How To Create Media Buys That Convert

Since 1998 I’ve been making money media buying both as a publisher and as an advertiser.  It’s how I made my first dollar online and how I’ve continued to sustain an online career.  To say I have a passion for it would be an understatement.  Over the year’s I’ve gained an immense amount of knowledge learning what works and what doesn’t.  One thing that some beginner (and expert) media buyers miss out on is “keeping the flow simple” for the visitor.

Many understand that click through rate (CTR) is king.  Publishers and advertising networks reward advertisers who yield the highest effective CPM (eCPM) with large amounts of quality volume (the first couple impressions).  While we want to use images that garner a solid CTR we want to take into consideration the overall flow of the campaign.

Your creative should contain similar text/images from your landing page.  This may seem like a no brainier to some, it’s a very important aspect to creating a campaign that returns a solid conversion rate.  Inside the Community we discuss a lot about “getting to know your market” and understanding how the demographic browses the Internet.

If your target market is females ages 35 – 45 it maybe beneficial to add a picture of one on your landing page.  You could include it as soon as the visitor lands on the page or when the visitor advances further through the site.  Keeping the flow gives the visitor an extra sense of security and they have more confidence when entering their information to become a successful lead or sale.

If promoting another product as an affiliate, the first thing I do when going to write creative copy is look at the landing page and use some of the headlines/text.  A high converting campaign that can be scaled will flow all the way through seamlessly.  Another trick to your copy is per-qualify the traffic a bit.  Since you’re interrupting them from browsing a website let them know how your product/service can benefit them.

It’s nice having a creative with a MASSIVE CTR but it’s also even nicer when you have one providing you 100% ROI.  Media buying can be very rewarding because of the scalability.  Focus on ROI early on and scale accordingly.  If you’re spending $100 a day and not making $200 then don’t scale up your spend.  Optimize your campaign by ensuring your creative/landing page flow seamlessly through the entire conversion process.