You must lower the cost-per-acquisition (CPA) metric on your PPC leads in order to run cost-effective PPC campaigns.
One of the most reliable ways to achieve this is to optimize your PPC landing pages. This will result in a significant boost in conversions without the need to increase your ad spend. Landing page optimizations not only deliver immediate benefits (in the form of higher conversions), but they also help you save money in the long run as your quality score rises and your bid prices fall. What more could you possibly want?
Here are a few fast techniques for landing page optimization that will help you get a greater return on your PPC expenditure while simultaneously lowering it.
Make a strategy for landing page testing.
A PPC landing page, according to Unbounce, is:
“A single web page that you intend to use in an AdWords, Bing Ads, or similar sponsored campaign.” It’s a special website where people “land” after clicking on a pay-per-click ad.
On a PPC landing page, you may test practically everything, from the headline to the form.
But how can you figure out which elements to test? And, more importantly, what should you test first?
Your data holds the answer.
When one of our Convert Experiences (A/B Testing Software) customers noticed a low conversion rate on their landing page, they went into their Google Analytics data and discovered that a large portion of their traffic was accessing the page via mobile. They noted an exceptionally high drop-off rate for this particular traffic category.
While investigating possible causes, they discovered that the form on the page was not mobile-friendly. The multi-column layout was clumsy and inconvenient to utilize. The form also contained an excessive number of mandatory text fields and lacked an efficient design.
Our client used this information to improve the mobile experience of their form by reducing the number of required form fields and optimizing the design (see below):
Ways to Reduce PPC Costs by Optimizing Your Landing Page
As a result, their conversion rate on the page increased dramatically.
This customer could have started by changing the headline or redesigning the page, but it’s unlikely that that would have fixed their conversion leaks. So, when you’re looking for ways to improve your PPC landing pages, start with your statistics. That’s where you’ll get your winning ideas.
Fixing errors revealed by your analytics can increase not only your conversions but also your time on page and other metrics that contribute to your quality score.
This will lower your bid price and, as a result, your CPC.
Improve the relevance of your paid search ads and landing pages.
It’s possible that your high post-click landing page bounce rate is due to your landing page not being related to the ad the searcher clicked on. In some circumstances, searchers abandon their search because they did not locate what they were looking for.
Relevance in Google Ads implies that
… that your advertisements, keywords, and landing page are all relevant to the terms a buyer could be looking for.
The following is an example from Google that explains this:
Ways to Reduce PPC Costs by Optimizing Your Landing Page
Despite the fact that relevancy is an important aspect in determining PPC performance, many firms overlook it.
Here’s a good example of a well-matched paid ad and landing page:
Ways to Reduce PPC Costs by Optimizing Your Landing Page
When you click on this ad, you’ll see just what you’re looking for:
Ways to Reduce PPC Costs by Optimizing Your Landing Page
Paid A/B testing traffic (PPC)
You should run A/B tests when using sponsored ads to generate visitors to your landing page. Testing will allow you to swiftly improve your campaign, resulting in a higher return on ad spend and more conversions.
Why are you interested in putting your paid traffic to the test?
The benefit of PPC is that you only pay when someone clicks on your ad, allowing you to experiment with small daily budgets while fine-tuning and testing modifications to your landing page.
This is a smart strategy since it allows you to gradually improve and perfect your landing page before devoting resources (budget) to less forgiving traffic sources. With PPC, you can obtain a rough indication of how effectively (or poorly) your landing page converts. You can attempt to improve this rate through testing. Then you can apply what you’ve learned to a larger paid traffic domain.
More information on Google’s testing:
When you create an ad on Google, you have the ability to test numerous types and ad sets (creatives), price points, and so on. This testing is beneficial to your campaign as a whole, but you shouldn’t stop there. Your landing page will do the heavy lifting in terms of converting a visitor, so make sure it’s up to par. This implies that you should additionally test this component.
Remember that when conducting any type of testing, you should follow established “testing methods” and conduct a “fair test” to ensure that you can measure, track, and optimize outcomes.
What Does A/B Testing Look Like in PPC Ads?
Let’s imagine you’re utilizing PPC advertisements to drive traffic, but you want to send some of it to “Page A” and the remaining to “Page B.”
– Go to the ad you wish to test and click on it.
– Make a marketing outline.
– Go to your ads section.
– In the draft, select all of your ads.
– Change the final URL in the ad you wish to test (your draft campaign). You can construct a version of your controlled landing page using an A/B testing solution like Convert.
Experimenting outside of Google has the advantage of avoiding the creation of a new campaign that may damage conversions. It’s crucial to remember that when you test ad sets and components in Google, you’re looking for what gets people to click, not what gets them to convert.
When you save the campaign, you’ll have the option of either updating it or running it as an experiment. You wish to use it as a test case.
Killer Ways to Reduce PPC Costs by Optimizing Your Landing Page.
Examine the outcomes.
For a live example, see How To AB Test Landing Pages In Google AdWords.
PPC Landing Pages that are personalized and dynamic are available.
Creating tailored PPC landing page experiences may take your message matching (and conversions) to a whole new level. This is more of an advanced landing page optimization hack. For your PPC ads, personalized or dynamic landing pages allow you to match your message even more uncannily with the purpose of the people that land on them.
How?
Consider the following scenario:
Assume you offer online MBA programs for professionals in HR, Finance, Legal, Marketing, and other sectors. In addition, each program in your PPC campaign has its own set of advertising and landing sites.
You’re now matching the content of your landing page to the ad that appears on the page (for example, the landing page for your HR program is custom-created and relevant to the ad running for it).
For a searcher looking for a keyword like “do online MBA HR,” this approach is ideal. But what if a searcher is looking for a specific keyword, such as “executive MBA HR online,” as opposed to a broad online MBA in HR key? In situations like these, personalizing the experience on your landing page might mean the difference between converting and losing a lead.
You can make the same page feel much more relevant to each lead by dynamically altering the text on the page. All of this without having to create a new landing page for terms that are comparable (group).
On your PPC landing pages, collect qualitative data.
Convert, Hotjar, ClickTale, and SessionCam are CRO solutions that let you “see” what your PPC leads do on your ad landing pages.
The actions of your users, including scrolling, clicking, and hovering, are captured by these technologies. As a result, they show you the hotspots (a heatmap that displays where your visitors are concentrating) on your landing page. They also show you the parts of the building that no one looks at.
Naturally, you’ll want to place your CTA button in a hotspot rather than a location that your PPC leads will disregard if you want to obtain the most conversions.
It’s not only about identifying the hotspots on your landing pages so you can better place CTAs. Such qualitative research can reveal a great deal more, such as:
Identify the exact areas on your landing page where your PPC leads click. If you notice clicks on odd graphic elements, links inside your article, or menu items in your navigation bar, remove them since they’re causing a distraction.
This is the exact point at which you will lose the majority of your PPC leads. If your PPC leads depart from your landing page after a few scrolls, you can improve the copy length if you employ long-form sales copy. Alternatively, you may use design cues to encourage them to scroll deeper. You’ll also want to make sure that the majority of your PPC leads see your CTA button (by placing it at least inside the area where most people scroll up to ideally in the fold area, where 80 percent of the user’s time is spent!).
Problems with your forms should be highlighted. On your landing pages, forms (more on this in the following section!) are a crucial component. If you see that your leads are fidgeting with your form or seem to be “stuck” on a certain field, dive deeper to find out why.
Forms should be fixed.
When it comes to optimizing B2B organizations’ PPC landing pages, the form is the one place where there is always room for improvement. These lead generation forms can destroy conversions in a variety of ways. By way of example,
An overabundance of form fields (or a long-form), employing an excessive number of mandatory fields, Inquiring excessively (asking for a phone number, for example), has an excessive amount of text, utilizing a less-than-ideal location (which could be above or below the fold)
Using poor design (such as a CTA “Submit” button that is too small or easy to miss, or a multi-column layout when a simpler one would suffice), utilizing sloppy copy (yes, a form also needs an excellent copy, such as the headline, the CTA button, etc.).
When it comes to optimizing forms, you might be tempted to follow one of the “form optimization best practices” that you come across in articles. But believe us when we say that there are no “industry standards” for the best forms. We’ve powered lead generation form tests for every imaginable B2B PPC campaign for organizations, from SaaS to consultancies and beyond, and we can tell you this: there’s no other way to find your most optimum form but to test it.
Work on making the best landing page experience possible.
One of the factors Google considers when determining your Ad Rank is your landing page experience. This implies it has an impact on everything from the visibility of your adverts to the amount of money you must spend for each click (your CPC).
As a result, optimizing your landing page experience not only improves your leads’ experience on your page (and, as a result, your conversions) but also lowers your CPC.
Google has provided some extremely useful tips for improving the experience of a PPC landing page here:
– You must provide original, relevant, and useful content.
– Transparency and trustworthiness should be emphasized on your website.
– Make it simple to navigate on a mobile device or a computer.
– Reduce the time it takes for your landing page to load.
– Make your website as quick as possible.
– Make your landing pages mobile-friendly, according to Google.
Start with the pages that have the worst performance when improving your landing page experience. Within your Ads account, Google displays the following pages:
Account for advertisements.
Make sure the anatomy of your PPC landing page is correct.
The structure of a PPC landing page may not always assist conversions. It may read and appear to be a generic page, but it fails to guide visitors through the required action, whether it’s registering for a webinar, making a purchase, or setting up a trial account. A landing page must follow a precise messaging and design hierarchy that primes people to convert in order to convert more visitors.
For example, Joanna Wiebe (of Copy Hackers) suggests following this communication In PPC campaigns, your landing pages do a lot of the heavy lifting. Even minor changes to your PPC landing pages can result in higher conversions and lower campaign bid prices.
However, in order to make successful adjustments, you must begin with data, as this is the only way to break through your present conversion obstacles. So take a look at your data and figure out what isn’t working. Then put your theories to the test.
