TPE #131: my only regret in PPC (wish I had learned this sooner)

Read time: 3 minutes

GM, Miles here!

I have only 1 regret in my PPC career:

(it’s not a missed client opportunity, failed experiment, or some account I screwed up)

I regret not working on landing pages earlier.

I’ll explain below — so you can hopefully learn from my regret and start developing this high ROI skill ASAP.

Let’s dive in!

In the first half of my career, I was too focused on in-platform strategies and optimizations.

I obsessed over what I could control inside Google Ads:

• New campaign structures.
• Bids & budget tweaks.
• Keyword strategies.
• Audience targeting.
• Ad copy testing.

Basically all the things we, as PPC Experts, should master.

I believed that if I could just get really good at in-platform optimizations, everything else would fall into place.

So, I left the creation of landing pages to my clients — figured it wasn’t part of my job.

But here’s what I learned the hard way:

When your landing page sucks, in-platform optimizations won’t improve results.

Some campaigns would generate a lot of high-quality clicks:

• Great CTRs.
• Solid Quality Scores.
• Great intent (search terms matched keywords).

But leads and sales? Still lagging behind.

My initial reaction would always be to tweak my campaigns.

But that didn’t always mean the results got better.

So as I got more experience, I realized the real bottleneck wasn’t inside Google Ads.

It was the landing page.

Even when you do everything right inside Google Ads — you still can’t scale if your landing page isn’t optimized for conversions.

And so I learned that what happens after the click is arguably more important than what happens before.

But for some reason, we leave the creation of landing pages to our clients…

Why I changed my mind and started to create my own landing pages.

Somewhere along the way, I realized that if I truly wanted to impact results, I needed to take responsibility for the full path from click to conversion.

Not just pre-click — also post-click.

But I didn’t know where to begin — I thought it was this big, complex task for people with technical skills.

But then I met Bob…

And he showed me how he templatized his clients’ landing pages and got a 20% conversion rate on his B2C Lead Gen client (that’s wild!!):

Bob taught me how to improve results with conversion-optimized landing pages (without being a CRO Expert or a designer).

He said it’s just a matter of having:

1. An irresistible offer.
2. A logical structure (information hierarchy).
3. Copy that converts.
4. Conversion design that supports the core message.
5. A simple drag-and-drop page builder.

Creating landing pages isn’t hard — it’s a lot of logical thinking.

Bob showed me how you can easily double or triple your conversion rate with a conversion-optimized landing page.

You just have to:

• Follow a clear structure.
• Guide the visitor step by step.
• Remove friction.
• Answer objections before they occur.
• Create desire for your offer.
• And make it easy to say “yes.”

You don’t need to be a world-class designer, CRO Expert, or copywriter.

You just need to understand how people make decisions — and give them the right information in the right order.

Simple as that.

If I could start over, I would learn how to create conversion-optimized landing pages much sooner.

I would take full control over the entire path from click to conversion.

• I would help my clients test new offers.
• I would test new landing page structures.
• I would relentlessly test above the fold.
• I would match the copy to the intent of the click.

Because when you fix the landing page, you have more control over the outcome:

• Conversion rates can easily double or triple.
• Unprofitable campaigns become profitable.
• You can scale without increasing budgets.
• Client relationships improve (decreasing churn).

My advice to you: start optimizing your landing pages, it’s the highest ROI skill for PPC Experts.

Your value as a Google Ads Specialist multiplies when you know how to create conversion-optimized landing pages.

So start owning the complete path from click to conversion — and watch your results and value skyrocket.

I promise you: it’s not as hard as it seems, and it’s totally worth it.

I wish I had realized that sooner…

So please learn from my regret and take control of your clients’ landing pages! :)

Last note: a few months ago, we launched Landing Page Mastery​ as part of our Google Ads Success Path program in The PPC Hub.

It’s the only landing page course for Google Ads Specialists (by Google Ads Specialists).

And last week, some people in my LinkedIn comments have asked about it (see below).

So we decided to make Landing Page Mastery available outside of The PPC Hub too! :)

• Launch date: June 16th.
• Launch offer: 50% off for 5 days.
• Interest list: opening up soon!

We just opened up the Interest List — click here to join and we'll notify you when the course goes live (with that limited-time 50% discount).​ 

(As a bonus, we'll send you a free 5-day crash course that goes deep into our Conversion Amplifier Framework, starting on June 9th — you'll love it!)

And that’s all for today — thank you for reading.

See you next week!

Cheers,

Miles (& Bob)