The ultimate goal in a marketing campaign is to convert prospects into customers. Your visitors arrived from somewhere, and an expectation was set before they even landed on your site.
Too often, landing pages are used as a means in themselves, instead of as the destination of an aligned campaign. With a well-executed landing page, your visitors will be inclined to take the appropriate steps in the buying process with the goal of choosing your product. Your mission is to create a seamless experience for your prospects.
For example, at a company where marketing creates 20 to 30 campaigns a month ranging from large email promotions to short 2-day promotions on Twitter or experimental campaigns for paid social ads, the marketing department will need easy access and flexibility to create landing pages that align with each one of their campaigns and for each channel.
Below are five tips to creating those landing pages effectively:
- Align Your Main Message and Call to Action With Your Overall Promise. If you are promising more on your source page than you are delivering on your landing page, this is a major problem. You should never offer something you can't deliver. It is critical to understand your audience and align your landing page with their intent and expectations for the highest conversion of prospects to customers.
- Keep Your Design Simple. The goal in creating an effective landing page is to be direct and minimize any potential distractions. Stick to a strategic and somewhat uniform font, color and size scheme; less content on a landing page is proven to lead to higher conversion rates. Action-driven keywords are also best for landing pages. Test a few to see what works for you and then make sure that you are consistent with your content. You should also ensure that the content is created with your specific audience in mind. If you give the people what they want, they will convert.
- Use Images Thoughtfully. Images are beneficial because they provide a visual representation of your product or service, but make sure you are strategically placing these images on your site. For example, bold, distracting images and other gimmicks could cause your page to fail. Therefore, make sure your image is an appropriate size, not too complex, and has a high enough resolution. Also, captions will help with your landing page SEO and put your image into context.
- Enable Social Sharing. Validate your credibility by allowing your visitors to tap into their social networks and share your page with their various communities. Every social share on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter will highlight the value of your offering while also helping your website rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs).
- Testing … 1, 2, 3. With so many moving parts, it's imperative to test your landing page before it's published to improve lead conversion and optimization, while creating an overall fluid experience for your users. The key to ongoing improvement is establishing a culture of testing and tweaking.
Rob Eleveld is CEO of Seattle-based marketing software provider Optify. Reach him at Rob@optify.net.
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