Before launching a Google Ads campaign, you must decide what happens when they click your ad. I imagine you want to send them to a place where you can show off your work and share information about you and your company. This needs to be determined before you start because when you set up your campaign in Google Ads, it will be one of the questions you will need to answer.

Where do you want people to go when they click on your ad? 

This is usually the second question I ask. I want to know the path you want the visitor to follow. Keep in mind that if someone is visiting your site from an ad, they are inquiring or exploring. They may need or will need your service, but first, they need to figure out that you are the right company to fill that need. How will they know? All they will know is what you put on the page they land on.

There is a process or path that a potential customer follows before they make your phone ring. You need to ask yourself, what is that path, and how can I duplicate it online? Next, you must determine where you send them to follow that path when they click on your ad. 

The most popular options are to send them to your website’s homepage or to a specific page on your website or to sign up for a third-party website to handle it for you. Each of these has its pros and cons. I put together some additional information to help you decide which will work best.

Sending them to the homepage of your site

Sending ad visitors to your homepage is considered a faux pas by many digital marketers. The belief is that the page the visitor lands on from a search ad should be tailored to that search. If they are looking for a bathroom remodel and you send them to the homepage where you are featuring kitchens or additions, they may think they have come to the wrong place. (Quick tip: no one is waiting for the scrolling images at the top of your page to see if you do bathroom remodels.) Another thing to consider is that many of your visitors are coming via the phone, which means your beautiful desktop layout that looks great on your 27-inch monitor will be squished into 3.75 inches. 

Think about what you will be advertising on Google. If you are looking to promote your bathroom remodeling services, then it should take the visitor three seconds on your homepage to figure out how to learn more about the service. That means you may have to update your homepage to reflect that. They really don’t care that you can do their deck and kitchen as well. For all you know, they may have had their kitchen redone and hated the contractor, which is why they are looking at you. Inversely, if all you do is bathroom remodeling, then sending them to the homepage should work out fine as long as you have the layout set properly. We’ll get into that later in this chapter.

Sending them to a specific page for the service

If you are a company that offers many different services, sending visitors to a separate page may be a better option for you. By sending the visitor to a page that is solely focused on one service, you can tailor the content (images, text, testimonials, etc.) to that service, and there isn’t the impulse to wander because the page should be self-contained. There are a couple of advantages to doing this.

• The first advantage is clarity. Visitors have less than six seconds before they move on. When they land on the page, you want them to know what you do and what you want them to do.
• The second advantage is that it is easier to track and update a single page than a homepage or website.

One downside to sending your visitors to a single page is they don’t see the depth or quality of your work as a whole. I believe that the simplicity of a single page outweighs the philosophy that you spent all this money on a website, so let’s send them to the homepage. 

Sending them to a third-party website

Several sites out there strictly focus on landing page conversions. This is a great option if your website could be better and you are redoing it or if you don’t want visitors to roam around your website. These third-party sites are made for the mainstream user. 

Their advantage is they usually have many templates you can use to start. They can streamline the process of setup and deployment. You can also make changes without the need to involve a web designer. There are too many to name, but a few you could look into are Active Campaign, Lead Pages, Unbounce, and Click Funnels. They usually have a free trial period and tons of tutorials out on the web. 

Which option is right for you? 

I’m going to eliminate sending them to the homepage as an option. The reason is there’s a good chance you will probably only do ads for one or two services. Yes, there could be additional business if a visitor wanders, but that isn’t what Google Ads are intended to do. They should lead the visitor to exactly what they are looking for at your site. With that out of the way, it leaves a landing page or third-party site.

The answer to the other two options depends on how knowledgeable you or the person who will work on the landing page is in updating your site. I always recommend driving traffic to your site. It lends itself to credibility and continuity with your brand. A landing page on your site will match your brand colors, styling, etc. However, suppose you aren’t technically savvy or have another company updating your site. In that case, the third-party option is probably better, particularly if you don’t want to involve them in this process. Again, it is up to you.

What Should Go on the Page?

Before we talk about what goes on the page, I want to briefly discuss page size or, rather, screen size. Take your phone and put it in front of you. Even if you have the XL version, it’s still a small screen. That small screen should be what you are designing for when considering what to put on the page. Each section will stack in one column on top of one another, and the content will only be visible when they scroll down. There’s not a ton of eye roaming like there is on a desktop screen. There’s no “A ha! There it is” moment of discovery. 

With that said, I created below an outline of how you should think about laying out your page. Whether you are sending visitors to your homepage, a separate landing page for your service, or a third-party website, or the visitor is on a desktop or their phone, the format is the same. Even though the same principles apply, for our purposes, I will be talking about the layout on the phone.

• Main Headline
• Supporting Headline
• Related video or image
• Benefits
• Social Proof
• Call to Action

Main Headline:

The main headline should match or relate to the ad headlines and copy. You should consider this as stating the problem (the ad) and offering the solution (the landing page). Also, the main headline should take up less than a third of the phone screen and include your unique selling proposition (USP). I wouldn’t use more than fifteen words. 

Supporting Headline:

The supporting headline adds any context that is needed about the main headline. It will back up the solution you are offering in your main headline. The visitor will determine if they found the right place based on the text of the main headline and supporting headline. In other words, you have less than six seconds before they move on, so you must make it count. The supporting headline can be more words, and I would use a smaller font size for two reasons. First, to make sure it differentiates itself from the main headline, and second, to take up less room on the screen. 

Related video or image:

This section, along with Benefits and Social Proof, is the supporting material for the solution you offer in the main and supporting headlines. What you put in this section needs to appeal to your visitors and make them stop scrolling. The quality of the imagery is important. If you are selling kitchen remodels, there needs to be a glamour shot of one of your best kitchens. If you have a video, it must reach the point in less than 6 seconds. As sad as it may sound, most visitors don’t have much of an attention span. 

You might ask yourself, can I combine this section with the other two? At that point, it is a background image, and I don’t believe it will be as effective. I would do a horizontal scrolling gallery. Mainly, it doesn’t take up that much room, and the visitor can scroll through it with their thumb quickly. You can also put more images in a horizontal gallery than stacking them on the page. 

If you choose a video, I will avoid having it start automatically. Nothing will get visitors off the page quicker than an unwanted music bed blasting throughout the room. Using a big red play arrow works well. There is a subconscious need to press the button. You could also add some text below or above the video to promote the idea of watching it. Again, make the video short and to the point. A 30-second intro with swirling logos and music looks great, but I recommend fading from black, getting your point in, and letting the rest of the video be the fluff. If you want to add the swirly logo, do it at the end.

Benefits:

This is the most important part of the page. If they have scrolled down this far, they are asking to be sold to, so sell to them. Remember, we talked about the process or path? This is where you need to get into their heads and answer the questions they have before they ask them.

I would state at least three benefits and no more than five. Each of those benefits should have two or three items of supporting text. This is where many businesses start to fall into the trap of describing features, things like “the finest materials,” “superior craftsmanship,” and “second-generation carpenter.” Those are all features. You can turn them all into benefits by simply answering why they are important. Don’t get me wrong, those are all important. They are the reason they will be satisfied with the finished project.

Here is something that I tell my clients all the time: the story needs to be told twice on the page. Once in the content and text and once in the headlines. People skim through pages online, particularly on their phones. I have tracked the movement of the page for clients and someone who is on the page for about 45 seconds to one minute, scrolling down the entire page. Unless they are speed readers, they scanned. So, make the page just as informative when they skim the headlines as when they read the text. Sorry, I don’t make the rules. I just try to make them work to my advantage.

Social Proof:

What is social proof? Social proof is what others say about you when not solicited by you. For example, if I ask you about my work, you will probably tell me one thing, but if someone else asks, you will tell them how you feel. (Hopefully, it’s the same.) Reviews are a good example of social proof. Everyone goes to the reviews section, whether buying a product or hiring a contractor. 

Those reviews can be used to your advantage. You can use them on your page as others say about your work. Again, I would limit the number to around three or four, mostly for spacing purposes. Also, I wouldn’t use a testimonial scroller that shows one at a time. Like the slide show on your homepage, nobody is waiting for the next one to show. 

If you have the project the review discusses, use it with the review. If you are going to do something like this, I would suggest an all-or-nothing approach. You don’t want people to wonder why you are not showing one or two. In the end, it’s up to you.

Call to Action:

The temptation is to put the call to action at the top of the page. The reasoning is, what if they don’t scroll down the page? In some cases, this could work. I am more of the philosophy that you must present your case first and then ask them to contact you. Particularly in a situation where the visitor did a search and clicked on an ad. It’s the equivalent of asking someone to marry you the first time you talk to them. They are still learning about who you are and what you do.

There is plenty written about what a good call to action is, and quite frankly, they all could work. What I tell my clients is that the call to action sums up what the visitor has learned to this point and why it is important for them to reach out. Most importantly, you need to tell the visitor what to do next. 

If you are going to use a phone number, it would be wise to make sure the visitor can click on the number to dial it. I would take it a step further and use call tracking software like CallRail (callrail.com). This way, you will know how many calls have come from the ad.

If you are going to use a form, then you will need to decide what you are asking them to fill out. Here is some advice from the experience I have had with forms: the more fields they need to fill out, the more serious they are about having you quote on the project. If you just ask for their name, phone number, and comment or question section, there’s a good chance they are just tire-kicking, and in some cases, they won’t remember that they filled out the form. Again, it’s up to you.