Landing pages are an essential tool in the world of marketing automation. They are customized webpages that your customers reach after responding to a call to action in an email or digital ad. Once the user gets to your landing page, it’s important to make it as easy as possible for them to achieve your conversion goal. That might be page views, click throughs, form submits, or something else. So it’s critical to guide them in a way that is clear and concise.

While you’ll find some variations in the types of elements used on landing pages, here is a run through of some basic components and some tips for making your landing pages successful. The headline. This is often the first thing a user sees when they get to your landing page. So make sure it’s relevant to the link they click to get there. You want to avoid any confusion where your customers may think they’re in the wrong place. Make your headline catchy if you want, but don’t sacrifice clarity. Your users have limited attention span so make sure you use their time wisely. Next is the hero shot, also called the banner image which depicts what you’re marketing. As with your headline, make sure your image is relevant to the offer.

Signs of trust or credibility. Privacy is of the utmost importance to your prospects and customers. Be clear on your website that your company is serious about privacy and that you’re in compliance with the relevant laws and regulations. Body text. This section is your opportunity to convince prospects in a clear and concise way why they should engage with you. Once again, relevancy is key so keep in mind who is coming to your specific landing pages and why they should be interested in what you have to say. It’s best practice to customize the body copy as much as possible by addressing the industry, function, and business challenges of your target audience. Also, keep in mind that your landing page has a single goal or call to action so make sure all of your copy is on track with that objective. Call to action, usually shortened to CTA. This is what you want the user to do on the landing page. Whether that action is something like download, submit, join today, or call now. The call to action text is most frequently on a button graphic to encourage click throughs. However, you might want to try to use the same language in the body text when appropriate with hyperlinks that allow users to respond in this way too.

Now let’s talk about some best practices for landing pages. You might want to try a few different things based on your target audience, but as a starter, consider the following practices. Build some HTML templates to use, but make them simple. You can also use one of the many options available in the template library. You should focus on a single call to action so remove distractions such as menus or navigation. Include a logo for branding and use a hero shot. Some ideas include adding an image of a white paper to give it prominence or including a photo of the person who is delivering your webinar. Whatever you put there, make it interactive since people like to click on graphics.

The content of your landing page should be straight to the point. Define the problem, talk about the solution, and deliver what you promise. In short, give the prospect a reason to give you their information. Also, consider using bullets in your copy. People often read three things when they get to a landing page, the headline, the bullet points, and a bio if available. Weren’t those bullets easy to read? Asking a visitor to submit a form is a useful call to action. The amount of information you try to capture depends on the value of the content you are offering. If you are offering something simple, like a white paper, you should collect only minimal information such as name, email, and company. The best practice for high conversion rates is four fields or less. You can always collect more information during a lead nurturing process. If you do offer any sort of tangible asset, like a white paper, guide, or e-book, be sure to email it. That way you can verify that they’ve provided a valid email address. If you are offering something higher value like a demo or a free trial, then you can collect a bit more information. It’s all relative to the value of what you are offering the prospect. Whatever you offer, be sure to have a thank you page that confirms the form submission and let your prospect know you appreciate their time. This is also a great time to highlight something else that might interest them. Page URLs are especially important. The name of the page along with the rest of the URL path is weighed fairly heavily by search engines. You can use up to 1,024 characters so be descriptive. Use dashes between words, but not underscores because search engines tend to process that structure better. Speaking of search engines, because they weigh metadata heavily in results, you should always enter a title, keywords, and a description in the appropriate fields for your landing pages. Finally, you should test everything, offers, copy, headlines, forms, colors, designs, lists, and more. Testing lets you verify what works and what doesn’t. Allowing your customers to vote with their actions.

In terms of reporting capabilities, Marketo has a landing page performance report that comes out of the box and reports on the views and conversions for your landing page. Now that we’ve talked about landing pages and best practices, let’s get into a real example. -