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Posts Tagged ‘landing pages’

The Anatomy of an Effective B2B Landing Page

March 12th, 2013 :: Monika Jansen

One of the best ways to generate leads via your website is with landing pages. Landing pages are hidden pages (i.e., they’re not accessible via your site’s menu) that allow a visitor to download or access content – a demo, ebook, whitepaper, etc. – after they fill out a short form.

Whether you have a landing page or want to add one (or a few) to your site, here are the 4 elements you’ll need to incorporate on your page to make it as effective as possible:

1. Clear and visible messaging

The messaging and value proposition on your page should be written clearly and concisely and positioned front and center on your page.

Include the value proposition in the headline
List the benefits of acting on the offer
If the offer was created by an industry expert, let the visitor know what makes that person so great
Make it clear what the visitor will receive

2. Clean layout

Avoid the temptation to clutter the page with graphics, quotes, a laundry list of your products or services, or offers for other content.

Keep design to a minimum – lots of white space is good
Remove a menu or other navigation tools so the visitor stays on that page
Make sure the download button is large and pops off the page

3. Short information-capture form

Decide what information you really need in order to 1) qualify the visitor as a lead, and 2) then contact them. There’s a big difference between must-have and nice-to-have, and the shorter your form, the easier it is for the visitor to access the offer.

At the least, ask for name, company, job title and email
To qualify them further, you could ask for location, company size, website and/or their biggest challenge in a certain area (a free form field)
If an question is optional, make it clear

4. Thank you/access page

OK, so this is technically not part of the original landing page, but I wanted to include it. Once your visitor submits their information, take them to a new thank you page that has a similar look and feel to the landing page.

Say thank you!
Remind them what they’re getting
Provide an access link to the offer, or let them know you just emailed access to them
Provide links to other content or pages on your website where they can find more information on the subject

What else should a landing page include?

Image courtesy of the author

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Tags: landing page design, landing pages, Marketing, Web Design
Posted in Marketing, Web Design | 5 Comments »

6 Ways to Convert Web Visitors Into Leads

December 4th, 2012 :: Monika Jansen

Want to convert more Web visitors into leads? Just follow these B2B best website practices – some are mine, and some are from Mediative.

1. Write content that is focused on your customers

Whenever I write website content for my clients, I always do two things. The first is to address customers directly. It is more personable, and it helps your website visitors feel like you are talking to them. You can focus on yourself on your company’s About page.

The second is to discuss your visitor’s problems, needs and solutions, in that order. For example (and this is super simplistic): “You got a sunburn on your first day of vacation, and you need a super-soothing and cooling lotion that lasts longer than 5 minutes. Our Feel Cool, Not Hot lotion will do the trick.”

2. Help visitors move through your website

As your visitors read content on your site, direct them to next steps with “learn more” buttons, a call to action to download information, or a link to your “contact us” page.

3. Include interactive elements

Videos and games are highly engaging content elements that encourage sharing and conversion. Videos are easy to create and need not be long – a minute will suffice – though you’ll need a developer to help you create a game.

4. Make it really easy to contact you

It drives me crazy when I visit a company’s “contact us” page and find nothing but a form to fill out. Include a phone number, email address, physical address and a “request information” form.

5. Create landing pages for downloadable resources

If you are offering a free download of a white paper, demo or other content, create a visitor-focused landing page to capture their information. The landing page should include:

A brief overview of your customers’ potential problems and challenges
How they can solve that problem
A short list of what is included in the white paper (or other content)
Simple information capture form to fill out
Opt-in for newsletter
A thank you page with a short message

6. Create a newsletter opt-in page

I really like this idea from Mediative. Instead of just capturing an email address for your newsletter opt-in, create a page with an opt-in form and a short explanation of what information is included in the newsletter and how often it’s delivered.

***

What other ways do you capture leads on your website?

Image courtesy of trails.com

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Tags: landing pages, lead conversion, Marketing, website best practices
Posted in Marketing | No Comments »

13 Helpful Guidelines for A/B Testing

May 4th, 2012 :: Monika Jansen

A/B Tests, or Split Tests, can help you optimize your landing pages, email marketing campaigns and calls-to-action. But isn’t testing something only big marketing research firms do? The answers is a definitive “no.”

In this article, I’ll share some tips for using A/B testing in your own marketing strategies, regardless of the size of your staff or budget.

Are your marketing efforts making the grade?

A/B testing can help you determine which marketing variables are giving you the best response rate. An example of a variable is the call-to-action in an email message or the landing page a Facebook post directs people to.

By conducting A/B tests, you can tweak your marketing performance to drive more traffic to your website and generate more leads for your business. The marketing pros at Hubspot have lots of suggestions for conducting A/B testing, but I’m going to break down the strategies for you in a quick and painless way.

Your A/B Testing Cheat Sheet

Conduct one test at a time to be sure your results don’t get mixed up. In other words, don’t launch a test for your email and your landing page simultaneously. Along that same line, only test one variable at a time so you can be sure you know exactly what to change or improve.
Test among two or more audiences and be sure these samples are similar. For example, if you’re testing an email message, pull names that have been on your list for similar amounts of time.
Just like in science experiments, you’ll need to have both a control group and a treatment group. In your A/B tests, the control group will be your original email or landing page, and the treatment group will be the variations of these tools you want to test. You may want to test whether including an image will enhance a landing page, so your original landing page would be the control element, and the landing page with an image would be the treatment element.
Conduct your A/B tests during the same timeframe. What this does is remove timing as a variable because conducting marketing tests a month or two apart can yield very different results. If you’re testing several elements for one particular campaign, test them simultaneously. Just be sure to test only one variable on each of your tests, as I mentioned above.

Deciding which variables to test

Now that you have some guidelines to get you started, which variables should you test? When you were creating a call-to-action for the company’s latest product launch, you may have wondered which copy or graphic elements would get the best results. Those elements are perfect for A/B testing. Here are some variables you may want to test:

Offers that convert the most prospects into leads
Structure for your copy (bullet lists, paragraphs, etc.)
Size or placement of the call-to-action
Color scheme or other design element
Photo or logo to use on a landing page
Format of email (newsletter, digest, etc.)
Time of day to send email
Subject line of email

A/B testing is an effective way to learn why your marketing campaigns or working – or why they aren’t. By testing elements in their campaigns, marketers can easily tweak their strategies to get the most bang for their buck- something every small business owner can surely appreciate.

Image courtesy of spamula.net

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Tags: A/B testing, calls to action, Email marketing, landing pages, Marketing, social media, split testing
Posted in Email Marketing, Marketing, Social Media | No Comments »

9 Ways to Not Suck at Facebook

March 28th, 2011 :: Monika Jansen

I hate Facebook so much that today is the first day I’ve been on it for, like, 3 weeks. I have a community manager, so I don’t need to worry too much about it, but still…I feel like I can’t make the time for it, even on a personal level. (Did I miss it? Not at all!)

However, I am sick of sucking at Facebook, so though I may loathe it, I also want to be good at it. I want a happy little community of smiling faces, just like in the photo. So, as part of my ongoing education, I just skimmed a great new eBook from HubSpot called Facebook Page Marketing. (See my other post for examples of 5 companies that are using Facebook creatively—and to great effect.)

Now, we already know lots of basics about Facebook: engage, push out interesting and useful content, have a personality, blah, blah, blah. Those aren’t being repeated below. Instead, I want to share 9 common sense things I learned in the eBook that are easy to overlook—or that you might not have thought of in the first place.

1. Use the Wall to build a sense of community with your fans. Interact with them in non-promotional ways.

2. If you want to grow your fan base, try using ads.

3. The number one reason people become fans is to take advantage of promotional offers.

4. Post on the weekends and in the mornings if you want more engagement on your page. Optimal posting frequency is about every other day (yes, this surprised me too!).

5. Experiment with different types of content—videos, photos, video blogs, etc.—to figure out what engages your fans.

6. If you really want to generate conversation, one of the most popular topics on Facebook is…Facebook.

7. Create custom landing tabs that allow people to subscribe to your email list or include a call-to-action.

8. People become fans of a brand for 3 reasons:

The brand directly invited them through their email or on their website
They saw an ad
They were referred by a friend to take advantage of a promotional offer

9. Find your customers on Facebook by taking advantage of their ad platform. You don’t actually have to launch an ad, but go through the process. Because their ads are highly targeted, the process will allow you to learn how many people fit your target demographic.

Image by Flickr user peyri (Creative Commons)

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Tags: custom tabs, Facebook, Facebook marketing, landing pages, Marketing, photos, social media, Social networking, video blogs, Videos
Posted in Marketing, Social Media | 3 Comments »