How to personalize landing pages for ads in WordPress

Rule #1 in marketing: Nobody cares about you and your brand!

Your ad traffic is not looking at your landing page or even at its layout, images and texts. Your visitors don’t even care about your brand. What they’re looking for is the value you offer to solve their specific problems or needs. The moment they click on your ad and arrive at your landing page, they’ll narrow their focus only on what they’re looking for.  These couple seconds could very well be the most critical point in a customer’s lifetime journey with your brand. If you manage to send out the right signals, then the visitor will choose to stay and explore your page a bit longer. Hopefully, they’ll move onto more pages and click on your call-to-action. The only way to maximize the efficiency of your landing page’s critical first signals is through relevancy. The more relevant your landing page is to your visitor’s specific needs, the more likely they’ll spend more time on your site and become converted to paying customers. And here comes the importance of personalizing your landing page for ads!

In this article, we’ll explore some tips about website personalization for WooCommerce that you can use on your landing page to maximize the engagement rate of ad visitors. We’ll further explain the critical elements that go into personalizing landing pages for ads and how we can automate the personalization process.

Who hates your one-size-fits-all ad landing page?

1- Google

Before your ad traffic even arrives on your landing page, Google doles out harsh punishments for generic landing pages by giving an ad a low score. In fact, it’s not the site visitor but Google that causes the first and immediate damage to your ad ROI. Even if you invest a high bid in your keyword or you have a high domain authority, what Google cares about is your audience and if your landing page serves them relevant content.

2- Your ad visitor

We live in a society where everything is sought to be commoditized and this insatiable hunger is now equipped with the power of the internet and social media. Your ad visitors now have a decade of experience surfing the internet, ads, clickbait and all kinds of sales pitches. An average visitor could ctrl-click 5 ads, organize and scan them in a matter of seconds and pick their candidates. If you have a generic landing page, then you would be greeting your visitor with a cold welcome message powered by some general WordPress template.  A nice hard bounce will be what you get in return.

Why personalize landing pages for ads?

Every single ad visitor has their own specific personal and contextual attributes as well as certain preferences. Of course, these variables will factor into what they expect to see on your site. In fact, the majority of consumers at 81% anticipate that businesses will grasp their needs and offer up relevant products and services at an appropriate time and place.

The best way to convey to customers that we’ve taken their specific characteristics and attributes into account is by offering customized solutions. Offering visitors the exact thing they want or need will have a positive psychological impact, which could further increase the rate of engagement and conversion.

Good personalization is good segmentation

Website personalization for WordPress is a sensitive matter and only effective when done properly. It requires research, focus and marketing technology – otherwise, you’ll end up with subpar personalization that damages your landing page even more than it being generic!

https://twitter.com/DresdenPlaid/status/466537256551870464

Before beginning to personalize landing pages for ads, you should first do your homework and find different customer segments that mean something to your business based on the goals you have set and values you expect from customers. Based on your research on your website funnels, market research and competition analysis, you can create a persona(s) of the most important visitor to your ad landing page. Then, you can focus all your effort into personalizing the landing page for this segment. Here are some examples to help guide you:

• Specific user types: Is it a first-time visiting guest? A returning lead? Or a loyal customer?
• Geolocational visitors:
  Do visitors from a specific location(s) matter more to you?
• Visitors from a specific source:
  Do you care more for visitors coming from a specific source (website, social media, etc)?
• Specific UTM campaign:
  Do you want to personalize the experience for visitors of a specific marketing campaign, for instance, using UTM parameters-?
• Showing specific in-site activity:
  Do you want to target those who have already visited specific pages on your website?
• Visitors who show specific behavior on your landing page:
  Do you care if they spend a specific amount of time on or are trying to exit your page?
• Past shopping behavior:
  Do you want to target existing customers who have already purchased specific items from your website?
• Specific device:
  Do you want to personalize the experience for visitors from a specific device like a mobile or tablet?
  

What can be personalized on an ad landing page?

Spoiler alert: not everything! When you personalize landing pages for ads, you should personalize the elements that play a critical role in resonating with the intent of your ad visitors. This is especially important given the very short time you have to grab their attention. Below are the most important elements for your objectives list:

Above the fold content (image, text, video,…)

Everything that could possibly be spotted in the first couple seconds by the arriving visitor is eligible to be personalized. It can be the greeting text, the image in your hero section or an explainer video related to your visitor’s intent.

Products

The most important! If you put a list of products on your landing page (which you should!), you’ll want to insert the most relevant list of items there. This might be a specific product that you are sure your audience is looking for or a category of products related to their intent. If you’re targeting existing customers or returning leads, you can include the items they left abandoned in their checkout right inside the landing page as well.

Blog posts

Blog posts play a definitive role in nurturing your new visitors and guests. It’s highly important to handpick and show the most relevant list of posts on your landing page that relates to your visitors’ intent. You can show specific blog posts or a category of blog posts related to the subject of the ad.

Every other piece of critical information

Even though one can name best practices to follow about the content and structure of a landing page, every niche and brand might have its own needs for custom content type and placement. So find out which piece of information on your landing page matters to your visitor and personalize it accordingly.

Practical tips to personalize landing pages for ads

Let’s personalize your landing page for ads for a fictional product website to better understand these practices. We’ll use Growmatik to do the segmentation and respective personalizations. Growmatik offers a wide segmentation and targeting criteria to use in personalizations and also uses a fully visual editor to apply your proposed personalizations without any coding involved.

Let’s assume we’re running adwords or any other kind of ads (in social media, for instance) for 3 different sneakers:

• Athletic Kicks
• Plimsoll Sneakers
• Canvas Sneakers

All ads are linked to the same landing page but each ad includes specific utm_source parameters in their link that we’ll use to personalize the landing page accordingly. The resulting landing page will not only include relevant content based on the clicked ad but also reflect personalization based on the location of the ad visitor, their user type and history on our website. Let’s get started!

Welcome your visitors with a personalized greeting and their intent

The text in the hero section of your landing page is probably the first and most important element a visitor sees when visiting your landing page. The more personalized it is, the better their first impression will be.  Make sure to include their search intent in the welcome message. For example:

It’s time for the cheapest yet coolest athletic kicks in town!

The phrase ‘athletic kicks’ is dynamically inserted based on the UTM parameter included in your ad link. In Growmatik:

• Go to the automation dashboard, find the Guests column and click on + button.
• Select All Guests as the condition.
• Choose Personalize as the action, and select your landing page from the menu.
• In the upcoming Webpage Personalizer environment, add a text element to the hero section and include a dynamic tag > utm source where applicable.
• Click Save & Exit and then Create Rule.

You can further customize the intro text by greeting your visitors with their first name and maybe based on their timezone. However, this should only be applied to your existing leads and customer whose names you have. For example:

Good evening Jack! It’s time for the cheapest yet coolest athletic kicks in town!

The words “good evening,” “Jack” and “athletic kicks” are dynamically inserted based on the visitor’s name, timezone and the UTM parameters in your ad link. In Growmatik:

• Go to the automation dashboard, find the Customers column and click on + button.
• Select All Customers as the condition.
• Choose Personalize as the action and select your landing page from the menu.
• In the upcoming Webpage Personalizer environment, add a text element to the hero section and include a dynamic tag > utm source, first name and daytime where applicable.
• Click Save & Exit and then Create Rule.

Include a relevant image or explainer video in the hero section

A related promo video about the visitor’s intent dramatically speeds up the process in a visitor finding out more info about a product they are interested in. And this shortens the path to conversion.  Whereas a general same-for-all brand promo video will be just another promo video everyone likes to skip. In Growmatik:

• Go to the automation dashboard, find the Guests column and click on + button.
• Select Source > UTM as the condition and enter the UTM value you want to target
• Choose Personalize as the action and select your landing page from the menu.
• In the upcoming Webpage Personalizer environment, add a video element to your hero section.
• Click Save & Exit and then Create Rule.
• Repeat the same process for the other two ads (UTMs) with the relevant videos selected for each.

Show a personalized product list in your first section

Show the visitor specific products or a category of products based on the ad they have clicked on. If they’re a returning lead or customer with abandoned items left from their last visit, you can first remind them of this first and display the new items in another row. In Growmatik:

• Go to the automation dashboard, find the Guests column and click on + button.
• Select Source > utm_source=Athletic Kicks as the condition.
• Choose Personalize as the action and select your landing page from the menu
• In the upcoming Webpage Personalizer environment, add a product element to the right section of your page, choose content > category and select the category related to the respective UTM source.
• Click Save & Exit and then Create Rule.
• Repeat the same process for the other two ads (UTMs) with the relevant product categories selected for each.

Include personalized explainer blog posts in the “learn more” section

Blog posts are a critical part of a customer journey in the awareness and consideration stages. If you have high-quality blog posts related to your industry/niche or insightful case studies, you’ll want to share them on your landing page. It would be ideal if you can show new visitors specific blog posts or a category of posts based on the ad they clicked on and show your existing leads and customers a list of posts related to their past reading history on your website (since they have already passed the consideration stage and are a customer). In Growmatik:

• Go to the automation dashboard, find the Guests column and click on + button.
• Select Source > utm_source=Athletic Kicks as the condition.
• Choose Personalize as the action and select your landing page from the menu.
• In the upcoming Webpage Personalizer environment, add a blog element to the right section of your page, choose content > category and select the category related to the respective UTM source.
• Click Save & Exit and then Create Rule.
• Repeat the same process for the other two ads (UTMs) with the relevant blog category selected for each.

Display exclusive popups for existing customers

It’s always a good retention practice to treat your existing or loyal customers with exclusive discounts and offers. If one of your existing customers comes across your ads, they’ll be very impressed to be met with a personalized greeting and possibly an exclusive discount for the advertised product. This will definitely increase their conversation probability. In Growmatik:

• Go to the automation dashboard, find the Customers column and click on + button.
• Select Source > utm_source=Athletic Kicks as the condition.
• Choose Show Popup as the action.
• In the upcoming popup builder tool, select a premade popup template or create yours. 
• Add a text element and include dynamic tags > first name and utm_source inside it.
• Click Save & Exit and then Create Rule.
• Repeat the same process for the other two ads (UTMs) with relevant popup templates for each.

Personalize your calls-to-action based on a visitor’s geolocation

You can personalize your landing page for ads with call to actions related to the location that matters to you. For example, if your main target markets are in 3 cities or countries, then you can personalize your calls-to-action for each location. For instance:

Find a store in NewYork 
Find a store in Brussels
Find a store in Abu Dhabi

In Growmatik:

• Go to the automation dashboard, find the Guests column and click on + button.
• Select Location as the condition and choose the applicable location.
• Choose Personalize as the action and choose your landing page.
• In the Webpage Personalizer tool, select the call-to-action button and add the location name to it by double-clicking on it.
• Click Save & Exit and then Create Rule.
• Repeat the same process for the other locations that you would like to add to your calls-to-action.

Place mobile-exclusive calls-to-action for mobile visitors

Google indexes your mobile site first, even before indexing your desktop site when deciding on ranking. So the importance of mobile channels in digital ads is a no brainer. If you’re targeting mobile phones with your ads, you can place mobile-exclusive items and controls on your landing page to facilitate the conversion of the visitor. For example, this could be a “call now” or “message on WhatsApp button.

In Growmatik:

• Go to the automation dashboard, find the Guests column and click on + button.
• Select Device as the condition and choose Mobile.
• Choose Personalize as the action and choose your landing page.
• In the Webpage Personalizer tool, add a Button to your top menu.
• Click Save & Exit and then Create Rule.

Conclusion

Personalization is a magic touch that can be applied to any marketing channel or material. Being treated personally and not like the rest of the masses provides visitors with a sense of privilege and importance and noticeably increases the engagement or conversion possibility of your ad visitor. You should always look for the most important target segments and see how you can personalize landing pages for ads to give that specific segment the best and most personalized experience. You can also test this idea with A/B testing in some of your ads and landing pages and observe how they compare.