By Cindy Schrauben
Great Gus Marketing
Landing pages are a vital part of the online sales process. But what do you need to do to write a good one? While each landing page is unique, the most effective share core elements that, if included, boost your odds of converting prospects to whatever goal you’ve set.
To write a compelling sales page, be sure to:
Be Goal-Oriented
The main objective of landing pages is to encourage visitors to take a predetermined action – aka, a call to action or CTA. So before writing your landing page, you must know what you want to accomplish. Every element of the landing page must inspire visitors to take the action you want them to take. By the way, it should be just one action because including more than one can confuse the reader and reduce your results.
Common landing page CTA are:
Signing up for an email list
Filling out a form
Scheduling an appointment
Filling out a survey
Downloading a coupon
Initiating a free trial
Downloading a free e-book
Know your audience
When writing your landing page, as with all your marketing, it is essential to know whom you are talking to. Determine the demographics and characteristics of your target market so you know their pain points, goals and objectives, and how they speak. Then, write directly to that audience in the language they would use. Your copy will resonate more with your target audience when aimed directly at them instead of a general audience.
Emphasize the benefits to the reader, not the product or service
It’s a hard reality for many business owners to accept, but people care much more about how you will solve their challenges and how they will feel after than they do about the features of your product or service. However, because you know your audience, you can concentrate on how your offering will transform their lives or, at the very least, make their lives more enjoyable by emphasizing the benefits rather than the features.
If you need a quick refresher, benefits are what a customer will gain from using your product or service. Benefits are based on emotions and the experience a person has when using a product or service. In contrast, features are specific details about what you sell, such as size or color.
Write a compelling headline
The fastest way to draw a prospect into your landing page is with a headline that gets their attention. Think back to the benefits of your product or service and highlight them.
Make the body copy easy to skim
The reality is that people are not going to read every word you write, so you must provide them with writing that is easy to skim, so they come away with the most critical information. Copy that is easy to scan includes:
subheads
section headings
short sentences and paragraphs
photos or graphics
bullet points
at least one CTA button
Keep it simple
People are busy, and they want to learn the most important aspects of your product or service and then get on with it. So don’t bog them down with too much copy. Remember to keep the most important information toward the top of your landing page. You can also highlight information in the layout with callout boxes, short paragraphs, and different colored fonts.
Include precise numbers
Readers want to learn about the results your product or service will bring them, and numbers offer proof of your claims. Your call to action is more powerful when you can back up your benefits with specific numbers or statistics rather than broad claims.
Include a clear CTA
For your landing page to be successful, you must ask readers to take a specific action. This action goes back to your goal for your landing page – whatever that goal is, ask the reader to do exactly what you want them to do. Be sure your call to action is prominent and consider repeating it several times in different areas of the page.
Test your content
The best way to know how successful your landing page copy can truly be is to perform an A/B test. Write slightly different versions of the copy (for example: vary the headlines, use different wording in your calls to action). After you test the copy, remove the less successful page, and reap the rewards brought by fantastic copy.
Keep the landing page form simple
It can be tempting to ask for as much information as possible from readers of your landing page. But keep your landing page form as simple as possible and only ask for information vital to providing readers with what they are after. Asking for too much information introduces complexity and can lead readers to leave without following through on your call to action.
If you’d like help writing effective landing pages, I’m ready to assist. Please contact me by email or call 269-215-1505.
Based in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Great Gus Marketing specializes in copywriting, content writing, and marketing strategy.
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