Sorry to dwell on Variety being important, but it really is a huge factor to success with many campaigns and types of Marketing.
PPC for example needs it when you move away from the trademark, product number and extension terms and want to start driving more traffic that is still targeted, higher volume and unfortunately usually harder to convert.
The variety you offer the end user will be key to helping to convert the sale. Now, one thing to think about is that Variety isn’t just a ton of products. It is the options on the products, the stores you provide, the coupons you provide and everything else.
Stores for example:
Not every store is right for every person. Some people have preferences but are just in the comparison stage of their buying process. For these people you may want to show product samples and drive people to the product pages or category pages on the stores you are promoting, but make sure you actually describe each store so that it clearly describes the differences, their advantages and the stores goals or Marketing pitch. Some stores may focus on customer service and higher prices like Nordstroms and others may focus on having great deals like TJ Maxx. Describe what they are going to find within the mix of stores you have and even more importantly if you go after this model, collect their email address for your newsletter so you can remarket to them and really start to get a chance to convert them into a sale over and over again.
By giving the shopper a choice of stores and a solid variety of options, they may not only come back to you for other product recommendations since they know you have done the work and research for them, but you have also made their lives easier which is one of the values of having solid Marketing. Bringing in the visitor that is looking for something, giving it to them and reinforcing why this is the right place to buy or send in your information for more information.
Products.
Having a product mix that is above and beyond what the person expected is definitely an advantage, at least in my opinion, since the traffic is general and not extremely targeted. If you are bidding on the term pocket watch, you don’t know if the person is looking for a gold one, a silver one, one that flips opened, one that holds a picture, one that is antique or one that is a newer style. If you are bidding on the term tshirt, you don’t know what size they are looking for, what color, if it is designer or non, long sleeve or short sleeve, undershirts or graphic tees, a round neck or a v neck, etc… when you are bidding on a really general term, besides your negative keyword list, you need to provide the shopper with a solid product variety and even more importantly a really good way to navigate though your site to see the entire product line and to help them find the actual products they are looking for even easier.
Search boxes, navigation links or even tag clouds can all help with this.
Coupons:
Coupons are another great way to help reinforce the sale. However, with the coupons, be careful about offering to many.
It can be argued either way, a huge variety of coupons gives more options so you can cover what your end user is looking for, or you can also say that too many coupons becomes overwhelming and if half of them aren’t working, you can frustrate your shopper making them not trust your recommendations and possibly not go to your site first for coupons and shopping since they only found coupons that didn’t work, were expired etc… and had a bad user experience. If you are not a coupon site or a Merchant that is driving to a blog or a forum, use coupons that will not expire so you can ensure that your traffic is always finding working coupons and having the best possible user experience possible. If you just list a ton of coupons and don’t keep the pages updated, you could lose this trust and the loss of trust in your site is what will kill you in the long run.
Anyways, variety is a seriously important thing to be able to offer your website visitors, especially with general term PPC. You can look at variety from navigation to product mix to coupons to stores to a whole variety of other variables. The important thing to remember is to not go overboard and to also keep it simple enough so that your Grandmother could find her way through the mix to find the product that she wants. If you need help with finding a solid variety mix for your site or product pages or campaigns, feel free to write me at adamr (at) adamriemer (dot) me (not .com) and I’ll be happy to look over your campaigns for you.
