I had a marketing meeting with a client the other day, and unbeknownst to me, they were spending over $1,500 a month on a pay per click (PPC) ad that was driving traffic to their home page. It sounded good to them because it was getting them more users to their home page. The problem is twofold.

Number one, when you have an ad, people have an expectation. You need a dedicated landing page with a succinct marketing message to back up that ad. Driving people to your home page, typically, it’s going to be very generic. You’re not going to have the conversion you’re looking for.

Number two has to do with conversion and tracking. When you have a dedicated landing page tied to that ad, it’s really easy to see if I drive 100 people there, and I get a 10% conversion rate, I can track that very easily and it’s much easier to determine whether or not you’re making a return on investment on that ad. If you’re running pay per click, do not push the ads to your home page, push it to a dedicated landing page.