Chapter 7
IN THIS CHAPTER
Understanding the various types of landing pages and when to use them
Building landing pages that generate leads and make sales
Evaluating the effectiveness of landing pages
Converting visitors to your landing page into buyers
Landing pages are fundamental to digital marketing. The broadest way to define a landing page is as any page where a visitor enters your website. For the purposes of this book, we use a more specific definition: A landing page is a web page designed to persuade a visitor to take a specific action. Your website should contain a landing page for each offer you make to prospects and customers. These are the pages toward which savvy digital marketers funnel traffic from all sources both internal and external to their website.
The performance of your landing pages will make or break your digital marketing campaigns. You can master the art of driving web traffic, but if the landing page fails to do its job, the campaign is doomed. In this chapter, we examine the elements of a winning landing page. We also tell you about the different types of landing pages and when to use each kind, how to assess the success of your landing pages, and how to convert customers into buyers.
You categorize landing pages by the specific action you want the site visitor to take. For example, some landing pages are designed to persuade visitors to enter their contact information, whereas others ask the visitor to buy a product or service. The campaigns that most digital marketers run fall into one of two landing page categories:
There are many ways to design and lay out a good landing page, but they all have one thing in common: focus. A solid landing page has a singular goal and as few distractions as possible. The focal point of the page should be the action you want the visitor to take.
The typical website home page is, for example, a page designed to allow the visitor to make a variety of choices. From the home page, a visitor can click a link to visit a product page, learn more about the company, or visit the company blog. For this reason, the home page of the website is a poor landing page in almost every circumstance. A home page simply presents visitors with too many choices.
A landing page should strive to plug as many “leaks” from the page as possible. This means removing links to other offers, more information, and anything else that isn’t absolutely necessary to achieve the goal for that page. Figure 7-1 shows a landing page with as few links as possible to minimize distractions and increase the chances of prospects opting in.
The lead capture page, sometimes called a squeeze page, is an important landing page type to any business that benefits from lead generation. As demonstrated in Figure 7-1, the lead capture page is an extremely focused page containing most of the following:
The sales page is designed to persuade the site visitor to take a specific action: make a purchase. Sales pages come in many forms, but most digital marketing campaigns require one of two types of sales page:
Source: http://www.digitalmarketer.com/lp/sbp/get-content-engine/
Mastering copywriting is a bit like mastering a craft such as pottery or oil painting: It involves a tremendous amount of art. That said, writing persuasive copy starts with understanding the fundamental components of a sales letter. In truth, you can apply the principles that comprise a persuasive sales letter to all your communications, including emails, blog posts, presentation titles, and more.
A beginner can use the process we describe here verbatim, but as you become more comfortable with the process, feel free to change it to meet your circumstances. A sales letter, above all else, should be truthful and therefore might not contain some of the elements outlined in this process simply because they don’t apply to your offer.
Here are the steps of the process required to write a well-crafted sales letter. You can refer to this as a checklist to ensure that you’ve included all the essential elements of a persuasive letter:
The following sections explain each part of the sales letter.
The headline is the first thing that people read and is therefore the most critical piece of copy on the page. If you’re just getting started, use a “How To” headline because they are simple to write and very effective. The How To headline will apply to 99 percent of the offers you are promoting. Of course, your offer may require a different kind of headline. If that’s the case, use a search engine such as Google to search for a list of proven headlines. You can find dozens of blog post articles that provide fantastic headline formulas.
Don’t start with a clever headline. Start with clear, simple, and direct language that communicates the benefit to reading the sales letter copy. Clear and direct almost always converts better than clever and confusing. Later, when you get more comfortable with copywriting, you can get clever.
Take a look at the following How To headline formulas and feel free to use them (filling in the blanks with your pertinent information) or to provide inspiration:
For example, this last headline formula might be used to write a headline at the top of a sales letter that reads: How to Buy a Home Even if You’ve Declared Bankruptcy.
The subheadline is optional but is often needed to elaborate on the headline. Once again, you can find dozens of articles online that provide lists of classic headline formulas. Here are a few to get you started:
For example, the last headline formula might be used to write a subheadline that reads: How Serena Williams Got in The Best Shape of Her Life in 14 Days.
By the time your landing page visitors are reading your opening, they have read the headline and subheadline. Some readers have even scrolled to the bottom of your letter to see the price and offer. In other words, they are interested.
If you’re just getting started, try the classic “Problem/Solution” opening to a sales letter. In the first step of the opening, you identify the problem that the prospective buyer has.
Next, you want to reveal that a solution to this problem exists, and it is your product or service (of course!). You don’t need to go into great detail about the product or service at this point; you do that later.
For example, if you’re selling tax preparation services, you might open your sales letter with the following:
The key to this part of your sales letter is to communicate (if applicable) that your solution is easy to do or quick to deliver results (or both). Now more than ever, prospective customers want results quickly and easily. If you can demonstrate ease of use or speed of results through text, images, or video, do it.
In this part of the sales letter page, you paint a picture in the minds of your readers of what it will look like if they solve their problem. You want your readers to imagine and feel the sense of being free of their problem.
The easiest way to start this section of the sales letter is by filling in the following blank:
Imagine what it would be like to _______.
For example, Ford Motor Company might write the following to sell the Mustang GT:
What problem does buying a Mustang GT solve, anyway? It won’t cure customers of the flu or get them out of credit card debt. In Chapter 1, we talk about articulating the customer’s movement from the Before state to the After state. In your sales copy, you must be able to articulate the value of that After state. In the case of the Mustang, you’re freeing people from their boring, old, and slow car of the Before state and delivering to them a new, beautiful, and exhilarating car.
In this step of putting together your sales letter, you need to address a question in your visitors’ minds: Why you?
That is, why are you or your organization qualified to solve their problem? You need to establish why the solution you have is credible. You have a number of ways to demonstrate your credibility, including the following:
Remember that at this point, no one who doesn’t have the problem you’re describing is reading this copy. At this point in the sales letter, you must explain why you’re qualified to solve the problem.
Although you hope that the reader of your sales letter will read every word you write, the truth is that most people will only skim your letter. Adding bullets to your sales letter breaks up the text and often causes even the most hurried skimmer to pause and read. You should include three to five bullets that explain the benefits of your offer. Take your time on this step, but don’t get bogged down. For your first draft, this step should take no longer than 30 minutes. You can come back and spend more time on these benefits after you have created this first draft.
Remember that people don’t buy products and services; rather, they buy a desired outcome:
In this step of writing your sales letter, you create the most important element of your copy: proof. Proof isn’t the same thing as credibility or the credibility of your organization, which you established in an earlier step. Establishing your credibility creates trust, but throughout your copy, you’ve started to introduce promises to your readers. Now you need to substantiate those promises by providing proof of your claims. If you’re selling a physical product, this is a good time to demonstrate, through video or images, how the product works and show it doing the things you described in the bullets you wrote earlier.
Infomercials have mastered the concept of showing proof. They show knives cutting through nails and then easily slicing a tomato, or they demonstrate a cleanser removing a red wine stain. Proof appears in many forms, including:
The higher the risk involved in your offer, the more proof your buyers will need to feel comfortable in making a purchase with you.
The offer you make to your readers should include exactly what they can expect to receive if they give you money. Most important is for your offer to be clear and not at all confusing. If your readers have even a shadow of a doubt as to what they will get, they won’t buy. Here are some examples of information to include for the sake of clarity:
Think through the questions that your readers might have about the offer and be sure to answer all those questions.
You may find that bonuses are not applicable to your offer. However, if you can add bonuses, you will almost certainly increase response. Perhaps you can add, at no additional cost to your buyers, a bonus product to the first 100 people who respond. Or give those who buy before a specified date an additional discount.
Adding a bonus is a great way to increase urgency (covered in Step 11) by taking those bonuses away after a certain date, or after a certain quantity has been sold.
Adding urgency to your offer, if appropriate to your product or service, gets your readers to take action now, which is what you want. If they decide to think about it or to do it later, they’re unlikely to return.
You can persuade people to take action now by communicating the urgency of taking the offer now. If they believe they could come back tomorrow, next week, or next year and get the same offer, they’re less likely to take action now.
Don’t manufacture scarcity or urgency, but if you have a real reason that people should take action now, be sure to communicate it. Here are some examples:
Another way of creating urgency in your sales letter is with a simple statement, such as, “Think how much it is costing you every day that you don’t take action on this problem.”
In this step of the sales letter, you add risk reversal, which provides people with a feeling of security about the purchase. You have numerous ways to reduce risk, including by
A call to action tells people exactly what you want them to do and how to do it. It’s a simple command statement, such as “Click the Add to Cart button below.”
Product detail pages, also known simply as product pages, are the most important pages on an e-commerce website. When prospects visit your product page and look at the images, read the descriptions, and consume the customer reviews, they are showing interest and thinking about purchasing your product. The product page is the make-or-break point that determines how successful your e-commerce store is. Your product page needs to get people to ascend to the next level: conversion. So pay extra attention to your product page or pages. The following sections describe the elements of successful product pages.
Although buying online is convenient, it can be a detriment because people can’t physically pick up and examine the product the way they do in a brick-and-mortar store. People don’t buy products on the Internet; rather, they buy pictures of products. To overcome the fact that the prospects can’t hold or touch your product, include as many high-quality images of the product as is necessary to fully convey its features and attributes. Make sure you show the product from a variety of directions and environments so that customers can get an idea of the size. If you can show the item in use, even better.
Give people the ability to zoom in on your product image so that they can get a close look at the product, its texture or features, and how it’s used. Image zoom can also help overcome doubts potential customers may have because it gives people a chance to examine a product before they put it in their shopping cart.
Be sure to include a well-written product description that is immediately visible on the page so that prospects can quickly learn about the product’s features without having to dig through the page for more information. Don’t skimp on the product description. Describe its unique selling points and how it solves people’s problems or improves their lives. Aim to create product descriptions with 250 words or more, and include the keywords that you’re targeting within the description. Including those keywords improves the product’s search marketing, which we discuss in Chapter 8. Similar to product images, the more complex or expensive a product is, the more detail is required. To improve readability and user experience, organize the product description with headlines, bullets, and step lists.
The product sales video is a great medium to demonstrate the product in use and is an extremely effective tool to make your sales pitch. Products that are expensive or complex do well with a sales video. Also, the product sales video is a fantastic way to overcome objections a potential customer may have. If you do include a sales video, make it easy to find rather than buried at the bottom of the page.
This type of video is also called an endorsement or press video, and it’s basically a second product sales video. Although not essential, third-party endorsements can significantly increase conversion on a product page. This type of video features someone who’s not associated with your brand actively recommending your brand and product. This is similar to a celebrity endorsement, although you don’t need a celebrity for this video to be effective. Third-party pitch videos are often scripted and professionally shot.
The call to action on a product page is typically an Add To Cart button. This button must be highly visible and accessible to the consumer. The Add to Cart button should be easy to locate on both desktop and mobile devices. Depending on the length of your product page, consider adding multiple Add to Cart buttons so that people can add your product to their cart no matter where they are on your page.You should also ensure that the call to action on your button matches the action clicking the button creates. If clicking the button takes them to a check out page, consider using Complete Purchase or Check Out as your button text. (See Figure 7-4.)
Include reviews, user-submitted content, and a frequently asked questions (FAQ) section within your product page. Reviews in particular serve as a form of social proof and are like a personal recommendation. Customer reviews don’t have to exist in only written form; they can also be videos. Customer video reviews are one of the best forms of proof you can include on a product page because the video gives potential customers someone to relate to while reviewing your product.
People regard review videos as harder to fake or manipulate than text testimonials, so they carry more weight. The main difference between customer video reviews and third-party pitch videos is that the third-party videos are professionally produced by the business, whereas a customer review video is shot by the customer, likely with his or her cell phone camera. To get more reviews, both in written and video form, follow up with past customers via email and ask for an honest review; you can incentive your customers to leave reviews by offering coupons and contests.
Amazon.com does cross-selling well with its Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought section, as shown in Figure 7-5, where the site suggests other products that a customer may want to add to his or her cart based on the product that is currently being viewed. Cross-sells are an effective way to increase your basket size, or offer an alternative, related product that may better suit potential customers’ needs, thus ensuring a sale.
In the previous sections of this chapter, we tell you about the most common landing pages and their essential elements, and in this section, we give you some criteria by which to evaluate the effectiveness of your pages. Landing pages come in many shapes and sizes, from short-form lead capture pages to long-form sales letters, so some of the elements included in the following sections may not apply to the landing page you’re evaluating. For example, a long-form sales letter that sells a service is unlikely to use a lead-capture form.
Evaluate your landing pages based on the criteria that apply to your pages. The most important thing to keep in mind is that improving each factor in the following list that is relevant to your landing page will have a substantial impact on the conversion rate of your landing page.
Number of fields: The number of form fields should be appropriate for the offer. For example, high-commitment offers have longer forms, and lower-commitment offers have fewer form fields.
Don’t ask for information that you don’t need! If you plan to follow up only via email, just ask for a name and email, at most. In fact, test dropping the name field, too, if you don’t plan to personalize your follow-up messages by including the person’s name. In general, having fewer form fields leads to a higher conversion rate.
Visible and compelling call-to-action button: People frequently debate button colors, but one constant is that the button color should contrast (not blend in) with the surrounding design elements. For example, if the background color of your website is sky blue, don’t use that sky-blue color as your call-to-action button color.
Second, use a compelling statement as the text on your call-to-action button. “Submit” is not good enough. Test button text that gives a specific command or speaks to the end result (such as “Get Free Instant Access”).