According to Blue Moose Math™, we are 100% certain that Ad + Destination = Results.
While you might be familiar with the idea that your campaigns are only as good as your ads, it’s important to recognize that a great destination is just as important for your campaigns to succeed. And the best way to create a destination for your campaigns is by using landing pages.
So… what’s a landing page? In short, a landing page is a single web page created specifically for a marketing campaign. It’s where your visitors will land after they’ve decided to click on your awesome ad, and they offer you the best ability to create unique, quality, and high-performing destinations for your customers.
Now check out these 5 reasons to send YOUR digital ads to a dedicated landing page:
1. Minimize Distractions
A typical company website has several points of navigation and is likely intended to encourage visitors to explore and check out a whole bunch of information about the business. They’re usually kind of bulky and include a ton of information. In contrast, the best landing pages are very focused, developed with a single action in mind for their users.
If a person clicks on your advertisement for a particular product or service, they’ve already let you know exactly what they’re interested in. You don’t want to encourage exploration, you want to keep them thinking about that one thing, and turn them from visitor to customer as efficiently as possible. As you’ve probably noticed, our attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, so your landing page should focus on telling them everything they need to know about the one thing that brought them there.
2. Message Match
Did you know that certain ad platforms actually rate your destination as a part of the quality of your ad? For example, when you’re running Google ads, Google ranks your ad against others based on a quality score. Your landing page quality and how relevantly its content matches your ad will directly contribute to that score. A better score means more people will see your ad when searching for your product or service on Google.
Creating a custom landing page for each campaign allows you to directly match the messaging from your ad to your landing page; your ad for Product X should take people to a landing page specifically about Product X. Without a landing page, your ad will take people to your website home page, where the messaging is much less relevant to the particular product or service that was featured in the ad. This will result in a lower quality score overall.
Ultimately, using landing pages directly impacts the performance of your ad campaigns. Your money will be better spent while improving your results at the same time…. win-win!
3. Split Testing (A/B Testing)
One powerful attribute of landing pages is the ability to test multiple versions against each other to determine what resonates best with your audience; instead of assuming what they might like or respond to, you can try subtly different variations and see what works best.
For example, maybe you’re unsure of which fields to include in a lead-generation form. You and a colleague decide it would be valuable to gather more information but are worried that adding extra fields could deter people from filling it out. Why not create two slightly different landing pages so you can test both forms and see which one generates more signups?
TIP: More advanced landing page builders (like Unbounce—more on that later) make split testing (or A/B testing) super easy to do. Their features allow you to create landing page variations in as little as a few minutes, and then they do all the work for you in deploying them efficiently.
4. Tracking Success
Because landing pages are designed for specific visitors that have expressed interest in a single product or service, it’s easy for you to track how well your destination is performing.
Maybe you have a primary objective like leads. You can track how many leads you’re getting, which ads are sending you the best quality leads, time spent on page, and so much more. As they say, knowledge is power, and all this new knowledge will allow you to create better campaigns because you’ll do far less assuming and rely on solid information you’ve gathered through your testing and tracking.
5. Easier + Cheaper To Build
No matter what your skill set is, building quality landing pages for campaign destinations is far easier for anyone to build than an entire website or trying to edit your existing website that was built on who knows what platform.
Building a company website properly takes an immense amount of time, energy, and budget because of all the subtle nuances, goals, and functions that your full website has to satisfy. On the other hand, landing pages are built to satisfy just one campaign and building a great destination can be done in an afternoon, costing you very little.
BONUS: Check out these landing page builders to find one that works for your skill set and budget.
Best for Conversions + Features
Unbounce ($90+/mo.)
Instapage ($149+/mo.)
Best On A Budget
Carrd.co (Free – $4/mo. …seriously)
Wix (Free – $50/mo.)
In summary, a good landing page will allow you to target a particular audience, keep them focused, and help convert a higher percentage of your visitors into leads. You can make a big difference with good ads and landing pages, no matter your budget. Read this article to see what you could do with a $1,500/mo marketing budget.
Ready to learn MORE about social media and digital marketing for your business? Check out our Digital Marketing Certification.