Creating a landing page is incredibly easy with the tools available today. WordPress has helped democratise digital publishing, and WooCommerce is now doing the same for e-retailers.
In this new world where more and more players are crowding the online market, one thing is certain. Those of us who buy and sell things to each other are human. Our consumption patterns and societies have changed, but at the end of the day, we are not far removed from our cousins who lived as hunters and gatherers. Therefore, even old truths in psychology, sales and marketing are relevant today, albeit in a new light.
Understand your audience
Some of the most important things we humans use every day are communication and empathy. Marketing and sales are all about applying these skills. If we can understand our potential customer’s point of view and are able to communicate how our product or service will help them solve their perceived problems – we’re home free.
At the heart of every high-converting landing page is therefore a deep understanding of the different problems, priorities, concerns and desired outcomes that our potential customer has.
This understanding should start before they are even on your website. By carefully researching what keywords and issues people are searching for on Google, for example (using Google Trends, for example), we can build a picture of what problems our potential customer wants to solve.
Contextual relevance
When we sit down to write our text, we need to remember that all our text must be contextually relevant. This relates to our understanding of the recipient who will be looking at the landing page. How deep is their understanding? It is very likely that the recipient’s understanding is not at all at the same level as yours.
Situational relevance / timing
One kind of relevance that is interesting to look at is situational relevance. If the visitor is sitting on the metro or walking between meetings, it is rare that they will sit down and read a 5000 word text. Here, perhaps a shorter text is needed that is more to the point.
Another situation you often see (especially for B2B companies) is that when people are home from work (normally Saturday-Sunday), some purchase decisions may not be made anyway. Instead of focusing on a close, could you perhaps collect expressions of interest where you are contacted during working hours?
Situational relevance is often the most difficult information to map and implement, but can provide incredible gains in conversion.
Problem awareness
In his book Breakthrough Advertising, psychologist Eugene Schwartz constructs potential customers’ awareness of their problems and potential solutions.
- Fully aware: knows that they have a problem, what they can expect as a result, what different solutions are offered by different players and why your product is the right match. This customer really only needs to know the terms of the deal.
- Product-aware: Knows that they have a problem, what they can expect to get out of it and what different solutions different players offer, but doesn’t know which product is the right match.
- Solution aware: Knows they have a problem and knows what outcome they want, but doesn’t know which solution to choose (or that your product solves the problem)
- Problem aware: Know they have a problem, but don’t know there is a solution.
- Unaware: No idea that there is even a problem that needs solving.
The first and most common mistake is to appeal to the recipient at the wrong level of awareness. Marketing to the completely unaware is often “feeding the crows”, but marketing to the solution-conscious can often cause you to miss many important customers. It’s easy to talk about fancy features and technical specifications rather than the value you add.
Starting by marketing the problem for which you have a solution is often the best way to get results. This way, as many people as possible can recognise your message and understand that it is a solution for them.
Developing this knowledge is complex and requires a deep understanding of the customer and their problem. Do market research, analyse data and conduct in-depth interviews to find out more about your customers. It will pay off if you want to sell more.
Answer the recipient’s questions
Now that we’ve finally mapped out our contextual relevance, it’s time to respond to the questions people have on our landing pages. To do this, it is important that the landing page follows a natural narrative. We want to answer customers’ questions one by one in an educational and light-hearted way.
A good landing page usually has the following narrative:
- What is this company?
- Why should I care?
- Who else cares? (Social proof)
- How does it work?
- Why should I trust you?
- If I trust you, what should I do next?
The design of the page should then be subordinate to its content. The form is there to reinforce and emphasise the editorial content, never the other way around. We need our recipient to understand the following through our landing page:
- It has a problem that needs solving
- The problem is causing discomfort of various kinds (often referred to as “pains”)
- The product/service you provide is the solution to the problem.
If we can do this, we have built our high-converting landing page.