An Ultimate Guide: Landing Page Essentials + Added Bonus Tips for Effective Digital Marketing
Marketing and advertising strategies change with time. But the core purpose remains the same: it’s to bring in more customers, accelerate sales and ensure higher profits.
Over the last decade, landing pages have gained much importance as part of an effective marketing strategy. According to studies, companies with 10 to 15 landing pages tend to increase conversions by 55%.
What is a Landing Page?
A landing page is a stand-alone web page, used as a marketing campaign, with a single CTA ( Call to Action ) goal. The key focus of a landing page is to increase the conversion rates.
A well-designed landing page can help you attract more customers and sales. You can use a landing page for varied marketing, sponsorship and nomination campaigns.
Is a Landing Page the same as a Homepage?
The simple answer is no. Here is why!
A Homepage is a starting point of your website. Simple or complex, it has lots of internal and external links, numerous pictures and videos.
A landing page, on the other hand, is a stand-alone page designed for a specific purpose. It has a Call To Action encouraging users to convert.
(Image Source: quora.com)
What are the 8 Essentials Of A Landing Page
The essential elements of a Landing page may differ on the basis of the service, product or the nature of your marketing campaign.
Regardless of what your landing page is about, adding the following elements will induce a higher conversion rate and better sales.
- A Catchy Headline
- A Supporting Sub-Heading With Offer Details
- A Cover Image or Video
- Lead Capture Form
- Prominent Call-To-Action
- Social Proof
- Benefits of Your Offering
- Stay Above The Fold
A Catchy Headline
The first and foremost thing on a Landing page which is visible to the user is the Headline. If you fail to attract the user at this point, there is no coming back.
The Headline should be exciting and inviting. Writing short and direct headlines with a positive benefit converts better.
A Supporting Sub-Heading With Offer Details
A headline can only deliver the message to a very limited extent. To support it, you will need a supporting sub-headline. It is sort of a direct extension and a follow up of the main heading.
Both the headline and the sub-heading need to be impact-full and convincing, and should not sound dull.
A Cover Image or Video
A picture is still worth a thousand words. Adding images or videos on any web page has a positive impression on the customers. It is a mandatory addition if you are selling a product or service.
It acts as a visual representation of your offer and helps the user better understand what your offer is about.
One thing which is important if you choose to add media to the landing page is that the images and videos should be of high quality and perfect resolution. Adding low-quality images and videos will garner the opposite reaction from the user, it’s a turnoff.
Optimizing your Image’s alt-text is also essential. No matter how perfect your image is, it is always possible that it won’t show up. Image’s alt-text acts like a back-up plan in such scenarios.
Lead Capture Form
A form helps you capture visitor’s information in exchange for a desired offer or benefit.
Forms should have a reasonable length depending on the goal of your landing page. Usually, too many fields are uninviting. The user gets overwhelmed quickly unless the added benefits are well worth the time.
Keeping the form short and with meaningful fields encourages more people to fill it out.
The lead form should also be designed and placed on top of your landing page so the user does not have to scroll down for it.
If for some reason, the landing page is long enough to go below the fold then a wise option would be to keep the form on the move with the scroll, so it is always visible to the user.
A Prominent Call-To-Action
A Call-to-action button decides the fate of your landing page. Sounds dramatic? It is!
Your landing page is all about increasing sales and conversion rates. This button is one step away from that goal.
The CTA can be a part of the lead capture form, or a stand-alone button on a web page.
Use prominent, convincing and action-oriented text for your button. A simple “Submit” won’t do much here! Instead, a proper reinforcing sentence or statement is what you need to engage your user until she clicks on it.
The color and design of the CTA should make it stand out from the rest of the page elements. Bright and eye-catchy color with a bold font that matches the contrast of the entire page is more likely to encourage more user engagement.
Social Proof (Testimonials and Clients Logo)
Presenting testimonials or client’s logos on a website acts as social proof. It adds to the credibility of your product and service.
Most of the users online look-up for the reviews and testimonials before buying or registering for an offer. Add them so that the user develops a feeling of security and trust.
Benefits of Your Offering
Keeping in mind the needs and demands of your user, display the benefits of your product or service. Tell them what problems is your unique selling proposition going to solve. How your product stands out from the competition. Don’t brag.
Include a benefits summary, feature descriptions and what the product or service does.
Stay Above The Fold
This is a very important element for a landing page.
Keeping the elements that are a vital part of your landing page above the scroll limit including the Call-to-action button will make sure it passes the Blink-test.
Blink-test refers to the 3-5 seconds time to determine that the visual elements on a page are prominent enough to capture in the Blink of an Eye.
If your landing page needs a lot of additional elements to define the product or service, then keep the form and CTA above the fold, or better yet, as described earlier, on the move with scroll.
Super Bonus Tips
- SAY NO TO NAVIGATION BARS. Take it as a bonus tip.
You do not want your user-attention to be diverted with all those extra added links and buttons. You want them to focus on the CTA button and click it!
- SET UP A THANK YOU PAGE OR MESSAGE. Yes, it is important.
When a user fills out a form or clicks and makes a purchase, its best to display or send a Thank-you Note to your customers. This adds to the personal touch and helps build stronger connections.
Confused about where to start? Have a look at Our Step by Step Guide to Create a Landing Page with PB Addons for WP Bakery Page Builder.
So, now you have all the essentials of a Landing page that are crucial for effective digital marketing. Let’s move onto how a landing page actually works?
How does a Landing Page Work?
Every landing page needs to have an enticing offer. It can be anything. From an e-Book download to discounts, free newsletter or a month’s free subscription offer, it has to be convincing.
So how exactly does a user arrive on your landing page and what happens next?
After you design a landing page, continuous promotion and advertising on social media platforms, email marketing, and SEO optimization will make the landing page visible to potential customers.
Once the user clicks on the promotional advertisement, it takes it to your Landing Page.
Now the interesting part: Its DO or DIE. Either the customer stays OR she just clicks on the browser cross button never to turn back again.
If it is a DO situation, this is how a Landing Page works:
- The User sees a form with the added benefits and fills it up. This converts them from a visitor into a lead.
- The information from the form is stored in your database.
- You can now set up your future strategies on the basis of the gathered information for a more focused and data-driven marketing campaign.
What happens if its too many DIE situations? Well, time to reconsider your Landing page design and perhaps more convincing offers!
Here is a tutorial for you to avoid DIE situations! Create a Landing Page with the Page Builder Addons for WP Bakery Page Builder. You can thank us later! 😉
Why are Landing Pages an Effective Marketing Tool?
Landing pages are visual, direct and convincing enough to make the user take immediate action by clicking on the CTA.
Let’s break up why they are so effective.
Increase Conversions and Sales
The Landing page influences a user’s decision to convert from a visitor into a potential customer. The conversion rate is directly proportional to the higher number of customers, and thus more sales.
That’s why it is very important from a marketing perspective to design and optimize your landing page to the fullest.
Helps Generate Data and Insights
If your landing page has a form, you can easily use the information to your benefits by collecting region-based data.
Data insights can be helpful for your future marketing campaigns. By refining your knowledge of the targeted audience you can redesign your campaign strategies and improve your effectiveness.
Helps to Grow Your Email List
Landing pages can help you generate better leads. The form submissions with the email addresses from interested people turn them into sales lead.
For example, for a promotional offer of 30 days Free Trial of a product or service, you can get the user to sign up and later use the Email to sell the product.
Landing page can take Email Marketing to a whole new level, and help grow your email list.
Improves Brand Awareness and Increases Credibility
Consistent branding is an added way to improve your brand awareness in the market.
If your website, landing page, social media presence are consistent and relevant to the content you have, it will help create a recognition of your brand among the customers.
This helps in marketing as people tend to trust the brands they recognize. With a consistent landing page design and content, the potential user will immediately be able to connect you with your business and thus increase your chances of conversion.
Another aspect is credibility, if you plan to display testimonials and clients’ logo on your landing page, it automatically helps to increase the credibility of your business.
Reading positive reviews will add to the trust and confidence of your customers, it encourages them to click on the CTA. That’s enough proof for effective marketing!
Conclusion
Landing pages are a part of marketing strategy, and help to improve your customer relations and brand recognition.
Well designed and effective landing pages will facilitate higher sales and conversion rates, which itself speaks success for your marketing campaign.
If your landing page is not converting, its always good to test and redesign the page to see what suits your business best. It is a never-ending process of trial and error until finally, you hit the jackpot! Well not literally, but that is what it feels like after your marketing tactics are starting to bear fruit!
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