There are a thousand ways to optimize a pay-per-click (PPC) ad campaign. Unfortunately, most marketers are selling themselves short by only focusing on a few of them.
Typically, PPC ad managers are so focused on optimizing the ad itself that they forget to pay attention to where the ad is directing traffic. As a result, they unintentionally hamstring their efforts and flush ad spend down the drain.
If you want to improve your ROI on PPC ads, you can’t stop with the ad set. You have to look at every aspect of the campaign, including the landing page. And in this article, we’re going to take a look at some of the very specific ways you can improve your PPC landing pages to generate higher conversions.
3 Optimization Tips for Landing Pages
Talk to any skilled PPC ad manager and they’ll tell you that the landing page is just as important as the ad. In fact, it’s impossible to generate meaningful ROI with an ad if you don’t have a proper landing page. You might get lots of clicks, but an unoptimized landing page won’t generate many conversions.
According to PPC.co, which works with everyone from small local businesses to Fortune 500 companies, the typical business can expect to see an immediate boost of between 30 to 50 percent on their existing PPC campaigns simply by optimizing the landing page.
Not sure where to begin? Here are a few suggestions:
- Ensure Message Match
You can’t promise one thing in your PPC ad and deliver something else on the landing page. If you make a claim in the ad, you have to fulfill it when someone clicks. A lack of consistency in this area will cost you big time.
In the marketing world, we call this concept “message match.” It’s the idea that landing page copy should carefully match the phrasing of the ad that brought the visitor there in the first place. If your PPC ad copy says Discover the secret to hitting a fastball, the headline of your landing page should say the same thing. If nothing else, it needs to include the words “secret” and “hitting a fastball.”
A strong message match increases conversions by reassuring visitors that they’re in the right place. A poor message match is confusing (at best) and deceptive (at worst).
- Keep it Focused
Don’t try to do too much with your landing page. Keep it focused on fulfilling the promise that was given in the PPC ad. In other words, if the promise is to show people how to hit a fastball, don’t zoom out and suddenly start talking about proper diet and nutrition for baseball players. It might be related, but that’s not the focus. The landing page has to stay focused on fulfilling the promise.
On a related note, never have more than one call-to-action (CTA) on a landing page. You can include the CTA multiple times on the same page (and even use distinctive language each time), but the underlying goal has to be the same. If you’re selling a book on hand-eye coordination for baseball players, that’s the only thing you’re selling. (You can add upsells later on in the funnel, but they should not find their way into the initial landing page.)
- Reduce Form Fields
Complexity is one of the biggest issues seen on landing pages. With so much information in your head, it’s easy to feel like you have to include everything. But truth be told, simple is always better.
Simplicity is important in every area of your landing page, but especially with conversion forms. Asking for too much information will kill your conversions. Reduce form fields to include only what’s necessary. If it’s an opt-in form for a free lead magnet and you can get away with just asking for an email address, don’t push the envelope and ask for a name and phone number. Stick with the bare minimum number of form fields.
Adding it All Up
The landing page is just as important as the PPC ad. If you aren’t optimizing both in tandem, you’re missing the point. Thankfully, all it takes is a few tweaks to bring things into proper alignment. Apply a few of the suggestions mentioned above and track the results.
