Cloud Sherpas is the world’s leading Google Apps cloud service provider. Their marketing team will discuss how they’ve leveraged Wordpress and Pardot to build a landing page engine in support of their online campaigns. They’ll discuss how to use custom post types to make the management of localized landing pages, embedded Pardot forms and Google Analytics goal tracking possible for everyone in your marketing department.

1. Elevate 2011:
Building a Landing Page Engine
with Pardot and Wordpress
November 15, 2011
Michael Cohn
Taylor Gould

2. Agenda
● Who are the Cloud Sherpas?
● Challenge - what were we trying to solve?
● Solution - how we solved it
● Results - what we're seeing
● Next steps - what we want to do next

3. is the world's leading
Google Apps cloud service provider
Thousands Millions Go More Google
of companies of users with us
500+ services customers 1 million mailboxes migrated
20,000+ product customers 3.5 million SherpaTools users
110+ countries
Cloud Sherpas is a founding member of the Google Apps Partner
Advisory Board, headquartered in Atlanta with international offices
in Sydney, Brisbane and Wellington.

4. We've helped migrate over 1,000,000 users to Google
Apps from some of the world's leading companies.
We've developed best practice deployment methodologies in Manufacturing,
Retail, Government, Real Estate, Healthcare, Education and other
industries.

5. B2B Marketing at Cloud Sherpas
Revive Campaigns
(Old/Open Leads)
Downloads App Installs
(White Papers, etc.)
Events Webinars
Search (SEO)
(Contact Us, Sales Line)
Paid Search (SEM)
(Landing Pages, Sales Line)
MQL
Marketing Qualified Lead
Enters the Sales Funnel

6. After we deployed Pardot...
Landing Nurture
PPC
Pages Campaigns
1000's of keywords 3 landing pages
10's of ad groups

7. Managing 10s of landing pages in Pardot was a
challenge. Scaling to 100s would be difficult.
● Difficulty making changes in layout template/landing
page framework
○ %%content%% - how do we standardize layouts inside the tag
○ problem compounded by more complex landing page designs
● Needed to streamline PPC processes; allow PPC
Manager to make landing page changes
○ "Let's test a new image this week" shouldn't require HTML/CSS guru

8. Project goal: create a
landing page engine
● Separate content from
the presentation layer
● Implement new landing page design
● Continue to use Pardot forms (vs. Form Handlers)
● Provide PPC Manager the ability to rapidly produce
landing pages for new campaigns...
...without marketing tech support

9. Redesign Landing Pages
Optimize for Conversion
Call or Submit
Browse to
content w/o
leaving page
Multi-step form
Ask qualifying
questions first, then
contact info
Browse to
content w/o
leaving page
psd2html.com
cut-up/WP theme
creation service

10. Custom Post Types
Easy to manage variations on the core design
There are many
ways to create a
Custom Post Types:
1. Use a plugin
2. Register it in the
functions.php file
3. Create a custom
plugin

11. Create Custom Fields
Customize landing pages to improve relevancy score
Headline
Subhead Form headline
Body Multi-step
Pardot form
Image
Submit button
Tabs
Other template
widgets

12. Create Custom Fields
Make it easy for your content managers

13. More Fields from More Plugins
Great plugin for managing fields
More Fields plugin Landing Page edit screen

14. Integrating the Pardot Form
Pass customizations to Pardot via iframe params
More Fields plugin
looking at Form Options Landing Page edit screen
<iframe id="formFrame" src="<?= $frame_source ?> ?
mode=html&step_1_submit=<?= $step_1_submit; ?>
&step_2_submit=<?= $step_2_submit; ?>" width="225"
height="443" type="text/html" frameborder="0"
scrolling="no"></iframe>

15. Creating a multi-step form
Use a javascript framework like jQuery
check out the jquery

16. The result
Managed easily by the PPC Manager
google apps setup

17. Process Improvements
● Much easier to create new landing pages
○ Created 20 new landing pages in 2 days for a new
campaign in APAC
● Easier to test the specific elements within
the landing page (image, headlines, etc.), by
simply editing text fields
● Yet - our non-technical staff can still edit the
forms and their fields in Pardot, huge benefit

18. PPC Results
● Creating highly relevant landing pages
increased our Quality Score (and reduced
CPC)
● All of the sudden, saw conversions in ad
groups we hadn't seen before
● Increased budget significantly, and ultimately
generated more leads and more business

19. Results
Most importantly - increased
conversion rate by.....
77%!

20. What's next
● Better tracking of what's coming in on the
Sales Line
● Better end-to-end conversion metrics
● Iterate on the landing page design