Have you Optimized Your Paid Search Campaign Lately? - Create Landing Pages
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There’s no point in optimizing ad copy with the goal of increasing CTRs only to send your visitors to a suboptimal landing page. It is not recommended to send people directly to your home page unless there is a specific reason or there is simply no other alternative (e.g., there is a registration form on the home page that people must fill out prior to obtaining information on the site). A landing page should be relevant to the keyword people searched for, have a clear purpose (e.g., a registration form for an online contest, a specific product page or product category page, etc.) and contain clear call-to-action language (e.g., “buy today, sale ends Tuesday”).
As with ad copy, it can be very enlightening to study the landing pages of competitors when trying to craft your own. Here are some questions to ask yourself when doing landing page research.
- Does this ad link to the site’s home page or an interior page that is relevant to the keyword I searched for?
- What incentives are present on the page that would motivate a visitor to buy something, register or click deeper into the site?
- Does the page look professional? How does my own landing page compare?
Once you’ve spent some time reviewing competitors’ pages and comparing your findings to your own site, you should have plenty of information to create your own compelling landing pages. Keep them brief and relevant and be sure to have your end-goal in mind (e.g., generating sales, motivating people to register, etc.)
Create An Incentive
It is counterproductive to pay for traffic if your site is not ready to court the visitors you attract through your paid search ads. It is highly recommended that you evaluate your site and make the necessary changes before you launch a paid search campaign or you will be losing money with every click. If your site doesn’t naturally promote sales via lots of call-to-action (“buy now”) language and/or it is not clear what you want your visitors to do (buy something, register for something, request a sample, etc.) then you should create an incentive prior to launching your PPC ad campaign.
Your incentive is intended to get people to buy something, or submit their information on the site for the purposes of registration or to request information. Some industries naturally lend themselves to incentives better than others. For example, a retail site could employ a sale, a low price guarantee or a rewards program to attract customers.
Content-only sites that don’t directly sell anything face the challenge of what to do with visitors once they get to the site. There are several ways you can get your visitors to either subscribe or request information via your site. Incentives for sites that don’t directly sell (e.g., a corporate Web site that does not directly sell products or services via a shopping cart on the site) could provide a tidbit of information that people want to download, a free information packet or a white paper. You are the expert in your field, after all. Ask yourself what information you have that other people may want.
There are several components you’ll need to provide to support your incentive. You will need a landing page to direct your ads to, a Thank You page for people who register on the site and a Thank You email that people receive after they’ve submitted personal information. You may need to create a Web-friendly file for people to download and/or an HTML page that people can print.
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