Campaigning Landing Pages: The Secret to CRO and Lead Generation Elizabeth Holloway Campaigning 8 mins read Aug 5, 2024 Landing Pages: The Secret to CRO and Lead Generation - Elizabeth Holloway Not to overstate it, but landing pages really are the real superheroes in lead generation. When looking to expand your audience online, landing pages help you distill your product and service offerings into a streamlined format that gives new users a concrete action to take. By simplifying the users’ first introduction into your brand, you avoid what’s called the “paradox of choice”—when you give people too many options, they’re less likely to make a decision and act on it. In fact, companies with 30 or more landing pages generate 7 times more leads than those with fewer than 10. Before you go hog wild creating landing pages, let’s go over some of the basics, as well as use cases and best practices. Having many landing pages will only improve your conversion rates and lead generation if you are using them effectively. What is a landing page? Landing pages are standalone website pages created specifically for digital marketing or advertising campaigns. Typically, when a user clicks on a link in an email, ad or social media post, they’ll be directed to a landing page. A defining characteristic of a landing page is that it will be limited in scope. These pages provide information on a single product, service or promotion. They also provide users with one tangible action to take, like joining your email list, buying your product, filling out a custom signup form or downloading a lead magnet. There are two types of landing pages: Lead generation pages, aka “lead gen” or “lead capture” pages, which focus on collecting lead data Click-through pages, which are designed as CTAs that direct users to areas of your website where they can complete an action (e.g. booking an appointment or buying products) For the purposes of this blog post, we will primarily be discussing lead generation pages. What makes a landing page different from your homepage? It’s important to be clear that landing pages are very different from homepages. Your homepage is going to discuss your brand from A-to-Z. That means it’s going to have lots of links, broader calls-to-action (CTAs) and content meant for users at different stages in their buying journey. By contrast, a landing page is much more strategic and calculated. It’s going to focus on a single CTA that targets a smaller segment of your audience or point in the buyer journey. The idea is to provide users with an explicit entrypoint into your brand. Why are landing pages important? Unlike other webpages that are designed chiefly to inform users, landing pages focus on short-term goals and KPIs to help you achieve the results you’re looking for. The benefits of creating landing pages for your campaigns include: Increasing conversion Improving ad campaigns Yielding new audience insights Simplifying the collection of lead data Your landing pages also provide opportunities to boost your credibility, reinforce your brand and increase overall traffic through on-page SEO. Conversion rate optimization (CRO) At the end of the day, landing pages are all about conversion rate optimization (CRO). This is the process of increasing the percentage of users who complete a desired action to increase the number of leads you generate. What’s considered a good conversion rate depends on your industry, but as a whole the average conversion rate per landing page is 9.7%. Uses for landing pages There are a lot of things you can do with your landing pages. As we’ve mentioned, they’re particularly useful for achieving short-term goals and KPIs. There is no such thing as having too many landing pages as each will serve a unique purpose. Whenever you want users’ undivided attention on something particular, you should create a landing page for it. Almost half (48%) of marketers create a new landing page for each new campaign. (Source: KlientBoost, 2023) Lead generation It might seem like overkill to create a unique page just to get people to fill out a form or sign up for a newsletter, but this way you eliminate potential distractions. Whether you realize it or not, your website will have more than a dozen links on each page. That makes it much harder to keep people focused on the action you want them to complete. By sending people to a landing page you remove unnecessary steps or barriers, which will maximize conversion. Market funnels Landing pages fit seamlessly into your marketing funnels. You can use them to move users from top-of-funnel to middle-of-funnel. The content on your landing pages will give users a better understanding of your offerings, address their pain points and move them closer to making purchasing decisions. Audience segmentation Your audience isn’t one-size-fits-all and your marketing campaigns shouldn’t be either. You can enhance the experience for each audience segment with separate landing pages. Modern users are accustomed to a much higher degree of personalization in marketing efforts. By creating separate landing pages for each segment, you’ll be able to speak more directly to their individual needs and pain points. Testing and optimization Creating multiple landing pages for your campaigns lets you optimize them, either through A/B testing or with AI optimization tools. Having multiple versions allows you to test different elements across your pages to see which ones perform the best and increase conversion rates. Best practices for creating landing pages Now that we’ve gone over the benefits and uses of landing pages, let’s talk about best practices. Creating many landing pages won’t necessarily improve your conversion rates unless you’ve been diligent about CRO. The following are some best practices that will help boost your lead generation and conversion rates. Focus on a single call-to-action Landing pages are specific and single-focus. Only include one CTA on each page. The point is to direct users to complete a tangible action. If you have more than one CTA on the page, you’ll divide their attention and muddy the impact. Another helpful tip is to place your CTAs above the fold. Users should be able to see it without having to scroll down the page. Ensure the landing page is mobile-friendly There is a good chance that your audience is going to view pages on their phones. Whether they’re following a link from an email or clicked on a social media ad, these days people do most of their browsing on their phones. Optimizing for mobile browsing should be a priority. Use compelling headlines and visuals Once you get users onto your landing pages, your content has to do the work of keeping them there. Your headlines and visuals should be compelling. Make sure your content is laid out so that it’s easy to read and avoid long blocks of text or overwhelming users with details. (For more tips, check out our Importance of Design series.) Testimonials and social proof Word of mouth is a powerful tool you can harness to build credibility around your offerings. Or in the case of digital marketing, we’re talking about user testimonials or real-time usage stats. This is known as “social proof” and it’s a way of influencing buying decisions by demonstrating that actual human beings have bought, used and loved your offerings. Not to mention, when you include social proof on your landing pages, you’re also fostering a sense of community within your brand. Focus on SEO and long-tail keywords Every landing page you create is an opportunity to improve your brand’s SEO rankings and visibility. You should target long-tail keywords, or keywords that tend to be four or more words long. It’s much easier to rank with long-tail keywords because they are so much more specific. It’s the difference between a keyword like “blog post” and “Tips for writing engaging blog posts.” When used effectively, your long-tail keywords will help position your landing pages to answer common user questions. Optimize for speed Something that research has shown us about user behaviour is that the longer a page takes to load, the more likely the user is to click out of it and keep searching. This applies to any website or landing page. And if you don’t address long load times, you will find it much harder to improve your SEO rankings. There are a lot of things that can contribute to poor loading speeds: large image files, high-res videos, poor code quality, a high number of HTTP requests or slow server response time. Addressing these key problem areas will improve your bounce rates, which translates into more conversions. What’s the takeaway? Landing pages help you maximize your digital advertising campaigns by creating dedicated, conversion rate optimized content. By targeting specific audience segments you can increase conversions and lead generation. These pages by nature differ from your homepage in that they direct users towards a specific CTA. This limited scope means you can keep your audience focused and prevent distractions that might be present on your regular website. Share This Article Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Previous Audio The Meaning of Colour Around the World - Global Branding July 29, 2024 Next Audio Will Web Development Evolve or Die? 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