Nowadays, businesses can barely survive without having a modicum of digital strategies in an increasingly connected world. One of the best ways to stay on top of your customers’ mind is to ensure you have a solid online presence. You can do that by running Google Ads, for example.
However, making sure your ads are up and running does not mean your work as a marketer is done. Your ads need constant monitoring and optimizing. When you notice your ads’ performance declining in a given period, you will usually ask why. Often, the root cause of the problem cannot be attributed to just one factor. There is the quality of your ad, the audience you are targeting, and your set budget.
While these factors can determine the outcomes of your ads quite significantly, it is important to remember that other reasons can also affect your ad performance. One of which is the quality of your landing pages.
Your landing pages can dictate your quality score, after all, making it an indispensable part of your Google Ads strategy.
What Is a Landing Page and Why Do You Need It?
Landing pages are such a great way to convert visitors into leads. It is often considered the heart and soul of every lead-generation campaign. Without the landing pages, you won’t have the mechanism to place interested prospects into a marketing funnel.
In a nutshell, a landing page is a tool that lets you capture your visitor’s information through a lead-generation form. Once they see your ad and click on it, they will be directed to a dedicated page that often contains a lead-capture form. A good landing page allows you to target your audience and give them something of value. It can be a useful tool, a handy guide, or a free webinar. If they like your lead magnet enough, they will be willing to give up their information.
That is when they will enter your marketing funnel, turning them into leads. Here are some of the reasons you need a landing page:
- Landing pages let you easily generate leads.
- They give your marketing offers a home, putting them behind a gated form so you can maximize your lead-generation efforts.
- Landing pages can give you an idea about prospects who are engaged with your products or brand.
In AdWords, landing pages are one of the significant factors that affect your Quality Score, which is integral in the performance of your ads. Google, through Quality Score, wants to ensure that only relevant ads enter an auction and appear whenever a user lodges a query.
Things You Should Do to Improve Your Landing Pages
Fortunately, there are many things you should do to improve your landing pages. This will make sure users interacting with your page will have a positive experience, which can then greatly increase your quality score.
Ensure Your Content Is Original and Relevant
Landing pages often serve as an extension to your ad. It is extremely important that your landing page is relevant to your ad. This means your message should complement what you promised users who saw your ad.
If they ever click on your ad for a specific product or offer, you need to direct them to a landing page that is relevant to your ad. It is not a good practice to lead them to a generic page or even your home page as this can be a distraction from what they actually wanted to get out of your ads.
Your landing page should have relevance to your ad, matching the user intent, headlines, and copy of your ad and delivering your promise to the user. This will likely compel them to click on your form in the landing page and provide their information.
If there is a disconnect between your ad and your landing page, users will easily bounce back, which can hurt your quality score and ad performance.
Make Sure to Offer a Good User Experience
Users should be able to easily navigate your landing page once they get there. The offer should be clear from the get-go. This requires you to organize and design your page in a way that can be readily understood. You should not make them hunt for information or look for the offer.
The visual hierarchy must offer clarity. Forms are often seen above the fold to make it easy for users to locate them, especially when they want to download a valuable offer. Ideally, you should use the F page pattern. Visitors will likely read the page horizontally, from the content in the upper area to the second horizontal line as they scroll down. By arranging your page in an F visual order, you can present crucial elements to the visitors more effectively and convert them in the process.
White spaces are also important as these draw attention to a specific page element. They reduce clutter on your page, enabling users to focus on particular landing-page elements. This includes the CTA button.
Use Just One Link to Avoid Overwhelming Visitors
Landing pages should ideally have links that will give visitors more idea about your product or services. You may want to link to an order form, contact info, or a home page. However, if you want to maximize the time of visitors, you should just link to a few important links or even limit it to one. This will reduce possible exits from your landing page, minimizing the chance of users leaving before taking the desired action.
Utilize a Clear and Powerful Call to Action
Calls to action are essential in every landing page. You will want to entice your visitors, so using a powerful and clear call to action is in order. Of course, your ad should have a CTA, but once they get to the landing page, you will need a post-click landing page CTA button link. This usually sits under the lead-generation form.
To make it effective, the CTA should be prominent and personalized to the offer. It should correspond with your message and desired action for users. You should make the CTA stand out by utilizing a button that contrasts with the page background. That way, users’ attention will be easily drawn to the CTA button.
Optimize Your Page for Mobile Use
In the digital age, it is highly important to have a mobile-optimized website. Users are mostly using their mobile devices like smartphones and tablets to surf the internet. This means websites should offer a seamless experience for users, whether they are accessing the pages on mobile or desktop. The copy should show up concisely and be still easy to read. The click-to-CTA buttons should be introduced above the fold, the same way it is done on desktop.
White spaces must be utilized to make important elements stand out. Ensuring a good experience for mobile users will decrease the possibility of high bounce rates.
Consider the Loading Speed of Your Landing Page
Users want to access what they need immediately. If your landing page is slow to load, impatient and frustrated users will more likely hit the back button. To improve the user experience, you should optimize the page speed. Ideally, your page should load within 3 seconds. Some of the common reasons your page loads slowly include the following:
- Issues with Javascript
- Excessive flash sizes
- Large media files
- Bulky codes
- Images that are not optimized
There are also tools that you can use to test the speed of the landing page like the Google Page Speed Insights.
Test Common Elements to Determine the Right Formula
Ultimately, you will want to know what kind of page will work best for users. This brings the idea of testing your page to the forefront. If you want to know how the elements will perform, you can test common elements against one another to determine the right formula.
For example, you can test the imagery or the headline. You can also test two versions of CTA buttons. Additionally, you can experiment with short and long copies. Once you have run the test on a certain period, you should be able to check the performance of your different landing-page versions and retain the one that performs the best.
You may also apply these discoveries to your future landing pages.
In Conclusion
Your landing page is an important part of your Google ad campaigns. It significantly affects your quality score. If it is not performing well, especially in terms of bounce rate, then your ads will get shown less and less to potential customers. That is why you must create relevant and valuable landing pages.
You will want to hold your visitors’ attention longer so you can start nurturing them to becoming paying customers. Making sure your landing pages are of high quality can make this possible. In fact, it can be the bridge that connects you to relevant prospects who will eventually get converted down the funnel.
Also Read: How To Do Lead Generation With Facebook?
