You see an ad on the web. Something about it catches your eye.

For example, this one grabbed my attention:

I couldn’t resist the headline “Double Your Law Firm’s Website Traffic,” so I clicked. What’s the worst that could happen? Maybe I’d just increase my website traffic by 1.5 times?

Here’s where the trouble started.

I clicked and was taken to this page:

Now, it’s a perfectly nice page. In fact, I think these particular marketing folks do good work and make nice-looking stuff. I enjoy their legal marketing blog.

But I didn’t click on the ad to find out about my “Law Firm’s Cost Per Client.” I was salivating to learn how to “double” my website traffic.

As soon as I landed, I felt annoyance at having suffered the old bait and switch. I took my screenshots and left in a huff.

That’s the last thing you want to happen. Leaving in a huff is bad. Sticking around, reading your info, and buying stuff is the objective.

Here’s the Drill

Run an ad to attract attention and desire so people click on it and come to your site. Once they arrive, give them what they want sufficiently to build a relationship. Then you sell them stuff, get their work done, and go home and spend the money buying the stuff you want because someone else attracted your attention and desire. Get it? This is the circle of life. I think it’s what The Lion King is about, right?

What’s wrong with the Hummingbird ad? It promises one thing and delivers another. Big mistake. You want to make people happy, not annoy them. Annoying them costs. It costs you the price of the click, it costs you the loss of a prospect, and it costs you the negative energy that comes from annoying people.

Does it work sometimes? Can you run an attractive ad, generate clicks, fail to deliver your promise, and still get customers? Sure, sometimes.

But why not just deliver what you promised? Why not figure out a way to match up the sexy headline with quality content?

Seriously, how long would it take to create an article, video, audio, or something that gave lawyers ideas to double their website traffic? You know what? And this is funny/odd: the Mockingbird people already have that material on their site in their blog posts. They’ve already written the content. So why are they disappointing us when we click on the ad?

Beats me. It’s an easy problem to solve, and you’ll want to be certain you’re not doing the same thing.

How It Should Work

Our firm runs an ad on Google AdWords. The headline is something like “Free North Carolina Divorce Report.” If you click on the ad, you end up on a landing page that guides you through downloading the document. The document is called exactly what’s mentioned in the ad. It’s all part of a path designed to help you feel comfortable with what you’re doing. We try hard to avoid giving you the sense that you’ve clicked in the wrong place or on the wrong thing. We’re building trust as quickly as possible.

We build our landing pages using LeadPages. It makes it easy for us to pop up a page in minutes. We do it without using a website developer. It’s easy.

We devote that landing page to the specific ad promoting the content on the page. We line it up so the click on the ad leads exactly where the user expects to go. Click, boom, ahhhhhhh. The clicker feels comfortable, we build trust, and soon we start fantasizing about using that money to buy something cool. Get it? Yeah, it’s “Circle of Life” Lion King cool.

Getting your ads right and coordinating them with the right landing page is simple. But, like everything, it gets complicated when you’re stringing it all together to make it work. The key is to view everything about the process from the perspective of the people you’re trying to influence. Think about what they’re thinking about and walk through the entire process by stepping in their footsteps. Eventually, through trial and error, you’ll get it right, and the circle of life will be complete.

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