Effective PPC Management - Part I - Getting your landing pages right

We have been undertaking more and more Paid Search campaigns over the last year or so, and I have to say the ‘art’ of effective PPC management is one that intrigues me nearly as much as my main baby SEO.

Paid Search is a mesmerising mix of effective copywriting, good design and strategic planning. Done correctly it can be a potent part of any search marketing mix, done badly it can be a money pit.

In the first part of a series of effective PPC Management, I thought I would cover the landing much, which I find to be the hardest sell to clients, used to offline advertising, and who often do not appreciate the significant benefits a well thought out landing page can deliver. So what makes a good landing page

1) Look and feel

I could start with something more technical, however I think this is another point often overlooked by a lot of the techies. People do judge a book by its cover, particularly within the retail sector. Whilst I will back this up by saying in some sectors this is not the case, in many it is, and therefore it is import to portray a modicum of professionalism within your landing page design.

2) Focus

Whilst I have put this down as point 2, it probably should be point 1 given its importance. Success can be won or lost by incorrectly implementing a landing page.

Focussing your customers thoughts where you want them is imperative, and therefore the inclusion of other detractions should be very carefully considered during landing page design. I myself doubted this for years, however the proof in many cases is in the pudding as far as this is concerned.

In particular I would draw your attention to a landing page I found recently for Churchills Stairlifts (from search for stairlifts), which highlights the points above. The PPC manager in this case has carefully thought out what is important namely:

• Focus on the product namely stairlifts - top navigation has been removed
• Inclusion of conversion mechanism - feedback form to the right.
• Easy to access information as core part of the design

I will compare this against a number of other campaigns in order to highlight the point. Recently I was looking for a W910i. I looked at a number of sites, from the Google UK results with the following results

• T-Mobile - sent me to an OOPS - Sorry we cannot find this page. All I am going to say is that this must be costing them a fortune, and I am suprised that this hasnt been tested prior to going live. Surely all the bid management tools in the world are not going to save you money here.
• O2 - Generic landing page - whilst this is better than the last attempt surely focussing maintaining the users focus on the product typed in rather than the brand would result in a higher conversion rate/lower bounce rate.
• Dialaphone - whilst I would suggest this was getting more towards my line of thinking with a dedicated Google W910i landing page - I was also advised that ” Sorry, there are no deals available, please amend your search criteria and search again.”. With the thoughts of customer focus in mind surely an alterior call to action would have been more acceptable - ie something along the lines of - “Sorry there are no deals available online - Please call our customer sales team on ….”

Given the recent Omniture study which surveyed a number of different landing pages, the above was all the more suprising. The Omniture report refered to ‘friction’ namely the more you make a customer work - the less likely the are to convert, and the more likely the are to leave your page. Given other reports with a suggested four seconds to impress your clients - the requirement for focussed landing pages is altogether more important.

3) Do your research

There is no point developing a landing page that is unsuitable for your clients. Use the two searches above - namely stairlifts and mobile phones. Your stairlift audience I would suggest are going to be 35+ (carers, family and people personally requiring stairlifts whome I would suggest would be 45+ - if there are any advertisers out there - would be nice to have some correct figures) many of whom are not going to be particularly IT literate. Therefore bamboozling them with fancy interactive gizmos, and too much content is just going to bamboozle. I would also suggest that this target market would be far more likely to be ‘turned on’ by features of the product and soft selling such as reliability (’Quality conscious’ rather than videos, 3d modelling and the like.

Contrast that with any of your mobile phone vendors, I would suggest your younger demographics are going to be far more succeptable to such technical integration. I personally would suggest the integration of such interactive elements would possibly enhance conversion (particularly on such a targeted term). I would also suggest that this demographic is going to be far more ‘price conscious’ than the afore mentioned stairlift consumer.

4) Test, Learn and Refine
You will be very lucky if you hit upon the magic formula first time round particularly with a new client, however that isnt the end of the world. Many of the biggest PPC agencies out there, constantly test, learn and refine their landing pages, in order to ensure that these pages perform as well as they possibly can. This includes straplines, imagery, calls to action, layout - really anything on there landing pages, that could possibly affect conversion.

Again, this possibly should have been further up the page, however its importance cannot be emphasised. Even if you think you have the perfect formula, I would suggest it can still be bettered.

5) Quality Score

Thought I would leave till last, however it should always be considered that landing pages are a factor when it comes to both Google and Yahoo’s quality score (I know Yahoo Panamas isnt called this - but it’s a similar principle). Relevant Landing pages can therefore save you money - and isn’t that as good a reason as any.

1 comment October 21st, 2007