Adam Marquardt
Landing page content is an excellent, often overlooked place where we can apply tried and true inbound marketing and content marketing principles to improve performance metrics.
How? It’s simple. We use the same guiding principle that we do for other content - “Am I generating valuable content that can be found and wanted when target customers are searching?”
If we continue delivering the information that visitors want in the manner that they want to digest it, we’ll see our leads from landing pages increase. How? SImply follow the steps listed below.
Step 1. Use Origin Specific Copy
Origin specific copy is the first element we want to focus on with our landing page text. We can drive increased lead numbers with landing page copy that acknowledges where a visitor came from. Maintaining a consistent message down the conversion funnel let’s them know that they’ve hit the correct landing page that corresponds with the link they clicked. We can even use the exact language from an ad, call to action, or email, on the landing page.
Let’s look at an example. If I send an email that invites readers to “Transform Your Life!”, I’ll also place a headline on the landing page that reads “Welcome: Transform Yourself Now!”. The body content will also make use of the word “Transform”.
Preserving this continuity between asset and landing page assures the visitor that they’ve come to the right place. This keeps them focused on the action you want them to take - reading your landing page content and converting into a lead. Inbound marketers can also take advantage of two additional landing page optimization opportunities, both dealing with buyer personas.
Step 2. Optimize Landing Page Content By Buyer Persona
As mentioned above, people want to hit a landing page where the content deals with their topic of interest as much as possible. This is the whole premise behind copy that is specifically tailored to our buyer personas.
What are their pain points? What do they value most? What are their goals? What are their most common objections to your product or service? When we consider these elements, we can create a streamlined piece of content that says to the visitor “I understand what you’re looking for and what your obstacles are. Here’s exactly what you need to solve the problem!” If we can communicate this through our landing pages, visitors will see us as authorities on a given topic and convert at much higher rates.
Step 3. Optimize Forms By Buyer Persona
Form optimization works similarly. Persona specific form construction is about presenting visitors with the exact number of fields that they’ll fill out completely and consistently - not one more or one less. Begin with the following key questions from Hubspot’s Buyer Persona Questionnaire. What is their demographic information? What is their job and level of seniority? What experience are they looking for when shopping for your products and services? By asking these questions, we get a feel for our visitor’s level of sophistication and how much we can ask them to do before it hurts our conversion rate.
Low level employees or visitors that are not very sophisticated will often do better with fewer form fields and simpler interaction features, like radio buttons. More savvy visitors will take the time to fill out a greater number of form fields as well as interact with more complex elements, like drop downs and videos. Keep this in mind when building your landing page forms. We never want to intimidate a visitor with a form that put’s them outside of their comfort zone. This can lead to an increased bounce rate and fewer leads.
The Cherry On Top
Landing pages are intended to convert the maximum number of visitors into qualified leads. The overarching design of the landing page plays a major part in accomplishing this goal, and it’s often driven by designers and developers. Where we, as inbound marketers, can contribute, is by using content and varied form types that create a consistent, informative search experience for visitors.
We supply the “icing on the cake” and influence the final touch that may push a visitor to convert. Take a few moments while constructing your next landing pages, and see if you can leverage the tips above to make an ordinary landing page into a high octane, high converting lead machine.
