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When it comes to running a successful PPC campaign, there’s always some degree of trial and error involved. From determining your highest performing keywords to gathering the right creative assets to entice potential searchers, you have to be willing to experiment with various growth hacking techniques to increase your awareness and drive traffic to your site. But while you’re focusing on convincing people to click on your ads over your competitors’ PPC campaigns, you might be overlooking what happens once visitors land on your site.
Web searchers, especially mobile web searchers, don’t have the time or patience to search for information on a site. If your ad’s landing page does not answer the questions searchers are seeking, you can guarantee they’ll flee the scene almost immediately. In fact, HubSpot reports that visitors spend fewer than 15 seconds on a site before bouncing. That’s a fraction of a minute to answer their questions and convince them that your services are far superior to your competitors. How well your site greets incoming visitors, especially first-time visitors can be the differentiator between a thriving practice and a sinking one.
Employ Consistent Messaging
The first thing potential patients will look for when they land on your site from the SERP is consistent messaging. Let’s say a potential patient clicked on an ad promoting your practice’s expertise in root canals, the first thing he is going to want to see when he lands on your site is similar language promoting that service; if he is led to a landing page without a single mention of the procedure, he’s going to be more likely to leave and never look back. Running PPC campaigns requires ongoing copy testing, but this also means that you might have to tweak your landing pages on a consistent basis to maintain consistency across customer touchpoints. Matching keywords with ad copy will give you a better chance at prolonging each patient visit on the site. In addition to the actual words used, there should be continuity in your messaging. A landing page that reads as disjointed from the ad that led your customer to your site in the first place will create a jarring and confusing experience.
Add a Clear Call to Action
It doesn’t do your practice much good to attract potential patients and then lose them in an instant. The ultimate goal is to convert them from a one-time visitor to lifelong patient on the landing page through clear calls to action. The only way a visitor will know when and where to input their information is through call-to-action buttons. Call-to-action buttons can be tricky; too many buttons lead to an obtrusive, annoying site experience and too few buttons lead to visitors missing the call to action. These buttons also need to stand out to entice your potential patients to offer up their information. A visitor might not want to take the time to fill in his information if your call-to-action simply reads as “submit here.” On the other hand, if your CTA reads as something like “Learn the secret to whiter teeth” or “This way to a cavity-free mouth” then they’ll immediately understand that by offering up their information they will get something valuable in return. Using click-worthy copy shows users the value they have to gain from interacting with your practice.
Eliminate Distractions
The purpose of a landing page is, ultimately, to convince a visitor to fill out an information form and join your practice’s list. However, the searcher may have landed on your page for a very specific reason and may not want to be bothered with filling out a contact form at this moment, which means you can’t fully disregard his intentions to serve your own purposes. One of the best ways to meet both demands is by limiting the navigation on your landing page. The last thing you want is to serve potential patients a defunct landing page – this will, almost assuredly, result in their swift exit – but you may also not want them to become immediately distracted by all of your site’s pages. You can eliminate potential distractions, like the About Us or Social Pages, and just include navigation to your dental services and FAQs.
For many practices that fail to optimize their pages, the landing page is the last point of contact with potential patrons. Don’t lose out on a slew of patients just because of a confusing, obtrusive, or unhelpful landing page. It’s true that everyone needs a local dentist, but thanks to more sophisticated search options it’s easier than ever for people to find new practices. What people really need is a dentist who utilizes optimal PPC strategies to always stay connected with the local community.
