Paid Clicks Sent to a Holding Page

Ads running before the site exists

A new business has its van lettered, its cards printed and its phone line connected. The website is still being built, and the first jobs are needed now.

So the AdWords account goes live with ads pointing at the only page there is: a logo, a line promising a new website soon, and an email address.

Every click on those ads is paid for. The person clicking wanted to know what the business does, where and for how much, and the page tells them none of it.

Most press the back button and click the next ad, which belongs to a competitor with a proper site.

What the visitor needed to see

• The service, named in the words they searched.
• The area you work in.
• A phone number that dials with a tap.
• A reason to trust you, such as experience or a licence.
• A photograph of real work.
• A short form for anyone who would rather not call.

The third is the one a holding page almost never has. Someone searching on a phone, ready to talk, calls if they can.

An email address alone asks them to write to a business they have never heard of and wait for a reply. Few do.

AdWords checks where ads lead

AdWords reviews the page each ad points to, as well as the ad itself. Its rules on destinations cover pages that do not work, pages under construction and pages with little for the visitor to do.

An ad pointing at a coming-soon page can be disapproved, which means it does not run at all until the destination changes. That at least costs nothing.

The worse case is an ad that is approved and runs. The clicks are charged in full, and the page wastes each one.

Quality Score and the price of each click

AdWords gives each keyword a Quality Score, based partly on how relevant and useful the landing page is to the people clicking. Google calls that part landing page experience.

A page with nothing about the service scores poorly on it. A low Quality Score means paying more per click for the same position, or appearing lower for the same bid.

So a holding page does not just waste clicks. It can raise the price of every click that follows, until the page improves.

One proper page is enough to start

The whole site does not need to be finished before the ads run. One good landing page does the job.

It needs a heading naming the service and the area, a few short paragraphs on what you do and how, the phone number at the top and a short form.

Add a photograph of your own work and a line on experience, licensing or insurance, whichever your customers ask about. For a new business, two or three honest photographs beat any amount of stock.

That page can be built in days, and it becomes part of the full site later.

A worked example

A pizza oven builder, a mason who left a larger masonry firm to build wood-fired ovens in backyards, started his business in the autumn.

He opened an AdWords account in September with ads for outdoor pizza ovens and wood-fired oven builders, pointing at a holding page with his logo and an email address. The full site was waiting on photographs of finished ovens.

Clicks arrived every day, and almost no emails. Two ads were disapproved for their destination, and the ones still running cost more per click than he had expected.

He paused the campaign and had one landing page built. It shows his first three ovens, including the one in his own backyard, and explains the base, dome, insulation and curing in plain words.

The area he serves, a starting price, his phone number and a short form sit near the top. Calls and form submissions are counted as conversions in AdWords.

The ads now point at that page, and run on weekdays and Saturday mornings, when he can answer the phone.

Measure from the first day

A holding page makes measurement impossible, because there is nothing on it to count. A landing page with a phone number and a form can be measured from the first click.

Set up conversion tracking for form submissions, and use call extensions with call reporting for calls from the ads. Then the account shows which keywords bring enquiries, not just clicks.

A new business learns more from its first month of measured advertising than from any amount of guessing, and it needs that knowledge before the budget grows.

If the ads must start today

Sometimes they genuinely must: a seasonal trade, a lease that has started, a van already on the road. Then keep the campaign small, with a few tightly chosen keywords in a small area and a modest daily budget.

Point it at the best real page available, even a single page with the service, the area and the number, rather than the holding page.

And set a reminder to move the ads to the proper landing page the day it is ready.

The counter-case

A business with a long waiting list from word of mouth may not need ads at launch, and can build its site at an ordinary pace before advertising.

Holding pages themselves are fine for what they are: something to show at the address while the site is built, for people who type it in from a card or the van.

What they cannot do is earn back a paid click. Build one proper landing page before the ads go live, with the service, the area and a phone number.

Before the first ad runs

1. Write one landing page for your main service.
2. Name the service and area in the heading.
3. Put a tappable phone number at the top.
4. Add photographs of your own work.
5. Set up conversion tracking for calls and forms.
6. Point every ad at that page, not the holding page.
7. Start small and read the search terms weekly.

Step five is the one new advertisers skip. Without it, the account reports clicks and costs, and nobody can say which of them turned into paying work.

Checking where and how the ads appear, without searching for them yourself, is covered in searching for your own ads every morning.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.