Elementary speaking, a landing page is a web page that a visitor can arrive on. But as you dig deeper into the realm of digital marketing, a landing page is a web portal to generate leads.
And for any brand, landing pages are the perfect lead machine.
You have painstakingly tailored your landing page to the whims of your target audience. You have spent countless hours and resources to design a meticulous, innovative and persuasive landing page. You have studied the various methods to garner leads with a landing page.
Despite these tasks, you have yet to generate any substantial amount of leads or even conversions. You feel frustrated, you feel desperate, you feel disappointed, you feel disenchaned.
Here’s a bit of advice before we go deeper: do not despair!
Like anything else in life, a landing page takes time to perfect. Remember, you’re competing with millions of other landing pages all across the world. You’re competing with other industry rivals for every eyeball, email and dollar. You can’t expect that your first landing page will immediately dazzle the world and make you a million dollars in your first year in business.
Ultimately, a landing page is a matter of trial and error, A/B testing, trying out new things.
For so many landing pages, all it takes to succeed is some minor tweaks and adjustments. Sure, the landing page is designed well and you’re taking advantage of an array of marketing (white hat) tricks. But it could be a couple of minuscule things that can change everything.
Here are four minor tweaks to your landing page that can make a major impact for conversions:
- Give Your Headline a Shot in the Arm
- Make Some Changes to Your Form
- Embrace the Power of Social
- Use a Visual in Your Landing Page
Give Your Headline a Shot in the Arm
After a recent study found that 70 percent of readers only peruse the title of a piece of content, producing a headline has never been more essential than it is today. Since most people will refrain from reading an article, blog post or landing page, you need a headline that will grab the reader’s attention and sum up your ultimate aim. Crisp, concise and to-the-point titles are a must.
Here are a few tips to consider when writing a headline:
- If possible, include numbers in your headline.
- Add attractive headlines that can pique the reader’s interest (controversial, essential, scary, easy, amazing, etc.).
- Why not insert a call-to-action (CTA) right away?
- Make a promise right away to your reader that they’ll find something valuable.
- Use who, what, where, when and how
These simple tips will make your headlines more catchy and grab some attention.
Simply put: give your headline a shot in the arm, a punch in the face, a kick in the groin.
Make Some Changes to Your Form
Forms are the lifeblood of any landing page. Due to the fact that this is how you generate leads or a sell product, forms have to be superbly crafted and well placed on your landing page to be effective. If not then you’re just wasting your time with a landing page.
When a form is not done very well – it can be considered a science, you know? – then the visitor will exit the page and go elsewhere. Even as something like the form’s line-of-sight can make a big difference in the end.
Here is what you need to do with your forms to create your leads:
- Above the Fold: the form of your landing page needs to be above the fold. If visitors have to scroll down to find the form then you risk irking the prospect. The form should always be at the top where it is clear to see.
- A Short Form: the longer the form is then the more people will be less likely to fill it in. Therefore, the simple solution is to keep it short on one column with just basic information (name, email address and country).
- Submit?: believe it or not, but forms with a “Submit” button tend to convert far less than forms without the conventional “Submit” button. This means that you have to tweak it just a little bit with something else. Get creative: “Send it to me,” “Sign up,” “Download” and other similar verbiage.
- Privacy Policy Link: in order to instill confidence in your visitor, you should include a privacy policy link in the middle of your form.
An inadequate form on your landing page may cost you both leads and conversions. Do it right.
Embrace the Power of Social
Social media and social sharing are now integral aspects of all digital marketing strategies. Without these two important features, you can say goodbye to any significant success.
You may be surprised by the fact that you can integrate social media with your landing page. It’s true. Well, as long as your landing page provides value, succinct content and a reasonable pledge (you can’t make grandiose promises filled with unicorns and rainbows).
Even just a slight social addition to your landing page can elicit a stellar impact to your conversions and leads. How can you embrace the power of social in your landing page?
Here are a few things you can do:
Social Proof: we don’t like to make this concession, but it has to be done: we have a herd mentality. We follow the crowd and we care what others think, say and do. This is why social proofing is critical to digital marketing strategies. For landing pages, you can exploit social proofing by adding it to these pages. By showcasing testimonial tweets, the number of Likes your Facebook page has or to have a lot of connections on LinkedIn, you’re accentuating your brand’s awareness, reach and reputation.
Easy to Share: there is nothing more irksome than not having the ability to share content on social media with ease and simplicity. In other words, you want your content to be shareable. This is achieved by having social sharing buttons: Twitter tweet button, Facebook Like button, Google+ plus button and so on. These installations make your content easy to share.
Be Shareable: your content has to be shareable in the first place. Whether it’s a unique visual (see below), valauble content or a superb product, your audience has to want to share your landing page with the rest of the world or follow you on Twitter without feeling embarrassed. Remember, there is nothing more permanent than the Internet. The Internet will always remember.
Use a Visual in Your Landing Page
Another thing that we human creatures are is visual. We like images, memes, infographics and other visual items. This is why the old adage of “a picture is worth a thousand words” rings true even in today’s neoteric world. Eye candy, within reason, is important for all brands.
When a landing page lacks a visual then you could bore readers and be viewed as uninteresting.
You may have a killer headline, stellar content and a valuable product/service, but if you do not have a compelling picture, image or infographic then you could risk losing a lead or a conversion.
Here are a couple of tips when adding a visual to your landing page:
- Ensure that your visual remains above the fold.
- The visual must convey the message of your landing page.
- Attempt to merge your headline with your visual.
- You should consider using a high-quality video.
Your visual provides the visitor with a tangible idea of what you’re wishing to accomplish.
Final Thoughts
Optimizing your landing page is often neglected by marketers because they’re focusing exclusively on email marketing, social media marketing, video marketing and so on.
Oftentimes, when they do hone in on the landing page, they make common mistakes.
Unfortunately, these erroneous endeavors increasingly pose challenges to your goals of leads, conversions and profits. You have to concentrate on your landing page because this will ultimately explain to the interested prospect what you’re all about, what you’re selling and how they will find value in the content, the webinar, the service, the product or the brand itself.
Landing pages don’t have to be a novel about your business. At the same time, they shouldn’t be 140 characters long. Landing pages serve as a gateway to a partnership between yourself and a customer. Like any other business partnership, they have to be first convinced, intrigued and excited to collaborate and receive the benefits of working with you. That’s how good it can be.
As soon as you incorporate these minor tweaks to your landing pages you will likely experience an uptick in not only eyeballs, but also leads and conversions.
