Ellen Welker
It’s a small victory when a visitor comes across your site and navigates to a landing page. What makes it a big win? With all the hard work you’ve done to get that visitor to your site, when they continue along a conversion path to fill out your form and become a lead…well, that’s worth celebrating!
When that visitor turns out to be one of your buyer personas in the midst of their buyer’s journey, that’s even better. Of course, part of the journey includes entering the top of your funnel by following the lead conversion path you’ve designed for them. A lead conversion path is made up of 6 elements:
- It begins with a type of offer.
- The offer is reached by clicking on a button called a call-to-action or CTA, which leads the visitor to a landing page (LP).
- The LP provides a snapshot of what the offer is, with a form to fill out in order to receive the offer.
- After filling out the form, the visitor is led to a thank you page. A thank you page does just that – thanks them for downloading!
- The link to the offer may be on this page or a follow up email is sent explaining how to download.
At the very end of the path, you have the opportunity to turn them into a lead for your business. For more detailed information, you can check out this HubSpot post “Lead Gen 101: How to Create an Intuitive Website Conversion Path”.
With the explosion of content hitting the Internet every day, it’s important that your company stands out as a valuable, helpful and relevant source. Remember, most of your visitors aren’t getting to your site because they’re desperate to buy something. Rather, they’re seeking knowledge to improve their world and they’re searching to find ways to solve their problems. Why should they take the next step with you?
The offer you’re making and your CTA must clearly answer that question. Think of those items as the lure, designed to attract your prospects into your net. Your LP is that net, and it’s important that you follow effective guidelines to create LPs that convert visitors to leads.
Remember that when someone lands on one of your landing pages, they’re already interested in what you’re offering. They’ve clicked on a CTA or a search result. Your landing page’s “job” is to get that interest across the finish line where they share valuable information in exchange for what you’re offering.
1. Create Value
If I’m looking for a company to work with, a product to implement or a service needed, I’m going to most likely know the basics. Your homepage should tell them what you do and what you can provide in general; your landing pages and offers should be far more focused and offer real value.
Don’t simply explain what the offer is or what it does. Tell your visitor how they’ll be better off for taking action. How will they be able to use it? How will it make their life or their business better? What problems does it solve?
It’s amazing what I’ve learned correcting a landing page from stating three bullet points about what the offer accomplishes to three bullets points that speak directly to the customer on how it can make them better.
2. Make Them the Star
This goes along with creating value. The more value you add to describe an offer on a LP, the more the focus shifts to the customer, and away from your business, products or services.
When someone comes to your LP it should speak to them, telling their story (not yours). They should be able to quickly identify with what you’re offering, and why it matters.
How do you do this? Answer their questions before they even ask them, know where they are in their journey and give them what they want before they find it. It all comes down to knowing your buyer personas.
3. Put Yourself in Their Shoes
People land on your page for a reason. For example, if someone clicks on a link or CTA to find out how to tend to a burn, they don’t want to be led to a prescription sign up form. This happened to me recently. I searched “how do you take care of a burn?” The first link that appeared aligned with my question and the meta description was similar. I clicked the link to land on a page with another link saying “What to do to prevent serious burn damage.” I clicked this and was led to a page asking me if I wanted to sign up for a free prescription antibiotic. If I’d wanted an antibiotic, I would have searched this.
When your landing page doesn’t fulfill your visitor’s expectations, you let them down. Your offer, CTA and LP should all be aligned, guiding and fulfilling your visitor’s expectations. You should be clear in telling them what you’re offering and what action they should take. Then deliver – don’t try to be sneaky.
For example, one of Imagine’s CTAs says “How to Build Your Buyer Personas Workbook.” When I click the button, I am sent to the LP with the same title at the top and the available eBook download, with a short summary of what the offer includes. When I fill out the form to receive the eBook, it is delivered with the same title.
4. Be Authentic
As part of what I do I see a lot of marketing efforts, websites and landing pages. Too often they look, feel and sound the same…boring. I think it’s probably because one company copies another and another and so on.
When creating your LPs, let your company’s personality come through. It’s okay to break a rule here or there if it’s purposeful. Don’t work so hard to sound like something that you’re not.
Be a little quirky, try something that you haven’t seen and then watch the results. It’s okay to be inspired by others, but the best thing you can do to improve your landing page performance is to be original…after all it’s why your customers are your customers.
