A client of a client clicked on a Google ad, landed on a page that had the right business name but completely wrong branding, wrong colours and a logo nobody had ever approved. The business owner had no idea the page existed.
That is not a one-off. It is one of the most common ways Perth business owners lose control of their own leads, and most of them never find out until something goes badly wrong.
In Episode 21 of Raising The Bar, Mel Strutt and Monique Jecks get into the world of landing pages, pay-per-click advertising and what business owners should actually be checking before they hand over a dollar to a digital agency. Including the story of an electrician who went from six staff and three vans to two people and back on the tools, because his leads were being quietly routed somewhere else for four months without his knowledge.
If you are running Google ads right now and you have never clicked on them yourself, this episode is for you.
Key Takeaways:
- The landing page you did not know existed: If your agency has set up a page you have never seen, with branding you never approved and a form that may not be sending leads to your inbox, that is a liability. Not a technicality.
- External landing pages have legitimate uses, but only as a short-term fix: Speed is sometimes the reason, and that’s okay. Hacked website, urgent campaign, old CMS. But there needs to be a plan to bring it back into your domain ecosystem, and you need to know about it and approve it before anything goes live.
- A dedicated landing page always converts better, but it needs to live in your ecosystem: What someone searches, what they see in the ad and what they land on should all match. And that landing page needs to sit within your domain, feed your Google Analytics and connect to your reporting. Otherwise, the only person who can tell you if your ads are working is the agency running them.
- Cookie-cutter agencies are cutting corners: When an agency sells a $550 pay-per-click package with no discovery and no strategy, the external landing page is usually how they make it work for themselves. Not for you.
- The worst-case scenario is that your leads are going somewhere else entirely: An electrician went from six staff to two because his leads were being routed to a scheduling platform he did not control. Four months passed before anyone raised the alarm. By then, the damage was done.
- B2B buyers need more than a standalone landing page: 61% of B2B buyers want to know everything about you before they pick up the phone. A page with no navigation, no team page and no case studies is a dead end for anyone who is not ready to convert on the spot.
- Get your agency to test the ad, fill the form and phone the number: These are not unreasonable requests. They are the minimum standard. Make sure the form lands in your inbox, and the number rings your phone. Do it before you spend another dollar.
Raising The Bar is a fortnightly podcast hosted by Mel Strutt, delivering blunt, experience-backed marketing guidance for Australian business owners. Joined by Monique Jecks, they address what matters, call out the fluff and raise the standard of what marketing must deliver for your bottom line.
