WordStream Launches PPC Landing Page Creator, Lead Management Tool For SMBs

Successful PPC lead generation campaigns demand good landing pages. Yet many small business marketers are left without the resources to create solid landing pages that will convert visitors into leads.

WordStream, a PPC platform designed specifically for small and mid-sized businesses and their agencies, sees this problem up close every day. In response, the company launched Landing Pages & Leads as part of the platform’s PPC Advisor software.

Advertisers and agencies using WordStream now have access to a simple tool to build custom landing pages. Users can select the color scheme, add their own copy and choose the fields they want included on the lead intake form. They then create a thank you page, which can include an asset like a white paper for users to download, and add tracking code.

The second tool WordStream launched helps marketers track and analyze the leads that come through their PPC campaigns. Users can see landing page conversion rates and export all their lead data in CSV format. Larry Kim, WordStream founder and CTO says the company is currently working on additional export options.

“We built this landing page and lead capture functionality because we realized that the landing pages used by the average small business are generally pretty awful, which is problematic because having decent landing pages are a key step in the whole PPC conversion funnel. For example, half of the accounts we looked at couldn’t even get conversion tracking working,” said Kim

Laura Pomerene, vice president and marketing director for First National Bank and Trust, was among the beta testers for the new tools. When asked about her experience and how she plans to use them, Laura summed up challenges that many small business marketers will recognize. Her department hasn’t fully staffed, she’s in the middle of on-boarding a new hire, she’s a novice PPC manager and has not had the resources to create custom landing pages for her campaigns.

She said, “I truly have about 3-4 hours per week to dedicate to PPC, so this tool is absolutely critical to helping me achieve any type of success. I’ve not used landing pages with any other tool, however, I’m planning to build them out in WordStream for my entire set of campaigns over the next several weeks. I can anticipate that my process will change dramatically once these are in place, since we’ve really been remiss in properly testing our PPC and modifying campaigns and calls to action.”

That’s good news to Kim, who says the company’s goal going forward is “to enable small businesses to get ROI from PPC, which has historically meant PPC campaign creation, optimization and reporting tools, and now is being expanded to include landing page management and lead management functionality.”