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Not infrequently, we hear from B2B businesses that have grown frustrated with the Google Search Network. Their marketing teams have been running Search Network campaigns for a while, but they’ve seen little return on their investment. And so they conclude that, as an ad network, the Search Network simply doesn’t work for them.
I can’t immediately dismiss the notion that the Search Network isn’t a good fit for some B2B companies (more on this later). But at the same time, we’ve turned around enough B2B Search Network campaigns to not give up so easily.
If your marketing team is struggling to get good (or even decent) Search Network results, you need to check a few items and explore a few ideas before abandoning your campaigns. Sometimes, the solution is simpler than you think.
1. The problem of landing page creep
Within tech companies, there’s a saying: feature creep is a great way to kill new products and projects. And the same kind of logic applies to landing page forms.
As a PPC agency, our clients take an active interest in our PPC landing pages. We know this because our email correspondence is often forwarded and/or copied to seven or more people and departments. And inevitably, each person on that email distribution list has his/her own ideas about what data to collect from prospects.
As a result, the number of fields on these landing pages tends to grow. A form that started with “name” and “email address” grows to include fields such as “title,” “city,” “ZIP code,” “industry” and more.
Before you know it, the form takes five minutes to complete.
My team member, Chelsea Tryon, came across this problem recently. One of her clients was seeing a major dip in PPC-generated leads. Upon inspection, she discovered the client’s landing page form had grown considerably in length.
She recommended that the client eliminate any unnecessary fields. They did so without issue, as they found that most of the data wasn’t being used.
And once they tightened up the form, the client’s lead numbers jumped back up — surpassing where they were before.
[Read the full article on Search Engine Land.]
Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.
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