What is a landing page?
So what exactly is a landing page? To keep it simple, a landing page is a standalone page that someone lands on after clicking on an ad. Landing pages are commonly used for marketing campaigns and have one purpose: to take your desired action. For example, to get visitors to ‘sign up for a quote’, 'download a free course’ or ‘buy a product’.
What is the difference between a landing page and A website?
A landing page is a single page with one goal for a marketing campaign. A website however is typically a collection of pages commonly used for organic visitors. It gives visitors the opportunity to explore other pages on your site. The most distinctive difference between a landing page and a website is a landing page should have one main call to action (CTA) such as ‘get a free 7-day trial’ as seen in the image below.
The two secrets to an effective landing page
If you want to nail your landing pages, there are two fundamental principles you need to follow.
Attention Ratio
Message Match
Attention ratio refers to all the things someone can do on a landing page compared to the action you actually want your visitor to do. For example, if there are 50 different buttons and links on your landing page that your visitor can click and you only want your visitor to ‘download a free PDF’, the attention ratio is 50:1. Ideally, the attention ratio should be 1:1. Often marketers overcomplicate landing pages and include too many links and buttons. The secret to an effective landing is keeping it simple and making it as easy as possible for the visitor to take your desired action.
Message Match refers to the consistency between your ad message and landing page message. Does the message on your ad match the headline of your landing page? For example, if you click on an ad that says ‘click here for a free PDF’, does your landing page headline say ‘Download a PDF’? Making sure your messages match tells visitors they are on the right page to increase the likelihood of them taking action. Additionally, it is important to use the same colour scheme, logos, buttons and photos to create a consistent user experience. A strong message match can result in low bounce rates and higher conversion rates.
The 5 elements that all landing pages must have
There are five essential elements that all landing pages must-have. These are:
A Unique Value Proposition
Hero Shot
Benefits
Social Proof
Call To Action
Unique Value Proposition
What makes your product or service unique? It is important to clearly communicate to your landing page visitors. Why should they pick you? For example, a cleaning service business, a headline such as ‘Get highly-experienced and reliable cleaners to your house within 3 hours’ communicates to visitors that the business is qualified and efficient.
Hero Shot
Let’s talk about the importance of imagery. Naturally, people are visual creatures so using a hero shot that captures your visitor's attention is crucial. The best hero shots are photos or videos that clearly depict your product or service. For example, a business selling headphones should use an visually appealing image of someone using their headphones as it clearly highlights the product and its intended use.
Benefits
Now that you have captured the visitor's attention using a catchy headline and amazing image/video, you should communicate the benefits of your service or product. The best way to do this is using bullet points to make it easy for people to quickly scan the information. Your benefits should address pain points that typically have and highlight how your product or service can help alleviate that pain. Let’s go back to the headphone example. Instead of stating a feature such as ‘active noise cancellation’, stating a benefit such as ‘enjoy an immersive listening experience even in noisy environments.’’ is more impactful.
Social Proof
Social proof is very powerful and can turn skeptical prospects into high-paying customers. It’s extremely important to establish authority in the minds of your customers as fast as possible. And through the use of reviews, testimonials and user-generated content from your previous customers, you can achieve this. Who do you think people are going to trust? You? The company selling the product or service? Or real people who have actually used your product or service are raving about how great it is?
There are numerous ways to use social proof but here are a few ideas: The first thing is to highlight how popular your product or service is by including numbers such as “Over 200 pair of earphones sold in the last month’ or ‘30 homes cleaned this week!’. The second thing is to use testimonials from your real customers and user-generated content to reinforce credibility and authenticity. Get your customers recommending your business.
Call To Action
Last but not least, the call to action! The purpose of a landing page is to get visitors to take your desired action. There are two things you need to consider for your call to action - design and copy.
The best call to action is easily noticeable and has a contrasting colour to the page background. Oftentimes, marketers get confused about what colour is the most effective. However, studies have found that it is not the colour that is important, more so the level of contrast between the button colour and the background. Using a tool like the contrast checker will allow you to determine your ‘contrast ratio’. The higher the contrast ratio, the better.
A great way to craft your call to action is to ask yourself “how do I {insert call to action}”. Example: ‘How Do I Claim My Free Ebook?’ or ‘How Do I Get A Quote’? The call-to-action copy should clearly outline what will happen when the button is clicked. These call to action clearly sets the expectation for the visitor.
When taking all of this into account, an example template may look like this:
Use these tips to build yourself a high-converting landing page that converts cold prospects into customers.
Let us know if this helped you!
If you have any questions or need any assistance with building your landing page, feel free to get in touch with us below!
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