Waikato Business News October/November 2017

37
The one change that doubled
an electrician’s leads
THE DIGITAL WORLD
We recently worked with an electrician and
doubled their leads with just one change to
their online advertising.
They had a brand-new
website which looked
beautiful and had
strong calls to action. They
were using AdWords, which
they’d set up themselves, and
were sending the traffic to
their new website and it was
generating leads. It was doing
OK… but they wanted to
grow.
If you need an electrician,
you turn to Google. You
search for “electricians Hamilton”
and a myriad of companies
show up in the results.
They’re all competing for the
business. What makes one
company more likely to win
business than another? It becomes
more important when
you’re paying per click for
your Google ads!
In the evolving world of
digital media, digital marketing
has empowered local
businesses to compete,
survive and boost business
growth. Small and medium
sized businesses (SMEs)
have limited resources and
that’s why digital marketing
provides them cost-effective
marketing channels that deliver
measurable results.
When we work with SMEs
we try to use proven strategies
and techniques that attract not
necessarily more traffic but
traffic that gives results i.e.
leads, crucial for their survival!
We had a look at the client’s
existing campaign and
this is what we recommended:
Send Google ad traffic to
stand alone landing pages and
NOT to the website.
The client was hesitant
to try our recommendation.
They had already paid an
awesome web designer to
create a beautiful website for
them and everyone praised
the new look the website had.
And hence came some good
questions:
“Why do I need to create
special landing pages? Why
can’t I just send the Google
ads traffic to an existing page
on my site?”
“I need the option to tell
people all the services we offer
and sell more to them. A
short landing page won’t let
me do that.”
Here’s why we recommended
ad traffic should not
go directly to the website.
The website offers navigation
which gives customers many
options to get distracted from
contacting you. The goal of a
landing page is to keep them
focused on the action you
want them to take. And for
most local businesses, that action
is to call you or fill a form
for a free consultation/quote.
For local businesses generating
leads from AdWords,
you will get more leads by
sticking to “one decision
landing pages.”
We convinced the client to
let us do a split test for one
month. We ran a 50-50 experiment
campaign, where half
of the traffic coming from Ad-
Words was sent to the website
and the other half to the custom
designed landing pages.
The landing pages that we
designed were built with just
one major objective - turn
page visitors into leads. They
> BY POOJA GUPTA
Pooja Gupta is Digital Media Executive at Duoplus
pooja@duoplus.nz . www.duoplus.nz
were short and succinct with
no navigation. The images
and content were benefit driven,
and included clear calls
to action. We were keeping
a close eye on the campaign
and at the end of the month,
this is what we found:
Results were doubled!
The leads produced from
ad traffic going to our custom
designed landing pages
were doubled in number, as
compared to leads from ad
traffic going to the website.
This meant that by doubling
the conversion rate, the client
received twice as many leads
for the same exact ad spend.
The key thing is, a well-designed
landing page could be
the difference between one local
business who spends a few
thousand dollars on Google
ads and decides “This isn’t
working for me” and another
business that gets leads for
half or one-third the cost because
their great landing page
is able to increase revenue to
their business.
Under certain specific circumstances,
it may still make
sense to send AdWords traffic
to a full website. However, in
the vast majority of cases we
have tested, if you’re looking
to generate leads for your
business from AdWords then
using well-crafted landing
pages can be the one change
that can potentially double
your leads, just like our client
found.
You don’t need a website developer any more
If you are a start-up or an
SME, I have some great
news for you. The sun is
setting on website programmers
in website development
businesses. You do not need
a coding superstar to develop
a website anymore. The improvements
in the quality and
number of simple and powerful
website creation solutions
available today have made the
website developer an unnecessary
cost for the average SME.
There is a certain irony in
this; powerful website creation
platforms developed
by computer programmers
are, in essence, taking away
business from website developers
who are also computer
programmers. But the ocean
is always full of bigger fish,
so it was not a surprise when
MARKETING MATTERS
> BY MEHRDAD BEHROOZI
Mehrdad (Merv) Behroozi is general manager of Hamilton graphic
design and web development company E9. Phone: 07 838 1188
Email: merv@e9.nz
Google stepped into the space
that website creation platforms
were dominating.
True to form, Google did
not just enter the website creation
market, it quite simply
decided that if you were a
business, you deserved a free
website. Yes, that is right, if
you have a Google My Business
account, you get to have
a free Google website for your
business. Sure, it is not going
to be the most complicated
website in the world with all
the bells and whistles, but it
covers everything a website
should. It is also integrated
with your Google My Business
information so everything
from your contact details to
your hours of operation only
needs to be kept up to date in
one place.
The landscape of the website
development industry has
changed. Today, the key to a
successful website is no longer
dominated by computer
programmers, instead it rests
in the hands of designers and
content creators.
Extensive research by a
team at Microsoft Research
lead by Chao Liu where they
used a data set of more than
2 billion dwell time records
taken from 205,873 web pages
shows us that the first 10 seconds
of a user’s page visit are
critical. During this time the
probability of a user ditching a
site is very high because users
have suffered; they have suffered
through a vast plethora
of poorly designed web pages
every day since the first time
they interacted with the World
Wide Web. This experience
has left them suspicious and
wary of badly designed websites
that are going to waste
their time. It’s only after the
30 second mark that the rate
at which website visitors leave
really reduces.
According to Jakob Nielsen
from evidence-based user
experience research company
Nielsen Norman Group: “If
you can convince users to stay
on your page for half a minute,
there's a fair chance that they'll
stay much longer — often two
minutes or more, which is an
eternity on the web.”
One thing that is absolutely
critical is that your value proposition
is communicated to the
website viewer within the first
10 seconds. A great designer,
like we have at E9, supported
by excellent content can do
that for you regardless of the
platform that you select for the
creation of your website.