Would you like to see more sales and signups from your landing pages? If you’re not happy with your conversion rate, you can certainly improve your results. However, it takes a commitment to a long-term strategy to see significant results that stick.
Creating a high converting landing page requires more than just writing some quick sales copy and publishing it on a webpage. From start to finish, creating a landing page takes research, planning, testing, adjusting, and more testing.
Optimizing a landing page to convert at a high rate requires multiple revisions sandwiched between multiple tests. Landing page optimization is an ongoing process. Even highly optimized landing page can be further improved. Unless you have a 100% conversion rate optimization there’s always room for improvement.
If you’re tired of minimal conversions and you’re wondering what you can do about it, you’re in the right place. This article will explain several ways you can increase your landing page conversion rate.
As a brief summary, to increase your conversions you need to identify opportunities for improvement and then implement the necessary changes. You can identify improvement opportunities by performing tests, which will all be explained below.
Here are X landing page tests you can run – and X changes you can make – to improve your landing page conversion rates.
Optimizing your landing page to increase your conversion rate optimization will rely on testing. Although you should hire a professional marketing agency to set up your tests, here’s a general idea of how it works.
Once creating landing page, that landing page is considered your “control.” Then, you create copies of your control page and change 1 or 2 elements on the page – preferably just one change at a time. Then, you market those pages through ads to the same target demographics and see which pages convert better.
When you identify the highest converting page, that page becomes your “control” and you can tweak additional elements to test those changes. This process is repeated on a regular basis.
Here are 4 landing page elements you’ll want to create variations for when running your tests. Since PPC ads begin the process of conversion, that’s where you’ll want to start optimizing first.
Traffic to your landing page will almost always come from PPC ad campaigns. There are other possible sources, but most people stick with PPC ads. Whether you’re using PPC ads or another ad source, start testing variations of your headlines and copy.
Headlines are the most important part of any ad. An effective headline will capture someone’s attention and influence them to click. The easiest way to capture attention with a headline is to promise to solve a big problem. Granted, your landing page copy will need to make good on that promise if you want conversions.
Your landing page visitors/website visitors will be heavily influenced by whatever they are exposed to right before arriving on your landing page. In other words, your PPC ads aren’t just a way to get clicks – they’re actually the beginning of the process of persuasion.
You can use your PPC ads to create a state of mind that will make visitors more perceptive to your marketing messages on your landing page.
Persuasion expert and author Robert Cialdini explains how this works, in detail, in his book Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade. However, he gave plenty of useful information in an interview with Forbes.
In the interview, Cialdini explained that researchers generated a higher participation rate from people by asking a question to get people thinking about how they are helpful people. When asking for help with a marketing survey, only 29% would participate. When asking a pre-suasive question, “Do you consider yourself a helpful person?” 77% of people agreed to participate.
If you’re running your own tests outside of a marketing agency, be willing to continually test ad headlines and copy. Improvement is an ongoing process that takes time.
In addition to your ad copy, your ad images (where applicable) have the potential to influence conversions. Before you start randomly testing images, read what other people have discovered to save yourself from having to reinvent the wheel.
For example, most people have learned through trial and error that proper contrast is more important than specific colors. Although, blue tends to be a good choice for a specific color scheme.
Wherever your ads display images, keep your images simple and relevant to your ad. Avoid gradients and complex graphic details that will make your image hard to see.
Your landing page design consists of the following:
There are seemingly endless variations you can create to test landing page elements. Unless you’re running a large budget marketing campaign, it’s important to start with one element at a time. For example, you might create variations of your landing page performance that includes all testimonials at the bottom of the page and another variation that sprinkles testimonials throughout the content.
Just like you’ll test your PPC ad headline and copy, you’ll want to test your landing page headlines and copy. Remember that people tend to scan copy rather than read it from start to finish. Because people scan, powerful, influential headlines will help your conversions.
The most important heading on your entire landing page is the top heading. Work on that heading first and then optimize the remaining headings.
For the most part, the changes you’ll make to your landing page will depend on what you’re testing. However, there are 5 basic changes you can make to your landing page that will optimize your conversions.
Distractions make it hard for visitors to know what to do next. Should they play the video or click on a link you provided in your sales copy? Or should they keep reading your sales page?
It’s important to create your landing page to be free from distractions. You’ll probably want to create a custom page template to start with a blank slate. It seems natural to create your landing page from an existing web page as a template. However, doing that will create multiple distractions for your visitors.
Landing pages need to be free from distractions. Distractions divert visitor attention away from your sales copy and can kill your conversion rate.
What counts as a distraction? Technically, anything that stops a visitor from reading your copy or pulls them away from the page is a distraction. Elements like:
Any and all links you insert into your sales copy on your landing page should place whatever item you’re selling into your visitor’s shopping cart. Aside from links in the footer, any other links will hurt your conversions.
Avoid linking to content in your landing page sales copy. You don’t want visitors to land on your sales page, click a link, and start wandering around your website or someone else’s website. You want visitors to stay on your sales page until they make a purchase.
Every link you publish on a sales page is one more opportunity for visitors to bounce without making a purchase. Don’t give visitors a reason to wander away from your sales page.
Navigation menus are the worst distraction for visitors on a sales page. If a visitor sees a navigation menu, they might start exploring your site instead of reading your sales copy.
You’ve probably seen landing pages with navigation, and there are exceptions. For example, navigation is okay if your landing page is a self-contained mini-website designed to provide visitors with important information. In that context, navigation is helpful.
On dynamic landing pages designed to generate sales or signups, a navigation menu will be a distraction and kill your conversions.
If you use your main web pages as a template for your landing page, make sure to eliminate the sidebar. Sidebar content will distract visitors and if it’s clickable, they’ll end up bouncing.
No matter what the content, sidebars don’t belong on landing pages – not even if the content is related to your product. If you have so much information that you want to present it to visitors in a sidebar, your landing page is already too complicated.
With few exceptions, landing page should be straightforward, simple, and clean. No navigation, no non-sale-related links, and no sidebar content.
Do you know the difference between a content writer and a copywriter?
If you’ve hired a content writer to write your landing page sales copy, you’ve hired a professional in the wrong industry. You need a copywriter, not a content writer. While both types of writers can be highly skilled, they’re entirely different professions.
Get your landing page copy written by a professional copywriter. It’s important to find a copywriter and not a blogger or content writer. Although content writers and bloggers can be phenomenal writers, high-level writing skills can actually prevent someone from writing effective sales copy.
Effective sales copy requires speaking directly to a well-defined target market using persuasive copywriting techniques that often defy grammar, punctuation, and other writing ‘rules.’
Say you’re an SEO firm selling an SEO Mastery Course that teaches entrepreneurs how to get high-level results. Your sales copy will directly influence your conversion rate and it won’t be based on perfect grammar.
You could have a landing page with well-written copy, perfect grammar and punctuation, and your conversions might still be low. Why? Good sales copy isn’t defined by the same standards as a good blog article. In fact, effective sales copy often uses incomplete sentences, incorrect punctuation, and a conversational tone that would make any English teacher whip out a red pen.
The point with sales copy isn’t to write perfect copy – it’s to persuade the reader to take a specific action. That often requires breaking the rules of grammar, punctuation, and style.
“Our SEO Mastery Course will show you how to get big results. Our expert SEO professionals will teach you how to increase your ranking in the search engines using several powerful techniques not available to the public.”
“If you’re like most entrepreneurs, you’ve learned a little SEO, but it’s not enough. You want agency-level results without the price tag. You don’t mind doing the work – if only you knew the secrets.
Imagine learning 2 closely-guarded SEO techniques that will make leads pour in faster than you can follow-up with. Imagine generating instant sales from leads who have no prior contact with your brand. Marketing pros do it all the time and you can, too.
When you take our SEO Mastery Course, you’ll learn some of the top SEO secrets marketing gurus keep from even their top students. When you implement these strategies, you’ll get breakthrough results you never thought possible.”
Both versions of copy are well-written, but the copywriter’s version is specifically written to persuade the reader to buy the SEO Mastery Course.
The biggest difference is in the style and tone. Content writers are trained to create informative, factual, well-researched copy. Copywriters create persuasive copy using specific techniques to influence the reader.
The best solution is to hire one of the A-listers like David Deutsch or John Carlton. However, you may not have a 5-figure budget.
If you’re on a budget, work with a marketing agency to get access to copywriters. If that’s out of your budget, start poking around online to find copywriters for hire.
When you find a possible copywriter, ask to see a portfolio, and if possible, e the stats for how well their copy performs. Good copywriters get paid royalties for their work. They should be able to provide statistics on how well their copy has performed for past clients. If a copywriter doesn’t know how well their copy performs, keep looking for someone who can provide you with that information.
Good typography is critical for conversions. Although, with typography, less is more. You don’t want visitors to notice your typography – you want all typography to blend into the experience of reading your sales page or watching your video.
Simplify your typography as much as possible. Use a web-safe font face, preferably Arial or Times New Roman. Don’t use background colors other than white or off-white with black or dark gray main text. It’s okay to use colors in your copy and as headings. However, avoid the high-contrast color schemes that use black or dark backgrounds with light text.
If you really want to dive into the art of persuasion using typography, read up on the 2012 experiment run by Errol Morris published in the New York Times. In the experiment, 40,000 readers read a passage from a book and were asked if they agreed with the passage by stating ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ The experiment utilized 6 different typefaces and determined that:
Typography can be a tedious element to optimize, but if you have the time and dedication it’s worth the effort.
Simplifying your landing page design and colors, and reducing the number of elements used will support an increase in landing page’s conversion rates / page speed/page load time. Ideally, your landing pages should be as plain as possible – almost boring in terms of design. Plain or ugly landing pages convert better than fancy landing pages.
Why do ugly sites convert more than fancy sites? Technically, it’s because plain and ugly sites contain little to no distractions and just offer the ‘meat and potatoes’ of the content. In other words, a website’s value is more accessible on an ugly site than a fancy site. There’s no eye candy, which is perfect for conversions.
When you create plain or ‘ugly’ landing pages, you’re stripping away all the bells and whistles and presenting pure content. It’s a natural way to prevent yourself from creating unnecessary barriers to the sale.
Another element that might seem strange is using large ‘buy’ buttons. At first, it might seem cheesy and spammy to use huge ‘buy’ buttons that take up most of the viewport. However, just like the ugly site phenomenon, large ‘buy’ buttons increase conversions.
If you’re not sure about using large ‘buy’ buttons, you can always split test your buttons against your highest converting page.
Optimizing your marketing strategy is the final component required to increase your landing page conversion rate. Here are 4 changes you can make to your marketing strategy to get better results.
How well do you know your market? How long has it been since you researched your market? Have you researched your market or are you guessing?
Finding your target market is a lot like generating a keyword list for SEO; both require extensive research and your opinion might not be accurate. For example, many business owners make the mistake of thinking they are their own target audience market. So, they craft marketing messages that appeal to them. In reality, their main market is usually an entirely different demographic.
No matter what your product is, only research can pinpoint your target market. Even when your market seems obvious, you can always go deeper. For example, if you sell socks, your obvious market is everyone. However, you won’t sell many socks marketing to everyone with a general message. Even when you sell a product as universal as socks, you still need to define a smaller group of people so you can craft specific, targeted messages to the group.
Market research will open the door for you to discover more about your market than you can gather from your own thoughts. With in-depth market research, you can discover multiple sub-niches that are also individual markets you can target with even more detailed and tailored marketing messages.
Most products and services have more than one target market. However, some markets are more profitable than others. Still, if you can target multiple niche segments of your market, you’ll increase conversions.
Specific marketing messages tailored for your market segments will increase conversions. Here’s how that works. Say you’re selling frozen black bean burritos. You can market your burritos to people who love black bean burritos and you’ll generate decent conversions.
You can also market your frozen black bean. burritos to people who don’t have time to cook and you’ll probably get more sales – even from people who aren’t too thrilled about black beans. Why? When marketing to that segment, the product is convenience. When marketing to burrito lovers, the product is the black bean burrito.
This is where having a professional copywriter will help you the most. They’ll know exactly how to write unique sales copy that reaches multiple market segments.
You’ll get landing page conversion rate when your marketing message is effective. To be effective, your marketing message needs to be targeted. Sales and conversions will increase as your marketing message more specifically targets your market. However, it’s important that you direct your marketing message to a specific target au market rather than creating a general marketing message.
The world’s top A-list copywriters get results because they write sales copy that targets specific markets. They’ve perfected their craft over many years and often earn tens of thousands of dollars – plus royalties – for writing just a few paragraphs.
For example, the late copywriting master Dan Kennedy was routinely hired by large corporations to see if his copy could outperform the company’s control piece. When Kennedy was allowed to run with his ideas, his copy outperformed the company’s control by a landslide.
However, Kennedy ran into the same problem with nearly every company that contracted him. He would go into a marketing meeting and people would toss out random advertising ideas based on the product’s features. If the company was selling a perfume, they’d toss out creative ideas for a product name, what colors to use, how to package the product, and what kind of music to put in the ad.
Nobody in the marketing meetings would talk about the target market.
In these meetings, Kennedy would redirect the conversation and get people talking about the target rather than the product.
Thinking of the target is the only way you’ll develop effective marketing messages. Effective copy speaks directly to the target rather than about the product.
The difference between copy that speaks to a target and copy that talks about the product is a small, yet critical distinction. Here’s a simple example:
With the Speedy Coffee Maker Pro, you can make a fresh cup of hot coffee without getting out of bed. Just open the app, choose your flavor and strength, and hit ‘brew.’ Coffee has never been so easy.
Have you gone to work empty-handed because you didn’t have time to brew your morning coffee? With the Speedy Coffee Maker Pro and app, you can brew a fresh pot of hot coffee before you get out of bed. Take that extra five minutes in the shower. Your coffee will be waiting. Just fill your favorite mug on your way out the door.
The difference between these two marketing messages is huge. The first message that simply discusses the product’s features is not a targeted message and won’t be that effective. There will always be some people who will buy items without targeted messaging, but it’s a small number.
The second message speaks directly to a target market consisting of busy people who don’t have time to make coffee in the morning, but can’t function without their coffee. This isn’t the most specific target possible, but it’s targeted enough to give you an idea of what specific targeting looks like.
Once your landing pages contain professionally-written, targeted sales copy, there’s one more step to ensure success. Your traffic source needs to be highly targeted as well.
It’s easy to manipulate people into clicking on PPC ads. However, that tactic will only decrease your landing page conversion rates.
Your PPC ads create an expectation for what the content will be your landing page. When people click on your advertisement, they expect the target page to be relevant to the ad. If the content doesn’t deliver on the promise in your ad, or if the content was hyped up in the ad, your visitors will bounce.
Additionally, if you’re running PPC ads to random demographics, you’re wasting your marketing budget. There are people who click on ads that look casually interesting even if they’re not part of that market.
The solution is to first work on defining your target market’s demographics. Then, optimize your PPC ads to be displayed for your target market. Ultimately, you’ll increase your landing page conversion rates when you target the right people with relevant and influential messages.
Although there are separate components, it’s all one continuous experience, from your PPC ad to your landing page.
You can’t increase landing page conversion rate by only optimizing your landing page. Increasing conversions is a trifecta that includes optimizing your landing page, your PPC ads, and your target demographics.
The tips and strategies outlined in this article will help you optimize your PPC ads and landing pages to generate higher conversion rates. However, your ability to get conversions will always hinge on how well you know – and target – your market.
Don’t skip market research, and don’t confuse market research with checking out keywords using Google Analytics. Market research is a fundamental aspect of marketing that has been somewhat lost in the DIY marketing revolution of the last decade or so.
It’s understandable if you’re on a tight budget and you can’t afford to pay a research firm for information on your target market. However, not having access to that information will hold you back. However, there are things you can do on your own to discover more about your market.
Are your conversions lacking? Does DIY marketing sound too exhausting? Get more conversions effortlessly by partnering with PPC.co. We’ll help you create a powerful PPC ad campaign that reaches your most profitable target market and we’ll create landing pages with professionally-written copy that sells.
Contact us today and tell us what you need. We’ll help you creating landing pages or high converting landing pages & get the landing page conversions you deserve.
%201.svg){kind=logo}
Cybersecurity is arguably one of the toughest industries to compete in when it comes to paid advertising. You’re basically selling to tech-savvy, skeptical buyers like CISOs, IT directors, compliance officers, and security teams. Most cybersecurity companies tend to expect hard proof of all claims and you can’t capture their attention easily. Generic ads and broad PPC marketing tactics won’t cut it in this competitive landscape. Because of this, high CPCs across major search engines, vendor saturation, and long evaluation cycles mean that poorly targeted cybersecurity PPC campaigns can be a huge waste of advertising spend.
To win in this arena, firms need advanced PPC for cybersecurity strategies like targeted intent segmentation, tightly aligned messaging, intelligent audience modeling, AI-powered optimization and bid strategies, technically accurate ad copy, and conversion paths designed for enterprise-level buyers. In this article, we’ll dive into the advanced cybersecurity PPC techniques modern cybersecurity firms must use to generate high-quality leads, reduce wasted ad spend, and stand out in a highly crowded search space.
Cybersecurity search queries represent a wide range of intent that spans from broad research to urgent remediation needs. You don’t want to treat all search terms the same or you’ll waste most of your ad spend. Here’s what you should do:
1. Segment keywords by intent
Start by dividing your PPC ads into cybersecurity PPC campaigns based on the following general categories of user intent:
· Educational. These searches might include terms like, “What is endpoint security?” and “Types of cyber threats.” They support content marketing, awareness-stage paid campaigns, and early-funnel marketing efforts.
· Research. These are phrases like “Buy SIEM software” and “24/7 SOC as a service price.” These keywords align with cybersecurity marketing services, gated assets, and evaluation-stage marketing strategies.
· High urgency. Urgent searches are phrases like, “Ransomware removal help now” and “Breach response service.” These searches demand immediate cybersecurity solutions and direct-response PPC advertising with strong CTAs.
This segmentation ensures you match your ad copy, ad relevance, landing pages, click through rates, and offers to exactly where the buyer is in their journey. This improves the relevance of your ads, reduces wasted ad spend, and increases conversions and overall campaign performance.
2. Prioritize longtail and high-intent keywords
Using long tail keywords and targeted keywords attracts higher-quality website traffic. These terms usually reduce marketing costs, improve conversion rates, and drive more efficient paid advertising.
3. Use negative keywords to filter out irrelevant traffic
Since a wide range of people search for cybersecurity terms, including students, hobbyists, and researchers, every marketing agency should use a negative keyword list to filter out irrelevant searches will protect advertising spend. For example, filter out queries using the terms “free course,” “tutorial,” and “certification exam.” Anyone searching for these phrases is unlikely to be looking for a cybersecurity product or service. This ensures your PPC campaigns reach potential customers, not job seekers or students.
The best compelling ad copy will fall flat if they don’t reach the target audience who make purchase decisions. If you cast your net too wide, you’ll miss those people. Many people searching for keywords related to cybersecurity are just curious or looking for free solutions. AI-driven ad targeting allows cybersecurity marketers to refine their highly targeted audiences and focus on the people who are most likely to convert.
To identify the right targets, you can use AI and upload campaign data from your CRM, like MQLs, SQLs, demos, and closed deals into Google Ads and Google Analytics so the model can learn what a “good lead” looks like. This will help you build a lookalike audience that represent your best customers – the people most likely to buy your cybersecurity offers.
Cybersecurity buyers are usually high-level roles in regulated industries. To reach them you can use filters for specific industries like healthcare, finance, enterprise tech, etc. and also filter for company size, geography, and job titles (like CISO, IT director, compliance, etc.). This is the best way to minimize wasted clicks and build targeted campaigns that improve campaign effectiveness and drive better data driven decisions.
Cybersecurity buyers expect total clarity, accuracy, and trust. They don’t respond to vague or sensationalized copy. To get their attention, use specific terms thar resonate in the cybersecurity world. Terms like: SEIM, MDR/XRD, SOC as a service, IAM/PAM, 247 monitoring, zero trust, end-to-end encryption, and compliance-ready. These phrases signal credibility.
Keep in mind that regulated industries are highly concerned with compliance, so highlight frameworks like HIPAA, PCI-DSS, SOC 2, and ISO 27001 when relevant. These small signals can be powerful triggers. Including compliance language boosts ad quality, improves search engine rankings, and increases ad visibility across search results.
The best cybersecurity ads will create urgency and offer a benefit-led call to action. Ads like “Protect your business from ransomware now – schedule a free security assessment” and “Ensure 24/7 threat detection for your enterprise” work better than vague promises. By speaking the language of your buyers and addressing their real fears and needs, your ads will appear more credible. This approach consistently produces successful PPC campaigns and supports scalable cybersecurity PPC advertising.
Great ads will get clicks, but your landing pages decide whether someone converts. For cybersecurity brands, generic “contact us” landing pages (and homepages) won’t cut it. Successful PPC campaigns rely on intent-matched landing pages to convert potential clients. You need threat-specific, offer-focused landing pages where the copy matches exactly what’s in the ad. For instance, if the ad is for ransomware protection that’s what the landing page needs to promote. Whether it’s a cloud security audit, SOC as a service, or a compliance assessment, make sure your ads and landing pages match. This improves seamless user experience, increases conversion rates, and supports long-term business growth.
Use case studies, certifications, compliance credentials, client logos if they allow for that, audit results, and security whitepapers to build trust with your audience. These elements can help buyers overcome their initial skepticism and compliance concerns.
Using a value-first approach is a great way to get more relevant clicks through cybersecurity lead generation and filters buyers actively seeking solutions. All you need to do is offer value people can access immediately. For example, free vulnerability assessments, security posture quizzes, and compliance readiness evaluations are all valuable on the spot. They also filter high-intent leads that are more likely to book a demo or discovery call with you. This strategy improves campaign performance, increases lead generation, and helps convert leads into pipeline opportunities.
Cybersecurity sales don’t usually happen on the first click. They often involve multiple stakeholders, extended review processes, compliance checks, and internal approvals. It won’t work to use one-click, last-click attribution.
· Use data-driven, multi-touch attribution models. These models credit all meaningful touchpoints (not just the final click) to give you a clear picture of how your PPC ads are contributing to real conversions over time. It helps justify ad spend and reveals which ads, keywords, and campaigns are influencing your decisions.
· Sync PPC leads with CRM and offline conversion data. Track your leads through all stages (MQL, SQL, Demo, Proposal) and feed this data back to your PPC platforms to train the algorithm on what quality conversions actually look like for you. This is how you’ll improve your targeting and bid optimization.
· Combine retargeting and content marketing. Buyers often visit a site multiple times before deciding to buy. Use remarketing gated content (like whitepapers and threat reports, webinars, and email sequences to nurture leads and lead them toward a purchase.
For B2B cybersecurity firms, a multi-touch, multi-step conversion funnel is the most realistic way to measure PPC ad success. Multi-touch attribution allows teams to track key performance indicators, analyze campaign data, and uncover valuable insights.
Using data insights, actionable insights, and data driven insights helps teams refine PPC strategy and justify marketing costs.
Cybersecurity keywords can be pretty expensive. Without intelligent bidding, you’ll overspend and underserve. AI-driven bid strategies, including a smart bidding strategy, optimize bids across search engines in real time. This reduces marketing costs, improves efficiency, and drives sustainable revenue growth.
Automated bidding strategies like Target CPA, Target ROAS, and Max Conversions are ideal when trained with clean, qualified conversion data. These strategies will adjust your bids based on the time, device, location, user behavior, and competitive factors – all elements humans can’t easily track at scale.
While it’s nice to get leads who visit your site and even fill out your form, keep your priority on conversion quality, not just volume. Don’t just optimize for clicks or form fills. Feed your bidding models real conversion events like qualified leads, demos booked, and deals closed. Empty form submissions aren’t helpful – your goal should be to build a real pipeline.
Most importantly, test and refine your ads continuously by split testing your ad copy and landing pages to see what works best. In cybersecurity PPC, even small tweaks can yield big results because you’re targeting a narrow, high-intent audience. With a well-trained AI bidding system, your campaigns will do well even in a competitive market.
Since cybersecurity buyers don’t convert on hype, value is essential. Long-form assets like whitepapers, threat reports, case studies, and compliance guides strengthen content marketing, improve online visibility, and support paid advertising across social media platforms, LinkedIn Ads, Twitter Ads, and Bing Ads.
Use your PPC ads to drive traffic to content offers like “2025 Ransomware Trend Report,” “Enterprise Security Readiness Checklist,” or “Cloud Compliance Guide.” These types of content will draw in decision makers who are researching solutions.
Make sure you gate the content you provide to people who click on your ads. Use progressive profiling forms that adapt to the user’s role or company size (if possible) to capture qualified leads. Then feed those leads directly into your lead nurturing workflows and retargeting sequences.
After a lead has downloaded your information or has made the first engagement, retarget them with ads offering free audits, demos, case studies, or consultations. This approach increases immediate visibility while building trust in the cybersecurity space and is highly effective for the long B2B sales cycles that exist in cybersecurity.
Since cybersecurity buyers usually need time to make a purchase, retargeting has to be precise. General remarketing will just burn through your ad budget and will be ignored by serious buyers.
To create specific segments for remarketing, start with intent and behavior. For example, if a user visited a ransomware page, don’t show them ads with general security content. Serve them ransomware-specific ads.
For the best results, segment your remarketing audiences based on:
· Pages visited (threat type, service)
· Actions taken (whitepaper downloaded, demo requested, form filled)
· Role/company size (if available)
Then tailor your messaging by funnel stage. Start with the awareness stage and offer more educational content like guides and webinars. For those in the consideration stage, push case studies, vendor comparisons, and ROI calculators. Finally, for those making the decision to buy, offer demo scheduling, free audits, and compliance checklists.
Be sure to always exclude low-intent and irrelevant audiences. There will always be researchers, students, job seekers, and random curious tire kickers searching for cybersecurity keywords. As discussed earlier, use negative keywords and exclusion lists to avoid wasting your ad spend.
Segmented remarketing improves ad relevance, strengthens marketing messages, and boosts click through rates. This approach supports successful campaigns while reducing wasted advertising spend.
Since many cybersecurity buyers are evaluating multiple vendors at the same time, competitor conquest campaigns can be highly effective if done correctly.
The right way to do this is to target your competitors’ weaknesses while maintaining compliant messaging. Avoid naming your competitors directly to stay within ad policies but highlight how your offering solves common complaints about your competitors. For instance, you might note that you have “Faster setup,” “Better support,” “Flexible pricing,” or “Stronger compliance reporting.”
Build out landing pages that compare your features to your competitors’ features without naming names. Show real differentiators like detection speed, compliance, and support, and highlight testimonials or case studies from clients who “switched from Vendor A.”
Never expect single clicks to convert. Treat competitor conquest campaigns like the first touchpoint in a series. Pair it with remarketing, content nurture, and follow-ups to maximize conversions from buyers who are currently in evaluation mode.
PPC ads can generate plenty of leads for your cybersecurity business, but closing deals will require a strong sales strategy. That’s why aligning your PPC campaigns with your sales workflows can help.
Sync your ad data with your CRM for full visibility. Capture data on keywords, ad groups, landing pages, and funnel stages for every lead. This will help your sales team know exactly what triggered their interest so they can tailor their follow-up conversations accordingly.
Provide your sales teams with assets to help your messaging stay consistent. For example, give them your case studies, compliance docs, whitepapers, audit reports, and technical comparisons. Doing so will help them maintain credibility when engaging with potential clients.
When PPC efforts align with sales workflows, marketing teams help cybersecurity businesses close deals faster. This improves campaign effectiveness, reduces friction, and lowers customer acquisition cost.
The cybersecurity industry is a battlefield. A basic PPC campaign won’t work when you’re competing for attention in the cybersecurity industry. The firms that invest in cybersecurity marketing, cybersecurity PPC, and data-backed marketing strategies know that precision and trust win conversions across digital channels. To win leads, you need to reach targeted audiences with intent-driven keywords and technically correct messaging, and it all needs to align with your sales process.
If your competitors are using these strategies and you’re not, you’re invisible. This is the time to sharpen your strategy and strengthen your funnel by implementing a stronger PPC strategy.
If you want to generate qualified enterprise leads, reduce wasted ad spend, and build a scalable, data-driven PPC engine that speaks directly to cybersecurity decision makers – an experienced cybersecurity marketing agency like us can help.
At PPC.co, we specialize in building paid ad strategies that convert clicks into real clients. Contact us today and we’ll position your firm as the credible, trusted authority cybersecurity buyers want.
The keyword jockey era is officially over. For years, PPC agencies were basically just click machines. You gave them a budget, they bid on keywords, and you got traffic. But that model is fading out. Platforms like Google Ads now handle bidding automatically, and anyone can buy clicks. What separates winners from losers today isn’t the company that spends more – it’s the ones who turn clicks into paying customers.
PPC ads are still a legitimate way to generate cheap traffic but the end goal is ultimately conversions. Until recently, many PPC agencies have only focused on generating traffic without focusing on customizing strategies to produce profitable outcomes. This requires more than just selecting keywords. It requires testing ad creatives, fine-tuning landing pages, and ruthlessly optimizing funnels.
If you’re working with a PPC agency that only talks about CPC while ignoring conversion rates and lifetime customer value (LTV), it’s time to upgrade to an agency that focuses on results measurable in dollars.
Ad platforms like Google Ads and Meta have made manual bidding almost obsolete. Their algorithms now choose how to get you the best conversion value, not just the cheapest click. That means the old “bid manager” agency model is toast.
Smart Bidding and bundled campaign types (like Performance Max) push optimization toward conversion value rather than just clicks. And that’s not a bad thing. It’s an invitation to apply your marketing budget to the things humans do best: messaging, creative strategy, and conversion rate optimization).
The algorithms do the heavy lifting now. Google’s Performance Max and Smart Bidding automatically find high-converting audiences. The system handles keyword strategy better than humans ever could. And it makes sense that these companies would invest the time and money into perfecting their systems because the better results you get, the more likely you are to keep running ads.
With the backend tech handling bidding, your agency’s edge comes from improving elements outside of the algorithm, like your ads and landing pages. The best PPC agencies no longer promise a lower CPC – they promise results.
That’s the key shift here. Automation didn’t eliminate the need for human marketers, no matter what the fear headlines say. It just readjusted the roles between humans and machines.
The agencies that survive this shift will be the ones who stop fighting automation and start building it into their workflows. Rather than wasting time micromanaging bids, cutting-edge agencies are using those hours to test headlines, improve page experience, and analyze conversion data to find out what’s really working.
Automation can never tell you why people click, bounce, or buy. That’s where humans are and always will be needed. When you understand your customer’s motivation better than the competition, you can write better ad copy and design better landing pages.
At the end of the day, automation leveled the playing field for media buying. What was once a technical advantage is now table stakes. Anyone can run their own ads. The agencies leading this new PPC era are competing on conversions, not the simple ability to run ads.
In the old days, you could buy the right keyword and call it a day. That isn’t how it works anymore. Two ads that target the same keyword can perform completely differently based on how they look, sound, and feel. Your ad creatives drive results when they’re optimized and waste your ad spend when they’re not.
Although all elements are important, the majority of an ad’s performance comes from creative quality, not targeting or bids. The best bidding strategy and perfect keyword targeting won’t get people to click on an ad that isn’t enticing.
The best PPC agencies continually test images, headlines, and even video styles to find out what converts best. That’s where the most notable performance gains come from. At the end of the day, keywords get you visibility but good creatives get you customers.
This shift continues to be confirmed over and over. Reports have confirmed that creative quality accounts for 49%-70% of an ad’s success, which outweighs media placement or targeting. In other words, creative isn’t just part of the equation. It’s the final factor.
The top performing brands run hundreds of ad variants every month. They’re not guessing. They’re structuring creative experiments and the winning ads are often the ones that break traditional marketing rules. These are the ads that use raw, authentic imagery, short unpolished videos, or headlines that sound like something a real customer would say. Regardless of what you think should work, constant testing uncovers what actually triggers action.
When your landing page converts better, every click becomes more valuable. Improving your conversion rate by even a few percentage points can provide better results than just a few months of ad optimization. And where landing page optimization is concerned, it’s not always about optimizing the offer (although that’s crucial). Sometimes small things make a massive, measurable difference.
For example, page load time is critical. Walmart found that for every 1-second improvement in load time, conversions increased by around 2%. And that’s not an anomaly. Plenty of businesses achieve similar increases (and even higher) just by optimizing the time it takes their landing pages to load.
Other small adjustments can have a profound impact, like adding social proof near your CTA, reducing the number of form fields, and clarifying your headlines.
When optimizing a landing page, design and clarity matter just as much as speed. Visitors make up their minds within seconds. If your pages are currently cluttered, switching to clean visuals, a clear CTA, and a simple layout can generate more conversions from existing traffic without spending another dollar on ads.
That’s the secret to all of this. Conversion rate optimization multiplies every dollar you already spend. If your ad campaign is driving 1,000 clicks and your conversion rate doubles from 2% to 4%, you’ve just cut your cost per acquisition in half without spending more money. This improvement comes from the one thing an algorithm can’t fix for you: the user experience after the click.
Good conversion rate optimization requires understanding the psychology behind what makes your audience hesitate and then eliminating that hesitation one element at a time. Landing page testing is similar to ad creative testing where it’s an ongoing process, not a one-time project. When you can create a seamless path from ad to action, that’s when your ad spend will perform better and it gets easier to scale.
Clicks and your CPC stats won’t tell you if you’re actually making money unless you’re also measuring profits from conversions. The best PPC agencies focus on metrics that get results measurable in dollars, like profit per visitor and customer lifetime value. Today, you won’t win the PPC game by getting cheaper clicks. You need to turn customers into repeat buyers.
This is the truth many marketers don’t get. Traffic isn’t a KPI if it doesn’t pay off in measurable dollars somewhere down the line. A campaign can drive thousands of clicks with a great CTR and still lose money if those visitors don’t convert or come back. That’s why the best PPC agencies today don’t brag about being able to get cheap traffic. They’re advertising meaningful results.
But sometimes results can’t be measured by what clicks led to a purchase. For example, a $10 click that becomes a loyal customer who spends $1,000 over time is far better than a $1 click that buys a $25 product. That’s why it’s crucial to account for profit-based metrics like customer lifetime value (LTV), return on ad spend (ROAS), and profit per visitor.
PPC success is ultimately measured by how efficiently you can turn paid traffic into long-term profits. That means understanding the customer journey past the initial click. You need to know what they’ll buy next, how often they’ll come back, and what will keep them loyal. Building strategies that account for this increase the value of every customer acquired.
The most amazing ad in the world that generates a 100% click through rate (CTR) can’t save a weak landing page. This applies to sales pages, squeeze pages, blog posts, home pages, and product pages. Wherever visitors are taken after they click on your ad needs to be just as good as your ad to convert.
On platforms like Amazon and Shopify, your product page is everything. It’s not enough to list your product at a good price. You need high-quality, detailed photos to increase buyer confidence. And it helps to use photos of real products, not mockups. Customers can tell the difference and computer-generated mockups (including AI models) reduce confidence and are a red flag for drop shipping. If you are drop shipping, it’s worth getting professional photos taken of everything you sell.
It costs more today to acquire a new customer than ever before. Even if your CPC drops one month, your overall ad costs will continue to rise long-term. The only way to win here is to make every click more profitable, and that boils down to conversion rate optimization. You can’t outspend your competitors forever. You need to out-convert them.
Digital advertising costs have been rising for years. The average customer acquisition cost (CAC) for online retailers is now between $68-$78, which is double what it was in 2013. Every year, it gets more expensive to get your ads in front of your customers. Algorithms are saturated, CPMs fluctuate unpredictably, and privacy updates (thanks, Apple) make it harder to target audiences efficiently. You can no longer buy your way to visibility.
A strong conversion strategy converts more existing traffic without needing to increase ad spend. This is exactly why the most effective PPC agencies focus on the entire funnel, not just the top.
Agencies that optimize per channel (like one for search, social, display, etc.) miss how those channels work together. Most conversions come from multiple touchpoints, but many teams only credit the final click. That can cause misguided budgets and stifle growth. Brands that use cross-channel attribution or marketing mix models see much better optimization. You need a PPC agency that will optimize for whatever will grow your business, not just what looks good on any given platform.
The agencies that win today are replacing the model that sells traffic with one that sells results. They don’t focus on vanity metrics, but rather, contribution margin, customer lifetime value, etc. They’ll help you with more than just ads. They’ll fix your sales page content, pricing issues, and even your page layouts because they know ads perform best with great landing pages. The new PPC agencies are full funnel growth partners, not just media buyers.
The future of PPC marketing is no longer about who can spend the most or manually tweak their bids the fastest. It’s about whoever can understand the customer journey and turn traffic into profit. The next generation of PPC agencies don’t sell clicks. That’s the old model. Instead, they sell you outcomes. And that’s exactly what every brand needs to thrive.
The age of “set it and forget it” PPC is over. Automation has leveled the playing field and brands chasing cheap clicks will be left behind. Winners understand that profit comes from performance beyond the ad and requires a landing page that builds trust and converts.
If your agency or in-house team is still talking about CPCs rather than profit, it’s time to upgrade your strategy. At PPC.co, we build campaigns engineered for outcomes over clicks. We optimize for conversions, revenue, and long-term customer value, and turn your ad spend into measurable business growth. Reach out today to learn how our team can transform your PPC performance into real profit.
