Maximize profits with multiple landing page types

One of the biggest mistakes I see new affiliates doing is sending all the traffic in a campaign to the same landing page. This makes no sense when the keywords that the user is searching for is already prequalifying their intentions. Each step in the landing page process will lose customers (bounce rates), so if you make them jump through 3 pages to get to the conversion you might lose 50% more customers than 2 pages. You want to get customers to the conversion page as quickly and as easily as possible. This in not an exact science, but more of an art. Some offers it might be worth adding in an extra step to pre-sell the customer before hitting the money page. But others, their search term has already shown you what they want so pre-selling is pointless and leads to lower conversions. Like everything in affiliate marketing, you have to test for each specific offer. This probably will make more sense with an example.

Let’s use everyones favorite niche, ringtones (even though I stopped promoting ringtones over a year ago). When I said earlier that the search term is prequalifying the users intention, here’s what I meant.

a user searches for “verizon ringtones”. This user should NOT be sent to the standard carrier select landing page. You already know they use verizon. In this case the best bet would be to get them right to the offer. Possibly a pre-sell landing page with Verizon branding to let them know they are in the right place. You would have to test both scenarios to find the best conversion. But carrier select would be a waste.

Now what if they searched for “new cell ringtones”? With this general term, you have to make a choice. If you are splitting your traffic to multiple offers for single carriers, it might work to use the carrier select landing page. However, if you are sending everything to an offer like Flycell that includes 7 of the 8 major carriers, it might work better to skip the carrier select page and send them right to the offer. Sure, you might lose a few people who had that 8th carrier that the offer didn’t support, but the increase in conversions by skipping the extra step would probably offset that loss.

It all just comes down to really examining your keywords and adgroups to determine what the user who uses those search term really wants. Then delivering them to the offer page as seamlessly and with as few steps as possible. Don’t make them jump through hoops if they don’t need to. Most offers I run go to a mix of direct linking, redirects, pre-sells, and reinforcing pass-through landing pages. I would never send everything to the same page.

Here is how I would conceptualize the landing page decision for most cases. But keep in mind there really should be an arrow from every box to every other box, because every possibility should eventually be tested in a successful campaign.