How To Create Landing Pages For Google Adwords

Google Adwords, Yahoo (formerly called Overture Sponsored listings) and other Pay Per Click (PPC) companies give you the chance to get your ad or search listing at the top of the pack, right up front and perfectly matched to the searcher's query. With a clever and catchy, attention grabbing ad or headline you can win the viewer in that critical split second he has to decide to click.

He clicks, you score! Right? WRONG! If you can get that click on a focused, targeted keyphrase and ad headline, you should feel very good. You're halfway there. But, where does he land? On your home page? On the specific product page if you have an online store?

The page where the viewer lands is called a "landing page" or "destination page." It is equally as important as your ad headline and copy, if not more. Most sales, conversions, or leads that cost hard cash to Adwords or Yahoo are often lost because of poor, or non existent landing pages.

The landing page is where you will use all your copywriting skills to complete the sale. As I said before, the goal of your ad is to get the click, and the goal of your landing page is to get the sale. It is in your landing page where you have all the room you need to explain all the benefits and features of your product or service. It is important to remember that your landing page is your sales page.

Your ad did its job by generating enough interest in the surfer to click through to your landing page. Now you should continue to hook and draw the prospect into your copy to complete the sale. The best way to do this is through a good headline. This headline should hook the prospect by appealing to her self-interest. What's in it for her? How will your product or service benefit her?

Continue to expand on your headline in your copy with more benefits for the prospect, and support these benefits with the features of your product or service. Do this throughout your copy and with subheadings. Make sure you keep the prospect interested and try to build some excitement in your product or service.

Use plenty of bullets and lists in your copy to show your benefits and features. Bullets are essentially mini headlines. Bullets can be used to summarize all benefits the prospect will gain from your product or service. They can also summarize all the problems your prospect is experiencing and that your product or service can solve.

Headlines, subheadings and bullets are very important aspects of your landing page. Surfers are impatient and impulsive. They tend to be in a hurry and want instant gratification. As a result, they often only scan the page. If a surfer is scanning your page, they will only read your headline, subheadings, and bullets. It is important that you get all the benefits to the prospect included in your headlines, subheadings, and bullets, for this reason. Of course there are also surfers who will read your whole page, so you will need to have good copy, which provides greater detail and all the information the prospect needs to make a decision.

Pictures are usually very effective, especially if you are selling a product. In this case make sure the surfer gets a good, clear look at the product. Since the surfer cannot touch the product it is important that they get as much visual information as they need. Your copy should support your pictures and your pictures should support your copy. The important thing is that the landing page is focused on what the prospect wants. So if the prospect is looking for gold plated doorknobs, then when they click your ad they should go to a landing page where they only see pictures of gold plated doorknobs, and only read text that describes the features and benefits of gold plated doorknobs.

Finally, at some point you will need to ask for the sale. This all needs to be done on your landing page. Do not ask the surfer to click through to another page and try to close the sale there. You must close the sale on your landing page. The surfer should only have to click through to your order page to provide their credit card information. If you are only looking to generate leads, have the form they need to fill out on the landing page as well.

The landing page is a very important aspect of a Google AdWords campaign. You should spend the same amount of time, if not more, creating your landing page as you do creating your ad and generating your keywords. By creating effective landing pages you can improve the overall profitability of your campaigns. Improving the profitability of your campaign can allow you to bid more per keyword and generate more traffic. In end, the landing page is an integral part of your search engine marketing and should not be neglected.

A concept developed in 1961 still holds merit today and is a great check for the underlying tone of your landing page. That is the "Unique Selling Proposition" by Rosser Reeves. The concept explains how every company should strive to show how it differs and surpasses its competition.

It consists of three concepts that should be applied to your advertisement (or adword) and your destination page.

1. Tell the consumer what benefits you will be giving him. ? "Buy this product, and you will get this specific benefit."

2. The benefits have to be unique to your product. Something that separates you from what the competition has to offer. If your products are sold by competitors too, find something that distinguishes YOUR company.

3. The proposition must be so strong and convincing that it can move the millions (attract new customers).

To be successful, you'll need to research and build a campaign, then watch and modify, test and retest different changes, words, prices, etc.

The same testing, observing, tracking and revising apply to landing pages as they do to ads and headlines themselves. It can save you a lot of money. If you're not careful you can run up thousands of dollars in PPC and adwords with insignificant sales or leads.