Optimizing Landing Pages

One of the most critical component in maximizing your online marketing campaign is to optimize your landing pages by customizing them. This will enable you to personalize the sales pitch for specific audiences. By delivering a concise message, prospects are more likely to respond, which will significantly increase your return on investment.

Your next customers can reach a landing page through a variety of mediums, from pay per click ads, enewsletters, QR codes and text messages to email marketing communications and direct mail pieces. These channels should each have a common, but customized landing page, to encourage a conversion.

Inbound Marketing University describes a landing page as “a lead capture page, where the visitor ultimately decides whether to proceed with the transaction of trading information for an offer.” This can include the option to enroll in a trial program, register as a new user, download a white paper or signup for a newsletter.

Offer a Single Option to Convert Leads

Having a potential customer arrive at your landing page is half the battle. You don’t want to lose them because your message is cluttered or irrelevant. You have about five seconds to capture and keep their attention, so your call to action must be unmistakable.

A single option is your best method for converting a lead into a sale. If you request too much information, the visitor is less likely to be engaged and may abandon your page, so your goal should be to have them fill out a brief form. Once the form is complete, visitors should be free to roam your website. The quality of this interaction is the largest factor in whether you convert a potential lead into a buying customer.

Design Elements

The design of the landing page must look professional, be clean and visually appealing, and it must be limited to a single page. Overload of information, graphics, outbound links or fancy JavaScripts will kill your campaign.

Make sure your copy is tight and focused. Include a vibrant headline, bulleted details and, most importantly, your keywords and value proposition so visitors know they arrived in the right place. These elements will build your company’s credibility with buyers.

The call to action should appear immediately and be prominent on the page. It must be included in the upper portion of the screen so that the visitor does not have to search for information. If an image or video is used on the landing page, it must reinforce the call to action.