If social media and emails are for inviting your prospects, then landing pages are for grabbing the prospects’ attention and driving conversions. In order to drive conversions, your landing page needs to focus on your message by offering a good conversion experience. According to Oli Gardner, a good conversion experience is “one in which your visitors are compelled to pay attention and ultimately interact with your conversion goal–clicking the Call-to-Action (CTA).” Therefore, your ad captures your visitor’s attention, and then your landing page needs to maintain and focus it on the CTA.
Why a Landing Page
A landing page has a better chance of converting prospects because of its attention ratio. The attention ratio is the ratio of links on a page to the number of campaign conversion goals. If your ad sends a prospect to your home page, the conversion goal is competing with all of the other types of links and information you have on your home page. Your attention ratio is in the range of 30:1 or higher. Researchers at Princeton University proved that too many choices overwhelm our brain. A campaign-dedicated landing page is entirely focused on the conversion campaign offering an attention ratio of 1:1.
Conversion Coupling
In order to get the best results from an ad-landing page pairing, you should use a technique called conversion coupling. Conversion coupling is the bond that exists between the source of a click (ad) and the landing page. The concept is to match the message and/or graphics in the ad and the landing page. Therefore, if your ad is promoting red widgets, then the first words on the landing page should be about your red widget promotion with matching graphics to your ad.
Conversion Momentum
The idea of an ad/landing page pairing is to move the prospect from the ad directly through the landing page to ultimately convert. It stands to reason that you want to continue the momentum that started in the ad as soon as they reach the landing page. To keep the ball rolling you need language that respects the prospect and continues the conversation that started in the ad.
If the ad says,” Let me demonstrate how our product can help,” then the landing page should continue with “What our product does is help make {words in link} easier for you. If you are interested, I can offer {this} incentive. And I can discuss more details if you contact me {here.}”
Lead Generation Form
People hate filling out forms. In order to get your prospects to fill out your lead generation form, you need to provide an incentive. The incentive is what you give the prospect in return for their contact information, such as an ebook, whitepaper, or free concert tickets. The next step is an easy to fill out form containing the following:
- Introductory headline
- Bulleted list of benefits prospect receives with incentive
- The form with descriptive form fields
- CTA
- Trust statements or links
- Closing context-enhancement statement
Copy and Graphics
The last element of a successful landing page is writing copy that converts and pairing it with appropriate graphics. There are many theories on what copy converts best. Using professional marketing bloggers for hire to write your copy can reduce your pain. However, the basic focus of your copy should be broken up into three parts–headline, reinforcement statement and closing argument. The graphics should be wholly focused on directing attention to the copy and CTA.
Paula A can usually be found in her favorite chair with her feet propped up on an ottoman quietly typing on her laptop and sipping iced coffee while chaos reigns around her.
