Marketers who fail to focus enough time and energy on landing pages will soon find they've fallen far behind -- and may never be able to catch up.
The marketing industry has shifted from the omnipresent marketing mindset of "I-know-what-I'm-doing-don't-question-me" to the realm of scientific marketing, where analysis and data-crunching walk side by side with intuition and creativity, says Joe Davis, President and CEO of Coremetrics.
Here are two examples:
In each of these examples, only by coming up with strong creative for different landing pages, then testing those ideas and tracking the results, can you be sure of increasing your ROI as much as possible.
"Marketers have the opportunity to use landing pages more effectively than they are now," Joe says. He offered five tips:
1. Don't assume visitors know who you are.
Marketers sometimes feel that browsers who come to their sites through a very targeted keyword or phrase know what they want and don't need to be educated.
But according to Joe, that's often a bad decision.
By deep-linking the browser into a specific product page and ignoring branding altogether, marketers miss an opportunity to deepen the company-consumer relationship. So if you're deep-linking a visitor to a specific product page, at least include some branding elements that will help them understand who you are and what you offer.
2. Align landing pages with search word goals
What do you want your keywords to accomplish? Some keywords are geared toward lead generation, some toward customer acquisition, and some toward actually closing a transaction. Knowing what you want your visitors to do when they get to your site is the first step to effective landing page design.
3. Landing pages are only part of the campaign
Marketers often find themselves focusing on one goal rather than the ultimate prize. They quickly tally the volume they're driving to a landing page but aren't so sure about the number of conversions. You have to focus on the bottom line.
"Marketing shouldn't say, 'We got someone to the website, now our job is done," Joe says. "Yes, you got them there - but you still need to market to them."
4. Don't automatically rely on your SEM firm for measurement
If you rely on an outside firm for search engine marketing, consider the firm's strategy for measurement, not just for buying keywords. Many firms measure the amount of traffic each word or phrase generates, but once they reach the site, "they pretty much turn invisible," Joe explains. "What happened in between coming to the site and taking action is pretty much a black hole."
When marketers begin to understand the treasure trove of data available from their site -- for example, not just whether a browser who clicked on a specific keyword converted to a sale, but what other products they browsed -- and begin making use of it, it will force the SEM industry to become more efficient, says Joe.
5. Don't ignore the creative aspect
If you're testing three different landing pages, you need three brilliant creative treatments. "The creative right brain thinkers still need to come up with ideas and thoughts and strategies," Joe says. "The difference now is that you can tie in what really happened with what you thought would happen."