A Landing Page is simply a web page specifically designed to convert visitors into leads. "Is it that important?" you ask! Well lets say building a website without landing pages is somewhat like going on a blind date and not asking your date's name!
You can look at your landing pages as your digital sales reps that work 24/7 helping convert visitors on your site into leads. It isn't that hard to create a landing page as there are numerous templates and guides already available on the web. But it takes a lot of focus and time, to make the landing page into a high performing tool that works wonders for your B2B business. To understand what makes a landing page work, just jot down on a piece of paper the last 3 times you submitted your email address on a site and note what you got in return? Were you satisfied / happy with what you got in return for your email address?
What is a Landing Page?
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. Unlike web pages, which typically have many goals and encourage exploration, landing pages are designed with a single focus or goal, known as a call to action (or CTA).
The CTA could either ask the prospects to fill out a form, subscribe to a weekly newsletter, or even buy the product or service by offering a tangible value in return like a free download or a discount coupon or any other benefit that is of value to the customer.
How is a Landing Page different from a Homepage?
Well, they are not necessarily different. The only difference between them is the objective. The homepage helps a visitor to understand the full breadth and width of what we do as an organisation and encourages an online conversation. A Landing Page is specific to a product / service and has minimal or no navigation to distract the visitor elsewhere. It focuses on a specific need / desire and showcases how our offer meets that need in the best way. It is therefore focused much more on conversion than conversation.
How to build a high performing Landing Page?
Although there’s no secret formula to generate a high-conversion landing page, but if you follow the following 4 simple steps, you could be well on your way to success:
1. Customer Persona
The more time you spend understanding your prospects and customers, the better you will know how to reach them efficiently and what motivates them to take action. For e.g. are they looking for value or price, or are they looking for safety or adventure? Are they male or female? What age group? Your landing page structure, colours, fonts, pictures.... everything, should be designed keeping your customer in mind!
2. Their Needs and Desires
Henry Ford once said, "If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, 'A faster horse!'" People don't know what they want until you show it to them. This was the philosophy of Steve Jobs who built the legendary 'Apple' brand but irrespective if you get your customer insights from your gut or a customer survey.. the point is it is necessary to know exactly what your customers want / need / desire so that your landing page clearly gives them a solution or fulfilment.
3. The Offer
“I'll make him an offer he can't refuse” is one of the best known lines from the Godfather movie, but of course said in a very different context. The point here is that your offer must resonate with your customer's needs and wants. It should be made in a form and fashion that appeals to her aesthetic sense as well as encourage to take action 'here and now'!
4. Coding
To be honest there are so many website and landing page builders out there today that you don't need to write a single piece of code, to build a landing page or even a full website. However it is important for you to know how to build a page with proper structure, mobile friendly, with on page SEO and split A/B testing. Also you need to integrate social media insights, google tags, analytics and conversion tracking. If not, it is better to seek professional help rather than spending time and money experimenting, especially if you are the business owner.
Essentials of high performing Landing Pages
1. Compelling above-the-fold content
Above-the-fold content refers to all the visible content when your page is loaded and displayed to your prospects. According to web usability guru Jakob Nielsen in his blog, 57% of time by website visitors is spent ‘Above The Fold’. So it is important that we include all the important elements on the above-the-fold screen in order to improve our conversion rates.
2. Headlines that make an impact!
Copywriting is like a call-to-action, but on a much larger scale. Copywriters are trying to get people to feel, think, or respond and a well written headline can make or break the conversion rate or even business. Just look at magazines and newspapers or google for great headlines. I don't suggest you copy from others but do find inspiration. And just in case you can't and go for professional help, remember your digital marketing agency needs to be creative et al just like in the good old days and not just spewing jargon like CPM, CPC, ROAS and stuff that you can't understand. Ask your creative team / agency how they plan to pique the interest of your customers using excellent headlines and sales copy!
3. The colour psychology
Colours and layout are key factors of your landing page that make a lasting impression on your prospects’ mindset. A thorough understanding of colour psychology goes a long way in designing your landing page as well as all other marketing collateral, website and social media posts, banners etc. The colours you choose should resonate with your brand while providing aesthetics visuals to engage the prospects. Here’s an illustration of colour psychology, showcasing the meaning of each colour.
4. Attractive & Relevant Images
visual appeal and aesthetics have become a necessary part of any kind of online marketing. Anything that is not so, leads to mistrust and severely harms your conversion rates. It is not necessary for your images or creatives to be complex or artistic. Very often a minimalist and no nonsense image does the trick better than a complicated one.
5. Prominent CTA button
A prominent CTA is elementary to boost conversion rates. There is only one major change in the image here. Variant 1 has the same colour as the background, while on the other one, the CTA has a contrasting blue colour. This simple change in colour can boost conversion from 10 - 15%.
6. Social Proofing: Trust Badges and Logos
Creating trust and confidence is the decisive factor in boosting conversion rate. When you incorporate awards, badges, and logos of your well-renowned clients, it will build trust into prospects’ minds. Most of the time, prospects only see your awards and famous clients’ logos to decide on doing business with your brand. Moreover, you can also incorporate testimonials and customer reviews on your landing page. It’s one of the best marketing strategies as prospects are inclined to believe in happy customers instead of sales copy. 88% of consumers are reported to trust online reviews as much as their friends’ recommendations and 72% of consumers reported they trust brands that have positive reviews. These stats are sufficient to understand the sanctity of incorporating social proof into your landing page.
7. The Landing Page Form
Since this is the primary tool of interaction with your prospects, it is obvious that a well thought through form will result in better conversions. One of the best ways to optimise a landing page form, is to include as few form fields as possible and limit it to one or two fields if possible, to get the most results.
8. Incorporate Live Chat Option
Despite your best efforts and deep thinking, there may still be a prospect who isn't sure and wants to ask a question. Exactly for this, you can leverage live chat on your landing page so that your prospects can easily clarify their queries and confusion promptly by chatting with your brand’s sales representative. It also gives you an opportunity to push sales directly when you get in contact with a potential lead.
To summarise
When you build or optimise your landing pages leveraging these tips, your conversion rate will become much higher than your competitors. If you are a B2B business and focus more on running your business than on marketing, you can always get professional help to efficiently plan and execute your marketing strategy and give you in depth reporting and insights. End of the day it is the quality of leads, conversions, tracking and revenue that are the most important parameters you want to measure, whether you do it yourself or through an agency.
Please feel free to contact us in case you need the best resources for B2B marketing at a national or international level, for domestic sales or exports.
Comments