How to Create Better Landing Pages that Generate More Leads
(With Bob Sparkins)
As the sales and marketing manager at Leadpages, Bob Sparkins helps his customers build top landing pages and websites to create conversion platforms. He is also the author of Take Action, Revise Later.
In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss how to create better landing pages that will generate more leads.
Key Takeaways
We will cover the following key takeaways:
- A landing page is a page that gets people to take one specific, desired action after they’ve landed on it.
- We should keep our landing pages short and simple.
- We shouldn’t just have one landing page. We should have as many landing pages as we can think of so we can make them as specific and targeted as possible.
- We have to make our landing pages about our ideal client or customer.
- We should use emotional triggers on our pages.
- We should weave testimonials throughout our landing pages in places where customers might have an objection.
What is a landing page?
A landing page is the first page people go to when they click on a link. For a finer definition, Bob explained that it is a page that gets people to take one specific, desired action after they’ve landed on it.
While a website homepage is technically a landing page, it doesn’t quite serve the same purpose as a true landing page. A website homepage traditionally has a navigation bar, contact information, and multiple call-to-actions. A visitor on a webpage is typically going to be directed to another page such as a contact form or shopping cart. A landing page on the other hand, is short, with only one main call-to-action.
“[A landing page] is basically [telling] people, ‘Here’s a challenge that you might be experiencing. Here’s a solution to that challenge that I want to present to you.’” Bob said. “Landing pages can both be opt-in pages and they can be sales pages, and in either case, the chief job of them is to get people to take an action. . . . That landing page should only address one main challenge.”
One of the biggest mistakes people make regarding landing pages is not having them. Instead of creating a single landing page, many businesses will only promote their website. However, website homepages don’t convert leads as well as specific landing pages do. According to Bob, you’ll get 1–3% conversion rates on lead generations on a website homepage and you’ll get closer to 20–30% on a landing page.
So what makes a good landing page?
5 Tips for a Great Landing Page
Here are five ways you can create a landing page that generates more leads:
1. Keep it Simple
We should keep our landing pages short and simple. Remember, each landing page should only ever have one call-to-action.
“Shorter is better, almost without fail,” Bob said. “Now you can try to test this and get better by having longer pages, but one of the secrets is don’t try to overcomplicate things. A simple, single panel landing page . . . will outperform a landing page that has three, four, or five sections on it.”
Opt-in pages are likely better when they are shorter, but a sales page will often need to be longer to convey more information. However, you still don’t want these pages to get too long. The key point is to always look for what you can cut.
2. Create Multiple Targeted Landing Pages
We want our landing pages to be very specific and targeted, so if something doesn’t quite apply to one customer, we can create a new version of that landing page for them.
“Pay attention to where people are coming from,” Bob said. “[Most people] create a landing page . . . to send traffic from Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, email, their business cards, from referrals, and from wherever else, to. The problem with that is if you get all these different channels going to the same page, you lose the context by which people are coming to the page. What if instead, you thought about having a different landing page for each individual channel from which people are coming?”
We can create a different landing page for customers coming from Instagram than those coming from Facebook. Each page can have different language and imagery based on where the customer is coming from.
“Don’t just have one landing page. Have as many landing pages as you can think of, even if it’s for the same objectives,” Bob said. “That way you are going to get much more conversions from all those channels because you’re matching the context by which people are joining it.”
I’ve seen this principle in my own career. For example, we did advertising for a large adoption organization and instead of sending all of the clicks through one landing page, we had a different landing page for every state in the country. This way we could say, “Adoption in Idaho!” or “Adoption in California!” We could also place local images on the page.
We can geographically target the ad and geographically target the landing page. When we did this, we saw our conversion rates increase. A lot of people were looking for local service providers, not just a national player, and so personalizing a landing page for each state helped it resonate with them more.
3. Make it About Your Customers
We should design our landing pages with our target customer in mind. We don’t want to make our pages about our brand or our products; we want to make it about our customers and how we can help them.
“You’ve got to make your landing pages about the ideal client that you’re trying to attract,” Bob said. “Don’t sell the [product] in your copy. Sell the transformation; sell the future version of themselves.”
We should start with a problem and show the customer that we are the solution. What problem does our product solve? What pain point does our product help our customers avoid? By making our landing page all about our customers, we are much more likely to generate more leads.
4. Use Emotional Triggers
“Be ready and willing to pull some emotional triggers on your pages. Don’t just talk about the thing or even the result. Talk about why that result is so important for people,” Bob said.
With everything we put on our landing page we can ask, “Why? Why is this important? Why am I including this benefit?” We should also ask ourselves, “So what?” This will guide our copy.
For example, if we are selling a workout guide, we might write, “This program will help you lose 10 pounds in a month!” So what? What is it that the customer really wants? They don’t really want to lose 10 pounds; they want to feel confident in their clothes. Getting to that why, to that level-10 passion, is the key to getting our customers’ attention.
“Keep asking yourself the ‘so what?’ question and tie the emotion into the language that you have for your page because that’s going to help people feel more compelled and magnetically attracted to whatever it is that you’re offering,” Bob said.
5. Use Testimonials
Testimonials give people the sense that they are not the first person to say yes to your brand. They give us the credibility and proof we need to show our customers that we really offer something of value.
When putting testimonials on our landing page or websites, Bob suggests we don’t put them all in one place.
“You can weave in testimonials throughout a landing page or throughout a sales page, right next to where a related objection would be had. That’s super effective,” Bob said. “[If] you make a bold claim, a bold promise, [put] a testimonial right under that [to] directly address that objection.”
Wherever a customer might challenge something on our landing page, we can put a testimonial. Wherever we make a promise, we can put a testimonial. This helps reduce our customer’s fears as soon as possible and gives them more confidence in our product.
To create a great testimonial, Bob suggests doing three things:
- Make it personal. Our testimonials should be clear with specific examples, instead of filled with vague terms.
- Structure the testimonial to answer: What was the challenge? What was the quick result? What was the long-term result?
- Include identifier markers. We should show that the person giving the testimonial is a real person that relates to our ideal customers. We can include their name, their profession, their business, etc.
As we create strong testimonials and place them in the right places on our landing pages, we will likely see our lead conversion rate increase.
Connect with Bob
Thank you so much Bob for sharing your stories and insights with us today. To learn more about or connect with Bob:
- Connect on LinkedIn
- Check out his website at Leadpages.com
- Get his book, Take Action, Revise Later, on TakeActionReviseLater.com
Next Steps
- Get a free ebook about passion marketing, and learn how to become a top priority of your ideal customers at PassionMarketing.com.
- Subscribe to Monetization Nation on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, our Facebook Group, and on your favorite podcast platform.
