Have you ever filled out a form on a website in return for some juicy content? Think back. Do you remember what exactly tempted you to do so? Was it the content itself, the anticipation of the offer, the appealing design or the whole package? Well, whether it's curiosity or general interest, a successful landing page takes the lead.
Now that you recall your own experience with landing pages, you'll have a better idea of how to create one. And, with the help of this guide, you'll have an even higher chance of creating a successful one, turning visitors into qualified leads.
When it comes to offering content in your Inbound Marketing strategy, it’s best practice to create relevant, informative and accurate information on your business’s industry. Often, it’s productive to deliver this content freely through social messaging or blogs. But, in some cases, when it comes to more substantial content, it’s best for your company to offer gated content through a landing page.
What is a Landing Page?
Landing pages are branded as website pages, but are actually separate from them. In order to reach one, the visitor must click on a link from the website, an email, a social message or a CTA (Call-to-action) button in a blog. A landing page acts as a "gate" to valuable content and requires the visitor to fill out a form in order to download and access the free content. This creates a win-win situation for both the customer and the company. Both parties get information they need and want. More often than not, gated content comes in form of a whitepaper, ebook, infographic, event sign up, webinar registry, case study or anything that encourages high conversion rate.
Once the visitor has chosen to fill out the form, they are directed to a Thank You page where they can download the content or are notified that the content will be delivered to their email inbox shortly.
What is the Purpose?
The main goal of the landing page is to convert visitors to leads through a form. That’s why it’s important to offer your most valuable content through a form. Most of the time, the visitors who are signing up to receive information are interested in taking action at some point. Based on the information they provide on the form, that information is segmented in the database. Then you will have enough information to move your new lead along the buyer’s journey.
No matter where your visitors are in the buyer's journey, it's important to help them along the way. Offer a viariety of content to suit all stages of the journey because you never know when a visitor will be ready to convert.
Creating a Killer Landing Page
So how exactly do we create a killer landing page? Since landing pages are meant to convert visitors to potenial customers, the offer in the message should be clear and concise.
- State exactly what the offer is.
- Provide the benefits of downloading the content now.
- Explain how the prospect can receive it.
1. Title
Make a clear, action-oriented and catchy title. This is what draws the audience in, so make it personable.
2. Subtitle
In the subtitle, describe the offer and tell the visitor what to expect from filling out the form to downloading the content. Don’t be afraid to add anticipation, but keep the message clear.
3. Brief Description
Provide a brief description of the actual content whether it's an eBook, case study or event. Summarize the key points and why it benefits them now. Use bullet points so the prospect can quickly decide if the content is of value to them or not.
4. Visuals
A picture speaks a thousand words, so choose an image, animation or video that is relevant to the topic and speaks for the content. Content with relevant images gets 94% more views than content that lacks relevant images.
5. Form
The amount of information you request ona form should reflect the value of your offer. Only include questions which will gather information that you truly require from the prospect. Most people don’t want to spend time filling out lengthy forms. Too many questions can intimidate the prospect from filling out the form. They won’t mind giving you some information in return for a free download, but don’t push it.
6. Navigation Menu & Links
Remove navigation menus and links from your landing page. You don't want to distract your visitors or give them an opportunity to navigate away from your offer.7. Social Sharing Icons
Don’t forget to provide these icons. If you’re providing gated content, you must be proud of it and want your visitors to be too. Social media icons encourage content sharing and, at the end of the day, that brings in leads.
Putting it all together, here's an example of what a successful landing page looks like.
Don't Forget to Test
You want a killer landing page right? Always, always, always test your content. While the previous 7 steps are essential, they might require some tweaking along the way and the only way to know is to test consistently.
From the colour scheme, to the messaging, to the components on the page, prepare and compare two versions of your content in order to see which version performs better. This is called A/B testing or split testing.
Remember when I mentioned visuals? According to ScoopIt.com, visual content is 40X more likely to get shared via social media than any other type of content. This doesn’t mean every landing page will get more exposure if it has an incredible visual. Test it out. Make two versions, one with an image and one without. Then you can analyze the results. Maybe there is a correlation between the content and the audience.
Creating a killer landing page might seem simple, but take another second to perfect the details. If you follow these guidelines, you’ll be on the right track to lead generation. After all, one lead can go a long way!
Now that you are converting visitors, make sure your content doesn't suck!
by Gabi Yanover on March 28, 2016
Gabi is the Director of Implementation Team at Penguin Strategies. She is passionate about yoga, traveling, and Marketing Tech solutions.
