As the Oli Gardener’s principle NSAMCWADLP says “Never start a marketing campaign without a designated landing page”. That is quite self explanatory. The list of benefits for creating a designated landing page can be long, but the main reason is better performance in driving conversions than other web pages. Then how come, that not every ad you click on leads to a page, that would visually match with the intended product and carry similar message as in the ad? We will look more into the reality behind the use of landing pages.
“Searchers click on ads because they’re trying to solve problems or gain information. And searchers, like most humans, are impatient. That’s why hyper-focused and clearly-relevant landing pages are so effective.”
Tanya Ferell, Paid search Manager, Digital Impulse
What SHOULD be done
Let’s start with some basic introduction of landing pages’ types. Based on your campaign goal, you should choose a design for your Landing Page (LP).
If you are launching a new product, let’s say a new chocolate ice cream with strawberry twirls, you would want to have a Single-product LP, where you could send your customers to the nearest store or a Single-purpose LP, in case your campaign goal is plain brand awareness and you only want page views.
If you are a clothing company and want to promote spring jackets, you would choose multi-product LP, where you could show the latest additions in the jackets sections. You could also use a Multi-category LP if you have male and female jackets and you wanted to give your customers the option to choose what interests them at the moment.
If you are an energy company and want people to sign-up for a new green energy program you are offering, you would use a Lead generation LP, where you could have a fill out form or a call in button.
If you are a car company and wants to promote your brand new electric car, that is coming next year, you may want to use a Subscription LP, where you would encourage customers to sign-up for a newsletter about the new vehicle.
What IS done
The reality of landing pages vary from the theory. In many cases the company does not have the resources, time or knowledge to create a designated LP. A lot of time you end up on a company Home page or other Web page. On Hubspot’s blog you can find that “Marketing Sherpa’s Landing page Handbook, 44% of clicks for B2B companies are directed to the business’ home page, not a special landing pages.” on Klientboost you can find a lot of reasons why you should have a landing page, but also that only “48% of marketers build a new landing page for each new campaign”. That could also mean, that they reuse old LP for new campaigns thought.
My experience
During my years as a PPC digital specialist I found out, that the reality of having a campaign-designated landing page, not even talking about a landing page with a goal, is not that usual. Many times a client would have us send the ad traffic to home page or a product web page. And very extreme situations happened in the Food&Beverege industry. A lot of times we would not even get a landing page, which is extremely tricky since all marketing platforms ask for one and would not let you create a campaign without one. We had to be satisfied with a very general company website. It caused many problems with deliveries and campaign efficiency. On the other hand, these cases could have been a country-specific, since a lot of the companies I worked for were global groups, and they were only adapting a global campaign for the local market. Their resources for translating and localizing materials were limited.
Conclusion
We are taught that having a designated landing page is a must-have and the best way to create one and how to design it to reach our campaign goals. In a perfect world every company would implement best practices in every aspect of their digital campaign strategy. However, we have to remember that reality is far from perfect. One day you are able to input your knowledge and help design the perfect goal-oriented landing page, and another day you work for a client whom you receive all the campaign material and you simply have to work with what you get. Even if it is a home page as your ad landing page.
We can hope to work with the best resources, but we should be ready to work with the bare minimum.
Eagle Digital 