A landing page is a stand alone page on your website designed to address a specific problem and encourage the visitor to take one action. There’s a number of different targeted marketing routes which can bring someone to this page: an email you’ve sent, a search engine lookup (i.e. Google), a referral they’ve had from another website, a social post, a paid ad, another piece of your content, from scanning a QR code at an event… the list goes on. Wherever they’ve come from, you want the visitor to land on your page and to quickly see what action they need to take next.
Now you might be wondering, isn’t that the purpose of my whole website? To help people take action? If you are thinking this then great job! You understand the purpose of your website (and if you don’t, we’ve got you covered. Start here with 5 things your website needs to communicate).
The main difference between a landing page and core website pages (i.e. Homepage, About Us) is their purpose.
The purpose of your website is to provide enough information for your visitor to make a decision about getting in touch with you. On their journey from learning you exist to deciding to work with you, there’ll be several different stops (and different actions to take). Your prospect can gather information about your services, learn about your team and values, explore resources and get in touch. Your website pages will all point to an ultimate solution (working with you) but they’re designed to be a nurturing exploration tool.
The purpose of a single landing page is to drive your visitor to take one specific action. It’s designed to convert visitors who have already shown interest into leads or customers by encouraging them to:
- Download a free resource (a guide, an ebook, a template)
- Book a space at an upcoming event
- Sign up to a new service
- Register for an online webinar
… or whatever the action is you want them to take.
When do I create a landing page?
Landing pages are most commonly created to serve a specific purpose within a marketing campaign. While landing pages are commonly used in campaigns, they’re not always necessary for every campaign. Some campaigns rely on other methods to achieve their goals, such as directing traffic to a specific section of a website or using social media platforms. Whether or not a landing page is needed depends on the campaign objectives, target audience, and specific action.
If you circle back to the purpose of a landing page (driving a visitor to one single call to action) then you’ll want to create one any time you want to guide them towards a targeted action. Focused landing pages prevent your audience from getting distracted by anything else on the page by giving them zero alternate options to think about.
To help give you an idea of when a landing page is really effective. here are a few examples of landing pages we’ve created for accountants:
Now you’ve seen what others in the industry are creating, you might be feeling pretty motivated to start creating your own landing page. I love the enthusiasm! A word of caution though, like with all your marketing, you need to be clear on who you’re speaking to and what you want them to do. And most importantly, show them how your guide, webinar, event, service… whatever it is, is going to help them with a problem or opportunity they have in their business.
What do I need to include on my landing page?
Let’s take a look at the core elements you need to create a successful landing page:
Headline text
This is the first thing your website visitor will see when they land on your page. It has to show them they’re in the right place and it’s what they expected to see. The most important thing here is to be clear and to connect with the visitor, so they instantly understand what they’ll get from the page and how it’ll benefit them.
Emphasis on clear benefits, features and their objections
Benefits: whether it’s signing up for a free webinar, or buying a training course, your visitor needs to see how your solution will improve their business.
Features: share enough information so your visitor knows exactly what you’re offering and what they’ll get out of it. Don’t overdo this and make sure the benefit to them is just as clear (and at times, even more so).
Let’s say you’re going to run a 30 minute webinar on what a business owner needs to know when deciding whether to register to become a limited company. You don’t need to waste 3 lines telling them the webinar will be on Zoom and they can register in advance and they’ll get the recording afterwards… great, that’s how most webinars run in 2024. Instead, focus on the clear benefit to them from coming to your 30 minute webinar.
Below are examples with two completely different tone of voices, with each one focusing on the benefit rather than the details of the webinar:
“Don’t believe everything John down the pub tells you about becoming a limited company. Learn the facts from the experts.”
“Director’s loan accounts, dividends, self-assessments… there’s a lot to consider when incorporating your company. We’ve got you covered.”
Objections: be willing to address the ‘ifs and buts’ your potential buyer is likely feeling. You need to de-risk the action by acknowledging their objections and fears and answering their questions before they’ve even needed to ask them.
One specific call to action
This is often the most challenging element of a landing page. It’s very tempting to provide 2 or 3 different actions your visitor could take in the hope they take 1 of them. This actually has the opposite effect on your visitor. When you don’t make the action you want them to take clear, you are causing confusion and delay and they are less likely to take any action at all (ask me how I know…).
Your clients and prospects are busy running their own businesses and sometimes they just want to be told what to do without having to give too much thought to it. You don’t want to risk them taking a different action from the one you’ve intended them to take. So make it really easy for them and give one specific clear call to action:
- Book a space
- Download PDF
- Start the process
- Join the waiting list
Social proof
Storytelling in your marketing is one of the most powerful ways to connect with more people in your audience. The icing on the cake is when you have stories from people who have worked with your firm, attended your webinars, enjoyed your free resources or experienced an event you’ve run. Including these stories, either in written or video format, on your landing page show the authentic experience the visitor could have if they take the same action as others before them.
On-brand imagery
A landing page with only text can feel a little… uninspiring. Including on-brand imagery helps support your message and communicate it faster and more easily to your visitor. Choose images which reflect the feelings you’re tapping into with your offering. Circling back to the earlier ‘Becoming a Limited Company’ webinar example, you wouldn’t include images of computer screens or the Zoom logo (yes, I’ve genuinely seen this happen and it’s terrible). Instead, you want the image you choose to reflect the feelings of confusion, uncertainty and worry that can come with making huge decisions about the future of your business. Here’s where to get help choosing the right stock imagery for your landing pages.
What do I need to do next?
You’ve published your brilliant new landing page and you’re seeing conversions trickle in. Hooray! You are successfully using a landing page. Now is not the time to sit back and relax. It’s time to start nurturing your leads and connecting with these potential clients for your firm.
Here’s some ideas of how you can do this:
Create a ‘thank you’ page
The first page a prospect sees after they’ve taken action on your landing page. This is your opportunity to keep their interest and extend their experience. You can do this in two ways:
- Deliver on your promised offer (i.e. guide download, registration confirmation) and
- Guide them towards something else on your site which may be of interest to them.
This pages needs to:
- Thank your new prospect (seems really obvious and yet I’m amazed by how many thank you pages don’t actually do this!)
- Provide a link to another piece of relevant content on your website
- Invite them to follow your firm on social media, or yourself personally
Start guiding them along the buyer journey
If you’re creating landing pages for your firm, then you need to have some sort of CRM (customer relationship management) system to track conversions. Whether it’s a download, a sign up or an enquiry about a new service, this is all worthwhile data to help you move your prospects along the buyer journey. You’ll want to have this next step ready for when you publish your landing page so you don’t lose any momentum. The next step could be sending an email with another free resource similar to the one they’ve downloaded or adding them to your list of contacts who you share information about upcoming webinars with. (In all cases, you’ll need to ask for permission to contact them and you can do this as a check box when they submit their email address on your landing page).
Track the results
It can be really tempting in marketing to base success off one landing page, email or social post. While the primary goal of a landing page is to convert leads, there are likely lots of other marketing pieces which have led your visitor to this page. That being said, it’s still worth tracking the performance of your landing page to determine the success of the page itself. This will help you to improve the page, any (potentially) related campaigns and guide you in creating future pages.
Here’s some numbers you can track to measure success:
- Conversion rate: how many people completed the action on the page
- Audience check: who took the action on the page? What have you learned about this audience?
- Bounce rate: how many people visited the page and didn’t complete the action
- Average time spent on page: gives you insights into whether visitors are genuinely considering you as a solution to their problem
- The longer they spend on the page, the more likely they are. Until it becomes 15+ minutes and they’ve more likely just not closed the website page
- Traffic source: tells you where your landing page is best connecting to your audience and where they are clicking through from i.e. another website page, a social post, a paid ad
Without measuring the success of your landing page, you can’t make improvements to your strategy for the next one. Although it’ll feel disappointing if your conversion rate is lower than you’d expected it to be, focus instead on what you can change to make your next page more effective.
Here’s 3 things I’ve learned from tracking landing page results:
- Make the action really easy to take
This sounds obvious, but bear with me here. I was often adding the call to action (CTA) button as the last section on PF’s landing pages. I wanted accountants and bookkeepers to scan through the messaging, take in the imagery and then decide to download the free guide or sign up for our next masterclass. For one particular online session, we weren’t getting the number of sign ups we’d expected and we needed to make some changes. So we moved the CTA button to the very top of the page, just underneath the title, subtitle and date/time of the session. That was enough information for people to decide if they wanted to register or not, and there was more detail below if they needed it. We had the highest number of registrants for this session by the time it ran
- Nothing else matters if the message isn’t right
The biggest challenge I regularly face as a marketer is remembering to focus the message on you ( PF’s audience). You’re passionate about your ability to transform businesses through proactive financial services. You’re excited to show the incredible work you do and skills you have to educate your own audience on how to run a more successful business. Just like it’s my job to speak your language, it’s your job to speak their language, What are your audience excited about? What do they care about? What are they scared of? What’s making running their business hard and stressful? That’s the message you need to share on your landing page. It doesn’t matter if you have perfectly crafted content, well thought out imagery and a killer site speed. If your messaging isn’t connecting with your audience’s experiences and feelings, you won’t inspire them to take any action whatsoever. - Simplify your message as much as possible
It’s easy to forget that the nature of a landing page means your visitor has likely clicked through from somewhere else. The content they’ve consumed has peaked their interest enough for them to want to continue finding out more and likely take the desired action. This however does vary depending on what you’ve created your landing page for. A free lead magnet usually only requires the visitor to exchange their email address for a, for example, PDF guide download, so they likely land on the page ready to take that action and move on with their day. A landing page for a small paid course needs to give enough information for someone to be able to make a purchasing decision: the value, features, address their objections, show a demo, include testimonials. In both cases, the messaging needs to be simple, connect with their feelings and show them how this is the right solution for them and their business.
Conclusion
Whether you’ve invested in creating a marketing asset (i.e. a guide, a webinar, a course) and you need help creating your landing page or you already have a landing page which isn’t capturing leads like you’d expected it to and you need help improving your messaging or driving the right people to the page, fill in our discovery form and share with us where you most need help.