Digital marketing is a world filled with a whole host of vocabulary and set of concepts - you only have to revisit our marketing jargon guide to be reminded of this. One of the most commonly used phrases is ‘landing pages’, of which you’re bound to have questions on how they fit into your overall digital marketing strategy.
Creating a landing page may seem daunting, and it can be, but they’re vitally essential for lead conversion.
In this article, you’ll find out what a landing page is, their benefit to your digital marketing strategy and landing page best practises.
What is a landing page?
A landing page is a web page that a consumer can ‘land’ on, usually a standalone page, distinct from your homepage or other pages, that serves a single and focused purpose. Oftentimes, consumers originate from an email, ad, or other digital location.
Once on a landing page, users are encouraged to take a particular action, such as signing up for your newsletter or buying your e-book. A landing page has succeeded if the user takes the specific desired action - or converts.
Landing pages can either be click through, leading to another page on your website, or lead generation based. Lead generation pages generally focus on offers such as e-books, free trials or whitepapers in return for the submission of contact information. A great landing page will convince users that whatever you’re offering is worth exchanging their personal details for.
What makes a homepage different from a landing page?
As you should be aware now, a landing page is a unique entity, separate from a homepage. There are a number of things that set homepages and landing pages apart. Homepages have:
A different purpose and audience. Those who visit your homepage may still be undecided on the services or products they want. On the other hand, users who end up on your landing pages have already shown purchase intent. They’re further along the sales funnel, in a position to convert.
More links. Typically, a plethora of links resides on homepages. You can often find a navigational menu at the top, links in the footer, service links in the banner and many in the page's content. A well-optimised landing page, though, will only have a few links, perhaps only one - the link that allows your users to convert.
Broader CTA’s. Your homepage needs to appeal to a variety of potential consumers, all with different interests at heart. Due to this, homepage content is often broad and has less specific CTA’s (e.g learn more, contact us now). Since landing pages have a single goal in mind, they have tailored CTA’s (e.g. sign up to our webinar).
The 2 types of landing pages
Landing pages are generally built to serve 1 or 2 functions: generate leads or direct users to the next step in their conversion funnel journey.
Lead generation landing pages
This type of landing page focuses on collecting personal data or lead data for consumers. In other words, it collects information about your customers, to be stored in a database for customer relationship management purposes.
The main feature of a lead generation page is a form, which serves as the CTA. In exchange for a product or service, users provide data like their name, email and phone number.
This data services an important purpose. The information collected from these forms can teach you about your audience. Using this information, you can then focus your marketing efforts and target the people who match them and are consequently more likely to convert. This can increase your ROI and conversion rate, especially if you run paid advertising campaigns.
To this end, the data that your lead generation pages capture helps inform your marketing strategy and make it more efficient. It allows you to tailor your ad targeting to a specific audience, an audience you know are more likely to convert.
Click-through landing pages
Instead of utilising forms, as is the case with lead generation pages, click-through landing pages focus on CTA buttons. Clicking these buttons redirects users to a page where they can take further action. For example, a button that says “get in touch” might redirect users to a contact page.
Besides CTA buttons, these landing pages will often include persuasive information like product details or user testimonials to further engage prospective customers. A list of current big-brand clients may be included, to instil trust and legitimacy.
Why are landing pages important and what are their benefits?
Landing pages are unique to other pages on your site because they’re built to meet specific, short-term goals. Besides increasing conversions, improving paid ad campaigns, and generating new audience insights to inform marketing strategy, landing pages can:
- Promote brand reinforcement. Maintaining consistency amongst website appearance, voice, tone and copy can reinforce your brand to potential customers. When your users don’t convert immediately, this strong brand image can help them remember you in the future, respond to remarketing efforts or recommend your brand to their friends.
- Promote credibility. Users typically appreciate simple messaging, that informs them of the value of your product or service to them. The use of testimonials and big-brand client logos will further enhance trust and legitimacy. Including social proof in landing pages has been found to increase conversion rates.
Landing page best practises
1. Create enticing headlines.
The headline is likely to be the first thing a website visitor sees. For this reason, it should be intriguing. You can draw attention with powerful keywords like “free” or “now”. Others have documented success with keywords surrounding “limited time offer”.
2. Match your heading with the CTA heading that your users clicked to get to your landing page.
You may be thinking this seems too simple to be effective? However, it’s vitally important to reassure users that they’ve landed in the right place. Doing otherwise can damage your reputation, search engine ranks and conversions. If users believe they’ve landed on the wrong page, they may ‘bounce’, harming your bounce rate and session duration, all of which impact your search engine ranking and conversions.
3. Use directional elements to draw users to your CTA.
Directional elements include arrows, circulation or perhaps a background image drawing attention to the CTA. Skillfully placed directional cues encourage users to scroll, keep reading, and convert.
4. Position your CTA’s above the fold.
Your CTA is the most fundamental element of your landing page. For this reason, it should also be the most visible. Positioning it above the fold ensures that it's visible to all users, promoting higher conversion rates. Unfortunately, especially when viewed on mobile devices, it may not be possible to position a CTA above the fold.
5. Test different variations of your pages.
Testing different headlines, visuals, calls to action and more is crucial. Conducting A/B tests to experiment with variations of your landing pages will highlight the most effective version, which will subsequently produce the highest conversion rate.
6. Provide social proof
Real-life testimonials from clients have been proven to increase conversion rates. Including testimonials, as well as documenting big-brand names you’ve worked with, will help increase trust and legitimacy, convincing others to try your product or service themselves.
7. Utilise bullet points
Bullet points are perfect for listing the key features of your product or service. It makes the information easily digestible and clear to readers, ensuring that users are made aware of every benefit your product/service has to offer - benefits they may have missed had they had to scan a large block of text themselves.
8. Repeat your CTA
Depending on how much content is displayed on your landing page, you may want to repeat your CTA. You may decide to place additional CTA buttons in the middle of your content, as well as at the end. This process provides users with greater opportunities to convert - just be careful not to overwhelm them.
9. Provide contact information
Providing your leads with the option to contact you with questions or concerns will put them at ease. Providing your contact information is a sign of legitimacy, as well as responsibility, ensuring customers that you’re there for help should they need it.
Providing contact information also allows those on the edge of converting, but with doubts, to ask further questions, providing you the opportunity to seal the deal. If contact details aren’t in place, leads may be lost.
10. Include a privacy message
Include a short privacy message regarding their personal details. Many visitors will be wary to provide their personal details online, especially to a company they may not know. A privacy message, informing these customers of the safety of their private information, can put them at ease.
Due to their role in converting leads into revenue, landing pages are a critical part of any digital marketing strategy.
Every landing page is an opportunity, and there's no limit to the number of landing pages your website can have. The more landing pages the merrier - as long as they’re not competing with one another! To ensure your landing pages aren’t competing, take care to make sure each landing page targets a specific demographic and encourages users to take a unique action on the website.
If you would like to learn more about the importance of landing pages or want to get in touch with an expert who can improve your landing page strategy, we'd love to chat with you right now!