Paying less for your PPC Adwords campaigns with an optimized landing page

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. This known proverb has a literal meaning, although the 'weakest link' referred to is figurative and usually applies to a person or technical feature rather than the link of an actual chain. Thinking of your online marketing as the chain, in this post we want to show you how to avoid a common “weak link””.

SEO, PPC, landing pages and conversions

So what is your online marketing “chain” made of? Most likely it's made of all of the above. Many marketers are seeking web traffic by using a mix of search engine optimization (SEO) techniques, content marketing and paid campaigns. Businesses have grown to learn the importance of using experts to help them with SEO, PPC and social media advertising. Most marketers also understand the importance of using landing pages and instead of driving traffic to a general purpose website, use a campaign-specific landing page. However, unfortunately, many marketers still neglect to acknowledge the role which the quality of their landing page plays in their overall campaign.

The other side of the funnel

Congratulations, with the right strategy and budget you are getting traffic and your funnel is filling. But how many people actually leave their contact information / subscribe / or buy your product or service? This is exactly where the quality of your landing page is measured. For some reason, it's very common to see businesses pay a lot of attention to important items such as keyword strategy and adwords fine tuning, and much less attention to tuning their landing pages. Thus making the end of their funnel narrower than it should be and making their landing pages the weakest link within their online marketing chain.

How you can you optimize your landing page ?

 

 

1. Start with your key message.
Make sure it's aligned with your ad copy. Their is nothing more aggravating for users than clicking on an ad looking for one thing and a second later finding themselves on a page offering something totally different. The key message needs to be consistent.

 

2. Choose a design that works well with your message.
It should be great, but it should leave room and focus for your message and not “steal the show”. Good design has a big impact however you must make sure it doesnt hurt your ppc efforts.

 

3. Work on your CTA:
be creative with your click to action button. Don’t use the simple old “submit” or “send” text. Use something that relates to what you are actually offering. In addition  try to speak your prospective customers’ language - this can also help

 

4. Avoid common mistakes:
There are quite a few rules for building online forms and landing pages. Try to follow them. E.g. make it short, don’t use too many fields. Avoid mandatory fields. Keep it flowing, Iinclude a legend for mandatory fields , watch how you align your labels, etc. In short, you should either read about such rules, get help from an expert or use a tool that provides you with auto conversion rate optimization features and proved templates.

 

5. A/B test.
No one get it right the first time. If you are not familiar with a/b testing, it's time you get to know it. It's all about comparing variations of your form and helping you pick the best one. Understand the concept of a/b testing and use it to optimize your message and design. You’ll be amazed to watch the improvement you can get.

 

6. Understand your users.
Use features such as heatmaps to see how your users hover over your form, or use online chat to talk with some of them in real time and gain insight into who they are and what are they looking for.

 

7. Don’t use auto-pilot:
keep track of your performance. Use a tool that has a dashboard, showing you at any point in time how many visitors your page is getting and how are your conversions.

 

 

Where are the savings?

Let's assume you have a monthly budget of $1,000 for your PPC adwords campaign. This amount buys you certain amount of traffic to your landing page. If optimization gets you a 20% improvement (and believe us, it can do a lot more), you could be spending only $800 and get the same goals of sales/subscribers/leads, etc. Alternatively, you could decide to keep spending the same $1000, and enjoy the increase in your bottom line performance.

 

To sum up:

There are many pieces to your marketing efforts. Don’t make the mistake of making your landing page the weaker link in your online marketing chain. The good news is that if you choose the right tool, you’ll find that landing page optimization is quite easy and fun. FormTitan is one of the most professional form builders you’ll find. Its built-in optimization pack makes it an ideal tool for landing page creation.