One of the sure fire ways to boost one’s online store sales is to advertise online. In fact, according to research by the search giant, Google, almost 88 percent of consumers search for the products they want to buy online.
With this in mind, small businesses have the opportunity to influence their target market through various paid advertising options in the form of search ads, blog postings pay-per-click advertising. As more and more companies compete for their target audience, up to $49.5 billion was spent for online ads by U.S. companies in 2014 according to Internet Ad Bureau.
For small businesses to effectively reach their target audience, setting up specific search ads with customized messaging will help achieve this goal. It also includes ensuring that the landing pages are properly setup prior to running the search ad campaigns to avoid spending on pages that will not convert. Here are the different types of landing pages to watch out for. Avoid these landing page mistakes when setting up your landing URLs.
“Out-of-Stock/Fully Booked” Pages
Check for product or sales pages that contain items or products that are currently out of stock. Paying to run a campaign that links to a product that is not available will not only waste ad budget but will potentially infuriate the target audience who may decide to click on the ad.
Outdated Sites
Running an ad linking to a themed (or outdated) campaign which may contain offers or promotions that are currently not available will not only scare away potential customers but will also consequently increase your site’s bounce rate.
Archived Pages
Spending your ad budget on links to archived pages that don’t have specific or relevant messaging to the search ad’s headline is a good way to loose your audience altogether.
Search Pages with No Results
Linking to pages that have no significant ranking or searches within your site is another way to waste money in your ad campaign.
In order to prevent these problems, small business marketers should carefully craft specific messaging and ideally segment these messages to specifically target specific demographics and match specific keyword searches.
Another way to avoid the common mistakes most people make when setting their ad campaigns and linking to relevant pages is to scan the landing pages for any possible broken links or outdated messages.
One company, BrainLabs, has created a browser script to scan Web pages and pause ad implementation when it finds any problems that might negate the effectiveness of your ads.
The script provides an overview of areas of the site that need fixing so campaigns with broken links or outdated information may be paused and resources may be focused on more relevant ones.
Daniel Gilbert, CEO of BrainLabs, explained that the script searches the code of a Web page seeking red flags like the words “out of stock” or “currently unavailable.”
Knowing the suitable and working landing pages on your site gives you the power to stop spending resources on the irrelevant pages an fix those problems while focusing your ad resources on campaigns that have a better chance of converting
Plane Landing Photo via Shutterstock
[“source-smallbiztrends”]