Mistake #1: Driving People To Your Website Instead of a Landing Page
Now at first, you might be thinking, “are you crazy? Of course, I am going to drive people to my website, where else I will be driving them?”
Let me show you why driving them to a website is probably not the best idea.
So I’m going to pull up a local business – there’s a gym here called Fit Republik (CLICK HERE) – that I’ll use as a random example. Let’s say I’m Fit Republik and I’m driving people to my website with Facebook ads. Now take a look at the user experience when you go to the website: someone could click on activities, who we are, gallery, class schedules, team, pricing, services, click here to register, social feeds etc. There is so much going on and so much to click on that you’re going to be overwhelming your customer.
They’re probably going to click around on a few things and then exit, not knowing what to do.
I am sure, that you as a business owner have a very specific goal that you want to fulfill, right? You probably want them to book a class, sign up for a membership, give a call to talk a representative, sign up for a newsletter etc.
When you send someone to a website homepage like this, there is no clear goal or call to action for them. What you want to do instead is to have one ad tailored to a specific landing page based on the specific action you want them to take.
So, here’s an example of a landing page I built (CLICK HERE) in about 60 seconds, so don’t judge it for the visuals. It’s just to get my point across.
Now let’s say you’re the gym owner and you want to book more people into your HIIT classes as there’s not enough people coming in. You decide, “okay I’m going to offer free HIIT classes and I want people to book using this simple landing page”.
That one simple page, I guarantee you, would be more effective than sending them to a website, because there is nothing else for them to do. There is nowhere else the person can scroll. All they can do is click that one button that says ‘book now’, enter their email address, and then they get a voucher for the free trial. Because you have their contact details, you can follow up as well.
The point here is that it’s clean, simple, and someone will not get distracted.
Now, you can build your landing page on your website if you want to, but then be sure to hide all the buttons on your website. What I would recommend is to use a landing page software. I personally use Leadpages (no affiliation by the way) and I like them, Click Funnel or Unbounce are also pretty popular.
That’s the lesson for today. Do not send customers straight to your website for a lead generation ad, you won’t see a return on your ads. Have a very specific goal in mind with your ad and drive them to a very specific landing page.