Here are a few things you should be sure not to do on your local business landing pages.

1. Don’t try to make a sale. The traffic coming from Google AdWords are going to be people who do not know you from a hole in the wall, so they are going to have their guard up at first. If you try make a sale, you are going to turn off most of these people, and your conversion of those leads into customers is going to be very low. Plus, if you are selling a high-end service, you are simply not going to close a $45,000 kitchen remodel or a $2,000 retainer for a DUI case on your landing page.

You need to get people on the phone and/or meet with them in person, and that is what your landing page should be designed to do.

2. Don’t try to answer all your prospects’ questions.  The more information you provide, the less incentive they have to contact you. The landing page should cover the biggest benefits you offer your clients and provide just enough information for them to want to pick up the phone and call.

3. Don’t be careless about your landing page and just throw something up really quick. The landing page needs to look nice and clean. This means having a nice logo, a professional-looking image or video, and proofreading your copy so the page doesn’t have any typos or grammatical mistakes. Look at the page as if you were a prospect for your business, and make sure the page is conveying the professionalism and image you would expect.

4. Don’t go negative. A lot of top copywriters/direct marketers talk about how you should hit prospects over the head with the pain points they are experiencing. In fact, one of the most common copywriting formulas is Problem/Agitate/Solve, where you highlight the problem they are having, agitate it by talking about all the pain and suffering having this problem causes, and show how your product/service solves the problem and associated pain. A lot of people swear by this, and it does work. However, if you are not an experienced copywriter, you can get into a lot of trouble trying to pull this off. Negative talk can trigger undesirable thoughts/ideas in your prospects’ minds.

So our advice is to avoid the negative and focus on the positive. Stick to the benefits of what you can do for them, why you are the best in your field (if you are), and why they should call you over other professionals in your field. This is the safer, more effective route to go.

5. Avoid Hyped Up Business Models, Products, & Claims. There are certain types of business and claims that Google does not like. Among them are:

• “Business Opportunity”-type claims, where you say you have the secret to helping your clients make millions of dollars
• Multi-level-marketing (MLMs)
• Affiliate marketing
• Miracle-cure-type products like goji berries and raspberry ketones
• Bold health claims (we’ve even had issues with a legitimate local CrossFit gym that had a landing page featuring a video of a client who had experienced dramatic weight-loss results)

Basically you want to avoid hyped claims. Most local businesses don’t have problems, but you should be aware of these things to avoid having your ads rejected by Google or having your account suspended.

Following the above list of don’t do items when creating a landing page will greatly increase your chances of success in your Google Adwords & other PPC advertising campaigns.

The above tips are excerpted from Ultimate Guide to Local Business Marketing by Perry Marshall & Talor Zamir, you can get it here.

Photo by James Emery cc by-sa

About the Author

Perry Marshall has launched two revolutions in sales and marketing. In Pay-Per-Click advertising, he pioneered best practices and wrote the world's best selling book on Google advertising. And he's driven the 80/20 Principle deeper than any other author, creating a new movement in business.

He is referenced across the Internet and by Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, INC and Forbes Magazine.