PPC Landing Pages – Learning From the Best

A recent statistic that’s been circulating the PPC community for a while now states that for each $92 invested in boosting traffic, no more than $1 is invested in conversion rate optimisation. Which when you think about it really doesn’t make any sense at all – why bother pulling thousands of customers toward your business if nobody buys anything?When you think about it, successfully managing double conversion rates means slashing costs per acquisition (CPA) in half. Which in turn means that if you are spending a fortune on pulling in traffic…well, you can no doubt work out the rest!  In terms of making it happen, it’s routinely argued that the most important link in the entire chain is that of the landing pages your PPC ads point to. Exactly what works will be determined by your audience, your intention, the nature of your business and so on. Nevertheless, by looking at some of the landing pages at the heart of some of the most successful PPC campaigns over recent years, there are certain similarities.And by interpreting these similarities as rules to build your own landing pages by, you stand a much better chance of recreating their success stories for yourself.1 – Simplicity SellsFirst of all, one of the most important rules to follow from top to bottom is simplicity. What you need to ask yourself before even breaking ground is whether your visitors really need a ton of information, or are they pretty much ready to get to business with an action?In many instances, those clicking your ads are already sold on whatever it is you have to offer. As such, you can take them straight to the end of the process, rather than trying to convince them further. Sometimes transporting them straight to the final checkout page can work best of all. The very nature of PPC is such that you have to assume you’re already 90% of the way home when they click your ads.How can you find out which works best? It’s easy really – test, test and test again.2 – Never Stop Testing Following on from that precise point, testing is a process that should be viewed as constant…on-going…never-ending. From ad copy to headlines to ad groups to keywords, every last element should be tweaked, played with and tested. Not only this, but your landing pages should also be changed around, swapped out and continually tested to see what works.Trial and error isn’t usually an advisable way to go in the world of marketing – PPC advertising being a massive exception to the rule. The reason being that changes (large and small alike) can be implemented in an instant and tested out in real-time. Given a week, a day or even a couple of hours, you’ll be able to see by way of analytics just how well or otherwise the changes have worked. From colours to content to text placement to CTA buttons and so on, small changes can add up to a massive difference.3 – Access to Info Regardless of what you choose to include or exclude from your PPC landing pages, you need to make it as easy as possible for your visitors to find out more about you. This means making your contact information so clear that it cannot be missed, along with any other relevant links they may have an interest in.On that note, one big mistake to avoid is that of plastering your landing pages with so many ads, banners and promotional spiel that they immediately get the impression they’ve stumbled across a spam site. Focus on the reason they clicked the ad in the first place and put everything else on ice…for the time being, at least.4 – Be Bold Don’t be afraid to be different when it comes to the way you construct and present your PPC landing pages. Just because there seems to be a set formula followed by others does NOT mean you have to go the same way. Once again, the fact that you have the luxury of being able to follow a trial and error process with little to no risk at all really is a godsend. You don’t necessarily have to be radical, but at the same time there’s no sense allowing yourself to fade into the background.5 – Never, Ever Use Your Homepage Last up, the single biggest mistake anyone can make when it comes to PPC in general is to send those who click the ads steaming through to the standard homepage of the website. This is nothing less than the kiss of death for conversion rates, as what you are effectively doing is taking someone already close to converting and sending them right back to the beginning of the process. It’s a surprisingly common error, but one that couldn’t be more detrimental.Your homepage exists for those who are interested in your niche or industry, though perhaps haven’t decided what it is they want just yet. By contrast, PPC advertising is far more targeted and focuses on those who have a good idea what they are looking for. And as these are two very different audiences, they should be provided with two very different landing pages.