The reason why so many landing pages fail is because the mechanics behind a successful landing page is deceptively complex. You’re not just asking people to fill out a form, you’re asking them to hand over their precious email address to a stranger who could potentially bombard them with annoying marketing collateral for several weeks until they’ve taken the time to opt out. It’s a big ask, and a leap that most are cautious about taking. Here’s how to create an effective landing page that will actually generate leads.
Step 1 – Suck ‘Em In
From the time someone lands on your page, you’ve got about five seconds to convince them to stay. This means a lot rests on your headline. Your headline should do about four things at once. It should state the offer, along with why you audience needs it, while having emotional appeal and fulfilling the criteria of the four U’s (useful, ultra-specific, urgent and unique). If your page visitors are not intrigued after the headline, they will simply click away. One way to gauge whether your headline is doing what it’s supposed to do is by using this emotional value marketing headline analyser, which gives you an idea of how effective your headline will be.
Step 2 – Earn Their Trust
Once you’ve succeeded in getting your audience to finish reading your headline and look at the rest of your page, you now need to gain their trust, asap. Unless your company is a household name, you most likely need to nick a bit of cred from others. If your website or organisation has been awarded a ‘top 100…’ label, stick that on your site. Or if you’ve been featured by a well known news outlet, use an ‘as featured on [logo]’ on your site. If you have nothing like this, a simple way of earning your audience’s trust is by authoring your blogs with a real photo and mini-bio, so people get a glimpse of your background, expertise and credentials. You can also earn trust by including client testimonials.
Step 3 – Grab The Goods
The contact form is as crucial as your headline in the way of retaining interest in what you have to offer. Two main things will cause people to click away. Firstly, if your CTA is boring and doesn’t give a clear instruction, you’ll fail to convert visitors. Make your CTAs more emotional by speaking in the first person as if you were the audience (“Yes, give me more!”) and injecting some urgency (“Gain access now”). Secondly, if you’ve got too many fields in your form, people will get tired halfway and not complete them. Make sure you’ve only got the bare essentials like name and email address, or if you require more, put further questions on the thank you page.
Congratulations, your landing page is finally generating leads.