How to Sell Any Product in 5 Minutes
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Selling a product in 5 minutes used to be impossible unless you were selling lemonade. Now customers want to buy products in 5 minutes, even if the product is expensive and being shipped from another country.
Digital marketing is just marketing on the internet. The same strategies can be seen in websites, emails, social media, and content marketing as on cable television, magazines, and billboards. The only thing that has changed is consumer behavior.
Cost
When you pay for an ad on the internet, every platform uses an algorithm to determine what you pay. Audiences, pages, and search rankings are all auctioned to the highest bidder.
The most important variable to cost is targeting followed by the quality of your ads.
- Targeting: Is your target audience and placement targeted by a lot of advertisers?
- Quality: Is your Ad receiving positive engagement?
The quality of your content is judged by your viewer’s engagement. Well-targeted ads will receive better engagement. An annoying advertisement will cost more than one with good reception.
Targeting
Advertising to web users in Manhattan is more expensive than in New Jersey. Advertising on LinkedIn is more expensive than on Instagram. Advertising towards higher income brackets or any demographic being targeted by a lot of advertisers will cost more.
You can target internet users by device, location, income, and interests.
You can also target users through “lookalike audiences” where email lists are assessed with artificial intelligence to find similar people around the world. This can be useful for targeting niche demographics not available in through the default targeting methods.
You can also group targeting methods. If you are advertising a luxury car, you can ensure you are only advertising to people interested in cars and with a high income. You could then exclude people interested in EVs, sports cars, and so on. The best practice is to run multiple campaigns and split-test their success.
Engagement
The quality of your advertisement is then judged by engagement. This is influenced in part by how you are targeting your advertisement. If you are showing an ad for real estate to college students it won’t do well regardless of the quality of the ad.
Similar algorithms are used across the internet, even on this site. If content marketing isn’t your thing that’s ok. You can go straight to display ads or search ads. You should still think of it as content. Your advertisements and website should drive engagement.
Advertising platforms do their best to match you with customers but they also want to match customers with good companies. You can read about how they judge content quality here.
AdWords
AdWords is a service from Google that allows you to target keywords and demographics on their search engine. AdWords can provide a lucrative stream of customers if coupled with a good landing page and effective targeting.
Choosing Keywords
A keyword is a targeted word contained in searches. A long-tail keyword is a targeted phrase. You can choose between a broad match and an exact match, which as the names indicate, narrows the targeting to;
- Broad Match: All similar words and phrases
- Exact Match: Only exact matches
A broad match for “SUV” would also target searches for “car”. An exact match wouldn’t.
Long-tail keywords naturally have the lowest competition. “Cars for soccer moms” is much cheaper than “luxury SUVs”.
Adwords allows conversion tracking so you can clearly calculate ROI. Do not forget to set up analytics and conversion tracking. This will allow you to measure the success of your targeting and website and make them better.
To search; go to the “Keyword Planner” under Tools & Settings on Google AdWords.
Search for keywords using a phrase, website, or category. where it says “your landing page”, you can enter your competitor’s URLs and see what they are doing. This is also possible through UberSuggest or SEMrush.
Text Ads
Next, you need to make sure your text ads and landing page are relevant to your targeted keyword. If you are targeting the key phrase “cars for soccer moms”; make sure the text ad, landing page, and products fit the audience.
Landing Page
Much like your text ad, your landing page needs to fit your target keyword and audience. It should clearly demonstrate key selling points in a digital form of the sales process.
You can see on this landing page from Apple how they divide the sales process into 3 pages, only giving the price at the very end, much like an expert car salesman or real estate agent would.
As you scroll down, each selling point is made clear in plain language and bold text.
The page is full of beautiful images and some are interactive.
Apple has been at the forefront of digital marketing for a long time. I believe the reason for their use of interactive elements is that it makes the product feel more tangible. It also makes your site more interesting, increasing the average time on the page, which increases the ranking of your site.
How to fix an AdWords campaign that isn’t working
If your AdWords campaign isn’t working, it is either due to your text ad, your targeting, or your website. The best practice, in this case, would be to check Google Analytics.
If you have indicators of poor web performance in analytics (high bounce rate/exit rates, low traffic, a low average time on page) your website is likely the culprit.
A 2-second delay in load time resulted in abandonment rates of up to 87%
In AdWords, check your keyword and bidding performance. Google shows a quality score for campaigns. If it is under 50% your AdWords campaign is causing an issue. Either the text ad, targeting, or both are ineffective. A poor click rate usually indicates an issue with the ad while Google nalytics indicates an issue with the site.
Display Ads
Google Ads display on any website that decides to monetize its traffic through google. You can target URLs or a category.
Google also owns Youtube. You can use Facebook ads to target Facebook or Instagram. Most other platforms have their own service but these two tech giants dominate most of the internet with partnerships.
Display Ads get a lower conversion rate than search ads because users are less likely to be actively looking for the product. They are also cheaper.
- PPC stands for pay-per-click.
- CPM cost per 1000 impressions.
- An impression is a jargon for views. Just because someone saw your ad, doesn’t necessarily mean you made an impression.
FAQs
Will SEO be automated?
SEO encompasses writing, graphic design, UI design, website maintenance, and photography. Technically all of these things can already be done by AI, but not well enough to rank on google.
Can SEO keywords be phrases?
Yes, this is referred to as a long-tail keyword or a phrase match if using AdWords.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization. Google and other search engine providers use an algorithm that determines what to rank based on what is called a “quality score”. Unsurprisingly, this attempts to gauge the quality of your site and ranks accordingly.
What is an impression?
Google named views of an advertisement an “impression”. Many advertisements, especially those displayed on the side of the screen are ignored altogether. Focus on really making an impression. Focus on engagement. This is the staple that ranks content across the internet.
You can read how I earned $378,920 in AdWords conversions for a total cost of $45,353 here.
