Getting More Leads and Conversions Using Landing Pages
With some great advice for your business videos, our friends at Unbounce deep dive into website landing pages.
Why Do Landing Pages Lead to More Conversions?
Landing pages are standalone web pages that serve a specific, pre-defined goal to maximize conversions (hint: that means getting more leads or sales!) If you’re trying to sell a product or service, you may use one or several landing pages to educate the user before directing them to a pricing page or offering a form for them to submit their lead. For example, the way you’d speak to customers looking for wedding photography may be very different from the way you’d speak to those looking for corporate headshots, but your contact form or pricing information may be very similar.
Landing pages are ideal conversion-oriented environments to send traffic from channels such as AdWords (PPC), display, paid social posts, email marketing, because you can customize them to reflect the segment you’re speaking to, test and measure the results. If you are sending traffic to your home page, or to a stand-alone form, you are missing out on opportunities to increase your conversions and campaign efficacy.
In short, landing pages are designed to push users toward a specific, conversion-centered goal by customizing messaging per channel and/or segment and running A/B testing to maximize conversions over time, to get the most bang for your marketing buck.
What’s a Landing Page and What Makes an Effective One?
Homepages vs. Landing Pages
Let’s compare the Webtrends homepage (left) with one of their landing pages (right). The homepage is beautifully designed and allows a visitor to accomplish a number of tasks. There are five concepts presented in the main promo area (via the rotating banner), four supplementary messages below that, and a total of 28 ways to interact with the page.
However, marketing campaigns should be laser-focused, driving users to one single action. When designing a landing page to be used in marketing campaigns, the concept of Attention Ratio is key. Attention Ratio (AR) is defined as the ratio of interactive elements (links/leaks) on the page, to the number of campaign conversion goals (which should always be one). On this homepage, the attention ratio is 28:1 meaning that there are 27 distracting actions and 1 desired action.
Compare the homepage with one of the lead generation landing pages (right). On the landing page, there is only one action to perform; users are asked to fill out the form and click the CTA button to complete the conversion. This produces a much more focused experience for visitors, keeping the attention ratio at 1:1.
Anatomy of a Landing Page
There are 5 must-have core elements on any landing page, regardless of whether it’s a lead generation or click-through page, and regardless of whether you’re promoting a product or service:
- Your Unique Selling Proposition – Main headline and supporting headline
- The hero shot – images/video showing context of use
- The benefits of your offering – A bullet point list summary of benefits
- Social proof – “I’ll have what she’s having”
- A single conversion goal – Your Call-To-Action (with or without a form)
The diagram below represents a sample layout. The order and location of the 5 elements will be determined by the story you want to tell your visitors, and may vary from this example. But it’s helpful to look at this for reference to understand why each element is needed to guide a visitor to their decision to (hopefully) convert.
Lead Generation vs. Click-Through Landing Pages
There are two main types of landing pages: lead generation and click-through.
Lead Generation Landing Pages are used to capture user data, such as a name and email address. The only purpose of the page is to collect information that will allow for further communication with the prospect at another time. A lead-gen page will contain a form along with a description of what the visitor will get in return for submitting their personal data. Great lead-gen pages make visitors want to convert by using the 5 elements to help them understand why they should give their information away and sign up!
Click-Through Landing Pages are used to persuade your visitor to click through to another page using the 5 key elements. Typically used in ecommerce funnels, they can offer product or service info in order to “warm up” your visitor and bring them closer to making a purchasing decision. When the prospect clicks through to the following page, they’ll be primed with all the information they require and are much more likely to buy.
What Now?
Now that you understand a bit more about landing pages and why you need them, it’s a great time to head over to Unbounce to learn more and get started with your landing page. Unbounce was built to empower professional marketers and small business owners to build beautiful and high-performing campaign-specific landing pages on their own. That is, without the help of developers and if they choose to use templates, without designers as well. Essentially very similar to what Animoto’s awesome builder does for videos, Unbounce does for landing pages. In fact, we’re so happy about partnering together that we’re offering Animoto customers a special introductory offer to try Unbounce, the perfect solution to pair with your videos and create beautiful, high-converting pages. If you want to read more about landing pages, improving conversion rates, and marketing best practices, there’s no better place than the Unbounce Landing Page eCourse or blog!
Liesl Barrell is a digital marketer, writer/editor, and extroverted expat. As Sr. Business Development Manager she tackles strategic partnerships for Unbounce.