Mar 22nd, 2007
Pre-Qualifying Traffic in CPC Environments
When designing banners or writing text links for your product or service its very important to determine which creatives will be used in a CPC (cost per click) or CPM (cost per impression) environment. A general rule of thumb is the following:
CPM = More agressive design
CPC = Less agressive design
Lets break this down further and discuss the importance of pre-qualifying your traffic in a CPC environment.
What does it mean to pre-qualify traffic?
Pre-qualifying traffic essentially means that you are providing more information in regards to a purchase on the banner *prior* to the surfer clicking thru. In other words if you are purchasing traffic and paying for every click (CPC) you want to ensure that the click has the highest possible chance of converting to a sale. It is very important that if you are paying by the click that the user understands as much as possible what you are offering and clicks because he is interested in your product or service.
How do I pre-qualify traffic?
There are some good rules of thumb when designing banners or writing text link meant to pre-qualify traffic. First include as much information as possible regarding your service. So if you are selling widgets be specific about the exact widget you are selling. Its also a good idea to include price points on the creative so the user will only click on the banner if the price seems reasonable to them.
Example messaging would be: “Buy Blue Widgets For $9.95 - Click Here To Purchase”
The user knows the specific type of widget (blue) and the price ($9.95) and the call to action (Click Here To Purchase) specifically mentions an action (purchasing the widget). The odds that this user is a buyer is significantly higher than a banner which did not utilize these concepts.
The difference between this style of design vs. designing for a CPM environment is that every click costs you money so you shouldn’t be too agressive in driving click thrus. You want to drive *qualified* click thrus. So while your average CTR (click thru rate) will be considerably lower your conversions on this traffic should be considerably higher thus optimizing your media buy.
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