You need to find a path for your marketing to follow. We are often asked…What is the ROI of social media? We tell people that the most important thing you need to do is to create a sales funnel. People need a path to follow in order to purchase. Typically, your sales funnel will lead potential customers to your website. If you’re using a tv, radio, print or even social media you need to focus the efforts to your website. It’s funny how people get caught up on their fan count. You should be caught up on your website traffic and sales. Landing pages are a great way to bridge the gap from your social media to your website. You can use Facebook ads to direct people from your fan page to your landing page.
What Holds You Back?
Generally speaking, there are two challenges for digital marketers: first, they need to devise compelling marketing campaigns that will inspire customers to respond; second, they need to provide a destination where the customer can easily achieve their goals and find all the information they need to make a decision. The second requirement is often the most overlooked – it’s far more exciting to launch a cool marketing campaign with stunning creative and unbeatable offers than to carefully plan out the onwards user journey and ensure all angles are covered to make the most of the response.
However, it’s this requirement that determines how successful a marketing campaign will be. For campaigns with an online response mechanism, your landing page plays a vital role in matching the needs of visitors with relevant calls to action and conversion paths. A well-designed landing page removes the barriers to conversion – the difference between failure and success. For example, a landing page that uses creative assets (e.g. banners)consistent with the marketing campaign reassures visitors that they are in the right place. We’ve seen campaigns flop because the landing page wasn’t strong enough to convince customers to take the plunge and commit to a purchase. We’ve also seen simple campaigns fly because of intelligent use of landing pages that make it easy for customers to act.
Factors you control to improve landing page performance.
1. Relevance of the page. In the first instants of a visit this is affected by the relevance of the headline of the page in the context of their visit – why and where have they arrived from.
2. Length of the landing page. There is a popular myth that short-form landing pages are ‘best practice’, with key content and call to action above the fold. However, there is sufficient evidence to counter this view and demonstrate that the length of a landing page should be determined by a mix of factors, including the needs of the audience for detailed information.
3. Placement of call to action. All calls to action must be above the fold right? Wrong. Yep, surprising isn’t it. In truth, there is no hard and fast rule. Whilst it’s true that in most cases a strong call to action above the fold increases conversion, there are cases where this isn’t true and actually putting the call to action in front of the customer before they are ready to take action can actually put them off.
You don’t need a landing page until you have a plan! Start with a general idea of how your customers will flow throughout your sales funnel. Then do a test landing page with an A and a B. You can test and measure until you reach the right balance.
Other tips:
-
Don’t purchase a 3rd party service. Create the landing page on your own site. This will help with your SEO on the website. You don’t need to spend more money to create a page. This will also help with branding. You will keep the same look and feel as your website.
- Don’t worry if the page is perfect. Just launch it!
