Recently, we wrote a post on how to create a landing page. There are some pretty common landing page mistakes that you should know about though, before you start devoting ad budget to getting leads.
Chances are that you are off to create one. Or maybe you already have a few landing pages up and ready and are actively working through the process to get them converting better.
It’s one thing to build a landing page for the sake of building; it’s completely something else to make the landing page work harder, get you leads, boost your conversions, and ultimately lead to profitability.
In the rush to build multiple landing pages, however, we forget some of the simplest of good marketing principles. In fact, brands lose millions of dollars in ad campaigns that don’t work as well as they should.
More than 98% of all ad spend is wasted, and most businesses even stop advertising, losing faith in the medium well before they put in the work to do it the right way.
It’s A Landing Page, Not A Website
Most ads still point to full-fledged websites. Each of those websites has multiple pages, navigation menus, all sorts of pop-ups, livechat windows, Facebook messenger prompts, galleries, blog posts, and more.
That’s information overload.
A landing page, by definition, is a focused web page that helps your ideal target market, your potential customers, engage in a more meaningful relationship with you.
When your visitors arrive on your landing pages, you’d not want to distract them. You don’t want them to click and go away somewhere else. If a navigation menu or livechat box increases conversions, then leave it. If not, take it out.
Your landing page is built to make an offer and collect leads. Unless properly A/B tested, you shouldn’t have anything that your visitors can click on a landing page — no images, links, social media buttons, or multiple forms for people to fill.
The technical term for this is Attention Ratio, as Oli Gardner of Unbounce calls it.
Don’t Attempt Building Landing Pages Yourself
As a business you’ll have multiple offers to make. Each offer requires a dedicated landing page. An average business needs multiple landing pages to get the marketing machine running.
In fact, just by increasing the number of landing pages you use from 1-5 to 6-10, you’d boost the chances of generating more leads by a whopping 55%, according to Pamela Vaughan of Hubspot. We can echo those sentiments with our Scriptly marketing as well. When we had just a few landing pages, conversion was good… When we upped that to 8 landing pages giving away reports and free material, conversion was GREAT!
The trouble is that if you depend on an average developer or a run-of-the-mill page builder to help build landing pages, there are mainly three issues:
- It’d turn out to be expensive, either in development costs or marketing split-tests
- Developers aren’t marketers. So, your landing pages will not be optimized for lead generation (they might just look pretty)
- It takes a lot of time for you launch each of these landing pages.
The solution? Use a conversion-based page building tool like Scriptly’s or get help from professional agencies.
If you’d like an audit or to discuss your marketing strategy or how you can use landing pages and funnels to grow your business, book a call with us.
First Impressions Matter
I look at you, and I start judging you based on how you look, what you wear, how you smell, the look on your face, how you carry yourself, and the overall first impressions I get.
You do it too.
We can all deny that we don’t judge, but we do.
Just like we judge each other or size one another up, landing pages are also judged. Pathetic designs are inexcusable.
But don’t overdo on the looks front. Like someone wise said,
“It’s alright to be ugly and functional than being pretty and broken”
Be sure to have a clean and simple layout, use great illustrations or visuals (don’t use cheesy stock photos), and make your value proposition simple.
Will You Please Show Up?
Today’s customer is tired of looking at logos, names, and fancy design or art. The more the reach and consumption patterns on the Internet grow, the higher is the need for you to show up.
If you are into consulting or if you provide services, show real people (and preferably you too). Better still, create videos for your landing pages with you talking to them (Talking head videos). Or Showcase other real people in your video content.
If you are building landing pages for products or other tangibles (like restaurants), please showcase the product.
Bring yourself, your brand, and your products or services up and center.
Keep The Landing Pages CTA Singular
Ever seen a page with multiple CTA buttons — like do this? Or do that? Or you can also do this?
The best advertising, from the very beginning, focuses on singularity.
When you make an ad, you’d do it for a specific audience and you’d make a very specific, singular offer to that audience.
The principle also applies to landing pages, sales funnels, and email marketing sequences. With the deluge of information and depleting attention spans out there, you don’t want your messages to be lost.
When you create a landing page, build it for a singular and specific offer. Period.
Confusion Is Expensive
Let’s say you have an ad that says 20% Off.
I click and I head out to your landing page which doesn’t mention the 20% discount at all. What happens?
What if your ad mentions free and when people visit your page, you ask for a credit card number?
These are disconnects. Each time there’s a disconnect, you lose. That potential customer is never going to return.
Message-matching landing pages, as they are called, are critical for your marketing machine to work. Landing pages that don’t match and compliment your ads and calls to action are worthless.
Don’t Launch If You Don’t Run A/B Tests
You have an ad. You have a landing page. The campaign goes live. You receive 1000 visitors and about 37 people sign up for an offer you made.
Quick question: How do you know for sure that this is the absolute best that your ad and landing page combination can deliver?
There’s no way to know unless you do A/B testing, or split testing as it’s coined in some circles.
When you A/B tests, you pitch the performance of version A with another version B. By sending equal traffic to both the landing pages, you’d have a way to find out which page performs better. You could test absolutely anything on a landing page (but only one test at a time by changing one variable element, like changing background images, headings, subheadings, copy, the call to action, etc.).
Do you need a second set of eyes on your landing pages? If so, make sure to book a call with us and we’ll take a look at your campaign from front to back.
