Creating a landing page that converts is the most important and probably difficult task of every PPC campaign. You could have the best set up but still not convert because users are not moving forward in your sales funnel.
You should imagine your website like a store. You can have many people walk in, but if nobody likes what they look at you won’t sell a single piece.
Here are 10 questions you should ask yourself while creating a landing page for your PPC campaigns:
1. Is my core business easy to understand within the first 10 seconds of navigation?
You might not know that the majority of users decide whether your website is worth a look in the first 10 seconds of navigation. You need to make sure that it is extra easy to understand what you do right away. The content of the landing page that matters the most to catch the attention of the users is what shows up above the fold, since this is what they see first.
2. Am I answering all the deal breaking questions a customer might have?
Each product or service has some key selling points. Addressing them the right way will help you boost your conversion rate. The first step should be to approach the landing page creation looking at every detail with the eyes of an user and not with the eyes of the business owner or marketing manager. If that comes difficult to you, simply use the help of somebody that is not involved with your day to day business to get a fresh pair of eyes on things.
3. Did you make a clear design plan before actually jumping into content creation?
Being organized is the secret in creating an effective landing page in a short time frame. Also, designing a landing page plan will make it scalable. Basically, you will be able to replicate a successful designs for all ad groups you want in minutes.
A design should include some basic elements:
- Decide which elements need to vary per ad group and which ones are fixed
- Where to place the call to action
- Decide on the writing style
- Decide what goes above and below the fold
- Navigation menu: do you put it both above the fold and in the footer?
- Are you going to offer any freebie?
There are many more elements that might be considered. Each company has its own story and therefore you might need to consider more or less elements depending on that
4. Is the landing page in line with the keywords and the ads in your SEM account?
The quality score and the customer experience are the two factors that could make your advertising campaigns cost effective. Aligning keywords, ads and landing pages will definitively boost your quality score and reduce the amount you need to pay per click to achieve a given ad rank.
Also, aligning the 3 elements we just mentioned will make sure that the user lands on a page that is relevant to its search. This will boost its experience and definitively simply the whole customer acquisition process.
5. Do you have USPs (unique selling propositions)?
In a few words, what differentiates your product or service from the others that are out there in the market? You should make sure to communicate it clearly so people will definitively pick you over the competition thanks to the unique differentiator of your business.
If you do not have an unique selling proposition you probably need to wait on creating landing pages and invest your time in understanding what your USP is.
6. What happens after you acquire a customer?
Many companies have a thank you page that does not include any call to action or that won’t invite the user to continue the navigation. It is very important to tell the user what to do after buying or submitting the lead. Are they supposed to just wait or is there maybe a better option that might up-sell them or that could enhance their brand experience?
If you are an e-commerce you can try to sell complementary items while if you are a service provider you can invite the user to download a white paper to learn more about your services.
7. Are you planning to run content split tests?
It won’t make sense at all to create a landing page and just run traffic. Any smart marketing strategy should be based on testing several variations of the landing page. Also, there are a ton of software out there that simplify this process for you and calculate results with just a few clicks. Remember, testing is the key to success.
8. Am I collecting data from incoming visitors?
SEM is built on data. You need to install all the necessary codes on your website in order to track the profitability of each click and to spot potential issues with the sales funnel. Many people are eager to get started and underestimate the value of data. Remember, data is the best friend of your optimization strategy.
9. Did I connect Google Analytics and Google AdWords?
This is fundamental in order to determine the value of each keyword for your campaign. You can understand which keywords are generating high bounce rates or low average time on site and pause them. This will save you a TON of budget because you won’t need to guess anymore.
10. Did I look at my competitors for landing page best practices?
Successful competitors are definitively doing something well. Looking at their landing pages might help you to actually get some ideas and apply them to your original design. You should not copy from your competitors but you should definitively benchmark your idea with what other companies believed working well for them.
In conclusion
Creating a landing page is not simply getting a page done. It involves a lot of continuous work and it is a continuous learning process. Having the right landing page could make the difference in making your landing page an hero or a zero!
