WTF: Outreach, Landing Pages & No Bananas (2)

Last week we looked at outreach copy - targeting your text to a specific audience and giving them a reason to click through; today we’re going to look at the page they arrive on – the “Landing page.”

What’s the point?

Before you do anything, actually before you write the original ad copy or guest post, you need to have a clear idea of what it is you want to achieve; just saying “more clients” or “sell more stuff” isn’t going to cut it.

Get their information

The only way you can turn a new visitor into a lead is to get them to give you their contact details. This could be in exchange for a specific piece of information, to set up a conversation, to join your mailing list, whatever; you need to come up with something that will persuade the new visitor to enter their information on the page.

Design

Once you’ve worked that out, you can then look at the design of the landing page – here are a few things to think about…

Relevancy = Trust

If you are using LinkedIn to target HR executives in the LA area the page copy needs to reflect that: use the LinkedIn logo, use an image of downtown LA, use headline copy that acknowledges HR. The Landing page is an extension of the copy they clicked on, the more relevant you make it, the more trustworthy you are and the more likely they will give you their information.

Less is more than enough

Get rid of anything that isn’t directly related to the purpose at hand; they’re here for one reason – don’t try and promote other things, not only does it weaken the core message, it’s actually kind of rude!

Single call to action

Remember that at this point, they’re not interested in you; they’re interested in what you said you could give them, or do for them. Make it easy for them to get that; consider removing all navigation from the page, change the page design, make it all about that one thing: filling in a contact form, entering their email, etc. The more options you give them, the less you will convert.

Don’t be lazy

You should have different landing pages for every campaign and outreach post you do, they don’t need to be radically different, but they do need to reflect the website and demographic you were targeting.

Yes – this is harder than just sending them to your home page and yes it takes more time and unless you’re doing it yourself it’ll cost a bit more, however, not doing it this way will dramatically reduce the success of your marketing efforts.

If you’re thinking about outreach and would like to do it right, reply to this email and book a session.