Business Services
Social Beats Search
for Leads in
Business Services
OVERVIEW
Key Insights for Business Services
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?
If you’re looking for leads, you’ve gotta get social.
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.
Looks like emotions have no place in business.
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.
Word count and reading ease matter (after all).
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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Key Insight: Conversion Rate
If you’re converting over 3.5%, you’re doing better than most business services.
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: Traffic
Wanna double your leads? Try social ads instead of search.
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.
Key Insight: Sentiment
Evoking emotion—any kind of emotion—could hurt your conversion rates.
Key Insight: Sentiment
Evoking emotion—any kind of emotion—could hurt your conversion rates.
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.
Sentiments: 2020 vs. 2021
These types of emotional language saw the biggest change in use (increase or decrease) on business services pages over the past year.
+7.1%
More Fear Words
+11.9%
More Anger Words
+3.3%
More Surprise Words
CONVERSION OPTIMIZATION
Boost your business 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: Readablity
Unless you’re in lead gen, keep your landing page copy short and accessible.
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).
Readability: 2020 vs. 2021
Here’s how reading ease and word count have changed on business services landing pages since our last report.
+9.8%
Easier to Read
+6.0%
More Total Words
Key Insight: Conversion Type
Should you think phone over form? Maybe—but the sample is small.
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.
Business Services
Business services marketers using Smart Traffic convert 36% more visitors.
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.
See how Smart Traffic “automagically” gets you more conversions.