Key takeaways
- Keep branding and imagery consistent across social profiles, main pages and landing pages to avoid confusing SMS/email visitors.
- Design simple, uncluttered landing pages with clear, prominent CTAs and navigation.
- Add trust elements, privacy policy info, testimonials, reviews, certifications or awards, chosen to fit your product or service.
- Write short, enticing headlines that clearly connect the page to the originating offer.
- Continuously test landing pages across audience segments and track bounce rate, unique visitors, time on site and conversion rate to guide optimisation.
Introduction
Whether you’re texting with customers in your area or reaching out to the masses in the inbox, one thing is certain – you better have a good plan in place for when these viewers hit your digital domain. Without stellar landing pages leading the charge on this front, it’s only a matter of time before these valued members of your online audience start seeing what the competition has to offer. To ensure that you always close the deal when a potential customer steps foot through your digital front door, let’s spend a minute talking about what makes a great set of landing pages.
Consistency Is Key
In his look at winning on this front, Inc. magazine’s Jim Belosic points out that it’s always a good idea to place an emphasis on consistency. From social profile and main page designs, to the various landing pages that greet new visitors, stable and easily identifiable branding and imagery is vital to creating a welcoming experience. The opposite approach – disparate selections that don’t tie into one another – can leave SMS and email shoppers alike feeling confused or uncertain about the seriousness of your digital approach.
Simple Is a Good Start
Additionally, Belosic suggests keeping things simple and toned down as you start developing and creating landing page content. Just like a longwinded text message or email chock full of images, having a set of landing pages that are too “busy” or confusing isn’t a smart idea.
Instead, keep your call-to-action (CTA) and navigation tools clear and prominent. This way, as shoppers start to delve into the particulars of the offer, product, or service that led to this point, they’ll have a straightforward and easily understood path leading straight to a successful checkout.
Sprinkle in Some Trust Elements
Of course, funneling viewers into a conversion isn’t always enough to seal the deal on a successful campaign. For some visitors, it’s all about feeling comfortable with the process, as well as what your brand has to offer. For this reason, John Paul Mains of Marketing Land explains that sprinkling in some content that helps build trust in your organization is a strong landing page tactic.
As far as options go on this front, Mains points out that you have plenty from which to choose. Whether you go with privacy policy information, consumer testimonials, reviews, certifications, or even prior awards and accolades all depends on your products and services. However, for the skeptical viewers out there, few offerings are as enticing and highly sought after on landing pages as these trust-oriented elements.
Building a Winning Headline
In terms of sheer impact, Phil Frost of Web Marketing Today notes that it’s hard to go wrong with a winning headline. Yes, you still need to have a strong offer and CTA, but simply snagging the initial attention of the shoppers that make the jump from SMS and email to this point often comes down to the headline.
Generally, you’ll want to focus on keeping things short, sweet, and enticing. Letting the reader know that this page is connected to the offer in question, as well as ensuring that it’s worth his or her time to continue reading should be your primary goal when it comes to writing headlines. If you’re able to do this, then you’re well on your way to capturing – and retaining – the attention of these future customers.
Test, Test, Test, and Test Some More
Finally, don’t be afraid to repeatedly test your landing page content with different segments of your audience. Just like SMS or email content, assuming you got everything right on the first try is a dangerous and risky way to approach this process. Testing does add extra work to your overall campaign commitment, but failing to optimize and refine this content opens your brand up to a plethora of problems and concerns.
Depending on your content strategy and methods, the type of test needed – as well as the testing variations – can shift or change. However, honing in on bounce rates, unique visitor numbers, time spent on site, and raw conversion rates should help tell the story of your landing page content fairly accurately.
Generating quality landing pages is a lot like pulling off a successful email or SMS marketing initiative. With the right information guiding the way, as well as a willingness to put forth the time and effort needed to refine your operations, there’s nothing that can stop your brand from making the most of this crucial gateway between initial interest and satisfied customers.
FAQ
Ensure consistent branding and imagery across your social profile, main page designs and landing pages so visitors recognize your business. Avoid disparate visuals or elements that don’t tie together, because that can make SMS and email shoppers feel confused or uncertain about your digital approach.
Keep the page simple and toned down rather than “busy.” Make your call-to-action (CTA) and navigation tools clear and prominent so shoppers have a straightforward path from the offer to checkout.
Sprinkle trust-oriented content such as privacy policy information, consumer testimonials, reviews, certifications or prior awards and accolades. Which elements to use depends on your products and services, but these options are commonly sought after by sceptical visitors.
Keep the headline short, enticing and directly connected to the offer that brought the visitor to the page. The headline should signal that the page is worth the reader’s time and encourage them to continue engaging with the content.
Focus on bounce rates, unique visitor numbers, time spent on site and raw conversion rates. These metrics will help tell the story of how well your landing page is performing and where to refine it.
Test repeatedly across different audience segments and experiment with variations. The specific tests and variations will depend on your content strategy and methods, but continual testing, despite the extra work, is necessary to avoid leaving optimization improvements on the table.
Common mistakes include inconsistent branding that confuses visitors, pages that are too busy or confusing and unclear CTAs or navigation. Also, assuming the page is perfect on the first try instead of testing and refining can expose your brand to problems.
