*guffaw* *snort* *chortle*

OK, I think I’m OK. Maturity levels are rising *snigger*, oops.

*Deep Breath*

OK, I had a really interesting e-mail today from Grant who is wondering about a campaign where he’s managed to optimise his direct to merchant ads well and is achieving some really good CTR’s. Unfortunately, despite his effort the product isn’t converting for him.

Here’s his question : -

Hi Kirsty

I wonder if you could shed some light on my PPC campaign.

I have been marketing a Clickbank product for about 3 weeks now tweaking the
ads and keywords so that I get a good CTR. I have been linking direct to the
Merchant to see if the product converts. Now being the beginning of the year I
thought a weight loss related product would be in demand.

I opted for this product www.nomanboobs.com this is my domain but with the
redirect to the merchant. I managed to get the following CTR with my 3 ad
groups:

1. Man Boobs - Rid: CTR = 10.58%, Clicks 98, Avg Pos 2.4, Sales None
2. Man Boobs - How CTR = 15.92%, Clicks 61, Avg Pos 2.3 Sales None
3. Man Boobs - Lose CTR = 5.71%, Clicks 24, Avg Pos 3, Sales None

Now the above Keywords were targeted as per the Ad groups ie Rid, How & Lose.
Would you say the Sales page is poor quality or my approach is lacking.

I had another campaign running that targeted Chest Fat with the same stats but
no sales.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Love the Blog

Grant

Hi Grant,

Well, first off congratulations on being able to optimise your ads to get such excellent CTR’s. You have obviously done a great job with your optimisation. I don’t think I’d advise relying on this kind of URL redirect in Adwords as a long term strategy, as they’ll probably catch up with you in the end. However, that’s not really the issue here!

If I’m reading your e-mail correctly, I think you were bidding on terms such as “lose man boobs”. I don’t think there has been anything wrong with what you have done. If you were getting any conversions at all, but couldn’t make them pay I might be inclined to advise you to try and find some more niche search terms in your area and try to get them at a lower CPC.

However, I really think what this is down to is the merchant landing page you are sending your traffic to. First of all, pages like this really turn people off. They are so 1999! Secondly, place yourself in the position of the unfortunate soul who needs rid of his manboobs. Just how far down a page full of ugly text and exclaimation marks would you scroll to find out what you needed to do about it? Obviously consumers want information, but there’s definately sales overkill at play.

I think the merchant page is really awful, and I’m not surprised you haven’t had any conversions. Usually, I might encourage you to send a few more clicks to give your new campaign time to “bed in”. For this merchant though, I tend to feel that these kind of offers will probably suffer from such dreadful conversion rates that you’d be best to cut your losses and look for something else.

Next Steps To A New Merchant

Firstly, don’t be too disheartened… at least you’ve perfected your ad optimisation skills.

I think they key to finding something to promote is to look at something you might buy personally. Sit down and and have a bit of an internet brainstorming session and write down a list of products that appeal to you. Things that work well are obviously higher value items, and perhaps things you can’t buy from too many retailers.

I wrote another Ask Kirsty article a while back that you might find useful… How To Find Your First Affiliate Niche

Also, I’ve no experience with them myself, but I’ve read a few rumblings about Clickbank not being suitable for newbies. The link is there, I’ll let you make your own mind up.

You’re on the right lines… so the best of luck to you!