In the world of digital marketing, a landing page is a standalone page, typically separate from all other pages on your website. They are likely the most effective lead conversion tool if utilised correctly. The objective of landing pages is to convert visitors into customers. Using completely separate landing pages allows you to relay all relevant information and offers you may have, in return for a potential customer’s contact details.
You may not know it, but you will have come across different types of landing pages. The type you want to use depends on what it is you want to achieve. It could be that you need landing pages that provide a click through link to your website or your focus may be on having lead generation landing pages. These lead gen pages tend to promote offers like free trials, registrations to courses or content to download such as an eBook.
So, for a landing page to be effective, you need to have an offer with a high enough impact to encourage users to hand over their useful information. Don’t worry, you don’t have to have just one landing page, you can maintain multiple landing pages to target segmented groups of potential customers.
What is a landing page?
Now, as we’ve already mentioned, a landing page is its own web page, created specifically for a marketing or advertising campaign. Once one of your prospective customers clicks on that link in an email, on social media, or from a Google search, this page is where they will land.
Usually, a web page will have many goals and encourage you to click around the website to explore. However landing pages have one particular goal or focus, what we refer to as a call to action (CTA).
That main goal is what makes a landing page the best option for getting it out there and increasing your conversion rates. This is great for your digital marketing campaign and can help to lower lead generation costs.
There are different types of landing pages, so we’ll name a few below for you:
- Lead generation landing pages – intended to collect a customer’s personal details
- Click through landing page – simply acts as the middle man between the communication they’ve come across and the action you want them to take
- Squeeze page – short, basic landing pages with the intention of gaining a person’s data
- Splash page – a very simple landing page of copy with the purpose of providing information
How are landing pages different from other pages?
The home page of your company website can have many distractions and it can be hard to direct users and capture their attention. Not only that, but they’re then unlikely to provide personal details. Therefore, having a landing page with a single and focused purpose allows for fewer links to increase conversion rates. A good landing page will have fewer distractions that may ruin your marketing efforts and send potential customers away from your website. You want them to get to that call to action, and all effective landing pages will have their focus on this.
It goes without saying that the rest of your website still needs to look great to attract visitors that may browse your site after finding you via social media posts, an organic search or further exploration after reaching your dedicated landing page. It also boasts your brand and lets website visitors look at your products and company values. From your home page, website visitors can go off and apply for open vacancies, read blogs, look at your privacy policy, or simply just leave.
Also Read: A guide to using customer questions to inform your content strategy and boost your SEO.
You can’t guarantee that they will buy what you’re selling, and that’s exactly our point… a successful landing page will generate leads.
When it comes to keeping prospective customers and enticing future customers to your website, landing pages serve a whole different purpose. Include eye-catching ads that promote one single offer and the landing page then works its magic to convert this website traffic into customers. That’s why we love dedicated landing pages, they’re converting the visitors you’re already getting. Feel the power!
How is a landing page a part of a wider digital marketing strategy?
If you haven’t already guessed, landing pages should be a pretty crucial part of your digital marketing campaign. The importance of landing pages is quite clear, they are specific pages created to generate leads and encourage customers to take action.
Instead of trying to send all your website visitors to the same page, you can adapt your landing pages to cater to a specific audience. Creating more pages for your website also allows for opportunities to better your search engine optimization, pushing you up the ranks in search engines. This means that not only could you be gaining traction from click through landing pages, but customers may also find you through an organic search and other marketing channels. More search traffic + good landing pages = lead generation!
Before you go creating landing pages – Landing page checklist
Hold your horses now, before you jump straight in and start creating landing pages, you need to do a little research and come up with the perfect way of enticing customers to follow your CTA and seal the deal. If you rush it, you run the risk of missing out on valuable conversion, so this is time well spent. Here are some elements you need to consider:
Get to know your ideal customer base
In order to identify who your ideal customer base is, you’ll need to create a fictional representation of them based on what you would like in a consumer. Utilising your current demographic data to identify who currently buys from your company and looking into market behaviours, will all help in building a picture in who you want your target audience to be. By getting into the mind of your customer, you can then find out what content they find interesting and build your strategy around that.
The joy of landing pages is that you can make different ones to suit your customer base. A very common mistake that many businesses make is trying to fit all customers into the same mould. Now, doing this means your landing page becomes confusing, maybe misleading and to some, it might even be completely irrelevant. Obviously, this then limits the number of conversions, just the opposite of your objective.
So, instead of making the same fatal mistake, focus on one landing page at a time and make them specific to each persona of your target audience. When you target specific consumers, this personalises the interaction and leads the customer to do exactly what you want them to. Landing pages lead customers to buy, simple.
Decide on your offer
The offer you choose needs to send prospective customers to your checkout page and buy your product or service. It may be true that many of us out there love a freebie, but whatever it is you’re offering has to be worth it in order to gain traction. It can be anything you know your current and future customers will love, a free webinar/downloadable, a free sample of a product, etc.
Also Read: How web design impacts content marketing.
The steps to a buyer’s journey
Decision making, awareness and consideration are all things that come into play throughout the buying process. Then, different kinds of content are needed to separate out the sections and push potential customers to each stage.
The awareness stage is when a website visitor is looking for something without knowing for certain what they actually need. When in this stage, your prospective customers will be heavily researching. It is at this point that you should offer your eBooks and/or guides.
Next, we arrive at the consideration stage. At this point, they have most likely identified what they’re wanting and now want more information. Get diving into your digital marketing toolbox because the content that works best in the consideration stage are videos, webinars and detailed white papers.
Finally, we arrive at the decision stage, also referred to as the intent stage. It is here that your potential customer recognises what they need to do next. They will compare which business will work best with their strategy and decide if they like you, or if you’re not the company for them. It is at this point you should boast examples of case studies, relevant products or service information. Keep them engaged throughout this sales process.
How to design kickass landing pages
In most cases when we refer to design, we’re talking about being creative, using a brand colour palette and relevant imagery. However, to create an effective landing page, you’ll need to take this design to another level entirely. It needs to be direction-oriented and functional but still needs to fit in with the rest of your website. For you to create good landing pages, you’ll need to reach into all corners of your brain. You will still need to use attractive colours and imagery, but we can tell you how to do that later.
Landing page structure
For those of you who are feeling a little flustered, don’t worry, you don’t have to be too creative at this stage. Most landing pages follow an incredibly similar structure, and this is because it’s effective in lead capture. If you do like to show off your creative flair, you can do this through the branded elements and imagery. What is important here is that you stick to a landing page format that your target audience are familiar with.
A good landing page will contain five elements:
- A headline that gets the visitor’s attention
- Imagery that is relevant to your audience
- A lead form that sits above the fold to capture visitors’ personal details
- Only one call to action (CTA) that is action-oriented and compelling
- Copy that informs and entices your website visitors to complete your form
A/B testing your landing page
Well, everything we’ve talked about up to this point is fabulous… theoretically. However, every business is different and your target audience is unique to you. Whether you choose to have just one landing page or you decide to have several dedicated pages, you’ll find yourself asking many questions.
How do we know if the copy is working? Are the colours right? Did we choose the right image for that page? Is the call to action in the right place?
So, what do you do? You test it!
A/B testing or split testing shouldn’t be a new thing to you in the digitally connected world. Testing your landing page is just one more task to add to your list.
Let’s find out how to best A/B test your landing pages.
A/B testing: what is it?
We’ve mentioned it a little already, so let’s continue… A/B testing is splitting your traffic into two or more variations of a page and launching them for a period of time, then see which of your landing pages performed better. Whilst you could do one at a time, it’s a much better use of your time and efforts to use software that will allow you to split test and then track your results.
The main components of an A/B test are variants, or the two versions of the page, the champion (the original page), and the challenger (the modified page) to test against the original.
How to A/B test
The most important tip when split testing your landing pages is to make very small adjustments with each experiment. For example, you don’t want to split test your headline and your image at the same time because you won’t know which of the elements altered the results. Instead, stick to testing one element at a time. The “winner” becomes your champion, then you can create a new challenger to test the next element. Repeat the cycle until you’ve reached a realistic conversion rate that you’re happy with.
What should you test?
You can test virtually anything on your landing pages. Whilst that is possible, you’ll want to limit your test to a few of the biggest elements of your landing page, such as:
- Headline copy
- Image
- Call to action (CTA) colour
- Click triggers
- Copy on the page
- Lead form length and fields
These tests will have the biggest impact on your conversion rates. Try starting with the simplest change first, like a headline or CTA colour, then work your way to the bigger differences, such as page copy.
Also Read: What are buyer personas? And should you have them?
Tips to make the best landing pages:
Researching is a crucial part of the process, but it really is just the beginning. When you create a landing page, it’s important to follow a pattern for success.
- Grab the readers’ attention with a snappy, clever headline. This is the first thing users will see when they land on the page, so make sure it is worth reading.
- What is your offer? We have the attention spans of gnats these days, you’ve got to make your offer clear and worthwhile to communicate the value of your landing page from the get-go to encourage higher conversion rates.
- The form on your landing page is responsible for gathering the personal details you need. The first step is to collate data such as a name and email address. As users get further into the sales process, you can create a more lengthy form asking for more information at the decision stage to discover how much you need to sell or promote.
- Include relevant and attractive imagery to engage users further. A page without imagery can be difficult and boring to read. You don’t want them to leave!
- Well, the proof is in the pudding. Add relevant testimonials that tell your potential customers how great your services or products are.
- Have only one call to action – landing pages with more than one CTA can generate 10% extra sales, whilst sticking to one effective call to action could see you an extra 13.5%.
Not sure how to use landing pages?
Not sure where to start with creating your landing pages or how they fit into your digital marketing strategy? Why not drop us a message? Here at Suki Marketing, we don’t believe in creating content to ‘tick the box,’ we create content that connects with your audience using the detailed history you’ll have of your business. So, why not contact us to see how we can help?
