The EdTech No-Touch Paid Campaign Optimization Method

Question:

Have you ever stopped in front of a shop window that got you excited about an item and really made you go inside?

Have you also been so disappointed after you went inside that shop because salespeople were so dismissive or didn’t give you the information you needed or not even pointed you in the right direction?

If you’re like me, you can’t stand having a campaign that doesn’t get results, even if it’s in the long term.

But half the time, it’s not your campaign that’s not performing. It’s your landing page.

If your landing page doesn’t connect with your audience and isn’t a continuation of your ads, there will be a message break, mental frustration, and abandonment.

Not addressing the audience, their problems, and how you solve them in an structured way, creates a cascade of issues that will waste your time on the wrong things:

• Campaign Budget Optimization
  Budget increases, cost caps, and all that stuff only make sense when you have a landing page that responds to the traffic it receives.

• Ad Copy Tests
  Whichever ad copy model you use (AIDA, BAB, TAS, etc), it will only have an effect if both messages - ad and landing page - connect by supplying a mental resolution for the curiosity that attracted people in the first place.

• Contradicting information between ads and landing pages
  Imagine you have 1) a high CTR on your ads and 2) high engagement rate on your landing pages, but 3) low conversion rate.
  What would you do next?

• Landing page A/B tests and CTA changes
  You probably had your share of A/B tests to know that they can be misleading if the landing page is not receiving a ton of traffic - especially when the core message of the page is not in sync with your audience.

• Page load speed
  First, disregard Google Page Speed scores. Those scores are ideal but not practical on a day to day basis. If the page loads fine and quickly on your 3G/4G average phone on the first time (no cache), you’re good. This will be a low priority task

In summary, you waste time and money on low return activities when your message is not planned and carefully crafted.

To avoid all this frustration, I created the…

Campaign Landing Page Messaging Guide

This is the same method I use with my clients - and also to write this very newsletter.

The Big Idea is that you improve campaigns by improving the landing page messaging.

Your landing page message will provide you with multiple paths to connect with your audience from the ads.

Basically, you focus on the Big Problem/Solution on the landing page and on the multiple problems/fears your audience faces that end up creating that big problem.

And then, you structure your landing page to visually display that message in the most appropriate way.

Here’s how it works:

PART 1: AUDIENCE

You need to know who you’re talking to. In a previous post, I explained what an EdTech product-market-fit ICP (ideal client profile) is.

Is your landing page going to talk to what customer profile? And to what buyer personas?

PART 2: CLARITY

You need to differentiate Curiosity from Clarity.

Your Ads need to create an information gap, most likely through curiosity.

Your Landing Page, on the other hand, need to close that gap and give the visitor clarity to solve the problem.

Here are some models and scenarios you can use:

• AIDA (attention, interest, desire, action)

• PAS (problem, problem agitation, solution)

Scenario 1: Your ad uses AIDA and your landing page uses PAS

Scenario 2: Your ad uses the P (from PAS) and your landing page uses AS (from PAS)

Either way, you need to drive attention to a curiosity gap and then close the gap with a solution and action.

PART 3: MESSAGE MATCH

Here’s the framework that I’m using right now to write this newsletter, based on the PAS model:

Topic and Subtopic

Define the broad topic and the specific subtopic you want to address.

In this post, the topic is Conversion. The subtopic is Landing Page Messaging.

Awareness Level

You need to decide where in the problem/solution your targets are:

• Problem Unaware

• Solution Unaware

• Solution Aware

• Product Aware

• Most Aware

In this post, I picked “Solution Unaware”.

Desire

Which of the eight desires are you addressing? In EdTech, most likely the last two:

1. Survival

2. Life enjoyment

3. Social acceptance

4. Companionship

5. Perceived status

6. Safety of tribe

7. Freedom from fear

8. Comfort and clarity

In this post, I picked “Comfort and clarity”.

Big Problem

What is the Big Problem you want to address?

Put together the awareness level and desire to help you come up with the problem.

For this post, I got “Disconnected Messaging Causing Poor Landing Page Conversion”.

Unique Mechanism

What is it that you do that is unique or that you can slap a compelling name to make it sound unique?

In this post, the mechanism name is “Campaign Landing Page Messaging Guide”.

Problems / Fears

List as many problems and fears as you can think your audience might be facing or use their own vocabulary from case studies and testimonials.

Benefits

Why is it applicable or related to their lives and problems/fears?

List as many bullet points as you can.

Big Idea

Create a one-sentence summary of all previous points that illustrates the value of what you’re providing.

In this post, the big idea is “Improve campaigns by improving the landing page messaging”.

Proof

What is your personal experience that illustrates the problem and how you overcame it - or helped clients overcome it.

In this post, I’m opening up how I write the newsletter and guide clients to write their landing pages and ad copy.

I also analyze an example of EdTech ad copy and landing page synergy.

Risk Reversal

In which ways can you ensure that by adopting your solution to the problem will remove most, if not all, the risk?

In this post, I offer to give you a “second pair of eyes on your message mapping.”

For example, a client of mine offers options: “if you’re not eligible for the state fund, we’ll guide you to free trials and other financial options”.

Putting All Together

When putting all the elements together, I order them as follows:

1. Hook
   curiosity gap between the problem (poor performing campaigns) and the solution (landing page messaging)

2. Lead-in
   solves part of the curiosity that tries to convince the audience to continue reading

3. Big Problem
   Introduce and explain the big problem

4. Agitation
   What’s the cost of not solving the problem

5. Unique Mechanism
   Compelling solution or approach name

6. Big Idea
   The one-sentence idea that solves the problem

7. Benefits
   All possible benefits you can list subsequent to solving the problem

8. Proof
   How you/clients have solved the problem

9. Risk Reversal
   How can you minimize risks?

How I Met Your Mother

Remember the TV series How I Met Your Mother, where Ted spent 9 years telling his two kids how he met their mother?

Before starting, the creators of the show knew only two things:

• The beginning

• The end

Everything in between was created to connect the two points.

Use this same approach:

Headline = Problem to solve

CTA = Action to solve the problem

PART 4: ATTENTION RATIO

If you’re driving paid traffic to a landing page, you want to remove all possible distractions and detractors of conversion - keeping only one reachable goal.

It’s called 1:1 Attention Ratio.

However, not it’s not always possible to maintain a 1:1 approach, especially if your product has a long sales cycle or needs a buying committee decision.

Goal(s)

If you can’t use the 1:1 attention ratio, you need to define:

• a High-Stakes CTA

• a Low-Stakes CTA

Doing so will compensate for the friction “request a demo” can cause, if the person is not ready for a demo.

When you have multiple CTAs, keep in mind to make them visually distinctive throughout the landing page.

Remove All Links

To get as close as you can to the 1:1 attention ratio, remove any links and menus that are not the CTAs you defined.

Simplify Forms

As a rule of thumb, you should remove friction everywhere for higher conversions.

However, low friction could impact the quality of MQLs.

Although you want to make it easy for people to convert, you don’t want to have unqualified leads that will uselessly spend SDRs’ time.

A couple of months ago, I spoke with a CEO who told me that his super long form was converting 80% of the leads into sales!

This is amazing, but not always the use case. It will depend on the difficulty of the sale: cycle, committee, application, price, financial support, etc.

Here’s the gist:

• If your product is expensive and/or has a long sales cycle, use short forms;

• If you need to utillize long forms to qualify leads, use stepped forms, especially if you can keep key fields in the database/crm independently of the remaining ones;

• Prioritize auto-fill fields at the top of the form: use the sunk-cost fallacy to get visitors to fill out the form.

PART 5: CREDIBILITY SIGNALS

Here’s a two fold:

1. If you only have one CTA (1:1 ratio), then use current client names/testimonials as credibility triggers;

2. If you need a low stakes CTA, use case studies or client list.

On one of my clients, we use the visit to the Clients page as part of the Account Scoring - as we detected that most website visitors check this page before downloading a digital asset.

By following the guide above, you will be able to:

• Improve conversions and the effectiveness of your campaigns

• Get clarity on how to structure your landing page messaging

• Get clarity to craft compelling ad copy that connects with the landing page

• Spend time on high impact activities

Ad Analysis

To show a practical example of the application of concise messaging, I will analyze a Linkedin ad by Ellucian.

Let’s start with the Curiosity Gap.

The use of a question creates a loose end that needs to be tied. And that’s what the landing page headline and subheadline do. They complete that missed information.

We then have the Problem Gap.

Every institution has fears that need to be addressed when purchasing a new software, especially a large software like a student information system.

Ellucian calls out those problems and then, on the landing page, offers information that soothes that fear. Short and effective.

They don’t only call out the problems in the ad, but they also list additional ones. This is a form of Problem Agitation.

Ideally, though, you would want to add a section mentioning a downstream consequence (or lack of), honing in on the cost of not solving the main problems.

The last piece of this puzzle is the Calls to Action.

Ellucian uses high and low commitment CTAs.

Requesting a demo of a large software like a SIS usually requires a custom setup and meeting a group of stakeholders. Most people are not prepared for that.

They are, however, prepared to check if the software customers are relevant to them. Maybe the customers are institutions of the same size, in the same location, or of the same type.

That’s when you apply case studies to get the engagement of the visitor, triggering your lead and account scoring.

Do you see any missed points their landing page should’ve addressed?

DO YOU NEED

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