A PPC landing page is the first page a visitor goes to after clicking on a paid ad. How can you increase your chances of converting that visitor into a lead or customer? Follow these absolute must-dos for your landing pages, and enjoy the results.
MUST DO: Create Separate Landing Pages for Each Ad Group
To some, creating separate landing pages for each ad group seems exhausting and pointless. To me, it is a must. Of course, if you don’t have the time, the budget and/or the resources, this can be rather difficult. But try your best to make this happen. Why, you ask? Well, how do higher conversion rates and lower costs-per-click sound to you? If you create separate landing pages that speak to your audience seamlessly from the keyword they search to the ad they click, the end result is often a conversion. 
Pretend you work for a pharmacy discount card company and you have five ad groups: Pharmacies, Discounts, Price Comparisons, Competitors and Brand Name Drugs. Each of these ad groups should have a well-planned and designed landing page related to the keywords and ad copy in the ad group. For the Pharmacies ad group, it would make sense to highlight the pharmacies that accept your prescription discount card on the landing page. You could include logos of the top five pharmacies like Wal-Mart, CVS, Walgreens, Rite-Aid and Target. Your headings and subheadings would include the terms “pharmacy” or “pharmacy discounts” or “pharmacy prescription discounts.” If you were to send this type of traffic to the home page of your site, visitors may see that you have a pharmacy discount card but may be left wondering about specific pharmacies that accept the card.
MUST DO: Choose Only One Topic and Call-to-Action
Yes, choose just one of each. Your landing page should be so incredibly focused that it does not detract from one core topic and one main action request. For some, this is hard to digest because they don’t want to limit the visitor, especially when paying for this traffic. However, the chances of converting a visitor into a lead or buyer is much higher when the landing page speaks to them in a singly focused message and strongly convinces them to enter their information on the form, make the phone call or buy the item.
To further explain this premise, let’s use an ad group from the prescription discount card company. The landing page for the Competitors ad group could have many different core topics, including a quick competitor comparison table, a list describing each competitor and their weaknesses, a video analyzing the features and benefits of the discount card company compared to the competitors’, or a short paragraph that briefly mentions the competitor and details the pros of the main company. Choose one of those—not 2 or 3 of them.
As for the main action request, this landing page could have many, including a quick email form to receive the card, a whitepaper to download with savings tips for prescription drugs or links to the app stores to download the app. Why not put all three calls-to-action on the landing page? Because it can be overwhelming to the visitor and it gives them too many options. Focus on one!
MUST DO: Make Ad Copy and Landing Page Seamless
The message in your ads should match the message on your landing page. Seems simple enough, right? Not for most marketers. It’s actually one of the most overlooked tactics with paid ads. Many marketers get lost in ad creation and don’t remember to sync the ad copy message to the landing page. Try to avoid getting lost.
If the call-to-action in your ads is to download the app but the call-to-action on your landing page is to fill out a form, there will be a disconnect with your audience. This will most likely result in a lost conversion and a click of the “back” button.
MUST DO: Lose the Leaks
This tip is also commonly overlooked. Why? Well, people think they’re paying for traffic so they should try to give the visitors as many opportunities to look around the site as possible, right? Wrong. You are only giving them opportunities to lose focus and avert the conversion. Although it’s essential to have links to other pages on your site (usually in the navigation), don’t purposefully give visitors obvious options to choose from and chances to leave the intended path.
MUST DO: Test and Test Some More
Throughout the course of your campaign, you should test and test some more. Actually, you should never stop testing and tweaking your landing page. What should you test? Try these areas:
- Headline (try using a question, shocking statement, crazy stat; change the text size and color)
- Call-to-Action (switch up the action; include arrows or pointers to direct to take action; adjust size and color of the text)
- Lead capture form (try a simple one- or two-entry form; change the colors; change the button)
- Button (color, size, text)
- Trust signal (testimonials, trust badges, guarantees)
- Videos (size and placement)
- Images (size, placement, with person and without)
Your landing page is the first page a visitor goes to after clicking on your ad. Use this precious real estate wisely. Employ these absolute MUST-DOs and escalate your chances of converting those visitors into leads!
Jan, you always have the best advice when it comes to PPC and SEO. I heave learned so much from you. I think one thing I often have to argue that I have learned from you is the ONE focus for each page. People so often want 3-5 focus points and then overlap focal points between pages. That never gives the best results!
I never thought about “losing the leaks”. It made sense to me to try and get people to click anywhere on the site, but I like your idea about keeping everyone focused to get better results.
I love this post! One thing I learned about conversion rates is that simply changing the color of the button can make such an impact! I attended a seminar that talked about this exact thing, and you hit the nail on the head! FOCUS! But allow for needed changes! This is going to be the most advantageous route to go! Some ads work well with blue, some with orange. Color theory is a whole other post topic, but I love the concept!
Wow I like that you always talk about PPC and it makes me want to the Adwords training to learn more about it. Like you said a landing page it doesn’t matter if it’s a page only for the ppc or SEO , it always have to have that call action and it has to be attractive to the user.