Improve your Acquisition Rate

Landing Pages are an Art form. I'm not saying this to create mystique or put them on a level all their own. I'm describing them this way, because this is exactly what they are; Landing Pages induce an Emotional Response.

As a writer, the first task for any Landing Page is deciding on the Emotional Response I want to achieve. If I am writing a Bid, on Guru for a New client, then I want to project Confidence, and Attraction. Since my Acquisition Rate on Guru.com is reported between 18% and 24%, depending on the month and my interest level, I can confidently say that this combination is working for me.

There are several great books on the value of Emotional Responses as tools for Landing Pages.

Acquisition Rate - A measure of Marketing and Sales effectiveness.

This is a very simple concept, compared to most Marketing concepts, which bring to mind the creatures in Where the Wild Things Are, every time I see them listed. Acquisition Rate is easy... your page sells or it doesn't and here is the Rate at which it Sells or Doesn't Sell.

I once worked for a company in Carlsbad as their Internet Marketing Manager. The owner of the company explained to me, when I suggested some changes in the PPC and Landing Pages, that he was more than happy with one sale in 1000 focused hits of that page, since a sale would mean that he was still making over $500 on each unit.

I quit that job. Those numbers don't even make sense, let alone inspire confidence in a company's future.

This being an easy concept to grasp, doesn't stop many Marketing Companies from trying to confuse it, in fact I just read a blog post by one Marketing company boasting that their efforts have increased conversions for their clients from 10% to %230 percent. So, if the client was only selling 1 product a month, you are boasting about increasing his sales to 230 a month? -- is the poor guy still in business? or still going broke?

Any Landing Page should have above 3% for its conversion rate, to be called a Landing Page – meaning, quite clearly, that for every 100 Focused Hits that page gets, it should convert at least three of them to sales.

If it is converting more than 17% it should be moved to another area, and used for Organic Traffic, so that it is giving you the most bang for the Buck, and the team should get together to see if they can come up with something new – because they are marketing gods.

Internet Marketing isn't a static world like Newspaper Ads, or Television Spots, there are far more considerations involved with the creation of a Landing Page besides their conversion rates, there are also considerations and actions to take with their failures.

There is nothing wrong with failures, unless you ignore them; because they cost you twice then.

If a page is only converting at 1-2% there is a wealth of information there, especially if you have been using PPC to pump over 100 hits a day at the page. Guys downtown, standing on the corner, asking for change are converting more than this page, so finding out why it is doing so poorly, will be incredibly valuable.

Over the last year, Don Winslow's web site has increased in traffic by 43.7%, if he isn't selling any more books than last year, does that increase in traffic matter?

Most companies are good about keeping the Goal in mind, surprisingly however, most web-site owners are not very good at this at all. The Goal is to Make Money. That is the Goal... Traffic is not a goal.

If you are new to Internet Marketing, Landing Pages are a heck of a place to start learning about making money on the Internet. Reading the books I mentioned before, will help you a great deal, then come back, and we will make you some money.