Case study / PPC / Conversion experience
Landing pages that kept the ad’s promise.
Paid traffic was arriving on a general page that asked visitors to work out which service matched the advertisement.
- Client
- Professional-services business
- Measured
- Two comparable 30-day periods
The situation
The ad made a specific promise. The page it led to talked about everything else.
This professional-services business was paying for clicks from people with one specific need, and its ads spoke to that need directly.
Then every click landed on a general page about the whole business. Someone who came for one thing had to work out which service matched the ad they’d just clicked. The answers to their real questions (what’s included, and what the first conversation looks like) sat far below the main button.
Every one of those clicks was paid for. And each one arrived on a page that asked the visitor to do the work of connecting the ad to the offer.
Where it broke
The same click, two different journeys.
Each stage of the customer’s journey as it was before the work, and as it is now.
01The ad
Before: Focused on one specific need.
After: Each campaign group is matched to a focused service message.
02The landing page
Before: A general page presenting the entire business.
After: A page built around the offer the ad made.
03The questions
Before: Scope and the first conversation were explained far below the main action.
After: What’s included and what happens first sit beside the action.
04The inquiry
Before: The ad, the page and what happened next were hard to connect in a report.
After: Inquiries are reviewed with the follow-up team, so the ad, the page and the outcome read as one story.
What we did
Four changes to the journey.
What we changed, and why each one mattered to the customer on the other side of the screen.
How we approach PPC ManagementMatched campaign groups to focused service messages.
Each group of ads was tied to one service and one message, so the promise in the ad could be carried all the way through to the page.
Rebuilt the landing-page hierarchy around the advertised offer.
The page now opens on the thing the ad offered. The rest of the business moved out of the way, and the page follows the order a buyer asks in: is this for me, what’s included, and what happens next.
Clarified the action and information needed to start a conversation.
The call to action says what happens when you reach out and what’s useful to have ready, and the questions about scope moved up beside it instead of below it.
Reviewed campaign inquiries with the team responsible for follow-up.
The people who answer the inquiries reviewed them with us to judge which were qualified. That closed the loop between the campaign and the conversations it produced, and turned the report into something the team could act on.
What changed
18 to 29.
Qualified campaign inquiries per comparison period
Across two comparable 30-day periods, qualified campaign inquiries went from 18 to 29. That’s 11 more qualified conversations started from the campaigns.
Reporting became easier to discuss, because the team could follow a lead from the ad that was clicked, to the page that was read, to what happened in the conversation.
What the number doesn’t say
This study compares qualified campaign inquiries across two periods. Ad spend and cost per lead weren’t part of the comparison, so it makes no claim about either.
- 18 before
- 29 after, 11 more
The lesson
Connect the ad with the right landing page.
Treat the ad and destination as one journey. A stronger headline cannot resolve a mismatch between the promise and the service being offered.
When paid traffic disappoints, the first instinct is to rewrite the ad. But the ad is only half of the promise.
If the page it points to doesn’t pick up exactly where the ad left off, you’re paying to send people somewhere that makes them start over. Fix the journey, not just the headline.
More results
More work and the results behind it.
+49%
More qualified leads from local search.
A service business needed its website to explain where it worked, which jobs it handled and what a useful inquiry should include.
SEO / Website experience
+30points
Clearer ownership and follow-up.
A growing team needed a clearer handoff between website inquiries and the people responsible for follow-up.
Automation / Attribution
Next step
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