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Hello everyone, welcome to another Digitize Your Firm webinar where we’ll going to talk about, drum roll please – landing pages! For those who don’t know me, my name is Jay Vickers and I am the Director of Strategy here at SimplyCast and I’ll be standing in for Stephen.
For anyone joining us who is a landing page wizard or for those who are just starting out, I welcome all comments and questions, simply click the green speech bubble at the top of the screen to open the chat and either type out your comment or ask to speak. If you haven’t already, be sure to click the ‘phone’ icon next to it the chat icon to ensure your audio is connected.
As with all Digitize Your Firm webinars, this will be recorded for later playback in case you wanted extra time with a certain section or for listening on the go. If you haven’t already, please visit the Weekly Webinar Schedule on our Digitize Your Firm page to check out our past webinars.
Now, let’s go over today’s agenda.
We’re going to start off with a general introduction into the world of landing pages, talk about why they’re so special, as well as how to make your landing page stand out. As always, we’ll do a review and tease next week’s topic.
Sound good? Let’s go!
Do you know what we haven’t had a chance to talk about yet?
Landing pages! One of our favorite subjects!
You see, there are 4 distinct groups of people visiting your current landing pages:
The point? Your landing pages need to be awesome!
What the four groups above illustrate is that you only have a limited time frame in which you need to show off what you are offering. This could be a product, your company, new features, or even a must-have service.
The tips that follow in this webinar will help you boost the overall effectiveness of your landing pages and raise the number and quality of your B2B conversions.
These steps are well known best practices, as well as others made possible by recently developed web technologies. Each will contribute directly to your online lead generation program.
Landing pages are a great tool for getting prospective customers to act upon unique marketing campaigns via a clear call to action, whether that means filling out an online form, signing up for a free trial, or actually making a purchase.
In addition, landing pages enable marketers to easily track the effectiveness of individual marketing campaigns through the measurement of click-through-rates and the numbers of acquired leads or customers.
For those of you new to landing pages, they have two main goals:
Obviously, you want landing pages that have a high conversion rate, meaning when a person lands on the page they sign up because they found the information they wanted.
But getting to this stage is a lot of hard work and patience.
The function of the modern website is more important and more difficult than ever. This is especially true when it comes to multi-channel sales strategies that drive people to the site in several (or more) ways.
Visitors arrive at your website through a variety of online channels: pay-per-click (PPC), bulk SMS links, print ads, email offers, social media, and of course organic search.
Once they land, they need to fulfill the objective of acting upon a promotion or buying a specific product.
If the user lands on your page and is left feeling cold or disappointed because they don’t see anything relevant to what drove them there, they are most likely to leave. This can be a waste of their time and your marketing dollars although in marketing, nothing should ever be considered a waste if you are constantly experimenting. Data is data and even the negative data can lead you to improve or optimize.
Landing pages serve as a bridge between the marketing message that brought visitors to the site and the site functionality that enables them to take action, such as making a purchase or submitting a lead.
This week, we’ll be going through all the best practices and tips you need to make a successful landing page.
It’s always important to maintain the look and feel of your product or company.
In that same vein, a landing page needs to be an extension of your website and overall marketing attack.
As with all elements of your marketing campaigns, your landing pages should match your brand. This not only helps develop your position in the market, it also makes your brand appear legitimate and trustworthy to visitors who may already be familiar with your company.
Think about commercials you see on TV or hear on the radio. They may not get you to act initially, but when it comes time to need that product or service, you remember that you saw or heard about that solution already and you act. A landing page is, of course, used to grab conversions at the absolute minimum, but it also needs to further promote your company brand.
This is where you begin to build a relationship with those who will hopefully become your future customers. It is also important to keep your landing page simple and closely related to the keyword or marketing campaign that is directing your visitors. This way your prospects will be handed the targeted information they are looking for and you are more likely to capture their interest. Overwhelming visitors with too much information about your company can distract them and prevent them from following through.
This is also a good reason not to simply send visitors to the main page of your website. The reason why they are clicking on an ad or link in the first place is that you have shown you have already done the targeting for them. If a user has to land on your website and still have to search, they are very likely to just leave and search for another company.
Assume people don’t want to search or read a lot to find what they need. The easier you make it, the higher the conversion numbers.
What To Remember:
The overall visual design and color pallet of the landing page should be consistent with that of your homepage and branding. All navigation menus (e.g. home, about us, portfolio, etc.), links, and extraneous design elements should be removed. Present the visitor with only one option to proceed – the call to action (CTA).
Don’t overwhelm and scare away your prospects.
If you have ever had to fill out a long web form to get to what you want, you know how frustrating it can be. With the rise of tablets and smartphones, forms need to be even easier.
Yes, it is true that web visitors looking to download content or access valuable services have become accustomed to filling out forms, but you can’t take that for granted.
A long web form can still be intimidating and cause visitors to abandon your page. Remember, their time is valuable, and you should treat it that way. A short, easy to complete form will be especially appealing to visitors who are not fully committed to obtaining your information; perhaps they received an email that mildly interested them and clicked on a link, therefore you only have a very short amount of time to convert them when they arrive on your page.
Don’t worry about collecting all the data you need on the first pass. It is best to stick to the essentials and then if needed, gather the rest later on. This will not only speed up the process, but it is a good way to make a second request where you can ask for a few more pieces of info. This will be much easier once they trust you with their information.
In many cases, all you really need is the prospect’s name, email address, and perhaps job title or company. Other first-time questions could include Twitter handle or something else social media-related. Also include a link to your company’s privacy rules to show you will not abuse the collected information.
The CTA (call to action) form should only ask for information that is absolutely necessary, sometimes a name, phone number, and email address is enough. Include a privacy statement to put the visitor at ease with sharing their contact information.
1. Landing pages need to be awesome – they need to be engaging, informative, and easy to navigate all at the same time. You want to get the most out of your efforts, so every element of the page matters, from description to visuals, forms, the format of the forms, and more. Over the next two weeks, we’re going to go over how to do all of this so that you create pages that make contacts go “WOW!”
2. People often ask – why landing pages? Why can’t I just make a page on my website? Well, it’s because landing pages are like having a mini-website about a product, initiative or service. They are built with a clear call-to-action in mind while providing you with analytics separate from your website. Overall, the goal is to have the user perform an action which is why the content, images, and CTA, must be so concentrated.
They can also be easily incorporated into your digital marketing mix by using pay-per-click ads, search ads, social media ads and more directing to the landing page. This will not only help improve the ad’s ranking due to the relevancy but save your potential customers from being taken to (and getting lost) on your site. Landing pages are, in every sense of the word, bridges that bring prospects to your company so they can invest in a product or service and potentially more and the relationship is built.
3. Your landing pages need to stand out – full stop. It needs to be engaging and draw the eye while staying consistent with your branding to provide an element of authenticity so that trust can be built. Think of great TV and radio commercials you’ve seen, and work to harness that same element of unique into a new medium – you may even want to put a video on your landing page. This being said, make a point to not overwhelm your visitors by having clear and concise language. Don’t get bogged down either trying to collect all the data you seek – just the important pieces like name, phone number, email, and industry. You can connect more later, this is just getting the information you need to reach out again. Finally, have a clear call to action – whether it is signing up for a free trial, booking a demo, or just providing feedback.
Next week, Stephen will be back to tell you how to drive prospects to your page, what to do after they convert, and of course – the importance of testing.
