Visitors From PPC do not convert

[nashville]

I am running a PPC program wth Google at the moment and the landing page is Learn to Fly, Flying Lessons, Flight School

You can see my ads when you enter "learn to fly" on google near the top.

I am offering exactly what I advertise and it is a true honest promotion ... but my cost per conversion is terrible.

Right now it is costing me $20 per every name I collect. Which is 4 times what it needs to be.

What am I missing?

[cw1865]

You know what? I don't think you're missing anything. Right now it seems to be costing you $20 to just get a lead (a name). What percentage of those names are turning into customers?

The first thing to look into is obvious, make sure that your campaign is geographically targetted. You probably already realize that if the customer is not within some sort of reasonable driving distance that you would be wasting your advertising dollars.

I think another consideration is that you have to reazlize that flying is something that many of us imagine we would like to do, but is something that only few of us actually get to do. (ie. like rock climbing, we'd all like to be mountain/rock climbers, but not really!) Unfortunately this mindset is apt to get you a lot of viewers who really aren't going to take even one more step. I've actually done this for motorcycles: every spring I say I'm going to get a motorcycle license, buy a motorcycle and 'just do it' - it hasn't happened for ten years!

One thing you might want to consider is to have ddirect articles in your website about your flight instructors, ie. John has been flying for 10 years; Suzie was a commercial pilot for 20 years; Gary has been teaching students since he was 18......this might help.

Another thing to consider even outside the ppc campaign are ancillary websites. Again its obvious that the searches that you 'want' are those that are geographically restrained to Nashville, TN. First, remember that Nashville has suburbs, so at some point (and of course it has to be natural, try to make sure that a search for 'flight lessons [suburb Nasvhille], TN will hit your site. (Don't forget counties if its relevant) - currently you're #4 on google for 'flight lessons nashville, tn'

Second thing I would try to get some ancillary names: flight-lessons-nashville.com, pilot-lessons-nashville.com - or any other geographic names that you consider to be locally important. (avoid suplicate content, which admittedly might be hard because you're relatively focused)....

I hope that helps!

[4arizona]

If you were a client of mine I would suggest that you have a better landing page superduper cost about 575.00 edit from the larger video a teaser video cost 350.00 analysis of Keywords and ads $400.00 getting a much higher ROI = Priceless

actually I just told you for free, so it is priceless


Since capturing their contact info is the number #1 Priority I would send all traffic to a single web landing page. If they fill in their info they can see the longer video and then I would give them access to the rest of the site.


I don't know what your google ads say but you might have to do a couple of different versions. Putting a price will cut down SOME of the lookies but not all


I could seo "learn to fly" to the first page of G but it would be $$$$

[Duncan Pollock]

I agree. You're probably broadcasting to too wide a potential customer base. PPC is all a question of numbers and there's no point in making yourself known to people who, ahem, would need to book a flight to get to you. You want locals and your Ads should include your geographic area, e.g. Learn To Fly In Nashville.

Duncan

[wige]

Have you checked the keywords that people are coming to your sites from? I had a PPC campaign that showed up for some unexpected long tail searches that lowered my conversion rate. IE I targeted "learn to fly" but got a lot of additional traffic from the non-converting variant "where to learn to fly" (purely an example). If this is the case, you may need to tweak your keywords.

Also, in my (limited) experience, ads on sites had a lower conversion rate than ads displayed on the SERPs, and if this is the case with your traffic as well, you might want to split into two campaigns, one for serps and one for web site ads and budget according to conversion rate.

[tamecrow]

One thing that may sound blindingly obvious and simple, but has caught me out before... Is your form/shopping cart working? I've seen problems where conversion rates have crashed due to some wonky code or an enquiry form not working. It's worth testing your own systems regularly - they can often break quite randomly

[4arizona]

Originally Posted by tamecrow

One thing that may sound blindingly obvious and simple, but has caught me out before... Is your form/shopping cart working?

This is a very good point. I would check to make sure the form/website is working in a couple of different internet browsers and
versions as well. Firefox,netscape and aol even if they are only used by a small %.

[SEO Slacker]

Definitely sounds like you're targeting too broad a range of keywords. Including local keyphrases is a good place to start.

You should also make sure that your ad is very clear that your site is offering flight lessons for XXX price...or something that will weed out the folks who are just curious about flying.

[bobchrist]

Try out narrowly targeted keywords like "helicopter flying lesson" "flying lesson California"....

[doj464]

$20 a name is not thaaat crazy. How qualified are those names?

If you are making a decent profit on those people it shouldn't be a big deal.

Some of the other things you could do is remove that image on the right - if your goal is to have them download the free flight lesson.

Basically, Create a goal (get them to sign up?), Optimize the site so that people take that action, and <i>test</i> if having some text ads for other options as a way to monetize your uninterested clientele.

[bobchrist]

Using specific keywords in anchor text and optimizing the landing page accordingly could bring good conversion.