A landing page is a gateway that marks the difference between your online business’s profitability and well… non-profitability.
It’s where your audience lands when they’ve clicked on a link from social media or your web advertisement. A potential lead clicks on your link because they think they’re interested – but it’s your landing page that determines whether they’re going to move forward with your business. This is why you need to ensure that the copy or written text on your landing page is perfect.
To that end, we’re going to cover some killer copywriting tips for your landing page. There are several best practices that are sure to fire up your landing page conversions.
Ready to dive in? Here we go.
Do Your Research. Seriously
There’s a substantial difference between thinking you know your audience and actually knowing them. In the second situation, your knowledge is informed from real data that you gather using tools or by asking your audience for their opinion.
Guessing and making assumptions about who your audience is and what they want will take you down the wrong path – leading to wasted time and resources.
So, how do you do research? You just roll up your sleeves and get busy like the high-powered research nerd you are.
Use analytics tools: Tools like Google Analytics and SEO tools can provide you with a wealth of information from doing website analyses. You’ll learn about the keywords people are using to get to your website, what questions they’re asking, and who your visitors are.
When you look at data like keywords, bounce rates, and other on-site activities, you’ll know whether your website is ranking for the right keywords. If not, how can you change your content? Or you should target another audience? These are great questions that bring you closer to the best solutions.
Demographic information will also help you manage your writing voice, language, and the benefits to highlight in your copy. The language and tone you use for moms will be significantly different from how you’d write for young gamers. Let demographic information and real data support your copywriting decisions.
Create surveys: Use a form plugin for WordPress to create surveys and polls. Share these surveys on social media and other forums and get people’s opinions on what they want. You’ll get rich information that’s actionable.
Do user testing: There are websites that let you test your content on real people. You’ll get recordings of people interacting with your site and content while relaying their thoughts. It’s an effective and insightful way to get information.
With the help of user input, your copy will be more relevant to your audience which creates more leads.
Focus on Benefits NOT Features
Since the dawn of marketing copy, copywriters have been shouting this piece of advice from the rooftops: write about the benefits of your product to your customers, not the features.
But this is a hard piece of advice for some businesses to follow since they believe that their strength lies in their specs. As a result, you can often come across great businesses whose websites do little in the way of conversions.
Remember, people spend fewer than 3 seconds once they land on a page before they decide to leave. You have 3 measly seconds to answer this question in your visitor’s mind “What’s in it for me?”.
Your landing page headline needs to inform people what they’re getting and why it benefits them. In fact, most of your landing page copy needs to tell customers what your business or product will help your audience with. It’s further down the line that you provide them with details like technical specifications.
Keep it Short
Since people don’t spend more than 3 seconds on a website before exiting, you need to keep your content short and easy to read.
Your headline, subheadings, and other copy needs to be simply phrased. When creating your headlines, try to answer these questions about your business as quickly as possible.
- Who are you?
- What do you do?
- Why should they use your product?
It’s a lot to manage with a few words, but it’s possible with some brainstorming and effort.
Use Everyday Language
Even if your product or business is highly technical, it’s important to use a conversational voice in your blog posts and other marketing copy.
Since users are processing a large amount of information while searching, they can get fatigued easily. Using normal and friendly language gets attention first and helps people understand if they should work with you.
For example, ‘Traffic Analysis Solution’ as a headline can be taxing and unappealing for people who are sifting through several websites. An easy to read headline like ‘Learn who’s visiting your site’ or something along those lines that shows customers clear benefits.
Once you’ve won over a lead, you can provide them with information that specifies technical content.
The Proof is in the Numbers … and the People
A powerful way to get attention and win trust instantly is to use numbers in your headline copy. You can add statistics such as how your product increased a client’s profits by 10%, how many members your site has, or the number of lives that have been affected.
Statistics offer a factual reason for your audience to trust you. It creates more credibility and authority – two things that are essential to build a strong brand image.
Another way to power your landing page copy is to add social proof. This is a psychological phenomenon where people ‘follow the crowd’. For example, you’re more likely to choose an already crowded restaurant than one nearby that has fewer people. This is because you interpret the sign of more people using something as evidence that the product or service must be good.
You can add social proof by showcasing testimonials, reviews, the number of ratings, and other content to help your audience build trust.
An effective way to showcase trust and boost conversions is to use a social proof notification feature. A plugin like TrustPulse lets you display notification bubbles on your site showing current purchases, subscriptions, and other information happening on your site in real-time.
Using numbers and social proof is a way to “Show, don’t tell” in writing copy. It’ll help you boost your conversion rates substantially in a very short time.
Create Specific Calls to Action
Calls to action ensure that your site visitors aren’t left hanging after they browse your landing page. It gives them something to do: subscribe to your newsletter, become a member of your community, or sign up for tutorials.
When you create a call to action such as opting into your mailing list, you’ll also be able to nurture visitors into leads.
Remember to create specific calls to action. In copywriting, specific and actionable language is more impactful than vague, generic content.
Make sure that your buttons and calls to action don’t just say ‘Click Here’ or something ‘Join Now’. Instead ‘Sign Up to Get Your Free Video’ and other specific calls to action let your audience know exactly what will happen next. They’re more likely to take action that supports your business.
Be Consistent
One easy-to-make mistake is to make your landing page appear inconsistent with your ad link and content. It’s important to use similar if not the same words in the ad that people clicked on to get to your landing page.
Make sure that the content is relevant to the search term and the ad itself. For example, if people clicked on your link because the text says that you’re offering a free trial, then your copy on the landing page needs to address that first. Don’t use this as the time to push your paid subscription, instead, mention it discreetly.
Do A/B Testing
Doing A/B tests or Split Tests is an important step to make sure that you’re using the best landing page copy possible. You need to test different copy versions and look at KPIs such as bounce rates, conversions, and others to see what’s working best.
In the end, even the best copywriting formula needs to be tweaked for your business, and testing helps you create the best version of your landing site.
Conclusion
There you go. We’ve looked at some specific ways that you can boost your landing page copy so that you get more conversions.
It’s a great idea to keep observing landing pages that you visit. Notice headlines that appeal to you. What are they doing right? Likewise, think about landing pages that made you quit immediately. What did they do wrong?
With these tips, some effort, and testing, you’ll be sure to create copy for landing pages that convert visitors to leads effectively.
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Syed Balkhi is an award-winning entrepreneur and online marketing expert. He is the co-founder of OptinMonster, WPBeginner, MonsterInsights, and WPForms.