Your website is getting a lot of traffic, but you’re not managing to convert any of that traffic into leads. Your problem might be that you’re not utilizing your landing pages properly. A landing page is a crucial element of your lead generation and much more likely to lead to conversions than other pages on your website.
What is a landing page?
The basic definition of a landing page is any page on your website that exists solely to capture customer information through the use of forms. It’s the page that a lot of your marketing will lead to, such as your email campaigns.
The mistake a lot of companies make is thinking that your homepage should be your landing page. Unfortunately, this shouldn’t be the case.
Think of your home page as a tourist information kiosk. It is there to direct visitors to the most relevant section of your website that interests them.
Your landing page is the destination, not just from your home page but from google searches and advertising campaigns. It is there to convert and to get your customer further down the sales funnel. You want your customer to give you information about themselves that you can use to do this, and in return you offer them something of value based on their interest such as a free e-book or free consultation.
Why should you use a landing page?
1. To generate more leads
First and foremost, your landing page is there to get more leads for your marketing and sales teams to qualify. You need somewhere to send the traffic you gain from your marketing efforts, and a good landing page is that place. As I mentioned earlier, sending them to your homepage can be too distracting as there are too many opportunities to deviate away from the form you want them to fill in. Having one specific page with a specific call-to-action will make it much more likely that they will give you their information, especially if you’re offering them something valuable (which you will be).
2. To collect information
Once you start generating more leads you need to nurture them until you think they’re ready to buy. Personalization is a key to this nurturing and a key to your marketing strategy. And how do you get the information you can use to personalize? Through landing page forms, of course. Any time a lead clicks on a link in an email or on social media, you should be bringing them to a landing page where you are able to collect information on that lead. The more information you get, the easier it will be to push them through the sales funnel.
Information is also useful in figuring out how likely a new lead is to qualify. You should have an Ideal Customer Profile that you can follow to see what demographics and behaviours you’re looking for in a customer, and the more information you have on a lead, the more you have to compare them to the ICP, and the quicker you can qualify them.
3. To see how well your marketing strategy works
Your marketing strives on data to let you know how whether it’s working or not, and landing pages are the perfect way to gain some of this data. Tracking and analyzing data from your landing pages gives you vital information about how many leads are converting, what kind of resources are more likely to make them convert, and so much more. All of this can help you improve your marketing to meet the needs of your customers.
What makes a great landing page?
Now that I’ve convinced you of the importance of a landing page let’s look at what you can do to make yours work for you.
1. A good headline
Your headline is the first thing that the customer will see when they get to your landing page, so you need it to grab their attention and make them want to stay on the page. You want to sum up the offer you’re giving in a clear and concise way, so a shorter headline is probably best, and it should stand out visually from the rest of the text.
You also want to make sure that it matches the CTA that the customer clicked on to get to the page. If you offered a free demo but then there’s a catch when they get to the landing page, they won’t be happy. So make sure you’re giving what you promised or they won’t fill out your form.
2. Clear and engaging copy
The actual text of the landing page should follow on from the headline, and explain what you are offering in a clear and simple way, while also engaging the customer enough to make them want to give their details in exchange.
Like the headline, it needs to be relatively short as your customer won’t want to slog through too much text to get to the offer. Listing the benefits of your product/offer in bullet points is a good way to make it look easier to read, as well as to show of the value that you can give your customer.
3. Hidden navigation
As I’ve said already, you want as little distraction from your form as possible. Hiding your navigation bar completely, or even just toning it down is a good way of stopping our customer from clicking on other links that will take them away from the page. I know that under normal circumstances you would want someone to stay on your website and look at other pages, but for this purpose you need them to stay on the landing page. Otherwise all you’ll have is a few clicks on your website instead of information on a lead.
4. The use of images
Or just one main, relevant image to capture the customer’s attention. We process images much faster than text and a customer is more likely to take in what you’re telling them if there is an image involved.
Videos have a similar effect, and they are useful in that they can show exactly how a product works and what it will look like. In fact, studies have shown that including video on a page can improve conversions by up to 80%.
Of course, this imagery is what BrandPitch does. Try it and increase your conversion in 24 hours.
A short form
The form itself is one of the most important parts of your landing page. You want to make sure that you keep the form short and only ask for necessary information. Your customer won’t want to spend too much of their time giving you every detail about themselves, so the shorter the form, the more likely they are to fill it out.
Tools like Pardot from Salesforce and similar have a feature called progressive fields. It means they only ask for each bit of information once. If a visitor comes back to the site it will present a shorter form of email only to reduce friction for visitors.
It’s also a good idea to have a ‘Download Now’ or ‘Get your free e-book now’ button rather than a ‘submit’ button at the end of the form, as it makes it sound less like they’re giving away their information and more like they’re gaining something valuable. Make this button stand out so that they’re drawn to it.
If you’re finding that you’re not generating the conversion rates you would have hoped for, maybe you should take a bit of time to optimize your landing pages.
