Pay per Click (PPC) can be a highly effective way of advertising products and boosting traffic to your website, and an increasing number of businesses are beginning to see the merits in it. It is common knowledge that when embarking on a PPC campaign, you should be creating a specific landing page for each campaign. Sending potential customers on a general link straight to your website does not create a good conversion rate and you will end up paying more for worse results.
The creation of your landing pages is really the deal breaker in the effectiveness of your PPC advert (providing that you have attracted the right people in the first place) so how do you make sure that your landing page is the best that it possibly can be?
- Do what it says on the tin – It is staggering the number of people who advertise something and send their interested parties to a site or landing page that isn’t what they promised. This is not only annoying for them; it also means that you will be paying for people who won’t be buying your product or service. If you are advertising a two-for-one sock deal, make sure that you take them through to a landing page for a two-for-one sock deal.
- Pre-empt – People either click on PPC adverts when they are looking to buy something, or have an interest in something. Let’s imagine that they are looking for more information about something. When then click on your advert, you should make sure that your landing page gives them the answer to what they want to know, and then takes them further down the page to where maybe they’ll buy something. Try to think about why people would be clicking on your ad.
- Call to Action – We are continually being told to add a Call to Action – a ‘buy’ or ‘subscribe’, or ‘design your bathroom now’ button. It is important that you build your page up to this button, so that by the time your potential customer gets to it, they won’t be able to help but press that button. If you can manage it without looking like an idiot, try and make it a bit more interesting – ‘Yes I’m ready to change my life’ or ‘I want to choose my new tennis racket’.
- Keep it simple – You’ve done the hard bit and attracted them to your ad. So keep your landing page as simple as possible and now help them to get what they want and need. You don’t need whistles and bells.
- Time is Money – Research shows that people have little patience in waiting for pages to load, so optimize your landing page to load with about 2 seconds – if not you’ll find people giving up!
- Testing, Testing – The best thing about PPC is that we are able to easily measure how effective it is. So you can easily test to see what works. By changing one thing or another you can compare and develop you landing page and advert to be continually improving.
Having the right landing page is key to the effectiveness of your PPC campaign. By following these simple guidelines you can ensure that your landing page is effective now and will continue to be effective in the future.