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Home::Online Promotion
Creating Landing Pages For Google AdWords
Author : George Peters
In creating a Google AdWords campaign, advertisers often spend
most of their time creating their ads and researching their
keywords. There is often little or no thought to where the
surfer will be sent when the ad does its job and generates a
click. Often advertisers send the surfer to the home page of
their website, hoping the website will do the rest of the work.
These advertisers are neglecting a very important part of their
AdWords campaign: the landing page. A good landing page is just
as important as a good ad, good keywords and strategic bidding.
By creating an effective landing page advertisers can increase
conversions, which will make their campaigns more competitive
and profitable.
When creating your landing page remember to make it specific to
the ad that is sending the traffic. As with everything else, the
landing page must be highly targeted. If a surfer clicked an ad
expecting to find gold plated doorknobs, then you better make
sure the corresponding landing page has just that. There is
nothing worse than having a customer who is ready to buy but
can't.
The role of your ad is to get clicks. The role of your landing
page is to convert those clicks into leads or sales. Make sure
you can convert the surfer within 3 clicks or less. If the
surfer has to click more than 3 times to buy your product you
will probably lose the sale. Ideally you want the surfer to
click only twice, once on your ad, and once on your landing page
to get to your order page. That's it. The more clicks you have,
the less sales you make.
Remember that surfers are impatient. You need to give them what
they want with as little effort as possible on their part.
Therefore, it is important to always keep your original
objective (conversions) in mind, as well as to refer to the
specific keywords and calls to action in your ad, when creating
your landing page.
The landing page is where you will use all your copywriting
skills to complete the sale. As I said before, the goal of your
ad is to get the click, and the goal of your landing page is to
get the sale. It is in your landing page where you have all the
room you need to explain all the benefits and features of your
product or service. It is important to remember that your
landing page is your sales page.
Your ad did its job by generating enough interest in the surfer
to click through to your landing page. Now you should continue
to hook and draw the prospect into your copy to complete the
sale. The best way to do this is through a good headline. This
headline should hook the prospect by appealing to her
self-interest. What's in it for her? How will your product or
service benefit her?
Continue to expand on your headline in your copy with more
benefits for the prospect, and support these benefits with the
features of your product or service. Do this throughout your
copy and with subheadings. Make sure you keep the prospect
interested and try to build some excitement in your product or
service.
Use plenty of bullets and lists in your copy to show your
benefits and features. Bullets are essentially mini headlines.
Bullets can be used to summarize all benefits the prospect will
gain from your product or service. They can also summarize all
the problems your prospect is experiencing and that your product
or service can solve.
Headlines, subheadings and bullets are very important aspects of
your landing page. As I said above, surfers are impatient and
impulsive. They tend to be in a hurry and want instant
gratification. As a result, they often only scan the page. If a
surfer is scanning your page, they will only read your headline,
subheadings, and bullets. It is important that you get all the
benefits to the prospect included in your headlines,
subheadings, and bullets, for this reason. Of course there are
also surfers who will read your whole page, so you will need to
have good copy, which provides greater detail and all the
information the prospect needs to make a decision.
Pictures are usually very effective, especially if you are
selling a product. In this case make sure the surfer gets a
good, clear look at the product. Since the surfer cannot touch
the product it is important that they get as much visual
information as they need. Your copy should support your pictures
and your pictures should support your copy. The important thing
is that the landing page is focused on what the prospect wants.
So if the prospect is looking for gold plated doorknobs, then
when they click your ad they should go to a landing page where
they only see pictures of gold plated doorknobs, and only read
text that describes the features and benefits of gold plated
doorknobs.
Finally, at some point you will need to ask for the sale. This
all needs to be done on your landing page. Do not ask the surfer
to click through to another page and try to close the sale
there. You must close the sale on your landing page. The surfer
should only have to click through to your order page to provide
their credit card information. If you are only looking to
generate leads, have the form they need to fill out on the
landing page as well.
The landing page is a very important aspect of a Google AdWords
campaign. You should spend the same amount of time, if not more,
creating your landing page as you do creating your ad and
generating your keywords. By creating effective landing pages
you can improve the overall profitability of your campaigns.
Improving the profitability of your campaign can allow you to
bid more per keyword and generate more traffic. In end, the
landing page is an integral part of your search engine marketing
and should not be neglected.
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