Five Tips for Creating Landing Pages That Convert

Guest post by Grace Murphy.

The two most common objectives for digital marketing campaigns (and B2B marketing in general) are brand awareness and lead generation.

Lead generation is, of course, the process of enticing prospective customers to provide you with their contact information so that you can contact them directly and stay in touch with them, a.k.a. driving conversions. This is most commonly accomplished by offering something of value in exchange, such as an ebook, event registration, contest entry, an assessment, checklist, or the results from using an online tool.

With organic search, that prospective customer may land on almost page of your website, depending on what they searched for. But when you’re running a Google Ads campaign or social media ad—that is, when you are actually paying directly to drive traffic to your website—you’ll want the user to hit a specific landing page.

The goal of that landing page is to:

• Visually capture the visitor’s interest;
• Concisely convey valuable, compelling information; and
• Effectively persuade users to take action (filling out your lead form).

To maximize the return on your paid advertising campaign spend, you’ll need a properly structured and optimized landing page. Here are five critical elements of effective landing page design to drive more conversions.

1. Proper Structure

These are the essential elements you should have on your landing page, regardless of your industry. Using landing page builder software can help you incorporate these elements successfully for conversion rate optimization (CRO).

• Headline: Present your unique selling point or value proposition in a short sentence.
• Images & videos: Try to feature an image or video clip at the centerfold of your landing page. This should grab people’s attention immediately and compliment your brand and headline.
• Form & Call-To-Action (CTA) Button: This is your end goal. You want people to fill out the form with their contact information and click “submit” (or something more descriptive, like “download,” “register,” or “learn more”).
• Copy: Provide more information on your product, service, or content offering and give more context. Typically you’ll highlight benefits here (hint: keep it to three to make it look neat). If you want, you can create a separate section to talk about the features. Try to elevate your content with photos or multimedia files to provide a visualization.
• Client Reviews: Handpick a few of your best reviews and show them off! We’ll expand on this in another point later on.

2. Customized Messaging

Of course, as you create your digital marketing campaign, you’ll keep in mind that different prospects will be at different stages of the customer journey. Someone who just discovered your ad and clicked on it might not be pulling the trigger just yet—they might be just getting started with their research! Whereas someone who has visited your website and perused several pages might be ready to book a consultation with you.

That’s why it’s vital to develop separate campaigns with corresponding landing pages that have messaging that speaks directly to users in different stages.

For example, if your campaign is for people who are at “top-of-the-funnel” or the beginning stage of the customer journey, you would use language like “find out more” and “learn more” to encourage them to explore your brand without being too pushy.

If the campaign targets people ready to make a purchase decision, you’d use more direct CTAs like “Book Now” or “Download Now” to give them a firm nudge.

If you’re unsure how to position your campaign messaging to effectively target your audiences, partnering up with a digital advertising agency could be a viable solution. They could help you strategically plan and take care of the digital front so you can focus on enhancing your products and services.

3. Client Testimonials

Your landing page should have a section devoted to social proof. This can come in the form of “brand name” customer logos, awards, major media coverage, and—most powerfully—customer testimonials and reviews.

It adds significant credibility to your message when people who visit your landing page can read first-hand accounts from your existing clients or customers, describing their experience with your product or service and how it benefitted them.

It’s a legitimate way to say, “You didn’t hear it from us.” Let your fans and brand advocates do the selling for you!

Try to handpick a few of your top reviews you think would resonate with people. Maybe they share the same pain point as someone featured in the testimonial and can picture how their life can be improved by your brand.

Social proof validates your brand’s trustworthiness and value and helps prospects make the purchase decision.

4. Simple Lead Form

With Google’s recent announcements of removing third-party cookies, collecting first-party data from consumers now (such as lead generation or growing a newsletter) is more important than ever. Obviously, the more information you can get from your leads is ideal, but that’s not the experience users want!

Imagine you go to a website with the intent of downloading a free ebook to learn more about a topic. But aside from your name and email, the form asks you for your address, company name, company size, job title, and other information…with so many required fields to fill out, it can be a bit daunting, and you will likely be less inclined to want to download it.

Context is important. Instead of a free ebook download, offer a free consultation. In this case, both you and the prospect would expect to fill out more information so you could provide them with a more valuable conversation. Your conversion rate will be lower, but the value of each conversion will be higher.

5. A/B Testing

Content, user interface (UI), user experience (UX), and experience design all come into play regarding how well your landing page converts.

That’s why whenever you build out a landing page, you should implement A/B testing. Try out two versions of your landing page design with slight differences in elements such as headline, imagery, or CTA. Observe what is working with audiences and what isn’t, then make adjustments accordingly.

Do note that the two versions of your testing shouldn’t have drastic differences; in trying to test too many different elements at once, you won’t be able to determine which tweak really mattered. Test one element change at a time to correctly pinpoint what should be optimized. A small modification can make all the difference.

A/B testing can help you fine-tune a landing page that drives conversions.

Incorporating these five tips can help you can build a more effective landing page, and generate more qualified leads for your business.

Grace Murphy is a business writer with experience supporting a wide range of clients throughout the corporate landscape. Her writing is informative and succinct, with actionable advice and inspired insight.