In the world of digital marketing, you only have 7 seconds to convince a potential client to stay on your website. Therefore, the importance of making a good first impression is crucial.
For most of your digital campaigns however, it will not be your ‘website’ that will be your visitors’ main entry point but your campaign landing pages. With only a matter of seconds to hold a visitor’s attention how effective are your landing pages at converting?
When designed right, your landing pages can convert a visitor into a lead in a matter of minutes. However, a bad first impression can destroy a potential lead before it has even begun. You may have created the very best thought leadership report but all of that work you’ve done to create the report and accompanying promotional assets will count for nothing if attention is not paid to the design of your landing page.
So, what makes a successful, high converting landing page in professional services marketing?
Your landing page has to entice your visitors to act. It should be clear and effortlessly communicate to your audience how to learn more about your service, solution or from a content perspective, your thought leadership report.
A question we often get asked is more text, images or video? Text and images signal that your landing page is direct and to the point. It also has the bonus of loading quicker on internet browsers, and with a one second delay in page load time, resulting in a 7% reduction in conversion, it’s good thing to keep in mind. On the other hand, video content is the future of digital marketing. Video content is the most engaging medium, and gives you the creative freedom to communicate your service or solution visually, potentially increasing your conversions by 80%. Our recommendation would be to focus on both, if you can.
A typical mistake many people make is thinking your landing page should be a replica of your homepage. Remember, a landing page is a campaign-specific call to action, with a single marketing goal in mind. Copy should be short but contain all the critical details you need. It needs to grab the reader’s attention from the start. It should engage and educate. However, most importantly you need to use the tone and language of your target audience, please, please avoid using industry jargon!
Ensure you have a captivating headline and make sure you have clear calls to action (CTA). Your CTA is the best way to convert visitors by conveying a quick action emotion. For example, ‘start your free trial’ or download your free report’. Use multiple CTA’s throughout your landing page and use strong action verbs such as ‘now’ to inform your client exactly what you want them to do.
Using the right colours is often overlooked. Make sure your CTA is a stand out colour from your colour palette. Your background colour should be easy to view and not contrasting with your text colour.
Remember, your landing page needs to be crafted for your service, solution or thought leadership report, and this alone. It’s important to remember that your goal is to speed up the conversion time.
Mastering your landing page is a trial and error process, it requires patience and experimentation, as well as continuously improving and redefining. Test and measure your results, observe how visitor behaviour changes with your enhancements.
Finally, don’t lose focus, keep your user’s experience central to your landing page strategy and design. Use A/B testing to find out what works the best and leads to qualified leads.
There is no one size fits all solution. But, follow the above and you’ll quickly find what works best for you and your target audience.
If you need help and/or advice we’re always on hand to help!