The other day I was browsing Facebook and saw the following ad on the right side of my feed:
Having recently flown on Alaska Air I figured this was a remarketing ad, but what really caught my eye was the copy:
Discover our Flight Deals from ID.
That stood out to me because I had checked my local airport and knew with absolute surety that Alaska Air did NOT fly out of Idaho Falls (I wish they did *hint, hint*). So I was curious how they were going to deliver on that copy. I clicked the ad and was greeted by this landing page:
The headline doesn’t say anything about Idaho. The two paragraphs of text don’t mention Idaho. The drop down for “Flight Deals From” hasn’t preselected any airports in Idaho. The right side search doesn’t have any predisposition to Idaho.
But alas, the one flight listed on the page is a flight from Boise to Salt Lake City. There’s the payoff. They said they’d show me flight deals from Idaho and there it is. Promise delivered.
Deliver On The Promise Of The Ad
The first thing your landing page must do is deliver on the promise of the ad. Fail here and you’ll see your bounce rate go up and most likely money going down the drain.
It sounds so simple to deliver on the promise of the ad, but how many companies fall short on this? I did a search for “hotels near disneyland” and got this ad:
When leading with a price of $59 you would expect to see a hotel for $59 right?
You’d be wrong!
They may have gotten the click, but they didn’t deliver. And this was likely an expensive click.
Now ask yourself the introspective question: Are you falling short on this? Maybe you put together a really awesome ad copy test, but you forgot to look at the landing page. If that awesome feature or benefit you mentioned isn’t on the landing page you may have successfully managed to increase the number of disappointed visitors to your site.
Conclusion
In short, make sure that your landing page delivers on the promise of the ad. If it doesn’t you need to 1) change the ad or 2) make a landing page that does fulfill the promise. I leave you with this profound tweet from Steve Hammer:
@robert_brady Everyone makes mistakes. It’s how quickly you catch and correct them.
— Steve Hammer (@armondhammer) May 8, 2015
