WSI Blog - Internet Marketing Tips and Strategies

Landing pages are tricky and extremely important tools. Many people believe that success has been reached when someone clicks through to your landing page, however that is only half the battle. You got their attention enough to push them further but it's the landing page that needs to seal the deal and drive your consumer to take action.

Tafadzwa Marapa recently shared 6 rules of creating powerful landing pages:

1. Determine your customer goal - It's up to you to decide what you want your visitor to do upon reaching your landing page. If you don't make it obvious what they should do upon arriving to your landing page then there's a good chance they will leave without taking any further action.

2. Make your landing page consistent with your ad - Using a consistent message from your ad to your landing page will help the visitor to understand the action you are encouraging them to take. It also let's the visitor know they've landed in the right place. This increases the likelihood that the visitor will follow and complete the path you've set out.

3. Present a professional design - Your landing page should meet or exceed the design standard set by your website. The page needs to look professional and be well designed with quality graphics.

4. Don't offer extra links - Keep your landing page to one message goal. Don't throw all kinds of links in there and hope the viewer finds something they like.

5. Call for action - If a consumer has clicked through to your landing page they are interested in your product. Make sure they know what to do upon arriving to the landing page to complete the process.

6. Track your results - Is your PPC campaign cost effective? Make sure you can measure your results. Track your conversion rate & the marketing cost per sale.

Click here to read Murapa's blog post entitled The rules of creating powerful landing pages.

Step 1: Define the Success of Your Campaign
In order to define the success of your campaign, you need to know what your goals are. Is your site solely for informational purposes & branding? A lead generation site? Are you selling products and focused on transactions? Start at the bottom of your sales funnel and work your way up to the top where a visitor/prospect first enters the funnel.

Step 2: Pinpoint Your Ideal Customer
One of the biggest mistakes most companies make is they craft their marketing campaigns and websites according to what they want to see versus finding out what your customer wants. This isn't about you. Most businesses feel compelled to tell their story to their presumed audience, which more times than not, is off the mark. It's too easy for an online visitor to leave your site and find another site that speaks to them and what they want (whats your bounce rate?).

Create an artificial persona complete wtih name, age, marital status, etc of an imaginary prospect that you feel fits the mold of the typical person you have sold to in the past. Create multiple profiles and prioritize them in order of importance. Remember, you can't be everything to everyone. Pick a niche in your industry, stick to it, and become an expert in that niche. If you pick to many ideal customer profiles, you will end up appealing to no one. Once you know who you are selling to, you can craft your message so that it appeals to them.

Step 3: Select the Right Domain
Most companies consider their home page their landing page. Sometimes this works, but most of the time it does not. Your landing page may be part of a targeted micro-site or a single page hosted separately with its own domain name. When selecting domain names, pick those that have your targeted keywords in the domain name itself (ex: chiropractorchicago.com) to improve overall Google Quality Score and conversion. Consider one or more "vanity names" targeting a specific product or service.

If your landing page is hosted on your domain (this is the best strategy for sites that have good PR scores already and have been around for awhile), build your landing page URL with your targeted keywords (ex: www.ableelectropolishing.com/electropolishing-lp.htm is a sample custom landing page we just created, "electropolishing" is their top keyword).

Step 4: Wireframing
Create a "sketch" of the page layout and start by listing all of the key components that should go on the page. Do this before you create the web copy because the space available in your layout will dictate the amount of copy that you will have to work with. Place the most important elements above the fold (the area in a browser that a visitor can see without scrolling).

Step 5: Write for the Web
People do not read the same way online that they would offline. They scan for key elements - headlines, bullet points, graphics. Within seconds, the brain will determine if this is the right page that matches what they are looking for. A page could match exactly what a person is looking for, but visually it sends the wrong signals. Make sure to pick the right graphics and design elements for your pages that go well with your web copy.

Only about 20% of your visitors will actually read the body copy, make it compelling and short (less is more). Create a strong call to action! Try matching up the call to action with the 1st headline since this is most certainly the one element on your page that most people will read.

Step 6: Test & Tweak
Schedule a regular time each week to examine how your site is peforming & converting. Use Google Analytics (fee analytics software) or hire an analytics consultant to measure the success of your campaigns and landing pages. Even after you successfully complete Steps 1-5, your work is not done. A good campaign needs revising (most campaigns). Maybe your call to action is not working, your bounce rate is too high, or the keywords you focused your campaign around are not generating any leads. Your testing and measurements should match your original goals (Lead Generation, Online Sales, Branding, Relationship Building, etc).

Sound like a lot of work? It is! But doing this the right way will squeeze more out of your marketing budgets than you can imagine.

Yes, its true that we do talk a lot about technology at WSI and how to leverage technology to run your business more effectively. But when it comes right down it, what's most important is understanding the psychology behind your custom landing pages and website architecture as a whole.

The old saying still holds true today "Advertising is the art of getting people to buy things they don't need with the money they don't have."

This statement has been around long before the internet (by a couple of decades), but most of the websites we analyze have put little thought into how to convince people to buy what you have. People rarely just stumble across a website in the sea of hundreds of millions of sites. They actively go out and search to find what they are looking for, spending their time and effort to eventually click and land on a potential match for their search. The problem is that most websites are poorly constructed and NOT designed for "conversion" or persuasion.  Most people land on the page and leave within 3-4 seconds. What a waste of your time and effort getting someone to come to your landing page, through paid search or organically, and to have them leave so quickly.

The truth is you only have 3-4 seconds to make an impact!  People aren't going to read long paragraphs, they are going to scan for what they are looking for.....location of the business (if someone is searching for a local business ie: "plumber chicago"), if the page offers the service or product that matches what they were searching for (bulleted lists, bolded text, bold headlines, short consise paragraphs), and well thought out images that grab their attention. I am still amazed at how many people are spending money on Pay Per Click marketing and driving this traffic to generic home pages or poorly designed landing pages. It doesn't make a lot of sense in this economy....makes more sense to take some of that paid search budget and invest it into a better landing page (a good custom landing page costs between $900 - $1,800 at WSI, less than a lot of our clients monthly PPC budgets).  

Developing a high quality, conversion friendly custom landing page for your pay per click marketing and organic search marketing efforts, will pay for itself in a very short period of time, generate more leads, and allow you to eventually decrease your marketing costs.
 (a modest 2% increase in conversions will result in 240 additional leads for most clients without increasing traffic, based on 12,000 annual visitors).