Designing an ad, generating ad impressions, and producing clicks is just half the battle in a programmatic campaign.

When a site visitor clicks on your ad, what do we want them to do next? According to a study done by Microsoft in 2015, we have an average eight-second attention span when consuming media online. If the visitor does not find the information relevant to the message of the ad once they click through, it is most likely they will get confused and bounce immediately with no action taken.

Engage vistors who click your programmatic ad campaigns by tying them to a landing pages with a single marketing objective.

Whether the goal is to generate leads or provide the visitor with click-through information to trust your product or service, you want them to take a particular action as soon as they click the ad. The action the user takes is a conversion. Conversions are measured by rate — the percentage of visitors who take the desired action once they click the ad.

One common mistake with programmatic ad campaigns is to link to a website home page. The home page design has a more general purpose in mind and multiple messages, with links to other areas of a site. While it provides multiple entry points deeper into the site (lowers bounce rate), it does not keep them focused on your campaign-specific conversion goals. What message are you trying to convey with the ad? Every link on your web page that doesn’t represent a conversion goal is a distraction that will weaken your message and reduce your conversion rate.

Imagine clicking on an interesting ad to get info, but then you get this experience instead.

So how to improve the conversion rate?

Keep it simple. Combine a programmatic ad destination with a landing page to secure a high conversion rate. Landing pages focus on a single objective to match the intent of the ad that your visitors clicked on.

A landing page is typically a standalone web page distinct from your main website with no additional links and only one call-to-action. The main reason for this is to limit the options available to your visitors, helping to guide them toward your intended conversion goal. Think of it as the lower part of the funnel.

Consider this scenario as an example:

You are a garden centre that provides gardening materials and seasonal outdoor plants. Your programmatic ad campaign talks about how customers can save $10 on their next purchase when they register for a newsletter. Your drive traffic back to your website, where you hope the visitor will then find the “promotion offer page” you mentioned in the ad and register to save.

 

A campaign landing page vs. your website’s home page. One lays out a clear path to conversion. The other presents too many options.

 

The problem and risk with doing that are that there’s a solid chance the visitor who clicked on the ad will go to your site, get distracted and give up trying to locate the promotion they were hoping to find. Instead of driving the traffic from this programmatic ad back to a busy website homepage, drive traffic to a single goal-oriented landing page with one promotional offer. Clear. Cut. Win.

Based on this example, do you see how a landing page could help you increase your conversion rates in your programmatic campaign, and decrease the number of times visitors click on your ad without taking action? Do you think directing ad click traffic to a landing page instead of your company website would be a big boost for your click-through to conversion ratio? Yes, yes, and yes.

Try to use a landing page for every programmatic ad campaign to provide the most relevant user experience.

Pro tip:  Make sure there is a consistent message match across campaign touch points to gently guide users along their path to conversion.

There is a full case study here to demonstrate how effective a programmatic ad campaign could be when combined with a landing page. 😄 😄