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What pages to use as landing pages
When you do pay-per-click advertising, you should create custom pages for your site that are designed to be landing pages for the campaign. Do not simply use a product or category page. These were not designed to specifically entice the type of visitors that will come from the search engine paid listings or from a banner ad, etc. They are not even designed to be an entry page for your site at the very least. They will encompass a listing of products and possibly images, but they do not take advantage of the vast potential available when you are getting the most out of your ad spending dollars.
Also, do not direct visitors to your homepage as this is not targeted at all. The only reason why you would want to direct visitors to your homepage is if you are bidding on very broad, all-encompassing keyword phrase characterizing all of your products. For example, Ebay can bid on “online auctions” and direct customers to its homepage, but they might do better by directing visitors to a page that resembles the homepage and overall site design but instead offers a run-down of how the service compares to its direct competitors and what the advantages are for users to remain at that site.
The goal
Your goal when participating in online paid advertising is to increase your revenue so that you can then spend more on online advertising, increasing your profits more and more through the constant research of keywords and tweaking of landing pages. Better conversion rates allow for increased revenue, which then allows you to increase your bid amount. You can proportionally increase your bids based upon your revenue by placing your bid amount at a percentage of your revenue, thus increasing profit as you improve.
What to include on your landing pages
- Do you have a distinct offering such as “Free Shipping”? This is a good place to introduce your site’s competitive advantage, and remember, it’s all in the way you present it. Do you offer a promotion currently such as 10% off or buy one get one free? Do you offer a guarantee? If you don’t have any promotions going on your site, you are potentially missing the boat. These are what encourage people to buy. You can at least run tests at different times to find out what causes people to bite while still keeping the promotion cost effective for yourself.
- Prominently display the keyword being searched. If creating a landing page for each keyword you are bidding on is not feasible, then create one landing page for every three to five keywords and prominently display each on these pages. You should be able to easily create keyword groups based upon their theme.
 Don’t try to sell – attempt to establish trust instead. Text on the page should try to qualify customers, not create customers. You can create several paragraphs presenting several choices for a visitor: try a paragraph about one particular type of product in that keyword group with a link to the appropriate products. This offers your customers choices. Do this rather than trying to tell someone why they should buy something in particular. They have arrived on your page because they are already searching for a product. This means they do not need to be convinced into buying that product. They need only to be convinced that your site is where they should buy it. Do everything you can to increase customer trust and confidence on your site. Remember, when they arrive at your site, they are thinking, “Who are you? Why should I trust you?”
- Try a few customer testimonials. Don’t make your landing page an entire page of testimonials, and remember to only use those that are positive, but these can be yet another element that helps establish trust and credibility. As a first impression, if you can work them into your landing page, they will your visitor believe that this is a trusted place to make a purchase.
- Easy to use. Make the navigation obvious and employ basic usability principles so that a technical problem or misleading or confusing layout doesn’t leave them feeling confused, lost and ultimately hitting the “Back” button.
- Make your call-to-action stand out. Set it off in a different color or larger font. Try to phrase your call to action in a way that sounds like you are making your visitor’s life easier or you are presenting a benefit or value. For example, instead of “Browse cartridges” (boring) try “Find your cartridge” or “Find low-price cartridges”. Instead of “Full list of widgets” try “Best discount widgets”
- Do you have any unique information or tools on your site such as a color pattern or sizing chart, free downloads or whitepapers, free guides or other unique resources? The more you can make your site stand out from others, the better. Advertise these unique features on your landing pages.
- Do you offer big-name brands? If so, this is the place to get them into the headlines or a bulleted list. Let them search by brand name if possible or at least mention them. Research shows that users rely heavily on general keyword phrases and look for brand-specific choices when they are closer to buying.
- This is a good opportunity to up-sell, which basically means convincing the customer that they need not buy X when they can buy Z which is even better and offers more advantages for a better value. Overall, presenting to the visitor that you have a large variety of products and choices to offer them will end up helping you in the long run. On the same note, this is a good place to let the customer know that you don’t simply sell widgets, but you also sell widget accessories! This is known as cross-selling. Keep your cross-selling and up-selling at low intensities on your landing pages so as not to come across as too pushy, but if you can work them in, they will help you get the message across that you offer more than your competitors.
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