This is one of the biggest issue for pay per click marketers. Let’s say you are planning to promote a product on Google adwords. Should you direct your traffic to a landing page or should you direct traffic to where it all happens?

It’s true that not many people agree on one or the other approach being better. That’s why we have sophisticated testing solutions out there on the market. If we knew the answer to this question already, then why are we wasting time grappling with it. The truth is, depending on your market, your conversion is going to be better with one of the above approach. Having been an affiliate in the credit card industry, I can tell you that I have seen both approaches work. We all know that Google cash is pretty much dead. In essence, you can’t direct traffic directly to the merchant’s side (actually there is a way around it ) But if you are an advertiser with a product, you have a decision to make. You can use your landing page to convince people to take that extra step or you can rely on your ads to do the job for you. But a lot of it depends on your product.

One thing that you should do is test the two approaches to figure out what works the best for you. I personally like the landing page approach better as I get to sell other products or collect information on my landing pages. But then again, I don’t use the same approach for different products. So when in doubt, let the numbers speak.