SALES FUNNEL BASICS: THE LANDING PAGE

There’s a LOT that goes on between the time the customer first sees your brand to them actually taking out and buying your product. Put yourself in that situation, if a brand was marketing to you, what would they need to do to get you to take out your wallet?

Good question, and a great way to start thinking about sales funnels. The entire purpose of a funnel is to guide the customer, step by step, from a “cold” lead into a buyer, and eventually a returning customer. The point is to control every aspect of the customer’s journey, curate the journey just for this customer, and automate it at scale so you can convert thousands, even millions, of prospects this way.

In this article, we are going to focus on one of the crucial pieces of the sales funnel: the landing page. Also known as an opt-in, the landing page’s role is to generate leads - THAT’S IT. The entire purpose is to collect emails, phone numbers, install pixels, etc. somehow to capture some kind of customer information that we will then be able to use later.

Let’s start with the purpose. Like we mentioned above, your landing page needs to have a single goal - collecting data. In this example we’ll use emails - and in order to collect an email we need an email collection form, that’s it. We don’t need to collect first names, last names, social security numbers, etc. The more words and forms you have, the more chances of clicking away there are. We want to give customers a swift and fast experience on the landing page.

Once you figure out the purpose of the landing page, everything in copy should be catered to that singular purpose.

Make clicking away as difficult as possible. Take out your site’s menu, take out the footer, any other buttons that might get in the way. The only "interactive" button should be the one that accomplishes your landing page's purpose.

For the customer’s information (email) we need to give them something in exchange. This is really the customer’s first commitment. It’s easier to “pay” with an email than it is to pay with their credit card. So the barrier to convert is lower, and we can offer something in exchange as well.

Free things work the best. E-books, giveaway entries, recipes, cheat sheets, something quick, consumable, that can benefit the customer as soon as they give you their email address. Stay away from long offers, like free webinars etc.

Long offers will generally capture less emails, but the emails they do capture will be high quality. You need to know where to strike the balance for your landing page.

The entire page should be about your singular free offer, and capturing their email. You don’t need to add anything else there.

The 5 things to include on your landing page:

1. WHAT IT IS (offer or product) AND that IT is FREE.

2. WHAT IT IS (again) AND HOW IT can HELP the customer.

3. Email or other form for information submission.

4. COUNTER the MAJOR doubt (put yourself in the customer’s shoes, seeing this page for the first time, and counter what they would doubt (free shipping, all expenses paid,etc.))

5. Social proof. Link your instagram or facebook feed. Testimonials or review links, somehow establish legitimacy.

The above 5 make up the MUST HAVE elements for a landing page. Outside of them the best thing you can do is put yourself in the customer’s shoes, and add what you would WANT to see, and take out any fluff.

Test your page! Make sure everything loads fast, and is optimized for both mobile and desktop view.