Whether you’re a human resources firm or a shipping and logistics outfit, you need landing pages to communicate the value of your service and get connected with business owners. But where are your best prospects coming from—Google or Facebook?
Paid search makes up the bulk of traffic volume for both click-through and lead gen pages. However, the median conversion rate for social visitors is about double that of people coming from a search engine.
At least, not according to the data. Our research shows that landing page copy evoking just about any emotion correlates with a neutral or negative impact on conversion rates. So, uh, try to keep it professional.
Last year, we didn’t see much correlation between the length or complexity of your copy and your conversion rate—but that’s changing. Even in business, short and simple messaging increasingly looks like the way to go.
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What’s this mean? This graph (called a “box plot”) shows how the conversion rates of landing pages are distributed. The dotted horizontal line is the median conversion rate, while the “box” shows where most pages sit. The vertical lines (or “whiskers”) represent the range of the remaining pages, excluding any extreme outliers.
The main source of traffic for business services is paid search, driving the volume to click-through (50.0%) and about two-thirds the volume to form-fill landing pages (68.8%). That’s followed by referral, then social traffic—which accounts for just under one-tenth of the visitors to pages in this industry (8.6% to form and 9.3% to click).
Why’s that matter? Well, the median conversion rate for visitors coming from a platform like Facebook or LinkedIn is twice that of anyone arriving from Google or Bing. So if you’re running a lead gen campaign, we’d suggest prioritizing social before search.
If you’re trying to collect leads on your landing page, consider moving some of your paid search budget over to social ads.
While business services landing pages generally have less emotional language than those in other industries, over the past year we’ve seen increases in every type of sentiment. The biggest jumps? Mostly the gloomy stuff: anger (+11.9%), fear (+7.1%), surprise (+3.3%), and negativity (+2.6%).
But truthfully, more of any kinda emotion is probably a bad idea for marketers here. Our analysis revealed that both positive and negative language seem to correlate with slightly lower conversion rates. That doesn’t mean you can’t express any emotion, of course—just try to keep things on an even keel.
Don’t hesitate to highlight the value of your service, but stick to facts over feelings. Aim for a neutral tone in your copy.
These types of emotional language saw the biggest change in use (increase or decrease) on business services pages over the past year.
Wanna get the most outta these insights? Here’s how we recommend you use ‘em in your marketing.
Do pages in your industry convert better when they’re short? Maybe your copy is giving off the wrong vibes? Take note of the findings that are relevant to your campaigns.
Create a variant of your landing page and make the changes recommended in this report. Use A/B testing to see how it performs.
Use the results from your landing page variant to inform the creation of more variants. Keep improving your pages and watch as your conversion rates climb.
In last year’s report, we said that reading ease and word count didn’t really correlate with more conversions in business services. But, hey—things change. Our most recent data analysis shows that short and simple copy is your best bet for a high-converting landing page.
One exception: lead gen consulting. Here, we see that landing pages convert best either when they’re written to be super accessible or when they use advanced vocabulary and sentence structure. We’d still always recommend simplicity, but don’t be afraid to get complex.
Try to keep your copy short—under 250 words, ideally—and aim to be understood by middle school students (and under).
Here’s how reading ease and word count have changed on business services landing pages since our last report.
As with other industries, click-through landing pages perform best in business services. That’s followed by mixed pages (those with more than one conversion type), then phone narrowly ahead of form. We’ve got a smaller sample of phone conversions than we’d like, but there are interesting signals here nonetheless.
What’s this mean? As much as people hate getting on the phone these days, there’s some indication that you’re more likely to get visitors to call than fill out a form.
Our recommendation: If you need more than a click, think about offering different ways for your visitors to connect. Give the talkers a way to call you directly and let the quiet types… ah, type it out.
Consider using Smart Traffic to experiment with different conversion types—particularly, offering a phone number alongside your lead gen form.
At least, that’s what the average lift data shows. Smart Traffic looks at each visitor’s attributes and sends ‘em to the page where they’re most likely to convert.