If demand and lead generation is a top priority for your organization, you know that capturing critical contact information is key to making sure your leads don’t slip away. Knowing who your contacts are, what industry they work in, and what is driving them to explore your solution empowers you to continue to engage with them through personalized marketing efforts. After all, the point of having a robust demand generation program is to attract leads that you can nurture and convert into customers down the road.
Making sure that your messaging and content are right on target will help you build credibility with these leads, keep them moving through the sales funnel, and convince them to choose you over your competitors.
But you’re probably wondering how to go about collecting key information, especially when it’s challenging enough to even get people on your website.
In some cases, landing pages allow you to kill two birds with one stone. The right landing page will help drive people to your site by offering original content and information and offer these individuals valuable content gated behind forms to entice them to hand over their information. However, if your goal is to generate conversions, you can use dedicated landing pages without any extra navigation to focus on the goal at hand.
The information you collect using landing pages allows you to build a thorough customer profile to help you determine the best marketing strategy to keep each customer interested. As you uncover more information about who your customers are, you can segment them into the appropriate campaigns and send them the right content and information to help them inch closer toward making a decision.
It’s important to keep in mind, however, that not all landing pages are created equal. Having a well-designed landing page can help you stand out from the competition and generate conversions. Today, we’re outlining a few best practices to help you make sure you’re creating landing pages that are visually appealing, easy to read, and motivate your customers to complete your call to action.
1. Make Sure Your Headline Is Clear and Catchy
Your headline is the first thing that people see when visiting your landing page. Many times, that’s all they need to decide if they want to continue to engage. It can also be extremely disappointing for visitors to visit a webpage that doesn’t offer what it said it would. So, it’s extremely important for your headlines to not only be catchy, but also clearly state what you have to offer.
If the headline is the title of a content asset (such as an eBook), you should use titles that directly address the kind of information your visitors can expect to find. If you need a little more room to make your offer easy to understand, you can always use a subheadline to further explain the purpose of your landing page. In addition to providing your visitors a clear idea of the offer they can expect from your landing page, your headline also provides a great opportunity to use popular keywords that resonate with your audience and will drive more traffic to your landing pages.
2. Keep Your Copy Brief and to the Point
A landing page should serve as an introduction of what’s in store for your visitors if they decide to exchange their information. Having too much copy on a page can overwhelm the user and make them bounce from your landing page before filling out a form.
To avoid this scenario, keep your copy brief and to the point. A short paragraph and a few bullet points is all you need to provide your audience with a sneak peek of what they’ll get when they fill out a form and download your asset or sign up for an event.
Because you’re keeping your copy short, you need to ensure that your message is clear and resonates with the pain points and interests of your consumers. Using high-ranking keywords and language that pertains to your visitors industry, preferences, and stage in the sales funnel can help ensure that your prospects remain interested in what you have to say.
3. Always Include Important Information
If you’re using your landing page to promote a piece of content such as an eBook or video, you can get away with including a few bullet points describing what your visitors can expect. If you’re hosting an event or webinar, however, you should also include a date, time, location, and presenter information.
Doing this will help your leads remember to clear time on their schedule to attend, helping you reap the rewards of interacting with in real time.
4. Use Design Best Practices to Make Your Landing Page Visually Appealing
A landing page that is too busy and hard to read will hurt your conversion rate. If you want to prevent your audience from bouncing before converting, you need good and simple design as a foundation.
Keeping things simple doesn’t mean that your landing page should be plain. Using eye catching graphics and images that complement the purpose of the landing page and give more context to your copy are a great way to capture your audience’s attention.
Another good rule of thumb is to keep key information above the fold. While you can include information on your landing page that allows your visitors to learn more about your brand and what you have to offer, you don’t want to distract them from your call to action. Keeping elements such as summaries and CTA buttons at the top of the page will help your visitors know what to do to receive their offer and make it easy for them to do so.
You don’t have to be a graphic designer or know HTML to design a visually appealing landing page. A marketing automation platform with easy-to-use templates will have a variety of features to help you get started.
5. Make It Easy for Individuals to Sign Up
A form with too many fields will scare away potential leads. Using an adaptive form with minimal fields allows you to ask customers for only the information you need to continue to build their profile. So, for example, if you already have their email and name, you can ask them to indicate their industry and topic of interest. This helps you collect the information you need and eliminates your lead’s frustration of having to fill out the same information each and every time.
6. Include a Clear CTA That Is Easy to Find
For your landing page to generate conversions, you have to make sure that you have a clear call to action. Whether it’s downloading an eBook, registering for an event, or signing up to receive more information, your customers have to know what to do and how to do it. Placing a prominent button at the end of your form will indicate that you want your visitors to fill out a form — and what they’ll get if they do it.
7. Feature Key Customer Logos and Reviews
Many times, a prospective customer’s first impression of your brand is your landing page. So, you want to show your audience who you are (beyond an eBook or a webinar). An easy way to do that is by showcasing a few top customer reviews and notable logos at the bottom of your page. This will allow your prospects to gain a sense of the type of customers you serve and learn why they choose you over your competitors, while also helping you establish credibility and trust in what you do.
8. A/B Test Elements to Optimize Your Efforts
Even the best landing pages can use a refresh every now and then. That is why you should make A/B testing different elements of your page a priority. A good place to start is by testing different versions of your headline to see if it’s helping drive traffic to your page. Once that is optimized, you can venture on to test other elements — such as design, CTA placement, and so on.
Act-On Can Help You Build Engaging Landing Pages That Spark the Customer Journey
Landing pages are one of the most powerful tools at your disposal because they allow you to collect that information you need to deliver personalized marketing efforts. But creating compelling and effective landing pages shouldn’t require you to invest more time and resources. Act-On makes it easy to build engaging landing pages and adaptive forms that appeal to your audience and generate conversions.
Additionally, our platform can empower you to do so much more than build great landing pages. We give you the tools to launch innovative and personalized multi-channel campaigns that help you attract leads, convert customers, and improve retention. It’s your true one-stop shop for lifecycle marketing!
To learn how Act-On can help you transform your digital marketing strategy, please schedule a demo with one of our marketing automation experts. They’ll be thrilled to show you the many ways Act-On makes it easy to innovate your marketing strategy at scale.