How PPC Is Like Dragons’ Den
I was chatting with one of my friends last night and he remarked that he was considering applying for the new series of Dragons’ Den for his new start-up business. This got me thinking about the whole process of gaining investment on Dragons’ Den and how it is not too dis-similar to making a sale via PPC. Please find below my reasoning for such a random statement!
The Pitch
The first stage of Dragons’ Den is the pitch where the usually nervous entrepreneur has a small amount of time, and words to gain the attention and interest of the potential investors. This stage could be likened to your PPC ad copy being displayed on the search engine results page. Just like on Dragons’ Den you only have a small window of time to catch a potential clicker’s attention, and once you’ve got their attention you have a limited amount of words to interest them enough to click on your advert to learn more. So just like in the Den with your pitch, your ad copy has to be informative and persuasive in order to ensure the best results, in this case a visit to your website.
Q&A
Once you’ve made your pitch in the Den you are then straight into the cross examination which is the Q&A, where you must provide the right answers to the Dragons’ questions in order for them to stay in and continue considering investing in your business. In PPC terms this stage could be seen as when someone has clicked on your advert and landed on your web site. A bit like a den interrogation the site visitor is looking for more information on the product or service you have initially pitched to them. In order to ensure you are providing the clicker with all the ‘right answers’ ensure your landing page is full of content relevant to the search query and ad copy and is easily navigated so the visitor doesn’t feel you are wasting their time.
You can make sure your landing page provides as many great answers as possible by studying analytics data and running A/B tests through tools such as website optimiser to ensure its performing as well as it can do.
I’m Out
Unfortunately, no matter how hard you try with your pitch and answers within the Q&A session it’s unlikely that all 5 dragons will stay in and make you an offer. This could be for a perfectly innocent reason such as your product or service wasn’t quite right for them or maybe the investment was too large. It could also be because you didn’t really do yourself justice with your pitch or your answers in the Q&A. This problem can occur in PPC also, where people are clicking on your adverts and looking round your site but not converting. In the event of this it’s often wise to go back through your pitch/ad copy and question answers/landing page to see where you may have gone wrong.
If you feel you would really like to try and impress those who have dropped out one more time you could try remarketing. This will allow you to try and convert those who have dropped out at this stage at a later date with a special tailored message based on whereabouts on your site they have visited.
Investment – An Offer
If you get past the pitch and Q&A stage in the Den and not all of the Dragons’ declare themselves out, then you are offered an investment. This can be compared to a conversion (online sale/enquiry) on your site after your advertising message and landing page have managed to inform and impress the site visitor.
If this is the case a lot like an entrepreneur on Dragons’ Den, you’re going home with money in your pocket!
