How to Use a Landing Page for Lead Generation

In digital marketing, landing pages are a single web page that appears in response to clicking on a search engine result, marketing promotion, a link in a marketing email, or an online advertisement. Landing pages look like a page on a website, but unlike a web page, landing pages have no navigation on them. Landing pages are designed to convert visitors into leads by capturing information about the visitor through lead gen forms.

Essentially, if a page has no navigation and its sole purpose is to convert visitors into leads with a contact form, it’s considered a landing page.

There are plenty of landing page builders out there. The best one for your business depends on your goals, needs, and budget. But once you build a landing page, how do you use it? Here’s how landing pages usually work in practice:

1. A user sees a call to action (CTA) and ends up on a landing page with a form (this CTA can be found in several places, including but not limited to an email, a PPC ad, a website pop-up, or a blog)
2. The user fills out a form on the landing page, which converts them from a visitor into a lead for your business
3. The information from the lead gen form is stored in your leads database
4. A sales development representative contacts the lead based on what he or she knows about them (the more information you have from the lead gen form, the better—this helps you craft unique messaging that serves the needs of your captured lead)

Your digital strategy team can use other tools to get even deeper insights about your landing page visitors (e.g. when the lead converted and what other interactions they’ve had with your site). Knowing this information can help you nurture leads in a more targeted way. Nurtured leads become qualified leads faster, and when you qualify leads, you’re moving them through the sales funnel and enabling your sales team to sell more.

Now that we know how landing pages work, let’s take a closer look at best practices when using them in a lead generation program. Landing pages are powerful lead generation tools, and when used correctly, you’ll see your sales numbers start to skyrocket.

Here are five tips for how you can generate more leads using a landing page.

A landing page is one single page—no navigation, no pop-ups, and no external links. You have one chance to impress visitors, and design is a huge part of this. A great landing page that converts starts with design; if the design doesn’t inspire confidence, visitors will lose interest quickly. Here are a few tips for creating a landing page with a good design:

• Create a layout that’s easy to follow, flows well, and is understandable to anyone
• Use theme-specific colors throughout the page
• Utilize shapes to organize, connect, or separate elements and content (shapes can also create movement and provide depth or texture)
• Let your text breathe (space things out properly) so that the page is easy to read
• Use big, bold text for your titles and calls to action (CTAs)

If you need some examples, check out these landing page designs for inspiration.

For someone with a lot of experience writing web content, sacrificing SEO may sound crazy. But the purpose of a landing page is not to rank for keywords or to boost the SEO value of your website. Writing a landing page is not about SEO content writing, but rather conversion-focused copywriting. On landing pages, you can sacrifice your SEO value because you’re directly trying to get users to convert right there on that page.

Here are three tips for writing conversion-focused copy for a landing page:

• Work on your CTAs. Landing pages shouldn’t have large sections of text; instead, small text should be broken up by several CTAs. The purpose of a CTA is to trigger an action and it can serve many purposes (e.g. subscribe to a newsletter, sign up for a free trial, buy a product or service, schedule a meeting, etc.). No matter what the intention of a CTA is, make sure it’s short, attention-grabbing, and to the point.
• Add testimonials and case studies. Case studies and testimonials from existing customers help you build credibility. Using these assets on a landing page will only entice visitors to want to contact you more, so make sure to highlight your biggest successes somewhere on the page.
• Highlight the main benefits of your offering. Landing pages allow you to really home in on a particular product or service and highlight the main benefits of that offering. Many companies make the mistake of over-explaining what they do on their landing page. Instead, focus on writing about how your product or service solves a problem your customers have. What is the benefit of what you have to offer, and why should users contact you? This is what will convert.

Use these tips to create high-converting content, but don’t be afraid to test multiple landing pages at a time. You might find that some content is working, while other content is not. This can help you improve your strategy and convert even more leads using landing pages.

Implementing changes based on performance is a good thing. When you launch a landing page, make sure that someone is constantly monitoring its performance. Here are eight landing page metrics you should be tracking:

• Landing page views
• Sessions by source
• Goal completions/conversions
• Visitors-to-contact ratio
• Average time on page
• Bounce rate
• Pages per sessions
• Top pages by pageviews

Tracking these metrics will help you measure the success of your campaign. From there, you can determine if you need to adjust your landing page to drive more conversions.

Don’t neglect your lead gen forms; after all, they are the thing that serves the main purpose of your landing page. Yes, a landing page should have conversion-focused copy and excellent design, but the lead gen form has to be great too. If it’s not, users won’t feel compelled to input their information and contact you.

Make sure that you create a form that (1) stands out from the rest of the page, (2) uses attractive colors (while still matching the theme), and (3) gives a clear or interesting value proposition (book a meeting to learn more, sign up for a free demo, etc.). Also, be sure that you only ask for the minimum information needed. Asking for too much might discourage a user from wanting to fill out the form. A good form only asks for what is needed to contact the visitor: an email address, phone number, and first and last names.

This tip doesn’t have to do with the landing page itself, but more so the process your team follows when a visitor converts into a lead. If you don’t have a process in place for how a lead becomes a customer, it won’t matter how many leads your landing page generates. When a lead comes in from your landing page, who is it emailed to? Then, how does that lead get into the hands of a sales development representative? Who takes the meeting with the lead to determine if they want to buy your product or service offering? All of these are questions you need to ask yourself before you start a landing page campaign.

Once you get the hang of how to create landing pages and how to create copy that converts, you’ll be amazed out how well they complement your sales efforts. Abstrakt Marketing Group has a full team of experts, including designers, professional copywriters, and sales development representatives, who can help make this process easier. We’ll create landing pages, move leads through the sales funnel, and schedule appointments for your business.

Ready to start the conversation? Contact us → book a meeting today.