In my circle of friends, I have this one male friend that everyone in our group refers to as our serial monogamist. In layman’s terms, a serial monogamist is the kind of person that constantly jumps from one relationship to the next with as little break time as possible. In the decade since I first met him in college, I’m pretty sure he’s never been in a relationship lasting longer than 12 months and that in the majority of these relationships, it’s often the other party that decided to end things with him. I once asked him about this and he said, somewhat mournfully, that he never had problems making women fall in love with him; he just hasn’t figured a way to make these women stay that way.
I’m pretty sure he’s far from the only person in the world to suffer from that predicament and his situation actually is reminiscent of the common problems when it comes to marketing. Getting people to pay attention to you is easy, what’s difficult is making them interested enough to commit to you in the process known as conversion. In the context of digital marketing and web development, this concept of conversion is important in the creation of landing pages and businesses should focus on optimizing their landing pages to maximize their revenue.
Breaking down the concept of landing page
Landing page is a term you’re bound to see multiple times in any discussion surrounding digital marketing and SEO but it’s always something that’s been nebulously defined so our first order of business should be in clarifying what exactly is a landing page. In its most literal definition, a landing page is a page people would land on after clicking a link but in practice, a landing page is defined as a webpage that is specifically designed to receive traffic from an online marketing campaign and convert them into actual customers.
So for example, if you’re running a PPC campaign, the page that serves as the link is your landing page. If you’re doing some guest posting as part of your marketing campaign, the link to your website you include in your posts is typically your landing page. In general, the webpage that you’re using in your link building campaign is a landing page. While it is possible to use your homepage as a landing page, it’s not advisable to do so as landing pages are meant to be focused on conversion and the typical homepage tend to be a bit too generic and broad for the purpose of conversion.
In practice, landing pages are typically product pages, lead-capture pages or blog posts that are designed to highlight a specific product or a service from your company. There are also temporary landing pages that are used in conjunction with limited-time special offers. Landing pages come in many forms but they’re all united in the sense that they’re all designed for conversion. As such, the following tips can more or less be universally used by businesses to better optimize their landing pages.
Implement a sense of urgency and/or scarcity in your landing pages
Or as I would like to call it, implement the Agoda method. If you’ve never used Agoda before, here’s a quick overview. In Agoda, whenever you’re trying to book a hotel room, you’re often going to be presented with a red text telling you how many rooms are left at that price, making vacation planning a much more stressful exercise than necessary. This marketing tactic takes advantage of what is referred to as FOMO, a fear of missing out, and given how often I’ve fallen prey for this scheme, I know from experience that this tactic works.
Funnel your user’s attention into one point
Landing pages are designed solely for conversion and it’s important for your business to minimize the distraction in your landing pages as much as possible. If it’s designed to promote a new product or service, shine the spotlight on that product or service only. Remember, even though landing pages are technically a part of your main website, the traffic comes from external sources so you have considerably more freedom to remove certain elements in your landing page if they could act as a distraction.
Provide a good reason for your CTA buttons
The key element in any landing pages is the CTA buttons but most businesses tend to make the mistake of designing their CTA buttons as attention-grabbind instead of inviting. I mean, a clown standing on the side of the read would certainly catch my attention but would I ever approach them? Definitely not. Use words that clarify your value proposition in your CTA buttons instead of just some random generic sales pitch. If you’re offering tennis lessons for example, use words such as ‘Start hitting winners’ instead of the more generic ‘Sign up for lessons’ in your CTA buttons.
Include two kinds of testimonials
Social proofs in the form of testimonials have been historically used to convince potential customers of your legitimacy and quality but recent cases inside the video game industry have shown that there’s currently a divide on how the public see these testimonials. In one corner, you have the type of people clamoring that professional reviews need to ‘end’. In the other corner, you have people clamoring that user-generated reviews are the one that’s problematic as they’re too easily hijacked by negative actors.
The solution for businesses then is to include both of them in your landing pages. Include both professional reviews and/or mentions of your company in press but also make sure to include actual customer reviews and testimonials in your landing pages. Professional reviews tend to be more of the objective kind while customer reviews are typically more subjective in nature and by including both, you could convince people who are simply looking for the best product and people looking for something that’s tailor-made for their needs and wants.