The Importance of Dedicated Landing Pages (and Best Practices)

Maximize Your PPC Campaigns

What’s going on, guys! Happy Wednesday.

Today we’re going to talk about dedicated landing pages — more importantly, the importance of dedicated landing pages. A lot of people who run ads run two landing pages already, so many of you already know this. But there are still people out there who run ads directly to their website’s homepage or won’t go after specific conversion actions… and there’s a problem with that.

So, let’s talk about the importance of dedicated landing pages.

 

Target Audience

Landing pages are highly targeted. If you think about it, when people see your ad, usually you’re promoting one thing, right? You’re not going to promote everything that you do. For instance, at Youtech, we offer a variety of different services. We’re not going to put every single one of those services on our landing page. That would be a terrible ad — no one would ever read all that. No one cares about every single thing that we have to offer.

Target the correct people with your ad. We want to target those looking for SEO with an SEO ad. Then we send them to a page on our website that talks all about SEO. The reason for this is to minimize distractions. Our home page, for example, has all the different kinds of services that we offer. It’s not geared towards one specific thing, so they might not find the information they’re looking for. They’ll say, “Oh, these people aren’t really specialized in SEO and that’s what I really wanted, so I’m not really going to go with them.”

 

Minimize Distractions 

Make sure you’re highly targeted and then minimize distractions on the page. Once people are there, you don’t want them navigating to other sections of the site, getting lost, and not being able to come back. Oftentimes, it’s a good move to remove the navbar in your landing page as well. Some sites keep the navbar, other sites minimize it. It depends on what you’re selling. I’ve seen it be really beneficial both ways, but it depends on how much information is needed.

Generally speaking, minimizing distractions is the way to go.

 

Call to Action

You want to have a very clear call to action on your landing page. That’s where the importance of landing pages come in. Landing pages are all centered around that clear call-to-action: That one thing that you want the user to do when they click on your ad. What is it that you want them to do? That’s what the entire page is about — trying to persuade them to do that one thing. With marketing and sales, that’s really all it is. Of course with your ads, you’re going to have multiple objectives. It’s not always going to be centered around one thing.

But, you need to get rid of all those secondary concerns and focus on the primary action you want people to take. Focus specifically on your call to action. That’s what will make your landing page successful. Home pages don’t really have that because they’re not targeted.

 

Cut the Fluff

You want to have just enough targeted information. Do not put every single thing you have about your service or product, your entire brand story, etc., because again, you’re moving away from being targeted. A dedicated landing page does not have that, and again, that increases the importance of it.

 

Quick Load Time 

I can’t tell you how many times we’ve come across sites that are just too slow. Even in my own personal use. Let’s say I come across an Instagram ad for some shoes that looks awesome — and I do purchase shoes on Instagram (I’m actually wearing some right now). A page’s load time is very important to me. If I click on that ad and your page doesn’t load right away, I’m going back to Instagram. Instagram is cool. It’s a lot better than looking at a blank screen about an ad that you showed me. I’m sort of interested, and it got me to click, but I’m not that invested. So I’m not going to wait around longer than three to four seconds for your page to load.

Make sure you’re focusing on those quick load times.

 

Establish Credibility 

You’re going to also want to establish credibility too. This is something that I see a lot of brands miss out on. They have their landing page, minimal info on the left side, form on the right, and they’re like, “why am I not getting any conversions? My page is highly targeted. It’s got everything.” Number one, your landing page might not have enough information depending on the type of product or service you’re selling. But also how have you established credibility?

Have 8,000 other people purchased from you? Do you have testimonials? Have you been featured in publications? Magazines? Have you won any awards? Are you certified? Those are the kind of things you’re going to want to put on your landing page.

 

Test it Out 

Last but not least, this is sort of a bonus, A/B test your landing pages. If you just stick one page up there and run everything to it — great job if it’s performing well for you, but you need to know if you can perform better. You need to go in and take the opportunity to find out what is the optimal landing page for you. Test different things, change the layout of the page. Change the words and keywords that you’re using. Change the color of the button on the page. Use different images.

Those are all different things you can do. Test them out. Test out one versus the other or do some multivariate testing. That’s going to help you improve your conversion rates in the long run. That’s really where the secret sauce is when it comes to PPC and advertising. The people who know how to continue making those adjustments over time — testing, experimenting, etc., — those are the people who do better in the long run than those who just set it and forget it. It’s one thing to come in and set up your ads. Sure! You can set them up great from the onset. But over time, you’re not really going to get better unless you’re working at it consistently.

 

In Conclusion

Dedicated landing pages are important. Make sure your landing page is highly targeted. Minimize distractions, create a clear CTA, make sure you have enough targeted information for someone to make a purchasing decision. Make sure you have quick load times. Establish credibility or social proof, and make sure to a/b test in the long run. Dedicated landing pages are the way to go. Please don’t send people to your homepage.
Please. Please don’t do it. Please.

Thank you, everyone!

 

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