How Does a Landing Page Work?

Converting visitors into leads is the first step to building a relationship between your business and potential customers.

Here’s everything you need on landing pages and their operation so that you can learn how does a landing page work.

A landing page is an area of your website that converts visitors into leads. It differs from other pages of your website because it follows these two criteria:

It features a form that allows visitors to provide their information in exchange for a specific offer.

Landing pages have one purpose: to convert visitors into leads. A homepage with forms on it doesn’t count as a page.

A landing page simply means any page that contains a form and does not include distractions or navigation.

How Do Landing Pages Work?

Marketo or HubSpot will allow you to see the offer that the lead converted on, what time they converted and any interactions they have had with your site. This data will enable you to nurture the lead in a targeted way and help you choose which marketing actions you should take.

A nurtured lead is more likely than an unqualified lead to become a marketing qualified (MQL) and progress through the marketing funnel quicker. This allows you to show the return-on-investment (ROI), and it keeps your sales team satisfied.

Every day we use money to pay for goods or services. A landing page can simply illustrate the idea of monetary value. You’re exchanging the same valuable information regardless of which side you’re on.

Visitors will fill out the form on the landing page because the content is valuable to them. Marketers will give the piece of content to site visitors because they can make future marketing decisions based on the valuable information they provide.

It’s a win-win situation. You are exchanging knowledge for contact.

Conversion Process

Since landing pages are the key elements of the conversion process, there are lots of assets that can be used to help you make it a success.

• CTAs (Call to Action)

A CTA is an image or line of text that asks visitors to perform a particular action. CTAs are used on landing pages to tell visitors where they can click to access the offer. You need to place them on pages that are related to your offer and on any relevant blog posts.

A visitor is more likely to convert if it resonates well with the landing page as well as other pages.

• Landing page

This is the place where visitors will fill out the form to receive the offer. Its sole purpose is to tell visitors the benefits of an offer and encourage them into becoming leads. Once the visitor has submitted the form, they should be redirected to a “thank-you” page.

Thank you Page

Although most tools offer an inline thank-you message, it’s recommended that you send your new lead to a dedicated thank-you page. This page should include a “download now” button that new leads can click in order to download the file you have provided on the landing pages.

A thank-you page can help boost the conversion and move the lead up the sales funnel. You should also include secondary offers, such as consultations, case studies, webinars, etc. on your thank-you page. This will encourage the lead to follow up with the offer.

Before you create a landing page, here are some things to consider:

• Before you begin to build the landing page, it is important to do all of your research.
• In preparation for beginning to design the landing page, ensure that you have covered the following:

The Buyer Persona(s)

A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your specific audience. These can be created using market research or customer data. They can be very useful in providing insight into customers’ thinking patterns and behaviors. This will enable you to create valuable content for them.

It is important that you target your landing page to a single persona (if you have more than one). It is not possible to appeal to all personas with the same landing page. This will result in fewer conversions.

Focusing on a single persona will help you focus your efforts and increase your chances of conversion. It is better not to try to appeal to everyone in this situation.

The Offer

An offer is any provision that adds value to an audience, other than the services they sell. You could offer a free webinar, tip sheet, comparison tool, or any other resource that is available online and provides information about your industry.

It should correspond to the pain points that your buyer personas are experiencing, as well as their stage in the Buyer’s Journey (explained further below).

The Buyer’s Journey

The Buyer’s Journey refers to the research process a buyer must go through before they make a purchase. It can be broken down into three distinct stages: 

• the awareness stage, 
• the consideration stage, 
• and the intent stage.

Each stage should have its own content to aid people in moving from one stage of the journey into another. The following details are provided:

Awareness Stage: The awareness stage refers to a visitor who has symptoms but is not able to identify the problem. The person at this stage has done extensive research to identify their symptoms and determine what is causing them. White papers, guides, and e-books are all examples of content that can be used to target this stage.

The Consideration stage: Prospects have identified their problem or opportunity. You should provide content for buyers at this stage of their Buyer’s Journey. These include white papers, webinars, and videos.

The Decision Stage (well-known as Intent Stage):
This process of the funnel allows prospects to know their solution strategy and approach. It is the stage where they compare vendors and narrow down their choices before making their final decision. It is a good time to give out case studies, demos, product information, and other relevant information.

How to Build a Great Landing Page

After you’ve done your background research, you can start to build the landing pages. There is a specific recipe that inbound marketers from around the world have developed. And you can use it to improve your chances of landing a conversion on your landing pages. This recipe is explained below.

Some Helpful Tips

These are some points to keep in mind that will make a huge difference on your landing page.

Proofread: It is important to be credible when someone visits your landing pages. It can look messy and discourage people from converting if you do not use the right words. Make sure you double-check everything on the landing page.

You should keep your copy above the fold. This is not a strict rule. However, it does mean that the more content on a landing page, the less likely it is to capture someone’s interest. Be concise with your message, and keep it above the fold.

Check Your Landing Page: After you’ve created a CTA linking to your landing page, and a thank-you page that redirects to it, you can test the whole process. You can click on the CTA and fill out the form to get the offer.

You should ensure that all steps are taken from a user’s standpoint. Check to confirm that your contact details have been entered into the database. This will ensure that everything runs smoothly behind the scenes.

Promotional Tips

After you have created the landing page, it isn’t done. The landing page is only the beginning. To get people to visit your landing page, you need to make them click on it. These are the top ways to promote your landing page.

CTAs – As mentioned previously, CTAs are an excellent way to promote landing pages. Remember that the CTA should be in sync with the landing pages and content. People will convert more if these assets are cohesive. The CTAs should be placed on pages that receive a lot of traffic that is relevant to the offer as well as in blog posts that support it.

Email: Email is an excellent way to promote your landing pages. Instead of sending an email blast to everyone, send a promo email. You have a better chance of getting people to convert if the list is targeted in relation to your landing page. You don’t have to reinvent this wheel; most of the content from landing pages can be used in emails.

Social Media: As most people know, social media is an excellent tool to spread the word about your content. Be aware, however, that you shouldn’t promote your content on every platform.

Choose the few platforms you know your personas on and make sure to promote them heavily. You shouldn’t just promote on Facebook because everyone else does it. Consider whether your personas enjoy Facebook. If they don’t, then it is worth looking elsewhere.

Analyzing the Data

After your campaign has launched and traffic has been driven to the page, it is important not to relax and just enjoy the show. You must regularly check the landing page results, but not too frequently.

Pay more attention to trends and important events over a longer period of time than to day-to-day traffic or conversion. These can vary widely and don’t provide you with a lot of useful and actionable information.

You can compare landing pages with different offers and find a pattern that explains why certain offers are performing better than others.

If you have a landing page that performs exceptionally well, promote it and see if your contacts increase.

Best Practices for Landing Pages

Make a compelling headline: This is the first thing visitors will see when they arrive at your landing page. It’s the text they will first read upon landing on your landing page.

Convey the Value of Your Offer Clearly: Effectively communicating the value of your offer is Key to your landing page development. Have you heard of the blink test? The blink test is a simple way to communicate your message and value to your visitor before they blink. It takes about 3-5 seconds. This is a crucial step to converting visitors. It takes only one “blink” to convince someone to visit your landing page. Wow!

Use bullet points: Humans love to be creative and have short attention spans when it comes to landing pages. To keep your audience engaged, avoid creating lengthy paragraphs on your landing page. Write a summary of the offer.

Below the offer summary, make sure to write bullet points about what the audience can expect to learn by downloading the material. These bullet points will keep your reader interested and can give you a preview of the future, which may be enough to entice them into downloading.

Make the Form: You should be aware of the number and type of fields that you have included in your landing page’s form. The Buyer’s Journey stage should dictate the number of forms you need.

You should keep your forms simple for awareness pieces and collect only basic information, such as name and email address. The higher up the funnel you go, the more fields to add as leads get closer to buying.

You will need to collect more information about them once they reach the decision stage. This will help you to better understand your prospect and make it easier for the salesperson to close the sale.

Eliminate Site Navigation:

You want your visitor to be distraction-free. Your landing page should be free from the site navigation. This will allow your visitor to focus on the content, and not on other tempting links.

Insert Images: Who doesn’t love a good image? Make sure your landing page has a compelling and relevant image to draw visitors in. If a compelling image is included on a landing page, people are more likely to stay longer.

Add Social Sharing Icons: Although the landing page should be stripped of all navigation, it’s important to add social sharing icons. This will allow people to share the page with others via their social media platforms.

To do this, make sure it opens in new tabs or windows when you click on the icon. It’s important to not redirect users away from the page. However, you should give them the option to promote it.

Offer testimonials when they are relevant: People look at reviews of products before purchasing. This is also true for landing pages. A testimonial should not be merely a tie to your offer. Be sure that it is directly related to your offer. If it doesn’t, it’s best to delete it. Similar advice applies to displaying awards and praises on your page.

Clear Instructions on Next Steps Are Important: If you have a form on your landing page, it usually means that you need to fill it out. But make sure that your landing page has copy that suggests that.

This is typically located near the end. Although it is straightforward, it will provide clear instructions to your visitor on the next steps. This will help increase conversion rates!

Conclusion

Changes to landing pages (e.g. text, images, and fields) should be made one at a time. Test for several minutes. You can then identify what is affecting performance, and separate it out.

If you make multiple changes at once, you won’t know which one or more of the changes has affected the landing page. You will not be able to use that information to create new landing pages.

If this has helped you in your research, I would love you to leave a comment, or a like and share.

Thanks for visiting.

LILY