Landing pages can be an incredibly crucial part of a digital marketing strategy.
In digital marketing, a landing page is a standalone web page, created specifically for a marketing or advertising campaign. It’s where a visitor “lands” after they click on a link in an email, or ads from Google, Bing, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or similar places on the web.
Any time we start a digital campaign, we like to refer back to what we call an ‘ecosystem’. In this ecosystem, we treat everything we’re doing as a piece of the puzzle. Without any one of these pieces, the system is incomplete and is not as effective.
We personally use landing pages for PPC campaigns, promotion information, and everything in between.
One thing that is certain is we’ll be creating a landing page for whatever it is that we’re promoting.
Note – We will sometimes use product or service pages if they are built correctly.
Our goal with creating landing pages is to help accomplish telling a cohesive story, the first time someone sees your message, till the time they become a customer. By making sure this story is the same from A to Z, it helps increase the conversion rate and effectiveness of whatever campaign you’re running.
It does this by building trust and familiarity. For example, when someone sees an ad we’re running for learning how to build a landing page on Facebook, clicks this ad, but then gets to our contact page on our website, they’ll certainly question if they got to where they were supposed to end up and why there isn’t any information about landing pages on this page.
If instead we were to build a specific landing page, with only information around how to build a landing page the right way, and they were to get to this landing page instead, the user experience is going to be much better.
Makes sense, right? Of course, it does! But what things need to be on a landing page in order for it to actually help with conversion rates?
Relevant Content
This one seems like a no-brainer, but it can definitely be overlooked! Making sure the content (text, images, videos, etc.) on the landing page you’re creating and driving traffic to is similar to and tells the same story as the source (PPC Ad, Email Newsletter, etc.) driving the traffic is crucial and probably the most important parts of a landing page.
Not only should the content be relevant, but it should be easy to scan and get the information needed in a short amount of time. If people have to work too hard to get the information they need, they’ll most likely leave and try a new search.
Common Hesitations
This is the perfect time to debunk common hesitation or answer common questions that you get about that service, product, or whatever it is that you’re landing page is promoting.
Think about it this way – if by the time someone calls you they already have their biggest fear of working with you or buying from you answered, that sale is going to be way easier since you’ve already started to build that trust.
Talk to your salespeople, customer service reps, or whoever talks to your customers often to learn what these common hesitations are and if you don’t already have solid answers for them, you will now. Win-win!
Social Proof
Another way to help make your sales process as frictionless as possible. If you have specific reviews for what your landing page is about, bonus! If not, general reviews will still work great here.
People love seeing and trust online reviews just as much as word-of-mouth recommendations in this more than ever digital world.
If you don’t have any reviews for whatever it is your landing page is about, this would be a perfect time to try and reach out to happy customers to get some!
A Goal
What is the goal of getting someone to your landing page? Maybe you’re trading an email for an eBook, trying to sell a product, or you’re simply trying to build trust by providing valuable information.
Whatever it is, make sure you have an end goal for your landing pages and that goal is easy to find and complete.
No Exit Points
A common error we see with landing pages is the amount of ‘exit points’ there are on them. We almost always try and remove all clickable links on a landing page so that there is no way a landing page visitor will be able to navigate away.
If the goal of your landing page is to have someone sign up for an event, best practice would be to only give them the option to either sign up for an event or maybe reach out to you for more information. Even removing your website navigation and header can potentially make a huge difference.
Mobile-Optimized
Something you definitely will want to make sure of is that your landing page is mobile optimized. If you’re going to be running any type of ads from social media, chances are that these landing page visitors will be on mobile since most social media traffic is on mobile.
Depending on your industry, a lot of the time we will start with a mobile-first mentality when creating landing pages. Check out your site analytics and figure out how most people are viewing your site – mobile or desktop.
Creating High Converting Landing Pages
At the end of the day, what works for you might be completely different than what works for somebody else! This is why it is so important to make sure to continually test and try new things on landing pages and your normal web pages too!
Try different copy, different colors of buttons, images vs video, page layout, and anything else you can think of!