The ‘Analyse A Real PPC Campaign’ continues having a look at how John Lewis are making Christmas PPC campaigns to take advantage of people wanting to buy Christmas decorations online. Last in the series looked at Nokia’s new tablet being the Lumia. What we found from this campaign was that they had created a poor title to their search PPC text advert but had created a good landing page encouraging the web user to scroll down to see the rest of the image of the Nokia Lumia. Let’s see how John Lewis have created their landing page aimed at selling Christmas trees.
To see John Lewis’s PPC text advert, I typed into Google search UK ‘christmas tree’:
Google have added a nice little touch by adding a Christmas theme to the search results when the web user searches for any keywords relating to Christmas.
At once, you can see why John Lewis needed to create a PPC campaign for Christmas trees. Their main competitor, Tesco, is ranked second organically compared to John Lewis who don’t even show up on the first page of results! Therefore, due to bad search engine optimisation, John Lewis have had to pay to get top spot.
Looking at the PPC text advert itself, John Lewis have made a really good advert because they mention everything the web user wants to hear before clicking on the advert:
- They make clear that John Lewis is a place to buy Christmas trees in the title of the advert.
- They mention their brand name (being ‘John Lewis’) in the advert as it is a trustworthy brand that is likely to increase the chances of gaining a conversion. As well as this, they are also retailer of the 2013 which again will work as a catalyst to conversions.
- They have added a financial incentive of free deliveries over £50. Considering trees are rather heavy, large and usually over £50, this means the Christmas trees will have free delivery.
- There is a call to action of ‘Find Your Perfect Tree Online’.
After clicking on the PPC advert, I came to the following landing page:
It is clear that John Lewis have adopted a similar strategy to Nokia by including upper snippets of the Christmas trees they are selling at the bottom of the page. This encourages the web user to scroll down and browse through the inventory. John Lewis are using, what could be considered, a hybrid landing page which is between a click through page and product/service page. This is because the landing page is showing products. But, to gain the conversion, the web user still needs to click on the product to buy it.
A good element to the landing page which advertisers can take note of is the fact that the prime area of the above-the-fold area of the landing page is taken up by an image. This is because images are great at holding lots of information in not as boring a way as text would. Therefore, it is a good idea for anyone with a landing page that has a high exit rate (or the web user’s average time on the landing page is low) should think about including an image to stop people exiting early.
