Part of any successful marketing efforts surely must be a great landing page. You probably know a landing page is an ultra-focused page for a specific type of customer and service or product where you send traffic.

Your job is to come up with a way to do that, and we’ll give you valuable tips on how to achieve this. There is a proven strategy for creating a landing page, and as you can imagine, content is the most critical part.

1. Define what is the objective of your landing page

What do you want to achieve with this page? Is it more calls, booking Zoom meetings or actual sales? Each page is different, and it is up to you to decide on a single action you want your customers to take.

Do not try to include everything on a single page. Create many different pages and variations if you need to. A focused approach is what matters.

2. Define the type of customer you are writing for

Think about your customers. Who is the page for? Having user stories helps here when you try to profile your customers, see what they have in common, and put them into categories. What matters to them? Why would they buy your product or use your service? Based on what exactly do they make purchasing decisions?

From the very beginning working with Computer Genie and Custom PC Genie, we performed thorough research and found out the business was accommodating two specific types of customers. Those with broken laptop screens and hinges, or generally facing slow or non-responsive computers.

The second type of customer were gamers. Either parent is buying their 16-year-old their first computer or streamers and professional gamers. It was far easier to split these two different groups and build landing pages focusing on the problems of each category of users. And this approach works.

3. How to write a compelling copy

Yes, the content is the king, and you should write compelling copy. But nobody tells you how. It’s not that hard, actually. Follow these few steps to get an idea about what a compelling copy means:

Do customer research and find out what they think about your product or service. It’s simple, call them and ask them. People will tell you if you ask nicely. You provide value, and you need to find out what that is. What’s the most important thing to your customers. You’ll be surprised! For Custom PC Genie, it’s not the price or how fast it is but the initial help of putting the right parts together for the best performance.

You get it now. At heart is your customer, not your company. Remember, your company is nothing without your customers. Any content needs to engage with your customer, the right kind of customers. Writing then should be much easier. Keep focusing on the value your company provides and the difference it makes to your customers’ lives.

4. Structure content from A to Z

Even your landing page needs to tell a story. A story that follows a logical pattern and is easy to understand. Start with the bold solution to your customer problems on the very top. Then in a few sentences, describe your value proposition. We call this part of the landing page a “hero section” or “header section”.

The following section can be seen sometimes as contravention but bear with me. Stating the cost of not doing business with you and highlighting the problem is very effective. It can sound a bit negative, but it works. Mention problems like wasted time, lost business, opportunities and frustration – highlight your understanding and acknowledge the problem.

Next is your value proposition. Not features and the boring stuff you are excited about, but your customers are not. Here is how you solve their problem and show your company’s immense value.

A neat trick is also to show the customer what it’s like had they purchased your service already. How their life changed had they done it already.

Remember, I don’t necessarily want a drill and drill bit. I want a hole in the wall to hang a picture of my medals or photos of how I climbed Everest!

You are their guide – the next section can be how you play the part of someone who helps them and knows their pain. Do you remember Matrix and how Morpheus says with a smile to Neo: “I can only show you the door, you are the one who has to walk through it”. Morpheus is Neo’s guide, and his sole purpose is to help him succeed.

5. Repeat the CTA

After each section, you should have the same CTA. Repetition is the key here. Each button is a cash register, and if you don’t have enough of them, you’ll just frustrate customers. As people read through your landing page, they are curious, don’t assume they read all pages before deciding to purchase. Maybe halfway through the page, your customer says: “okay, I’ve seen enough; where do I buy?”

Don’t make the mistake of offering too many choices. Clicking buy now, book now or schedule a call is too much – just decide on one single call to action and repeat that. You can always experiment with A/B testing to see which CTA gets better conversion.

And maybe, in the end, your customer is still not quite ready to commit. That’s fine too. Give them the option to exit but keep them interested. It’s quite okay that some customers might need more time convincing. It is your job to keep them interested!

6. Fully responsive experience on mobiles

More than half of your customers will see your landing page on a mobile with a small screen. How many of those customers have glasses or made their mobile font a little bigger. Can you afford to ignore them and waste half of your marketing budget?

Make no mistake, mobile and responsive web design will reflect on your bottom line. You can choose to make an effort and optimise your landing page for mobile devices and reap the rewards if you do so.

Loading speed also reflects on your conversion rate. If it takes too long to load, visitors will leave. If your landing page takes longer than 6 seconds to load, the bounce rate will double.

7. Don’t forget keyword research

For some people, keyword research may be old school or an afterthought. Keyword research is essential for an SEO-optimised website and the organic traffic it brings from Google.

You need to know which keywords to target and which keywords bring the most traffic. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that small niche keywords are not worth the effort. They definitely are, as focusing on a niche will help with search intent.

Knowing which keywords are considered valuable but the most useful are those your customers type into Google. That’s how you can insanely improve accuracy by focusing on your customers.

We found some surprising medium to low-traffic keywords during our research for Computer Genie client. To our surprise, this strategy worked brilliantly, and the whole website was lifted on more generic keywords simply by including niche keywords.

8. Headline and value proposition

This is a tricky one and can drive you mad. How do you come up with the best illustration of value in a short sentence? Donald Miller from Story Brand showed us a little trick – creating a one-liner.

If you follow his example and start with the problem. Follow by a solution and finish up with a result, and you’ll have a starting point of your own business marketing message.

Writing successful headlines and value proposition sentences is challenging and should be constantly tested. You can try A/B to test your titles and headings to see which gets better response. Get a measurable difference of different variants of the same marketing message.

9. Trust and verifiable testimonials

Now that we are in the second half of your landing page, it’s the right time to reinforce what you are saying. How can the customer trust you will deliver the value you are promising? Accreditations and social proof will go a long way and are most popular, but you can do more. Including verifiable, real-world testimonials from the third party is a must. And you can go beyond that and tell a customer story. Dedicate a section of the landing page to customers who have already made a purchase. And show the difference your product made to their lives.

10. Measure conversion rate

All of the above will be for nothing if you don’t measure your conversion rate. You need to measure how many visitors are looking at your page and clicking on purchase.

Remember, the landing page is designed to be the last step of your customer journey to purchase. Your leads go through several stages before they are ready to buy. Map out how your business understands this purchasing journey and what you are doing in each stage.

More landing page optimisation tips

Forms – If you offer forms signups, then test them on mobiles or, better yet, see if they can be auto-filled on mobiles. Yes, there is a way your customer can click and automatically get their details filled and just click submit. Make it easy for them to do business with you!

A/B testing is a great way to measure the impact of your writing. You’d be surprised how little change in heading or subheading can drastically improve your conversion rates.

Trust and credibility customers can verify. Include third-party reviews that you cannot control in any way. Show you genuinely care about your customers.

Include FAQs as they can help overcome sales objections.

The design has an impact on your credibility. Your carefully designed landing page cannot look like a spammy site with red buttons screaming look here. That destroys your credibility. Use a layout with elements in the right places, don’t try to be too clever with your design. People expect certain things in the right places. An original design might win you awards but not many sales.

Social proof is a great idea and a very effective tool to pursue people to click on the CTA. That’s why we have celebrities and influencers. Their marketing reaches the masses, which creates social proof.