Need an offer for your landing page? It’s easier than you think.

By: Gayle Davies

This is a challenge that presents itself to small business website owners who are diligently navigating towards the online marketing arena. The challenge of what to offer on your landing page. The offer comes easily for some, but for others it takes nothing less than a 180 degree attitude adjustment.

Let’s face it. Not every business can use discounts, coupons or “end of season” sales. What if you sell ideas, or opinions, medical services or goods that have a high dollar value. If this is you, then you have to adjust your thinking from: “I am the holder of all things valuable and you must pay for my expertise sight unseen.” To: “Let me share some of my knowledge so that you can come to a reasoned decision on your eventual purchase.” Here are two examples of the types of businesses that have to get creative with offers.

Cosmetic Surgery Practice

Landing page offer: Sale on breast implants. Buy one get one free!
Me: Uh, no thank you. Why the quick sale? Are they like….... expiring soon or something?

That wouldn’t quite work would it. So, what do you offer if you are a cosmetic surgeon? Well, put yourself in the shoes of the website visitor. They have questions and concerns. Will I look better? Is the surgery dangerous? Is this doctor a board certified physician? They have landed on your website not necessarily ready to buy but rather they are just looking for answers to their questions.

Offer Solution
The solution is a landing page offer that invites visitors into a special “members only” area of the website after filling out the form and leaving their email address. The "before and after photo" gallery gives the visitor a realistic view of what actual patients looked like before and after surgery, thus answering one of their questions. Once the doctor has the visitor’s email, it is easy enough to send informational emails about the doctor’s qualifications (another question answered), and stats on surgical outcomes (another question answered.) Every email had a link to a landing page that offered free consultations. At some point the visitor (now a lead) will be ready to buy.

Blast Furnaces.
Ok, so you sell blast furnaces. How would this offer work for you. “Buy one, get the second one half off.” Not really. So what the heck can you offer? This is where the attitude adjustment comes in. The “I really want to share my knowledge because if I don’t then visitors can go to the other 1,000 websites that offer my product” attitude adjustment. And it helps to have a certain confidence in yourself and in the product knowledge you have acquired over the years of doing business. You have no idea how much you really know. The trick is to pull that knowledge out and create a valuable, downloadable resource for your visitor.

Offer Solution
The solution is an e-book. Think back through the years. Think about all the questions your customers have asked. Answer those questions in a downloadable e-book offered on your landing page when they fill out the form and leave their email address.

1. What advances have been made in blast furnaces?
2. How is the green revolution going to impact blast furnace operations?
3. How do the features of your blast furnace compare to other brands?
4. How can pig iron be converted to steel? (What? Never mind, skip that one.)

No. You may not get a sale right at that moment. But you will get a number of leads from people who leave their email address. And you can educate your leads with nurturing emails. Begin to form a trusted relationship. A percentage of those leads will turn into sales. Don't let the chore of producing the e-book stop you. It is a simple job for a graphic designer and is well worth the cost.

Are you really stuck on an idea? Send me your website url and I'll look at the first one that comes in. I'll send you an idea you can use for an offer.

Call-to-action buttons are like doorknobs.

by Gayle Davies 

Until someone develops scratch and sniff website technology or some other sensory lure, business owners will have to rely on some tried and true internet marketing realities to attract potential customers surfing the web.

If you have ever walked past a bakery and smelled the yeasty aroma of freshly baked bread and found yourself turning around and walking towards that smell, instantly realizing that you have a need (empty stomach) that needs to be met, you know what I mean.

Call to Action buttons serve the same purpose as that delicious bakery smell. It is the first step you use to convert that anonymous pedestrian into a potential customer. And because your website has the distinct disadvantage of not being able to appeal to all of our 6 senses, Call-to-Action buttons must be designed correctly. They rely mainly on sight.

Website Must-Have

As a small business owner struggling to keep up with new online marketing rules, you have heard all kinds of new terms. Social media, SEO, landing pages, call-to-action buttons. The list is endless but these are the tools you must master if you want your web presence to be successful. Your ROI depends on it.

Let me simplify one tool for you. Call-to-Action buttons. You may know the essential elements of an effective C2A button:

• Create a sense of urgency
• Use contrasting colors
• Make it clickable
• Use compelling images
• Use action words

But how does a call-to-action button translate into a customer or lead? Simply put, they attract your customer’s attention, just like that irresistible bakery smell. Once you have their attention, they will walk to your place of business and place their hand on the doorknob (click the button) in order to open the door to that thing they need (or want). In this case, bread.

Call-to-Action buttons are just doorknobs.

Generate leads before visitors get away

by Claudia Hafner

 

In today's online world someone is considered a lead if they have decided to take some sort of action on your website where they leave contact info.

So? Why should I care? 

You care, because this lead has given you their contact information! You now know they were interested enough in something you had to offer to give it to you. It is the contact information that 'converts' this visitor into a lead; it is tangible evidence of interest.

You have visitors coming to your site all day long, but if they never take an action you may never see them again. While a sale would be nice too, it may be too soon for them. And this is an important point, "they may not be ready to purchase yet." However, they may be ready to get more information if you offer it to them. This provides you an opportunity to help them through their purchasing cycle in a consitent and ongoing manner. 

Make the offer. 

What can you give a visitor in exchange for their contact information? Special information, in-depth information, how-to information, a worksheet to show them a process, on-going information? Whatever your business, product or service, there is something that would further a visitor's experience with you, your business, or your product...and ultimately be useful to the visitor.

Use this offer to convert your visitors into leads by creating a specialized landing page. Tell them why this information will benefit them, what they will receive, and then ask them to fill out some contact info and submit it. 

You now have a lead.

Start creating your specialized landing pages and convert visitors to leads with this downloadable worksheet.

Download our Landing Page Worksheet.

 

 

Increase cost effectiveness of advertising dollars

by Claudia Hafner

Specialized landing pages and calls-to-action reduce costs by increasing the value of your prospects.

When a visitor clicks to your site from a paid search (pay-per-click) or banner ad, it has already cost you the price of a click to get them there. If the page they landed on is specific to the ad, you may have increased the value of that click in several ways.

1. Google likes to see content that matches the Google ad your visitor clicked on. In such cases, Google actually charges less for that click than it would have otherwise.
2. If the visitor sees what they are looking for as soon as they land on your page, they are apt to stick around and read it...and maybe even take some form of action.
   
3. If you offer your visitor something compelling (a call-to-action) in exchange for their contact information, this person has become a lead, which, over weeks, months and years, can potentially bring continued revenue.

As you move your advertising dollars away from interruption marketing to inbound marketing, you want to keep giving your visitor more of what they are looking for through specialized landing pages and calls-to-action.

Think about the different traffic streams through which your visitors are reaching your site. Can you provide more focused content through a landing page designed to give them what they are looking for? Give this some thought and leave comments about the challenges you are facing in this regard.

Start creating your specialized landing pages with this downloadable worksheet.

Download our Landing Page Worksheet.

 

Targeted landing pages help generate leads

by Claudia Hafner  

Tailor specific messages to specific calls-to-action

This is the first in a series of posts devoted to learning more about how specialized landing pages can help convert your visitors and generate leads.

A landing page is literally a page that visitors land on when they click to your site or log on to your homepage. Any page of your website is potentially a landing page. What we want to talk about here are specialized landing pages and calls-to-action.

Your customers are not one-size-fits-all and neither should a single web page try to sell (inform, educate, etc) everything to everyone. Your main website pages have general information that pertain to your broader base of visitors. Hopefully you have traffic coming from a variety of specialized or targeted sources and calls-to-action. Some of these sources might include:

• a link from an email
  
• a paid search ad
• a banner ad
  
• an offline print ad
  
• a direct mailer

Calls-to-action literally ask someone to take some action. They might include:

• Download worksheet
• Subscribe to my blog
• Request information
  
• Learn more
  

All these sources and calls-to-action require some type of specialized landing page.

Specialized, targeted landing pages increase your chances that your visitors from targeted sources will find what they are looking for because the specialized page is customized to talk to them. They may even click on something else you present them with. You want your visitors to stay interested in what you have to say, but you also want to talk about what they are intersted in. Specialized landing pages can really help in this process.

Start creating your specialized landing pages with this downloadable worksheet.

Download our Landing Page Worksheet.