Top Landing Page Best Practices for Higher Conversion Rates

The number one goal of a landing page is to get visitors to convert – whether it’s a form fill or sale, your landing page should propel visitors to act.  If your visitors aren’t converting or if you want to increase your conversions even more, then it’s time to do some testing.

Although it’s not rocket science, putting together the right killer mix of elements to your page isn’t always easy.  What works for one traffic source may not work for another, so it’s important to always try out new ideas and combinations.  However there are certain time-tested and true landing page best practices for increasing conversion rates that you should check your pages for if you’re not happy with your conversion rate.  Use these landing page best practices as a starting point for your testing ideas and plans. 

Top Landing Page Best Practices For Higher Conversions 

• Uncomplicated forms – I’ve been on landing pages with some very compelling messaging and I almost filled out their form – almost. Long, complicated forms are a hassle and a turn off. The best forms only gather what is absolutely necessary – nothing more, nothing less.  Nurture programs and progressive profiling can help you build up prospect profiles over time.  For initial lead generation forms, whatever your form is asking should be proportional to the your offer.
  
  
• Center their attention – If a landing page has you looking in all different directions with no apparent target, it’s likely you’re going to click the mighty back button. The focus of a landing page should be to compel your visitor to convert – and that’s it! Keep all of the content on your landing page clear and focused on getting visitors to the conversion point. Take a big step away from your landing page (both figuratively and literally), is it still clear what you’d like your visitors to do?

• Use a compelling call to action – A good, clear call to action is vital! You need to tell your visitor what to do and how to do it – if you don’t, they may go away, never to return.  Make your call to actions compelling- don’t simply say “Submit” but try using active, positive messages like “Download your free whitepaper now” that reaffirm what visitors are getting from you.

• Give them what they want – Visitors come to your page for specific reasons – to get something that helps them solve a problem or answer a question. If you don’t address their needs right away, you’ve lost that conversion. If you’re getting traffic to your page then you know that whatever offer was in your ad or email is connecting with your visitors; keep their attention by continuing with that same offer and conversation on your landing page.

• Mind the fold – You know that part of the page that lies “above” the scrolling point? That’s the area above the fold and generally for an effective landing page, you need to put your most important elements for conversion – the elements that you definitely want your visitors to see – in that space.  You only have a moment to convince most visitors to stay so use your best real estate wisely. Don’t make visitors scroll to find your call to action or form.

Use these best practices to form new test ideas and to get your conversion rates up!  In addition to these conversion techniques, another great way to get your page ready for higher conversions is by using our READY framework.

If you are looking for a way to create and test high-converting landing pages, schedule a demonstration of our landing page solution, LiveBall, & we cab help you put these best practices and others in to action.

7 Ways to Generate High-quality Leads with Content Marketing

This is a guest post by Megan Leap. Megan is Online Marketing Manager at MarketingProfs, where she manages marketing programs for PRO Membership. She’s also a LiveBall customer and conversion optimization enthusiast.

Fill your lead funnel through content marketing!Content is a critical component of great B2B marketing today. Content can help position your organization as thought leaders, nurture prospects over time, and best of all, it can generate high-quality leads, too.

Without any further adieu, here are 7 ways to generate high-quality leads with content marketing.

1. Create content that attracts your best prospects

If you’re like most B2B marketers, you’ve identified a few sweet spots—those prospects that are most likely to close and become your most profitable, best customers. While you may already focus your PPC, search and banner efforts on attracting them, you can do the same with your content marketing. Make sure a portion of your content focuses on the pain points and interests of your most valuable and important segments.

2. Help solve problems and address pain points

All good content, whether white papers, blogs, webinars, or slides, addresses pain points and solves problems. Create Guides, Top 10 Lists, How-Tos etc. This is a critical step in attracting your best prospects, because when they are searching for you, they may not use words to describe your company or product—they’ll use words that focus on solving problems and improving their results. It’s your job to educate them that the way to solve their problem is with your solution.

3. Go beyond your specific offering

Sure, while you should always create content about your organization’s specific area of focus, you’ll attract a bigger audience if your content addresses other topics that are interesting and important to your best prospects. For instance, let’s say you market social media solutions to senior-level marketers. While I recommend becoming a trusted source of information and advice on social media marketing and creating content about it, you should also create content that focuses on marketing ROI, public relations, industry news, and SEO, because most senior marketers that are interested in social media, are also interested in those topics, too.

4. Become a trusted resource

Every marketer is now a publisher. It’s important for your content to be helpful and useful. Give away some secrets to the magic behind your company—really. Don’t shill. Don’t sell. And when your prospects are ready to evaluate solutions, they’ll go to you, not your competitors.

5. Delight and engage—let your prospects to get to know you

Don’t discount the importance of delighting your visitors and letting them get to know you and your brand via your content marketing. After all, buyers don’t buy from companies—they buy from people. And every touch point of your marketing, whether that’s content, social media, search, or email, is an opportunity for your prospects to get to know your organization and what you stand for. So delight them, engage them, and deliver awesome. The more you do, the more likely they will be to raise their hand, become a lead, and hopefully, a customer.

6. Include conversion points within your content

Think you can’t generate leads from blog posts? Think again. Every blog post is an opportunity to convert a visitor into a lead. For example, if you’re promoting a webinar on email marketing, you can generate interest in the webinar by writing a blog on the “Top 10 Ways to Improve Email Open Rates”, and then cross promote a call-to-action at the end of the blog to sign up for the webinar. You can also link to a landing page with gated content (ex: a white paper), which will allow visitors to learn more about the topic. (ion does that at the end of this blog post! See below.) You can also include banner ad on your blog, or a call-to-action within any white papers that get passed around. (Me? I use LiveBall to create landing pages that I link to from blogs and white papers.)

7. Make it easy to share

This may seem obvious, but the easier you make it for your visitors to share your content with their networks, the more likely they’ll be to do it. So, include share buttons for LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and any other network that your prospects use. Don’t only use these buttons on your website, but also include them in any PDF content as well.

Want to learn more about generating leads from content marketing? Check out ion’s FREE guide, Conversion Content Marketing

7 Ways to Improve B2B Lead Nurturing

A great lead nurturing campaign can go a long way in moving your prospects further down the sales process. Based on our experience managing B2B lead nurturing campaigns over the past few years, here are 7 key tips to help you close more leads, faster.

1. Match Your Email Content According to Phases in the Sales Process

When a lead first gets added to your lead nurturing program, start the relationship—or courting process—by mailing them best practices information, quick tips—any kind of content that allows your subscribers to get to know and trust you. Then, once they start to engage with that content, deliver content that slowly introduces your prospects to your product or service. Finally, once they consistently show interest, send them product demos, sales call requests, consultant offers etc. I recommended creating a 3-phase map, with designed content for cold, warm, and hot leads. You can even include content that helps your prospects overcome obstacles in the buying process, such as getting budget approval or technical requirements. As always, it’s a good idea to run these emails by your sales team, to see if they have any recommendations that will make their job faster and easier.

2. Stay in Front of Your Leads

Frequency is a touchy subject. The more often you email your subscribers, the higher the chances they will unsubscribe. However, it’s important to find your frequency sweet spot—the ideal number of email touches required to stay in front of your leads while keeping them happy and engaged. I recommend monitoring your email response rates against your unsubscribes. Need a place to begin? Send emails once a week, and provide frequency options for subscribers who want to hear from your more (or less) often.

3. Use Progressive Profiling to Learn More About Your Leads

The fewer fields you require on your forms, the higher your conversion rate will be. When generating leads online, I recommend requiring the fewest fields possible. Then, once leads get added to your lead nurturing program, you can begin to learn more about them via progressive profiling. For example, on our PPC landing pages (see the LiveBall landing page), we only require leads to fill out their first name, last name, company name, and email address. Then, they get added to our lead nurturing program (we use Eloqua), and we ask them a few more questions in exchange for best practices content (see example 2 below). This allows us to cast a wide net at the top of our funnel, and then learn more about our prospects over time. It’s a win-win for both our leads and us.

An example progressive profile form.

4. Don’t Rush for the Close

While you may be tempted to mail product information or sales-focused messages early on in the nurture cycle, it’s important to hold those for when your subscribers consistently engage with your best practices content and show interest in your product or service by visiting product pages on your website or raising their hand.

5. Be Human and Personable

We’ve all heard the saying—people don’t buy from companies, they buy from people. So, add a human touch to your email campaigns, whether that means including a headshot of your sales team, a signature, or a personalized message. Use your lead nurturing as an opportunity to let your prospects get to know not only your company, but also the brains behind it. The more they get to know you, the more likely they will be to trust you, and ultimately, buy from you.

6. Add Humor to Your Campaigns

A little delight can go a long way. While it’s easy to get stuck in the rut of sending the same ol’ same ol’ week after week, mix in emails that that delight your subscribers with humor and personality, because whether you market to marketers or IT professionals, everyone likes to laugh, and humor can really set your campaigns apart from your competition.

7. Test Your Landing Pages

According to a recent MarketingSherpa study, the most effective element to test in email campaigns is the landing page.  So, before you start testing subject lines or email body copy, run some A/B tests on your landing pages—and test the desired action you’d like your visitors to take.

Are you running lead nurturing programs now? What has your experience been like? Let us know in the comments below.

Progressive Profiling: Who, What & Why?

Who can use progressive profiling?

• Marketing managers driving prospects to landing pages from email marketing campaigns
• Must be passing lead information into a CRM and or marketing automation system (Eloqua, Marketo, etc.)

What is progressive profiling?

• Using landing page forms to build lead profiles and qualification over time
• A few multiple choice questions are asked on the landing page each time a lead returns for nurture fulfillment
• Helps build relationships with prospects during nurture process

 

Why is progressive profiling important?

• Reduces number of form fields on initial conversion point, increasing lead conversions
• Builds valuable prospect profiles for sales
• Allows for scoring and qualification
• Surfaces HOT! leads
• Progressive profile forms convert up to 75% of visitors
• Progressive profiling is easy in LiveBall

Interested in learning more about progressive profiling in LiveBall?
Tweet us @ioninteractive or call 561.394.9484.

Landing page testing 101: A/B testing

I’ve said it numerous times before in this blog and I’ll say it again: If you’re not A/B testing your landing pages, you need to start – today! A/B testing isn’t an afterthought, and it’s something you should do more than once a year. We’re huge proponents of testing and believe it is a process that should be applied consistently to every landing page. So let’s go over why A/B testing is so awesome.

The basics of A/B testing

A/B testing goes by a few other names, like split testing, but no matter what you call it, it’s an essential part of effective marketing. This is where you test variances of your messaging or other another page element to see if one converts better than the other. To get the true scoop, it’s best to test multiple samples against a control. 

Some of the different areas to change and test include, but are not limited to: colors, images, headlines call-to-action, design and layout, or the actual conversion path.

I’ve always believed in thorough A/B testing, not once or twice, but multiple scenarios, until we get just the right data. Those statistics tell us what works and what doesn’t – which leads to positive changes in marketing campaigns.

Here’s an example of A/B testing:

Say you have a large mailing list and you want to send out an email campaign to funnel readers to a dedicated landing page and where they an convert by filling out a form. You might A/B test different calls to action as well as change the color of the button on your form. Once statistical confidence has been reached, with one version showing a higher conversion rate, you’ve found a better converter for your marketing campaign. With this and other information you found from your testing, you can more effectively forecast your ROI for the entire marketing campaign.

As you can see, testing is a must. Not only does it give you more comprehensive conversion data, it helps you calculate your ROI result. If you’re on the fence or don’t test enough, now is the time to jump that fence and start A/B testing to see what your prospects and customers want from you.

How A/B testing will help your business

I won’t lie to you, testing takes work and sometimes the answer isn’t always in front of you. With all that, the benefits outweigh any cons of A/B testing and the actual testing process can be made easier in LiveBall, which also supports multivariate testing (MVT).  So what are these benefits that you’ll get from A/B testing your landing pages?  These are just a few, but you’ll learn:

• What converts more prospects into leads
• Whether the path to your landing page needs a fix or if your landing page does
• What your prospects and customers like about your current marketing
• How to better plan resources and budget for marketing campaigns based on data from past campaigns

Now that you know the “why” of A/B testing, learn a little bit more about the “how.” Get started with Top 5 tips for effective landing page A/B testing or schedule a LiveBall demo.