Welcome to the ‘Landing Page From Scratch Series’, where we’ll be taking you from zero to hero and crafting a high converting landing page from the ground up.
In each lesson we’ll take you through the core principles required to formulate the perfect page and get your campaign off to a strong start. So with that in mind, let’s get started from the top with ‘Planning your Landing Page’.
Planning your Landing Page
As with any successful venture or campaign, it’s important to lay some groundwork before you get kicked off. As Benjamin Franklin once famously said:
“If you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail”
Having a baseline plan in place to guide you through the process is imperative to ensure you’re covering all angles when creating your landing page. Whilst you don’t need to ‘overthink’ these things, it’s important to touch on the following points to ensure you’re able to structure everything accordingly moving forward.
Define your core audience
Knowing who you are targeting is imperative to the success of any marketing campaign, and that doesn’t change here. If you don’t know who you’re trying to reach, then you’re 10 steps behind before you even get started, so get clear on it.
Take the time to consider factors such as:
- Their Age
- Gender
- Browsing Habits
- Device of Choice
- Technological Understanding
These will allow you to determine your messaging, proposition along with the design and flow of the landing page. Older demographics may need larger fonts, less distraction and guided actions vs a tech savvy millennial who can navigate the web with their eyes closed.
Set a clear goal for the page
Next up is deciding what your one core goal is for the page. This is as simple as knowing what you want to achieve from the audience, whether it be a lead capture, sale, click through, subscription to a newsletter, app download or similar.
Keep this simple. Decide ONE goal for the page to keep the focus narrow.
Consider where you’ll be sending traffic from
The source of your traffic can have an impact on the performance of your landing page in many ways, including how it’s viewed and interacted with but also (and more importantly) the intent of the visitor at the time of viewing, their mindset and whether they’re pre-qualified and warmed to your offering.
How a user acts on a landing page from an Instagram ad will differ greatly from someone who is viewing from a long tail search term on PPC advert where the intent is stronger and the stage of the buying circle is further advanced.
If your visitor is a ‘cold visitor’ there’s going to need to be more attention paid to educating them on the problem they’re facing, the benefit of your solution, the solution you’re offering as well as why they should trust you. This would involve a longer form landing page that leads the visitor through the full journey from awareness through to action.
Contrast this to a visitor who has found you via a very specific search that implies that they know who you are and/or what you’re offering, or even through an advertorial or pre-sell which has already convinced them that they need what you have to offer. This visitor isn’t going to want to have to filter through the how’s, why’s and what’s to get to the end product, they just simply want to take action.
Create a unique proposition
Before we get stuck into the design, take a moment to consider what you are offering your visitor, how it benefits them and how to clearly communicate that message. By this stage you should already be aware of the stage of the buying cycle your visitor is at and where they’re coming from, which can help you choose whether to frame a problem with a solution, or a benefit and feature.
Take Invision for example:
or our message at Landing Page Guys:
Putting it all together
Planning your strategy is an integral part of crafting the perfect landing page, however don’t get too caught up on this stage and spend hours – just simply ensure you know who you’re trying to reach and how you’re trying to reach them. You can use our free ‘Landing Page Planner’ spreadsheet as a quick and effective guide.
If you’ve completed all these steps and your landing page is planned, it’s time for designing.
You can read our blog on designing here.
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