Better Conversion Tip #8 – Create Targeted Landing Pages
When you’re driving traffic to your website with ads, make sure the visitor arrives at a page that is consistent with the message in the ad. In most cases, that means that it will be far more effective to have a targeted landing page for the traffic, rather than simply send the traffic to your home page.
The same general principle applies to other traffic sources such as articles. If you’re promoting your expertise in specific area, make sure the link from the article goes to a page that contains relevant information about that area.
Why do this? It’s all about having a smooth-flowing “conversation” with the prospect. You’ve attracted attention with a specific message and you want to continue that conversation.
Also, if you sell a product that, for example, appeals to both doctors and dentists, create separate landing pages that speak directly to each group. That is, you’ll have a landing page that speaks to doctors and another that speaks to dentists. If you advertise in an ezine for doctors, you would want your link in the ad take them to the doctor landing page. Same goes for dentists.
Whatever ad or article they are viewing, your landing page should be an extension of that ad or article. You want to continue the conversation already going on in their minds. Not only is this more effective than a “one size fits all” landing page, but with Google’s changes in their Adwords policy, you’ll find your cost per clicks may go way down if your landing page is more relevant to the ad you are showing.
For example, if I search for “how to grow tomatoes”…
…then when I click on an ad the first thing I want to see is how to grow tomatoes.
Something like this, in fact…
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How To Grow 20%, 50% – Even 100% More Tomatoes!
If you’re growing peppers and want to know how to grow tomatoes that will amaze…
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That’s relevant, and matches what I’m looking for.
If, instead, their headline and lead looked like the following…
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Your Soil Could Be Killing Your Watermelons!
Read on to learn how your soil is choking the life out of your watermelons and other fruits…
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…then if I saw that I would probably leave the site fairly quickly. I may search around for information on growing tomatoes, but why make me work at it? You want to make it as easy as possible to find the information they are seeking.
If a person searches for “fast weight loss,” you want your Google ad to say “Fast Weight Loss,” and you want your landing page to say the same thing.
If, on the other hand, a person searches for “easy weight loss,” you want your ads and landing pages to match accordingly as well.
This is especially important if you start expanding your keywords you’re bidding on to encompass a similar niche that is also a potential market of yours. You want your ads and landing pages to speak the language and desires of that niche, not just echo those of your existing one.
In many cases, this doesn’t even involve having additional landing pages, but one that is customized dynamically on the server-side. For something like “fast weight loss” and “easy weight loss,” your webmaster could probably just substitute the appropriate phrase on your landing page, depending on the parameters sent in the link.
And remember that someone who wants “easy weight loss” would probably also want “fast weight loss.” After all fast and easy is better than either one alone, right? Well, if that’s the case for your keywords, you may want to emphasize both aspects.
Finally, if you have a large online store with thousands of products in a database, you may want to consider creating specialized landing pages with long compelling copy for your most popular and highest margin items.