Optimizing a landing page is often an overlooked tactic by brands, however it’s a crucial part of a full funnel paid acquisition strategy. What full funnel really means is finishing what you started—and oftentimes advertisers overlook CRO (conversion rate optimization), which starts on the landing page. Even after building out a strong paid acquisition campaign in a channel in Meta or Google, without a strong landing page, you simply won’t see the same results. We’re breaking down what a brand needs on their landing pages to round out a successful campaign.
What’s In The Secret Sauce To A Landing Page That Converts
When thinking about what makes a landing page a success, we have to consider consumer behavior. Did you know, the average time spent on each website page is less than 60 seconds? This means that not only do you have less than a minute to capture someone’s attention, but in that time you need to provide your consumers with enticing, concise and meaningful product education.
Here’s four key steps to optimize your campaign’s landing page:
- Eliminate Unnecessary Scrolling. Users don’t have time to read through large blocks of content that don’t give them the information they’re looking for. Condense your content into easy to digest formats like bullet points and comparison tables that are easy to digest. This makes it easier for someone to simply scan through your page and capture the most important information about your product.
- Include a “Call To Action” In The Areas That Count. If conversion is your goal, and you have less than a minute to convince your consumer to stay on your site, you need a call to action, or a CTA, above the fold. Brands make this mistake all to often, so don’t worry – it’s not just you. A majority of consumers seek to get most of their education from the product page itself, so including a CTA above the fold, ahead of the core of the content is the way to go. This allows them to easily navigate to a full product product page or collection description. In addition to the first CTA, including multiple directives throughout the page provides the user with multiple opportunities to convert, no matter how far down on the page they scroll. Additionally, personalized CTAs perform 202% better than basic CTAs. Users want to feel like you understand them, so do your homework on who you’re speaking to (age, geo, gender, socioeconomic status, interests etc…)
- Continuity Is Key. Designing a beautiful ad and sending the user to a landing page that’s lacking continuity will drive high engagement, however it likely won’t drive the high conversion rate a brand is looking for. In a recent Meta ad performance test, we compared a more general hair concern with a specific hair concern (dry hair vs. excessive hair shedding). In this targeted A/B test, we drove both ads to the same landing page, which featured the product collection that was meant to serve as the solution to both these problems. However, the most prominent messaging on the page was about excessive hair shedding. The ad that spoke to dry hair generated a 25% higher click through rate, while onsite metrics showed that the same ad had a 20% lower purchase conversion rate. The results showed us that speaking to the more specific hair concern drove lower engagement at the ad level, but when matched with a highly relevant landing page, purchase conversion rates were 25% higher.
- Tout Your Clout. Press placements and testimonials provide credibility for prospecting users that can’t be built through more generic educational content. When consumers feel uncertain about a product, they tend to look to others for confirmation that what they’re shopping for does what a brand says it does. We call this: “social proof”. Make your gleaming press pieces and best reviews work harder for you by featuring press logos in an “As Seen In” section, or showcase those reviews in a “Ask Our Users What They Think” section. Give the consumer the confidence they need to complete that purchase.
So, Why Aren’t More Brands Investing In Custom Landing Pages?
This blog post makes it seem simple enough to just add landing pages to your site to help on site conversion rates however it’s not that simple. However, brands that use optimization software for landing pages see an average of 30% lift in conversion rates. The most common response brands give when asked to build out additional pages for conversion campaigns is “our bandwidth is stretched very thin”—while this is likely the case there are a few good options that are extremely user friendly and built for marketers in an effort to take the workload off of a brand’s website team.
- Instapage. A favorite among the Spray Marketing Team due to its user friendly nature, and ability to build landing pages in minutes—Instapage tout’s that customer’s who build out specific landing pages can “get up to 400% more from their digital ad spend”.
- Unbounce. The “original” landing page building tool—Unbounce—helps marketing teams create new custom landing pages in minutes and pairs you with machine learning to help drive better full funnel results.
- Google Optimize (Free). Google Optimize is one of the only reputable, free landing page optimization tools in the market currently available. It’s a good place to start for brands looking to test the water out without a budget. It helps increase conversion rates by running dynamic straight-forward A/B test experiments.
