How to Optimize Your Search Marketing Campaign

Search marketing is far and away the most effective method of driving targeted traffic to a business website. Its importance to generating new business will only increase: A recently-released study by the private equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson suggests that Internet ad spending will total nearly $62 billion by 2011, surpassing all other media. National internet advertising spending, which includes search engine marketing, will make up the lion’s share of these dollars with an estimated $38 billion.

Despite significant (and significantly growing) investments in this advertising medium, many businesses fail to take full advantage of their search marketing spending by converting clicks into customers, says Chris Finnegan, Director of Online Marketing of national Internet marketing firm TruePresence. He says landing pages are the key to landing customers online.

“A landing page serves as the first destination a visitor “lands” on after clicking on a link or an advertisement,” explains Finnegan. “By creating one or more pages with content directly related to the keyword search or advertisement that brought a visitor to your site, you’re much more likely to convert them into customers.”

There are two types of landing pages commonly used, transactional and reference. Transactional pages are designed to convert the visitor into a customer by promoting a single, prominent offer. In addition to allowing a user to make a purchase, transactional pages also make it possible to obtain an offer directly from a website. Reference landing pages provide information relevant to the target audience; they can also be used to create a revenue stream through the sale of display ads on the page.

Finnegan points out that landing pages may also serve a valuable marketing function. “Landing pages can be used to quickly test different offers or campaigns without having to alter your main corporate website. By tracking the efficacy of these pages, businesses can hone in on the messages and offers that yield the best ROI.”

When a business owner or marketing director is ready to begin building landing pages—or optimize existing ones—TruePresence has a few tips to keep in mind:

• Give the visitor what they want. The information should be compelling and relevant to the search terms that brought the visitor there.
• Keep forms on your transactional landing pages as short as possible. The fewer fields there are, the more likely someone will fill them out.
• Provide multiple response methods. If you’d like visitors to be able to respond in ways beyond the form—say, by calling or emailing you—make the contact information and calls to action prominent.
• Remember to “close exit doors by opening windows.” Make sure all external links open in a new browser window. The goal is to keep the user on the page and make it as painless as possible for visitors to take action.

With an appropriately targeted landing page, a business website will convert visitors into customers.

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