Compare your landing pages to your competitors’

Are you still sending paid clicks to your home page or deep links? Are you creating landing pages ad hoc? Are you sending your visitors to one-size-fits-all, flat landing pages? 

It’s time to stop converting like its 1999, and start post-clicking like it’s 2009. 

There’s just 31 days left before 2009, and there’s no better time focus on your post-click strategy for the new year. The longer you wait, the more clicks you’ll waste.

A recent study by Compete Inc. says the greatest way to improve your investment online is by focusing on what happens after people click you ads. 

Improving your post-click experiences is not just about headlines, forms, or images. Those elements are important, but to see real improvement in online marketing, your strategy, creative, and design must come together to serve up the best, most relevant post-click experience for each of your unique audience segments.

For the month of December, we will count down the top 31 ways (in no particular order) to improve your landing pages in 2009. Come back every day for a new best practice.

The first best practice?

1. Compare your landing pages to your competitors’. 

Go out there, sign up for their email lists, click on their ads, revel in the glory that your click just cost them $3. See what online marketing strategy they have in place — and determine how you can do it better. How many times have you been in shopping mode, and clicked on a few ads until you found a landing page that fit your fancy? And your specific needs and requirements? We’ve all done it, and your prospects and potential customers do it too.

Compete’s study found that, “Your competitors could be generating five times the ROI as you are with comparable messaging and spending. What can you do right now to increase the ROI of your ad campaign? Pay more attention to the post-click experience.” Your post-click marketing is the perfect way for your company to gain a competitive edge over your competition. 

Chances are, if your competitors send traffic to a deep link or home page, even the most basic landing page will be better.

But don’t just be better. Be extraordinary.

Keeping following our blog as we count down 30 other ways to improve your landing pages, increase conversions, and improve online marketing ROI in 2009.  Once you starting making these improvements, you’ll see a lift, and then be able to party like it’s 1999.