In order to get a positive return on investment with your pay-per-click (PPC) ad campaign, you need to pay attention to the numbers.
That’s really all PPC Online advertising is – a numbers game. And if you get the numbers right, you win.
But which numbers matter most? And how can you boost those numbers as much as possible to increase your success and revenue?
Well, it all starts with a good click-through rate (CTR).
In this article, we’re going to dive into the nitty-gritty of what click through rate is, why it’s important, what percentages you should be aiming for, and clever (somewhat random) ways you can get better results.
Let’s go all the way back to the basics and dig into what the Average click through rate(CTR) metric represents, how to calculate it, and all of the basic 101-level information that usually gets glossed over.
If you already know this stuff, great – consider it a quick refresher (or move on to the section below on benchmark PPC CTR rates). If you’re totally new to the PPC game, then this will give you a baseline understanding so that everything else we’re about to discuss will make sense.
So, without further ado, let’s get into the definition.
An Average click through rate(CTR), is basically the percentage of impressions that result in total number of clicks. In order to calculate this number, you simply take the number of clicks and divide it by the total number of impressions (people who saw the ad). Then you multiply that number by 100.
For example, let’s say your online ad got 5,000 impressions and 75 people clicked. The equation would look like this:
(75 / 5,000) x 100
The result is (.015) x (100). This comes out to 1.5 percent. This is your click-through rate. It means 1.5 percent of people who saw your online ad clicked.
Okay, great – but so what?
The simplest answer is that the click-throughs on paid ad platforms like Google and Facebook use Average click through rate CTR to quickly evaluate the health and value of an ad. If lots of people are clicking, then it tells the algorithm that this is an attractive ad that’s making them lots of money. And if the ad is making them lots of money, they want to make sure you keep serving the ad. This leads them to lower the cost per click (CPC) as a way of incentivizing you to continue online advertising on their network.
In the case of Google Ads management,(CTR) also impacts something known as a “Quality Score.” This score is awarded on a 1-10 scale and is determined by a mixture of factors like Average click through rate(CTR), landing page UX, and ad relevance.
An ad’s Quality Score impacts its “Ad Rank,” which Google uses to determine where ads show up on search results. A high CTR leads to a higher Quality Score, which in turn leads to a higher Ad Rank. This ends up putting your ad in front of more of your target customers at a lower price.
If that’s all a bit confusing, here’s a simple visual to make it easier:
CTR → Quality Score → Ad Rank → PPC Ad Placement → Higher CTR
It’s basically a self-feeding cycle. As your CTR increases, so do all of the other metrics. This usually leads to a higher CTR, which…well, you get the picture.
Once you understand what (CTR) is and why it’s important for PPC ads, the next logical question is, what’s a good click-through rate?
The answer is…it depends!
I know – that’s not the answer you’re looking for – but we’re going to take a deeper dive in just a moment. The point is that there’s no concrete figure. There are dozens of circumstantial variables that come into play based on your product, industry, creative, and the PPC platform (Google vs. Facebook vs. Others).
When evaluating baseline PPC CTR, there are a few quick factors you can take into account right from the start. This includes (a) how the ad is being displayed, and (b) the industry you’re in.
Let’s start with how the ad is being displayed. With Google ads, there are two different networks. You have the Google or other search engines network and the Google display network.
The search network includes text-based ads that pop up within Google search results (at the top and bottom of the page). The display network serves ads on other websites. These are typically image-based ads and banners.
Google search network ads tend to have a slightly better click through rate(CTR), simply because they appear within the search results. Averages across all industries are usually somewhere in the 1.75 – 2.00 percent range.
Ads in the Google display network are usually much lower – somewhere south of 0.50 percent. (This is due to the fact that many users use ad blockers and other plugins that make it less likely they’ll even see the ad.)
When it comes to the industry, the average click through rate(CTR) can change dramatically from one sector to another. Here are some examples pulled from recent reports:
As you can see, the standard from industry to industry is different. Achieving a 4 percent CTR in dating and personals might be extremely low, whereas it would be an incredible rate in technology. This just goes to show there are a lot of unique factors in play.
Even within specific industries, averages vary based on the offer, type of product, brand, etc.
The fact that click-through rates vary so much can actually be viewed as a good thing. It means you always have the ability to increase your numbers. And, sometimes, all it takes is a little creativity.
Now that we have some basic context established, let’s dig into the juicy stuff. How can you improve your PPC click-through rates so that you stand a better chance of producing conversion rate and increasing revenue?
Here are several suggestions:
Humans have a wide range of emotions. And while we like to assume that we’re fairly rational creatures who make logical decisions after having all of the facts laid out for us, the truth is that we typically act on emotion (then justify with logic after the fact).
As an advertiser, you can use this little bit of knowledge to your advantage. Avoid the logical plea and get emotional. Ethically leveraging love, fear, hope, belonging, shock, and surprise can help you get better click-through rates.
For example, let’s say you’re running an ad for roses during Valentine’s. Leading with something like “2 Dozen Roses for Just $29” is actually a fairly weak hook. You might make a few sales, but there’s nothing other than price at play. What about all of the buyers who are less price sensitive?
A better ad might read: “She Thinks You Forgot. Roses Delivered Same Day.” Do you see how much better this ad copy is? It makes an emotional appeal – not just a logical dollars and cents pitch.
Questions can be powerful when used appropriately in your PPC ads management. People are naturally curious and posing the right query can get people thinking about things through whatever filter or context you’d like.
When asking questions, try wording them in a way that the answer is obvious. (Not only that, but the answer should be obvious and certain to push them closer to clicking.)
Going back to our roses example, you could do something like this: “Miss Her Birthday Again? 2 Dozen Roses Will Do The Trick.”
Or if you’re a financial advisor: “Unprepared for Retirement? Learn How to Create a Guaranteed Stream of Income in Your Golden Years.”
A good question can save valuable space in your ad by letting your prospect tell themselves why they should click. This can be more powerful than using a direct command.
Humans have a huge, oversized fear of missing out on something. You might even say this is a distinctly human trait. Dogs don’t see other dogs walking with their owners as the sun goes down and think to themselves, “No! I hope I don’t miss out on a walk with my owner before the sun sets!” Now, if you tell a dog that you’re going on a walk, they might get really excited. (And they might even get sad if you’re then unable to take them out.) But they don’t have a fear of missing out.
With humans, we’re constantly fearful of being left out or missing the boat. In many cases, we’ll do anything to avoid this feeling – even if it means spending time or money on something we might not truly need.
In advertising, you can tap into FOMO by creating urgency and/or playing the scarcity card. You can do this by setting a deadline for a sale, releasing a limited order quantity, or using some sort of tiered discount based on when people place an order.
While not perfect for every brand, humor can be a very useful mechanism for increasing click through rate(CTR) and getting a better response. Having said that, it’s a somewhat risky play – simply because everyone has a unique sense of humor. You could easily miss the mark and drive your click through rate(CTR) close to zero.
If you’re going to attempt humor in your ads, we recommend running multiple variations. Have a humorous version and a non-humorous version and split test the same ad creative. This will give you a pretty good feel for the response. After gathering enough data, you can make a decision on whether to move forward with the funny ad or nix it.
We can talk all we want about ad creatives, copy, and other elements, but it all comes down to ad-audience fit. If you aren’t focusing on the right audience, you aren’t going to have high CTRs.
For Facebook in particular, where you have a massive amount of control over your audience, niching down to a very specific part of the market is going to give you the ability to create much more targeted ad copy and images that resonate.
For example, don’t just target business owners. Target restaurant owners. And then split your ad campaign up so that you can target South Carolina restaurant owners and California restaurant owners separately. This gives you so much more relevancy and control.
One school of thought says you should max out your ad by using every single character you’re allowed to use within the character limit. But is this really the best way to go?
There’s ample research to suggest shorter ads (particularly on Facebook) get more number of clicks and better engagement. In fact, as character count increases, response rates steadily fall off.
The fact that shorter ads do better is likely due to the fact that people have very small attention spans. An ad that can be consumed in three seconds is much more enticing than an ad that takes 90 seconds to read. Even if your copy is great and you can effortlessly compel people to read sentence after sentence with mouth-watering copy, there’s simply too much friction to attract a large percentage of your audience. Keep it short!
When dealing with Google display network ads and/or Facebook ads, the image is the most important part. People will process the image long before they read the copy or call-to-action. So when you run an ad, always split test at least three different images. This will give you a feel for what your customers respond to best.
PPC is both an art and a science. It requires equal parts creativity, technical competence, and experience. If you’re lacking in any of these three areas, you aren’t going to get the sort of results you need.
But there’s good news: We can help.
At PPC.co, we partner with entrepreneurs, digital marketers & email marketers/ email marketing professionals, agencies, startups, small businesses, and established enterprises to make PPC advertising a smooth, seamless experience that ultimately results in more clicks and conversion rate.
Want to learn more about whether we’re a good fit for each other? Let’s chat!
%201.svg){kind=logo}
Pay-per-click (PPC) ads can generate a steady stream of guests for anyone in the hospitality industry, whether you run a hotel, motel, hostel, vacation rental, or an Airbnb. In terms of marketing strategies, PPC ads convert 50% better than SEO and it’s easier to measure than results from organic search.
But a successful ad campaign isn’t just a matter of getting ads in front of people who are looking to book right now. You can also use PPC ads to find people who are just starting to think about their getaway and those who are comparing options. An effective strategy will reach a variety of people to get bookings now, fill future pipelines, and get repeat guests.
If you’re in the hospitality industry, here’s how paid advertising can help you drive more revenue.
To run a successful PPC campaign you need to understand the guest journey. Different people are doing different things at different times. For example, some people are researching destinations and others are comparing lodging, all while another group of people are ready to book. If you serve all these people the same ads, you won’t get the best results.
1. Define your funnel stages
There are four main stages to a hospitality funnel: awareness, consideration, conversion, and loyalty. Reaching leads at each stage requires different messaging and targeting. That’s where audience segmentation comes in.
2. Segment your audience by intent
Since each lead needs to be given a different message, it’s crucial to segment them by intent first. For example, the dreamers are people who search for “things to do in X city,” “best beach getaway,” and “romantic weekend destinations.”
The comparers search for “hotel vs. motel in X city,” “4-star stays in X city,” and “Airbnb vs. boutique hotel.”
The bookers search for a specific brand + location + dates.
Each audience segment should be served different ad copy, different offers, and of course – different landing pages.
3. Measure results according to stage
Finally, you need to measure results in several ways, like impressions, click-throughs, content engagement, and email signups. This will give you the bigger picture regarding how your ads are working (or not). For example, to measure the conversion stage, look at bookings, CPA, and revenue per booking. For the loyalty stage, look for repeat stays or referral leads.
Once you know how you’ll segment your audience and track the results, you can allocate your budget smartly. Otherwise, you risk overspending on high-intent leads and ignoring the long-term value of leads in earlier stages of the journey.
If you only bid on keyword phrases like “hotel room booking tonight,” you’ll miss all the people researching and thinking about their vacation. These people can convert, too, even if it doesn’t happen in the moment. They’re worth pursuing. You can capture their email, get them to like your social media pages, and you can also use remarketing to serve them additional ads.
The following are the general types of keywords you want to focus on:
· Broad/discovery keywords. These keywords will reach people in the awareness stage. Phrases like, “Best beaches in [location],” “Top things to do in [location],” and “Travel inspiration [country].” When you use broad modifiers (like “top,” “best,” “where to stay”) you’ll attract people in the research stage.
· Middle-funnel comparative keywords. These are phrases like, “Boutique hotel vs. Airbnb in [location],” “Hotel deals vs. motel,” and “Hotel amenities comparison.” With phrases like these, people are narrowing down their choices. The right PPC campaign can help them pick your business.
· Branded and high-intent booking keywords. These keywords reach people further down the funnel. Phrases like, “[Your hotel name] rooms,” “Hotel in [location] near [landmark],” and “cheap hotel [location][dates].” These phrases typically provide the highest conversion rates but can be competitive, so they may cost more.
· Negative keywords. To prevent wasted ad spend on irrelevant clicks, you can add certain keywords to your negative keyword list. This ensures your ads won’t show up when people search for these terms. Common negative keywords used in the hospitality industry include, “Free stay” and “Jobs at [hotel].”
Since most hotels and motels stick with keywords that target people ready to book, you can expand your reach by running ads for people in other stages. Just make sure you have a system in place to nurture your leads so they don’t go cold.
What you say matters just as much as when you say it. Copy that works for someone researching won’t work for someone ready to book with you. Every part of your ad needs to match intent, including the imagery, tone, copy, and offers. Here’s how to reach each stage:
· Awareness stage ads. At this stage, people will respond to emotional and inspirational copy. Phrases like, “Discover tranquil stays in the mountains,” or “Unwind by the sea.” Use imagery to provoke desire. Beautiful views and relaxing room setups work like a charm.
· Consideration stage ads. These people need more information, so hit ‘em with your amenities (Wi-Fi, breakfast), comparisons, reviews, ratings, and testimonials. Show them visuals of your accommodations and the local area.
· Booking/conversion stage ads. Urgency works best here. Phrases that get people to click to book now, like “Limited rooms available,” and “Book now and save.”
· Loyalty stage ads. Guests who have stayed with you before, even just once, are more cost-effective to convert again compared to chasing down new customers. Create some ads for these people by highlighting perks, upgrades, and exclusive deals they can’t get through other places. For example, you can use lines like:
“Book direct for free late checkout,” “Exclusive returning guest discount,” or “VIP upgrade on your next stay.” It also helps to use personalized copy like, “Welcome back to [your hotel name].” along with imagery of your best amenities.
Loyalty ads drive repeat bookings and increase lifetime value by bringing people back.
· Remarketing and nurturing prospects who got away. In addition to targeting people in all funnel stages, you want to bring people back who clicked but never booked or signed up for your email list. Run retargeting ads to show them what they looked at and offer them incentives or discounts. This is a great time to leverage social proof.
By matching your ad content to meet potential leads where they are in their journey, your ads will be more relevant and you’ll get more conversions.
Having a great ad doesn’t necessarily mean it will drive conversions. If your landing page is confusing or the booking process is clunky, you’ll lose people. That’s why landing page optimization is often where people see the biggest gains.
As a foundation, create a specific landing page for each target audience. You need a dedicated landing page for ads that target each funnel stage. Landing pages should be simple and clear and should be free from all distractions (like links and menus) that invite a user to click away. You want one offer and one call to action.
Social proof is critical in the hospitality industry. Show guest reviews from Tripadvisor, Google, Trustpilot, etc. It also helps to show photos of real guests enjoying their stay (with their permission). Showcasing reviews will reduce anxiety and hesitation, especially for people comparing you with other options.
If your landing pages show pricing, make sure you’re up front about all fees. Be clear about what’s included, like tax, breakfast, and service fees. People hate hidden fees. If a guest’s experience doesn’t match the impression they get from the page where they booked, they’ll probably leave a bad review.
Talk to your website developer and have them trigger a follow-up email that goes out to people who start filling out a booking form but stop. The email should show them what they left behind and you can sweeten the deal by offering a small discount or other incentive.
Having a smooth flow after a person clicks on your ad can help you convert far more prospects. Everything you can do to reduce friction and increase trust compounds.
To get conversions, your bidding strategy and budget need to align with a variety of factors, including funnel stage and seasonality.
· Increase bids for high-intent keywords, use moderate bids for middle-funnel ads, and go lower for awareness and discovery.
· Watch for online travel agents (OTAs) and large hotel chains that bid on your property’s name or similar keywords. If they undercut you in rate or bid too aggressively, you could end up with arbitrarily inflated costs per click. Research data shows this can cost around 47% more per click.
· Adjust your bids and budget during travel seasons, events, and holidays. During off-peak seasons you may want to stick with pushing awareness.
· Allocate your budget proportionately across all funnel stages.
· Use Google’s automated bidding tool for the conversion stage, but use manual methods for the consideration and awareness stage.
The right bidding strategy will ensure you don’t overspend for low-intent clicks or underinvest in more profitable funnel stages.
PPC is more than search. When you use different channels and ad formats you’ll reach people in a variety of places.
· Search ads (Google, Bing). Search ads capture high-intent demand users. They’re great for the conversion and compare phases and can make use of extensions like call, location, and reviews.
· Display and discovery/native ads. Display ads are excellent for the awareness stage. They reach people browsing travel blogs and using apps. With these ads, visuals are everything.
· Social media ads. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok are great for the awareness and consideration stages. They’re especially powerful for remarketing.
· Video ads. Short-form videos can stir emotion, show off ambiance, and be used to create a mini virtual tour. These ads are great for top and middle funnel prospects.
· Email ads. If you’re using email marketing, offer loyalty deals and off-peak discounts.
Paid search on social media converts better in hospitality than it does in other industries.
Location matters in hospitality. Geotargeting can significantly improve your conversions and reduce wasted ad spend. You can use radius bids and location extensions to target people looking for accommodations within a certain radius.
It pays to bid higher for people in feeder markets and origin cities during the holidays. You can also target departure cities for Arbnbs if that’s relevant to you.
In your ad copy, include local cues like “Only 30 mins from downtown,” and “15 minutes from airport. If you know your audience well, include the origin city (“Fly in from Seattle & Stay with us just outside Olympia”).
When offered by the ad platform, use local extensions to note your address, phone number, and any other elements offered. This will generate more bookings from mobile users.
Most people who click your ads or visit your website won’t book right away. Retargeting will help convert these “warm but not ready” leads into guests eventually.
When you target people who visited your site without converting, show them ads with refreshed offers like a free breakfast or an upgraded view. Visual reminders will help bring them back.
Show the specific rooms and properties to the prospect so the ad feels personalized. Use tools like Google dynamic remarketing and Facebook Product Ads.
For guests who did convert, show them additional special offers and upgrades. Keeping them in your funnel will make future conversions easier.
It’s crucial to know when to pull back, push forward, test more, or scale.
· Define clear ROI goals. Know your target Cost-Per-Acquisition (CPA), Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), and guest Lifetime Value (LTV). If your ad spend yields bookings but loses money, it’s not working.
· Perform weekly and monthly audits. Refine keywords, ad creatives, and keep testing.
· Scale what works. Once you have a campaign producing consistent returns, increase the budget there while watching for diminishing returns.
· Adjust your offers and pricing. If conversion rates drop or your CPCs rise, start offering special packages like early-bird deals and loyalty perks.
The average travel and hospitality conversion rate for search is 3.55% so if you’re under that, there’s room for improvement. If you’re over that, scale carefully.
If you’re ready to transform your PPC campaign into a reliable machine that fills your rooms and builds a solid pipeline for the future, we can help. At PPC.co, we specialize in creating full funnel PPC strategies for hotels, motels, and Airbnbs that convert into bookings, repeat guests, and long-term loyalty. Contact us today and let’s craft a PPC strategy that drives bookings and turns first-time guests into lifelong customers.
If you’re running paid ads to promote your web hosting services, your landing pages are the core of your funnel. You can run a killer campaign with the perfect keywords and nail your targeting, but if your landing pages aren’t optimized to convert, you’re wasting money.
Your pay-per-click (PPC) ads need to capture attention immediately or you won’t get clicks. But web hosting is a highly competitive market and your landing pages need to be top-notch to turn those clicks into paying customers. To accomplish this, each page has to prove your value in seconds, overcome objections before they’re raised, and guide visitors toward signing up.
PPC strategies for generating web hosting leads apply whether you’re running your own company or building a business as a reseller. In this guide, we’ll walk you through the critical elements that make the difference between someone who buys and someone who clicks out of curiosity and bounces.
Generating leads from PPC ads starts with understanding user intent. For example, someone who clicks an ad for “best web hosting for small business” isn’t looking for the same thing as someone searching for “cheap web hosting.” They might both end up buying the same plan, but you have to sell your services differently to each group. Each lead needs to think, “this hosting plan is for me” when reading your ads and landing page. As such, you need to alter the language to speak directly to each group’s pain points, desires, and fears.
It’s worth pursuing multiple markets, but each requires a unique strategy. Success requires segmenting your traffic by creating separate landing pages for each group and then crafting ads and offers specifically tailored to those groups based on their intent. For example, you want to run separate ads with corresponding landing pages for each of the following keyword groups:
· “Reliable small business web hosting” – these leads are small business owners looking for a web host that has decent uptime and won’t go offline for a few hours every month.
Your ad and landing page copy should focus on reliability, uptime, and access to tools like email, page builders, security, and customer support.
· “WordPress hosting” – these leads aren’t tech savvy and want hosting that offers one-click WordPress installations. However, they aren’t necessarily looking for the quick installer that comes with cPanel. That’s far too complex for this group. They want a fully managed WordPress hosting account with a user interface that makes managing every WordPress installation a breeze.
To capture this group, your ad and landing page copy should focus on simple installation, easy migration, templates, automated backups, managed maintenance, and accessible support.
· “Cheap web hosting” – these leads are looking to save money and will likely sacrifice features for the right price.
Your ad and landing page copy should focus on your prices, discounts, and deals first, followed by elements like reliability and features.
· “Reliable web hosting” – these leads prioritize reliability over everything else.
Your ad and landing page copy should focus on your uptime guarantee, security, accessible support, and anything else that tells leads your servers aren’t going to crash or get hacked every week.
These are just a handful of examples of what search phrases can tell you about a user’s intent. To maximize leads, it’s crucial to segment your market based on intent to reach each group with customized marketing messages.
As with any market, before you type a single word, analyze your competition to know what you’re up against. Your competitors are bidding on the same keywords, targeting the same customers, and many are throwing down some serious cash. If your landing pages aren’t top-notch, you’re not going to make it.
Here’s how to research web hosting competitors:
· Dissect their traffic sources. Use tools like Ahrefs or Semrush to find out where they’re getting traffic. If you’re not using these platforms yet, it’s time to start.
· Copy their offers (but not specifically). Analyze their headlines, subheadings, CTAs, and packages/plans. Use this information as inspiration to build your landing pages and offers, but don’t copy anything word-for-word. Then, see what you can improve.
If your goal is to create better offers, keep in mind that hosting companies offer mid-tier plans that don’t make financial sense as part of a marketing strategy to get people to buy a more expensive plan. If you don’t use this strategy, it could result in fewer sales.
· Look for their hooks. What emotional buttons are they pushing? Security? Speed? Price? Support? Take their hooks and craft even better ones. For example, if their hook is “Hosting for $2.95/month,” take that up a notch to “Hosting that won’t crash - $2.95/month.”
· Read all their reviews. Take a deep dive into what people are saying about your competitors on sites like Reddit and Trustpilot. Negative customer reviews will tell you exactly where your competitors are failing, and those are the pain points you can solve (and advertise). For example, if a one of your competitors has an awful support ticket system, make it clear that you have superior-level support. For example, “No more ticket system nightmares – talk to a real human 24/7.”
Researching your competitors is the best way to avoid having to reinvent the wheel each time you need to build a landing page. It will give you the foundation needed to meet and exceed your competitors’ offers.
Your landing page headline is your first impression. If it doesn’t capture attention and resonate immediately, the rest of your content won’t matter. According to research from the Nielsen Norman Group, 79% of users only scan web page content and don’t read word-by-word. To capture attention, your content has to include scannable text, and that’s where your headlines shine.
When users scan web pages, they scroll while taking in headlines and subheadings in addition to bolded text and bulleted lists. But if your headings aren’t convincing, they won’t scan the rest of your content.
No matter what market you’re going for, craft your headlines to be value-and-benefit-driven. For example:
· “Lightning-fast hosting for growing businesses” is more effective than “Shared hosting plans.”
· “Get your website live in [time frame] – no tech skills needed” is more effective than “Build your website with us”
· “Affordable hosting that scales with your business” is more effective than “Business hosting plans.”
These are general guidelines – you’ll need to split test specific headlines to see what works best.
Landing pages generate more conversions when they load fast and aren’t cluttered with distractions and opportunities for people to click away from the page. Strip your landing pages down to simplicity. Remove sidebars, footers, links, and anything else that will allow users to escape from the conversion path. Most importantly, eliminate the main navigation menu to keep people on the page.
As previously discussed, most people scan content and don’t read it word-for-word, which means your landing pages need to give users something to focus on as they scroll and scan. This can be accomplished with meaningful headlines and subheadings, bolding important words, breaking up text into smaller paragraphs, using bulleted and numbered lists, and containing features and benefits inside visual comparison boxes.
One important feature of a successful landing page is that it provides limited options. If you give people too many choices they’ll struggle to make a selection. Whatever you’re offering, make it simple and limited. For example, say you have 20 different hosting plans spread out across shared hosting, dedicated servers, and VPS plans. Instead of listing all 20 plans on one page, list the three categories and link them to separate pages that detail all the relevant plans. When you create your PPC ads, run specific ads for each category of hosting rather than a generic ad for better results.
It’s not your amazing services that sell – it’s the packaging. In this case, it’s how you present your offer. Mediocre web hosting wrapped in a great offer will beat great web hosting wrapped in a boring offer every time.
Web hosting offers tend to do well with limited time offers that create a sense of urgency for the user to act now. Deals that end at midnight or offers only available to the first 50 signups can increase conversions. Just make sure you actually end those offers when claimed, and limit signups as advertised to avoid being fined by the FTC.
If you don’t know how to craft a compelling offer, look at what your competitors are offering and make sure your offer can compete. However, don’t just focus on price and disk space – that’s an old tactic that worked in the past, but today, people want more than generous resources. In fact, the average web hosting client won’t necessarily know or care about how much RAM or processing power your servers have.
Today’s web hosting clients want the following:
· A plan they can use without technical knowledge
· Managed WordPress hosting with automatic installation
· The ability to scale
· Ecommerce options
· High uptime
· Free SSL certificate
· A free domain name for at least the first year
· Site migration services
· AI-powered web building tools
· The option for custom design services
· Automated malware protection
· Automated backups
· A money-back guarantee
With so many unknown and scammy web hosts out there, social proof will go a long way in helping you generate leads. What others say about your business matters more than what you say about yourself. In fact, according to statistics published by Brightlocal, around 87% of people use Google to find reviews before making a purchase.
When people are researching your company, they’ll use customer reviews to determine whether or not you can be trusted. However, you can leverage social proof more powerfully by embedding testimonials right in your landing pages. Instead of bouncing to go look you up on Google right away, many users will read and/or watch your embedded reviews first.
If you’re not one of the top, well-known web hosting companies, you need social proof to gain momentum and trust in the market. Instead of posting images of 5-star reviews, highlight reviews from real people using a name and photo whenever possible. If you don’t have a system yet, you can start collecting video testimonials from sites like Storyprompt and embed them on your website.
Even though you’re selling web hosting services, users need to be told what to do for the next step. That’s where your CTA comes in. Your call-to-action (CTA) needs to be direct, bold, and specific to the targeted user. According to Hubspot data, aligned CTAs convert 202% better than basic ones.
Effective web hosting CTAs are action-oriented, like “Get started,” “Choose plan,” or “Claim your offer now.” For optimal conversions, create a custom action-oriented CTA for each segment you’re targeting.
Since people scroll through content scanning headlines and words here and there, it’s crucial to repeat your CTA throughout your text in a way that makes sense based on the content. For example, place a CTA at the end of each main section, like your pricing plan comparison charts, features overview, and testimonials section.
Mobile optimization doesn’t simply mean creating pages that can be viewed and interacted with on mobile. It requires a strategy for crafting pages that support how mobile users naturally read, scroll, and click. Effective mobile-friendly pages are plain, use limited or no images, don’t use sidebars, and have a sticky menu with a “buy” button so the user doesn’t need to scroll to the top of the page to make a purchase.
Friction makes users bounce fast. Eliminate any kind of on-page barrier that makes it hard or frustrating to get information or sign up for your services. For example, simplify your web forms and only ask for what you need at each stage. The first stage should ask for the basics, like name, email, and domain name. In the next step, ask for billing information. While users will eventually need to fill in all the information, it helps to break it down into stages. In fact, data published by Unbounce highlights a company that increased conversions by 120% just by reducing a form from 11 fields to four.
Another way to eliminate mental friction is to offer a free trial. In terms of web hosting, you can offer a heavy discount for the first month or a no questions asked 30-day money back guarantee.
Finally, include a FAQ section that addresses common questions and concerns transparently. If you can address objections and concerns that are at the top of people’s minds, they’ll be more likely to sign up.
If you’re ready to turn clicks into customers it’s time to hire a professional PPC company. At the end of the day, even the sharpest PPC strategy won’t deliver results if your landing pages don’t pull their weight. Web hosting is one of the most competitive industries around, and that means your pages can’t be average. They need to be fast, persuasive, and laser-focused on turning visitors into paying web hosting clients.
That’s where expert help makes the difference. At PPC.co, we specialize in building and managing high-converting PPC campaigns paired with landing pages crafted to maximize leads. Don’t let your ad budget leak away on clicks that never convert – contact us today and we’ll craft a tailored PPC strategy that maximizes every dollar.
