3 Key Reasons for Landing Pages

At our agency, we see it happen all too often. Once a company has been convinced that paid search advertising is the way to go (which we all know it is) they go and figure out their budget, their keywords, and suggestions for ad copy. But they all forget 1 key area every single time. In fact they miss the key reason you should run a paid campaign in the first place: to drive traffic to your website.

That area that they all forget is what happens once the searcher gets past the engine, and arrives at their website. They have reached the first objective of the campaign, the user felt that the ad was the best answer for their query. Whether they complete the next step of either staying or leaving, the key factor is the landing page. Unfortunately for most businesses, they take an existing page (*sic* the homepage) and use that to channel the traffic.

Below I plan to outline just 3 key reasons why you need specially designed landing pages:

They Serve a Specific Purpose

Not all your ads in your campaign do not target the same words or the same product or service. Nor does your homepage normally provide enough information specific enough to match the claims made in the ad. Hence, each landing page should make sure it clearly match the expressions and claims put forth in the search ad, assuring the user that they made the right choice.

Your Offers Should be Within a Couple of Clicks

If Google decides to review your campaign, they recommend that any offers such as “15% off”, “Buy One Get 1 Free” are backed up on the website itself. However, this should not be your only reason. Think of your own user experiences with less credible websites that do not re-inforce their offer on the landing page. How much faith will you put in the rest of their claims? Always a smart move to be ethical in your dealings.

Prominent Calls to Action

On your landing page, you have the ability to fill key pieces of online real estate with banners, phone numbers and contact/enquiry forms. It would not reflect well on your existing webpages if all of them reduced the overall user experience (and even your SEO efforts) by removing navigation elements or page copy – all in the name of extracting somebody’s name and number.
Landing pages give you that flexibility and can be structured to funnel the user in the path that you would like them to take. Each method of contact also then can be tailored to the specific product or service, rather than just the generic contact us form you probably already use on the website.

So in conclusion, make sure that when you are about to undertake a paid search advertising campaign you factor in your budget landing page design. Your conversion stats and bottom line will thankyou later.