Target Your Click Throughs Carefully
With ad services like Google Adwords, having control of the page a viewer sees once they click on your ad means you have the advantage of presenting a targeted message.
One of the worst mistakes you can do is to create a compelling headline and brief description, and then just send someone to an all-encompassing home page — that momentum is lost and a visitor is often confused by their choices.
The message on the home page — unless you have a very lead-generation specific website with only one presented message — is not often an extension of the ad message that had the visitor interested enough to click in the first place. That confusion is a “road block” to converting that visitor to your objective.
So it makes sense that the page they see accurately reflects the advertising message … you should use a page that specifically meets this purpose.
However, be careful to TEST that it works!
I clicked on an ad on a web page yesterday (from within Google Mail) … for a bookkeeping company. They had created a specific page for that ad. However, the page I saw had this message:
You are not authorized to view this resource.
You need to login.
Oh no … lost sale. Road block. Crash. Wasted money spent on that click!
Most likely, the person creating the ad landing page was logged in, and didn’t even realise the potential for this type of error. How much money will they waste until they realise this problem?
Admittedly, some visitors may then use the navigation to click on the home page and track down what they were after. But you’re at the mercy of their resourcefulness, and that’s a dangerous place to be, especially when your home page is not prepared to carry that same targeted message.
So … don’t just use your home page as an ad landing page, unless it is very consumer targeted. And make sure that if you do have a specific page, you logout of your web content management system and test the page just as a visitor would see it!
Getting Online Publicity 1
Slideshare is a great starting point for finding literally 1000′s of online presentations.
Although they’re without sound, there’s plenty of great content and I dare say I’ve barely scratched the surface.
Here’s one presentation that you could watch on two levels:
- There’s at least several new ideas for online marketing that you’ll get as a business owner
- As a marketer, observe how this slideshare presentation is another form of free online publicity that is itself being shared and distributed! It’s a way of providing both expert positioning and getting your message across to a wide audience. The better you do it, the better the exposure you’ll get.
If you view this presentation on Slideshare, you can see it in full-screen mode.