WSI Blog - Internet Marketing Tips and Strategies

Landing pages are tricky and extremely important tools. Many people believe that success has been reached when someone clicks through to your landing page, however that is only half the battle. You got their attention enough to push them further but it's the landing page that needs to seal the deal and drive your consumer to take action.

Tafadzwa Marapa recently shared 6 rules of creating powerful landing pages:

1. Determine your customer goal - It's up to you to decide what you want your visitor to do upon reaching your landing page. If you don't make it obvious what they should do upon arriving to your landing page then there's a good chance they will leave without taking any further action.

2. Make your landing page consistent with your ad - Using a consistent message from your ad to your landing page will help the visitor to understand the action you are encouraging them to take. It also let's the visitor know they've landed in the right place. This increases the likelihood that the visitor will follow and complete the path you've set out.

3. Present a professional design - Your landing page should meet or exceed the design standard set by your website. The page needs to look professional and be well designed with quality graphics.

4. Don't offer extra links - Keep your landing page to one message goal. Don't throw all kinds of links in there and hope the viewer finds something they like.

5. Call for action - If a consumer has clicked through to your landing page they are interested in your product. Make sure they know what to do upon arriving to the landing page to complete the process.

6. Track your results - Is your PPC campaign cost effective? Make sure you can measure your results. Track your conversion rate & the marketing cost per sale.

Click here to read Murapa's blog post entitled The rules of creating powerful landing pages.

Pay Per Click Marketing Tips:

Here are some quick Pay Per Click Marketing tips for you to consider when managing your own campaigns.

•  Set Goals - Determine the goal of your campaign (sales, leads, brand awareness)

•  Know your audience – allows you to narrow in on keywords, ad text, landing pages to avoid potential “roadblocks” in the conversion process.

•  Less is more! – don’t try to do too much with 1 campaign. Creating multiple, highly targeted campaigns with focused ad groups and keywords that align well with ad copy and landing pages, will improve your quality score, relevancy, conversion, and squeeze more out of your PPC budgets.

•  Geo Targeting – if your business is local, have your pay per click ads only display in a 10, 15, 25 mile radius of your office or primary market. If you are on a limited budget, the smaller the radius the better.

•  Content Networks – avoid content networks until you have a good feel for your campaigns. Test content networks in small increments to see what works and what doesn’t.

•  Keywords – find niche, long tail keywords that convert and you will get more from your budget. Spending time on keyword research is vital to your success. Review your keywords on a regular basis and search for more. What might work today, might not work tomorrow. Optimize, Optimize, Optimize!

•  Landing Pages – make sure the page you are sending your traffic aligns well with the keywords and ad copy. Investing in a good landing page with a well crafted PPC campaign can produce excellent results.

•  Analytics – study your analytics data and conversion goals. You need to know what is working and what is not producing results.

•  #1 Position Isn’t Always Better– businesses are obsessed with obtaining the #1 paid ad position in the search engines. Why? They believe that being #1 will produce the best results, but this is not necessarily true. It depends on the keywords, bidding strategy, landing page, and conversion results from various placements. A #3-5 position can generate better results with a well thought out campaign with a good landing page vs. a #1 position with poor keyword to ad alignment and a below average landing page. And it will cost you a lot less! That doesn’t mean we don’t see the value in a #1 position, if we can get there by achieving a good Quality Score, and good results for a reasonable investment.

Obviously, there is a lot more to PPC than what I can provide in a blog post, and to do it well is going to take a lot of time. If you are going to manage your own campaigns, you need to stay educated and up to speed with the industry changes. There are lots of great resources online and Google even offers some good educational tools to help learn more about PPC and how to manage a campaign.

Step 1: Define the Success of Your Campaign
In order to define the success of your campaign, you need to know what your goals are. Is your site solely for informational purposes & branding? A lead generation site? Are you selling products and focused on transactions? Start at the bottom of your sales funnel and work your way up to the top where a visitor/prospect first enters the funnel.

Step 2: Pinpoint Your Ideal Customer
One of the biggest mistakes most companies make is they craft their marketing campaigns and websites according to what they want to see versus finding out what your customer wants. This isn't about you. Most businesses feel compelled to tell their story to their presumed audience, which more times than not, is off the mark. It's too easy for an online visitor to leave your site and find another site that speaks to them and what they want (whats your bounce rate?).

Create an artificial persona complete wtih name, age, marital status, etc of an imaginary prospect that you feel fits the mold of the typical person you have sold to in the past. Create multiple profiles and prioritize them in order of importance. Remember, you can't be everything to everyone. Pick a niche in your industry, stick to it, and become an expert in that niche. If you pick to many ideal customer profiles, you will end up appealing to no one. Once you know who you are selling to, you can craft your message so that it appeals to them.

Step 3: Select the Right Domain
Most companies consider their home page their landing page. Sometimes this works, but most of the time it does not. Your landing page may be part of a targeted micro-site or a single page hosted separately with its own domain name. When selecting domain names, pick those that have your targeted keywords in the domain name itself (ex: chiropractorchicago.com) to improve overall Google Quality Score and conversion. Consider one or more "vanity names" targeting a specific product or service.

If your landing page is hosted on your domain (this is the best strategy for sites that have good PR scores already and have been around for awhile), build your landing page URL with your targeted keywords (ex: www.ableelectropolishing.com/electropolishing-lp.htm is a sample custom landing page we just created, "electropolishing" is their top keyword).

Step 4: Wireframing
Create a "sketch" of the page layout and start by listing all of the key components that should go on the page. Do this before you create the web copy because the space available in your layout will dictate the amount of copy that you will have to work with. Place the most important elements above the fold (the area in a browser that a visitor can see without scrolling).

Step 5: Write for the Web
People do not read the same way online that they would offline. They scan for key elements - headlines, bullet points, graphics. Within seconds, the brain will determine if this is the right page that matches what they are looking for. A page could match exactly what a person is looking for, but visually it sends the wrong signals. Make sure to pick the right graphics and design elements for your pages that go well with your web copy.

Only about 20% of your visitors will actually read the body copy, make it compelling and short (less is more). Create a strong call to action! Try matching up the call to action with the 1st headline since this is most certainly the one element on your page that most people will read.

Step 6: Test & Tweak
Schedule a regular time each week to examine how your site is peforming & converting. Use Google Analytics (fee analytics software) or hire an analytics consultant to measure the success of your campaigns and landing pages. Even after you successfully complete Steps 1-5, your work is not done. A good campaign needs revising (most campaigns). Maybe your call to action is not working, your bounce rate is too high, or the keywords you focused your campaign around are not generating any leads. Your testing and measurements should match your original goals (Lead Generation, Online Sales, Branding, Relationship Building, etc).

Sound like a lot of work? It is! But doing this the right way will squeeze more out of your marketing budgets than you can imagine.

Most of our clients are familiar with pay per click marketing campaigns, and many use WSI for this very service. But it is important to understand that running a PPC campaign is really only half as effective as it could be if the ads are not directed to a customized landing page - and the best possible landing page, at that.

If you are running a PPC campaign and seeing great results, you can stop reading here. You either already have the best landing page for your business (bravo!) or are incredibly lucky and don't need one. (WSI still thinks you could do better if you had one.) But if you were expecting more from your PPC advertising, it may be time to ask yourself why you aren't converting the traffic that you're paying for. Most likely, you need to take another look at the landing page, or whatever page your potential customers hit after they click through.

To help you further understand the partnership between PPC and landing pages, we recommend that you contact WSI today or attend our upcoming webinar. Click here to sign up today!

With increased adoption of Internet marketing it continues to evolve and grow in the variety of tools, techniques and methodology available. Custom Landing pages are becoming an essential step in online marketing practices. Business owners are realizing that traffic to their home page is clearly, not leading to sufficient customer conversion. If you are spending money through online advertising to bring in traffic, it is worth that extra effort to make sure it translates into conversions and revenue. Read on to find out how you can do this.