The landing page has been around for a long time. Sometimes called campaign or sales pages they are often overlooked as a marketing tactic. Proven very effective, it’s not clear why they are not used more often. Here I’ll describe only the basics of what goes into a great landing page.
What Is A Landing Page?
You may say, “I have a web site that explains everything about my company. Why do I need a landing page for?”. If your web site represents all aspects of your business, consider the landing page your top sales person. A landing page is a stand alone web page with a single purpose – to get your customer to take a specific action. This may include getting them to become a member to your group, sign up to an event, download a whitepaper, try a new product or service. For this to work the landing page must engage your customer and walk them through the entire sales cycle all on one page. This is a lot for a single page to do. So it is critical that it be concise in its offering. Provide enough benefits and value to the customer. And be clear about what you are asking the reader to do.
Landing pages do not generally attract repeat visitors. So the percentage of first time visitors are usually much higher than any area of your web site. Also visitors who visit a landing page do not stay very long. So it is very important that your reader isn’t hear to hang out to get to business quickly. That being said to measure the effectiveness of a landing page you only need to focus on how many visitors completed the call to action (CTA). Well designed pages can see returns of 10-100% engagement! Which is great from your top sales person!
So what goes into making an effective landing page? There are many design and content considerations to make an effective landing page work for you. Below I’ll discuss the 3 most important ingredients.
Start With A Clear Goal
For any marketing strategy to work there must be a clear and achievable goal. It’s no different for landing pages. Until you have a clearly articulated goal then you can determine what the right CTA should be. If your goal isn’t clear, you will confuse your reader as to what it is you want them to do. Here are some examples of goals for your landing page:
- Generate sales leads: You want to collect information on your visitors so you can include them into your sales process.
- Sell a new product: You want to get people to try your new product or service.
- Create brand awareness: You are either a new company or wish to expand the awareness of your business.
Have A Great Offer
You have a goal. Now you have to decide what’s in it for your customer? Your landing page must have a clear and concise offer to help achieve your goal. Your value proposition must also anticipate what your customer is going to want to know before they make a decision. The offer must do the following:
- Meet the expectations of your customer when they come to see your page. There is nothing worse than a disappointed customer to ruin your plan.
- Make an offer they can’t refuse. That’s right. The offer must be intriguing for them to take the time or spend the money on you. An offer could include a date with the president, a trial offer, a special discount or a valued whitepaper.
- Explain the benefits. In simple and concise language explain the value behind your offer.
- Be credible and trustworthy. Don’t offer something to good to be true or that you can’t deliver.
- Answer as many questions as possible. You don’t want them to leave this page with more questions than answers. Anticipate what a customer would ask and provide it on this page.
Close The Deal
This is the most important ingredient. You have taken the time to specify your goals and articulate that into a win-win offer. You have an engaged and willing customer. What to do now? An effective landing page must have a simple and useful application to complete the sales cycle. This could a simple email form to capture basic information or a link to credit card application like PayPal. Whatever it is there are two things you must ensure:
- The information you are asking for is relevant and reasonable to close the deal. Landing page visitors are not usually browsers. So respect their time and privacy. So do not ask for information that is not necessary for the offer. Shorter forms (3-6 fields) usually sees the best response.
- Make sure the form or application you are using works in popular browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. There is nothing worse than a broken form to ruin a sale. Remember you only have one chance to impress a visitor. So it’s now or never.
Of course there is much more to designing great landing pages. I may cover other aspects in upcoming posts. But this will definitely get you started.
