Who wouldn’t, after all?
The headline may sound ‘too good to be true’, but these results really are typical of our real-world client results, where we are using custom landing pages combined with a strong Google Ads campaign.
So what’s a landing page?
In simple terms, it just means a page that visitors land on when clicking through from an advertising campaign – from Google Ads, for example. So a landing page could just be a page on your website.
However, what we’re talking about here is custom landing pages that have been tailor made for the visitors coming from a specific campaign. These pretty much ALWAYS perform better than just landing people on your website.
Custom landing pages are designed around a specific Call to Action (CTA), which is usually an enquiry form that you want visitors to complete. Whatever the call to action is, it should be trackable, so that you can see how many people made an enquiry on that page.
How does a landing page differ from a ‘normal’ web page?
A well designed landing page would normally:
- Minimise navigation away from the page – the basic premise is, ‘make an enquiry or go away’! So landing pages normally don’t have a menu bar or any obvious navigation leading to the rest of the website.
- Contain all the key pieces of information a visitor needs in order to be ready to make an enquiry – the length will vary widely according to the circumstances and how much information needs to be included. For example, you’d want to make it clear what the service is, why it’s good, where/how it’s delivered, and give some reassurance that the visitor can trust you – this might be in the form of customer reviews, star ratings, or industry accreditations, for example.
- Have a short and simple contact form that is really easy to fill in.
- Be closely matched to the keyword that the visitor searched for and the ad they have seen before clicking through.
How can a landing page achieve 5x more leads than a ‘standard’ web page?
Landing pages have quite a few key advantages, as follows:
They get a better conversion rate
Because you know exactly where the user has come from – ie your ad campaign – and what they searched for, as well as what ad they have seen, you can really tailor the message on the page.
A landing page will be on quite a narrow topic, and will lead users down a ‘funnel’ towards your call to action in a way which is difficult to achieve on your main website – on a standard web page, users will often get distracted by looking at a range of different pages, and not necessarily end up making a decision to contact you.
Our own results really demonstrate how conversion rates can be improved in this way:
| Conversion rate on main website | Conversion rate on landing pages | More leads for the same budget | |
| Client A (eye surgery) | 1.37% | 5.43% | 4x |
| Client B (signage) | 0.66% | 5.45% | 8x |
| Client C (obesity surgery) | 0.66% | 2.82% | 4x |
All these stats are averaged over several landing pages, and looked at over a 3 month period – so they are not down to one fluke landing page or one particularly good month. The average client does gain 5x more leads with a custom landing page than they do by pointing their ads at their own website.
They get you a better quality score
If you know anything much about Google Ads, you’ll know that Quality Scores are absolutely key to getting profitable results.
With a high Quality Score, your ad will appear in a higher position for a lower cost per click. Getting the cost per click down can lead to you being able to run a far more profitable campaign.
Landing pages are great for getting high Quality Scores as you can customise their wording to closely match the keywords you are targeting.
When you improve both the conversion rate and the cost per click of your campaign, you benefit from the compound effect of the two working together.
They give you a great platform for split testing
While creating a strong landing page can bring you immediate benefits, you can also use them as a platform to improve results even further over time.
When you run a landing page split test, 2 or more variants of a landing page running simultaneously and split the traffic across the variants, measuring which one gets the best conversion rate.
This allows you test such things as – which headline will work best; which photograph you should use; whether your pricing should be expressed as a monthly fee or a one off payment, for example.
By running a series of split tests you can not only improve the results on the pages themselves but also apply what you have learned back to your main website. If you find that particular wording or photography generates more conversions on your landing page, for example, then you might also want to use that on your main site.
Can we help you?
If you’r running a digital marketing campaign to generates leads, and you’d like to generate a lot more leads without increasing your advertising budget, that’s exactly the kind of thing we can help with.
Give us a bell on 01952 462845, or drop us an email, and we’ll put together a free estimate of the potential results we could get for you.
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