I use no-nonsense and established methodologies that I have tested for YEARS to improve the bottom line of my clients
A landing page must have strong, well-written content in order to keep visitors engaged. If visitors don’t find anything useful or informative in the first several lines of content, they’re likely to leave the page before they reach your “call-to-action.” If you don’t have persuasive, “killer” content on your landing page, your conversions will be much lower than you want. The following strategies will help you write killer content and improve your landing page conversions.
If you know who your landing page is supposed to target, this will help you write content that appeals to that target group. The buyer persona you create will describe your consumer, and could include the following:
Hubspot has a quick guide on how to write buyer persona that goes into greater detail about this process. After you create your buyer persona, you can focus your content around your prospects.
You may also want to create negative personas. These personas represent customers who you do not want to target with your landing page. These personas represent customers who would not be interested in your product. By defining customers who you do not want to attract, you can adjust your content to those you do want.
What does your audience need? Why are they looking at your landing page? Determining your audience’s intent will help you create content that provides either the solution or the information they are looking for.
When determining your audience’s intent, ask yourself, “How can I write my content to genuinely help my prospects?” Remember that you can create multiple landing pages that focus on different specifics rather than creating one page with generalized content. Doing so allows you to focus your content on specific audiences rather than trying to appeal to everyone.
For example, if your landing page is for a florist, some audiences may be looking for wedding flowers. Others may be searching for Valentine bouquets, birthday arrangements, or funeral flowers. Multiple landing pages that focus on specific areas can address audience intent more clearly and efficiently than a single landing page could.
Rather than focusing on the features of what you offer your consumers, show them how they can benefit from your product or service. The benefit of a feature is not always clear, and it’s also very easy to let your content become bogged down in details or technical terms. The reader may get lost in these terms, particularly if your buyer persona is an average consumer rather than someone familiar with industry jargon.
For example, if the goal of your landing page is to sell your chemical storage tanks, discuss how your product provides safe storage in cold weather, prevents leaks, and stores chemicals for long periods of time. You can include information on how these benefits are achieved farther down on the page, but hook the reader with the benefits first.
If readers feel they are important to you, they’re more likely to be interested in purchasing your product or service. To increase your potential customer’s feeling of importance, use the “second person” in your copy. Instead of referring to clients and customers, talk directly to the reader—“ You need this product” instead of “Our clients need this product.”
Don’t be afraid to write in a more conversational style. Think of your landing page as a conversation between you and a potential customer. If you were speaking to a customer in a brick-and-mortar shop, you wouldn’t speak in a very stilted or formal manner. Do the same with your landing page content. Make it sound personal, as if you are sharing a secret with the reader. The more the reader feels that he or she is being given information that others aren’t, the more important he or she will feel.
Many landing pages use bland text for their call-to-action. A “ho-hum” statement like “click here to order,” located in the last line of the final paragraph, may work for those who scroll to the end of the page, but what about those who don’t? Visitors should know what you want them to do almost as soon as they reach your landing page.
A good call-to-action is linked to a button or image, not to a small line of text. These buttons need to stand out, and should appear in the “above the fold” area (the part of the landing page that the visitor sees when the page first opens and before they start scrolling down.)
Make use of strong verbs in your call-to-action buttons. Expressions such as “Download Now” or “Join our email list” quickly tell the reader what the call-to-action is. If something is free, make sure to say so in the call-to-action. “Free” is one of the most effective words you can use to convert visitors.
Your landing page doesn’t necessarily need to contain multiple videos, long text, and dozens of images. You want your reader to quickly understand the need you are filling, the benefits of working with you instead of your competitors, and the call-to-action he or she should follow. If your landing page isn’t concise and simple, it may not be doing the job you want it to.
This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t include images or videos if they are relevant to your product and provide useful information to the reader. What this does mean is that you need to make certain that everything on the page is truly relevant. This includes text as well. Keep your paragraphs as short as possible.
Testimonials can help build trust with your potential customers. They show that the solution you’re offering works and is a worthwhile investment. Using a few testimonials on your landing page can help solidify trust. However, as with all content on your page, keep them short. If possible, use a few short sentences from a customer testimonial rather than including the entire thing.
Make certain these testimonials are legitimate and include the person’s name and image. Ensure that the testimonial includes other relevant information such as the person’s hometown, company, or demographic.
You should also include authority signals, such as the logos or names of your partners, the logos or names of those who have endorsed your business, and your credentials. If you’re a business-to-business company, you should also include the logos of some of your larger clients. If small businesses see that larger companies are working with you, it will indicate to them that you’re someone who is trustworthy.
When readers are confronted with large paragraphs of text, it often discourages them. Your landing page should be easy to read and scan. A visitor should be able to scan your page and determine its focus and main talking points very quickly. The following elements can help you structure your content for easy scanning:
You can see some of these listed techniques applied to the above list. The bullets and bold text make it easy to scan the main points in the list, while placing a blank line between each point allows you to easily read each description.
The use of a little empathy can make your potential customer feel as if he or she is talking to a real person. It can make your organization seem more than just another large, faceless company trying to sell a product. Your organization will appear to know what the consumer is going through.
The more you identify with consumers, the more they are going to trust what you say. Show the visitors to your landing page that you “get” them, that you hear their complaints, and that you have a solution that works for them.
Draw your reader in with a few empathetic statements or questions at the beginning.
“Are you tired of getting a bill, only to find hundreds of dollars in hidden charges you didn’t agree to? We never add any extra charges to your bill. You pay exactly what you were quoted.”
or
“Don’t you just hate calling customer service and dealing with computers? So do we! Our customer service line is staffed with live people, so you never have to deal with a robot.”
If a visitor clicks on your landing page, do they see a large wall of text? If so, they will probably click off the page. Large blocks of text are hard to read on a screen, especially if the customer is using a mobile device. To avoid this, remember to keep your content as concise as possible. Clearly state what your product or service does and why the consumer needs it. Then highlight a few of its standout features.
Your landing page is designed to be compelling and to grab the reader’s attention, not to provide all the details of your product. That you can save for a different page. Let’s examine the three points below:
Your landing page needs to market your product and persuade readers to follow the call-to-action. Nothing else! Although your landing page does need to provide information about your product or business, it does not need to go into detail that goes beyond the call-to-action. Your company’s history and contact information, for example, can go on other pages.
You may need to do some research to prove why your product is superior or more popular. A good statistic or two is often enough to demonstrate why a consumer needs your product. For example, you can play on the reader’s fear of missing out by showing that the majority, or at least a large number of people, are using your product. “Eighty-five percent of business owners use X” or “Over 1 million downloads” show that your product is in demand, or provides a solution that many have found effective.
It is important that these statistics be backed up by credible sources. Adding the source is often another way of establishing credibility, especially if the source is a well-known survey or government organization.
By implying a knowledge gap, you can make the reader curious about what he or she does not know. Curiosity can be a very powerful force. By implying that you have information that the reader does not have, you can leverage that force. People want to learn about new techniques or gain additional information that will make their job easier or more effective.
You may have seen many articles that start with “Common mistakes made by…” or “Ten great tips for…” These articles imply that the writer knows things that the reader does not. If the reader decides to move on without reading the article, he or she may either be missing out on some great tips, or not learning about mistakes they’re making. Titles such as these help draw in readers and can be very effective on a landing page.
Your headline is your potential customer’s first impression of your organization. If it doesn’t grab the customer’s attention and make him or her curious about the rest of the content, the customer will simply move on. Your headline must provide an idea of what the rest of your content will be about, and (at the same time) persuade the reader to continue. A question such as “Why Do You Need SEO?” can be a strong headline. Good follow-up headlines would use words that indicate how your product stands out.
Listed below are some keywords that have proven to be very effective in headlines, along with some examples of their use:
While the use of these keywords has proven effective in drawing in readers, they should only be used if they are compatible with your landing page and do not make your headline seem awkward.
Now that you know the golden rules for writing killer content for your landing page, you’ll be able to create better landing pages that have a higher conversion rate. These landing pages will be very focused on the topic, easy to read, and will include a strong call-to-action that grabs the reader’s attention quickly.
You can also apply these techniques to your older landing pages, and either replace them with new pages or edit them to create stronger content. You most likely have already applied some of these rules to these older landing pages. However, by applying all of these rules you can greatly improve their conversion rates.
