The magic of low-hanging fruit

[audax]

Seth's Blog: The magic of low-hanging fruit

This is so relevent to our business it's not even funny.

Imagine that half the cars in the US get 10 miles per gallon. And half get 40 miles per gallon. Further stipulate that all cars are driven the same number of miles per year.

Now, you get one wish. You can give every low-mileage car a new set of spark plugs that will increase fuel efficiency by 5 mpg, up to 15. Or you can replace every 40 mpg car with a car that gets 75 mpg, an increase of 35 miles for every gallon driven.

Which is better?

It turns out that the 5 mpg increase is far better for overall mileage than the 35 mpg increase, even though it's smaller both as a percentage and absolutely. That's because the 10 mpg hogs use up so much gas. They're the low-hanging fruit, not just easy to fix, but worth fixing.

As marketers, we're tempted to tweak the already tweaked, to turn the 100 to 101, to optimize for the peak performances. That long tail is very long, though, and if there's a way you can raise the floor (instead of just focusing on the ceiling) you may be surprised to discover that it can have a huge impact.

Instead of dropping all those keywords from your PPC campaign that aren't converting, try figuring out why; Move them to another group, push them to a different landing page or a different offer. How much money and how many conversions are you leaving on the table by cutting them out?

Simple example: It's way more profitable to encourage each of your existing customers to spend $3 than it is to get a stranger to spend $300. It's also more effective to get the 80% of your customer service people that are average to be a little better than it is to get the amazing ones to be better still.

This will probably hit home for those who do even a little bit of e-mail marketing. If you aren't capturing your traffic's email address before passing them on to the offer, you are limiting yourself to only a single transaction with that customer. Capture their email and hit them up again later (something relevant though, no spamming). How much easier is it to get the sale from someone you've already qualified and is obviously more motivated to convert?

 

[nickycakes]

Yes, this is a very relevant lesson, however when applying it to PPC campaigns you're missing a major factor. The reason people dump the non-converting keywords is because it is far more profitable to just dump them and start a whole new campaign for another product. Wasting hours trying to squeeze 10% profit out of some shitty keywords just isn't worth it. The low hanging fruit are the converting keywords that were easy to find, the shitty ones we dump for some poor soul to waste time on after we're gone.

 

[audax]

Yes, understood. I'm not trying to imply that every non-converting keyword should be kept. Some keywords are going to be a total waste and should be dropped. I was just trying to make the point that you should truly know that the keyword is bust before you drop it.

The point was moreso to encourge focusing on the keyword that are converting but at a lower rate than the top converting ones. If your top keywords are converting at 30%, in line with the article, you should take a look at those converting at 20% and push those up some, rather than trying to get those 30% words up to 35%. Now obviously, if those keywords converting around 20% are only bringing a trickle of traffic it's not worth it, but you have to evaluate your options in each case.

Just like Seth said, instead of focusing only on pushing the ceiling, try to raise the floor too.