There is one purpose and one purpose only for having a landing page – and that’s capturing the contact information of the qualified prospective customer.
Now, what follows assumes that the individual arrives on this landing page with proper expectations. For example, they say your PPC ad offering a free checklist for doing X and they want to learn more about X before they give you their contact information.
1 – Great Writing
No matter how they landed on your landing page, everything starts over fresh. This means you need to write a compelling, persuasive headline and subhead to get them back on your side.
For example, let’s say you are targeting consumers and you sell clothing.
Alright, it might not win a Pulitzer, but it is persuasive. Notice the buttons, who in their right mind clicks “I don’t want 10% off”?
2 – Clear, No Clutter.
And speaking of clear…limit the distractions you put before your audience members. Too much of anything can cause people to become overwhelmed which leads to second-guessing which leads to pushing off a decision.
For example, what’s your reaction to this landing page?
Where does your eye go when you first look at the ad? Where do you start? What are you supposed to do? How many messages and offers are on this one page….
Attention Ration: “the ratio of links on a landing page to the number of campaign conversion goals. In an optimized campaign, your attention ratio should be 1:1. Because every campaign has one goal, every corresponding landing page should have only one call to action—one place to click.”[i]
Notice the difference between the previous landing page?
One place to click and that’s right under the one form that clearly states is required to be completed and submitted to earn your free consultation.
What else do you notice?
Short, easy to scan bulleted copy – all focused on being rated/ranked highly by others.
Downside – “Rated #1” does appear to be a headline and only 1 of the 4 bullet points underneath are #1 rankings.
3 – Forms
Ask for what you will use immediately – and keep it short.
The “Request Info” form you see to the right is a fantastic example of what not to do to someone that is contacting you for the first time.
The name of the institution will not be divulged but this interrogation includes questions that are also asked and answered on the application form – and are not relevant to pre-qualifying the prospect.
In higher education, we recommend:
- First Name
- Last Name
- Program of Interest
- Desired start date
If the institution asks for “Phone”, we tell them [a] make it “Cell Phone” and [b] ask them to opt-in for text messages. Leaving it generic, “Phone” means you could get home, work, or cell…making that information rather useless.
If the institution serves the military, we recommend adding a relevant question to the 5 above and then using that to redirect them to other relevant questions. (A multi-step form is helpful here.)
For businesses outside of education, we recommend:
You can ask for First and Last Name but make it optional rather than required.
Remember this is the first step in your life together with this prospective client so leave a little something for later conversations.
4 – Motivate, Ease
When you hear people discussing how to make the landing page more effective, you typically hear people discussing layout.
“Put the form here and the button there…”
That’s an important conversation that comes in second to a discussion about motivation.
“Are we offering them enough value to perform the tasks that we are requesting?”
That question should then be followed by this one.
“Are we clearly conveying to them the urgency of taking action now?”
Think about that for a moment.
“Act now and save $”
“Offer ends today!”
“Only # left”
“Don’t miss this incredible value”
“Act now and receive an additional…”
Urgency. A little fear. Combine them with a strong offer that is valuable and relevant to the prospect – you will see your landing page conversions increase.
If you want to get into the science behind this, check out this behavior model.
5 – Social Proof
Earlier, under “1 – Clear, No Clutter”, you might have noticed on the 180fusion landing page, the logos of what were most likely clients and businesses that had recognized them with awards.
It’s great that you can say wonderful things about yourself. It’s significantly more valuable to your audience to have others do it as well.
6 – Listen
If you can, use live chat functionality for the first few weeks your new landing page is in the market and live. Listen to what questions and objections the visitors to that landing page have and then use that to modify and improve the landing page.
7 – Segmentation
I saved this one for last because it does require some expertise that is not as common in marketing departments as the previous factors.
Your most likely targeting several segments or personas rather than one large homogeneous audience – so, when you can, create landing pages for those segments.
Hopefully, you can target your ads with the proper landing page at the start of your campaign but there are some that don’t do this and wind up with different segments heading towards the same landing page.
For those people, the question is how do you get the members of the segments/personas to the proper landing page?
Location/geo-based personalization can be accomplished with either browser redirections or content swapping based on IP address.
Other factors such as industry or budget or product/service can be accomplished by using a question in the web form that redirects them to the proper landing page.
What did I miss?
If I missed anything, please be sure to mention it in the Comments section.
And out of all mentioned above, “4- Motivate, Ease” is the one that can deliver the greatest returns. You might make some progress changing the button color or moving the form from the lower right to the upper left part of the page – but if your offer is not motivating and you fail to create any sense of urgency, many will continue to walk away.
[i] Downloaded from https://www.carnegiecomm.com/blog/what-is-attention-ratio-landing-pages-101/ on May 25, 2018
