If you could do one thing to dramatically improve your marketing ROI today, would it be to use landing pages on your website?
If you're trying to generate leads for your business, and you don't have at least a few landing pages on your website, you're missing out on a key opportunity to turn website visitors into something more.
Here, we'll explore what a landing page is, the myriad of landing page benefits and how you might use a landing page to reach your business goals, and how to make your landing pages as powerful as possible.
What is a landing page?
A landing page is a page on your website where you can offer a resource from your business in exchange for a visitor's contact information. Marketers can capture this contact information using a lead-capture form, where visitors can enter details like their name, email address, and job title.
A good landing page is focused on a particular stream of traffic -- say, from an email campaign that's promoting an ebook. Because the landing page is targeting just people who are (presumably) interested in this ebook, and because this ebook has exclusive information that elaborates on a topic your audience cares about, you can convert a higher percentage of your website visitors into leads whom you can then follow up with.
How to Create a Landing Page
To create a landing page, you'll want to start by exploring various landing page builders — unless, of course, you're using a content management system that already provides landing page templates, like HubSpot.
Once you've determined the right tool for you, explore pre-built templates or consider whether it's better to build your own. You might also use this as an opportunity to A/B test two different designs to explore which design elements result in the highest conversions.
Additionally, it's critical any landing page you design effectively communicates the value you're providing visitors in exchange for contact information. And, of course, you'll want to include a form you're asking visitors to fill out in exchange for whatever offer you've provided on your landing page.
To learn more about how to create a landing page in detail, take a look at How to Create a Landing Page: The Simple Step-by-Step Guide.
Landing pages have one chief purpose: to generate leads for your business. However, you can define those leads in a number of ways and offer more than one type of content or experience through this landing page.
Here are some of the ways you can use a landing page to start a relationship with your future customers:
1. Ebooks and Whitepapers
If you wrote a blog post that introduces a topic relevant to your audience, you can satisfy deeper interests in that topic by elaborating on the subject in an ebook or whitepaper. Using a landing page, you can "gate" this resource behind a lead-capture form for people to download.
2. Email Newsletter Subscription
Let's say you write a lot of blog content on a similar topic. Sure, you can develop an ebook or whitepaper that elaborates on specific details, but you can also offer your readers an email newsletter they can subscribe to for the latest content around your industry. On various blog posts, use a call-to-action (CTA) to invite readers to subscribe to your blog. This CTA can link to a separate landing page where they enter their contact information for addition to your email list.
3. Online Course Enrollment
Whether you're in the education industry or you offer various skill-based certifications to your audience, online courses should have their own landing pages, too. Using these pages, you can invite new students to sign up for a class you offer and capture information on them that can lead to a customer relationship that goes beyond the courses they take with you.
4. Event Registration
Similar to online courses, industry events require you to collect information on your audience so they can receive updates prior to the event. An event, as well as its various sessions and keynotes, can have their own individual landing pages to turn event goers into event attendees and business leads.
5. Free Trial of a Product
Offering people a free demo of your product? Your demo offering could use its own landing page. Bring users to a page where they can sign up for a free trial of your software using their name, email address, job title, and any other information you deem necessary to give them the best customer experience.
6. Community Membership
If your business thrives on conversation among your audience -- perhaps you have a website dedicated to dialogue between users -- there's no harm in making it invitation-only. In fact, it's a great way to generate leads through the people who want to become members of your community. Create a landing page that lets website visitors sign up to become a bigger part of your business.
7. App Download
Developing a mobile app for your product doesn't just improve your customer experience -- it also gives you another avenue to capture leads from your audience. A lead-optimized landing page that invites users to download an app is quite common in the app-maker community.
Landing Page Benefits
1. Landing pages can lead to increased conversions.
Having a targeted page that directly ties into a certain offer or next step is critical for providing value upfront, and can encourage new site visitors to provide their information in exchange for an immediate, tangible reward.
For instance, let's say you've landed on a business' website and you're immediately greeted with a pop-up form asking for your name and email. A bit jarring before you even know what the company is about, isn't it?
Alternatively, imagine you've found a business' free e-book on social media, which outlines ten immediate solutions to your problem. I'm willing to bet you're more likely to provide your email and name for that valuable content, right?
Ultimately, a landing page can help increase conversions while providing a better user experience. Plus, a landing page can help you determine which types of content to serve certain visitors for faster, more effective lead generation.
Too many companies send their advertising, email, or social media traffic to their homepage. This is a huge missed opportunity. When you know a stream of targeted traffic will be coming to your website, you can increase the likelihood of converting that traffic into leads by using a targeted landing page.
For instance, those users who convert on your social media e-book landing page are clearly interested in social media. To further nurture those leads, you might follow-up with a personalized email, detailing additional content you can provide related to social media.
2. Landing pages can provide additional insights into your target audience.
By creating various landing pages with segmented offers, you can track which topics convert at the highest rate. This can give you valuable insights into your audience's interests.
You might use the data you collect from your landing pages to create a more targeted, personalized marketing strategy. Plus, landing pages don't just tell you which content your audience likes best — they also tell you which channels your leads prefer. This can enable your marketing team to refine your strategy further, promoting content and engaging with your audience on the channel(s) they're already using.
For example, let's say you notice your landing pages related to e-commerce perform exceptionally well, and most of those users find your landing page from your paid ads on Facebook and LinkedIn. This information can help you target future campaigns primarily towards your social audience, and consider how you might incorporate additional e-commerce content into your marketing strategy as a whole.
3. Landing pages can grow your email subscriber list.
In exchange for the content offered on your landing page, you'll typically ask users to provide their email and name. This can help you quickly grow your email subscriber list, and segment that list to provide more personalized follow-up emails.
People who've filled out a form in exchange for content, or information on your product or service, have shown an interest in what you have to offer — which ensures your subscriber list is filled with potentially high-quality leads.
Consider how you might further nurture them by sending a kick-back "Thank you" email after they download your landing page offer, with additional resources related to the content in which they've shown interest.
4. Landing pages are testable.
A landing page is oftentimes a fantastic opportunity to get creative and test out various designs to determine which visuals and text perform best with your target audience. Additionally, it's often lower risk to test out a new landing page, rather than making major design changes to your entire blog or website infrastructure.
For instance, AJ Beltis, HubSpot's Content & Acquisition Manager, told me, "If you're using a content management system with a built-in A/B testing tool (like HubSpot), you can easily set up and run a test to see which copy, design featured, imagery, and page elements yield a stronger conversion rate. This means you can quickly uncover new ways to drive more leads and contacts for your business."
5. Landing pages allow you to measure metrics directly tied to business goals.
If you've created a specific landing page to market your new product or service, you can then use that landing page to measure metrics directly tied to your business goals.
For instance, let's say your marketing team is tasked with increasing sales for your new email tool. To accomplish this, your team creates a campaign with a landing page offering a free demo of your tool.
You might measure conversion metrics on that landing page to determine how well your campaign is performing, or whether you need to make tweaks to communicate the true value of your new product. Additionally, you can measure which sites drive the highest conversions to your landing page, and put more resources into marketing your email tool on those sites — or social media apps — in particular.
6. Landing pages add context to your offer.
AJ Beltis told me one of the biggest benefits of a landing page is the opportunity to add context to your marketing offer. "Marketers feel motivated to bypass the landing page process and skip right to the conversion by encouraging form fills in other methods, such as through a chatbot," Beltis told me.
Beltis adds, "However, this process eliminates the opportunity to add more context to what it is you're offering. Imagery and essential information that can only be shared with a landing page provide content to those who need it before deciding to convert."
7. Landing pages increase brand value and help make a good first impression.
Ultimately, a sleek, well-designed landing page can impress new visitors and turn them into leads by demonstrating the valuable content your company can deliver. A landing page is space you can use to tell your visitors what you're offering, and how it can positively impact them. Even if a viewer doesn't immediately convert, a well-designed landing page can increase brand recognition and help nurture leads for future sales.
For instance, take a look at this impressive landing page created by Talisker, a whisky brand. Using Ceros' landing page product to design an immersive experience, Talisker is demonstrating brand value and, ideally, making a fantastic first impression on new visitors.
This is proof a landing page doesn't have to be boring — in fact, it shouldn't be. Take the time to create an engaging, interactive, interesting landing page that convinces visitors in the value of your brand.
What makes a landing page most effective?
Ready to create your first landing page, or improve on a landing page you already have? Here are some of the most important elements to make sure your landing page is working hard for you:
1. Limit Navigation
You've brought your targeted traffic to a page where they can take your desired action. Don't distract them! Limit the number of exits from your landing page so that your visitors are focused on filling out your form. A key part of this is to remove the website navigation elements on landing pages. This helps put the focus back on the content you're offering.
See how the landing page below does this -- aside from the HubSpot logo, there are no navigation buttons to confuse or distract visitors.
2. Enable Sharing
Tap into a huge community of your best (and free) marketers: your audience. Add share links to your landing page to encourage your website visitors to share your content with their audiences.
3. Deliver Value
First and foremost, if you have a valuable offer, your visitors will give up their contact information in exchange for your offer. Ask yourself if your offer is compelling to your audience and make sure your landing page demonstrates that value. One way to ensure your landing page adds value is to show your audience the content they're going to receive -- directly on the page. See how this can look in the example landing page below.
4. Keep it Short
The longer your landing page and form, the more friction you add to the lead-generation process. Keeping your lead form short and straightforward will increase your conversion rate.
Here's a tip: Put as many contact fields as you can on the same line. Shortening the height of your lead-capture form helps you limit the more trivial fields you might be tempted to include, and prevents your landing page visitors from getting spooked by a form that's asking too much of them. As shown below, sometimes all you need is a first and last name, followed by an email address.
5. Test, Test, Test
As many best practices as you may read about online, your landing page can always use more testing and improvement. Make sure you have a landing page creation tool that allows you to create and test many different landing pages to see what works best for your business. Additionally, if you're a HubSpot customer, consider some of the landing page tool integrations, such as briX.
Are you a landing page guru? Check out some of our advanced tips and data around landing page best practices on effective calls to action and the best/worst button text (hint: don't use "Submit"). Do you need to make any of these 10 Quick Fixes to Build Killer Landing Pages?
If you're working hard to drive traffic to your website, don't make the mistake of not capturing that traffic as leads.
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