The following is the text of a newsletter we recently sent to our clients and subscribers. If you aren’t on the list already, you can subscribe below; you’ll find the messages are not over-frequent and the list is not shared.
Maximize your Communications and Marketing Efforts
Ask yourself: what do you want your website to do?
Surely, you want to drive people to your website. But then what? You want them to take the next step, whether it be to buy a product, ask for a consultation, or sign up for a cause. If you have an objective for visitors, a certain behaviour you want from them, you need a page on your site that fulfills that objective without any friction.
We recently sat down with Jason Wieler of Lightray Marketing, a Certified Google Ads Specialist, to talk about landing pages.
A landing page is the destination where you send your traffic. When you build an ad, it has to be aimed at something that converts. The landing page has to be highly relevant to your ad. When people click a link, they have an expectation of what they will see next. Fulfill that expectation, and have a frictionless call-to-action…the logical next step in the process.
Think about the throughline…You need intentionality to really win the game. You know your goal, and you work backwards from the end…the campaign, landing page and the desired behaviour. Ask yourself, “What do you want to do?
A lot of customers haven’t thought about putting up a landing page, or incorporating something into a sales cycle.
So, if you’re going to do it, you need to be specific and intentional.
Google Ads are perfect for driving the difference between you and others in your field. Highlight brands you carry, or unique services you provide. If you are similar to other offerings, is your online offering better, is your in store experience for customers superior? You could go generic but nuanced works better, is more efficient, and saves you money.
Perhaps you own a shoe store. You have all kinds of shoes. But there’s nothing specific to your ad. It doesn’t drive interest. So consider the intention of selling boots with a campaign. You make sure you have a landing page (or simply the presorted page of your online catalogue) featuring boots, or the specific boots you have on sale, or given brand you want to feature. Then you create an ad campaign about those specific boots.Tell people what will happen when they click the link (you’re going boot shopping!) The flow is obvious: the ad attracts and the landing page tells people they’re in the right place. The next step for the client is obvious.
If you’re looking to add people to your sales funnel, then you might want to feature one of your services. Create a landing page with a “lead magnet” (say, a downloadable pdf with key information on benefits of the service, or on how your service solves the customer’s problems). Make the lead magnet contingent on giving a valid email. Alternately, provide the key information on the landing page and then state the obvious: “For a free consultation, fill out our form and we’ll get back to you.”
Also, when considering buying any advertising, having your ad and your landing page finely tuned and aligned is important. It prevents “friction” when the landing page delivers what the ad promised, and gives you an easy next step. The key is to ensure the landing page is highly relevant to the ad, as this will improve your website sales.Google rewards a good landing page experience with a high quality score, which simply means you might pay a lower cost per click, which makes better use of your advertising budget.
Meanwhile, building a focused landing page and ad has benefits in online positioning and ad costs. Google judges the quality of your campaign. If your ad is relevant to your landing page you will score better with Google, resulting in discounts on clicks and in winning ad auctions with your competition. Google favours clear messaging, keywords and aligned landing pages.
Google rewards a good landing page experience with a high quality score, which means you pay a lower cost per click, which makes better use of your advertising budget. To repeat: Improve your landing page & get rewarded by Google with lower cost per clicks.
Jason suggests that if you’re considering a revamp or rebuild of your website, you should think in terms of your product or service offering, special landing pages, and potential ad campaigns. Start by planning landing pages for your key services and products. When you want to buy ads, you’ve already done the hard work of having a landing page ready.
At Modern Earth, we can help in all aspects of rebuilding your site and help you with your landing page offerings. And, along with Lightray Marketing, we can optimize everything to give you the best online positioning for your ads.
Contact Paul Schmitt at 204-985-2460, ext 50 or reply to this message
If you’re thinking about improving your site and making it “business ready”, talk to us about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and other online marketing tactics to drive traffic to your site — and turn visitors into paying customers.
