10 Best Practices Tips
To Optimize Landing Pages
To Optimize Landing Pages
By Kelly Abner, Director of Marketing, Marketo
If you can catch buyers early in their buying process, you have the opportunity to frame their decision and establish yourself as the company to beat. Since 93% of B2B buyers begin their buying process with a search engine, search marketing paired with landing pages is a great way to do this.
The landing page is critical. From the prospect's perspective, clicking on your link is easy and doesn't cost (them) anything. In contrast, converting and becoming a lead requires them to invest their time and energy to understand your offer and fill out your firm – not to mention risk unwanted marketing since you require they share their contact information.
That’s why getting your landing pages right is so critical. In our experience, optimized landing pages can increase your conversions by 200% improvements – or more. With that kind of ROI, here are ten practical tips you can use to improve and optimize your landing pages.
If you can catch buyers early in their buying process, you have the opportunity to frame their decision and establish yourself as the company to beat. Since 93% of B2B buyers begin their buying process with a search engine, search marketing paired with landing pages is a great way to do this.
The landing page is critical. From the prospect's perspective, clicking on your link is easy and doesn't cost (them) anything. In contrast, converting and becoming a lead requires them to invest their time and energy to understand your offer and fill out your firm – not to mention risk unwanted marketing since you require they share their contact information.
That’s why getting your landing pages right is so critical. In our experience, optimized landing pages can increase your conversions by 200% improvements – or more. With that kind of ROI, here are ten practical tips you can use to improve and optimize your landing pages.
1. Layouts & Templates
Use simple designs. This isn’t your home page, so remove the navigation. It's worth taking the time to create a navigation-free HTML template.
2. Graphics
Graphics are the #1 thing that draws the eye. Include a hero shot – a mock up of the white paper cover or a photo of your webinar speaker. Two quick tips: Let people click the graphics to get more info (people often click on graphics) and be sure to have a caption (people read captions).
3. Content
Make it straight and to the point, but be sure to give enough info to sell them prospect:
Setup the problem.
Talk about the solution.
Deliver the offer (such as a white paper, demo or webinar).
Use bullets. People read them more than long copy (you're reading this, right).
Include a call to action.
4. Forms
Don’t ask for too much information. Collect as little as you need at this stage of your funnel. You can always collect more during your nurturing process.
5. White Papers
Don’t just serve up that white paper. Email it to the prospect. This is a great trick to ensure that you get a valid email address.
6. Confirmation Pages
Confirm the form submittal with a thank you. Do you have something else they might be interested in? Make another offer and collect more info.
7. Page URLs
The name of the page, along with the rest of the URL path, is weighed fairly heavily. Use CamelCase or dashes between words, not underscores – search engines like that better.
8. Meta Data
Good metadata can improve your keyword ranking by telling the search engine that your page is relevant. So be sure to write a keyword specific title and craft a good description with a call to action.
9. Test
Testing lets your customers vote with their actions, removing any debate about what works and what doesn’t. The best things to test are headline, caption, submit button, form length, and graphical elements.
10. But Don’t Over-test
Over-testing is a problem in the “high value, low volume” world of B2B marketing. A good rule of thumb is to take the number of conversions you get per day and divide it by 10. Then take your testing period in weeks and divide that by 2. Multiply the two results together to get the number of versions you can confidently test in your testing period.
About the Author
Kelly Abner is Director of Marketing for Marketo, a provider of marketing automation software that helps B2B marketing professionals drive revenue and improve marketing accountability. Download Marketo's new eBook, Building Effective Landing Pages by visting their blog, Modern B2B Marketing. For more information, contact Kelly at Kelly@marketo.com or via phone at 650-655.4830.
