Optimizing Paid Traffic

Before getting started: The stuff covered in this chapter builds on what you built in previous chapters (we recommend starting there if you haven't done it already).

Ads are expensive, so let’s maximize the post-click conversion rate. When your website content doesn’t match the content in the ad, your visitor ends up bouncing and you waste your ad spend.

Our main data source here will be UTM parameters that come through the URL and give context on the ad group.

There are 5 standard UTM parameters. All of these are available directly in Mutiny.

• utm_source: The campaign source, like a search engine or newsletter.

• utm_medium: The campaign medium, like email or PPC.

• utm_term: The keywords your visitors searched for before clicking through the paid search ad.

• utm_content: Can differentiate ads or links that point to the same URL, especially useful if you’re A/B testing your ads/links to see which one is more effective.

• utm_campaign: Identifies a specific campaign or promotion.

If you have a performance marketer that you work with, grab some time with them to buddy up on this chapter. They can help you understand what ads are running, who is currently seeing relevant content to the ad and who isn’t, and which ad groups are in most need of optimization.

If you don’t have access to that person, we’ve got some tools right in Mutiny to help you out.

First, start by creating an experience. Choose “UTM Term” as the attribute and take a look at your top values. Click on the arrow at the left of the row to breakdown each value by page. Do you spot any mismatches in the search term and the page the visitor is landing on?

Find a term that’s misaligned with the landing page content. Build your segment using this term, and similar terms. You may want to use “contains” logic and combine a few similar terms to build larger audiences.

Create a personalized page experience on the landing page 

If you noticed high volume on pages after the landing page, you can create a personalized experiences for those pages as well.

Personalize your headline to include the term directly. Think about the intention of the searcher when using this term and make sure you are speaking to the problem they are trying to solve.

Now let’s take a look at campaign opportunities by looking at “UTM Campaign” data. If you are running paid social, or using creatives such as imagery or videos to promote your paid ads then let’s embed those assets into the landing page.

Create an experience for one of your display campaigns

Your headline should be the same or very close to the headline on the display ad. This will instill confidence in your visitors that they will find what they were looking for when they decide to clickthrough on the ad.

In the example above, Attentive we're seeing prospects click-through on the ad, but not convert on the landing page. By personalizing the landing page copy to match the UTM parameters of that paid ad, they saw a 77% lift in conversion.

If your display ad has a sub-headline, you may want to stick with the exact or similar messaging on the landing page.

Landing page optimization

Do your paid landing pages contain a nav bar? Use Mutiny to delete the nav or remove individual menu items. This eliminates distractions and keeps the visitor focused down the landing page conversion path.

Check out paid channel playbooks from other ground breakers.

See how Fabien from Notion optimizes the post-click experience for paid ads to reduce cost per lead.

We will let these experiences collect some data and check back in on how they are doing in the next few weeks. In the meantime, let’s optimize for mobile traffic.