In the world of pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and sales, it’s easy to get so caught up in the top of the funnel that you totally forget the bottom of the funnel and everything that happens in the “post-click” environment.
As important as pre-click elements are – including ad optimization and audience targeting /target audience– the reality is that you can’t complete the conversion without a compelling landing page. And one of the most significant elements of a great landing page is the effective landing page headlines.
Every landing pages has a number of vital elements that are integral to creating a meaningful onsite experience and ultimately driving conversions. They include:
But all of these important factors are a waste if you don’t get the headline right.
The PPC landing page headline is the very first thing a visitor sees after clicking the PPC ad and landing on the page. If it’s irrelevant, inaccurate, vague, or boring, you have almost no chance of converting.
Outside of page loading speed, the headline is arguably the first decision point for a visitor. It gives a reason to either stick around and learn more, or bolt for something else.
Headlines, regardless of whether it’s a landing pages or newspaper, have always been treated like gold by copywriters and marketers. David Ogilvy, who is known as one of history’s greatest copywriters, was adamant that headlines are to be given the focus they deserve.
On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar
he once said.
And while most marketers and copywriters think about headlines after everything else has been created, Ogilvy and other industry legends have always been adamant that the headline commands more attention.
Ogilvy had an unofficial principle that he called the 50/50 Rule. This rule states that you should spend at least half of your time and effort developing and iterating the headline. In other words, if it takes you two hours to write copy for the rest of the page, you should spend one hour brainstorming and optimizing the headline.
While Ogilvy created this rule with ad copywriting in mind, it’s still a valuable rule of thumb for landing pages/landing page headline. And with all of the advanced split testing that we can do with same landing pages, the value of spending more time with headlines is clear. The more headlines you can drum up, the more likely it is that you’ll laser in on the recipe that works for your target audience.
Headline writing is a mixture of art, logic, psychology, and persistence. It takes time and experimentation to land on the right “formula.” And while experience is the ultimate weapon in this war, here are some tips and tricks you can use to shorten the learning curve and get better results in less time:
There are three main characteristics that every headline should always possess:
Think of your headline like a three-legged stool. If it’s missing any one of these elements, the stool loses its stability and topples over. You might be able to prop it up, but you won’t be able to sit on it.
As you craft your headlines, keep these three characteristics at the core. It’ll serve you well as you learn to develop high-converting landing pages.
The headline is important, but do you know what the goal of the headline is? (Hint: It’s not to generate a conversion or produce a sale.)
The only objective of the headline is to get a visitor to read the subheading. And then the main objective of the subheading is to get the visitor to read the next line of copy, and so on.
Don’t feel the weight of trying to convert someone in 10 words or less – there’s ample room to do this below the fold. Your goal is to reaffirm their decision to click on the ad and give them a reason to keep reading. If you can do that, it’s a win.
It’s difficult to hit on everything you want to cover in one headline. Thankfully, you also have the option of creating a subheader (which is basically just a smaller heading that goes directly beneath the heading).
The subheading can be a bit longer and include more characters. It’s used to clarify, restate, or expound upon what was stated in the headline. In many cases, it lists off additional benefits and, as previously stated, serves the purpose of pushing a visitor’s eyes further down the landing page.
Specificity converts and generalities tank.
If you want to generate better results with your headlines and drive higher conversion rates for your landing page, it starts with being very clear. You might push some people away, but your clarity will bring the right people into the fold.
Think in terms of specific claims and clarifying language. If you’re selling consulting services, don’t talk in terms of serving “business owners” or “entrepreneurs.” Get super specific about the types of business owners and entrepreneurs you’re communicating with. Are they small local restaurant owners? Are they growing digital marketing agencies?
Don’t make vague claims about how something works. Instead, use data, statistics, or quotes from customers. Always avoid the macro language when you have the opportunity to go macro. You’ll speak to a smaller group, but that group will be so much more invested in what you have to say.
Length is another important element in headline writing. You want the headline to be short enough for a visitor to focus and long enough to include everything that needs to be mentioned. Where does the sweet spot lie?
According to one study, the human brain only has a certain capacity to process information. And if you want to grab peak focus and engagement, seven words is the bullseye. However, anything within the five to nine range generally performs quite well.
Don’t get too caught up on making headlines five to seven words in length, but avoid extremes. Anything super short – like one to three words – probably isn’t enough. Likewise, anything that’s 15 to 20 words is going to miss the mark.
The worst mistake – and one that’s unfortunately quite common – is to focus the headline on your brand or product. (Intuitively, this seems like the very thing you should be doing. But realistically, it’s a huge misstep that’s difficult to recover from.)
When you write a headline that’s brand-focused, you’re basically making yourself the focal point. You’re like the kid who stands on the table at a high school party and screams, “Look at me!” People might look, but they’re rolling their eyes.
Headlines should always, always, always be focused on your target customer. Your product might solve their problems, but leave the product out of it. Focus on benefits instead of solutions.
The best brands don’t try to position themselves as the hero. Instead, they position the customer as a hero and offer to be a guide who points them to a solution that makes their problem go away and/or fulfills their underlying desire. (This solution just so happens to be the product.)
Listicles have emerged as a favorite style of copywriting in recent years. And though they can feel generic and repetitive, the truth is that they work. And the reason why is tied to the specificity of numbers.
Numbers are psychologically proven to generate a response in the brain. When the brain sees a digit amongst a sea of words, it has no choice but to slow down and process the number. It also establishes parameters and allows for easy classification. If you’re giving someone the “5 Reason Eating Red Meat is Good for Your Health,” it tells people exactly what to expect. They don’t have to go searching for the takeaways. They know there will be five – end of story.
Numbers are especially powerful when attached to a data point. Statistics and percentages are powerful on many levels – use them to your advantage.
Generic and boring words won’t get you very far. Your headline is the curb appeal. If it doesn’t pull people in on an emotional level and communicate tangible value, people aren’t going to read on.
Creative wording doesn’t mean lying or embellishing. It doesn’t mean being flowery and over-the-top. It does, however, require you to improve your word choice.
Don’t have the deepest vocabulary? Use an online thesaurus or a book like Words That Sell to get ideas for more impactful language. Sometimes upgrading a single word can make a major difference in the perception of your landing page headline.
The headline is so important that you should dedicate a specific amount of time to brainstorming options and creating different options. (As Ogilvy’s rule states, you should spend at least half the amount of time it takes you to write the accompanying copy on the headline.) However, don’t get so lost in headline writing that you forget about the rest of the PPC landing page.
A headline is only effective if it has proper alignment with the body copy. Never mislead a visitor or make someone search for relevance. The headline can evoke curiosity and intrigue, but it can’t deliberately lead someone astray. You might get people to spend time on the landing page, but they won’t convert.
Word choice, sentence structure, and grammar are only part of what it takes to write a good headline. Sometimes you have to get creative with how a headline looks to the eye. And whether you realize it or not, you have a number of powerful tools you can leverage to analyze competitors and get results. They include:
As you can see, there are countless ways to improve a Search engines headline without even changing a word of copy. Success is in the details!
Everyone wants to be original and flex their own creative muscles, but when it comes to writing headlines, your decision to leave the herd may actually hurt your ability to convert. This is one area of life where following the pack and mimicking what’s already been done helps.
According to one study, 200 of the best ads that produced significant sales and gained global recognition across a wide swath of industries were actually very similar to one another. In fact, 89 percent of these Google ads could be classified into one of six headline formulas.
It’s rare that you need to reinvent the wheel – simply installing the wheel correctly is enough to get you to where you need to be. Become a student of the game and build up your own library of effective formulas and examples to pull from. Never copy, but always mirror.
Now that we’ve thoroughly dissected some elements and tips for crafting superior landing page headlines, let’s take a look at a few copy-and-paste formulas and high-converting examples that you can use to improve your results.
Feel free to add these formulas to your own personal swipe file and/or experiment with a few of them on your next landing page project. As always, you’ll want to tweak and test until you find the best fit for your landing page.
Did you know that less than 25 percent of PPC ads produce any conversions? Yes, that’s right…more than 75 out of 100 PPC ad campaigns are able to convert clicks into customers. This means the majority of ad campaigns are a waste of time and money or your PPC agency is simply doing it wrong.
When your ad campaigns don’t work, it’s easy to blame the medium and assume that PPC ads or effective PPC landing page headlines don’t work. But if we’re being frank, it’s not that PPC doesn’t work – it’s that most agencies are doing it wrong.
At PPC.co, we work with small businesses and enterprise companies on a daily basis. And because we have such a large sample size and experienced track record working with a variety of brands in all industries, niches, and stages of growth, we know that PPC landing pages advertising works. We’ve also discovered that so much of the results depend on the post-click experience.
Want to learn more about how you can develop winning ad campaigns that meld compelling pre- and post-click experiences to generate results for your business? We’d love to fix your broken ad spend and help you boost the bottom line.
Contact PPC.co today and get a no-strings-attached audit and proposal for your next campaign! We have great incentives for those just starting out in PPC that may need some white label assistance!
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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.
