Landing pages are the first impression visitors receive of your website or business. If you optimize your landing pages correctly, visitors should be able to capture the essence of what you are offering at a glance.
With that quick look, you still want them to remember your business, so personal, emotional and highly targeted mental hooks will help build that awareness.
Landing Page Optimization
Keep in mind that when people visit your website, they land on many different pages. When investigating landing page optimization, analyze your top landing pages and build a plan to optimize those first.
Landing pages have several key elements in common, but what works for others might not yield the same results for your website. You’ll want to look at the key elements to tailor them to your business and perfect your landing page sales pitch.
1. Headline
The headline is the hook for your landing page. A great headline grabs the attention of your audience and gets them to keep reading. For landing page optimization, you can approach the headline in several ways.
One is to confirm the offer from the ad and put additional explanation of the value in the subheading. Alternatively, you can put the value proposition in the heading and add a product explanation in the subheading.
With either of these approaches, you only have 5 to 8 seconds to convince your audience that your offer is worth their time and attention.
2. Connection with the reader
The purpose of your landing page is to connect the audience with your business. By connecting with readers, you open them up to the sales message later on the page.
Asking questions to get them nodding and verifying the benefits before they read on will connect your readers to your landing page sales pitch. Ask the visitor:
- Do you wish you could?
- Do you want to?
- Are you tired of?
- Have you ever?
These are all great questions that connect readers to the painful problems that your business can solve, as you will explore with them later.
3. Emphasize the pain points: your origin story
Now that you’ve connected with the readers, tell your story. Focus on the pain of the problem you were encountering that drove you to work toward a solution.
People will buy into the solution, but only if it they are truly in pain and you remind them of that fact. Remember: Solving the right problem can make you rich.
4. Solution
You’ve clearly stated the pain of the problem you were experiencing. Here is where you briefly describe your solution to that problem. Offer your unique value proposition (UPV), the single clear and compelling message that states why your products are different and worth buying.
Make your prospect aware of the value they will derive from your business in a clear, quantifiable way.
In addition to offering your UPV, you’ll want to address the three most common objections. Imagine the future or what life would be like with your product and why someone would object to your product, and address those areas.
5. Proof
Word of mouth or proof of approval by others is always a driving source of success.
Always make abundant use of trust signals such as logos for e-commerce, recognizable clients, publications that featured you or your product, and testimonials or compliments from trusted brand names.
When collecting trust signals, don’t forget media mentions and likes/tweets/+1 on social media sites.
6. Offer Details
Once you’ve made your case, you’ll want to explain your offer in detail. Describe exactly what they will get plus the benefit of each item. This area should be like your headline, but should also offer an exciting description.
Think about using “hypnotic” words such as “you,” “imagine,” and “because.” These words help connect with the reader. “You” makes the offer more personal; “imagine” invokes desire and stimulates their unconscious mind to give them a sense of owning your product; and “because” satisfies the brain’s natural search for reasons, triggering the “reason-why” reflex.
Your offer should be enticing, something that will be desired by your visitors.
7. Price
Before you talk about the price, your landing page should validate the need. Demonstrate the value of your product and address objections by repeating major benefits from your pricing page. Once those areas are addressed, then move on to the price.
It’s important not to underestimate your worth. Start with value generated or cost savings from your product, rather than the experience from similar cheap products. Focusing on your worth rather than comparisons will help justify your particular price.
8. Action
A perfect landing page sales pitch urges visitors to take action sooner, rather than waiting and deciding later. The goal of your optimized landing page is to funnel visitors down a desired pathway.
Creating a sense of urgency or scarcity guides people to make a decision and buy now.
Once the desired pathway is established, finish with a call to action for something specific. Be clear and concise so visitors don’t get confused as to what they should do next.
9. Address final risks
Don’t forget to address any final risks such as return policies, trial period clarifications and money-back guarantees.
10. Call to action
Tell visitors exactly what action to take. Offer a single call to action that is visually obvious. You can provide the call to action as text copy or button text.
Provide a short form with the call to action. Visitors should be asked to fill out as few fields as possible, with the information you really need.
If you would like more information, it can be obtained on the thank-you page.
Bonus Tips
11. Confirmation page
A thank-you or confirmation page is a great way to guide visitors to other related material on your website that might interest them, such as related products, guides, and other helpful information.
You can always ask for more information on this page if you want more than was collected on the call-to-action form.
12. Customization
You might want to customize your landing page based on your various audiences or channels. Consider changing your message depending on where your users are coming from:
Visitors from social media such as Facebook or Twitter posts are different from those that arrive from a PPC ad or link from a monthly newsletter.
For landing page optimization, you should examine your largest or top-converting traffic sources. Make sure your landing page, associated ads and keywords accurately represent your value proposition based on these traffic sources.
Another issue to consider for your perfect landing page sales pitch is length. Your landing page can be short and minimal or long and rich, depending on the audience, channel, and product.
Longer landing pages work well for products that are more complicated or newer to the market, in which case the landing page needs to build visitor trust.
Shorter landing pages work well for products that are easy to understand or already have strong brand awareness and visitor trust.