If you are not familiar with landing pages, a landing page is a page on your website that people land on after clicking on what we call a call-to-action.
Most businesses do not use landing pages but they are a highly effective way to turn anonymous visitors that come to your website into known leads and are key components to any inbound marketing strategy.
If your business is not getting the leads it deserves through its website and you would like to learn more about how landing pages can help you generate more leads and sales then read on.
The beauty of landing pages is that they are laser focused to one particular topic or service and are highly relevant. According to Interactive Marketing Inc, by creating landing pages that are relevant and focused you can increase conversion by 55%.
But before we talk about how you can best leverage landing pages to increase leads, we first must talk about calls-to-actions.
Calls-to actions: The taster for what’s to come.
Think of calls to actions as a little advert that entices your website visitors to a page where they can download really helpful information that’s relevant to what they are currently reading or searching for.
See the picture below that shows the relationship between content, calls-to-actions and landing pages.
Once a user clicks on the call-to action it is now the landing page’s job to convert them into known leads. Kind of like a virtual sales person.
How can landing pages help generate leads?
Landing pages are excellent at generating leads because by offering your potential customers something useful they are more likely to give up some of their identifiable information.
The key is you have to make sure the content you offer is of high quality. Create great content that people would pay for and give it to them for free.
Most of your visitors are not ready to buy so having a softer approach and offering them information that they find helpful will result in much higher conversion rates.
The beauty of landing pages is once they fill in their information they can then be nurtured into a customer with more helpful information via email, telephone and in person.
How to get started with landing pages right now!
It is a lot easier to get started with landing pages than you think. I will go over what you need and some best practices so you can get started today.
Depending on your knowledge you may need a web designers help. If you do need help why not download our extensive guide on landing pages and print it off and give it to your designer.
In a nutshell your landing pages need to have the following elements:
1. Heading: It all starts with a great title. Give your landing page a title that will make the reader want to fill in your form. A good practice here is to basically state what you are giving them. For example ‘FREE GUIDE: 10 Signs your Mother is an Alien’. This explains exactly what you can expect by downloading the guide as the headline is the first thing they will see.
2. Sub Heading: It is also good practice to add a sub heading,but this heading has a different purpose than the main heading as it describes the benefits so people know how it will help them. This may be the only content they read so be concise and demonstrate the benefits.
3. Image: Images are great at quickly demonstrating information people can understand. An image of a physical book can convey substance so people feel they are getting something of worth.
4. Form: This is a very important element, without a form people cannot give you their information. The information you ask will depend on who your buyer personas are (more on buyer personas here) and the amount of form fields you include. We would say stick to 3-7 and ask for information that helps qualify your leads.
5. CTA: Create a call-to-action for the title of your form. A great tip here is to make it the same as your submit button, this really helps lift conversion rates.
6. Content: Keep this short and snappy to only a few sentences and focus on the benefits and how it will help the reader. Use bullet points to highlight the main benefits.
7. Navigation: You will see in the example above that we have removed the navigation as this is just a distraction. We do not want people leaving the page we want them to focus on the offer.
Conclusion
By creating great offers and landing pages you can quickly see an increase in leads and if you follow the best practices above there is no reason why you cannot see 40-50% conversion rates on your landing pages.
Get your designer to create a landing page template, this way you will be able to create more without their intervention. Better still use HubSpot marketing software that lets you create landing pages with no technical knowledge. This is how we create ours.
Now it’s your turn
Have any questions about landing pages we didn’t cover? Then let us know in the comments below.