Creating Killer Effective Landing Pages Is Essential For Online Advertising Campaigns

When creating a online ad, such as for Google AdWords, Yahoo or MSN, online advertisers usually spend the majority of their time creating the actual ads themselves, or researching effective keywords. There is often very little thought going into where the visitor will be sent to… when the ad generates a click to your destination.

Most often the advertiser will send the visitor directly to the home page of their website, hoping that the website will do the job. These advertisers however are neglecting a very large and important part of their online ads campaign, which is creating an eye catching, killer landing page. An effective landing page is just as or at times more important than: the ad, good keyword selection and strategic bidding on the networks. When creating a landing page that works, advertisers can exponentially increase their conversion rates, making the campaign a lot more competitive and profitable.

When building the landing page properly, make it specific and directly related to the ad that is sending you the traffic. The landing page is your online salesman, so it has to be highly targeted. If the visitor clicks on an ad expecting to find… gold plated golf clubs, then the corresponding landing page has to be just that. There is nothing worse than having a visitor interested in your product and s ready to buy, but are unable to do so.

The role and job of your online ad is to get the clicks to your site. The role of your online salesman, the landing page, is to convert those targeted clicks into leads or sales. There is a rule that you must be able to convert your visitor within 3 clicks or less to the money. If your visitor has to click more than the 3 times to buy your product or service, you will most likely lose the sale. The ideal process is the visitor clicking only twice. Once on your online ad, once on your landing page, to get to your order page. It’s that simple. The more clicks you force your visitor to do, the less sales and conversions you make.

Remember that most visitors are generally impatient and at times lazy. You need to give them a reason to lead them to what they want, with as little or no effort as possible on their behalf. So it’s always important to keep your original objective in mind, which is high conversions, done by: using specific keywords, a call to action on your ad, creating an attention grabbing ‘killer’ landing page.

The landing page as mentioned, is your direct online salesman, and thus where your best graphic and copy-writing skills are needed. Remember the goal of your online ad is to generate the click, and the goal of your landing page is to get the sale. Your ad lists the features, where your landing page explains the benefits of your product or service.


Once The Ad Does It’s Job
Once your ad does its job by generating the click, your landing page should have enough ‘hook’ to motivate the visitor to buy. The most obvious and best way to do this is a good effective headline. The headline should captivate the visitor by appealing to their self-interests, and what your product can do for them. What’s in it for them? How will your product benefit them or solve their problem?

Continue to test and expand on your headline to list the benefits of your product, and assure them that they made the right decision by clicking on your ad. Then support the benefits by listing the features of your product or service. Continue to do this throughout your landing page copy, benefits and features, using subheadings. Keep the visitor interested by build excitement using graphics of your product or service. After all, a picture tells a thousand words.

Keep it simple, use plenty of arrows or bullets and use lists as much as possible in your copy. Bullets work as effective mini headlines. Bullets are used to summarize the features your visitors will gain from your product. They can also be used to summarize the problems your visitors are experiencing and how or why your product or service is the solution to those problems.

So use effective eye drawing headlines, subheadings as well as bullets on your landing page. Remember that visitors are impulsive and impatient at all times. They are always in a hurry and are looking for instant gratification, so captivate them! What the average visitor does is they will often just scan your landing page, and while scanning, they will just read the headline, and at times the subheadings. So its vital that you list the important benefits for the visitor in your headlines, subheadings, and bullets.

There are occasionally visitors who will read your entire landing page, so providing good crisp error free copy is essential, with exact details and precise information the visitor needs to make a decision on the spot.

Graphics and Pictures
They truly do speak a thousand words. Use pictures and graphics as they are very effective, especially when selling a product. Make sure that your visitor gets a good, clear visual of your product. Since the visitor cannot touch or smell it, it’s essentially important that they get as much information as they need based on the picture. The copy should then support the graphics and vice versa.

The landing page should explain exactly what the prospect is looking for. So if your visitor is looking for gold plated golf clubs, then once they click your online ad, the landing page should show a picture of a gold plated golf club, and only the exact text that describes the features and benefits of gold plated golf clubs.

You will also need to ask for the order. This needs to be done on your landing page. Do not ask the visitor to click through to yet another page in attempts to close the sale there. Close the sale NOW… ask for the order directly on your landing page. The only action your visitor should have to do after reading your landing page is click through to your opt-in page or your order page to provide their credit card information. If you are only looking to collect email addresses or just generate leads, make sure you have the form they need to fill out directly on the landing page.

Arguably the landing page is just as important or more important than your ad in your online advertising campaign. You should spend as much time creating an effective landing page as you would generating keywords and creating the Adwords ad. A good landing page plays an integral part of your search engine marketing arsenal and should not be neglected.


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