OmniKick Blog

Why You should Read this…

If you are desperate to find your way to the SERP (search engine results page), gain better exposure and visibility in the target market and consequently gain high conversion rates then you’re in luck.

I’m about to embark on an epic that narrates how you can use one of the most powerful elements, you as an internet marketer have and can use it to boost your business.

What I’m talking about here is your landing page.

Landing pages are your first chance to make any sort of impression on your visitors, and in fact, it may also be the last time you get to impress them.

A landing page is a page that your visitor arrives at looking for something specific. Your landing page could be your home page, your about page or as in most cases, it can be the page with the CTA.

So, why the landing page?

There are many elements about your page that you could tweak in order to boost your business, but there’s one thing, which if formatted properly could give the best possible results.

A good landing page can turn all the lights on at the same time just like in a good old Pinball game.

So hang around to find out how important a role landing pages play in your marketing plan.

I’ve divided this blog post into 4 broad categories each of which discusses the 4 major online marketing strategies that can make your landing page worthwhile.

1. SEO

According to Rand Fishkin of MOZ, SEO is

“the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of the traffic that you earn through the organic results in search engines”.

The way to go about earning your traffic is by building an SEO-friendly site that’ll help you find your way onto the radar.

So here’s how you make a landing page that’s SEO friendly:

• Headline with keywords. This is an essential part of your landing page and perhaps the trickiest because while you want to impress your readers, you have to at the same time ensure that Google’s not going to throw dirty looks your way.

When writing a headline make sure you have your keywords lined up in a manner that is most likely to be keyed in.

• Qualitative content. Google is very strict when it comes to the quality of the content that is being produced. Don’t meander, use focused keywords and be precise in telling your visitors precisely what they came looking for.

Going on for too long can result in a loss of visitors since everyone’s on a time leash.

• Inbound links. Your landing page should have inbound links that tell Google that you’ve done your research and this is also a great way to get visitors from elsewhere as well.

However, when using foreign links make sure they are credible. You could use tools like the MOZ toolbar that allows you to check the analytics of a page before using it.

• Social proof. Use customer reviews or testimonials to build trust with the newly arrived.

On seeing reviews or testimonials, people are likely to feel more comfortable when making a decision because they know that someone’s made a purchase from here before and that it’s reliable.

• Cut the jargon. Imagine this: Google’s just given you the green signal and listed you on their first page. Congratulations.

But guess what happens next?

Visitors click on your link only to leave in a while. It’s probably because you’ve used too much technicality and your phrases are too hard to understand.

In that case, you’re not of much help to the visitors then are you? So simply use words and phrases that are easily understood and explain your service and product in the most simple way possible.

Try to be as user-friendly as possible.

• Simplify the design. Always remember, that for landing pages less is more.

Fewer tabs, images, and text mean that there are fewer distractions. If you look at landing pages that are designed now you’ll see how the fields required to be filled in and the options available are all limited.

Today’s web designers are also very post-modern in their designs: they all have a minimalist approach, and why not? It does sell.

2. PPC

What we’ve just discussed above is perhaps the best way to generate organic growth and conversion.

What organic growth means that the traffic generated to your page is all natural, without any interference. On the other hand, you have paid per Click ads or the PPC where you pay Google every time someone clicks your link.

The PPC ads are placed right on top of Google’s results page and the word ‘Ad’ is inscribed in a yellow box denoting that it’s a paid ad

While this is a handy marketing strategy it’ll only be of benefit to you if know how to use it.

Make sure that this paid ad leads your visitor to exactly the page that they’ve searched for. Often people redirect their paid ads to their homepage in an attempt to show off their hard work.

However, your visitors are not got all that time and so chances are they’re going to leave straight away instead of looking up the necessary page.

And you can’t blame them, can you? The homepage tends to have all the various links and tabs and this can often be difficult to navigate. All of this is bound to put visitors off especially if they’re in a hurry.

For your PPC ads make sure you have a focused landing page that leads on to the sales or CTA page via a click-through page. With just one click-through page between your landing page and the sales page, you can gear your visitors towards the ultimate goal.

This strategy also prevents them from getting distracted which they might have gotten if they’d landed on your homepage, or any other page and had to navigate their way from there.

This is what the average visitor’s journey ought to look like from the time they trigger a search to the time you’ve got them hooked:

Also leading your visitors directly to your focused landing pages can reduce your bounce rate significantly. You may use PPC tools as well to get some additional help. There are plenty of awesome tools to help you run your PPC campaigns flawlessly.

3. CRO

The CRO or conversion rate optimization is direct, if not solely, related to landing pages. CRO is the maximization of visitors of a page to converts whether it be from landing pages, search ads or the website in general.

It is here that the conversion takes place and so the making of this page with the proven etiquettes of CRO is mandatory.

But no worries, it’s extremely easy.

Here’s how you can increase your conversion rates using landing pages.

• Use emotional fallacies or cognitive biases to hook your visitors to your product.

Emotional or cognitive bias is the error in judgment that a person makes unconsciously.

Here’s some of the bias that can come in handy when trying to improve your conversion rates:

• The bandwagon effect is a lot like peer pressure where one’s forced into doing something because everyone else is doing it.

Everyone’s got a Smartphone and that’s reason enough for you to have one. That’s how it works.

• You also have the anchoring effect which is more like an illusory trick that you play.

Take a designer bag with a tag that has a scratched out price of $500 and instead has $300 written on it. Now stand back and watch people fight over it.

That’s how the anchoring effect works: you set a higher, impractical price so that whatever lowers price you put below it in comparison it’ll seem like an offer of a lifetime.

• The decoy effect is another one. Here you have at least three prices where one of them is one that you’re okay with not selling at all.

You do this because if you had two prices, a higher one, and a lower one then people will opt for the lower one. But if you have three prices, the buyer will go with the second highest price.

• Use directional cues to guide the line of sight of your visitors towards the product or the opt-in form.

You can do this by using a model looking at what you want them to see. This has been tried and tested, so know that you’re certain to get results.

You could use all of these or any of these biases to optimize your conversion rate and you’ll be amazed by the wonders that these hacks can work.

• There’s a lot more about human beings that’s interesting and that can be used in your favor.

Did you know that visuals are way more effective in getting information into the heads of the people than text?

Using that principle, you could use any one of these to brighten your landing page and consequently get increased conversion rates.

Here’s a list of the following things you could do to spice up your page visually:

• Infographics
• Hand drew images
• Stock photographs
• Videos

There are a few other elements that you could use in pages to make things more interesting.

Here’s a list of them:

• Make the heading Try a large bold font for it so that it stands out over the rest of the text and visually appealing

Not only that but also make sure that the words are inviting as well.

• Also, have CTA buttons that are eye-catchy and can’t be ignored. Button color, size and the words on them are said to have a significant impact on how the visitors react.

4. Social Media Marketing

It’s no secret that the social media is now a major highway for traffic and you could be leading this potential market onto your landing pages directly.

When on any of the social networking sites, people are easily distracted by all the noise present in terms of picture and videos, sharing, friends and so much more.

However, if they’ve noticed your advert somewhere they might want to take a closer look. By redirecting them to a dedicated landing page you’ll be able to take advantage of the attention, but you can only do so by having a landing page prepared.

• Firstly you’ve got to ensure that you’re talking to your visitors whether it is on Facebook or on Twitter.

That’s because you’re not writing content for a web page anymore, but rather for a site where things are a lot more relaxed and people expect to be engaged in a conversation.

• Not only will you have to mind the tone that you are using, you’ll also have to ensure that the content that you are producing is appropriate for the context in which the people are viewing it from.

You have to show that your products or services are relevant in the culture or in accordance with the customs of whichever place your visitors are from. Otherwise, the effect may be disorienting and might result in visitors bouncing.

• Also, it is ideal to create original content for each of the channels that you are catering at.

It might seem tempting to copy paste idea and content from the web page that you already have, but it only goes to show how lazy you are. Reusing content from one of your already existing landing pages could result in a loss of conversion if your ad does not match the offer that you are talking about.

More importantly, your landing page on the social networking site can also be used for generating leads as you ask them to fill in a form to sign up for a weekly update or reminder of what’s new.

• Finally, you have to focus on the offer that you are giving. Why is the offer so special or why should anyone invest any time or effort in it is what you have to advertise.

While people do indulge themselves more nowadays, the ever-expanding market offers the customers a wide range of options at any given time.

For instance, there are already tons of online clothing stores that are selling from the social media sites. If you’re one of them, then how to you persuade visitors that you’re the best in town?

Here’s where you’ve got to build a USP or a Unique Selling Proposition that’ll give you an edge over your competitors.

5. And after you’ve done all of that you can sit back and enjoy watching your sales rocket into outer space!

Conclusion

There’s nothing more satisfying than knowing that you’ve got all of your online marketing strategies sorted out and well-executed.

You will want to handle your SEO, PPC, CRO and social media marketing optimization with respect to your landing pages one at a time since that will allow you to focus and strengthen them respectively.

If in the process you hit an unexpected dead-end and need help resolving it feel free to knock any time and I’ll tell you how you could boost your online marketing strategies using landing pages.

Tell me what you think in the comments below…

Related articles: inbound marketing strategy, boost your online marketing, e-commerce marketing mistake, marketing  psychology,