First-rate landing pages are an essential component of lead generation, boasting an impressive 5 – 15% conversion rate on average.
Commonly referred to as lead-capture pages, landing pages empower savvy marketers to target audiences with specific information and consumer touchpoints. The most successful landing pages will persuade a visitor to perform an action, conquering the long-fought battle of lead conversion and generating profit as a result.
Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it?
Wrong. Although companies with 30 or more landing pages get seven times more leads than those that use fewer than 10, a surprisingly large volume of marketers out there still struggle to nail the landing page process from start to finish.
Why is this?
We all know that users are impatient when it comes to online search. With short attention spans and a strong desire for immediate results, visitors need to be captivated by a landing page within seconds of clicking onto it.
Naturally, this pressure causes marketers to overthink and overcomplicate the design, copy, and overall structure of a landing page.
It’s time to think less.
1. Your design is messy
Keep it simple.
The driving goal of your landing page should be that it is as easy as possible for users to navigate and convert.
Design should be clean and organised, with fast loading time, streamlined graphics and bold headers. The colour of these headers should contrast with the background colour of your landing page so that action points are made clear.
Colour matters. Choose an eye-catching and complementary colour scheme that reflects high quality and slickness.
Avoid distracting the user’s experience with multiple visual elements. Instead, ensure that your landing page has plenty of white space that draws attention to your product or action.
Make sure that graphics used are viable across multiple monitors by checking your page at different resolutions. You want your landing page to convert as many users as possible.
2. Your copy is over-elaborate
This isn’t an English exam.
Your landing page copy doesn’t have to dive into the depths of your business’s history and/or mission.
Copy should be clear, concise and straight to the point. Copywriters should avoid using overly expressive language that might confuse the reader (they’re not interested in your writing abilities, they’re interested in your solution).
Customers will pay attention to your landing page’s headline, subheadings, lead capture form, and CTA buttons. The copy used for each of these features should be carefully constructed yet simplistic. This is who you are. This is what you offer.
Customers also want to know more about the benefits of the solution you are providing rather than the solution itself. Make sure that your copy centres around how customers will gain from your product.
Of course, add style to your copy and ensure that it captures the audience’s attention, but keep it simple and direct.
3. Not thinking hard enough about buyer persona
Using your buyer persona to guide the direction of your landing page’s design and copy is essential in your creation process.
71% of companies who exceed lead and revenue goals have documented buyer Personas within their campaigns.
Why establish a buyer persona? Because it builds the foundation of your digital marketing strategy. Personas determine who your customer is, where they are in their consumer journey, and the benefits that they hope to gain from investing in your solution.
While your landing page copy should be concise, it should also accurately reflect your persona’s needs and objections. For example — the needs of individuals within a large organisation are vastly different to those within a startup or a small agency. Copywriters should understand this key factor and implement it in their work.
The same rules apply to design. Different forms of design appeal to different kinds of people depending on their age, status and needs.
Think more about your buyer persona to drive more leads and profit.
4. Your PPC ad copy and landing page copy don’t match
An intrinsic component of any PPC ad campaign is building a landing page that matches your campaign consistently.
By using the same keywords and sharing the same message across your PPC Ad and landing page, you are more likely to reassure customers that they are on the right path to purchasing a solution correctly suited to their needs.
You can match copy across your PPC campaign and landing page by choosing certain common phrases (the most searched variants of your keywords) and implementing them into headings and subheadings. Of course, you can also repeat the exact same language across platforms for maximum impact.
The most powerful landing pages drive users directly to the content they are looking for. If a user clicks a PPC Ad about toothpaste, don’t deliver them to a disconnected landing page about socks.
5. You haven’t carried out enough testing
Getting landing pages built and tested is one of the top five challenges for B2B marketers.
Although it’s no easy feat, a successful landing page cannot exist without being tested multiple times and in multiple different ways.
A strategic testing campaign involves smart marketers determining target conversion goals, identifying the appropriate elements of a landing page to test, and figuring out which testing tools to use.
Whether you opt for A/B testing or multivariate testing depends on your overall approach to your campaign and your website’s traffic level. However, there are key elements within a landing page that must be tested regardless of strategy. These include:
- USPs
- Text font and style
- Page design
- Headline
- CTA buttons
There are countless tools available out there to test your landing page if you wish to avoid getting developers and coders involved in the process.
If it’s not tested, then it’s not worth it. Up your testing strategy today. If there’s one thing you should take away from this article, it’s that simple sells.
As seen in The Drum
