Five reasons why your paid media campaign needs a dedicated destination.
11/20/2024
Clients often come to us wanting to raise awareness, reputation, and funds for their institutions — to which I say: “Put me in, Coach!” But many times, there’s continued discussion about where their paid ads should send users. We field questions like:
- Why can’t we just send them to our home page?
- If we want them to apply, should we just send them directly to the application?
- We have a fully functional alumni page — that feels like a great place to send users for this fundraising campaign, right?
Close, but not quite. To get the full value out of your paid media campaign, you need an intentional destination: a tailored landing page or microsite. Here are five reasons why.
Reason 1: You can give users the information they’re most curious about.
If a user clicks on your ad, they want more information about the message you’re promoting. Let’s use e-commerce as an example.
Imagine that I see an ad for a pair of jeans that I’m interested in, and I click through, hoping to learn more — only to be directed to the home page, where I have to somehow navigate my way to that specific product. Pretty frustrating, right? At that point, they’ve lost me. I want the destination to correspond to the ad, so that I can check out the jeans that caught my eye.
Higher ed should function the same way. Let’s say your ad campaign focuses on outcomes, with a message like “98% of our graduates have jobs upon graduation.” Then the page you send users to should be specific and targeted, expanding on the same topic. A landing page or microsite that satiates a user’s curiosity will work much harder for your campaign than one that takes users somewhere broad and mostly unrelated, like the home page or an admissions page that doesn’t directly pay off the message.
Reason 2: You can showcase your brand with fewer constraints.
Microsites are a great opportunity to flex your brand for a specific audience segment. Creatively, they give you the space to tell a focused story without the limitations of working within your full website. Your main .edu site has certain constraints that make it easier for your institution to organize tons of information for a broad range of internal and external audiences. With a dedicated destination, however, you can sidestep many of these. The look and feel can match the campaign and can serve as a bridge to the rest of the site. This means you can zero in on the experience for your campaign’s target users.
Reason 3: You can create a home base for the campaign.
In any campaign, some members of your audience will see your message without clicking through — maybe several times. Other members might click, but then not really engage with your message. But in these cases, your ad still might have made an impression that lingers. One thing a landing page can do is give these users somewhere tangible to go or come back to, even if they’re just using Google to find you again. The landing page enables you to answer the key questions your users are asking. And if it’s engaging, it can improve your search rankings, making it easier for you to be found. It’s a place to tell a targeted story about your institution, giving users exactly what they want, rather than just leaving them to find it on their own.
Reason 4: You can build uniquely targeted experiences.
Through a dedicated landing page, you can specifically curate the message based on the ad a user clicks on, creating a more personalized and targeted experience.
Let’s go back to our example of an outcomes-driven campaign. User A might be interested in an ad about the vast connections your institution provides. They click on that ad and end up on a landing page with a hero message that emphasizes your wide-reaching alumni base. User B is interested in an ad that focuses on the starting salaries for your graduates. User B clicks on that ad and ends up on the same landing page as User A, but the hero message shifts to tout your institution’s job placement rates.
Both versions speak to your institution and what you offer, but the message is targeted specifically to reach each user with the message that resonates most.
Reason 5: It works. And it works better.
When your users are sent to a dedicated destination, they can think about your message, not about navigating the experience. And that increases your campaign’s success. We know this from deep experience: If we compare two campaigns — one with a dedicated landing page or microsite and one that goes to a more general page on your site — the one with a dedicated destination is bound to drive more conversions.
If you’re investing your time, energy, and dollars into a paid media campaign, it should be non-negotiable that you have a dedicated place for users to go. That way, they can easily get the information they need to complete a specific, desired action — whatever that action may be.
We build landing pages and microsites like it’s our job. Because, well, it actually is our job. Let us know if you need some help.
