How To Write And Design A Compelling Landing Page

Whether you’re writing lead nurturing emails, drafting blog posts or shooting an ad for your YouTube channel, in order to be a successful inbound marketer, you have to be a master content creator.

Generally, when people think about landing pages they automatically jump to conversions: but there’s more to it.

Factors such as how often visitors abandon your form, which particular treatment performs better or what the bounce rate is: all these metrics boil down to how well you craft your content.

But writing a good website landing page is somewhat different from say, a blog post.

Several nuances necessitate a different approach when handling landing page copywriting and while these nuances might seem minor, they have significant impact on conversions.

And while the main point is to get the lead, you also want to redirect them immediately to a sales page with a relevant offer after signing up to try to monetise the lead as soon as possible.

So if you’re trying to find a way to create effective copy that leads to a successful “squeeze page”, consider these practices.

Work On The Headline

Your target here is to make sure the landing page refers to the place from which every visitor came.

Likewise if an ad copy drove them there, ensure the headline refers to where they came from.

Your language should match exactly, so that your visitors stay oriented and engaged. This is a crucial part of your landing page.

Clear Call To Action

Some of your options here include using hot-linked text or graphic buttons but whatever you use, make sure your visitor knows what they need to do.

A short landing page should do well with at least 2 calls to action; and 3–5 in a longer landing page. Testing headlines and copy texts will give you the best results: but you may choose to spice it up a bit.

Always write in the second person

Your visitors don’t care much about you, your company or even services and products, except as to how they benefit them. Forge a stronger connection between the reader and whatever you have to offer by speaking to them directly, and that way you’ll have successfully demonstrated the value of your offer- by showing the reader how they can benefit from it.

Write A Clear, Persuasive Message

You might be temped to showcase your creativity here, or how good you are at turning a clever phase. Keep in mind this is business, and not an art class, so you have little room to express your creative genius.

Try to think of the most direct way to say what you want, and avoid jargon or literary flair if it detracts from the essence of your message.

It’s OK To Write Long Copy But…

Your readers can and will follow long copy provided you keep presenting a solid case. But not every service or product will require the same amount of copy so adjust accordingly.

Short copy is perfect for subscription or something that doesn’t include cash commitment. Long copy is best used when closing a sale.

Get To The Point Fast

Most of your visitors are gleaning and skipping through content and you only have three seconds to get their attention before they hit the back button.

People tend to read beginnings and ends before they focus on middles so you need to find a way to position your most critical arguments in these positions.

Make it easy for them to get the message so you don’t lose leads or new reconverts.

Learn To Use Reader Keywords

What on earth is a reader keyword? Think of the words your visitor will look for- not the search engine- when they scan your page.

Readers will assume the page they landed on is related to the CTA or page they came from so you need to confirm this for them.

You may use the same phrases -or close variations- to let the reader know they’re on track.

Draft Value-Oriented Language

This is the “so what?” of your page copy. This is where you spend time convincing your visitor that the time he or she will spend filling out the form is worth it because of the offer they’ll receive.

Make it a rule to include a header on every landing page that explains a specific benefit– “If you purchase this, you will get.”– or something similar.

This way you will pinpoint the value of your offer.

Work On The Format

Good landing page has much to do with sentence structure and word choice as it does presentation.

Your copy might be decent enough but if its not visually appealing, they might lose interest with the information.

You can get over this hurdle by breaking up your copy and using headers of varying sizes, and make use of bold text, italics, checkmarks, parentheticals, etc.

Consistency

Finally, after writing and formatting your copy, go back one last time and proofread the copy.

Remember you’re trying to convince people to give you their personal information and they are not likely to do so if they find your copy riddled with errors.

Go over the grammar, spelling, accuracy, consistency and facts.

Here’s where people go wrong:

• Using different spellings for the same words and terms
• Losing track of uppercase and lowercase letters when writing terms such as “eBook”.
• Messing up dates
• Giving inaccurate data
• Quoting the wrong sources

Test Everything

As with any aspect of landing page optimization, you need to keep testing. These tricks and tips will get you started but your work doesn’t end there: design plays a huge role in this.

Elements such as color, layout, images- these are crucial interactivity elements whose single purpose is to engage the reader at a deeper level and cause a response.

Likewise your audio and video play a major role and they all need regular testing in order to effectively merit a deeper look.

Finally, you may need to minimize the amount of clutter on your page. This means removing visual clutter, navigation bars and certain links. If you want the reader to focus on your copy, don’t give them any distractions.

Make sure your supportive visual keeps them engaged but not side-tracked. This should be enough to get you positive results consistently.

Any type of marketing funnel relies on good sales copy and there are many pitfalls and mistakes that inexperienced copywriters can make. If you want to know more about avoiding these and other copywriting mistakes, take a look at the featured resource below where you can download a copy of a free report, Copywriting Blunders, so you will be forewarned and can make your copy more effective. Download, read it and take action 😊