If you’re looking to drum up excitement around your business and engage with leads, you occasionally might need to provide a little something more valuable than your standard content that will set up a relationship that could result in them becoming a customer. But how do you go about initiating that relationship? By allowing them to entrust you with their information.
A landing page is a specific destination on a website where potential leads are sent to in order to obtain something you’re offering. Potential offers include a consultation, an e-book, or a webinar—basically, something of more substantial value than what you provide on your blog or on other parts of your site. By filling out a form to claim the offer, visitors will be providing you with contact information that you can use to follow through within the lead conversion process.
One of the mistakes that companies make when creating offers is assuming that once a visitor clicks on their call-to-action, the lead is as good as captured. However, the visitor still has to digest your landing page and fill out your form, giving them more time to change their mind than you might think. The more effective your landing page is, the better chance you have to convert your lead.
Make sure that you follow these best practices when you’re creating your landing page:
Pay Attention To Design
Formatting can go a long way in helping visitors read your content with ease, so keep our user friendly web design tips in mind. Minimize all possible distractions, which means don’t add links on your landing page, even if it’s to different pages on your website. The last thing you want to do is direct your lead away from the page before they’ve taken action. If they see a link, they may click on it, leading them further away from signing up.
Although you want to use content to entice the lead even more, one thing you should be sure to avoid is cluttering up the page. You don’t want the lead to feel overwhelmed, nor do you want to make it difficult for them to find the form. Not to mention that too much clutter due to extravagant visuals can cause your landing page to load slower, which will decrease the chances of a lead following through.
Outline The Offer
Although people should have an idea of what they’re getting when they click into your landing page, this is your chance to expand on that a little further. However, you don’t want to give TOO much information away.
Keep text to a quick summary and use bolding and bullet points to highlight the key benefits that are available to them upon claiming the offer. Keep the headline and sub-headline short and attention-grabbing by either posing a question or giving a clear direction.
Images help potential leads conceptualize what they’re going to be getting (even if it’s not a literal representation of it.) Make sure you use a large image that is relevant to your products or services. Images should always be of high quality because low quality images reflect poorly on your brand.
Create An Even, Fair Exchange
People tend to be hesitant when it comes to giving out their private information—and for good reason. To make them feel more comfortable with filling out your form, make sure that you prove your credibility. Although we mentioned limiting what goes on the page, you should add a privacy statement that ensures leads that you won’t share their personal information.
Another way to make potential leads feel more at ease is to make the information you request on the form reflect the quality of the offer you’re giving. Offers should reflect the needs of a certain point in the buying process—the closer the person is to becoming your customer, the more valuable the offer should be, and in return, the more information people should be willing to provide. For example, someone downloading a whitepaper might not be as qualified of a lead to ask for more than a name and email address, but if someone is looking to have a consultation with you, you can prompt them to provide a little more details about themselves.
As a seemingly obvious, but still important final note: The call-to-action that sends leads to the landing page, the content of your landing page, and the offer you deliver should all be consistent. If you offered a free e-book to readers on your blog, then linked to a landing page that provides a coupon instead, leads are going to be confused at the inconsistency of the offer and are most likely not going to sign up. Even if you are offering the same thing but using different language, such as referring to your offer as an “informative brochure” and then referring to it on your landing page as a “whitepaper,” is going to confuse your leads.
Remember, just because you've managed to lure a lead to your landing page doesn’t mean that the job is done. If you need more help creating a professional, enticing offer, have us create a custom landing page for you!
