For a lot of Internet marketers, landing pages aren’t as simple as they seem. The concept is clear – drive traffic to a specific page from ads and social links, and then get them to convert. The reality, though, is that optimizing your pages to convert as many visitors into leads or sales as possible can start to feel tedious and confusing.
To help you make sense of the process – and get the highest possible return from the money you spend on Internet advertising – we’d like to offer you our patented Better Landing Page Blueprint…
Start With Your Traffic Sources
The first step to a strong landing page strategy is to evaluate your different sources of traffic. Look at your advertising platforms, and your analytics, to see where potential customers are coming from. Then evaluate what their needs and concerns might be based on those factors. Do the keywords, or referral sites, being used suggest a certain kind of intent? You can’t optimize your landing pages until you understand who your buyers are and where they’re coming from.
Customize Offers by Keyword and Customer
Take the biggest traffic source you’ve identified, and then begin to build a list of keywords, customer attributes, and potential offers (in the form of products, discounts, and information pieces) that might work together. Once you have a winning combination between the three, this becomes the basis for your landing page. Build headlines, page content, images, and calls to action around those factors so they appeal to a specific type of buyer.
Test Two Versions of Important Pages
Once you have what you feel is a strong version of your landing page in place, try a similar version that uses a different offer, a sharper call to action, or some other element that you’d like to test. Devote most of your budget (and accompanying traffic) to the stronger more proven of the two landing pages. Over time, whichever one performs better becomes your standard landing page, and then you can build a new version (based on the winner) that you can test the next time around.
Know When to Move On
Although this process of split-testing should be ongoing, there does come a point where the gains start to become minimal. If you find that you just can’t beat your winning landing page after several attempts, or that the types of improvements you’re making aren’t really helping your bottom line, then it’s time to start crafting and testing a different kind of landing page for a new product, offer, or audience.
Add New Landing Pages Gradually
Too many business owners and marketers attempt to develop, split-test, and refine several different landing pages at once. Unless you have a large marketing team, or lots of time to work with, this can be a difficult strategy. We recommend that you add new pages and ideas gradually – or even one at a time – testing them thoroughly until you can be sure you know it’s working. Otherwise, you might find yourself spending a lot of money, not getting the return you’d hoped for, and failing to understand why.
Effective Landing Pages = ROI
Having effective landing pages is important if you’re going to maximize the return you get from Internet advertising and social media marketing. Why not follow our blueprint to landing page success and see how you can increase conversion rates on your website?