If you’re a business that relies on inbound leads whether you paid for them or not, your landing pages are almost certainly more important than you think.
It’s easy to see why when you take a moment to consider the way in which they are measured: conversion rate. That number represents the number of people who fill in a form as a percentage of the number that arrive on the page.
The former number is important. Once an individual fills in a form, you have a lead. Your sales team will be happy. In my experience sales people get unhappy when they have nothing to do, so keeping them busy is important.
And of course some of those leads turn into closed business, which pays the bills.
But the latter number, the number of people who arrive on the page, is also important. One way or another you paid for these people. In some cases, you really did pay for them. You built a campaign on LinkedIn, Google and co and pay a certain amount every time somebody clicks on one of those ads.
Alternatively, you’ve been investing money in PR, content and SEO in the hope that your increased profile will equal increased visitors.
So when you boil it all down, it becomes clear.
The thing standing in between the money I spent and the desired result (leads) is the landing page.
That conversion rate suddenly matters. If you increase if from 3% to 6% you are doubling your lead generation for zero additional cost. And that isn’t a particularly unusual result.
If you are still in doubt, think about what the alternatives methods for moving the needle in that way would be. One is doubling your demand generation spend. Not something that is advisable or even possible in most cases. Another is doubling your close rate. Certainly nice to have, and something we should always be working on. But not realistic.
So let’s improve landing pages. Here’s how.
Building Better Landing Pages
The first thing you need to do is care. Hopefully I’ve already got you to that point. But caring means making a little more effort.
In practical terms that may well mean looking beyond whatever the default options of your chosen marketing automation platform (Hubspot, Salesforce, Marketo etc) are. These products can often help you build out landing pages quickly, but you might be disappointed by the flexibility and quality they offer you. Instead, consider bespoke development to ensure what you have is as good as it can be.
And remember, in the context of landing pages, ‘good’ is not a subjective matter. It is measured in your conversion rate. After all, in almost all circumstances landing pages are for one thing and one thing only: getting those forms completed.
With that in mind, first and foremost benchmark and test. Don’t be afraid to experiment. Be bold - you have nothing to lose and a lot to gain. After all, if a particular approach doesn’t work, you can just turn it off. All you are limited by is the time you can commit to the project.
Connect landing pages to traffic sources. The wonderful thing about these pages is that you can build and host an almost infinite number of them. So build landing pages specific to the creative and location of all your advertising. Keep your prospects on the straight and narrow.
Whilst experimentation is to be welcomed, I would nevertheless recommend that where possible you keep it simple when it comes to landing page design. In particular, don’t assume effective landing pages look conventionally attractive or contain huge amounts of information. They don’t have to. Prioritise the information that matters (particularly anything that might overcome last minute hesitation) and make completing that form as easy as possible.
On that note, all other things equal keep form fields to a minimum and do not make any field other than email mandatory.
Opinion is divided on this question. Some say that information implies intent and that if a prospect isn’t serious enough to share their phone number, then why collect their details in the first place.
I say everyone is different. Great conversations can start with a gmail address. I have seen it myself. Many people will be happy sharing details immediately. Some will not. So exclude nobody. Your email communications can figure out the rest later.
Last but not least: remove choice. Again opinions differ - and testing has the answer - but I’ve rarely seen landing pages with multiple options outperform those with one (the one you want). Don’t let your visitors get distracted and leave the page without submitting the form!
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