[Infographic] How to use PPC Landing Pages for Higher Conversions

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Ever wondered why your paid search campaigns don’t convert? Ever wondered why your cost-per-click is super expensive? Ever wondered why your ads never show up in a decent spot?

Using high performance landing pages for your PPC ad campaigns results in higher conversion rates and a lower cost-per-click. The goal here is to create a closely coupled relationship between the ads and the content of your PPC landing pages.

This increases the message match for humans (reducing bounce rate) and for Google (higher Quality Score and Ad Rank).

Successful PPC campaigns are about more than simply choosing ad words that attract the attention of your target audience. Many marketers falter in the “what happens next” post-click phase, and a big reason for this is sending paid traffic to the wrong type of page.

Roughly 80% of paid search traffic is sent to one of the following page types:

  • The company homepage (by far the most common)
  • A product detail page
  • A sign-up or registration page
  • A shopping cart page

If your ppc campaigns are not using landing pages, then your highest converting call-to-action is likely to be the back button on your visitors browser – which means marketing dollars going to waste.

It’s crazy that only about 20% of traffic is being sent to promotion specific landing pages. Most marketers know that landing pages improve conversion rates, but did you know that they also have a big impact on Google’s landing page component of the quality score (QS) – which translates into a reduced cost-per-click (CPC)?

The solution? Send paid search traffic to specialized PPC landing pages. Study the infographic to get the scoop on the right and wrong way to do PPC, and never send paid traffic to your homepage again. Please.

Note: Click the image for the full-size infographic.

ppc landing pages infographic
Click for the full-size infographic

Landing Pages for PPC – The Top 5

To summarize the infographic in words, let’s look at 5 reasons why using a targeted promotion specific landing page is more effective than sending your paid traffic to other pages on your site:

  1. Relevance: With a landing page you can tailor your content to be specific to a single focused topic giving you a 1:1 content relevancy mapping. Conversely, your homepage often has multiple messages based on different product areas and is likely to produce a higher mapping ratio – perhaps 1:4 – diluting the landing page portion of your Quality Score.
  2. Message Match: By providing a very clear headline on your page that strongly matches your ad message you give people a sense of positive reinforcement – that they made a “good click”.
  3. Subject Focus: Consider the example of a ninja tossing a throwing star at you. If you’ve got some decent reflexes you might avoid it before it strikes you. However, if he threw 4 stars simultaneously, you’d be unlikely to maintain focus on any of them, leaving you with a bunch of metal objects sticking in your chest. This is the same as arriving at someone’s homepage and being overwhelmed by multiple messages.
  4. Experimentation & Testing: You can easily test many variations of messaging and layout by using landing pages without having to redesign your homepage, which typically involves seeking the consent of multiple departments. Bottleneck anyone?
  5. Traffic Budget: You will see a better ROI by optimizing your landing page for improved Quality Score and conversions, than by simply increasing your PPC campaign budget to get more traffic.

In Conclusion

Landing pages simplify communication and improve the conversion experience both for paid search engine bots and your prospective customers. They do this by enabling more focused messaging which boosts the landing page component of your Quality Score and reducing your cost-per-click. At the same time they reduce the post ad-click bounce rate which improves conversions.

— Oli Gardner


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About Oli Gardner
Unbounce co-founder Oli Gardner has seen more landing pages than anyone on the planet. He’s obsessed with identifying and reversing bad marketing practices, and his disdain for marketers who send campaign traffic to their homepage is legendary, resulting in landing page rants that can peel paint off an unpainted wall. A prolific international keynote speaker, Oli is on a mission to rid the world of marketing mediocrity by using data-informed copywriting, design, interaction, and psychology to create a more delightful experience for marketers and customers alike. He was recently named the "The 2018 Marketer to Watch," in the under 46 category, by his mother.
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