Yay, your target audience made it to your site! You’ve managed to grab their attention and pull them to your website. You might have invested a little in advertising, but who cares. They’re finally here and ready to fall in love with your brand, right?
According to Statista’s Digital Advertising Report 2021, digital advertising shows strong growth in all regions globally, with an expected total ad spend of 463.8 billion dollars in 2021.
Social media advertising accounts for 30% of the total ad spend and shows growth rates of around 19.2% per year.
Nowadays, the problem we face isn’t necessarily that audiences don’t visit websites anymore. It’s that they do not easily convert or identify themselves anymore. On average, 97% of website visitors remain anonymous and thus a lost opportunity for many brands.
A big part of the annual ad spend results in a waste of money because a lot of brands don’t take extra measures to get their visitors to convert due to the main focus being website visits. Landing pages can make or break your conversion rate and are a lot more important than many companies realize nowadays. Hubspot discovered that the average landing page conversion rate across all industries is 9.7%. Businesses that use optimization software for their landing pages see an average increase of 30%, and using personalized CTAs can even convert 202% better than default versions.
Whoever said ‘one size fits all’ clearly didn’t know the internet was coming to disrupt everything we’ve ever known. One size doesn’t work on the internet. You need to personalize every touchpoint you have during your customer journey because one size fits none these days.
The magic of landing pages
A landing page is a web page that serves as the entry point for a website or a particular section of a website when someone clicks an ad, a social media post, a link in an email, and so on. It is usually a newly designed page that focuses on a specific conversion goal based on the entry point rather than showing every visitor the same home page. You can have different landing pages for different entry points and tailor them to the goal of your campaign.
If you’re running an ad targeting job applicants, you will show an entirely different landing page than when you’re trying to promote a new product or create brand awareness.
The ads you’re using are targeted to a specific group of people based on their interests, keywords, etc. You do this to make sure the right audience sees the right ad and the people you have in mind will come to your website. Now that you have their attention, you should use different landing pages for different target groups. Customize them to your audience and marketing or advertising campaign to make them as relevant as possible to your campaign’s target group.
You do not necessarily need to rebuild your whole website every time you launch a new campaign. You can easily build separate landing pages for each campaign and redirect that audience to that specific landing page. It’s explicitly designed to get those visitors to convert and make their conversion as easy and personalized as possible.
You only have one chance to earn a new customer, use highly personalized communication and touchpoints to increase conversion rates and boost your business.
How to rethink your landing pages
1. Define a specific goal
The first step towards building a successful landing page is defining the end goal and what metrics you will use to measure your campaign’s success later. What do you want your audience to do on that page? How do you want them to identify themselves?
Some lead generating goals could be:
Newsletter subscriptions
Email address collection
Signing up or making an account on your website
Booking a meeting or an appointment
...
2. Identify your target group
The second step is about identifying whom you want to target with your campaign. Who are your ideal customers, and what would you like them to do? This should be one of the easiest steps because you already have identified them for your ads. Focus on their needs and how you can turn that 97% of your unknown audience into valuable leads.
3. Review your content and resources
This is the most crucial part that will make or break your personalized landing page. You don’t need to start from scratch. The chances are that you have everything, or most of the content, you need to build a personalized landing page for your target audience. You might have to give your existing content some tweaks to fit the campaign, but you probably have most of the content you need already.
Put yourself in your audience’s shoes and think about what pushes them over the edge and gets them to reach your predefined goals from step 1.
4. Build a custom landing page
The fourth step might be the scariest one for a lot of marketers. You might think this is a lot of work that involves coding new pages from scratch and all the complications that come with it. Don’t worry; you can easily build custom landing pages with very easy-to-use tools. Let's take a closer look at MasterClass' landing page and how they are using the different elements to their advantage.
The most important elements to keep in mind when building a landing page are the following:
Your unique selling proposition:
What makes you different from everyone else? Make sure this message matches your ads. MasterClass clearly communicates that their lecturers have changed the world and that it is your time now by learning from the most inspiring icons in the world.
Your hero visual: This is the first video or photo your audience gets to see. Think of it as the eye-catcher or the billboard of your landing page. MasterClass immediately shows icons like Gordon Ramsay and Samuel L. Jackson to catch the visitor's attention.
The benefits and features of your service or product. MasterClass does this throughout the whole landing page and communicates its different benefits and features spread over different sections of the page.
Use authentic social proof: Testimonials, case studies, and customer quotes are perfect examples of social proof. These make your brand look legit and help you establish trust and show your expertise. MasterClass has a whole section dedicated to testimonials from users from different industries further down their page.
A single conversion goal: This is the most important of them all, don’t overwhelm your audience with too many options. Simply lead them to the conversion through your page and make sure there is only one conversion option available throughout the landing page. It’s essential to keep your conversion point above the fold. This is the visible part of your landing page before scrolling. The conversion MasterClass would like their visitors to make, is to sign up to the platform as stated from the very first moment you visit the website. The sign up button also immediately catches the visitor's attention and stands out from the rest of the page.
5. Test your landing page
The last and final step is to test your landing page and see if it helps you reach your desired goal. You can always build two different versions of your landing page to see what works best and then decide which one you’ll be using for your main campaign.