42.6% Conversion Rate on a High-Intent Landing Page
A dedicated landing page paired with high-intent keywords delivered 42.6% conversion rate and 1,662 conversions at $139 cost per acquisition.
The Challenge
An energy client was running Google Ads campaigns for their premium product offering, but the generic landing pages weren't converting at rates that justified the high cost-per-click. With CPCs north of $13, they needed a landing page strategy that could protect margins while maximizing conversions from every click.
Goals
- Increase conversion rate to justify premium CPC investment
- Create message match between search intent and landing experience
- Establish consistent conversion tracking across form and phone actions
- Maintain efficient cost per acquisition despite competitive bidding
The Strategy
Approach
We built a dedicated landing page for the premium product campaign with above-the-fold conversion actions, intent-matched messaging, and comprehensive tracking. Combined with aggressive keyword pruning and bid management, this allowed us to maintain efficiency at scale.
Key Tactics
- Designed dedicated landing page with above-the-fold CTA and calculator tool
- Curated high-intent keyword set with exact and phrase match targeting
- Implemented weekly search query pruning to eliminate waste
- Set up dual conversion tracking for form submissions and calls
- Established account-level negatives to protect brand and eliminate overlap
The Results
The dedicated landing page strategy transformed a challenging high-CPC environment into a conversion machine, delivering nearly half of all visitors as leads while maintaining cost efficiency.
The High-CPC Challenge
Premium energy products command premium search prices. When clicks cost $13+ each, you can't afford to send traffic to generic pages and hope for the best. Every click needs to count.
The energy client's existing approach was sending all product-related traffic to the same landing pages, regardless of search intent. Conversion rates were inconsistent, and the math wasn't working at scale.
Building the Dedicated Experience
We designed a landing page specifically for the premium product campaign, built around one principle: remove every obstacle between click and conversion.
- Above-the-fold CTA: A savings calculator and clear "Get Your Rate" action visible without scrolling
- Intent-matched messaging: Headlines and benefits that mirrored the search queries driving traffic
- Eligibility clarity: Upfront qualification information to filter out non-viable prospects early
- Dual conversion paths: Both form submission and click-to-call for different user preferences
Precision Keyword Strategy
A great landing page can't save a campaign with leaky targeting. We implemented a tight keyword structure:
- High-intent query set: Exact and phrase match keywords with proven conversion history
- Account-level negatives: Protection against brand cannibalization and irrelevant traffic
- Weekly SQR reviews: Aggressive pruning of any query that didn't convert within threshold
This wasn't "set it and forget it" optimization. Weekly search query reports identified waste and surfaced new opportunities continuously.
Tracking Both Conversion Paths
Many campaigns only track one conversion action. We implemented comprehensive tracking:
- Form submissions: Tracked as primary conversions with full attribution
- Phone calls: Source-level tracking with duration thresholds to filter spam
This dual tracking revealed that approximately 40% of conversions came through phone calls—leads that would have been invisible with form-only tracking.
The Efficiency Flywheel
High conversion rates create a positive feedback loop:
- Better quality scores from strong landing page experience
- Lower CPCs from quality score improvements
- More budget available for incremental scale
- Higher impression share capturing more high-intent searches
The campaign achieved 35.1% absolute top impression share while maintaining $139 cost per conversion—well below the $155 threshold that would trigger scaling concerns.
The Bottom Line
October 2025 delivered 1,662 conversions at $139 CPA from $32,497 in spend. More importantly, the 42.6% conversion rate proved that even in expensive search categories, a dedicated landing page strategy can turn challenging economics into a scaling opportunity.
The key isn't spending less—it's converting more of what you spend.
Key Insights
- Message match between ad copy and landing page is critical—visitors who see consistent messaging convert at dramatically higher rates.
- A dedicated landing page with a single conversion focus outperforms multi-purpose pages, even when the product is complex.
- Weekly search query reports are non-negotiable for high-CPC campaigns; a single bad query can waste hundreds of dollars.
- Above-the-fold CTAs with clear value propositions (calculator, instant quote) reduce friction and boost conversion.
- Dual tracking (forms + calls) captures the full conversion picture; phone-only tracking would have missed 60% of leads.
