By John Eberhard
I have been managing ad campaigns on Google Ads since 2005. Part of that has been carefully monitoring the results – how many leads came in and what was the average cost per lead?
Something I learned early on was that with an online ad campaign with Google Ads, Facebook or even email campaigns, it works better to create a customized landing page for people to land on, rather than having them land on your home page or even one of the interior pages on your website. And when I say “works better,” I mean that you get more leads.
Here’s what should be on that customized landing page:
- It should not have any navigation buttons. This is probably the most important thing. Why? Because you want to focus your visitor on exactly what you want him to focus on, and nothing else. You don’t want him wandering around your site. That’s too dispersed and you get fewer leads. And that tells you that it should not be one of the interior pages of your site, because that will always have navigation buttons on it.
- The landing page should have sales copy that is exactly about what your ad said. And don’t ever make the visitor have to hunt around and click through to another page to find what your ad was about.
- You need to have a phone number and response form on your landing page. And the phone number should be a trackable phone number through a company such as Callrail, so you can count the number of people who called (which is usually about half the people who respond).
- You need a simple headline which either speaks to your visitor’s “pain points,” i.e. what he is experiencing that is negative that your product or service can help with, or describes the benefit he will get from your product or service.
- You need some kind of compelling visual that communicates something related to your product or service. I often find that a background video at the top of the page works best, but static images can work great too.
- You need some sales text, concentrating on benefits rather than features.
- If you have a short video (1-5 minutes) explaining the product or service, put it on there.
- You need to have testimonials, but these can be further down the page.
You might wonder if I am sure of these points? Especially #1, which people ask me about frequently. And the answer is that yes, I am sure. Results from 21 years have shown me.
Recently I made some changes to the landing pages of one of my clients, and over a 4 month period doubled his leads from averaging below 100 to just over 200.
These points are actually considered common knowledge by most people in the marketing industry, but I still see many people not doing these points, especially #1 above.
If you would like a free consultation on Google Ads, either how to improve a current campaign, or how to get started, contact Real Web Marketing at 661-441-2429, or fill out a form here.
