“Land” Your Best Prospects with Landing Page Marketing

Landing pages have a vital, singular purpose — encouraging visitors to begin the sales cycle with a brand.  

Digital marketers invest in creating landing pages because of their higher conversion rates. As opposed to whole blog posts, webinars, eBooks, and other digital content, the landing page is a simple design to bring the reader to a call to action.

Landing pages serve as a litmus test to digital marketing campaign success — you get to see who is interested in your content and how many. And that content is a gateway to a possible sale. After users go through with a landing page, there should be a clear path to the end — an action that brings them into your sales funnel. 

Let’s get into the importance of landing page content marketing, and how to build them for your digital marketing strategy.

What is the Landing Page’s Importance in Digital Marketing?

It’s safe to say that company websites are a digital marketer’s favorite place for lead conversion. Not only do websites show off your brand, but they serve as a gateway to the buyer’s journey.

You don’t have to be a part of an eCommerce organization to build an effective lead capture system on your digital channels. 

Whether or not a visitor that downloads your content is fully invested in your product at the moment, getting their information is a valuable asset for your organization. That initial curiosity in your content offering — eBooks, whitepapers, case studies — might grow into an interest in your solution. 

What Makes a Good Landing Page?

What makes a landing page inviting and effective is strategic design, relevance to visitors, and a clear call to action. Although increased revenue is the ultimate objective, you can’t forget the end goals for landing page strategies are increasing traffic and conversion. Implementing conversion rate optimization for landing pages is crucial to achieving these goals.

With calculated element placement, quality copy, and a clear action statement, here’s what to include in your landing page:

Headline – This should include a concise, keyword-driven message that introduces the rest of the landing page’s benefits. And keep it interesting! A generic headline is a major lead deterrent. 

Graphics – Graphics should be simple, engaging, and relevant in design. Their overall purpose is to catch someone’s eye and keep their attention on the page with little to no distraction.

Content offering – Visitors aren’t going to fill in their information if they aren’t getting something of value out of it. Offerings need to be quality and relevant to their interests — or risk turning them off to your brand.

Call to action (CTA) – CTAs should persuade — not frighten — readers to go through with the landing page action. They give that last tiny nudge to hit the final “submit” button.

Thank you page – While it’s not part of the actual landing page, a follow-up thank you message is crucial for a lasting impression. It serves as a validator for offering up contact information and a promotional space for other content, such as relevant articles, newsletters, and social media channels.

Landing Page Best Practices

Keep the following in mind for your digital marketing team when putting together a landing page:

Segmentation (for precise targeting)

Visitors who find themselves on a landing page are most likely in the sales funnel’s top area — the “awareness” stage. They may not know what your brand is (yet) or be aware of solutions your company offers. Landing pages are fantastic in this stage for brand exposure and educating visitors about your products.

Keep in mind that potential prospects may already be interested in your competitors — and your current customers could jump ship. They both need this engagement!

While the awareness stage is crucial, you want to appeal to audiences at every stage of the buyer’s journey. Segmenting every one one of these potential prospects and creating content (including landing pages) for each of them will uniquely interest them.

Since different content topics attract diverse audiences, you want to segment your landing page to target specific customer personas. For example, visitors who find your website to learn about  data insights are more interested in content offerings related to data trends (instead of say, sales team structure).

Value propositioning

A quality content offering shouldn’t be the only thing of value with a landing page. Make it a key goal to pique readers’ interest by highlighting a possible pain point and offering a solution. 

Without exaggerating or invoking fear, landing page copy needs to address a visitor’s possible challenge, and present an answer through the content offering. It serves as a path marker to begin the purchasing journey with your sales and marketing teams.

This is also an excellent opportunity to display social proof (recommendations and reviews from customers), further showing off the value of your solution.

Simpler design

Simple does not always mean boring. From a design perspective, landing page design must include clear messaging, visual appeal, and ease of navigation. You don’t want to overwhelm readers with distracting graphics, chaotic text, and slow loading.

The eyes of the reader should go from: 

• eye-catching headline -> 
• informative, but short text -> 
• quick overview of offering -> 
• call to action -> 
• form fill ->
• to “thank you!”

Without a design strategy for landing pages, readers won’t scroll down far enough to see the submit button.

Testing

Testing is critical for understanding how landing pages are working. Did you know that only 17% of marketers use landing page A/B testing for conversion rate strategies?

While you’re choosing testing metrics, keep in mind how you measure success. For instance, how important are the number of clickthroughs and form fills compared to traffic sources and segmentations? These metrics vary by company and digital marketing strategy.

Bring in More Leads with a Quality Landing Page

The steps to landing page content marketing success may sound uncomplicated: ad visibility, landing page fill, lead nurture, deal close. But that path has to stay clear from miscategorization, low-quality content, and lack of engagement.

B2B digital marketing teams have to play the long game compared to B2C teams with content (including landing pages) thanks to buyer groups and lengthier sales cycles. But it’s all the more reason to step up your landing page content marketing strategy to qualify the best leads.