Want to create a landing page? Don't jump ahead to designing it as most people do. Write your copy first. Copy is twice as important to conversion rates as design. The first step in the landing page creation process doesn’t involve sketches or wireframes. It starts with these questions:
You can’t really get far into the design of a landing page until all these questions are answered and you already have your content thought out. Let's clarify how you can answer each of these questions to make sure that your copy is rock solid.
Landing pages are needed to support a marketing campaign. Every campaign (and every landing page) is focused on promoting a single idea or goal. That's why every element on your page needs to persuade people to take action:
For example, Hubspot has lots of landing pages focused on persuading visitors to leave their emails in exchange for templates, ebooks, and other free resources. Codeacademy has a landing page focused on selling its pro membership. Miro, a company that sells remote collaboration software, has many landing pages classified By Use Case and By Team – all persuade visitors to sign up for a free trial.
The goal you want to achieve with a landing page is your call to action. We'll talk about it at the end of this blog post.
Think about a landing page as an offer that you want people to buy. Think about an offer as a solution to a problem that your target audience is struggling with.
If you don't know what problem your audience has, do research before you begin writing. You can mine customer reviews, talk to your sales team, or even set up interviews with your existing customers.
When the COVID-19 pandemic started and people switched to remote work, Asana, a project management tool, created a message that targets their customers' pain: Keep your team coordinated, wherever you are. Asana’s target buyer is a project manager whose goal is to coordinate their team. But keeping a team coordinated during quarantine is more challenging than during normal circumstances. Asana offered a solution to this problem – a coordinated team, despite dispersed team members.
You can have many landing pages on your website. But each landing page needs to be tailored to a specific audience.
For example, Atlassian, a company that sells project management software Jira, has landing pages that target marketing managers, human resource managers, financial managers, and other buyer personas.
Check out Conversion Benchmark Report by Unbounce to see what you can learn about your audience.
The traffic source helps you determine how aware your visitors are of your product. Knowing your visitor's stage of awareness helps you target your copy, make it more relevant, and, as a result, improve your page’s conversion rate.
In his book Breakthrough Advertising, Eugene Schwartz breaks down buyer awareness into five distinct phases: unaware, problem-aware, solution-aware, product-aware, and most aware.
I've talked about stages of awareness in my blog about a content strategy, make sure you check it out.
For example, let's say you want to use SEO to attract organic traffic to a landing page that promotes Machine Learning Consulting Services. The keywords you're going to use reveal a lot about your traffic’s awareness level.
Someone who googles "AI use cases" is unaware. It makes no sense to target this key phrase because it won't bring leads. The key phrase "machine learning consulting services," on the other hand, has a transactional intent. People who search for this key phrase on Google are solution-aware. In other words, they intent to buy – and this audience is exactly who you want to attract.
The takeaway: for organic or PPC campaigns you need to focus on keywords that bring problem or solution aware traffic. Copy for a landing page that targets people at these stages of awareness is usually long, because you need to persuade these people that your solution is the best one so they become product and most-aware.
Traffic from email campaigns, on the other hand, is already product-aware, which means you don't need a lot of copy to persuade this audience (of course, if you have a solid list of engaged subscribers and are not sending them spammy sales emails).
A value prop is a clear statement that describes what you’re offering, why this specific audience that you’re talking to should buy it, and how it's different from what your competitors offer.
Your value proposition should be clear and identifiable within a few seconds, otherwise, people will bounce. Communicate it at the top of your page and reinforce it throughout the rest of your copy, adding messages and proofs.
For example, a search engine DuckDuckGo has a clear value proposition formulated in the headline and subheadline:
Stripe, a payment system, expresses their value proposition for e-commerce businesses like this:
A landing page for one of MailChimp's product, a website builder has the following value prop:
Remember that your value proposition stated in the headline should be about your audience – not about you.
Also, it's always better to phrase a headline as a customer benefit (rather than a product feature) because with this approach you show your visitors that you understand their needs.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to organizing sections on your landing page. It all depends on your offer and your audience. But here are a few tips on how to do it property:
For example, let's look at how a company called Remote that helps businesses hire international talent structured their landing page with an offer for HR leaders:
Every headline here is a message with promises and benefits. The body copy supports the message in the headline providing details and proofs. All sections tie back to the main value proposition, formulated in the first headline and subheading.
It's a good idea to observe how other companies structure their landing pages and think why they do it the way they do it.
By and large, a landing page is a list of claims or promises and proofs that back them up. What can serve as a proof?
You should use proofs to affirm what you’re saying, when you're saying it. For example, if you promise a particular benefit in your headline, back it up with a testimonial from someone who’s experienced it.
Look at how Basecamp, a company that sells an app for project management, uses a testimonial to prove their promise.
And finally,
As I've already mentioned, your landing page should be focused on one goal. This goal is your call to action. You want to put it at the end of your page. But sometimes it also makes sense to start with a CTA and add a CTA somewhere in the middle, wherever you think people are ready to convert.
For example, Notion, an app for notetaking and collaboration, has one and the same CTA – Try Notion Free – throughout the page.
Here are a few rules of writing CTAs:
So there you have it. Here are 7 things you should think about to write a high converting landing page:
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Time to write a landing page! Keep in mind that your content will always be a work in progress. That means you shouldn't write it only once and never again: track how it performs and continue to optimize it after you publish.
What do you think B2B buyers want? Thought leadership content? I'm afraid what they want is to buy. But marketers won’t help them do it. Learn how to apply Gartner's B2B buyer's journey to your content to let your buyers successfully arrive at a purchase.
When you talk about your company or products, what do you usually highlight? Do you focus on the outcomes your customers can expect, like increased sales? Or maybe you talk about the category you're in, like custom software development? Do you target a specific audience, like business owners? Or perhaps you emphasize the cost, like offering a premium service? If you haven't guessed already, in this article we're going to dive into positioning! So, let's get started!
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