Landing pages, when combined with website analytics, can reveal behavioral trends that successful marketers and small business owners use to outmaneuver their competitors. Fundamentally, a landing page is a webpage with a contact form, a free offer such as a guide, presentation or consultation, and a brief explanation as to how it will benefit the reader. Landing pages are different than a typical web page because they are transactional. Your firm provides valuable advice in exchange for a name and email address from a website, visitor.

Landing pages provide insight into prospect behaviors because they help determine if your target audience values the content and offers you're providing.  An offer should be an extension of your written website content or blog article on which it resides.  A compelling enough offer will encourage the visitor to take the next step and fill out the form.  Think of an offer as a second chapter or as Paul Harvey used to say, "The rest of the story."

As content marketing strategies become a more prevalent for built environment companies, landing pages and email marketing are no longer "nice to have" tactics.  Landing pages help you gather contact information, and email marketing allows you to remain top-of-mind by nurturing those prospects that opt-in. Automated email marketing and list segmentation enable you to target prospects that have taken an interest in your firm. Marketing is a data-driven process that comes from asking the right questions of the right prospects at the right time in the sales process. Landing pages are the place on the website where questions are asked, and lead intelligence is gathered.

If Google AdWords or any other form of pay-per-click advertising is part of your marketing strategy, you must have a landing page that promotes a service and encourages an opt-in. Landing pages are an indispensable marketing tool for lead capture. Without landing pages, offers and follow up email marketing, you're wasting your marketing budget. The moment a prospective client clicks on your pay-per-click advertising and lands on your homepage you no longer have control of the process or the messaging. This is especially true for architects, interior designers and design-build websites that have homepage portfolios with minimal amounts of keyword-rich copy written content. With Google statistics showing that prospects interact with a company more than 30 times before securing a service, it's hubris to think a visit to a portfolio of images will drive a sale. 

Pay-per-click ads promise more information and landing pages are there to make good on their promise and to turn a visitor into a sales lead. Landing pages are the first step in a process used to move prospects from one stage of the sales process to the next.

You have less than three seconds to engage a visitor before they click away from your web page. The following advice will help you build landing pages that convert visitors into qualified sales leads.

Landing Page Content Should Matches your PPC Advertisements

Pay-per-click advertising can be dangerous if the content on your landing page is irrelevant to the anchor text in the corresponding ad. Pay-per-click advertisements promise information. When that information is not delivered, customers get confused, and with a three-second window in which to engage your lead, you cannot afford to leave them frustrated. Control what you can control by checking your work. Irrelevant content indicates a lack of professionalism, among other things. Needless errors cost you time and money, where careful redistribution thereof could yield you the opposite under the right circumstances. 

Remove Navigation Headers from Landing Pages

Navigation will allow prospects to click off your landing page before you capture their contact information. Keep landing pages simple. Include the following only,

• A title that explains the offer
• An image related to the offer
• A form for gathering contact information
• A submission button

The next steps following the landing page should include a thank you page that opens after the conversion is made, and an automated email used to deliver the offer. Prevailing trends show that prospects subconsciously click away from pages that appear ad-like. Bold fonts, garish colors, sales speak and false promises will kill results. The highest converting landing pages uses a proper page format followed by a marketing process that aims to nurture sales through education. 

Be Clear, Concise and To The Point

When consumers click on advertisements, they are looking for clear information. Keep your offer the focal point. It and your services are what your prospects are expecting. A landing page is where you should keep written content to an eighth-grade reading level. Speaking in a voice that matches your education level is best on your web pages and your blog. Remember, time is of the essence. You have less than 3 seconds. Don’t play around. 

Post Your Landing Pages on Social Media 

Social media sites are a great way of distributing landing pages. The nature of file sharing permits the redistribution of material on an exponential scale. For this reason, social networking sites can improve your off-site visibility quickly and will encourage more visits. Post a link to your landing page on your Facebook timeline, a LinkedIn profile on Twitter and as a link back from your Houzz project pages. Add supporting text and users will share content they enjoy or is helpful. If picked up by the right people, the chain reaction reaches prospects through in your target market. As long as your landing page remains visible on someone’s social media page, you will enjoy the ongoing exposure.  

Done well, pay-per-click advertising generates impressions but the key is converting them into leads and providing them relative engaging content through email marketing. Satisfied prospects will tell others by posting testimonials on social media or possibly linking to your landing page in a blog article. The result is an ongoing third party promotion of your services and valuable search engine optimization benefits.

About Michael Conway

I'm the owner and strategist at Means-of-Production. My firm builds Squarespace websites, Houzz profiles, and content marketing and advertising solutions for architects, interior designers, design-build contractors and landscape design firms. Our all-in-one marketing tactics attract the right clients with exceptional architectural photography and brand messaging that sets you apart from the competition.