Imagine, for a moment, a woman in Florida hoping to get her pre-baby body back. Typing “mommy makeover miami” into a search engine, she clicks on the top two results, both of which are ads for local cosmetic surgeons.
One leads to a page listing all sorts of information: office locations, other services offered and, once you scroll enough, a brief description of the procedure in question. The other describes how the procedure can help her achieve her goal, along with an explanatory video and before & after gallery.
Which site do you suppose she’s going to spend her time on?
That, in a nutshell, is why having a strategy for landing pages is so crucial. Yes, many visitors to your practice website will arrive via your homepage — think of it as your digital front door — but others, especially highly motivated ones, will bypass it completely. Clicking on a search ad or result, they’re not looking for an introduction to your practice; they want information, and if the page they land on doesn’t provide it, their next click will probably take them back to Google.
The secret to success? Ensuring that the content on your landing pages is well matched to visitors’ searches. Specific elements — keyword-rich headlines, eye-catching images, patient testimonials, etc. — can help, but for the purposes of this post, they can be summarized by the 3 Cs of good landing page design:
Content: Unlike a homepage, which is often about making an impression and establishing your brand identity, landing pages have one specific purpose: to convert visitors into leads. In addition to being relevant, copy should also be concise; consider using bullet points to highlight the most important information and surround them with plenty of white space to facilitate scanning. Images and videos will appeal to more visual learners, and both have been shown to boost engagement and time on site.
Credibility: People conducting searches on elective procedures are not just looking to gather information; they’re also hoping to gain the confidence that they’re making the aesthetic decisions that are right for them. The insights you share are a good start, but nothing speaks louder than the social proof provided by others. Board-certification logos, awards and honors, and snippets of reviews from satisfied patients prove you’re not just bragging.
Call to action: All of the above should serve one purpose: to prompt a visitor to take further action. Do you want them to sign up for an email newsletter, download an e-book, or schedule an appointment? Whatever it is, the idea is to make it easy for them to proceed — a colorful “Book Consult Now” button, for example, and/or short contact form — which, in turn, makes it that much more likely that they’ll share their contact information.
Which, it must be said, is not to suggest that they’re automatically ready to proceed. At this point, they’ve only expressed a willingness to hear more from you, not an interest in scheduling a surgery. A good landing page isn’t about selling potential patients on your services; it’s about selling them on the idea of considering your services, a subtle but crucial difference, and one that is best nurtured through subsequent messages and a good lead management system.
Nor is any of the above meant to suggest that you need to become fluent in the design and execution of your landing-page campaigns. It is, however, a call to understand the concept in order to get a better sense of what your web team is doing and whether or not it’s working.
Viewed through that lens, the reality is that every page on your practice website should be considered a landing page, including some you might not even have considered.
Next up: About Us pages: When It’s OK to Make It All about You
