You have just come up with the PERFECT, and I mean perfect, Social Media plan. Your tweets are rolling. You’re getting retweeted left and right. Your Facebook page is hopping. You could post “the sky is blue” and people would “like” your post. Your Social Media campaign was built on the idea that you are a resource for people in your industry. You’re the helpful company. You’re the company who has the knowledge and experience. You’re not out there to sell. You’re out there to help!
In all of the places where you can list a website, you link to a page that has product information, a sample request form, and a buy now button.
And yet – your sales are not going up. What is going on?
Like many things in marketing, there is a subtle art to the landing page. Yes, it’s very important to have one. There are plenty of companies that leave navigation to their website up to the internet gods. However, having a landing page just to have a place to drive traffic is not really the best approach either.
Some of the best landing pages I’ve seen out there offer the following features:
1. No Multiple Personality Disorder: If your Social Media campaign touts your company’s knowledge of the industry, don’t lead people to a page with giant yellow “buy now” starbursts. If your ads have giant yellow “buy now” starbursts, don’t lead people to a page that offers white papers written in ancient Greek. The landing page is still a part of your campaign. It needs to make sense there.
2. Talk to Me Like You Love Me: It might seem cheesy, but I think it’s really effective on a landing page to say, “Oh hi, you must have come from xyz place. Let’s continue our conversation here.” If anything, it shows that your campaign is well organized. It also takes me seamlessly from one part of your campaign to another.
3. Customize To Your Audience: We have a client who worked tirelessly with us on a very long, extremely detailed RFQ form. We thought that it was too cumbersome, but our client insisted that his customers would be all over this. Sure enough, that form comes back filled out entirely about ten times a week, sometimes more. Other audiences wouldn’t look twice at an RFQ form. Show that you value your customers by showing that you know them.
4. No Tricks: Is there anything worse than feeling like you were cheated into landing on a landing page? Well, probably, but it really stinks. Don’t dress up a scarecrow and tell me Pavarotti. Be transparent about where you’re taking people. If it’s right for them, they’ll go. If it’s not, they won’t get really cheesed off with you.
5. Give To Get: The key moral code of Social Media applies to landing pages too, no matter how you are driving traffic to them. If you want me to do something for you, do something for me. Having a white paper, a webinar, or an e-book (for free) on a landing page is a nice way to say “thanks for clicking and trusting me.”
Those are five things I’ve seen in landing pages that I think are well done. They are things we try to do when we develop landing pages for our clients. What are your five?
Image by Sean Connolly. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/SeanJC