The Business Case for Better Landing Pages

Let’s start this blog with one of the best ways to hook an audience (especially on the internet): with a math problem!

Assume the following scenario:

• Available searches: You’re diligently working to optimize your Google rankings for the keyword “IoT for manufacturing”. According to Google, this keyword is searched 1,000 times per month. 
• Your click-through rate (CTR): Your efforts were successful! You’re ranking consistently in the top three organic (i.e., “free”) results of Google, and 20 percent of users are clicking through to your website — which is not unusual if you’re holding that high of a ranking position in a search result page (BACKLINKO). 
• Your conversion rate: Once users reach your landing page, roughly 1 percent of them will complete a desired action and “convert”. Let’s say they submit a form to download your nifty white paper about the importance of reliability in the manufacturing industry, thus becoming a “lead”

Ask the question: How many leads does “IoT for manufacturing” drive per year from organic search? 
The math breaks down like so:

• Months (Searches Available x Your CTR x Your Conversion Rate) = Leads

Then, plugging in the inputs above, you get:

• 12 (1,000 x 20% x 1%) = 24 yearly leads 

Twenty-four leads may not be bad. But if you’re looking to optimize further in your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts, where do you start? Let’s check our basic assumptions here. You’re already ranking highly, and that 20 percent CTR is looking handsome. At this point, some marketers may throw their hands in the air and call it a day. Next, they’ll focus on producing actionless keyword ranking reports month after month, until the client inevitably pulls the plug on their SEO program.

Rather than succumbing to the endless pit of reporting for reporting sake, let’s take a look at that 1 percent conversion rate your landing page is yielding. What if after implementing a few cosmetic enhancements, some punched-up copy and some A/B experiments, you’re able to raise that conversion rate from 1 to 2 percent?

Now you’ve doubled your leads from 24 to 48 leads a year — and that didn’t require you to earn a single additional impression beyond what you’re currently achieving. Sometimes better leveraging your existing pool of impressions is the proverbial low-hanging fruit we all seek.

Remember, too, this is merely one isolated keyword instance. What if you were able to make similar improvements for a dozen other keywords that carry a comparable number of searches? Before you know it, that same landing page is potentially driving hundreds of additional free leads over the course of a year. While the change of a conversion rate from 1 to 2 percent may not seem like the most baggable stat in the world, at scale, these improvements can contribute huge wins for your bottom line.

All you had to do was focus on your landing pages!

Work Your Way Back to Keywords on Strategy

In search engine marketing, there tends to be an excessive collective focus on keywords and rankings. This is somewhat understandable, as these are tangible results that are easy to understand. Sadly, the pages to which these keywords are driving potential customers are often treated as an afterthought. This problem isn’t unique to organic efforts either; paid results (e.g., per-per-click [PPC]) are frequently hindered by similar oversight.

Search engines are definitely important for most digital marketing mixes, but they are merely one of several channels at your disposal; they are neither your business goal nor your message. In the same vein, you wouldn’t start an offline campaign by choosing a random billboard first, without any thought about what you were trying to sell or what your message should be.

What Should a Landing Page Include?

The Face of Your Brand: As we all move toward embracing a modern digital evolution, we need to remember that every user-facing digital asset — whether a landing page, a social media post or an email — effectively act as the face of your company. The wonderful thing about the advancement of digital technology is the ease in which one can publish something to potentially thousands of contacts. However, this often leads to complacency with brand messaging, design or interactivity. Never exchange quality in exchange for quickness.

Emotional: Try to start with your ideal customer profile, and determine what they need to make an informed decision to engage with you. Like any sale, you need to build a connection with a potential prospect first. This starts by recognizing the emotional connections we all make that impact our decision making. Don’t just launch into a list of technical specs or cost savings anecdotes that differentiate you from competitors. Without that emotional connection established first, these features will only distract, not influence, your audience.

Organized: The architecture of your page’s information is critical. What are the “need-to-knows”? Can those points be made concisely in the header and your first few sentences? If not, you may want to consider breaking up a topic into multiple pages.

Interactive: Long gone are the days of static copy guiding a user from search engine to sale. You need to get your users to lose themselves in your web experience. Interactivity — such as buttons that respond to your mouse hovering or elements that come to life as you work your way down a page — are not merely bells and whistles. These elements help users to understand the mechanics of how your website is intended to work and guide them along the way to your desired end point. To spark your imagination, here are a few examples from Bluleadz of strong B2B web experiences.

Actionable and Trackable: Ultimately, if your primary goal is lead generation, you need to make it as easy as possible for a prospect to connect with you. Make sure your forms, buttons, calls-to-action, etc. are prominent (but not pushy) throughout your page. Data is also key here. Make sure you are accurately measuring what is happening, so where to make future adjustments doesn’t become a guessing game.

What Tools Do I Need to Track the Success of a Landing Page?

There are many tools available, but here are the types of things you’ll want in your arsenal:

• Analytics: Something you can use to measure activity on the page. Google Analytics is a popular go-to, as is Adobe Analytics. The types of things you’ll want to track include:
  • Sessions: Suffice it to say, you’ll probably want to know how many hits your page is generating. 
  • Bounce rates: Are users liking what they’re seeing, or are they bailing before taking a single on-site action?
  • Time on site: Are users spending as much time as you think they would to properly digest the materials you’re feeding them? 
  • Goal completions: Can you tell how many users are submitting forms, completing quizzes, etc.?
• Heat mapping: These tools can visually demonstrate where a user’s mouse hovers or clicks on your page. Not sure if anyone is enjoying your carousel banner? Maybe you’ve taken a crack at some sort of floating Contact Us button. Well, tools like Lucky Orange can help you to determine if these elements are helpful or just being ignored.
• Call tracking: You may be surprised by how many users call the numbers listed on websites. Services like CallTrackingMetrics enable you to distinguish which calls from your website were driven by an organic search, vs. social media, email, advertisements, etc.

Build Yourself Some Longer-Lasting Assets

It seems tempting to get a paid digital ad campaign up and running as quickly as possible. Within just a few days, you’ll see large chunks of traffic flowing in, providing a pretty immediate, measurable reward of sorts. Remember, traffic is a pretty easy metric to inflate, especially when there are ad dollars backing it. In the B2B space, the quality of your traffic virtually always outweighs the quantity. If you’ve overlooked your company’s landing page experience, there’s a good chance this traffic doesn’t mean a whole lot: no time on site, huge bounce rates, no leads, etc. When you’re considering how you want to allocate your marketing budget, remember that the landing pages you build aren’t just useful in driving leads temporarily. You’re building assets that will hopefully have some lasting power. Conversely, every click you purchase is a one-time deal; once it’s done, it’s done.

Investing more in your landing pages upfront will help to turn those clicks into much more meaningful short-term results, while also giving you something tangible that can be used throughout your future digital endeavors.