Website Quality & Paid Media

A large portion of my early career was spent optimizing marketing efforts through the lens of in-platform optimizations. Testing campaign structures, bidding strategies, audience A/B tests, the works.

While this type of work is important, there was a big gap that wasn’t being addressed for my clients.

It was their website.

In my opinion, the main goal of marketing is to understand buyer behavior, then craft user experiences that align with that behavior which encourages buyers to make a purchase. One of the most important touch points a buyer can have with a brand is when they visit that brand’s website.

I’ve seen firsthand how a quality website can make a dramatic difference in paid media performance without touching anything in the ad platforms themselves. In this post, I’ll dive into a couple of reasons why website optimizations are important for paid media.

Prospects Conduct Research Through Websites

I’ve written a handful of previous posts analyzing buyer behavior, but a common theme is that modern buyers like to conduct research before raising their hand to become a lead.

Yes, a lot of this research will be done looking at third party sources, communities, networks, etc… but buyers will almost always check out a brand’s website during their research process. How else would they become anyway?

Slightly rhetorical question.

I’ve seen this in my own client data as well. For example, I’ve been working with one client to run in-platform lead form campaigns on Meta to collect leads and share educational content with them. The goal isn’t to sell these leads up front, but instead share valuable information to build trust and authority.

Unsurprisingly, we see a decent number of these leads go to this brand’s website on their own time, and book a meeting from there. In these scenarios, they’re not clicking on a link from an email, or booking by clicking on an ad. They’re conducting research on their own time.

If a brand’s website doesn’t clearly communicate what their offer is, as well as how valuable that offer is, then that brand will most likely lose out on a significant amount of potential business because potential buyers will leave their website more confused than before they arrived.

A poorly designed website can create a very leaky bucket.

I know that it may seem obvious, but I still see many websites that don’t have clear messaging across the site, let alone the home page itself.

Without easy-to-understand messaging on the site, it will be difficult to convert paid media prospects during their research process.

Site Visitors Often Visit Multiple Pages Before Converting

When I emphasize the importance of messaging, and promoting the value of a brand’s offer, that isn’t limited to just a landing page.

I also frequently see data that high quality leads usually visit multiple pages on a website within a single session before converting. Some of the most common page types that I see contribute to high quality leads are:

• Some sort of product or service page

• Blog posts on specific topics related to the offer

• Case studies or examples of work

• The home page

Contributing to the development or optimization of these types of pages doesn’t typically fall within the responsibilities of a paid media practitioner, but I believe this work is a big opportunity for those in the field. Without the presence of quality supporting content on a website, a singular landing page can only go so far.

Wrapping Up

Prospects usually conduct research on a brand’s website before deciding to make a purchase or become a lead, so it’s important that any website has clear messaging, and some strong supporting content in addition to a typical landing page.

The combination of these components can act as a rising tide that lifts paid media performance without having to make any adjustments within an ad platform!

Have questions, considerations, or critiques? I’d love to hear them! If you’re reading this via email, just hit respond. Otherwise, you can find me on LinkedIn.