Your lead generation checklist

Investing in digital acquisition ad campaigns is a great start, but, it’s only half the battle to deliver high volume, high quality leads. If your lead generation campaigns don’t tick off the following elements, then press pause on that ad spend and get your landing pages up to scratch first. Otherwise, you risk damaging ROI.  

UK spend on digital advertising worldwide increased year-on-year to $378.16 billion in 2020 (Statista), meaning the lead generation landscape is only getting increasingly crowded and competitive. So, it’s more important than ever that you dedicate as much time and effort to creating your landing pages as you do to your ad set-up and management.

Need support creating landing pages for your next campaign? Get in touch.

Can’t we just link to our homepage?

Let’s get back to basics and reflect on the purpose of a landing page…

A lead generation landing page is a page on your website that’s designed with the sole purpose of converting visitors into leads. It’s not an existing page of your website that’s part of your main navigation, like your home page or your contact us page (linking to those in your digital ads won’t deliver good conversion).

It’s a stand-alone page crafted with care and attention to deliver on the promise you made in your ad (the thing that persuaded prospects to click). Its single aim is to compel visitors to take a specific action, such as completing a data capture form.

This is your moment

Think about the experience your current landing pages offer. To visitors it’s either going to be make or break. A good landing page gives visitors a neat and seamless journey, with an easy-to-follow route to the desired action – increasing the likelihood that they will stick around to complete that action.

A poor landing page makes the journey feel confusing, jarring and actually hard work. The result… 1) your bounce rate goes through the roof because no one will want to hang around long enough to figure out where the relevant information is, and 2) it wastes your precious ad budget.

Follow these 7 simple steps for landing pages that convert

There’s so much scope for developing landing pages to increase conversion. We’ve summarised seven essentials below that you can check your landing pages against…

1. Create headlines that match your ad

Naturally you’ll want to make the first thing that visitors see enticing and persuasive. But remember, it’s very important to also use consistent language across both the ad and landing page, to provide consistency for the visitor. For example, here’s how an Accountants search campaign could deliver that consistency between ad and landing page.

2. Cut to the chase – pronto

Your visitor isn’t here to read for leisure (sadly) – instead you’ve done a great job of momentarily grabbing their attention from whatever they were previously browsing (with your enticing ad). This means you need to get your main pitch across quickly before they rush off again (especially in these times of shorter attention spans).

A succinct, less is more approach is always best for landing page content, as you only have a matter of seconds to entice the visitor to stay, read and complete an action. So, check that your current landing pages get the overall offer across at a glance (literally!).

3. Remove site navigation

Don’t distract your visitors by presenting them with lots of different links and exit routes. Remove the main navigation from landing pages so visitors can focus solely on your conversion message and the single lead-generating action you want them to take.

If you want to offer them further information, save these extra links for your auto thank you note or follow-up email once they’ve completed the action.

4. Design goals

Create the right tone for visitors by designing your landing page to make a great first impression. The design and layout should be visually appealing while providing a clear route for visitors to take. It should prioritise simplicity, engaging imagery and white space, with copy kept to a minimum.
If visitors are arriving from a visual ad rather than a search ad, then you need to ensure the design of the ad and the page match each other, to uphold that seamless journey.

5. Show some social proof

Can you remember the last time you made a new purchase or investment without checking out previous customer reviews? … Nope, neither can we! Check your landing pages to see if you’ve included social proof, such as Google or Trust Pilot ratings or a single pulled out testimonial that relates directly to the offer you’re making.
People like to know that other people were pleased with the product or service you provided. Having this reassurance is great for convincing visitors to go ahead and interact with your business.

6. Create forms. Short ones.

To maximise conversion, you need to make it as easy (and fast) as possible for visitors to complete your desired action. This is why pages with simple forms asking for minimal information perform best.

It’s like…which of these would you be more inclined to complete?

If you absolutely need to capture more information than two or three fields, then explore creative ways of making the form appear shorter, such as designing it to run horizontally rather than vertically, or using a two-step process.

7. Humanise that CTA button

Last, but absolutely not least!…
All of your hard work culminates at the moment your visitors’ view your call-to- action button. Get the wording on it right and you’ve converted a visitor to a lead. Get it wrong and your efforts up to this point will go unrewarded.

So, what does it mean to ‘get it right’?

What we mean here is make the wording on your call-to-action button friendly and disarming. It should be encouraging and sound like something your visitor would want to do, rather than ‘work’ that they have to do. Wording that does is described as ‘low-friction’ and it includes words like ‘Get’ and ‘Discover’ – which sound like something you would want to do rather than something you have to do. You can even take these in a more creative direction if you want to mix it up, using playful, low-friction phrases such as ‘I want in’ or ‘Let’s go’.

On the flip of this, always avoid using ‘high friction’ words such as ‘Submit’, ‘Download’ or ‘Sign-up’. These are classed as ‘high friction’ words because they cause cognitive friction for the visitor by sounding like work that they have to do, rather than something they want to do. A high-friction call-to-action button on your landing page will definitely decrease conversion. Moral of the story…aim for those low-friction CTAs every time!

Get help building your landing pages

We hope these tips have been helpful when it comes to reviewing your existing landing pages, or developing new ones.

If you’re looking for support to create winning landing pages for your next campaign, get in touch with our team today. Our digital and content experts can help maximise conversion and increase your leads.