Lead generation landing pages are the superstar sales team for your online business.
Even while you’re sleeping, they’re out there beating the pavement 24/7, drumming up leads and growing your audience.
It isn’t an easy job, either. Your landing page has to effectively perform the entire sales process in only a few seconds, grabbing visitors’ attention and convincing them to sign up for your offer.
That’s a lot to ask of one little web page.
Lead generation landing pages are easy to attempt but difficult to perfect. Pouring all your creative energy into crafting a superb landing page, only to watch your hard-earned visitors leave without signing up, can be pretty demoralizing.
Success requires walking a fine line between getting the information you need and overwhelming potential leads. Every element needs to work seamlessly to convert visitors into subscribers.
Fortunately, improving your lead generation landing pages and optimizing your conversion rate isn’t difficult. Let’s take a look at some simple conversion rate tips we’ve found that can help you create better landing pages and boost your conversions.
So what are lead generation landing pages?
Landing pages tend to come in two primary flavors:
- Click-through landing pages
- Lead generation landing pages
Click-through landing pages are designed to “warm-up” or qualify visitors before they buy a product or subscribe to a service. Click-through landing pages come in all shapes and sizes. Blog posts, white papers, product descriptions, and case studies all work well as click-through landing pages.
Lead generation landing pages, on the other hand, are single-purpose pages where you give something valuable away for free—like an ebook, newsletter, email course, or worksheet—in exchange for visitors’ contact information.
Lead generation landing pages aren’t about sales
The point of your lead generation landing pages isn’t to close any deals.
That’d be like me asking for your hand in marriage 10 minutes into the first date. Thanks, but no thanks.
You might not be asking visitors to pull out their wallets quite yet, but you are asking them to make a “transaction.” But instead of trading money for products, they’re swapping their valuable contact details (and permission to follow up later) for the information you’re offering.
That initial “transaction” is a vital part of the sales process for many businesses. For consultants, coaches, course creators, and other high-value products and services, generating and nurturing leads is a crucial part of the sales process.
No leads, no sales.
Now that you know why lead generation landing pages are so important, let’s dive into some practical tips for boosting your conversion rates.
10 tips to increase your landing page conversions
No matter what kind of online business you run, the core elements of every landing page are the same. Here’s what content strategist and landing page wizard Aaron Orendorff has to say:
At their core, landing pages that convert speak directly to real people with real problems in search of real solutions.
And people are people. This means that the rock-bottom, non-negotiable, absolutely essential elements to every high-converting landing page are the same.
So being real with your target audience is the key to unlocking more conversions. What does that look like in practice?
#1: Set one goal and eliminate distractions
You should design every landing page with a single goal in mind. The goal you choose is crucial—it should be the smallest possible step that visitors could take down the path to becoming a customer or client.
Some common goals you might choose for your landing page:
- Subscribe to your newsletter
- Download a free guide
- Follow you on social media
- Schedule a call
- Sign up for a webinar
Every single element on the page should have a role to play in moving visitors closer to achieving that goal. That means removing any potential distractions, alternate paths, and secondary CTAs.
Navigation and outside links should all be left off your landing pages. These options all give users an easy chance to leave your landing page without converting, so they should be left off your landing pages.
Heat mapping software Crazy Egg’s landing page does a great job of guiding visitors toward their goal of creating their first heat map. Visitors have only one option, and that’s to enter their website URL to generate their first heat map and create their account.
Apart from creating their first heatmap (and perhaps enjoying the delightful illustrations), there’s nothing else visitors can do on the landing page. Simplicity is the key to improving conversions.
#2: Grab visitors’ attention with your headline
Once someone hits your landing page, you have only about 15 seconds to grab their attention and let them know whether you’re offering what they need. Your landing page headline needs to let readers know how your offer will benefit them immediately.
While writing attention-grabbing headlines might sound painful, it’s not all that difficult. Landing page headlines tend to work best when you follow one of three principles:
- Ask readers a question related to your product
- Promise the reader useful information
- Explain how the reader can reach their goals
Let’s say you’re a freelancer creating a landing page for a free email course that teaches other freelancers how to grow their client base. Based on our three headline principles, you might choose headlines like:
- Tired of waiting for clients to come to you? (asks a question)
- Avoid the top 7 mistakes freelancers make when finding clients (promises useful information)
- How to fill your client list in the next 30 days (without working for peanuts) (explains how to do something)
Each of these headlines would work well for the same product—pick your favorite one and try it out.
Check out our headline on the ConvertKit home page—it explains the benefits that customers get from the platform—growing their audience—without getting lost in the details of email marketing.
SEO tool Moz is another excellent example of a landing page headline, challenging visitors to up their SEO game by signing up for their software. – Read more
