No form on PPC landing page

[WestAdvertising]

My client has explained to me that they want to drive sales CALLS instead of form submissions because they feel they have a better chance of "closing the deal" on the phone. So my company is working to design a PPC landing page that focuses on the phone number. But the question is, do you still think we should include a simple form on the landing page? There are two competing trains of thought in my office. One is concerned that if we offer a form, people won't call. The other is that if we DON'T offer a form, we will lose out on possibly good customers.

In addition to the form, no form question is the question of providing additional links to other parts of the website. One person I work with is concerned visitors will leak away and not pick up the phone. My concern is that if we do not offer a way to "learn more" the visitor will become agitated and not call at all.

This is specifically for a focused PPC effort. To recap:
1- Form or no form?
2- Links or no links?

[WestAdvertising]

• The community is convinced they can sell anyone on the community if they talk to them.

Sorry for the confusion. What I meant by that statement was that the community believes that if they can talk to someone on the phone, they can get them to come to the community for a visit.

Luckily for my client, their facility is top notch and they have a very solid reputation. They are booked on some floors but have openings for people with more serious issues and they are always actively looking for new residents. In this particular industry, you are constantly "losing" customers.

I must say that just because the facility is great does not mean potential customer visits shouldn't be met by someone trying to extol the virtues of the facility. I think the word "salesperson" is throwing us all off here. It is a very soft sell on their part because the community understands that location, smell, cleanliness and quality of food are huge. And they are not worried about that.

All they want to do is talk to someone on the phone and schedule a visit, the rest will take care of itself.

[EGOL]

• The community is convinced they can sell anyone on the community if they talk to them

They will NOT close one single sale by phone.

Unfortunately, I visit these places frequently and have done that for years.  The selling points really are.... Location (how far family has to drive to visit), price (can vary by thousands of dollars per month), quality of facilities and food, attention of staff to the daily needs of residents (rapid assessment is a quick check of toenails trimmed and teeth brushed), and does the place smell like pee (two steps into the building can clear your brain of the finest salesmanship).

If they want to close the deal they got to get the people into their facility and impress them.  The people who make the decisions about this purchase fall into two groups...

1. urgent buyers - these folks are really busy, really stressed, and often working on immediate deadlines because their family member is being discharged from a hospital or has lost a caregiver.

2. savvy consumers - their parent is already in one of these facilities and they are looking for something better.  They will not be fooled by BS on the phone.  They know the deficits of their parents' current living arrangement and are trying to make an important improvement.

The reputation of these facilities is often widely known.  If you have a great facility there will be a long waiting list to get in.  Salesmanship will not be needed.  When salesmanship is needed the buyer will believe what he sees rather than what he is told.

[WestAdvertising]

Thank you all so much for your thoughtful answers. So a little info that might help the discussion.

• This is for an assisted living community where residents a large monthly bill
• it is normally the son or daughter who calls to discuss the service.
• The phones will be manned by industry professional, not salespeople. Although they are instructed to put on a very soft sell, the initial call is not a true sales call. It is more for the caller looking to learn more by speaking with the community liaison.
• The community is convinced they can sell anyone on the community if they talk to them.
• They will be available 24/7.

Again, I appreciate all the feedback and will update this post after our campaigns run and tests are over to see what worked and what didn't. Hmmm, could this have the makings of my first YouMoz post? Stay tuned....

[BlueprintMarketing]

I agree with EGOL you must A/B test plus use

analytics something like kiss metrics or mix panel in your forms so you can figure out who is actually filling them out. I think it is way too hard to determine without knowing what you're selling. I have a client that sells a very expensive product that is very unique, and almost everything has to be determined verbally. However, I would never dream of not allowing someone to use a form.

You want to track the leads A/B test, and you can do that using one of the analytics programs above for terminating who is filling out what form.

Call rail and many other similar call metrics tools are available to tell you if the best way is to use the telephone or to use a form Or combination of the two.

You will have to then confirm with your client which one is converting is it just getting a lead or is there more value in a phone Lead?

could you not just ask the person for their phone number in the form? Then your client can call them back. I don't really know enough about what you're trying to do to give you a better answer I'm sorry.

All the best,

Thomas

[Travis_Bailey]

One could argue that someone that took the time to fill out a form may be more committed than say, someone that picked up the phone and asked a question. If they haven't done any real lead scoring, they don't really know which converts better.

I would rather call on 10 form submissions and close four than field 20 calls and close four. If that's the situation, find someone you like on the sales team and hand them forms. The rest may come around if such is the case.

And yes, it's generally a great idea to let a prospect self-qualify. Give them as much information as they need to call and not much more. Would your client rather have their sales team spend a ton of time dealing with non-buyers, or someone that feels informed enough to make contact?

[MoosaHemani]

A landing page without the form is very much dependent upon the industry you are working with. In my experience deals that contain big dollars convert better on the phone.

I know form can provide you phone numbers as well but when person check the website their enthusiasm is different which might or might not be after some time (hours of days) when you call them back! My opinion would be to take a look at the industry and see if this is a website where phone is better than a form.

I guess link should be provided as this allow user to better understand the company and product/service you are trying to sell but obviously your call to action should be powerful and eye catchy (use eye tracking here) that users stick to it and call.

Hope this helps!

[Dan_InboundHorizons]

Eric -

EGOL definitely has some good insights on the matter. All I would add from my experience in PPC and dealing with these types of scenarios is two things. First, as EGOL said, I would encourage you to A/B test this thing substantially and see which PPC ads that convert on the phone vs. form page actually result in sales. I am assuming they have some kind of CRM you can pass that information on to from lead source all the way to closing sale. You may find the conversion rate and CPA are equal in the end, or lower for phone vs. form, but the resulting sales are higher and thus a better ROI in the end for your clients ad spend.

Second, concerning the links, I've generally found that a site with quality product content, and lots of it in a variety that fits your targeted market, generally converts better than a bare bones lander that only features one or two products. Obviously this is going to differ on your product, industry, consumer demographic, etc... But in most cases I've seen higher conversion rates where people had more to choose from. The logic being somewhat along the lines of they come to the site off your PPC ad thinking it's what they want, they see the product is not exactly what they want, but then they can browse around and find something similar you offer that is what they want, and you then have a lead you may otherwise have lost.

For whatever that's worth, hope it may be of some use to you in your decision making process!

[EGOL]

I see.

I think that there are a lot of different types of people out there.

There are a lot of questions..... Will the client have a skilled closer at the phone 24/7?  If not, they will probably miss clients in different time zones and who look for information at different times per day.

I would be disappointed if the phone didn't answer or if I got an untrained person... then I would be adding their phone number to tomorrow's "to do list"... no, I wouldn't do that, I would call their competitor.... no, I would not do that either because I would want to read, study and compare before I get an obnoxious deal closer on the phone.

So, a better route might be to serve the phone number while the deal closer is on duty and have a form to collect data when his is not on duty or on another phone line or in the crapper.  The deal closer could have a control panel where he pushes a button and the page gets changed from a phone pitch to a form.

[WestAdvertising]

Thank you EGOL. The hope is that the landing page will do a good enough job explaining the services provided that they will want to pick up the phone and call. We currently get a lot of form submissions that do not lead to sales so, essentially, this phone-centric landing page is actually a test. Can we close more people when we only give them a phone number and no other way to contact us?

Also, we are using this landing page for one specific product we sell, not for the entire campaign. So we will be able to see how it compares to other search terms that are being sent to specific areas of the site that speak to the search term.

I guess my question was born out of me being nervous that if we ONLY provide a phone, we will
a) piss people off
b) lose leads

Maybe the test is. we build two landing pages - one that does have a form and one that doesn't and see what happens.

[EGOL]

Honestly.....   You don't want people who have no idea who your customers are, who your client is or what you are selling to be guessin' and kibitzin' about this.

You need to test this and see which one makes the most money.   If you don't test a bunch of different options then there is almost a certainty that you will leave a lot of money on the table month after month after month.

I'd be working on a bunch of options to test and a method of collecting good data.

How long have you guys been arguing about this?   The website visitors are the ONLY people with the answer.