You’ve spent hours creating a campaign, thinking of your audience, creating awesome ads, and shoveling thousands of dollars into marketing the campaign, but you didn’t take the time to create a truly remarkable landing page. Why?

When I asked some colleagues of mine they stated that they really didn’t see the importance of a landing page. “We have a CTA on the homepage of the website,” was an actual quote. Now, I can’t control my facial expressions so he must’ve known that I was utterly baffled because he then asked, “why does it even matter?” Why does it matter?! Let me tell you sir why it matters! Then I went on a 20 minute tangent about strong landing pages, and totally annoyed him, but I think I got my point across. This conversation led me to wonder, just how many people don’t realize the impact a strong landing page makes. So, let’s break it down.

What is a landing page?

Unbounce defines a landing page as: In digital marketing, a landing page is a standalone web page, created specifically for the purposes of a marketing or advertising campaign. It’s where a visitor “lands” when they have clicked on an ad. So, in layman’s terms, this isn’t your homepage, it isn’t your resources page, this is a page designed to generate you leads for a specific campaign.

So, why are they important?

A landing page has the ability to bring you countless leads, while giving you a method in which to track how those specific leads come in. Say for instance, you want to promote an eBook. You would create ads tailored towards your audience you think would benefit from reading your eBook that would lead them to your landing page. This landing page will contain a few form submission fields, and ultimately the download for your eBook. Had you just put this eBook on your site with no landing page and form submission, you wouldn’t know who downloaded it, nor where that person found your website/eBook from. Hence, the importance of landing pages.

1. Copy will make or break you

Now, a landing page won’t be effective if it isn’t engaging and appealing. Having a strong landing page is imperative if you want to generate leads and the major way to engage and appeal to your audience is with strong copy.

Over 90% of visitors who reported reading headlines also read CTA copy

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Creating a strong headline is only the beginning. You need to create that headline that will draw them in and make them want to read more. But, what if your headline is great but your copy is lacking? Then my friend, you need to step it up. If you can grab their attention with appealing headline copy, you need to lock them in with some even better CTA and body copy. Also, be sure to include keywords to optimize your SEO (but don’t overdo it, that’ll look messy and amateur). Be sure your copy is pertinent to the ads you linked to that landing page. If someone sees an ad for a free eBook download, but arrives on a landing page for a webinar, you’ve done a couple things; 1. You’ve paid for a click that now is obsolete, and 2. You’ve lost the trust of that potential customer, they trusted the ad you showed them was what they were looking for and then didn’t deliver.

2. Don’t forget about your mobile visitors

Everyone nowadays seems to constantly be looking down at their phone. How many of you are viewing this from a smartphone or tablet? I would dare to say a good percentage of you. So, why are companies still not making their landing pages mobile friendly? Many think their page will automatically convert to mobile viewing, some don’t even think about it. But, you need to. It’s absolutely essential to have mobile optimized landing pages, if your customer can’t view it, or can’t view it efficiently, they’re going to close that tab and move on. Don’t lose a customer because you don’t take the extra time to generate mobile viewing.

In 2018, 58% of site visits were from mobile devices

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3. Form submission fields – less is more

Have you ever been to a website, went to fill out the form for the product or service and your eyes bulged at the amount of form submission fields? There’s some that include the normal (name, email, phone) but some contain an excessive amount of fields. Always remember, people want instant gratification, they want what they want now. Filling out unnecessary field submissions just gives them more time to second guess if they really want what you’re offering. So don’t give them that chance. Cut the field submissions down to 4 (first name, last name, email, phone) and get the rest of the information when you call or email them. By then you’ve converted them from a prospect to a lead and you have the basic contact information to extract the extra  you need.

Reducing the number of form fields from 11 to 4 can result in a 120% increase in conversions

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4. Don’t give them a reason to leave

The whole goal of a landing page is to gain conversions, so don’t add extra links or hyperlinked images that navigate away from the landing page. If you do include graphics or videos (which I highly recommend you do), don’t hyperlink the images, and make the video an instant-play or play on the page. If they navigate away from your page, chances are you lost them, so don’t give the means to leave without filling out that form and clicking your CTA.

Using videos on landing pages can increase conversions by 86%

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Always remember, the more quality landing pages – the better.

Companies with 10 to 15 landing pages increase leads by 55%

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