MARKETING HOW-TO GUIDE LANDING PAGES 101: COMMON MISTAKES THAT CONFUSE AND CONFOUND AND HOW TO FIX THEM

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1 MARKETING HOW-TO GUIDE LANDING PAGES 101: COMMON MISTAKES THAT CONFUSE AND CONFOUND AND HOW TO FIX THEM

2 Contents at a Glance INTRODUCTION 1 1. WHAT S A LANDING PAGE? 2 2. PURGE YOUR LANDING PAGES OF THESE COMMON MISTAKES 4 3. CHECKLIST OF LANDING PAGE MUST-HAVES DON T FORGET TO TEST YOUR PAGES! LEARN MORE 25 ABOUT THE AUTHOR 27 ABOUT MARKETINGPROFS 27

INTRODUCTION Landing pages are critical in online marketing for numerous reasons, not least among them the following: 1. Revenue. Where would your online business be without landing pages?

3 INTRODUCTION Landing pages are critical in online marketing for numerous reasons, not least among them the following: 1. Revenue. Where would your online business be without landing pages? They are the point at which you likely generate most of your online revenue. The better your landing page performs, the more revenue your organization generates. 2. Efficiency. When marketers decide they need more sales, they usually up their media/ad spend. However, by focusing on what happens after the click (on the landing page), you can usually generate more sales from the same (or less spend). It s all about efficiency which is really what matters to your CFO and CMO. 3. Branding. Landing pages may be the first experience a prospect/customer ever has with your brand. If your visitors land on an awful landing page, they ll leave with a bad taste in their mouth about your brand. Give them a great landing page, however, and your brand will have left a great impression. Now Picture This Imagine you ve landed at a major airport. As soon as you step into the terminal, your senses are assaulted by bright, glittering signs, a grating voice over the loudspeaker, neon arrows pointing in myriad directions, and signs filled with complicated rules for getting to your destination. Or imagine stepping into a terminal and finding hardly anything at all, just entirely too much space, no guides or signs to point you in the right direction. Landing pages containing too much or too little are like those terminals. You need a landing page that is neither too cluttered nor too sparse. When folks glide onto your landing page, they should know immediately where they are, what is available to them, and what the next step is. Unfortunately, that s not how most landing pages are. To help you keep your landing pages streamlined and effective, we ve put together this introductory guide, which covers the following topics: The top landing page mistakes How to fix what s broken A checklist of landing page must-haves Why you should test You ll also find links to additional resources, including online seminars, case studies, articles, and MarketingProfs SmartTools. 1

2. Purge Your Landing Pages of These Common Mistakes Delivering Mixed Messages Your page should have only the information that your visitors want and clicked through to get and nothing more.

4 2. Purge Your Landing Pages of These Common Mistakes Delivering Mixed Messages Your page should have only the information that your visitors want and clicked through to get and nothing more. Your landing page should have one mission, one primary focus. A secondary focus is OK sometimes. But each landing page should just have one call to action. The following page from Adorama (via Tim Ash s webinar) had 146 clickable links. Your page should have only the information that your visitors want and clicked through to get and nothing more. Be mindful that you don t ask too much of clickers to do; overwhelmed with choices, they ll likely end up taking no action other than leaving the page. Asking People to Confirm Their Decision to Ditch It s a spammy page that throws up a dialog box confirming whether or not I want to leave the page, usually presented in complicated double negatives that make it hard to know if OK will make you stay or leave, and if Cancel will make you stay or leave, says Oli Gardner of Unbounce. Just let the visitors leave without having to embarrass themselves. Or you. 13

5 2. Purge Your Landing Pages of These Common Mistakes A landing page with too many links ends up driving folks away from your site and down rabbit trails. Paths Away From the Landing Page A landing page with too many links ends up driving folks away from your site and down rabbit trails. Even sending visitors to your homepage isn t a good call, because it takes the focus away from the specific reason visitors are on your landing page. And sending a clicker to a website s homepage, especially in campaigns, undermines any call to action. Homepages are most often created to appeal to the broadest spectrum of prospects possible, while truly successful marketing campaigns are focused on segmented groups base on their relationship to the company or product, says Elaine O Gorman, vice-president of strategy for Silverpop. Using the homepage as a landing page, therefore, can be confusing. It s much better to create a landing page unique to the campaign whenever possible. 14

6 3. CHECKLIST OF LANDING PAGE MUST-HAVES Your landing-page headline should pop. Smart and direct, it needs to include similar (or even exact) language from the ad or that triggered the click. The previous pages of this guide were all about common mistakes on landing pages. But what if you haven t even started designing your landing page yet? Here s a checklist of must-haves for the landing pages you build. (And do keep in mind the common mistakes previously mentioned.) Match Your Landing Page to Your Ad s Call to Action and Theme The call to action is the most important element of your landing page. The reason a person clicks on your ad or link has to be immediately matched on the landing page. When visitors arrive on your landing page, they should immediately feel the connection between the ad or link that got them there and where they ve ended up. So match the message of your ad/ with the message of your landing page. If your ad promises a 50% reduction in costs, your landing page must echo that message, writes MarketingProfs Megan Leap in a Daily Fix blog post. Think about it: If the message is powerful enough to elicit a user to click, you must expand upon that message if you want them to convert. Also, the theme of an ad should be reflected the landing page. For example, if a florist s ad includes an image of a child holding flowers, then the landing page should follow the theme with something about mothers, grandmothers, Mother s Day, and so on but not images of bridal bouquets or holiday wreaths, for example. You should also remember the primary feeling that your writing or ad is invoking. As Kim MacPherson says in the MarketingProfs article, The Anatomy of a Novel-Sized Landing Page, Part 1 : Keep in mind that you really need to know where your prospect s head is at when you develop your page. And also note that theme alone doesn t make the sale. Your copy should reflect that theme, but it should also focus on pulling at the heartstrings at least a little. Remember, most people buy on emotion and that goes for just about any product or service you can think of. Have an Attention-Grabbing Headline Your landing-page headline should pop. Smart and direct, it needs to include similar (or even exact) language from the ad or that triggered the click. Though usually left as the last item on a designer s to-do list, the headline is a crucial element of a successful landing page. Your landing-page headline should... 15

7 Did you enjoy the read? The best marketing and educational investment ever. I have learned about where marketing is going, been exposed to the best minds in the business, been challenged to rethink my assumptions about the marketplace, and gotten ideas about how to merge old and new marketing. PRO member Christine Whittemore MarketingProfs creates information-packed PRO products like this one every month. And our website is a rich and trusted resource used by a vibrant online community of more than 350,000 marketers from organizations of all shapes and sizes. Our article library, online seminars, conferences, discussion forum, and special reports provide the tactics, tools, and troubleshooting you need to tackle the most difficult marketing challenges. Join the MarketingProfs community today! (866) support@marketingprofs.com

8 ABOUT THE AUTHOR Verónica Maria Jarski is a MarketingProfs senior content writer and the editor of the MarketingProfs Daily Fix blog. She is the author of A Quick Guide to YouTube & Creating Your Own YouTube Channel, editor of various guides and reports in the MarketingProfs store, and the content producer of the Take 10 series of webcasts. ABOUT MARKETINGPROFS MarketingProfs is a rich and trusted resource that offers actionable know-how designed to make you a smarter marketer from social media and content marketing to lead generation and online conversions. More than 400,000 MarketingProfs members rely on our free daily publications, virtual conferences, and more to stay up to date on the most important trends in marketing and how to apply them to their businesses. Plus, MarketingProfs delivers enhanced professional development training through online seminars and short webcasts, in-depth how-to reports, research, interactive planning tools, online courses, and in-person events. MarketingProfs helps the smartest marketers worldwide turn even the toughest marketing challenges into success stories. 27

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