Setting up Google Ads, creating a budget, and managing your PPC spend is only half of the equation. Without a stellar page to send your clicks to, all that time and money is wasted!
You have two choices when it comes to PPC – send your clicks to any page on your website or send them to a custom-built landing page. Which is best?
At iLeads, we aren’t shy about expressing our favour for the landing page. It’s a neat solution that can boost conversions and see a good PPC campaign become a great PPC campaign, boosting your revenue along the way.
A landing page is built solely to be “landed” on.
While your homepage may be designed to attract visitors and explain your services, it also provides links to your about page and explains your business to all visitors. The purpose is not targeted.
In comparison, a landing page is designed with just one purpose – convert leads. Furthermore, the visitors that reach your landing page have just one reason for being there – they saw your ad and are already interested in buying or signing up.
It’s almost like your paid traffic has a one-track mind, and the page they land on should be solely focused on that.
With PPC, where every click costs you money, it’s vitally important that your page converts as many visitors as possible. It doesn’t matter whether you’re attracting customers to make sales, submit a form, or even just raise awareness of your brand – they should all head to a landing page that is custom created to fit the PPC campaign you are targeting.
Note: while a services page on your website may be a bit more targeted than the homepage, it’s still nowhere near as targeted as a landing page.
Let’s compare website pages with landing pages in more detail, with PPC in mind.
A website page is mostly targeted for organic, social, direct and referral traffic. That means you may have a layout and headings that are solely there for SEO benefits. The page will also explain all your services and sum up what you are about.
It could have a large graphic element above the fold too, to visually explain what your business is for and create an impression.
For web visitors who just want to get a feel for what your business is about, it’s perfect! But generally, these web visitors need to move around to another page to learn more and may visit several times before finally converting. Whether a visitor has found you on Facebook or come across you during a Google search, the home page should cater to anyone who lands on it.
Of course, with PPC, only a certain type of customer will be clicking on that link and visiting the page. So, you don’t need many of the features that are typically included on a homepage… in fact, those features become a distraction.
Ergo, the homepage or generic website page is not focused enough to quickly and efficiently “hook” the PPC visitor and make it easy for them to convert into a lead.
If you decided to use a homepage for your PPC campaign, here are the pros and cons.
Pros
Cons
Homepage is best for: organic, direct, referral and social traffic that is curious about your business.
A landing page is specific. It has a single purpose and a single call to action (CTA), e.g., “Get In Touch” or “Buy Now”.
There are no distractions elsewhere on the page – everything is focused on that one goal. Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the page is super short. In fact, you may want to use long-form copy to convince your web visitors if they are particularly hesitant to convert. On these landing pages, the CTA is repeated throughout the copy.
Importantly, the landing page is customised for the specific PPC campaign.
For example, if you are an insurance broker, you may have multiple services listed on your homepage. You may want to show your web visitors that you can arrange life insurance as well as home insurance and business insurance types.
But your PPC campaign is focused on the keyword “life insurance heart attack”, so your landing page has just one focus – encouraging people who have had a heart attack to use your brokerage to find life insurance.
The customer has Googled a query, your ad promises to hold the solution (writing good ad copy is something we can help you with too), then your landing page delivers, and they convert into a lead by submitting their details.
Like a funnel, it’s targeted, customised and efficient.
Pros
Cons
One way to minimise these downsides is to hire a PPC agency like iLeads to manage the ads and landing page for you.
Landing page is best for: paid traffic that’s on a mission!
At iLeads, we are so fond of landing pages because we have seen – first-hand – how much more effective they are. We don’t just recommend landing pages to all the businesses we work with, we can actually help them set up landing pages too. So, if you don’t know how to start building a landing page (or are just too busy to handle it yourself) then get in touch!
