Here at Radix, we write a lot of landing pages for clients. And yet, after five minutes of Googling “landing pages”, I noticed that every link had something in common: they all focused on design – and not the copy.
To me, this is alarming because it means there are countless people creating landing pages based solely on design, and not giving a fig about the content that’ll actually drive people to take action. You know, the stuff that people actually read once they land on your page.
I’m not saying design isn’t important, but with a landing page, you have 200-300 words (and very little retail space) to get your message across well enough that someone will click on your call to action.
Design alone won’t create conversions, no matter how great it might be.
What can create conversions is asking these three essential questions before writing (or briefing a writer on) your landing page.
1 – What’s the purpose of your page?
The sole purpose of a landing page (in B2B marketing at least) is to act as a portal for what you actually want a user to do.
This could be a simple call to action for a bigger piece of content or a gated contact form that’s the barrier between customers and assets.
All too often though, brands send people from an email or advert to their homepage, or worse, a page that has nothing to do with what they clicked on. And the result? Users will simply drop off your site without a second thought.
The reason? You didn’t deliver what you promised.
Getting a user to click through to your site is difficult – I mean really difficult. So if they’ve given you the time of day to hear what you have to say, you need to make sure it matches up with what you do next. You need to actually send them to the content you promised, preferably hosted on a clear, concise landing page.
Do this, and you’re more likely to keep your audience on your website, and capture their contact details.
2 – Where does your traffic come from?
You now need to consider how people will land on your page. There’s two reasons for this: the content needs to reflect where they’ve just come from, and it also tells you how committed and well-informed your reader is when they arrive.
The two main types of page we tend to write are for email campaigns and advertising/pay-per-click campaigns.
Email landing pages
Generally speaking, an email campaign will consist of many different levels, depending on where the buyer is in the funnel.
More and more emails are using call to actions as a way of driving people to a specific landing page. But this click is like gold-dust. So once you’ve captured people, you need to do your very best to prevent them dropping off your website.
Adverts/PPC
This is where many brands fall foul. If you’re not pointing your adverts towards relevant landing pages, you’re not just going to get high drop off, but you’ll also likely annoy a lot of people.
And they might need more information and persuasion than an email landing page, because ad copy is generally a lot shorter. As a rule of thumb, an ad landing page does the heavy lifting… an email landing page mostly needs to avoid getting in the way.
Remember: if someone’s keen enough to click on your advert, the least you can do is tailor your landing page.
3 – What do you actually want to say?
This is the bit where you keep your copy brief. Usually, the bulk of what you want to say is contained in the asset you’re promoting, so you simply need to give teasers here and point people towards it.
Here, a snappy title that lures the reader in is key. It doesn’t need to be clever or a play on words – in fact, the quicker it gets to the point, the better. Your messaging needs to be engaging enough to pull the reader towards your call to action, but brief enough to keep their interest.
Help your customers land feet first – every time
Ask yourself these simple questions, and you can save yourself a lot of stress with your landing pages.
As long as you nail your title, keep it brief, and treat every click with respect, you’ll be driving shed loads more traffic deeper into your website in no time.
As it happens, we do this content wtiting every day, and we’re pretty good at it. So, if you’d really like to take the stress out of your landing pages, feel free to get in touch. We’ll happily chat through your options.
