How to use landing pages to generate leads
Inbound marketing relies on landing pages to take your potential customers through the sakes funnel, unlike the regular information pages on your website, they are designed to drive action. They have a specific goal: to convert visitors who land there into leads, or to promote direct sales, in exchange for visitor contact information. As such, landing pages represent a classical direct marketing challenge.
What do landing pages cover?
Businesses use landing pages to generate leads in various ways. The key is to provide real value by offering something useful and relevant. An in-depth white paper to help them crack a particularly knotty problem or issue. A unique sector report or the findings gleaned from a piece of industry research. An invitation to ‘member only’ or time-limited content. A special offer, newsletter subscription, free trial, webinar, event, app or useful online tool. In other words, something genuinely beneficial with real practical, emotional or intellectual value.
Various kinds of landing pages
An organic landing page relies on traffic from natural search, providing valuable content on-site, integrally. A campaign-led landing page focuses on a particular campaign, acting as a specific destination for interested parties. Rather than being an integral part of your site, featuring the same layout and navigation, it’s designed specifically to capture interested visitors’ details via a form.
Some landing pages simply ask for information, generating leads that can be converted to sales by various means at some time in the future. Others generate sales directly on a ‘buy now’ basis.
How to maximise lead generation from landing pages
Both types of landing page deserve careful attention to maximise their lead generation effectiveness. Here’s how to create a winning landing page that generates plenty of warm, qualified leads:
- Describe exactly what you’re offering clearly and transparently, honestly and briefly, using bold headers and subheads, short paragraphs and bulleted lists to their full effect for a seamless, logical visitor experience
- Include images or video to help bed in your offer and increase its visual appeal
- If you’re using navigation, keep it simple, intuitive page navigation saves visitors time and enhances the response.
- A prominent call to action and form button drives people in the right direction
- A short, easy-to-complete form encourages more people to complete the form-filling process, while a long complicated form can suppress response
- Telling people exactly what will happen once they’ve pressed the ‘submit form’ button promotes trust and increases submission levels
A few words about testing landing pages
One of the best things about landing pages is the ability to test different approaches. Here’s a list of elements you can test to see which performs best and pulls in the healthiest response:
- The offer itself – does one work better than another?
- Text size, density, quantity, style and fonts
- Where on the page you place your call to action
- Where you place your form button
- Different form designs
- The call to action (CTA)
- Images and video
- The overall creative treatment
- Colours
- Your tone of voice
Make sure you test just one element at a time or you won’t be able to tell which makes a difference. And always include analytics so you can track the performance of each test accurately and act accordingly.
6 top ways to drive traffic to your landing page
- Via SEO or paid search (Google AdWords, Yahoo Pay Per Click etc)
- Through email marketing campaigns
- Advertising on LinkedIn or Facebook
- Leveraging social networking
- Via offline campaigns, for example in newspapers and magazines
- Through your blog or via guest blogging
In conclusion…
Landing pages are a proven way to collect valuable lead information from tightly-targeted, relevant visitors that have a vested interest in your products and services. They can also drive direct sales.
