In this lesson we're going to learn a bit about the strategy of Using Bonuses to Increase Your Pay-per-Click Conversions.

A bonus is a free extra — essentially a reward—that a buyer gets in return for making a purchase. Bonuses are a useful tool for two reasons:

• They give buyers an additional incentive to buy,
• They encourage a buyer to choose you over a competitor.

Bonus offers aren't exclusive to the Internet by any means. This strategy is as old as the hills — swing by your local department store some day and you'll see 'special offers' and 'special bonuses' galore, especially among the makeup counters. Bonus offers are everywhere because they work!

Bonuses to Increase Conversions

For affiliate marketers, offering a special bonus in your ad copy or landing page can be a good way to increase your conversion rate, particularly if the bonus is more valuable than the product itself!

The bonus strategy is especially beneficial in these situations:

• During the launch build up of an internet marketing product — buyers in this market are usually savvy enough to look out for great bonuses,
• When promoting a name-brand product. People searching for a product by its name are usually ready to buy and a good incentive in the form of a bonus may be all the encouragement they need to take action.

On the other hand, bonuses don't work so well when:

• People are skeptical about the product and are searching for reviews or information to help them make up their mind,
• The bonus isn't very exciting.

Although bonuses work well in many markets, they don't work well in all, so it's very important to test this strategy for yourself.

Let's take a look at a couple of examples of successful bonus offers.

This ad appears when people search for the product 'pure personality' in Google:

The second example is for 'Commission Blueprint', a recently launched internet marketing product.

In both of these examples, the ads are targeted at people who have searched for a product by its name and are ready to buy - the customers just need an extra 'push' to whip out their credit cards in the form of an exciting incentive.

Creating a Knock-Out Bonus

Good bonuses obviously need to be something that the person interested in buying the target product will want. For example, if you are promoting a dog training book, then a bonus book on stopping dog aggression or dog health would be a good bonus.

The best bonuses are more valuable than the actual product! A great question to consider when you're brainstorming ideas is "What can I offer the market that's even more exciting than the product itself?"

For an internet marketing product, for example, you could interview a couple of internet millionaires — you can usually find one or two who'll say yes—and use the interview as your bonus. Alternatively, Private Label websites are a good place to source material which you can use to put together a great bonus. Finally, you can just ask the owner of the affiliate program whether they have any bonuses for you to use.

Testing

A word of caution from us: not every market responds well to pay-per-click ads offering bonuses. In most of our tests, bonus offers have worked very well, but we have come across a couple of markets where bonuses actually reduced click-through rates; like most other pay-per-click strategies, this is one you'll need to test for yourself.

Lesson Summary

In this lesson we've looked at using Bonuses to increase your PPC conversions.

Bonuses are a good idea when:

• Building up to the launch of an Internet Marketing product
• Promoting a name-brand product

The best bonuses are better than the actual product! Look at doing an interview, compiling content from Private Label sites or asking the affiliate program owner for any available bonuses.

Finally, be aware that not all markets respond positively to bonuses!