How to Build Landing Pages That Actually Convert

 

What's up, everybody? Today we are talking about how to create effective landing pages.

Now, first, before we dive into things, let's address: “What is a landing page? How is it different than any other page on your website?”

Well, whereas on your website, you're trying to to give full context of everything you do and what it's like to work with you, a landing page has a very specific, singular purpose.

You're only trying to get the person who lands on that page to take one specific action.

So, in practice, a landing page is when you post a link on social or run an advertising campaign that people who click that link land on this page that gives them more information about that very specific topic that you teased in the ad or in your social post and ask them to take a singular action.

So that's what landing pages are. They're very important, especially when you're running advertising campaigns. And so today we're going to talk about how to make them effective. Let's get into it.

For a long time, marketing decisions didn't always put the user first. I'll say it like that as a nice way of putting it.

But for a long time, the thought about landing pages was give the user no navigation. You take them to a bare page that doesn't have links to anything else on your website, and you give them the single option of either click out or download what I want you to download.

1. Build minimal navigation links.

That's changing a little bit right now. So the first part of building an effective landing page is not to build in no navigation links, but to build in minimal navigation links.

If you're thinking about the user experience, if someone's landing on your page, your landing page from an ad and they’ve never encountered your business before, they may want to know things like, “Who are you?” So adding a link to your about page can be good. Even adding a link to your normal website homepage can be a good move.

Now I say minimal, because what you still don't really want to do is have your entire website menu across the top of that page, because that still just give somebody too many options when you're trying to ask them to take a single, specific action on your landing page.

But you do want to give them those things that provide more context. And one of those services that we like a lot, AdRoll, actually requires that when you build a landing page that you have a few of these links, like you've got a Privacy Policy, you've got a link to your homepage, you've got an About Us link, etc.

They don't want you to use that old school mindset of no links, ever and just a download button, because they want you to build landing pages with the user experience first, and we're all for it.

You still want to be targeted. You still want to be very clear about that specific action you want somebody to take. So minimal navigational links is a part of an effective landing page, so you're not duplicating your entire sites menu. You're just giving the user the really important links to give context to who you are. If they want to learn more about you before they do what you're asking them to do.

2. Be strategic with your CTAs.

The second piece of an effective landing page is all about the Call to Actions (CTAs). First of all, you want your first call to action to be above the fold. What does above the fold mean? Well, above the fold means that you see it before you have to scroll down on the page. It's right there at the very top.

If you're asking somebody to subscribe to your YouTube channel or join your email list or download your ebook, whatever that landing page purpose is, that you give them that opportunity right away with a clear call to action button.

And, also on that note, you really want to give a single call to action. You don't want to be asking someone to make a choice on what you want them to do, so you don't want to give them a buffet of options.

You want to say, “Hey, join our email list or subscribe to our YouTube, or download the ebook, or download this other case.” Everything should point to that one single action that you want someone to take in your call to actions. And yes, you can and should have multiple call to actions throughout the page, but they're all leading to the same destination.

3. Add a video.

For an effective landing page, if you can, put a video of yourself up there. Videos create trust.

People like to know the people that they're working with in a professional services setting, and they want to see who you are.They want to see what you're about, and they want to see your personality.

So, put it out there, even if it's just a ring light with an iPhone, get a solid Lavalier mic or a boom mic. Get your audio going. Put a video of yourself up for 60 seconds talking about, “Hey, Here's what this is. Here's how it benefits you.”

Then, people can use that to get a better understanding, while keeping them on the page longer. Get them to watch. Put the video up there.

Now, when someone clicks the call to action, you’ve got to collect a little bit of information from them if this is gated content, with gated meaning behind a form.

But here's the thing, you don't need 10 fields on your forms. You want to choose form fields that are relevant to the content that you're giving to people. You want to make it relative to the value of that piece of content. So, for example, if you're asking someone to join your email list, just ask them for their email. You don't need to know everything else about them.

If you are running ads to an ebook that is top of the funnel content, again, this is just a quick intro to this person. Imagine if you were meeting somebody for the first time. You need their email, and you need their name. You don't need more than that.

But if this is something where you're using retargeting ads to people who have been interacting with you for a long time and they've been visiting certain pages on your website, and so you want to serve them more bottom of the funnel content, that’s different. That’s at the decision making stage where having more information is very valuable.

Even if you haven't had a conversation yet, you want to know more information about them, like maybe:

  • How many assets do they have?
  • What type of account(s) do they have?
  • What's their biggest problem that they're facing?

So, you can add more form fields as you get deeper down the funnel and offer higher value content.

If you're gating content, make the things that you're asking for relative to what it is that you're offering somebody.

4. Use compelling copy.

The last piece of an effective landing page is your copy. Your copy has to sell people. It has to convince them to take the action that you want them to take.

But I'm not going to be super dogmatic about how much copy is on your page.

I've had landing pages excel with a paragraph of copy, and I've had landing pages excel that are long-form sales pages that have a lot of words to them with a thousand words or so.

I've been on both sides of this. It's about giving your audience what they need in that moment. And the one consistent thing I will say is that you always want to write the copy to the user who is reading it, what benefits they’ll get, and why it matters for their life.

You don't want your copy to be focused on you, your credentials, and what you're doing. You want to explain to the reader: “If you get this, here is what you are going to get out of it. Here's the transformation that’s going to happen in your life when you read this ebook.”

Maybe a bit hyperbole there. I don't think anybody's life has been changed by an ebook, but you get it.

Focus on the benefits to the user. Everything's about the client first.

How to create landing pages

The last thing that I'm going to leave you with is how to create landing pages in the first place. Well, there's no shortage of options.

You can do this just by adding a page to your existing website. If you've got a WordPress developer, they can create one for you. But there's also a ton of services that make landing page creation super easy. Your CRM or your email marketing platform will work great. Here are some popular options:

Best of luck! Next time you run an ad campaign and next time you have a social campaign, make sure that you're sending people to a targeted, specific landing page that gives them exactly what it is they're looking for, and makes it really clear what it is that you're offering. And that's it.

That's how to create effective landing pages. Hope these tips help. We'll see you next week.

Related: The 3 Best Ways Advisors Can Build an Email List