Getting your marketing campaign to work and bring in revenue requires lots of work and optimization. Besides your product/service, you need to think about how you’re going to position your business in front of your target customers, and what tools and tactics you will use to achieve that success.
There are lots of ways to place your products successfully and attract the attention of your ideal consumers. However, what will you do with that attention? Do you know where to send people that clicked on your social media posts or opened your website?
If you want to have an effective marketing campaign, what you need is a specific page that will be created with a goal in mind – a landing page. In this article, we’re going to provide you with the best tips that you can implement in the creation of the perfect landing page for your marketing campaign.
Understanding Landing Pages
A landing page is a standalone page or a page that is part of your website, designed to convert web visitors into leads and customers.
This is where you can capture the visitor’s attention and his/her information. When someone “lands” on your landing page he/she can either click on your CTA link/button or fill in the lead capture form with their name and email address.
You need to build your landing page with a goal in mind. It must be directed towards a specific target audience and those that have already performed an action such as clicking on an email link or opening a promotional link on social media.
The Core Elements of a Landing Page
Before you start building a landing page for your marketing campaign, you need to get familiar with the anatomy of the landing page:
- Unique Value Proposition (UVP)
- Hero Photo/Graphic/Video
- Beneficial Offer
- Social Proof
- Call-to-action (CTA)
This is what sets you apart from your competitors and what makes you memorable. A good example of this is DeskBeer’s unique value proposition “Craft and small-batch drinks delivered to your office.”
There are 4 major components that form the presentation of your UVP in your landing page:
- Main Headline: The first line that users see and read when they open your landing page. This is where you need to be clear about your product/service benefits.
- Sub Headline: Short line that supports the main headline. It can come as an extension of the main headline or as an additional compelling message.
- Experience Statement: A message that is usually found halfway on the landing page and it describes the experience that users will get if they accept your call-to-action.
- Closing Statement: This is where you need to add additional messages to strengthen your UVP.
You need to know how to visually represent the benefits to your audience. With a hero photograph or a video, users can understand your product/service better. Here are two ways to achieve this:
- Photography: If you have a tech product, a good idea might be a photograph of someone using it.
- Video: You can directly showcase the benefits and the product UX with a video.
You’ll definitely need a thorough description of the benefits users will get by clicking on your CTA. You can outline your product/service benefits with the help of:
- Bulletin list: You don’t have to write an entire article about the benefits on your landing page. An introduction followed by bullet points can be enough.
- Extended Description: Here, you need to expand on the benefits of your offer. But don’t exaggerate. Don’t detail everything, instead, invite users to discover it themselves by responding to your CTA.
It is one of the most convincing arguments you have. You can directly illustrate how customers use your product/service to improve their lives and solve their problems. If others use your service, new customers will be convinced easier to do so too. Social proof can come in the form of:
- Social Signals
- Customers Count
- Trust Seals
- Awards and Certifications
- Reviews from Customers
On your landing page, everything comes down to the call-to-action. Every other element is just a supportive element that needs to convince the user to click on the CTA. It can either be an action button or an opt-in form.
This is an important element towards increasing your conversion rate. If you want people to take action, it’s extremely important where you position the CTA, its design, and the core message that will make people take action.
Creating the Landing Page for Your Marketing Campaign
Now that you got the basics out of the way and understand the anatomy of the landing page, it is time to start creating the landing page for your marketing campaign.
1. Conduct a Market Research First
Every effective marketing campaign starts with market research. To build a successful landing page, you need to collect customer data in order to develop your core messages and deliver an impeccable user experience.
You need to understand your audience before you offer something on your landing page. Your target market has its own preferences, interests, and expectations regarding a given product/service, so you need to make sure that you have that information in details.
Your target users go through the following stages when they decide to buy a product or use a service:
- Discovering a Need: Your target customers have a problem that needs a solution.
- Researching: People want to learn more so they compare solutions and products, read user reviews and collect the information.
- Ready to Buy: At this stage, people know where to go to buy the product.
- Buying: Now that they’re convinced, people place an order, click the CTA or physically buy the solution.
- After Purchase: This is the experience that the user has after the purchase it often includes whether the product has been useful and whether the entire buying and customer experience is on point.
When you develop your landing page, you need to know how to address each of the concerns above. Think about your target personas. Make sure that your product/solution fulfills a need or solves a problem.
Check what type of people have bought your products already. Define demographics, sex, age, hobbies, income level and any other data that can help your landing page design. Also, you can look at your most successful competitors to get more data on your target clients.
2. Start the Design Process
Content is important to convince users to opt for the CTA, but design matters if you want to place your copy properly. Each of your sections/elements matter and every element complements the next.
When you start developing your landing page template, you need to focus on:
- Clean UX/UI: Make sure that you provide a clean interface. You need to make the experience easier for users and align every element of your landing page according to that experience.
- Clear and Readable Fonts: Remember that we live in the age of mobile and that users today often browse more on their smartphones than on desktops. Your landing page copy needs to be clear and perfectly readable on mobile devices too.
When you design your landing page, you need to think of its end goal first. Ask yourself the following questions:
- Why do I need this landing page?
- What is the main goal of this landing page?
- What is the action that I want my target users to take?
- Why the action that the users take matters for my business?
Of course, you want to convert landing page visitors into customers, but they can’t read your mind. They want to be guided by your landing page layout, copy, and design.
When your target users browse the internet, they don’t go immediately to a landing page in their browser and click the CTA. No, they go online first to solve their problems. You just need to be there at the right time and with the right landing page that will convert them.
With a clear landing page goal, you need to start with the wireframing process. At this stage, you need to define each element of your landing page, the number of images, the quality of visuals, the number of lines, amount of copy, etc.
The main elements that you need to include in your landing page wireframe are:
- Hero Shot
- Additional images
- Benefits and Features
- Client Testimonials
- Media Mentions
The more you focus on your CTA, the better. That’s why you don’t need to include navigational links in your landing page design. Leave the navigational links and social buttons for your homepage.
When you develop your landing page layout, look to the most successful landing pages for inspiration. And remember to stick to a clean design that enhances your landing page elements.
Don’t forget to develop a natural and intuitive UX and flow. An effective landing page should lead the user to the CTA.
- Analogous – Colors that are next to each other on the color wheel are naturally compatible because the adjacent colors in most of the cases evoke similar emotions.
- Complementary – Opposites attract each other, especially when it comes to color combinations. Colors that are on the opposite side of the color wheel, they bring out the best results when they’re paired.
- Triadic –It is a stable color scheme just like the analogous one, but with a more invigorating effect. For the triadic scheme to work, you need to pick the right 3 colors that correspond to your brand’s personality.
Bottom line, when you choose the colors for your landing page, make sure that each of your landing page elements is visible both on mobile and on a desktop. Use color psychology to make each element stand out, and make sure that the CTA button doesn’t overlap with the background color or the users will not be able to recognize it immediately.
4. Have a Compelling Headline
The headline is the first line that the users see when they open your landing page. Users’ entire engagement with your page can depend solely on the headline. This is why you need a have a clear, concise and compelling headline for your landing page.
The headline is there to explain your company or product mission. It is important to explain the product as easily and as simply as possible instead of using obvious sales words. You must be concise in telling people what they sign up for.
Some examples of concise headlines would be:
- “Sign up for our product demo.”
- “Work Smarter. Use (Name of Tool).”
- “Get the latest advice straight to your inbox.”
To increase the effect, you can also use subheading under the main headline. This provides the audience with more information about your product/service and its benefits.
5. Write an Engaging Copy
After you’ve introduced your offer with a headline, it’s time to provide more details to your audience.
Your copy needs to answer every user question that we mentioned at the beginning of this article and present every benefit of your product/service.
Remember what the goal of your landing page is. It’s important for your marketing campaign that you provide a complete, but not too overwhelming copy about your product/service benefits.
Make sure that you don’t write something that is too long to read in order to reduce the risk of losing your target visitors. Writing a short copy is excellent if you want to provide a free giveaway or to increase your email list.
A longer, more detailed copy might be better if you sell an expensive product. Here you want to be able to convince your future customers why they should give you their hard-earned money.
To make sure that you have an engaging copy for your landing page, stick to the following checklist:
- Have a clear copy structure that includes a headline, subheadlines, supporting details, and a closing argument.
- Make sure that the headline helps your visitors comprehend your product and the benefits.
- Use words that people use when they talk about similar products/services. Listen to existing customers to discover the right words for your campaign.
- Ensure that you use the right industry vocabulary.
- Outline benefits and features with bulletin lists.
- Depending on your page goals and offer, decide if you’re going to use long or short copy.
- Proofread for coherent and consistent copy throughout the landing page.
6. Have Captivating Visuals Elements
The visual elements of your landing page should communicate every argument of your landing page copy. You can’t convert a visitor today with just a headline, copy, and an action button.
Your prospects have to connect the content with your visual elements and that will stick in their minds longer than the text. They will process images better than any other type of data on your page.
The visual element alone should be of such quality and have such power that it will immediately direct the users towards the CTA. For example, an image should represent your solution, eBook, someone that uses your solution, graphic design for your offer or a discount, or a video on how to use the product.
Emotions play a huge role in your landing page visual elements. You need to address your target users’ motivations and desires from the moment they land on your page. Whether prospects want to feel secure, loved or relaxed when they land on the page, you need to provide the right feeling for them.
The best way to convey emotions in your landing page is to use images with people in them. We are all hardwired to respond to faces. It’s in the human DNA. This is the reason why you should use human faces and expressions in your landing page imagery. The more similar the face to your target customer, the better.
If you want to provide more technical information about your products, perhaps a chart or a creative graphic would do better than an image. Just make sure that your graphic doesn’t overlap with any other elements on your landing page, especially the headline and the CTA.
7. Include Real Customer Testimonials
Testimonials have the power to boost your landing page conversions. However, you should not use them blatantly or invent them on your own. You need to include real results, from real people.
This is a crucial element if you want to build trust with your future customers. It’ll definitely add to the positive user experience of your landing page.
Trust is vital. People that are interested in your product need to be convinced by what they are looking at on your page. Even asking for personal information such as email and a name is often too much if you’re not able to build trust immediately. That’s why a happy client and his/her testimonial is the best social proof of all if you want to increase your landing page conversion.
8. Have a Thank You Page
You must be grateful that your visitors went through the process of opening your landing page and responding to the call-to-action. A thank you page is the least that you can do for them.
This is also a matter of principle, good business manners, and also, a way to let users know that you’ve received their information and provided t steps to complete the transaction. You can also engage the user further and provide an additional CTA such as a link to becoming a social media follower or to check out other things you have to offer.
Again, before you redirect people to your Thank You page, remember your initial landing page goals. By keeping these goals in mind, you’ll know what information and additional CTA to provide within your Thank You page.
9. Monitor and A/B Test Your Landing Page
Testing and learning from mistakes is how you’ll improve your marketing campaigns. You need to run parallel tests between at least two landing pages with similar goals, but with slightly altered elements and element placement.
Your target customers will decide what works best and converts better for your landing page. The elements that you need to A/B test on your landing page are:
- The Headline: Test headlines to see which one represents your value proposition the best.
- The CTA: One type of CTA will bring more conversions than the rest. Discover it.
- Hero Shot: Try different photos that show your product or how your product or service is being used.
- Action Button Design: Try a different contrast, surrounding whitespace, design.
- Action Button Color: Test different colors, remember the color psychology that we outlined above.
- Form Length: Collect varying types of information, but make sure that you don’t overdo it. With this, you can decide which form produces a better conversion rate and which type increases the abandonment rate.
- Long Copy or Short Copy: In general, a shorter copy is better, although for certain product details and for high-priced services, you’ll need a more detailed description.
The tips mentioned above are all tried and true, but that doesn’t mean that implementing them is enough and that your marketing campaign is over just by creating a landing page.
You should be constantly collecting data and analyzing feedback. Improvement is always possible if you conduct A/B tests regularly. With that, your high-converting marketing campaign will start to unfold and bring you more customers, one step at the time.