PPC Landing Page Emergency

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The Biggest PPC Advertising Mistake — It’s Costing You Leads and Money

Are you making the same PPC landing page mistake that most advertisers make?

If you are, then making this mistake is costing you lost leads and more expensive costs per click.

You are losing leads because

people are clicking on your ad and running up your PPC bill — but they are not taking the action you want them to take.

Most PPC advertisers simply do not have a clear outcome for their paid clicks

Your cost per click is also rising because your quality score is falling. I’m not a big fan of Google and I don’t believe much of what they say to the market. It is mostly PR and manipulation. So I understand why so many PPC experts reach for the salt  when they hear Google say that the relevance of your landing page is a smaller factor than your ad’s click through rate (CTR).

Relevance is super important.

No matter what Google really thinks, it is certain that your ad copy and keyword must be relevant to the page that the clicker lands on after they click your ad.

And it should be important to you, too.

In this run through of the PPC landing page function, I would like to show you how relevance makes sense —to you and your PPC prospects— without the need for any Google input at all.

Let’s Step Through the PPC Process and See How it Unfolds

When you run your PPC ad on Google, you pay for each click that ad gets, whether you make money yourself or not. Every time a searcher responds to your ad content and keywords, they click your ad and that click sends them to another page.

That page is called a “landing page”. And very, very few advertisers use a landing page with a logical destination for what their ad promised — in other words, page content that is tightly linked and relevant to their ad copy and keyword.

Do you have an actual landing page or do you just send paid clicks to your website?

Most local business advertisers —and, as you will see below, even much bigger corporate advertisers— make the same basic mistake. They link their ads straight to their home page, not to a landing page.

Clearly, they expect the clicker to spend time hunting around their site, trying to find something relevant to the ad they clicked.

It is not smart to make your PPC advertising an Easter egg hunt.

Why should you have a dedicated PPC landing page?

It can double your conversions. Even a poorly designed landing page should work better than your home page. Your home page is full of leaks.

There are way too many distractions, too many links to unhelpful pages — rabbit hole adventures that the visitor can take to exit from the page they landed on. You paid to get them there, but so far, you have nothing in return for your money.

If they leave, you’ve lost control of their journey. And once they’ve wandered off, you have almost zero chance that they will ever do what you are paying to have them do.

What does that mean? I don’t know if I made that clear. Let me try again.

Presumably you are not giving your money to Google because you want to help them make more money. You decided to pay Google for PPC clicks because you believe doing so will help your business in some specific way. You want Google to bring you specific people who are looking for something in particular and using the Google search engine to find it. In other words, good prospects.

Presumably, you figure the keyword phrase they use in Google will identify them as a hot prospect for whatever you are selling. Or for getting them to do whatever it is that will benefit you in the transaction.

Let’s say your keyword is Personal Injury Lawyer and your ad is focused on someone looking for a Personal Injury Lawyer. All good so far. And we can take the logical leap that your ad will only appeal to someone who actually wants to find a Personal Injury Lawyer.

That’s what they want; that’s what they are searching for and that’s what you are telling them you have for them.

If you were them, if YOU were the clicker, would you not expect to find a Personal Injury Lawyer at the end of the click? Why give them a distraction from that path, why would you introduce anything else at all?

Specific Examples of High-paying PPC Ads and Their Landing Pages

Here’s what I find in Melbourne, Australia when I search for Personal Injury Lawyer. You will almost certainly find the same kind of thing where you are and for your search word phrase.

Do you see what I mean by leaks?

I’ve put in a few red crosses (they may need the Red Cross, too) to show the links that will take people off the page. At least they have 3 or 4 “Personal Injury” words fairly prominent on the page.

They have phone numbers (two different ones and no explanation why they are different) and live chat, plus calls to action but they are not locking the clicker into the one topic. They are not giving a reason to choose them nor are they asking for email contact.

The second firm has almost nothing to do with Personal Injury Lawyer — the main headline had me really confused.

One phone number, no call to action and plenty of leaks.

At least the last firm’s landing page is about personal injury but it has so many leaks that will be leading clickers away from the best chance to convert them.

At least… is that how you want your ad to be working — “at LEAST” or at most?

I hope you can see by these examples that you will have a better result or at least, a better chance, when your landing page has a better focus. A single focus — giving the clicker what they are expecting on the landing page. And tell them why you have what they want and need.

Why you are the best choice and why they should contact you now. Include clear calls to action that are immediate; phone, email, chat. Don’t have them to click your ad today then expect them to visit your office in person some time later —without any interaction with you, first. Do It Now.

Make it hard, not easy, for them to leave your page before they have made contact with you. After all, that’s what they want, too.