Tag: Landing Page

4 Elements of a Strong Landing Page

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

Source

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

Source

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

Source

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%

Source

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

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


Source

A Crash Course on Landing Page Copy

A landing page is defined by Unbouce 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 a Google AdWords ad or similar.” So in essence, a landing page is a blip of your website that is custom tailored to a specific promotion you are running.

Landing page copy is incredibly important. It is where your would-be customers go when they click on an ad, so they have to be intrigued enough to follow through on your landing page. There are 6 things that are absolutely critical to a successful landing page creation, and of course I’m going to explain them all to you.

Headline and Sub-Headline

These go hand in hand for every. single. piece of copy you write. A captivating headline should always attract your readers after less than 3 seconds, you don’t have long, especially on the internet so you better wow them from the get-go. I can promise you, if your headline sucks, your conversion rate will suck. A good headline addresses a problem that you want to solve. Today our example is going to be getting people to register for a webinar that will show them how to use their iPhone.

Endless Information at Your Fingertips

As you can see we created an intriguing headline with a problem we want to solve for them, there’s a whole bunch of information out there for them, and they don’t know how to get to it (we’ll tell them how to solve it in the sub-headline).

Learn the ins and outs of how to operate your iPhone

See, we are telling them what we’re doing, and how it directly correlates to the headline.

So now I’ve caught the attention of the reader, because I have already targeted them with ads on being a new iPhone user, or being a beginner in the iPhone realm, and they have landed on my landing page wanting to know more.

Body Copy

Body copy for a landing page should be short and sweet. Because this is a webinar, I plan to say a short blurb about the webinar and detail in bullets the topics I will cover.

During this live webinar on July 12th, 2019 at 2:00 p.m. ET, we will go into detail on how to use your new iPhone XS and the new features revealed with its release. In this webinar we will discuss:

  • How to use portrait mode
  • How to add parental controls to other devices
  • Hidden features
  • And much more!

As you can see, in my body copy I said what I’m doing (webinar), when I’m doing it (July 12th, 2019 at 2:00 p.m. ET), and what I’ll be covering (bullet list). The 3 basic things a reader would need to know in order to register for my webinar.

Form (Lead Capture)

The most important thing that needs to be on your landing page, is a method in which your users can buy/register/sign-up/download whatever it is you want them to do. Since we’re doing a webinar, we’ll be asking them to register for it. (Don’t say “sign-up” for a webinar, you sign-up to receive a newsletter, you sign-up to play tee-ball, you register to attend something). So in order to register for a webinar we have to get them to fill out a form. A form is huge in the landing page world. A form is a method in which you’ll capture the lead because they want to be captured, you don’t have to farm for these leads, or cold call, or any other grimey method. These people want to be contacted and they are giving you everything you need to do so. Form copy is super duper easy. Always remember: The shorter the form, the better it performs. Don’t make them fill out frivolous details, stick to the bare minimum.  Our form will look something like this: (please note: this is NOT a designing a landing page demo *I’ll get to that another day* this is simply for copy, so ignore the grey color and basic fonts)

Notice how my form is short, i have 3 required fields, and 1 optional field, and my call to action button stands out and tells them exactly what I want to do.

Call To Action
CTA

The 5th most important thing in your landing page copy ties in directly with your form, a call to action. A call to action is simply telling your reader/future-customer what you want them do to. In this example, I want them to register for this webinar, and I want them to do it now. So, my call to action is simply Register Now. If you want people to sign-up for your newsletter, it could be Sign-Up Today, if you want people to download your eBook it could be Download Now. You see where I’m going with this right? A great CTA is short and bossy. Don’t be afraid to tell people what to do, if you’re timid, you won’t get results. Be bossy, be blunt, and be straightforward. Don’t put a bunch of foo-foo text in your body and CTA because you’re trying to get awesome SEO, if you’re concise and direct in your body copy the SEO will come with it.

Contact Section

The last important thing to include in your landing page copy is a contact section. Give people a way to contact you if they have questions. A contact section doesn’t need to include a map with your exact whereabouts, but a simple Contact Us section with an email address (and maybe even a phone number) is the bare minimum you should include. Don’t just put a phone number, people nowadays don’t want to talk on the phone, they’d rather text. So unless you have a text bot, an email address will suffice.

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