Landing Page Optimization (LPO) is critical to your business. Offering the right page in which a visitor “lands” can make all the difference in the world to a form filled out, product bought, or something downloaded. Yes, we test different button colors, messaging, images, templates, and other on-page aspects to find the perfect combination that will lead to higher conversion but have you thought about WHERE the visitor is coming from and what are their expectations?
I like to start my LPO series off by talking about a bad example of ad message mis-match. Most LPO starts with obtain traffic from a media buy of some sort. Today I will talk about text ads and how important it is to make sure your ad matches the landing page and vice versa.
I love golf and I have done a search for “Taylor Made Golf Clubs” on Google. This ad has show up in the paid search results:
Now from an ad standpoint (which I will discuss ad writing in a later date) it really is not bad at all. I give it an 8 out of 10. This ad has done its job and has made me (or any golf nut) click on the following link and “lands” me on this page:
All I can say is WOW! Where do I start? First of all this company does not sell Taylor Made golf clubs. They manufacture a training device (yes, I have this device and it works!) that will help your golf game period. This club has nothing to do with the ad in any way, shape, or form. How many people do you think buy this product after see the above ad? I can tell you not many because of the way they mis-match the visitor’s expectations after reading the above ad and “landing” on this page. What does this page have to do with Taylor Made Golf Clubs? Nothing! Would you buy this device if your experience was like this?
So how do we fix this? I would suggest not bidding on any keywords like this due to the massive mis-match but if I felt I needed to bid on these keywords or I did receive some orders though this ad I would do the following:
- Would have the logo of the manufacturer on this page.
- I would have a headline something like this; “Hit Your Taylor Made Golf Clubs Up To 60 Yards Further!”
- Testimonial of a golfer who uses Taylor Made golf clubs saying how this club has improved his game.
At least this way there is some connection to the brand of Taylor Made and will give a little better experience for the user that will hopefully translate to a sale (but I doubt it). Remember you paid for this visitor to come to your website so make every visitor count. Next article I will show a great example of this ad match and how you should be doing the same.
