Landing pages are essential in digital marketing. With all the digital noise and a barrage of online advertising, landing pages help to quieten the customer journey, and hold attention in order to encourage your customers to complete an action. Different to a standard webpage on your website, a landing page has a single clear purpose with few distractions. Landing pages are particularly effective when you have invested in Google Ads and other PPC campaigns. A great landing page is the ultimate call to action, but of course, the best landing pages are a product of well-considered design, copywriting and strategy – certainly a powerful trio in marketing. Oh, and your offer needs to be good too!
Why are Landing Pages Important for Today’s Buyers?
As consumers, we have all embraced the digital age with both hands firmly on our keyboards. Your website is an integral part of the buyer’s research phase, but there’s a multitude of “actions” that users can perform. There are buttons everywhere! Pages lead to other pages, there’s company information, product and service information, phone numbers, contact forms, testimonials, case studies, videos...so much to do and see.
A landing page is very conversion-specific, crafted to make it as easy as possible for a customer to come to a decision in their digital journey with you and do precisely what you want them to do. We have our landing page development strategy down to a fine art. Consult, create, convert – although it’s a little more involved than that...so let’s dive in.
Strategy and Purpose
Seeing as your landing page has one job to do, the first critical step is to clearly define that job. What is the action you want people to perform? To do this well, you need to consider:
- At what stage is the customer in their buying journey?
- What is it that the customer needs or wants?
- Where did the customer come from in order to land on the page?
These considerations will help you decide where your pages are advertised, how many different variations you might need and what the call to action is. Some landing pages need to offer more information than others, and we need to be careful not to confuse our prospects.
- If a customer arrives on your page from a PPC Google search for keywords, it might be their first interaction with your company or product. They may need more information.
- Maybe your customer has already been tracked as a visitor of your website and product pages. If they have arrived on your landing page due to a remarketing or retargeting campaign, you can assume they already know all about you. In this case, they might just need a swift reminder and final special offer to guide them over the line.
- Perhaps your user came from a Facebook advertising campaign targeted to a particular demographic and geographic area. They might land on a page designed and worded specifically for that demographic and area. See how this landing page has a clear job to get you, the customer, to ‘enrol today’?
Not only that, this landing page has a sticky feature where the ‘enrol today’ button and notification on the top left-hand side stays on the page as you scroll down to look at more information.
- Those who have landed via an email newsletter campaign are presumably already your customers to one extent or another. This is your brand community, you should know exactly what they’re looking for – speak to them! Here’s a great example of Maurie And Eve’s email marketing strategy where it offers customers a discount! This retargeting strategy shows the latest products on offer whilst also drawing a customer back in with an incentive to purchase again.
Different Types of Landing Pages
There are essentially four primary landing page types:
1. Splash Pag
Typically a splash page is required when you need certain information from a customer in order to interact with your site. They’re usually in the form of a popup before a user goes through to your website. This might be where the user confirms their language choice or confirms they’re 18+ if your website is promoting alcohol. A splash page can also be used to advise site visitors of a particular sitewide discount on your website during their session. They are very simple in design and copywriting, with a clear and concise message.
2. Squeeze page
The purpose of a squeeze page is to offer a customer something of value to them in exchange for their email address. Generally small and light on content, they’re best used at the top of the Marketing funnel. Building a good subscriber base is still one of the most powerful marketing strategies there is. A squeeze page might offer a free ebook download or guide, it could offer a discount code to be sent via email. A squeeze page is essentially an email drive where you ask people to become subscribers before you give them the item they were interested in. It doesn’t cost the customer anything (except for a really full inbox at times) so it can seem like a fair trade to them, and you have a small gold nugget - the opportunity to promote to them again in the future.
3. Sales Page
This one is a toughy, but when created well, it’s the ultimate converter – from prospect to customer in the least time possible. Persuading people to ‘buy’ is no mean feat. Sales pages can still be short and very targeted, but depending on the complexity of your product and how customers arrived at your page, they often contain a detailed pitch. A sales page should be beautifully optimised for your particular audience segment and offer them exactly what they want.
4. Lead Capture Landing Page
The lead capture page is by far the page most commonly used by marketers. Typically for the middle funnel stage of the buying process. Your offer needs to be very clear and can take the form of an ebook or guide, webinar registration, report, free trial, or product demonstration. The lead capture page will require your prospects to complete a form, so you can escalate the sales process for whatever your ultimate objective is.
Landing Page Design Tips
Design is (almost) everything in terms of ease of navigation and the presentation of your information.
Our advice
- Ensure your critical information and a nice big call to action is above the fold. Use subtle yet effective directional cues to draw attention to your CTA.
- Banner content should contain your CTA and strong imagery or video that clearly demonstrates the value offer.
- Colour scheme and design should be on brand and minimalistic with only the necessary elements.
- All buttons and forms should be consistent with your overall call to action.
- Keep your forms short and sweet. Asking for phone numbers and dates of birth can make prospects run for the digital hills. You can gather more data through tracking, or even via a second-tier information request on your thank you page - although you should always warn the customer of this.
- The design should be ultra-fast loading and perfectly mobile friendly and responsive. According to Statistica, in 2018, 52.2% of all global web traffic originated from mobile devices.
Great Copywriting for Landing Pages
A sales landing page is the copywriter’s ultimate test. The sales landing page is to blame for 21st Century writer’s block, but it’s a mission we love to accomplish. Again, depending on the complexity of your product or service (and the price), your persuasive copy might be short and sweet, or information-rich...either way it needs to be clear, concise and valuable to your customer.
- Banner copy headline must be irresistible. Simply unscrollable. The reader must be able to understand the purpose of the page, it’s relevance and what they should do within seconds. In a few snappy words, you should address the buyers needs, demonstrate value, explain what they’ll get, and show them how to get it.
- Don’t bog customers down with info and make them scroll through long blocks of text. Bullet points and headlines are a buyer’s best friend. You should outline the benefits of core features to the customer in a way that is quick and easy to scan through and read.
- Sales pages, particularly through PPC campaigns should include relevant keywords naturally sprinkled throughout the copy. This is a delicate and deliberate process. Remember, ultimately you’re selling to buyers, not search engines – but Google has to know what you’re all about.
- Address the reasons your customers have landed on your page – they’re right to be there and be interested in your offering. Their life/work/day will be better for pushing that big shiny button.
- Avoid too much company information – this page is about your customer and their needs. Approach your copy more from the perspective of voicing company beliefs, what you stand for, particularly those that will resonate with your customer. This could be the environment and energy efficiency, or a faster and easier way to do something, or a happier healthier balanced lifestyle. Customers care about what they care about and what you can do for them.
- Address any doubts that may be holding the customer back. What are their common objections? This can be done in the form of FAQ’s or a simple line. For example, “No Lock-in Contracts.”
What tools can you leverage alongside your amazing design and copy?
- Social proof. People want to hear from their peers. Include reviews, testimonials or a short case study video, but don’t overdo it! Logos from reputable brands that have invested in your product or service are attractive to buyers in the B2B space – they don’t like the idea of their competitors having (and loving) something that they don’t.
- Special limited time offer or discount. The fear of missing out can be very persuasive. Countdown timers are responsible for many click through and impulse purchases!
- Videos have shown to improve conversion rates by 80%. They say that the play button is the most compelling call to action on the web. This is a great way to demonstrate your product or service and engage with your customers; however, always make sure your videography is top quality, relevant, and not too long. And never be boring!
- Free stuff! We all fall for a freebie. Can you offer a free demo or trial? Is there a value-add that can be included? Buy one get one FREE?
- Once a customer has followed through on your CTA, you must thank them...so use your thank you page to your advantage! When someone completes an action, they’re in the moment, and are more likely to be happy to engage further – you could do a special offer or discount here or encourage social media sharing to help people celebrate their purchase!
- A clickable phone number. With almost 50% of traffic coming from mobiles you’d be crazy not to allow people to skip the complicated landing page funnel and get straight to your trained customer service and sales team. Personalisation and TestingSo you’ve laboured through all of the above...but you’re not done yet. Testing your landing pages is probably equally as important as having them in the first place. If you’re not leveraging personalisation and testing, you could really be missing out on the best and highest conversion rates possible and the absolute BEST possible return on your investment. Dynamic landing pages include dynamic (changing) keywords and design elements that show different landing page variations to different people, based on how they interact with your ads. Amazing huh. Every landing page should endure vigorous, relentless testing. Perform A/B split tests between two versions (at least) and see what performs best! But always test one element at a time – if you try out a different form, headline and button colour on one page...how can you know which element/s make the positive or negative difference?
What are some of the elements you can A/B test?
- Headlines and copywriting
- Order of design elements and sections
- Form fields and form design
- Button CTA wording, design and colour
- Visual cues such as arrows or a person pointing at an image or form
- Imagery – the age/gender of people, the position of videos, and product photos.
- Social proof testimonials – different styles of presentation, with or without photos, logos or five gold stars.
We take our landing pages seriously
Your landing page plays a bit part in your quality score for a PPC campaign. This can determine whether or not you win the bid for nominated keywords over your competitors. For a good landing page quality score, a fast, responsive, beautiful and relevant page with valuable content and a clear CTA is a must. Always track results and use the data to tweak and fine-tune your landing pages to maximise success. Give the people what they want; when all the right elements are in place, a top-quality user experience always inspires action.
Landed yourself in a little trouble with your marketing strategy? We at Anchor Digital can help. Anchor provides a full range of digital marketing services, from SEO, to web design, to PPC campaigns, all to help you reach your business goals. Contact us today, or read more about our services.
