I thought I’d share a real story about how important your web site design (specifically, your landing pages) is to your search engine marketing program’s success. Here’s the story.
A company recently approached me about a running a Google Adwords campaign for them with the goal of getting more people to their web site. After some initial keyword research, I confirmed my hunches that their target keywords bring a hefty price tag.
I told myself that I could still make it work, but after looking at their web site, I’m squarely sitting on the fence. The web site isn’t structured well at all — in fact, there are no good destination pages with relevant content on the site, and the homepage is one image (no text at all). Surely the quality score that Google will assign to the client’s destination pages will be very low. Unless we build some custom landing pages, we’ll have to live with the higher price-per-click and a low conversion rate.
When companies hire consultants to revamp their search engine marketing campaigns, they should understand that an effective search engine marketing campaign often requires more than just the campaign setup and monitoring. We consultants want to make our clients’ campaigns as effective as they possibly can be, so allowing a consultant the budget to create some targeted landing pages to place on the client’s web site is something that should be included in every campaign.
Here’s why — Persuasion/the selling process doesn’t end with the ad.
Selling and generating leads online requires that you capture the user’s attention in the ad, get them to click, and then push them to your web site where you can convince them to do business with your company. After they are sold, they will call or buy online.
If your landing page simply provides a phone number or contact form, you’ve missed the opportunity to convince that visitor to do business with your company. Worse, you’ve wasted your money on the click.
A quality landing page on your web site is critical to the success of the search engine marketing campaign. Your web site is where most of the selling should happen, and your web site should engage your potential customer with relevance and credibility. It should also make the process of becoming a customer intuitive.
Understanding this concept will make your company’s search engine marketing campaign much more effective.
