Subscribe via RSS FeedLaptop Bags, PayPerClick and Landing Page Relevance
I was searching today for laptop bags in Google search, and I noticed two Google Adwords ads from online retailers I have shopped with in the past:
Laptop Bags
Order online, pick up in-store.
It’s Convenient, Fast & Free!
www.FutureShop.ca
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Laptop Cases
Name Brand Laptops at Low Prices!
Toshiba, HP, Gateway, IBM & More
www.TigerDirect.ca
Please note the promises in the ads: FutureShop suggests I can order a laptop bag online, and pick it up in store (I should hope that it would also be free if I had to drive myself to the store!). TigerDirect screams Laptop Cases! Then switches its offer to various name brand laptops, which is it…laptop cases or just laptops?
This is what I found when I clicked through…
FutureShop’s landing page:
I was taken to the laptop category! No bags, no cases, no totes, no carriers! At this point, I normally would have hit “back,” but I’m blogging today, so I decided to try my luck with the search box and typed in “laptop bags” and, drumroll please…
No laptops? And you’re the top result in sponsored search? I found it humorous that FutureShop invites me to try my search again (do you mean try a different search or the exact same one and cross my fingers?) and does not provide a search box to try again with! I hit the back button and tried one more time: “laptop cases.” NOW I’m returned with 20 results. *Sigh.*
Now to TigerDirect. When I landed on a similar laptop cases category page, I was a bit less peeved because at least the ad gave me a hint to what I would land on. BUT what really makes me throw my hands in the air is that TigerDirect carries laptop bags and laptop cases! A site search on TigerDirect.ca for “laptop cases” delivered results:
As did a search for laptop bags:
Why the results are formatted differently, I don’t know. But what makes my head spin is how such large etailers can have such sloppy pay-per-click campaigns. How the BASIC principles of pay-per-click optimization can go so ignored. How websites that may be paying over $2 per click in some cases can throw money away by sending searchers to an irrelevant page is irritating to me — not as a user but as a search marketer myself.
BestBuy.ca is also guilty of the exact same thing as FutureShop. Wrong landing page, no results for “laptop bags” and a whack of results for “laptop cases.” But kudos to Dell.ca for getting the whole thing right:
Laptop Bags
Buy Laptop Bags & Accessories at
Affordable Dell Prices. Shop Online
www.Dell.ca
And you land on a page with exactly what you were promised, (although they’re nowhere near as cool, chic and funky as Kate Trgovac’s laptop bags Squidoo lens.)
Sloppy Pay-Per-Click Campaigns Cost Money
The advertiser loses money on every click for poorly organized campaigns. Pay-per-click can be like a dripping faucet, just one mistake in a campaign can end up costing thousands. If you don’t select the proper landing page, you’ll experience:
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1. Lower quality score (due to lower relevance of the landing page), thus higher average cost per click
2. Higher bounce rate, lower conversions, paying for irrelevant clicks = less efficient campaign, lower ROI
If you’re advertising with Adwords, make sure you do thorough quality assurance on your AdGroups, ad text and landing pages. Go into your Adwords campaign and click on your ads and ensure that:
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1. Your keywords are all placed in the appropriate AdGroup and that your AdGroups are tightly focused
2. Your keywords match your ads
3. Your ad offers match what is shown on your landing page
The extra time it takes to thoroughly check your campaign’s accuracy will make a big difference. Make sure you’re making the most of each click.
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Hi, Linda .. thanks for the link to my Squidoo lens!! There are Google ads that appear on my lens (part of Squidoo’s revenue program) and I often see the ones you mention and I cringe because I know their landing pages don’t deliver what people are looking for when they visit my lens. Sigh. Hopefully some of them will improve their campaigns! Cheers .. Kate
What a great post Linda!! You brought up a very important point - message mismatch is a HUGE problem in online marketing. FutureShop and TigerDirect are certainly wasting tons of money and losing user trust at the same time. Message match is even more challenging in the age of long tail, but still just as critical to success.
Thanks Anna,
I *almost* wrote a post about how shocked I was when I clicked on an Adsense ad (a product I was actually interested in) the other day and was redirected to one of these horrible “get a free ipod if you just sell your soul, your email address and send this to 50 of your friends” promos…because apparently the offer was not “good” in Canada. My first reaction was — hello? Anyone heard of Geotargeting? But then I figured it was pre-meditated as they had already planned for the redirect. I really didn’t know what to think.
On a side note, you have a good point about message match becoming more difficult for the long tail. Really the best way to do it is to have one ad group for each product, and have ad groups for category pages too. For example:
Blenders - blender category landing page
Osterizer blender - Osterizer blenders page
Osterizer blender Model #Whatever - Product page
And always triple check your keyword-to-ad-to-landing page accuracy!