Creating a quality landing page correctly is an often-overlooked part of setting up and executing a Paid Ads campaign for Home Service businesses that can have a significant impact on the return of your investment. Read on to learn what a landing page is, why it's used, and the surprising amount of considerations and work that goes into creating one right.
So What is a Landing Page?
It's essentially a one-page website with one goal - to serve as the destination for people who click on your Google ad, designed to generate you a lead for the one service you're advertising.
It's almost always separate from your main website, and for good reason - we want to prevent your landing page visitors from getting distracted by anything else, like a full website menu, any pop-ups, live chat features, etc.
A dedicated landing page also improves the performance of your Google ads through allowing for relevant written content all on one page, which we'll dive into later on.
We want your landing page visitors to stay laser-focused on your specific service, and to either call you or complete a website form submission, thus converting into a lead for your business.
A Landing Page is used to keep visitors laser-focused on the one service you're advertising, to increase the chances of them converting into a lead.
Got It - Then Let's Build a Landing Page!
There's a few things to consider before building a landing page that will influence how it's designed.
The first one is: which specific service are you advertising?
Let's say you offer Plumbing, HVAC, and Home Generator installation services. For an advertising campaign to work effectively, it needs to be focused on one specific service.
So how do you choose?
As the business owner, you know which of your services are the most profitable, so you might think to start there. But depending on your monthly budget and the competitiveness of your local market, it may be that advertising for plumbing services versus your most profitable service has the highest chance of bringing you the best return on your marketing investment.
You also need to consider the best-case scenario of getting more leads than you have the capacity to handle - which means leaving money on the table, or a decrease in customer service from being just too busy.
Choose one specific service to advertise for, consider how competitive your local market is for that service, and with your monthly budget in mind, determine if that service has the best chance of delivering marketing ROI.
Any quality digital marketing agency can help you determine this.
Ok, I get it - Is there anything else to consider?
You also need to think about how you'll handle leads. Consider these three items:
- Are you equipped to handle phone calls, with an employee available to immediately answer every call at any time during the day and route appropriately?
- Are you better suited to encourage leads to email you via a form on your landing page, letting you get back to them as soon as you're available?
- Can you handle both of those types of leads equally well, and with a sense of urgency?
Your answers will influence how heavily we encourage phone call leads, form submissions, or both equally throughout the design of your landing page and the setup of your advertising campaign.
You also need to consider if you'll run any specials, discounts, or other offers related to your service, so that it can be featured within your ads and on your landing page.
Think about how you can best handle which type of lead, in the fastest manner possible, and if you're providing any kind of discount or offer.
That makes sense - can we finally build this landing page?
We can! Having determined the service you're advertising, how you'll handle leads, and if you're offering any specials, we can begin building the actual landing page.
Where do we start?
With words.
We need words, more words, and most importantly - the right words. The written content on your landing page plays a huge role in how well your campaign itself performs.
Google wants to serve the best-quality, most-relevant ads to it's searchers it possibly can. One way Google determines this is to see how closely related the ad people click on is to the information found on the landing page they're taken to.
The words on your landing page need to connect well with the keywords and phrases used in your ads campaign, and they need to be as informative and useful as possible to humans reading the text to encourage them to convert into leads.
We also need different types of words & content, such as:
- Customer testimonials & reviews
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Before-and-after photos or "see our work" type imagery
- Logos of companies you've helped if you have a commercial focus
- Logos of your certificates and organizations you belong to
The items above will answer questions, demonstrate your expertise, and build trust with the landing page visitor, encouraging them to call you or complete a form.
We must have good amounts of content that makes Google AND your prospective customers happy, as well as content that demonstrates your credibility and expertise in the industry.
Great - we need lots of written content. What about the design?
To encourage a visitor to convert into a lead, there are some best practices concerning design that we need to follow...
- Remove Top Menu Options: We want visitors to focus on your one specific service & offer, so we'll usually remove the ability for them to navigate to unrelated pages like they would on your main website. Here's an example of a landing page that just has the company logo and telephone number.
- Call-To-Actions (CTAs): Visitors need multiple chances to convert into a lead regardless of where they're at on your landing page. This means including many "Call Now" buttons and telephone numbers, and/or embedded forms or buttons that scroll the visitor to a form on your landing page, Like the "Schedule Service," "Call Now," and "Get Help Now" buttons on this example landing page.
- Include a Sticky Header: While we don't want a full menu at the top of the page, we DO want CTAs to stay with the visitor as they scroll down the page, giving them yet another always-present method for them to convert into a lead, like the telephone number and "Call Now" button on this example.
- Attractive-But-Straightforward Design: To stand out in the competitive Home Services industry, businesses sometimes lean on a flashy design or an eye-catching (sometimes even cartoony,) logo design. For a landing page, we want to keep the visitors focused on the goal - converting into a lead for one specific service that fulfills their immediate need. This doesn't mean we can't make a landing page attractive (check out this example) - it just means that we may want to steer away from visually overwhelming the visitor, instead making it as easy for them to become a lead as possible.
A landing page needs to be attractive, but without ever loosing sight of the goal - to meet Google's requirements for a successful campaign and to encourage visitors to convert into leads.
Ok - we've got great content and a great design. Now what?
Now we launch your ad campaign!
As with any successful campaign, periodic tweaks, modifications, and optimizations will be required to make sure your ad dollars are being spent as efficiently as possible.
This can include changes to your landing page based on your campaign performance - so while we've started off as strong as possible, there's always room for improvement, guided by data and results.
To ensure you're leveraging every lead as best you can, check out our advice for an effective lead intake process here.
If you need help with Paid Ads, give us a call at (888) 717-4249 to speak to someone within minutes, or book a call directly with a consultant on our contact page.
