5 Keys for Creating Landing Pages that Get Leads

One of the most common ways to collect leads in both traditional direct mail and online PPC campaigns, is through the combined use of Calls to Action and Landing Pages. A call to action is where you offer a trade of information – your content for their name and permission to contact them. A landing page (or squeeze page as its sometimes called) is a webpage that has the sole responsibility of getting your prospect to take action, and exchange their name and contact info for your offer.

So, you send out your call to action to a few hundred people – which tells them about your offer and where they need to go to get it – then they go to your landing page where they exchange their personal information for that offer. But how do you ensure those that come to your landing page actually sign-up? Here are 5 powerful tips to help improve your landing page so you can turn those viewers into leads.

1. Have a great offer

The most important part about a Lead-Generating landing page, is the offer! Crazy, I know. What ever it is, is should look extremely valuable to your prospect. If you are asking prospects to give you their personal information – you better be ready to give up something valuable.

A few examples of tried and true landing page offers are; Sales Reports, Whitepapers, Industry Tool Kits, Solutions Guides, an Invite to a Webinar, or maybe an invitation to lunch for a free consultation. Whatever it is, remember that unless you feel like your giving up something good, its probably not appealing to your prospect.

2. One clear message – One clear goal

So you got your lead to land on your page, awesome. I know its tempting to add a little of this and that. Maybe mention another offer down the side, or have some links on the bottom for other relevant services you can provide. But if you want the highest response rate possible – DON’T DO IT. Remember, your prospects didn’t come to this page by accident, they came because you made them an offer, so keep them focused on the offer. Make the process as streamlined as possible, any extra offers are distracting and may cause the potential lead to just click another button – which dramatically reduces conversion rates on your page.

3. Simple, easy to read copy

Most people don’t want to read, and frankly some barely want to skim. Write your copy for all the “swimmers” and “skimmer” out there. Swimmers, read all the words on a page, they really dive in deep to what ever content has their attention. Skimmers just surf the headlines, they look for the key points and move on to the next topic. So make your offer crystal clear with as few words as possible. A descriptive, attention-grabbing headline followed by some benefit-driven bullets. I like to think of the landing page as a last stop checklist for the potential lead – they have already decided they are interested in your offer and have taken the steps to get here. Now they just need that last bit of reassurance they are in the right place, and they are getting the right thing. Just give them a few strong points to hammer the point home before they fill in their information.

4. Dont ask for more information than you need

If you’re only building a list for an online newsletter, you only need the prospects name and email. Every box you include for the prospect to fill-out, reduces the chance they will finish it. Don’t bother them about company size, position, or mailing address – all that stuff can come later when you convert them to a client. Keep as few barriers between the prospect and the offer as possible.

5. No Navigation

Like step 2, don’t give the prospect any option to leave the page unless its through signing-up. Any additional content on the page is just going to divide the viewers attention – so you need to keep it simple. The last thing you want is to come all this way with a potential lead just for them to get distracted and go read your services page again – and potentially forget to sign-up. If you want to keep them on the site a bit longer after you have sealed the deal, all those links can come one step later on the “Thank You” page.

The most important thing about a landing page for your Lead-Generating program is to keep it simple. Every aspect of the page needs to be clear and to the point, don’t give the potential lead any excuse to do anything except sign-up. Follow these 5 steps when designing your Lead-Generating website and you will be converting leads to clients in no time.