“Your Website Sucks”

When I first became known as an expert on AdWords and began speaking on the internet marketing circuit, I noticed a lot of pushback from many attendees at those seminars thanks to their macho “I don’t pay for traffic” attitudes.

Don’t get me wrong – that attitude certainly doesn’t describe the majority at those events, but there is a substantial number of people in the internet marketing community who feel that way. That wasn’t a big deal though … we know that truly successful marketers happily pay for traffic as long as there is a positive ROI on that investment.

The bigger issue I run into as an AdWords consultant is having to tell people, “Your website sucks.”

It usually happens like this: Someone contacts me to complain that they’ve spent a ton of money on AdWords and are not getting the conversions. I take a look at their campaigns, and while I can always make recommendations for improvements, 9 times out of 10 the real issue is with their websites.

I tell people, before you even spend that first dollar on AdWords, you need to improve your site and your marketing system first. That’s the biggest secret of succeeding on AdWords – the key to success with any PPC campaign lies primarily with your site and not the PPC campaigns themselves. If your site can’t convert traffic as it is, why would you expect that situation to change with AdWords traffic?

Here’s just a partial list of problems I immediately see:

- No opt-in or “squeeze.” (Or a really bad one.) Surprisingly, this is the most frequent problem, especially with small business owners and entrepreneurs who have not educated themselves on internet marketing.

- Poor site look & feel. Too many entrepreneurs are bootstrappers who build their own sites in a WYSIWYG editor and wind up with something that looks like a 3rd grader built it.

- Poor site structure.

- Poor sales copy and weak (or no) calls to action.

- Order links hard to find, obscure, no “Order Now” option in the site menu.

And the list goes on and on.

I’m certainly not surprised at this. I was guilty of it myself for a long time. My first couple of years in business, I was always hellbent on getting more traffic, more traffic, more traffic. Never did I consider that it’s not only a lot easier, but also far more effective to work on converting more of the traffic I already had than it was to drive more traffic. I also put more emphasis on monetizing my list – people who already know and respect me – than on traffic. That one’s no secret – every sales expert can tell you that your existing customers are worth far more in future revenue than prospective customers who haven’t bought yet.

So, if you’re frustrated with AdWords, my advice is to slow down, take a step back, and work on your site and your marketing system. Start split-testing different landing pages, structures, copy, audio, video, pricing, and for God’s sake, get some viral tell-a-friend features implemented!

That’s enough for my rant. For now anyway … I’ve got some split tests to check up on

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