Increasing Conversion Percentages with Conversion-Focused Landing Pages

The way people buy cars today is much different than in the past.  Prior to the internet, consumers would browse newspaper ads or see television commercials before visiting several dealerships looking for the car they wanted to buy.  Today, those traditional methods still exist, but the digital world has changed the way we shop for cars.  People now rely on the internet to find information needed to make a car-buying decision.  Consumers visit multiple websites to gather information and educate themselves and often narrow their decision down to a single dealership to buy from before even stepping foot on the physical property. A study done by Google found that today’s vehicle shoppers research and decide faster and also expect dealer sites to be as helpful as the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) sites.  What this means is that, as digital marketers, we have to help dealers get the right message in front of the right people at the right time.  If someone is searching for a specific model of vehicle in a dealer’s area, they need to be shown an ad and taken to information about that specific vehicle.  Our solution to this is implementing Conversion Pages onto a dealer’s website. A Conversion Page is a conversion-focused landing page on a dealer’s website that contains dealer-specific content about one make/model or event and presents a clear call to action or incentive for customers to purchase the car they want from the dealership.  It also includes a link to the dealer’s inventory.  We supplement these pages with multiple media drivers including SEO, Paid Search, Display and Retargeting. You might be asking, does it really work?  The answer is YES and we have the results to prove it. We started implementing conversion pages with one specific dealer group across all five of their dealership sites in June along with Paid Search and SEO.  For these particular results, we define a conversion as a lead stemming from a completed form on their webpage.

The dealer’s overall website conversion percentage for June through November was at 4.45%.  This includes traffic from every source including direct traffic, organic, referral and paid search.  Our Paid Search efforts which include traffic to inventory and conversion pages had a 2.72% conversion rate.  When someone landed on or visited a conversion page, the conversion percentage rose to an astounding 5.85%.

Clearly, conversion pages are an effective method for connecting the appropriate audience with the specific information they are seeking at that time. It's as simple as making it easier for customers to buy. Doug Drees is the Director of SEM at TargetClick – Powered by Mudd Advertising. Contact him at [email protected] to learn more about conversion pages and other paid search methods.