In creating a Google AdWords campaign, advertisers often spend most of their time creating their ads and researching their keywords. There is often little or no thought to where the surfer will be sent when the ad does its job and generates a click. Often advertisers send the surfer to the home page of their website, hoping the website will do the rest of the work. These advertisers are neglecting a very important part of their AdWords campaign: the landing page. A good landing page is just as important as a good ad, good keywords and strategic bidding. By creating an effective landing page advertisers can increase conversions, which will make their campaigns more competitive and profitable.

When creating your landing page remember to make it specific to the ad that is sending the traffic. As with everything else, the landing page must be highly targeted. If a surfer clicked an ad expecting to find gold plated doorknobs, then you better make sure the corresponding landing page has just that. There is nothing worse than having a customer who is ready to buy but can’t.

The role of your ad is to get clicks. The role of your landing page is to convert those clicks into leads or sales. Make sure you can convert the surfer within 3 clicks or less. If the surfer has to click more than 3 times to buy your product you will probably lose the sale. Ideally you want the surfer to click only twice, once on your ad, and once on your landing page to get to your order page. That’s it. The more clicks you have, the less sales you make.

Remember that surfers are impatient. You need to give them what they want with as little effort as possible on their part. Therefore, it is important to always keep your original objective (conversions) in mind, as well as to refer to the specific keywords and calls to action in your ad, when creating your landing page.

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. As I said above, 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.