- All the parts of a landing page
- How landing pages boost conversion rates
- Why driving traffic to your home page is costing you money
- How landing pages help build trust with your potential customer
Send us your questions, comments, feedback, praise! We can’t wait to hear from you!
Transcription:
Devon Hayes:
Hi guys. I’m Devon Hayes.
Amanda Joyce:
And I’m Amanda Joyce.
Devon Hayes:
Thanks for joining us today. Today we’re going to talk about landing pages and why you need them, and here’s why you should care. Landing pages will help you get the most out of your marketing dollars with an easy-to-track ROI.
Welcome to Trade Secrets, where we demystify digital marketing to help contractors get the most bang for their marketing bucks.
Amanda Joyce:
This is for you if you’re a contractor looking for actionable marketing insights.
Devon Hayes:
Learn from home services industry experts to elevate your business through simplified marketing strategies.
Amanda Joyce:
Let’s dive into today’s trade secret.
Okay. Yay, landing pages, one of my favorite topics. We talk to people all the time that aren’t even sure what a landing page is. How’s it different than your homepage? A landing page is a very simple page that really just covers whatever topic it is you’re serving. It’s not your homepage, it’s not a page on your website that you can get to from within your navigation. It’s a standalone page that shares very succinct information about whatever it is you’re trying to get across. So if you are trying to drive leads for your company, it is a very simplistic page where you can land people, and ideally move them down the funnel as quickly as possible.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah, and I think a lot of times there’s paid services, like Instapage I think creates landing pages. And you can have your developer build a specific landing page within your site. I think the biggest thing to note is that there’s typically no navigation anywhere at the top of this landing page like there would be another page on your website, right?
Amanda Joyce:
Exactly. So the whole point of it is people can’t get lost. They come there, you have one very specific message. You typically have one action you’re trying to get them to take. You could have a secondary action, but typically it’s one action, some information about your company, why they should trust you, and why they should complete the lead form, or why they should call you. It’s really basic. And why should you need these? Because a lot of times if you’re spending money on paid ads, or even if you’re running an email campaign, or anything where you are trying to get people to take a specific action, your conversion rate will be exponentially higher if you’re driving people to a landing page. If you’re driving them to your homepage, forget about it. You’re wasting your money. [inaudible 00:02:43].
Devon Hayes:
Yeah, because if you’re just driving them to your homepage, how do you know effective that ad campaign was? So if you pay for an ad on Google, and I’m just really simplifying things here, so if you pay for an ad on Google and that link takes you to a homepage versus a landing page, can you talk about… Out of all your web visitors, how would you track an ROI or a conversion if it’s just driving to a homepage?
Amanda Joyce:
So within Google Analytics, you can still see where they came from, so you would know that they were from search or paid search or organic or whatever. If you were using really specific tracking, you could tell what campaign or ad they came in on, but you’re not siloing the traffic. You certainly couldn’t make a remarketing list and say, “Okay, everyone that hit this landing page is clearly interested in X service. I want to make sure that I can market to them again.” But most importantly, they just get lost in your page. I’ve seen this across the board my entire career. I’ve been doing paid search since 2005, and that was always the first thing we would do with anyone that we would bring in.
Devon Hayes:
Woo 2005.
Amanda Joyce:
I know, it’s aging me. It’s aging me. Good thing for Botox is all I can say, but I’ve been doing it for a while. And that’s the first thing we would always do when we would bring in a new client and it would change their conversion rate immediately. It doesn’t mean that you’re going to suddenly start making millions off of it, but I guarantee you, if you had a 3% conversion rate and you just introduced a landing page, you’re probably going to see it double. So for something that simple… Yeah.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah, because a landing page, as you mentioned, it’s simple so they don’t get lost in the clutter and the rest of the messaging that maybe your homepage has. But the true point of a landing page is really to build trust in a clean and simple manner and give them a reason to want to share their contact info. If you’re driving to a service page, you’re just asking for their contact info. I struggle with websites that have an intake form in the header image because you’re asking someone to give you their information without giving them a reason to trust you, right? So asking for that before they… It’s like, give me, give me, give me, without telling you-
Amanda Joyce:
What’s in it for them.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah, what’s in it for them, who you are, and what outcome they can anticipate if they choose to work with you. And I think a landing page gives you a really clean, easy way to do that and remove the clutter from the rest of the site.
Amanda Joyce:
It quiets the noise. Exactly. And then one of the things that we find, if someone is running, even if it’s your brand word, but you’re just driving it to your homepage, if you go on there and look at their path on Google Analytics, they might click and look at a service and then maybe go click and read a blog post, and then they leave. And that is the last thing you want to do. If you’re paying for that click, or if you spend all this time doing an email marketing campaign and then they click through to your site. You’ve got them there, and then they’re like, “Okay, I’m lost in the ethos of all of your content piece.” That’s the last thing you want.
So the most important thing you can do is, like you said, just give them one simplified message. Make it very clear what your end goal is, make it easy for them to complete that, but also build that trust. Give them the information they want. Especially if someone’s clicking on an ad, they probably do have a short attention span, so they want an answer to their question. They want to know you’re reputable in your area, or you offer the service they need, why they should trust you and how to get in contact with you. So if you can just keep it that simple, you won’t even believe how much more effective your marketing campaigns are just from having a landing page. And you could have your developer make you one template and then you can duplicate it and maybe change some calls to action, change a title, change an image. But just just having that landing page that is sticky and people like to engage with will literally change your marketing.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah. So another phrase that maybe a lot of contractors might be familiar with is click funnels, right? I feel like that is… I see the home services niche get targeted massively for click funnels, click funnels, click funnels. A landing page, I mean it’s basically a simplified click funnel. I hate click funnels that have you click through four or five different screens. So a landing page is just taking you from… The click funnel could be this add-on social media that drives to your landing page on your website that then you fill out a form and you submit it. So there could be a two-page click funnel or a three page… So it doesn’t have to be this massive-
Amanda Joyce:
Crazy thing.
Devon Hayes:
And as a consumer-
Amanda Joyce:
Multi-step process. Yeah.
Devon Hayes:
I hate that shit.
Amanda Joyce:
I do too. I hate it, and also, data tells us that the less clicks they have to do to complete your action, the more likely they’re going to complete your actions. So make their life easier and yours. You don’t need to make five landing pages that take them through some long lost journey of finding themselves before they decide that you’re the right service provider. Make it easy, make their life easier. You’ll make your life easier, and your conversion rates will show for it.
Devon Hayes:
Oh my gosh, this makes me think… It’s like when you look up a recipe and you just want to jump to the recipe, but sometimes those buttons don’t work and you have all these interstitial… All these ads popping in, and then you have to read the lifelong story, and then there’s another ad and you just want to get to the recipe. Like a really shitty click funnel is one of those making [inaudible 00:08:37].
Amanda Joyce:
Exactly. You have to find if they’re gluten intolerant. You have to find out all the reasons why… They’ve recently got a divorce. I’m like, “I just need to know what to preheat my oven to.”
Devon Hayes:
So I’m kind of hating on click funnels, but there’s a place for the longer click funnels that collect a ton of data. There’s a place for that. But for your average home services, like contractor’s customer, do you really need to collect that much data? Or data, however you want to say it. Tomato, tomato. You can make a case for it here or there. It depends on maybe the buyer journey for a super high end thing, maybe. Maybe with solar for example, where it’s like… What do they call it? I don’t know, your sunscape or something. Sunsphere. There’s something. So maybe I could see where that makes more sense because you can really qualify a lead, but for the typical contractor who’s running an ad on Google, you just got to drive it back to a really clean landing page that gives your buyer a reason to trust you and give them a reason to give you their information, right? I mean-
Amanda Joyce:
Exactly.
Devon Hayes:
And what other best practices do you see on landing pages? Because you know the numbers. You know where we see the best conversions with our customers and-
Amanda Joyce:
Yeah, exactly. So at end of the day, like I said earlier, a singular call to action has always been the rule of thumb in the industry. Fill out the form, call us, whatever it may be, the singular call to action. You can sometimes… This is going to muddy the waters a little bit. If you, for instance, were promoting solar and you want somebody to get in touch to have a consult to determine if solar’s right for them, you could have a secondary link to an ebook for someone that’s like, “Yeah, not ready to give you my information yet, but I might give you my email if you’ll give me that e-book.” And then that’s building more trust with them. Then they could very well come back and come organically. They could come revisit you, call you later, your contact information’s in said ebook.
So you can do that, but as a typical rule of thumb, it’s one call to action. And trust signals, talk about what your five-star rating on Google, your BBB accreditation. Have some trust signals there. Some really specific strong marketing messaging that just explains what you want to do, why they should do it, let them know why they should trust you. And that’s it. You can test a bunch of other stuff. We’ve talked about CRO and other episodes. You’re not going to know what’s going to work until you’ve tested it. But at the end of the day, do not drive traffic to your website to just a page of your website or your homepage. And if you have hired somebody right now and they’re spending your hard-earned marketing dollars to drive to your homepage, have a conversation today about changing to landing pages, and it’ll change the course of your marketing destiny and it will save you a lot of money in the long run, and give your ideal buyer a much better experience with your brand from the start.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah, and I mean, I’ve mentioned driving from a paid ad to a landing page because that’s something you should always do. But you could even, I mean, in your monthly newsletter email that you send out, you could have a specific landing page that you drive them to. And your email provider, your newsletter email provider, they probably track how many click-throughs each article gets and stuff like that. But if you have specific messaging for something that you’re doing organically, you can do that. I mean, we’ve built out landing pages for events that are going on. If you go to the home show and you want to track leads from there with your QR code, those QR codes can scan and go straight to that landing page.
Then you can see how many people filled out the form directly from… Or how many people made it to that landing page and didn’t fill out the form just from scanning your QR code. Which we know those QR codes are everywhere now, they’re back in business. Thank you, COVID. So it doesn’t have to be paid, it can be through any organic campaigns. It’s just a great way to track what you’re doing. Are you paying for content marketing? And are they writing white papers for you? How many downloads are you getting? Can you track it? And then that’ll give you an idea of how much to invest in each of those specific campaigns. Because if you’re just driving traffic to the homepage, it just makes it a lot harder to delineate which marketing campaigns are effective. I mean, we’ve even-
Amanda Joyce:
Yeah, and you’re not helping them out. You’re not helping out your potential customer. Help them get to the information that you drew them in with. And if you drew them in with an offer or a specific service offering, don’t just shoot them into your homepage and then expect them to navigate to the information that they’re looking for. Give it to them. Make it easier for them to want to do business with you. Yeah.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah, and I was going to say, so this is the time year where at Elevation Marketing, we do our annual reviews with our clients. And one of our specific service offerings is SEO with content marketing and website management. But with that, sometimes clients forget that we’re your partner, share with us what’s going on. And we got the idea for this podcast because we were just talking with our client, and he had some other things going on. We’re like, “We can help you. We can help you track that. As your website manager, we can build out those landing pages for you and give you those URLs that you can point those campaigns to.” So-
Amanda Joyce:
Exactly. And on that note too, remarketing. Even if it’s not something you want to run right now-
Devon Hayes:
Wait, hold on. Can you just-
Amanda Joyce:
Remarketing. I’m going to explain what it is. Sorry, [inaudible 00:14:19].
Devon Hayes:
I was going to say, will just define that for the layperson? Yeah.
Amanda Joyce:
Yeah. So remarketing is, we’ve all had it happen. You go to a website and then they kind of chase you on the web, and advertise to you. Sometimes it’s a nuisance, sometimes it’s not. Sometimes you intended to complete that conversion and you didn’t do it and you’re like, “Oh yeah, I need to go back and complete it.” So let’s say you spend a few thousand dollars to go to a home show and you make a landing page, and then you want to get in front of those people again later. You can just use your Google Analytics to just track anyone who’s been on that landing page. And talk about a reason to use a landing page. And then anyone who’s been to the website, that’s been on that landing page has been cookie’d. So then you could run out in the next 30 to 90 days, depending on how long you keep the cookie in place, and you can advertise to them.
So maybe you were promoting solar at the home show, and now you’re running a promotion to really get some people to sign up with you. You can hit them over their head again and remind them about that promo. But if you didn’t have that landing page in place and you didn’t set up already with your tracking code to just cookie people, you’re kind of losing them after that. You spend all that money to be at the home show, just have the building blocks in place, so that you can continue to work off of that. And it doesn’t cost you much more money, and it just helps you stay top of mind with your potential clients. And ideally, drive some people down that conversion funnel.
Devon Hayes:
Spitting some knowledge over there.
Amanda Joyce:
Doing my best.
Devon Hayes:
Heck yeah. So that’s about it. I mean, landing pages, they’re going to help you increase your ROI by being able to track what each marketing campaign is doing, tracking the efficacy of each of those efforts.
Amanda Joyce:
Exactly. And if you’re not really even sure where to start, Google it. Go look for best practices in landing pages. You’re going to find a million examples. HubSpot’s always publishing what they’re finding is the latest and greatest in landing page design, and play with it. But at the end of the day, a landing page that’s not perfect is going to still be better than just dropping them off on your homepage. And then you can work on that perfection over time as you learn how people interact with your landing page. So I hope this was helpful and not overwhelming.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah. As always, reach out with any questions, comments, all that stuff. We’d love to hear from you. And thanks for listening.
Amanda Joyce:
That was today’s trade secret. Thanks for listening.
Devon Hayes:
Did you find this helpful? We’re just getting started.
Amanda Joyce:
Subscribe, and don’t miss our next reveal.
Devon Hayes:
Until next time.
