A landing page is a very important part of your digital marketing campaign.
This page is where you will send the highly targetted traffic you have sourced with a carefully targetted message. Your landing page must contain the same message as in your ad text, but in much more detail. It’s purpose is to convince your potential customers that you are the answer to their problems and show them what they need to do in order to get resolution to that problem.
What is a Landing Page?
Firstly, what is a landing page? A landing page is a page of content on your website or sales funnel that ideally contains a single message and prompts a single action. An example of this might be if you wanted to promote a new course you’ve written. Your page would be all about your new course, along with a call to action for that course – such as a Sign Up form.
Landing pages can double as content on your website. However, you’ll often create many landing pages with a very similar message in order to test conversion rates, so they are often not included in your website content or indexed in Google (to avoid duplicate content).
For online stores, your landing page may be as simple as using the product or category specific page. For example, if you are advertising RAT tests, then your landing page might be the RAT Test product page.
Where Can You Use a Landing Page?
Landing pages are used in marketing campaigns such as Google Ads. Your Google Ad ad text will catch your potential client in their search for a similar product or service to yours, and direct them through to your carefully crafted landing page.
You can use your landing page in any online campaign. This might be a Facebook ad, LinkedIn ad, or a display ad on a website.
Understand Your Market Segment
Before you start building your landing page, it is important to get super clear on a few things. Let’s start with defining your market segment.
When people buy or engage in services with a company, there are three main core desires they have that cause them to do this:
- Relationships
- Wealth
- Health
Think about your business. What is the primary core desire your business gives?
For example, if you are a dentist, your core desire is Health. You help people get healthier teeth and gums.
If you are a website designer, it is Wealth. You help people grow their businesses so they can make more money.
If you are a florist, it’s Relationships as you help people connect and show love to their partners or friends.
Once you understand your core market, break this down into smaller market segments. If your market segments are already swamped with other businesses, try and create a new niche sub-market that you can dominate.
Some examples of sub segments are:
Health – Dental Care – Fixing broken teeth
Health – Dental Care – Whitening teeth
Wealth – IT Support – Supplying email software
Wealth – IT Support – Managing IT security
Relationships – Florist – Delivering flowers
Relationships – Florist – Creating wedding flowers
Your landing page content should be designed to your Core Desire (Relationships, Wealth or Health) and then speak to your submarket niche.
Understand Why People Buy
When creating your content, keep in mind the 3 reasons that result in people buying something:
- Emotion – they buy because of an emotional response (50% of buyers)
- Fear – they buy because or urgency or scarity (30% of buyers)
- Logic – they buy through reasoning or comparison (20% of buyers)
Create content on your landing page that addresses these 3 behaviours, starting with emotion and ending with logic.
Define Your Customers Key Problems and How Your Business Resolves These
Create a spreadsheet or document and list all the problems you can think of that your customers face, in relation to the specific product you are going to market on this landing page.
Then, write down all of the ways your product or service helps them resolve those issues.
Now, think about how your customers will feel after you’ve resolved these issues.
Take this example. You are a dentist and your landing page is marketing cracked tooth repair.
Problems:
- Pain
- Ugly teeth
- Embarrasment or shyness
Answers:
- No more pain
- Beautiful teeth
- Confidence
How Your Client Will Feel After:
- Pain-free
- Confident
- Happy
Break this down into several key sentences that really nail this message, then you can work these through your text.
For example:
Do you have cracked or broken teeth causing you pain or discomfort? Do you hate smiling or being in photos because of your teeth? Now you can get your confidence back with beautiful straight, pain-free teeth! Never be nervous about smiling your best smile again!
If you are offering IT Support, you might write:
Would you like your IT systems to run efficiently and with as little expense as possible? Our IT support packages are perfect for reducing costs, saving you time, and helping to ensure your business runs smoothly. This frees you up to do what you do best.
Create your Content from the Users Perspective
Yes, your website is all about you. You are the hero who is going to make the client feel amazing, make more money or enjoy better relationships. But for the user, you must not be the hero of the story. The client wants to think that its all about them. Their problems, their solutions, their feelings. You are the guide, showing them the way to the perfect resolution of these things.
When crafting your content, try and write your text from the perspective of your client. Use the list and key sentences you created above to help you with the wording for your page.
What Key Sections do you need on Your Landing Page
Each landing page you create should follow a specific layout, with all the very important key sections in it.
This is a good formula to help you remember these key sections:
PASTA
P – Problem
A – Aggrevate the problem
S – Solution
T – Testimonial proof
A – Action
You might try re-ordering these sections, or changing the text or images on them, but you want to ensure you have them all on each landing page.
These key sections will highlight the problem that your users face, provide a solution to this problem, give testimonial proof as to why your business is the best answer to their problem, and provide a strong call to action.
What Content should you Include on your Landing Page
When a customer looks at your landing page, you have on average about 7 seconds to grab their attention by expaining what your offer is, how it resolves their issue and why they should buy it from you. In order to do this, your landing page should include a mix of these elements:
- Headings with key messages. What your product or service is, how it resolves their issues, what you want them to do.
- Images that are eye catching, appealing and relevant. Avoid stock images where possible and use authentic images.
- Bullet point lists that explain solutions and features. Avoid technical terms and write these in simple to understand ways.
- Call to action buttons and forms. These buttons might include a few variations on your call to action.
- Short easy to read sentences and paragraphs. Write your content in simple, easy to understand sentences with simple, easy to understand words. The Flesch-Kincaid readability score is a good guide to test how easy your text is to read. You should aim for between Grade 6 and 8 – so 8 to 14 year old children should be able to read and understand your message. Many SEO plugins have this tool built in.
- Testimonials. If you don’t have any, try and get some from your loyal customers. Still stuck, have you worked with friends or family? Ask them for a testimonial.
Include your Company Core Values
Integrating your Core Values into your landing page can help create trust and give weight to Why You. For example, our core values here at Innovate Digital are:
- Integrity
- Innovation
- Excellence
- Responsibility
Include Conversion Tracking
Your shopping cart, contact forms, file downloads, sign up forms, phone numbers etc all need to be tracked. Conversion tracking is a vital step in any website, so ideally this should already be done. If it is not already set up, do it now.
Test your Landing Page
Created the perfect landing page? You have one more step. TEST! Make sure all your buttons and links work. Test your enquiry form, sign up form, booking service or shopping cart. Read and reread your text, are there any spelling or grammatical errors? Nothing will deter sales faster than spelling errors or broken links!
Test your conversion tracking is working correctly.
You might want to duplicate your page and then try subtle differences. A different photo. Different text on your call to action buttons. Target a different behaviour for buying. Then use your alternate landing pages in your marketing and test which is more effective.
The Takeaway
Once you have followed this guide, you are ready to use your landing page in your marketing campaign. Remember to check your analytics regularly to see how it is performing. Test different variations and content. Sometimes something as little as a button text, an image or a colour you’ve used can deter a sale!
Need help creating your landing pages? Get in touch below!
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Are you ready to smash some exciting goals? Or just need some help with your website, Google Ads or social media marketing? Let us know how we can help and we’ll be in touch.