6 Secrets to Building High-Converting Landing Pages by joe lucas

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6 Secrets to Building High-Converting Landing Pages by joe lucas

shutterstock_92888848Remember when landing pages were a project undertaken solely by the IT team or the Interactive Marketing Manager who had sole access to the company's website? Those days are long gone. Marketing automation makes landing pages so easy to create that companies today employ interns to build them. However, because landing pages are easy to build doesn't mean they're easy to build well. Follow these six tips to make sure your landing pages always meet top standards.
Convey your theme
Message match is important for conversions and also helps relevancy. It's critical that the text from ads and the web content on the landing page are complementary. The landing pages should also be directly connected to the campaign for which you create them. Deviating too far from the campaign will confuse page visitors and lead to decreased traffic. Even when you create campaigns that deviate from your corporate brand, make sure you keep the theme of the campaign consistent across all mediums it touches ? including landing pages.
Target Your Landing Page
Make sure your message is clearly targeted to the people you want to retain. A well-made landing page moves visitors to action. A superbly-created landing page moves the right visitors to action. Use images and text to which your target audience will respond. For example, if you want to capture lead information for CFOs via a form on a landing page, don't pepper the page with marketing and sales lingo. Use key words to which CFOs respond, such as revenue, customer churn, and cost-effective.
Enable Mobile Users
To increase conversion for your site, ensure that there's a mobile-friendly version of the desktop landing page. Use of smart phones to access all Internet pages is only going to increase, so test out your page on a phone or tablet before launching it. How do you build a page that's easy to view and consume on a mobile device? Don't cover the page in images and text. The fewer images and text boxes, the quicker a page will load on a phone, and the easier the text will be for a mobile user to read. You should also make sure that your call to action button screams out "click me!" very prominently on the page. Whatever text it depicts should draw the eye instantly.
Create One Clear Call to Action
Too many marketers cloud their landing pages with side boxes and extra add ons. These only confuse viewers. If the purpose of your page is to convert leads and encourage visitors to fill out a form, they need extremely clear instructions. It's very tempting to use landing pages as a place to add extra promotion for a big event you're hosting or the latest white paper you published, but too many calls to action are distracting. Even when your main call to action is front and center and all others are marginal in comparison to it, viewers will still get distracted. Rather than fogging up one landing page with many messages, redirect leads that fill out forms to other pages with other messages. For example, if a visitor to your landing page signs up for the Webinar you promote on that page, redirect the visitor to a landing page that offers your latest white paper on the confirmation page they get after they click "submit" on the Webinar registration page.
Track Page Traffic with UTM Codes
Everyone that visits a landing page has to get there somehow. Knowing how they wound up on your landing page is an extremely important part of understanding which marketing mediums work for which prospects. Create separate UTM codes for visitors that reach your page by way of your blog, twitter, another site page, etc. The more you know about how your customers interact with your brand, the better you can target campaigns in the future. Google Analytics offers an easy-to-use UTM URL builder if you need a place to start.
Test Frequently
Once you've gotten into the swing of testing landing pages and the altering behavior afterwards, keep up this habit. It's important to continue testing and altering because this is the most time and cost-effective way to improve the performance of your campaigns. Review data and think about recommended changes on at least a weekly basis.
Check out some other awesome landing page secrets here.