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How to Produce Strong Landing Pages for Your Content Marketing

Monday 16 November 2015

11 minute read

By Sarah Burns

If you've taken an interest in our other inbound marketing and lead generation blog posts, you'll know that we're keen about producing worthwhile content.

Landing pages are the place where your website visitors discover more about that content and decide whether or not its worth filling in a form with their personal details.

If your visitor doesn't think its important then you've lost a conversion opportunity - and we, as marketers - are always hoping this doesn't happen.

Walk through our guide for landing page creation and development below, to help revitalise your content offering and increase conversion rates...

What is a landing page?

A landing page is a standalone web page which gives a visitor a specific offer. They include a number of pieces of content, all leading the visitor to decide whether or not they will fill in an on-page form, allowing them to receive the offer.

Why use landing pages?

Landing pages are commonplace in the field of inbound marketing and we encourage all of our clients to look into their use and purpose. Landing pages are one of the steps used to produce workflows. Workflows are a system of actions and delays which form a web visitor's overall experience and communications with your website, based on their choices and interests - not yours.

Landing pages are usually found via a call to action - a button or image which "calls" for a visitor to click and either find out more or download a resource. The landing page itself includes a form which takes such details as company name, person's name, website URL and email address. If filled out, the visitor has given you their details for further marketing purposes, but in return expects the offer to be fulfilled - this happens on a thank you page. 

Thank you pages offer the download and perhaps other options, such as similar blog posts or ebooks. A thank you page is where the process is fulfilled and often triggers a follow up email, which sends the download to the visitor's email address, which they provided with the form.

Overall, the workflow and inbound process takes a lot of time to set up, but then works for itself 24/7, 365 days a year.

5 Top Tips for Landing Page Content Marketing

We follow a set pattern to ensure that our content best suits its audience. This pattern is what we're going to advise you of - for free, right now. 

1. Know your page goal

There shouldn't be multiple goals on a single landing page, it confuses the process for visitors. Decide whether you want them to opt-in to email updates, sign up for a consultation or download one ebook. Focus all of your content elements on this one goal alone.

2. All of your elements have one job

The headline cannot attract, answer questions, break dance and cook a three-course meal. Instead it does one job. It tells visitors what to expect. Just as this is the case with the headline, it is the same with all other elements. 

  • Headline: Keep visitors on the page
  • Subhead: Move visitors to the body copy
  • Body copy: Directly support the page goal
  • Social proof: Add evidence to your body copy - testimonials etc
  • Form headline: Remove the worries from completing the page goal
  • Form: Get completed
  • Button: Get clicked
[Source: Unbounce]

3. How aware are your visitors? 

The visitor's level of awareness* to their problem and the solution indicates what kind of approach you should take with your landing page. This can include both deciding on content type and page length. As explained by many copywriters and authors, not least Gene Schwartz, author of Breakthrough Advertising, these are the awareness levels we follow:

  • Most Aware: Visitors know and trust your brand
  • Product Aware: Visitors know you offer solutions they may need but they have yet to choose your product
  • Solution Aware: Visitors know solutions exist for their pain but don’t know about yours
  • Pain Aware: Visitors are aware of their problem but not of any solutions
  • Unaware: People who are not necessarily in need at this point

* This is quite an advanced way of producing landing pages, so don't worry about this too much, but take into consideration as you move through your website how your content will be viewed and how your visitor will / will not respond to it. It is always wise to review your buyer personas when producing content!

4. Be specific

There is one thing to excite your readers with "our customers have seen X returns" and "our customers claim this product has revolutionised their lives" etc, but what does that really mean?

Landing pages with specific figures and real life evidence that your company, products and service have tangible positive impacts is what counts.

This is where "social proof" comes into your landing pages. If a human can see that another human downloaded your content and can say that you're great because of X, Y, Z, then it does a lot more than a generic statement. 

Perhaps most obviously, your visitor doesn't want to be the only person downloading your content or using your services - so prove that they aren't!

5. Give your CTA a revamp

There are millions of "Download Now" or "Download Ebook" call-to-actions out there, but yours should be 'next level' in its wording and offer.

Remember that it shouldn't alienate, scare or make anything seem difficult for the visitor. Your CTA leads people to the landing page where the offer is, so make it seem attractive and not a challenging task.

Review all of this information - there's a lot of it - and then go away and compile a content marketing strategy! Implement these changes to your landing pages or produce your own. 

If you're looking to embark on a website build project, whether it's completely from scratch or a site refresh, our ebook will give you the knowledge to make your project as stress-free as possible.

The Website Design Handbook for Businesses

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