3 Ways To Greatly Improve Your PPC Performance

3 Ways To Greatly Improve Your PPC Performance

Pay-per-click advertising can be a great way to drive traffic to your sales funnel: it’s reliable, it’s measurable, and it’s scalable.

However, if you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s easy to burn through your entire marketing budget without having anything to show for it.

That’s why today we are going to look at three ways to greatly improve the performance of your PPC campaigns.

#1 Build a Value Ladder Sales Funnel

If you only take away one thing from this article, please make it this one. It is hands down the best way to increase paid advertising ROI. 

The Biggest Paid Advertising Mistake That You Need To Avoid at All Costs

Do you know what is the most common mistake that entrepreneurs make with their PPC advertising campaigns?

It’s using paid ads to drive traffic to a sales page. “Wait, what?” you might think. “Isn’t that what paid ads are for?”

Think about it this way:

If a complete stranger walked up to you and said “Yo, here’s my product, now buy it!”… Would you buy it?

Not only you would not buy it but you would also think that this person was a lunatic!

Driving traffic directly to your sales page is the online equivalent of this – you are putting your offer in front of someone who has never even heard of you and expecting them to hand over their hard-earned money to you. 

In fact, if you were to approach them in real life, they might be willing to hear out your sales pitch out of politeness.

But this social pressure doesn’t exist online so they will likely leave your sales page the moment they get distracted by something else. 

And once they are gone, they are probably gone forever. Just like the money you spent to get them to click through to your sales page. 

This approach to marketing doesn’t make any sense when you think about it, right?

Fortunately, there’s a better way

What Is a Value Ladder Sales Funnel?

We believe that the most effective way to sell anything online is the Value Ladder sales funnel.

It was created by our co-founder Russel Brunson who then used it to take ClickFunnels from zero to $10M+ in annual revenue in just one year (it’s at $100M+ now!). 

This sales funnel has four stages:

  • Bait. You offer the potential customer your lead magnet in exchange for their email address. 
  • Frontend. You offer the potential customer your least expensive and least valuable product or service. 
  • Middle. You offer the customer a more expensive and more valuable product or service. 
  • Backend. You offer the customer your most expensive and most valuable product or service.

Ideally, you also offer a continuity program of some sort, meaning, a subscription product that generates recurring revenue. 

We also recommend adding downsells, upsells, and cross-sells to these core offers in order to maximize your revenue.

What Is a Value Ladder Sales Funnel?

The reason why this sales funnel works so well is that it allows you to:

  1. Start the relationship with that person by offering free value.
  2. Nurture that relationship by continuing to provide free value via email. 
  3. Build trust by providing progressively more paid value at each stage.

Here’s how Russell explains it:

How To Build a Value Ladder Sales Funnel in 5 Steps

So how can you build a Value Ladder sales funnel for your business?

Step 1: Create an Irresistible Lead Magnet

A lead magnet is a freebie that you offer to potential customers in exchange for their email address.

It can be anything that they can either download to their device or access online:

  • A report.
  • An ebook.
  • A webinar.
  • An email course.
  • A video course.

…etc. 

What’s important is that your lead magnet offers an effective solution to a problem that your potential customers are struggling with.

For example:

Matthew Hussey, a world-renowned dating coach, uses a guide called “9 Magic Texts No Man Can Resist” as one of his lead magnets.

This guide includes nine text message scripts that women can copy-paste when texting guys they like. 

Step 2: Create a Landing Page for Your Lead Magnet

You also need a landing page for your lead magnet.

A simple squeeze page that has these three key elements will do:

  • A headline that conveys what your free offer is all about.
  • An opt-in form where the potential customer can type in their email address. It can be either displayed immediately or shown once they click the call-to-action button.
  • A call-to-action button that encourages the potential customer to get the lead magnet. 

You might also want to experiment with various additional elements such as subheadlines, images, social proof, etc. 

For example:

Here’s Matthew Hussey’s landing page for his “9 Magic Texts No Man Can Resist” guide:

Create a Landing Page for Your Lead Magnet

Step 3: Create a Frontend Offer

It’s important to understand that the purpose of the frontend offer isn’t to make you loads of money – it’s to convert leads into paying customers. 

That’s why we recommend creating a product specifically for that as opposed to just using one of your existing products as your frontend offer. 

Ideally, there should be a logical progression from the lead magnet to the frontend offer, which you can achieve by making sure that the latter builds on the former.

For example:

One of Matthew Hussey’s frontend offers is a guide called “The Momentum Texts” that provides 67 more text message scripts.

See how there’s a seamless transition from the lead magnet to the frontend offer? You want the same in your sales funnel.

Create a Frontend Offer

We also recommend pricing your frontend offer at $7.

This price point is:

  • Not high enough to make the potential customer stop and think twice before proceeding with the purchase. 
  • Not low enough to make the potential customer skeptical of the product’s value and therefore hesitant to buy it. 

Again, the goal here is to convert leads into paying customers, so you don’t want the price to get in the way of that. 

Step 4: Create a Sales Page for Your Frontend Offer

You also need to create a sales page for your frontend offer.

It should include these five key elements:

  • A headline that conveys what your frontend offer is all about.
  • A subheadline that provides more information about your frontend offer. 
  • Sales copy that establishes an emotional connection with the potential customer,  explains the benefits of your frontend product, and addresses potential objections to buying it. 
  • Social proof that reassures the potential customer that you are legit. This can include testimonials, endorsements, relevant credentials, relevant accomplishments, “As Seen On” badges, etc.
  • A call-to-action button that encourages the potential customer to purchase your frontend product. 

We also recommend providing a 30, 60, or 90-day no-questions-asked money-back guarantee to remove all financial risk from the purchase decision.

For example:

Let’s take a look at Matthew Hussey’s “The Momentum Texts” sales page. 

Here’s what you see above the fold:

Create a Sales Page for Your Frontend Offer

Below that there’s sales copy where Matthew establishes an emotional connection with the potential customer:

Create a Sales Page for Your Frontend Offer, emotional connection sales copy example.

Then he introduces “The Momentum Texts”:

Create a Sales Page for Your Frontend Offer, the momentum texts example.

Finally, there’s the second call to action, a 60-day no-questions-asked money-back guarantee, and “As Seen On” media badges:

Create a Sales Page for Your Frontend Offer, second call to action example.

Step 5: Setup an Email “Indoctrination” Sequence

We don’t recommend hitting the potential customer with a sales pitch the moment they give you their email address.

Send them this 6-email sequence instead:

  • Email #1: Who are you? Introduce yourself to the potential customer. 
  • Email #2: Where did you come from? Tell them how you came to do what you do now. 
  • Email #3: What do you do? Tell them more about what it is that you do. 
  • Email #4: How did you gain this expertise? Explain what makes you qualified to do what you do. 
  • Email #5: Who do you do this for? Explain who are your ideal customers + share a case study on how you helped such a person get what they want. 
  • Email #6: How can you do it for me? Pitch your frontend product to the potential customer. End the email with a call to action encouraging them to click through to its sales page and buy it. 

By the time you send that person the sixth email, they might trust you enough to check out your frontend offer. 

And if they aren’t at that point yet, then that’s okay too – continue nurturing that relationship by providing free value via email. They aren’t ready to buy now but they might be in the future.

Use Paid Ads to Drive Traffic to Your Lead Magnet Landing Page!

Now that your Value Ladder sales funnel is all set up and ready to go, it’s time to start driving traffic to it with PPC advertising. 

Direct potential customers to your lead magnet landing page, then let the “indoctrination” sequence that we have just discussed do the selling for you. 

Even if the person doesn’t buy your product you still have their email address which means that you have the opportunity to convert them into a paying customer in the future.

#2 Be Ruthless With Your Ad Targeting

The second most common mistake that entrepreneurs make with their PPC advertising campaigns is ad targeting that is too broad.

Here’s what you should do:

  1. Identify your ideal customers. Who is actually buying your products? Look at your existing sales data.
  2. Figure out what attributes they tend to have in common. Gender, ethnicity, age, location, education level, income level, political beliefs, religious beliefs, hobbies, interests, etc. 
  3. Use those common attributes in your ad targeting to attract more people like that. 

Note that we aren’t talking about leads here, we are talking about existing customers aka people who have actually bought something from you. 

We also recommend actively excluding people who don’t fit your ideal customer persona from your ad targeting.

For example:

When Noah Kagan looked at his sales data, he realized that female email subscribers rarely converted into paying customers.

So he decided to exclude women from his Facebook advertising campaigns altogether.

“It’s not that I don’t like women. I love them! 

But the point is that they are not actually as interested in my content. 

There’s probably someone who can better share that type of content with them.

So I target my audience which is males, 25-44.

Excluding entire demographics like that might feel weird at first but you need to remember that you aren’t doing anyone any favors by going after people that aren’t a match for what you are offering. 

That’s why you need to be ruthless in your ad targeting: 

Focus on your ideal customers. Ignore everyone else.

#3 Use the Hook, Story, Offer Framework

Banner blindness is a phenomenon where Internet users automatically ignore anything that they perceive to be an advertisement. 

You need to use the Hook, Story, Offer method to get around this problem:

  • Hook. Grab the person’s attention with a “pattern interrupt” – something that makes them stop scrolling and take a closer look. Funny, shocking, or bizarre statement can work well here. You can also use interesting visuals for this. 
  • Story. Depending on the ad format you choose, you might not have much space for storytelling. However, even a single sentence can be enough to pique someone’s curiosity and make them want to learn more. 
  • Offer.  Have a clear call to action encouraging them to go get your lead magnet. Make sure to emphasize that it’s completely FREE. 

Want Russell To Show You How To Build Your First Sales Funnel?

Let’s keep it real:

Building a sales funnel from scratch can seem like a daunting task.

That’s why we created our 5-Day Challenge where Russel walks you through it step-by-step.

You will learn how to:

  • Generate unlimited leads.
  • Create your first lead magnet.
  • Build your first sales funnel.
  • Create a simple 6-email follow-up sequence.
  • And launch your funnel!

…in just five days.

So don’t hesitate.

Join our 5 Day Challenge today. It’s completely free!

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