Effective Incentives Can Improve Your Ad and Landing Page Performance

It’s no secret that effective ads and landing pages are crucial to the success of your search engine marketing efforts. Perhaps you’ve already created compelling copy relevant to your keywords, achieved top positions on the search results pages, and optimized the design and usability of your landing pages. All of this may have increased your site’s traffic and conversions, but do you still want more? Try offering an incentive.

Appealing incentives are proven to persuade searchers to not only click on your ads but also convert once they arrive at your landing page. Depending on the nature of your business, you can offer a free white paper or book, discount, web special, complementary product or accessory, gift, or free shipping to boost conversions. According to an article in Practical eCommerce, 84% of online shoppers surveyed during last year’s holiday season said they were most influenced by free shipping offers, while 77% cited sales and specials as their strongest motivators.

However, when it comes to determining the ideal incentive for your site, it’s best to test. Remember that while an incentive is a value-add for your customers, it’s also an incremental cost to you. That’s why it’s important to consider how it affects your bottom line. A recent study in Marketing Experiments Journal confirms that conversion rate alone cannot indicate which incentive has the most positive impact on net profit. Instead, the journal recommends using Return-On-Incentive, or ROIc, to measure this. Simply stated, the ROIc is the net cost of the incentive subtracted from its net profit. For instance, a free shipping offer might result in more conversions, but a free gift might be a better incentive because it yields a higher ROIc. Check out the study to learn more about calculating ROIc and using it to test two or more incentives.

Are you utilizing incentives to your advantage today?