Andrew Marston works as a Marketing Executive in Test Buy Inc., a local computer hardware retail store. They are popular because they allow their buyers to pay for the hardware in installments. Students are big fans because someone who cannot pay $1000 for a new computer may instead be able to $100 in 10 installments plus an additional fee. Nevertheless, the installment option is their unique selling proposition.
Now, Test Buy Inc. usually does not go for digital marketing. However, this year due to the COVID-19 phenomenon management decided to try digital marketing to boost their sales. For this campaign, Andrew came up with a brilliant idea: run a social media and Google Ads campaign simultaneously. These ads directly lead the prospects to their website from which they will be able to capture some leads……
STOP! RIGHT! THERE!
You must be thinking “Whoa! What’s wrong? I do that too!”
I am sure you do, just like many of the marketers out there. But sadly, when you have a sales approach in mind and want to capture excruciatingly hot leads who hit the submit button with a credit card in their other hand, using your website as a landing page is not really a great idea. Actually, that idea is one of the most common mistakes when you are designing a campaign that involves landing pages.
Here, in this blog series, we are going to show you how to design a landing page for your business by providing you with essential tips and tricks for how to use landing pages for your business.
Ready? Buckle up!
#1 Never, ever use your homepage as your landing page
But my homepage is so amazing. Did you check our website? It’s so great and is mobile optimized with an amazing animated video and an extraordinary user experience score!
Trust me! We get it. That is really good if you are getting loads of traffic from organic sources. However, if you are going for a paid marketing campaign, that’s not really something you should do. Here is the main reason: DISTRACTION!
People click on your Facebook or Google Ads because they want to know more about some particular product, or value-proposition, or offer mentioned in the Ads. If they are redirected to your homepage, they will be bombarded with tons of information. From a general view, it seems like a good deal because you are educating your prospects. But, it is not serving your purpose for running a paid marketing. Your goal for a paid marketing campaign is either: make the client purchase the product from that page or getting a sign-up so your salespeople can close the deal as soon as possible. Be it a Facebook marketing campaign or Google Ads campaign, every click costs you a few bucks. And, if your visitor bounces off your site or worse goes back to the Google search result and clicks on your competitor’s ad, all your marketing dollars are going down the drain!
Tip: Always make one landing page per campaign. For instance, if Test Buy Inc. is promoting “installment payment” and “discount offer” at the same time, they should go for two different landing pages instead of using their homepage. In that way, those who are highly intending to pay for a computer with installments will be enticed to either buy or at least contact the sales team. The same goes for hot prospects who want to pay full price but looking for an affordable option. You cannot modify your website for both campaigns, but if you have landing pages it’s a piece of cake.
#2 Create a killer header section
You must have heard of the 80-20 rule, right? The idea that says in business, 80% of the revenue is generated by 20% of the sales and the other 80% of sales generates 20% of the revenue. A landing page kind of follows the same approach. The header section of a landing page can be just 20% of a landing page design but that actually does 80% of the job. The other 80% of the landing page completes the remaining 20% and leads a visitor to sign up.
Realistically, you have just 8-10 seconds to impress a visitor and have them decide if they are scrolling down to read the rest of the content and sign-up. Those 8-10 seconds are consumed by the first thing they see on a landing page: the header. So, it is a wise idea to put your best effort into designing a killer landing page header.
By killer what I mean is creating a header caption that is to the point and an image that goes with the value proposition while also being interesting and enticing.
In my last campaign, I tried a pretty much complex and humorous caption with a funny image. My conversion rate dived down! I went back to creating an 8-word caption that states the value proposition clearly and used a funny image that corroborates to my statement. Boom! The conversion rate skyrocketed! Just like the veteran marketers’ wisdom: awesomely intelligent content might amaze visitors but that does not guarantee conversions
Tips: Make sure the header section contains both visual and textual elements that complement each other. It should be clear to read and easy to grab (remember the 8-10 seconds rule). This means, if you are using humor, it shouldn’t take too long for them to understand. And yes, keep the header section clear so your visitors do not have to do a lot of eye movement. A clean, easy-to-browse header section creates a higher chance of a conversion.
#3 Go for a minimalistic approach
I’ll be repeating what I mentioned in the header tips: a minimalistic approach is the best approach. Many marketers like to feed everything to their visitors in the first go and they put really heavy text blocks that give a vibe of reading a thesis paper. Which, in reality, does a great job as a turn off factor!
Last week, I was having a chat with one of our salespeople about one of the landing pages I built to promote our marketing automation service. I literally wrote everything I knew about that service on the landing page. The conversation was like this:
“Why you are putting all this information on the landing page?”
“Oh! I just want the prospect to learn well about our service!”
“What will I talk about then?"
(silence)
See! You don’t need to put all technical details, use cases, how they can use the software, etc. on the landing page. Let the sales team handle this. All you can do is provide a brief idea and a minimalistic approach does the best job.
Tip: Go gaga with images. One image speaks a thousand words and if you add a few words with the image, it can tell a whole story! From my experience, I have learned that reviewing your text content every 4 hours helps. Review and curate your textual content three or four times and you’ll see that you are able to slash a 100 word to 25 to 30 words.
#4 Ask for minimum information in the sign-up form
A perfectly-built landing page that can even take the conversion ratio beyond your wildest imagination needs only one element to ruin everything: a poorly built sign-up form!
Imagine yourself in the position of someone who needs a computer immediately and who is currently looking at the sign-up form at Test Buy’s landing page. That form says that the sales team will call you back only when you give them your name, date of birth, company name, designation, favorite color, address, and school’s name!
Well, this is a bit exaggerated, but we all have felt the same when we see a sign-up form that asks too much. What did we do? We didn’t sign up despite having an interest in that product or service. Isn’t it obvious? Filling out a form online is an irritating job and a long form is not the right solution for a landing page.
Tip: Always ask for minimal information. It is understandable that getting more info helps us to create more personalized engagement but if we fail to capture leads, what’s the point? If you want to reach out to them, just ask for a name, email, and phone number. The sales team can always capture more information later during the conversation.
#5 Clearly identify what they expect once they sign up
The final recommendation for today’s landing page blog: make sure your prospect knows what to do once they sign up. Without a clear idea about what is going to happen next, is a bit of a turn-off.
For instance, you have embedded a form that asks for name, phone, email, and submit. That’s works but doesn’t do a fantastic job Because a prospect might think: oh, what is going to happen? I just submit the form and that’s it?
That could turn a prospect away and you don’t want to take that risk, do you?
Tip: Either in the landing page body or in the form text, clearly write the post-submission experience. If your next step is to call them, state that a sales representative will be calling them as soon as possible. If your goal is to give them an eBook, tell them that once they submit the form, the download will begin. Any action without an end result usually feels like a lackluster one. Stating the post-submission action will encourage your prospects to sign up faster. You can also set up a system that will send an automated email, SMS, or both to the prospect’s email and phone number saying what they can expect in the next couple of hours. Yes, it is possible if you are using the right tool!
So, the first blog in the “How to Use Landing Pages for Your Business” series ends here! In the next blogs, we will discuss advanced technology to integrate a landing page into an automated marketing campaign and using landing pages with Google Ads.
Meanwhile….
If you are experiencing a conversion rate that does not meet your expectations and you want to create stunning landing page campaigns that convert, check out our landing page builder software.
SimplyCast’s landing page builder allows you to create standalone webpages, following your brand identity and tone. Using our dynamic drag-and-drop editor, you can create sleek landing page designs the way you want. Using separate images, text, and video blocks, you can articulate your thoughts and tell your story that tempts visitors to hit the submit button. Use our dynamic form builder software to design eye-catching forms and embed those in landing pages.
It comes with a built-in web tracker and CRM system that allows you to track visitors’ activities on your landing pages, store and manage your leads, and generate reports. Using all these features, you can determine landing page performances and optimize those accordingly.
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