The primary goal of marketing is conversions. Every website owner wants to turn visitors into business in some way or form. PTs want their website visitors to become regular clients, gym owners want their visitors to attend their establishment and become fully fledged members.
However, in order to start converting visitors into leads, you need to create landing pages that generate leads.
Lead-gen landing pages play a massive part in online marketing – so big in fact we use them on all of our campaigns turning our prospects into leads.
But don’t be fooled. You cannot just mock up any old page and expect to just sit back and watch the leads come rolling in. It doesn’t work like that.
Creating a landing page that converts is an art form, which can be tough to master. But in this article we will teach you how to do just that; how to become an architect in building successful lead-gen landing pages.
How Landing Pages Work
The main reason people are put off using landing pages is that they don’t fully understand how they work. They also mistake the landing page’s true goal. Let’s get this straight, a landing page isn’t to make visitors purchase immediately as this is extremely rare – in fact, according to our friends at Inbound Marketing, a whopping 96% of first-time visitors to your site aren’t ready to buy yet.
The ultimate goal of a landing page is in-fact to convince your visitors to provide you with their contact information in exchange for a high-value offer.
Once visitors have provided you with their details, you can then email them and nurture them down your sales funnel by continuing to market to them via email, phone calls, or social media, influencing them to buy from you. The more landing pages you have, the more opportunities to generate leads and fill your funnel.
Key Elements of a Successful Lead-Generating Landing Page
No matter what your business is or what you’re looking to promote in your marketing campaign, all lead-generating landing pages, that capture user data, will have the same key elements, which are essential for success…
The Unique Selling Point
First and foremost, when you begin a marketing campaign you need to pinpoint exactly what is it about your product or service that sets it apart from the competition. This then needs to be expressed in a succinct way on your landing page. Try to break down your offering to its most basic level, to describe the specific benefit your customers will get by choosing your product or service.
The primary headline:
The landing page headline is the first thing most people will see, therefore, it’s crucial that it describes clearly what a visitor will get from the page. This needs to be strong enough to keep visitors on the page, rather than losing concentration and clicking off – you need to show them instantly that they’re in the right place.
Here is a perfect example:
Sub header
It can be quite tough squeezing everything into your primary headline, which sometimes means you will need a secondary headline. This headline is smaller in size and reiterates your primary headline while adding further clarification.
Marketers most commonly use a sub header to allow the primary headline to be as short as possible while still providing that epic punch. Your headline can only say so much if you want to keep it succinct and easily digestible. The best way to keep your headline short and sweet is to add a supporting headline, like the example below:
The reinforcement statement
When browsing the Internet, people usually scan pages when they are reading. This makes it critical that any titles you use – not only in your landing page but throughout your website too – should stand out to a reader and be easy and clear to read when scanning.
Using a reinforcement statement can benefit this. This is basically a second headline, which sits about halfway down your landing page. When visitors scan your page and scroll down, they will be met by your reinforcement statement that will provide them with further reason on why to stay on your page and take the action you wish from them.
The Hero Shot
How does that saying go again – ‘A picture paints a thousand words?’ Damn right it does and this is extremely true when it comes to landing pages.
The hero shot (main image at the top of your page) visually represents your offer allowing visitors to gain a better understanding of exactly what it is they’re getting. Let’s say, for instance, you’re a CrossFit trainer looking to get people to sign up for a free taster session. In your hero shot you should show people training using popular CrossFit workouts.
The idea here is to get your customers to empathize and place themselves in the scenario of your image. If you’re offering a ‘Get toned in 30 days’ eBook, for example, then show off a toned body in the hero shot for visitors to visualise what their body could look like after downloading this eBook and using it.
Nailing your hero shot is a big step in getting your visitors to convert.
The Benefits Section
By crafting an effective headline you gained the attention of your customer, and now you have to provide a little more detail, to the offer, to answer any questions they may have. This is where you use the benefits section.
The benefits section is basically a more detailed description of your main headlines on what you’re offering the reader.
A great way of creating the perfect benefits section is by focussing on answering one simple question – “What will this do for the reader?” This will help you to write clear-cut content that speaks directly to your customer and answers their questions.
You need to strike a balance here, as it’s essential not to have your landing page bogged down with too much text. It will look cluttered and visitors will ultimately get bored and leave without converting. Write a brief one-paragraph summary and 3-5 bullet points for clarity.
Breaking up your benefits section into bullet points is ideal to increase readership of your landing page. They prove a way for you to enhance text and, most importantly, gives you a chance to highlight the benefits of your product or service with quick snappy lines.
Come back to this section many times and edit the copy to remove any bloated or unnecessary verbiage.
The closing argument
When you come to the final stage of your landing page, you have the opportunity to reinforce your statement one last time. This backs up your main value proposition.
If your page is short and has minimal scroll, then a closing argument isn’t always a requirement as your headline will still be visible.
Your Call to Action
The next essential part of your landing page comes in the form of your CTA – your call to action.
A CTA is an image (usually a button) or line of text that prompts your visitors to take action.
When you’re creating a call-to-action, it’s easy to make the mistake in designing your buttons to fit the design of your overall page. This may look nice and pretty but the main problem is your CTA button doesn’t stand out. Take a look at the examples below…
As you can see, the CTA blends in with the rest of the landing page. This makes it less likely for your visitors to click the call to action as it doesn’t stand out. Remember, the majority of visitors will just scan your page. You need to ensure your CTA grabs their attention when they’re scanning, like the image below…
CTAs may have changed over the years, but the goal hasn’t: Put the right message in front of the right people at the right time. It’s critical that you learn to master you CTAs. And, of course, there’s no better way to learn than to be testing them, which is why you should split test your landing pages.
Split Testing
Split testing or A/B testing, as some call it, is basically an experiment where you test two different versions of a landing page simultaneously.
The beauty of split testing is that you can change up elements in your landing page to see what works and what doesn’t. Some visitors will be directed to ‘version A’ and others will be directed to ‘version B’, allowing you to see which converts best.
Remember to only change one thing per split test page. Let’s say you change multiple things like your headline, your CTA button and your images all at the same time. Your conversion rate then goes down. However, due to the fact that you’ve change three elements at once, you don’t know what led to your falling conversion rate. Testing just one element at a time will give you a more accurate understanding of what works and what doesn’t. This will help you to master the art of landing pages.
Directing People to your landing page
Once your landing page is set up, all your links work and you’re happy with the layout, it’s time to bring in the leads. But how?
Facebook Custom Audience
There are many ways you can direct traffic to your page. One of which is with Website Custom Audience on Facebook. Website Custom Audiences (or WCA as it’s also know) allows you to create Facebook ads that target users who have previously visited your website. Therefore, if you’ve had visitors read your blog but haven’t clicked on your landing page, your created ads will then show up on their newsfeed promoting the offer.
This is a great way to reach a relevant audience that already know about you.
You can also create social media posts adding the link in the copy text and asking your Facebook page fans to check it out and engage.
Email Campaigns
Another great way is creating an email campaign to your list of clients promoting your offer. Both of the above have proven to be very effective when it comes to our own personal campaigns.
Banner Ads
We would also recommend using a banner advert at the bottom of your blogs. For instance, if your campaign is offering people a free Yoga session at your studio, create a number of blog pieces on how beneficial Yoga is for fitness, flexibility and having a toned body. You can then promote your landing page through these blog articles, adding a bottom banner image driving them to click and adding clickable links throughout the article copy.
You will see at the bottom of this post that we have a banner ad directing people to a landing page.
Once you have a substantial amount of traffic coming in to your landing page, the leads will start building up and your funnel will become full.
Final Thought
Landing pages could ultimately change your marketing campaigns forever. With so many variations and with it being so simple to master, you will be kicking yourself that you haven’t used them earlier.
Remember to evaluate your landing pages, and use this article as a checklist for setting up the perfect page. Effective landing pages are what will turn your website into a lead generating machine. And don’t forget to test your landing pages to see which ones work best for you!
If you’re looking for an easy landing page builder to use, we would recommend Instapage. Instapage is not only simple but also has many variations, allowing people of all abilities to create successful landing pages. We have a free guidebook on how to use Instapage, which you can download here.
