360 Degree View On Creating a Landing Page

So I know what your thinking, is there really more than just creating an awesome hero shot, a branded caption, and a slick submit button. Unfortunately, too many marketers believe that if their outbound campaign is so awesome the creative will pre-sell prospects on the offer and user will come flocking to the thank you page, no matter how lame or outdated the landing page is. I believe I know the scenario in why landings pages are often not thought about until the final phases of the marketing campaign. So you’re about to launch a big online marketing campaign, your going to get tons of targeted traffic no matter what, lets even say your did some testing on creative and got the perfect headline, all you have to do is sit back and watch as the money rolls through the door. Sound at all familiar? Maybe not, I am sure you other marketers were way more advanced than me, but for those who didn’t think of what the user was going to do once they got on the landing page, I suggest you read on. There are about six things you insist a user to do:

• Read the awesome content that you paid for ( whether in man hours or to an agency)
• Make them actually do something like type in their name and address with possibility of snail spam
  
• Hand over a phone number so a telemarkter will pester them
• Give their email and take the risk of being spammed again
  
• Dig out a credit card, and possibly risk phishing or fraud ( got to love those credit check commercials)
• Pay or agree for something

And you wondering why landing pages convert in the single digits, and for the some that are in the double digits….KUDOS! For the people who are not there yet, I had the chance to read the holy bible of landing pages, the Marketing Sherpa Landing Page Handbook. The first thing that caught my eye was that you have about 0-8 seconds to convince visitors that the page is really what they were looking for and the most they will read is 15 words, yes 15 words! I will go through the six steps in a series of post here from their suggested guidelines (don’t want to bore you with more below scrolling than necessary, however I will start with step one today. One big mistake is that marketers assume that a landing page can handle two or three different conversion goals without thinking how a user would react to all the spam around the page. I know your saying how hard it to think about what a conversion is, they hit the thank you page and thats that, right and user love our product so it's a win win? Well before you dismiss the definition give it a look through and question exactly what is your motive for the landing page.

#1 -Conversion Definition

1. eCommerce- Adding items to a shopping cart or starting the process

2. Lead Generation- Fillings out registration form (Might include white papers, coupons, price quotes, or trials/samples)

3. Branding Education- Spending time on site or interacting with content

4. Relationship- Opting in to receive communications on an on going basis. (Might include emails, RSS feeds, newsletters)

5. Membership- registering to actively use the site

6. Viral Outreach- Telling personal and professional contacts to refer the landing page

Well that is the list, do you fall and excute a few of these models on your landing pages? I would love to hear your stories, what worked and what didn’t.