Agencies
Collect More Clients with Complex Language
OVERVIEW
Key Insights for Agencies
Digital marketing agencies are usually more focused on building landing pages for other businesses than for themselves. But you’ve gotta generate leads, too—and to do that, you’ve gotta get professional.
Readability doesn’t mean more conversions.
You’d think accessible, easy-to-read copy would help you convert more visitors, but that’s really not the case for agencies. What gives?
Generating leads might call for some complexity.
It’s not only that simple language doesn’t get you more conversions. If you’ve got a form-fill page, you could be better off writing in a more detailed, businesslike way (and we think we know why).
Positive or negative, your clients ain’t buying it.
We analyzed how including certain types of emotional language might impact your page performance. Turns out, just about every sentiment—the good and the bad—is more likely to hurt than help.
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Key Insight: Conversion Rate
Agency forms convert 46.6% less often than those in other industries.
Marketing agencies exist in a hyper-competitive context—options are everywhere—and most buyers have been burned at least once. Visitors are only on your page because they couldn’t find a good referral, so trust thresholds are high.
Co-Founder and CMO, Orbit Media
Conversion Rate: 2020 vs. 2021
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.
Key Insight: Readability
Don’t sweat readability. Just make the best pitch possible.
In most segments, we see a pretty obvious correlation between the readability of a landing page and its conversion rate. As the copy becomes shorter and more understandable, the performance goes up. Makes sense, right?
Things are a lil’ different with agency pages. For starters, while easy-to-read copy makes your visitors somewhat more likely to convert, you only really see the benefit at the very far end of the spectrum. (Like, an elementary school comprehension level.) That’s a tough mark to hit, and the payoff isn’t huge.
And then there’s word count. Write a short page (say, under 300 words) in almost any other industry and you can expect to get a decent bump in conversions. Write a short page as an agency? Mmm, maybe you get a half percent. There are better ways to optimize your landing pages.
If you wanna optimize your landing page copy, don’t worry so much about reading ease or word count. Instead, focus on making the best pitch for your agency—however it looks.
Readability: 2020 vs. 2021
Here’s how reading ease and word count have changed on agency landing pages since our last report.
+9.9%
Easier to Read
+6.6%
More Total Words
CONVERSION OPTIMIZATION
Turn more visitors into clients by optimizing for more conversions.
Wanna get the most outta these insights? Here’s how we recommend you use ‘em in your marketing.
1. Pick the insights that are most relevant to you.
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.
2. Apply the recommendations to your pages.
Create a variant of your landing page and make the changes recommended in this report. Use A/B testing to see how it performs.
3. Get new insights and keep on optimizing.
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.
Key Insight: Conversion Type
On form-fill landing pages, it helps to get into the nitty-gritty.
Key Insight: Conversion Type
On form-fill landing pages, it helps to get into the nitty-gritty.
Across all types of agency pages, readability doesn’t do much for your conversion rate one way or another. On form pages, though, easier-to-read copy actually correlates with a drop in conversion rates. Huh?
Check out the graph. Form pages tend to perform best when they’re written in a way that requires a higher level of reading comprehension.
So, what’s the deal? When visitors are filling out a form on your agency page, it’s usually because they’re about to take the next step—they’re ready to have a serious conversation about working with you. But before they do, they wanna be sure you know your stuff.
This data shows that by demonstrating you’re the experts—through an informed and precise explanation of your value—you can persuade visitors they’ve found the right partner.
Consider experimenting with more sophisticated copy on your lead gen pages. Show visitors that you know what you’re talking about with an in-depth explanation of your value.
Optimizing for Form Conversions
Like with other types of agency pages, word count won’t really influence whether someone fills out your form. Still, shorter is better.
In other industries, including a “name” field in your forms can make someone less likely to convert. That doesn’t apply to agencies, though—so, ask away.
Someone looking at agencies is looking for a partner—someone who gets them, who understands what they need. Ultimately, you want to know as much as you can about an agency before committing.
CEO, animalz
Key Insight: Sentiment
The only emotion you should want more of is joy.
Whether you’re a one-person bootstrap or a digital advertising powerhouse, our research makes it pretty clear: nearly all types of emotional sentiment can have a detrimental effect on your page performance.
And it’s not just the positive or negative stuff either. As you can see from the graph, it’s actually both. (People are tough to please, right?)
There is one sentiment that correlates with higher conversion rates for agency pages, and that’s joy. When you speak to the benefits that your service delivers—using modifiers like “remarkable,” “delightful,” and “exciting”—your visitors can be more likely to become clients.
You generally wanna avoid using emotionally-charged language on your page—but don’t hesitate to emphasize the value you bring by sprinkling in words that evoke joy.
Sentiments: 2020 vs. 2021
These types of emotional language saw the biggest change in use (increase or decrease) on agency pages over the past year.
+22.9%
More Fear Words
+4.4%
More Anger Words
+6.7%
More Sadness Words
Agencies
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