I was recently honored to be interviewed by John Hinson of Spotlight Branding. I shared eight tips for how to create successful landing pages so you can make more profit from Google Ads. My synopsis is below but watch the video if you have half an hour!
1. Quality Score (Landing Page Experience)
You need to monitor and optimize your Quality Score! Landing page experience is one of three factors in determining Quality Score. Having a higher Quality Score gets you lower costs per click, which lowers your cost per lead and increases your profits!
2. Cater Your Landing Page to the Type of User You are Targeting with Ads
With legal PPC, we are targeting our ads to people who need help now. Not to people who are in the information seeking phase. Your website, with all its articles and information, should be written in such a way that caters to people who are not yet ready to hire a lawyer but are in the information seeking phase (as well as people who are ready to buy). With PPC we can be a bit more direct because we are specifically targeting people who use search terms with commercial intent, such as “lawyers near me” or “best lawyer in Albuquerque.”
3. Make Multiple, Hyper Specific Landing Pages
Break up your keywords into different ad groups and build multiple landing page versions to be hyper specific to the search term. For example, a Google search for “lawyers near me” signifies a different mindset than “best lawyer in Albuquerque.” If they use “lawyers near me,” we will emphasize the convenience of your location. If they use “best lawyer in [insert city here]” we will emphasize how you are the best!
4. High Quality Headshots and Photos
People are visual. Make a good first impression. Photos and faces build trust subconsciously. Put your best foot forward- spend money to get professional headshots and team shots! Even better would be to embed a high-quality video! Many people are intimidated by lawyers. Use photos and videos to overcome that barrier and make yourself relatable.
5. Use Social Proof
In the absence of personal experience, people look to third party sources as signifiers of trust. Use everything you can to signify that you can be trusted (to someone who does not know you or your yet). This includes those badges from companies like Avvo and Expertise, as well as testimonials that are relevant to the specific search and landing page.
And the most important thing- generate reviews! Have an outreach process for generating reviews from happy clients, and deal with bad reviews in a professional and polite way. And obviously, make sure the entire process, from initial phone call to post engagement, is an outstanding experience for the client. This will automatically generate lots of good reviews for your firm.
6. Prominent Calls to Action
Make sure the phone number and contact form are prominently displayed. These are the actions we are optimizing for, so remove any friction.
7. Page Load Speed
Make sure your page is fast loading. Slow loading pages are one of the major causes of high bounce rates. It doesn’t have to get a perfect score on those page speed tools like Google Insights, but the page should use best practices and be free of bloat. This is not often a major problem, but when it is a problem, it needs to be fixed before spending any more money on ads that lead to that page.
Also, use a tool to automatically monitor 404’s. You don’t want to spend money on ads that take users to a non-working page. We use a script that automatically pauses ads when there is a 404. Google Ads automatically does this, but it sometimes takes many days and many dollars before it kicks in. Don’t rely on Google Ads to monitor for pages that are down.
8. Track All Conversions
Track all phone calls and form fills. Any way that someone can contact you should be tracked. And make sure your landing pages and your main website are integrated so that someone who lands on your landing page and later contacts you from the main website is properly tracked and the first touchpoint gets proper credit.
Here’s an example of a typical customer journey:
- Jane searches Google for “divorce lawyers near me.”
- Jane clicks multiple ads to compare divorce lawyers near her.
- Jane reviews your landing page and likes what she sees. She ads you to her list of potential attorneys.
- Jane searches Google using brand terms. She searches for you and lands on your website via a branded, organic search.
- Jane calls you using the phone number on your main website.
In this case, the original ad played a major part in Jane’s customer journey. You want to make sure your reports reflect this so you can make smart decisions when it comes to your marketing strategy. We use call tracking which dynamically replaces the phone number on the website so we can see that Jane originally clicked an ad using the keyword “divorce lawyers near me.”
The bottom line is, make sure your conversion tracking is on point! Use data to make decisions.
Conclusion
It was an honor to be interviewed by Spotlight. I can personally vouch for the quality of their work, and I love collaborating with them. And did I mention that Baltzer Marketing is Spotlight Branding’s preferred partner for Google Ads?
So if you need help getting a great website and a great content strategy, and you like working with people of integrity, get in touch with Spotlight Branding. And if you are interested in learning more about Google Ads, contact us. We can give you an estimate of how much profit you stand to make with Google Ads.
And know that if you work with both of us, you are getting two puzzle pieces that work well together.
