Like many things in marketing and advertising, advertising online is effective when all the pieces come together. Lots of great ideas don’t live up to expectations because the system fails at some point. That point might be the first thing your potential customers see when they arrive at your site from one of your advertisements.
The Landing Page
Your landing page is the front door to your website for these visitors, and if it isn’t done right, you might not get the leads you paid for.
Done well, a landing page will push people who arrive at your site quickly through to your call to action. Whether you want them to enter your contest, or download your ebook, a landing page should present no barriers, and no confusion. If your landing page is done poorly, potential customers may not make a 2nd attempt to connect with you and go through that door.
1. Communicate clearly
Don’t say anything unnecessary on your landing page, only the facts. Minimalistic, sparse, whatever you want to call it, keep it simple. You need to communicate your unique value proposition (UVP) front and center. Your ‘give away’ needs to be prominently featured and your call to action (CTA) needs to be simple and straightforward. Anything more is decoration.
2. Give a little, get a little
Landing pages are generally built to get leads. Visitors land here, and if your page is working, they literally fall right through to your prospect funnel. When you give them something, like a subscription to a newsletter, a webinar or a white paper, they’ll feel good about giving you their contact info. Put a little sugar in your landing page to build trust and credibility.
3. The call to action
When that visitor starts typing, you get one shot to do it right. Keep the call to action simple and clear, but make it unavoidable. Your CTA should have 5 boxes maximum: first and last name, company name, email, phone number. Beyond that, you’re wasting their time. Make the submit button clear and obvious. Color is key. Green is always a positive reinforcement color choice. Blue is nice too.
4. Clean design
This is the easiest thing to get wrong. Don’t over think this and don’t reinvent the wheel. The easier you make it for people to see what you’re offering, and what you want in return, the more likely they will play along. Make it easy to navigate, choose complementary colors, use a liberal amount of white space, and keep your entire page above the fold. You have 5 seconds to get them to initiate action. Test it before you launch it. If your testers can’t do it in 5, it won’t get done by visitors.
Landing pages are the starting point of your engagement with a prospect. They are the key point in a successful inbound marketing campaign. Every marketing effort you run and every offer you make should drive visitors to a unique landing page that ties in to the theme and location of each campaign.
What does your landing page look like?
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