How to Optimize Landing Pages for PPC Traffic

May 28

The best digital marketing strategies are the ones that combine both paid and organic techniques to drive traffic that can ultimately be converted into customers. When organic techniques don’t work out, brands rarely throw a fit. (After all, it costs nothing more than time.) But when paid tactics flop, well...it’s a costly and painful ordeal.

If you’re spending money on PPC traffic, it’s imperative that you maximize each and every click. And to do that, you need well-optimized landing pages that produce high conversion rates on demand.

5 Tips for Optimizing PPC Landing Pages

The difference between an average landing page and a high converting landing page is razor-thin. But if you can transform your pages from the former into the latter, the ROI is exponential.

Here are a few simple tips you can use to improve your landing pages and put ad spend to good use.

Ensure Ad-Landing Page Consistency

People hate inconsistency. If they feel like they’ve been duped, they’ll bounce as quickly as they arrived. Make sure your landing page is consistent with your ad. If you made a promise or claim in your PPC ad copy, fulfill that promise quickly – ideally beginning with the headline.

Create a Killer Headline

On average, five times as many people are going to read your headline as will read the body of your landing page copy. It’s the first thing people see, and it’s the thing that leaves a lasting impression. Make sure your headline is crafted to convert.

Good PPC landing page headlines are:

Consistent: We already touched on this one in the previous section, but make sure it’s consistent with the ad itself.
Clear: There should be nothing vague or veiled. They’re on the page now – start dishing out the goods.
Relevant: This goes hand-in-hand with consistency. The headline must be relevant to the visitor’s needs, desires, and/or pain points in order to resonate.
Unique: The headline can’t be the same headline they see on every other website or landing page. Find a unique angle to breathe life into even the most recycled topics.

If you can include elements of urgency in your headline, that’s good, too. However, it’s not always possible or necessary to do so. Urgency can be created in other ways. (Like with a CTA.)

Show Don’t Tell

People are visual creatures. Research shows that 91 percent of people now prefer visual content over traditional text-based media. Better yet, the brain is far more likely to remember and recall visual information than text.

As a general rule of thumb for PPC landing pages, you should never tell the visitor something when you can show them. In other words, if there’s a way to use a visual – like an image, graph, or video – rather than a chunky paragraph of text, do it!

Keep Forms Short and Simple

Every landing page should have some sort of opt-in (unless it’s a direct sales page). But don’t make the mistake of using long, complicated opt-in forms that require a visitor to hand over a bunch of information. Most will give up without even attempting to fill it out.

The best PPC landing page opt-in forms are short and simple. If you can get away with asking for just the email address, do it. At the most, ask for their first name and email.

Include Proof, Credibility, and Urgency

You have to assume that all PPC traffic is cold traffic. These are people who don’t know you and have never interacted with your brand. In other words, they’re trying to figure out why they should trust you and why it’s important that they take action.

The best way to do this is by using a triple-play combo of proof, credibility, and urgency. You establish proof by showing that whatever you’re promising or claiming is true (ideally through objective data and/or third-party sources). Once proof is established, you hammer home your credibility with things like quotes, testimonials, or media mentions. Finally, you focus on urgency. You want people to act quickly. (If they click away, they most likely won’t return.) Figure out a way to get them to fill out your form so that, at the very least, you have their email address and can follow up.

Do More With Your Paid Traffic

If you continue to waste money on paid traffic, it’ll ultimately bleed your marketing budget dry. But with a few of these simple tweaks to your PPC landing pages, you can turn things around and generate a positive and predictable return on your investment.