Ken Tucker: Hey everybody. This is Ken Tucker with Changescape Web. Welcome to this episode of The Marketing Guides for Small Businesses Podcast. Today I’m joined, as usual by the mysterious Mr. P, Jen and Ian. Hey, Paul, how are you doing?
Paul Barthel: Hello.
Ken Tucker: Today we are gonna be talking about something that maybe some of our watchers and listeners don’t really do much with it yet, but it but it’s a really important element that I think you need to look into for your marketing, and that is the use of landing pages. Landing pages are specific types of pages that are created for specific purposes. So we’re gonna unpack that today and talk about the key elements you should consider when you’re using landing pages, when to use ’em, how to use ’em, what should be on ’em, those kinds of things. They play a critical role in conversion. As such, they warrant different design considerations than what we talked about a couple of weeks ago when we talked about the homepage design. Some of it may be very consistent or very much the same, but there are different considerations. Really, landing pages are all about getting your visitors to take action. You wanna keep them laser focused on that action. So we’re gonna discuss what a landing page is, what should go into it, and how to create good landing pages. So welcome guys. Ian, I’m gonna start with you. When should you consider a landing page, and maybe even before we get into that, should we talk about what a landing page is?
Ian Cantle: Sure. They combine well, those two discussions. So a landing page is a webpage and it’s usually designed just as you said with one purpose in mind. And I’ll go into a little bit more detail about this, but really, You’re just trying to offer a visitor one call to action, one key focus of, usually it’s a value exchange of some sort where, let me describe A, a use for it or the main use for it, and I think it’ll become clearer. Usually landing pages are used and it’s a best practice to use them for advertising. And the reason is when you draw someone through an ad, you are presenting them with a very specific call to action. For example, you may be a real estate agent and you may be offering a seller’s guide or a seller’s checklist that will help them prepare their home to sell it. And so you’re offering them something of value. You want them to come to your landing page. You want them to understand clearly from the ad and then the landing page, what it is that they would get, and you wanna make it super easy for them to act on that. So you don’t want a nav bar like you would normally have on your. You want one call to action, which is, yes, I want the PDF download, I want the checklist, I want the ebook, I want the free webinar. Whatever it is you’re offering the value exchange and then it, the real key call to action is usually a form, and at its simplest, it’s your name and email. Again, you’re trying to make sure that the value exchange is appropriate for what you’re offering. And so landing pages have one single call to action. Usually they’re for advertising, but you can also use them for things like live events. They’re fantastic for that. Where you’re at a trade show, you want the people that come to your booth to take a specific action, and so a landing page is fantastic at that, and you can customize the landing page specifically for that event, which obviously creates continuity that is the key of a landing page. You want continuity from the ad or the place that they first get introduced to it, Into the landing page, into the call to action, and then what happens after that? Speaking events, networking events, a promotion, a restaurant offering something, value add. Come five times and get a free something, and you might want to do that through a landing page, sign up form.
Ken Tucker: Just curious, what are your thoughts about, you said name and email address. Do you like to separate first name, last name, or do you just wanna have one field that’s first, you know, that’s just name?
Ian Cantle: My preference is always keep it as simple as possible. So usually it’s full name. The caveat to that is that your crm, your email system that’s on the backend, sucking that information out needs to be able to split out a full name into first and last. That’s my only caveat to that. So a lot of systems do that now automatically, but yeah, because you’re gonna want to have the first name separated out because you’ll actually use that first name more than you’ll use the last name in follow up emails. Hey, Ian. Thanks for downloading our guide.
Ken Tucker: Yeah, personalization. Definitely. So you talked about you might even create different landing pages and customize that landing page for, if you’re going to three trade shows, you might customize it for each one of the three trade shows. One of the things that we do is it’s great because. If you’re using a good system, you can clone that page so you don’t have to start from scratch. You’ve already got a well designed page that, that hopefully, is working and we’ll talk about how you can figure that out here in just a second. We’ve talked in the past about this concept of duplicate page content. Pages you don’t really care about that. You should be setting your landing pages to no index, I think is the best practice. And then you can clone the heck out of ’em. You can make as many copy of them as you want. For different purposes and you already have 80% of the page done. What’s a good landing page? Now you, or maybe even 90%, all you doing is changing the title of the event and maybe everything else is pretty much the same and, maybe just very slight customization to make it more specific to that event. So is that is what you guys do as well?
Ian Cantle: Absolutely. Another layer of sophistication if you really want to get fancy. And of course you get fancy to increase conversions, not to be fancy, and that’s to use dynamic content so you can actually have it so a landing page is dynamically fed from the ad they see. So if they see an ad for e-commerce, you see this all the time. If they see an ad for Nike, Air Jordan, whatever the latest shoe is, when they click on that ad, it can actually use one landing page and present dynamic content related to that specific product. And of course you can do that with other types of businesses as well. If you had multiple lead magnets, you could do the same thing. It’s just, does the sophistication, is it easier to clone the page or does it make more sense to do the dynamic content? But there’s different levels of sophistication you can go to for sure.
Ken Tucker: And also the cost.
Ian Cantle: Yeah, but the personalization, for example, I use product as an example, but, you could even use dynamic content in such a way that you know from their IP address where they’re located, you could actually customize and personalize the landing page to fit their geography or some other aspect, which again, it’s all about conversion. So if that raises conversion, which raises the value to the business, then sometimes that makes sense.
Ken Tucker: Assuming the IP address reveals the proper location.
Ian Cantle: For sure business to business it works really well. Business to customer not as well.
Ken Tucker: Paul, how important is it that the landing page has a clear message and a clear call to action? Ian talked a little bit about this, but I really want to drill down into this and also Ian did talk a little bit about navigation. Just talk about your thoughts in terms of what navigation, if any, should go on the landing page.
Paul Barthel: Yeah, it’s absolutely important to have a clear message and call to action because that’s why you’re sending them there. It’s like running a paper click campaign and sending ’em to your homepage. It just stupid doesn’t make sense. You should never do that. That’s absolutely important. The navigation. I agree with the end. You don’t want it up in the header, but I think that depends on what stage of the buying journey they’re in. Cuz you can drive people to landing pages at different stages of the buyer journey. And if they’re at the top of the marketing funnel that we talk about all the time, I would at the very least put some navigation in the footer because at that point they may just be checking you out and seeing, maybe they never heard of you before they clicked on an ad, but they’ve never heard of you before. Are you a scammer? Are you legitimate? So provide them. Ian said, you may not want it up in the header, but people are used to scrolling. So put some navigation in the footer so that they can go look at your website if that’s where they are on the buyer journey. Now, if you’re at the bottom of that funnel, I would probably not have any navigation. Because at that point, they’re ready to make a buying decision and you want them to take action. So you’re definitely gonna have different landing pages for different stages of the buyer journey. And like I said, if they’re at the top of the funnel, then I would put some navigation in the footer, at least.
Ken Tucker: Ian, you said one call to action. What do you guys think? On the particular landing page.
Paul Barthel: I think what Ian meant was called to action to do one particular thing. Is that what you meant, Ian?
Ian Cantle: That is what I meant, correct. So I would definitely go multiple times on the page.
Paul Barthel: Exactly. I was, I would definitely space that call to action, multiple times throughout the page. Now, one thing I wanted to, I know when you were talking about the landing pages and setting them to no index, when cloning them, you should also. If you’re cloning a page, let’s say you have a page on kitchen remodeling and you clone that and you use that content for a call to, for a landing page, and you set that to no index, you should also set the canonical URL because no index does not mean Google will not crawl it. No index means that Google will not show it in their search results, but they’re still gonna crawl that page, and if you set a canonical url, then you’re telling Google, Okay, Google’s not stupid. As much as Google pisses off sometimes they’re not stupid. They’re smart enough to know, Okay, this is a landing page. Here’s the canonical url. We’re not gonna index it and we’re not gonna look at it as duplicate content.
Ken Tucker: What’s a canonical URL for our listeners?
Paul Barthel: Okay. That tells Google, like I said, Okay, you have a kitchen remodeling page and you clone. And make some change and do different things, and you use those for landing pages. What you’re telling Google is the canonical url. This is the original source of the content, and that’s what you should use in your search results. The no index tells Google Don’t Index is paid. Don’t show it in your search results, but here’s the original source of that content.
Ken Tucker: Jen, let’s go to you. One of the great things about landing pages, like Ian said if you design ’em right and you have the right tool set, you can make copies of these, you can clone ’em, or you can do a variety of different things. There’s this concept we talk about in the world marketing called AB testing. Can you talk about what that is and explain what AB testing is?
Jen Kelly: Yeah, sure. So I’ve got AB testing prepared and then some of the different elements that you could AB. On a landing page, and it’s a neat thing we can do in marketing and you can do it pretty quickly as well. What it refers to is this page gonna get more response or is that page gonna get more response? And by changing some of the content, either videos, images, copywriting, colors, layout of a landing page, Sometimes one will garner more response than the other, and it’s a way to figure out which one will get the most response and then that is the one that you would use for your real campaign. So AB testing, just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should do it. And we do this a lot when we’re getting started with email marketing. I know that’s a separate topic, but the thing. Like any survey or any polling of people, you have to have enough traffic, enough audience to make a difference. If you’re, your landing page is getting pretty low traffic, having an AB test might not be the best thing to do. You wanna do that where you have a significant amount of traffic so that the difference really is apparent to you. So AB testing, Is it version eight that we’re gonna go with, or version B that we’re gonna go with? And the thing is, when you’re doing this kind of testing, you want to change just one element at a time per test. Otherwise, if you’re changing the image and you change the color, and then say your A test outranked your B test. You don’t really know, was it the color change? Was it the image change? What was the element that really worked for us? And so there’s five elements on a landing page that you can change. And again, you wanna change ’em one at a time. Here they are with some examples. So number one would be headlines. Just like when you’re writing a blog post or an article, you can come up with a few different headlines and some are more catchier than others, and you wanna test that as well. So you would put up one landing page with one version of the headline, one landing page with another version. See which one got the most response. Whatever gets the most response, that would be your winner. Number two would be calls to action. So what is it that you’re asking the person to do, and where is that called to action placed On the landing page, you pick up one for version A, one for version B. Test that out and see which one is the winner. Next element you can change or test would be images. So either the actual image. Would, could be swapped out, the size of the images could be swapped out, whether you’re doing color black and white, that kind of thing. That would be another element to try. Number four would be testimonials. So any kinds of great reviews and testimonials from your clients. How you would test that is one landing page would have the testimonials and one would not. So the test there would be, does that third party sort of validation help your audience take the next action that you’re after. And then the last one, and probably one of the hardest things to to test is landing page copy. And I just say hardest thing because when copywriting has done well it’s probably like when art is done well, you just think, Oh, I could have done that. Yeah. You read and everything flows together and makes sense and sounds on brand, but anyone knows who has written it. It’s a real skill and worth investing and to get a real copywriter. So what you’d wanna test is copywriting A and B. So how do you test that? Perhaps there’s a lot of copy to a little copy. Perhaps there’s more humorous copy to more straightforward copy. Those would be a couple of examples of how to test landing page copy. So that’s AB testing for you. And those are five different elements that you can test and. Test one at a time. Otherwise you won’t know what it was that tipped the scale in the favor of one of the tests.
Ken Tucker: Yeah. So a couple questions. One is, do you have any notion of how much traffic is enough traffic to consider doing AB testing? Any rule of thumb. Does anybody have any idea about that?
Jen Kelly: I don’t.
Ken Tucker: Okay. The other comment I had really was, I’m constantly amazed, and one of the easiest ways to see this in action is when you’re doing Facebook ads. When you’re doing a Facebook ad, you almost always want to use images, right? Because the images are gonna be things that are catching people’s attention. I’m constantly amazed when I pick images. It’s Man, I think this image is just gonna nail it. This is gonna be the top performer. And then I watch the performance of the ad over time and it. The image that I personally thought would kill it is the worst performing one or a poorer performing one than the top one. It’s fascinating to see. Don’t use science to the extent that you can to remove your personal bias and your personal preference, because unless every customer you have or client you have is exactly you, it’s not gonna perform the same way.
Jen Kelly: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more on that. And we see that in other areas, much if we’re looking at traffic for blogs and articles, nine times out of 10 it’s always, on our sites, on our client sites, it’s always the one where the client is really, What’s so interesting about that article? Oh my God. And it’s the best performing one.
Ken Tucker: Ian, let’s talk about UTM codes. Is there any value for UTM code? For a landing page, what is UTM code and how does that help you out?
Ian Cantle: Hang on, I’m gonna Google what it means, what it stands for again.
Paul Barthel: Urchin Tracking Module. It goes back to a company called Urchin that invented the concept and Google bought them. And the name stuck.
Ian Cantle: All right.
Jen Kelly: So, I can tell you that’s why we always ask technical questions to Paul.
Ian Cantle: That was awesome. I actually Googled it just before you started talking. I thought it was universal tracking module, but it’s urchin because we’re tracking urchins. Everybody else, Yeah. Yeah. In the ocean. First of all, a UTM code. What it is it’s a bit of code that you can set up to mean certain things. As an example from your Google ads, you can say, Attach this UTM code to the final url. Or webpage address that you’re sending people to. What the UTM code then allows your system to do. When I was talking about dynamic content, allows your page, if you’re using dynamic content to see what the different codes are in that extended UTM code. So as I was explaining prior, If you wanted to geographically focus or personalize things and your AD can pull that information out, put it in a UTM code, you can then use dynamic content to then present something different to people, the flag of the state that they’re in or whatever it is. It’s really a way to use content or information from an ad, pull it over to a website.
Ken Tucker: Does it have any merit in terms of helping you back lead sources if you’re sending people to the same landing page from a couple of different sources?
Ian Cantle: Absolutely. Yeah. That’s, as an advertiser, that’s one of the main uses we use it for is we want to know where somebody is coming from. So if we have ads on. Facebook, YouTube, whatever it is, the UTM code can include the source, which is very valuable for us for tracking purposes for sure.
Ken Tucker: Okay. Yeah. All right, cool. Paul might have some additional comments about that too.
Paul Barthel: I put a UTM code example in the chat. .
Ken Tucker: Ah, okay, cool.
Paul Barthel: There’s some standardized things you can track sources where it came from. Medium is like in the example, was it an email? And the campaign is whatever you’re calling the campaign. The content usually used to track like your call to action. Was it at the bottom? Did they click on a button at the bottom? Did they click on a bot button at the top? If you have a contact form, if. Two contact forms. Was it the one at the top? Was it the one at the bottom? That’s getting rather sophisticated to track that But yeah, the UTM codes, it helps you know where these things came from. What the source was, what the campaign was. If you’re running two different campaigns or three different campaigns and you’re AB testing those campaigns, that UTM code will tell you which campaign is performing the best.
Ian Cantle: And you can even have it apply the transfer in what search term somebody had entered in order to get that ad, which is pretty powerful as an advertiser as well.
Ken Tucker: Yeah. It’s not necessarily a feature a function of the landing page, but it’s a critical component that if you have the opportunity and the technical chops to be able to do it, it’s gonna add real value in terms of helping you track and identify the best performing pieces of your entire campaign. Paul, let’s get to you. This idea of social proof for elements of authority. Or expertise are those appropriate to put on a landing page? And if so, do you have any guidance on where those things ought to go?
Paul Barthel: Yes, you should absolutely have them on your landing page because that’s, it goes back to we talk about reviews a lot and how important they are, and especially goes back to where they are in the buyer journey. If. They’re at the bottom of the funnel, so to speak, and you’re on their short list, it’s probably less important. Not that you shouldn’t have them, but if they’re at the top of the funnel, yeah it’s absolutely important cuz that’s one of the first things they want to know. Is this company legitimate? Do they know what they’re doing? What kind of expertise do they have? What do their customers say as far as where they go, they should be spaced throughout the page, I think, but they should definitely be near the top. Like I said, that’s one of the first things people wanna know, especially at the very beginning of that buyer journey at the top of the funnel. That’s one of the first things they want to know is this a legitimate company? If you put that way down at the bottom in someone’s at the top of the funnel, they may not scroll down and see it. They should definitely be on there and they should be spaced throughout the page, but they should definitely be above the fold as we say.
Ken Tucker: You mentioned reviews. Are there any other elements of authority or expertise, ways that you could demonstrate expertise on a page?
Paul Barthel: Yeah. Testimonials, reviews, any kind of social proof if you,
Ken Tucker: What about like logos of customers you’ve done business with or you’ve done business with?
Paul Barthel: It goes back to reviews, but if you have a customer did a video testimonial for you, definitely put that on there.
Ken Tucker: Obviously, any certifications or key memberships, like if you’re a member of a Chamber or Better Business Bureau or things like that as well, I think are also good examples of that. Jen, let’s talk about I think another piece of content that I think is important to go on the landing page, and that is really the copywriting that addresses the value proposition. How do you write that good value proposition section of a landing page?
Jen Kelly: When we talk about the value proposition, so what is your user? What is the person that is gonna download or get whatever is on that landing page? How is it gonna change your life? How is it gonna improve their business? How’s it gonna improve their situation? When we talk about changing your life, it all will be it’s a silver bullet. I’m being funny there, but there is going to be a change or a promise. That your user is expecting as a result of using or reading or downloading the content that is available for them on that landing page. So all kidding aside, whether it’s they’re fixing something within their house, they’re fixing something within their business, they’re starting to learn something about a concept for their business or for the client that they don’t yet know yet, that is the change that they want to happen as a result of downloading whatever it is that you have for them on that landing page, the importance of having the value proposition there is that’s the promise. You’re gonna remind them how their life will be better, how their clarity will happen, how their problem will be solved as a result of taking the next action. How do you get to that? I haven’t taken this full disclosure, but I know, Ken, you’re a big fan of and certified within the StoryBrand Framework, so it is worth for all the small business owners out there, if you haven’t done something like that already invest the time in getting very clear and StoryBrand is a good way to do that. Very clear about the messaging of your company, the messaging and the value proposition will come out of that work. And it’s the kind of thing that it is the value proposition is the benefit that the customer gets as a result of interacting, buying, downloading some of the content. It should be pretty close to the top of the landing page, and it should be reiterated throughout the landing page. So the customer is reassured that the next step will promise what you deliver. And that’s the other thing too. While we make fun of your life will change, it’ll all be roses and rainbows. The value proposition and what you’re promising has to be something that you really can. If it really is clarity, if it really is the best price, if it really is more information, don’t be baiting and switching. Don’t be over promising whatever it is that you can deliver to make that user, that customer’s life better. It’s gotta be tied in and legitimate. Legitimate to what you really can do.
Ken Tucker: Yeah. Tied to the specific call to action that you’re doing.
Jen Kelly: Yeah, you’re right.
Ken Tucker: For us, we do assessments. We do this total online presence audit or some kind of a website assessment, for example. You wanna explain how is that gonna be beneficial? If I give you my contact information and say, Okay, yeah, I want you to do this for me, or even a ebook, I wanna get a guide to the exact image dimensions for every social media platform you wanna explain. Now instead of having to fumble around and figure out and upload an image and to find out that it looks like crap on the social media platform, now you know the right size as you’re designing it to begin with. So it’s gonna save you time, it’s gonna make your images pop. You wanna describe all of those kinds of things as the value in advance so that they can visualize, Okay. Yeah. Like you said, this is gonna provide that transformation. It’s gonna solve this problem for me.
Jen Kelly: Yeah.
Ken Tucker: Ian, this kinda leads into it. The lead magnet is that thing that people are going to the landing page typically to take advantage of. What role does a lead magnet play in a landing page structure? And then also just talk a little bit about the importance of the service or the solution that, that you’re offering.
Ian Cantle: Sure the role of the lead magnet is a common thread that should be running through your entire campaign. Again, we’re talking about specifically the landing page, but the landing page lives in isolation. Unless there’s an ad or social posts or organic traffic being sent to it. Somehow you need traffic. Being sent to it. The lead magnet is what will get you, first of all, traffic to your landing page, because that’s gonna be the carrot or the enticement, or whatever term you wanna use. It’s that magnet. It’s the attracting factor that gets someone to first click on that ad to first be brought to the landing page. And then once they’re at the landing page, of course, the role of the lead magnet is to get them to act, to exchange value with you. To give you their email address and their name so that you can then nurture that relationship, offer more value, and move them towards through their buying journey to a buying decision. Right? That’s really why you would invest the time, money, and energy into. A landing page, an ad campaign, a lead magnet. The title of the lead magnet is really important. I, Jen talked about AB testing headlines and that kind of stuff. The value of what you call this lead magnet has to talk. To the person, resonate with them about the value and the transformation that they’re going to receive from this piece. And then of course you have supporting copy that supports that. But the title, just like subject lines in an email. The title is so important.
Ken Tucker: Cool. So Paul, when you’re creating a landing page, very commonly have a form where you’re asking people to provide some information as that call to action. What are your thoughts in terms of what should you collect? What is the minimum information you should collect and how much should you collect? Would that vary based on the type of lead magnet that you’re providing?
Paul Barthel: I don’t know that it varies based on the type of lead magnet, because the purpose of a lead. Really is to get their information so you can remarket to them. Really, I would say the minimum that you need. At the very least, you want their email address. I think you should get their name because if you’re gonna put them into some kind of nurture sequence and you want to customize that message, you’re gonna have to have that. There’s some sources that say you should just get an email address, and there’s a lot of lead magnets that’s all they ask for. But I think the problem with that is all you can do then send out a generic message. You can’t customize it with their name, which I think is important. So I would say at the very least, first name and email. And I don’t think that varies based on what you’re offering, because like I said, the purpose is you’re gonna reach back out to them. Then as you remarket them, as you do an email campaign, whatever you’re doing, you can always get additional information later, but you don’t need their name, address, phone number. You don’t need all that for an email for a lead magnet. You just don’t need it, and it’ll turn people off. It’ll make them less likely to fill it out.
Ken Tucker: So having said that, in my mind, and first of all, not every lead magnet is free, right? There are some paid things that are low cost, but very potentially high value for somebody. That’s a good way to try to test people out to see if there’s good alignment. So I guess what, the reason I ask that question is because I’m thinking if I’m gonna have a lead magnet on my website that is one $99 marketing assessment. Whatever I might charge for something like that. I don’t wanna do that for everybody. I want some pre-qualification to take place, so I may want to ask them some additional information because one, if it’s paid, there’s the concern that you need to deliver more, even more value because somebody’s paying for something. So if it’s a marketing assessment, I might ask for your website url. Give me your Facebook page, Give me any other social media accounts you have, something like that. It really just depends on what you’re trying to achieve in a try. A landing page scenario where you’re trying to get somebody to actually give you money to make that first small transaction. Because once they give you money, it’s easier for you to get them to spend more with you, to come back and be a customer with you again if they have a good experience. If that’s your goal, then I think it’s appropriate ask for more qualifying information. We work with home remodeling contractors and sometimes they’re giving a free estimate to maximize the number of forms that are submitted. Sure, you wanna minimize the information you’re asking for, but you need to monitor that, engage that in my opinion. And Paul, you, I, you may have different thoughts. I’d love to hear them. If you’re offering a free estimate, then sometimes maybe it’s worth saying, What’s your address? Because why even bother with it if it’s not even in an area that you serve? What is the square footage of your property? Or how old are your windows? Depending on whatever home improvement project it might be to make sure that it’s a valuable. Lead, because after all, we’re really, the whole purpose of a landing page is to generate leads.
Paul Barthel: Yeah. I guess it’s just my thought process that if it’s a free estimate, I don’t look at that as a lead magnet. I look at that as they’re asking for an estimate, in which case, yes, absolutely. You’re gonna ask for a lot more information. Now, what you said about some kind of paid consultation that, yes, that’s different, but to me, a lead magnet, you’re just trying to get your foot in the door, like you said, you’re just trying to get them to do something. Download a checklist, take a survey, whatever it is, and in those situations, I think the less information you ask for, the more success you’re gonna have. If it’s a paid kind of thing, you can ask for more information because if they’re gonna give you their money, then they’re probably gonna be more willing to give you information. If it’s downloading a checklist, taking a survey. Then I think the less you as far is better.
Ian Cantle: We have a general rule. We always look at this as a value exchange. So think of a scale, a balancing scale, where you put one thing on one side and another thing on the other side. We want that scale to be equaled in this value exchange. And so I tend to side or consider things lead magnets to me oftentimes. When we present the idea of lead magnets, people are thinking of a downloadable pdf. A lead magnet is an offer. It’s anything I can offer as a business to you as a visitor. That is an enticement. So for example, the higher the value I’m going to offer someone, the more information I’m going to ask for. Sometimes it’s because the delivery. Thing requires more information. For instance, we offer a free local SEO report card in order to fill that report card. First of all, the value of it is much higher than a PDF document, but then for us to fill that service to the visitor, we need a lot more information from them. We need to understand where they’re located. We need to understand what the URL of their website is. We need to understand the true name of their business so that we can find it against their Google business profile. There’s a bunch of other things that we need, but it’s very clear that the value they’re gonna be getting is very high. So we always look at it as that value exchange. And as you said, Ken, if you’re offering, whether it’s a paid or an unpaid audit or consultation or something like that, like we do occasionally, we offer free website reviews. Huge value, but we need a lot more information from the user. I would always say ask for the minimal amount of information to get people to act, but as a business, you want the maximum amount of information that will help you qualify them as a potential prospect.
Ken Tucker: I guess what I was trying to get to, is there’s not any one right answer. It really depends on what are you trying to accomplish and what is the nature of the lead magnet or the offer to is out there.
Ian Cantle: And if you’re finding that you’re attracting people to your landing page, but they’re not actually completing the form, then take out some of the requirements, keep reducing it down to whatever’s gonna get people to act, and then you might have to do more on the back end of the funnel, but that’s okay.
Ken Tucker: Jen, we haven’t talked about the value of custom thank you page, but when I think of landing pages, to me it’s not just a single page, it’s a bundle of pages. The thank you page. At a minimum, can you talk about what a custom thank you page is, why it’s valuable, and what you might be able to do with additional pages in the sequence following your landing page?
Jen Kelly: . Sure. Yeah. To explain what a landing page is. Let’s pretend the lead magnet is a downloadable pdf. Let’s just go with that one. As soon as you enter your information and collect the download, typically what happens is another page comes up that says, Thank you. Your download is ready for you. And here’s where there’s all kinds of forks in the road. A pretty low level thank you page, and I’m sure we’ve all experienced it is thank you. Watch your email for the download. And so you’re watching your email because you’re in the zone to get this information right now and the thing doesn’t show up for 10 minutes or 30 minutes or whatever. And so in between that time, you as a user is wondering, did like it did this work? How long should I wait? It didn’t say I don’t have the information right now. I’m ready to get on with my learning or take the next step, and it’s just stalled there. And the problem with that in that kind of process is you could lose the attention of your potential customer. Boom, they’re off doing something else and you lost it there.
Ken Tucker: So what’s your recommendation there?
Jen Kelly: The recommendation would be to have a very good custom landing page, which would mean in my case, which I would suggest, is that you have the downloadable item right there. So thank you. Here’s your item, as well as sending it to the email as well. Double duty on that if they wanna download it right now. There we go as well. Even though we talk about the funnel in the fact that not everybody’s ready to buy right now, there’ll be a small percentage of people that are ready to buy right now. What can they do right now to take the next step? There’s also another bunch of people that are ready to take several different steps. Are they gonna watch a video? Are they gonna learn more about your company, About your offer? So your thank you page. Lead them further down the funnel by showing them different information now that you’ve secured their interest in your downloadable content. With the thank you pages. Now, I do know we just had this experience the other day. We were using a system, the thank you page that came out. Frankly, this was on an email marketing system. It was not customizable, and it’s a real disservice to your users in order to be able to capitalize on their enthusiasm to take the next step. All of that ramble to say a thank you page has to have the downloadable content available there. It’s gotta be sent to the email as well. If you have videos, if you have other pieces of content, if you have other information that can be on that thank you page to help the person come down the funnel have that there as well.
Ken Tucker: One thing too, I want to add to that is from a remarketing perspective, having a custom landing page where you know somebody’s on that page, they’re only getting there because they submitted the form to claim that lead magnet. So now you might have somebody who hit your landing page but didn’t submit the form successfully. And then you’ve got the people who did submit the form successfully and you know that they did because they’re on a custom thank you page. So now you can target those two different audiences and run different ads to ’em because you one may have got stalled. Think about an e-commerce. It’s hey, you put this in your shopping cart, but you didn’t, actually make the purchase. Then the others are like, Oh, hey, how did you like these shoes? By the way, people who bought these shoes, they also kinda like to go with buy socks or whatever. It’s got real benefits there. I think the other thing too is, like you said it’s a really good way to move people further along through the buyer’s journey. Ian, I know you and I follow some people who talk about you’re gonna use some kind of a resource, especially something that people are gonna have to take time to read one of the things I would do and have, have done and consider doing. Every time I create a, some kind of a PDF that somebody’s gonna have to read or review is, Hey, Skip having to read this and signed up to watch this webinar or this video, or, Why don’t you just go ahead and book an appointment and I’ll talk you through what is in this pdf. You can do different things like that so you can have a booking calendar on your thank you page, which is a really common practice that I do to get people to say, Yeah, I’m interested in this, and it’s okay. You know what? Yeah, I probably just ought to go ahead and talk to this guy. There are a lot of cool things that you can do. Don’t just stop at the landing page and take the easy way out and say, Hey, thanks for filling out our form as a message that you display. You can do that, but that’s really limiting yourself.
Paul Barthel: There’s another reason to use a thank you page is for tracking capabilities. There’s a lot of sources out there that say thank you page, Just track the button, click. The problem with that is if you have required fields and they don’t fill that out and they click that button Google’s gonna track that as a click. Then they go back and fill in the required fields and they click it again. Now in your analytics, that’s gonna show up as two conversions.
Ken Tucker: Oh, cool. So here’s one that I’m curious to get your guys’ thoughts on. This is for all of you guys on the panel. How long should a landing page be in terms of not exact number of words, but are we talking in 200. We talking 2000? Longer than that, somewhere in between? What do you guys think?
Ian Cantle: My view is as long as necessary in order to provide the person with enough information to act again. To me it’s the value exchange. If it’s super simple and super clear, sometimes a great headline and image of the. Lead magnet and some bullet points of the benefits they’re gonna get is exactly all they need in order to act because it’s such a low value exchange. But if there’s back list, for example, if it’s a higher value exchange, especially with something paid like you talked about, Ken, then I think you really need to offer the authority, support the testimonials. I signed up for this. This is the result I. I think you do need to understand the value exchange or go back to what Jen talked about with AB testing. Do a short one, do a long one, see which one converts the best. And there you go.
Ken Tucker: Yeah. Jen or Paul?
Paul Barthel: I agree with Ian. As short as possible. There was a study done recently, a matter of fact, Ken, I think you sent it to me, that the shorter landing pages actually convert better, but again, it goes back to if what you’re offering is a high dollar item then you may need a slightly longer landing page. Additional resources.
Jen Kelly: What I would say is shorter, but I would say just don’t get in the way. Remember how someone got to your landing page, There was an ad or something enticing and they have decided, yes, I either I want that or I wanna learn more. And so stop selling, give them what they’ve come for.
Ken Tucker: Yeah. Paul, I think the article you were talking about, if I remember, I didn’t say like the sweet spot was like 200 words.
Paul Barthel: Yeah, I think it was.
Ken Tucker: That, that blew me away. Ian, I agree with you. If it’s an ebook with a clear value proposition where the title of the ebook and five or six bullet points tell you exactly what you’re gonna learn when you get this ebook or checklist, I can see where 200 words or even less can work really well and be super effective. We’ve all seen, because a lot of marketers wind up buying a lot of different tools, we’ve all seen landing pages that are probably 10,000 plus words. So it really. I was just curious if you guys had any insights or thoughts.
Ian Cantle: I call those the beat you into submission landing pages because you might have a little interest. And then by the, usually there’s a time sensitivity to those ones. And they just keep beating it into you. And nobody ever reads the whole page usually.
Ken Tucker: So speaking of time sensitivity, we haven’t talked about that. So let’s spend our last couple of minutes talking about that. Does scarcity and urgency improve the performance of a landing page? If so, what are the scenarios of where that might apply?
Paul Barthel: That’s an interesting question because I don’t know. I guess if you actually enforce it over time, it can, but how often have you seen some commercial on TV where you have to do this in the next 10 minutes or the next two days and then three weeks later you see the same thing and you have to do this in the next three days? And I guess it, it can, especially if it’s a pricing thing and you have a countdown on there. But I guess for me it’s not gonna work. The scarcity thing for me isn’t gonna.
Ian Cantle: I think it only works with discount or added value offers. I think for most lead magnets it doesn’t work.
Ken Tucker: Yeah. It’s more for offers for sure. Like one of the things I’m thinking is, Free teeth whitening or $50, I don’t know how much teeth whitening is, but let’s say it’s a hundred dollars you’re doing for 50 bucks, you might wanna say, We’re only doing five of these this month. , And that’s legitimate because the business may only be able to absorb five more of those. But it’s valuable to them to do it at that price because they want to get people in the door, because if they’re in the door once, they’re probably gonna come back over and over again, that the lifetime value could be massive. When you think. If the lead magnet is truly an offer, you can say you can buy this now and get it at this price, but if you wait until August 15th, it’s gonna go up to this price. A lot of people do that to launch new products, to get as many people to buy and buy in, just to generate some cash flow so that they can take that cash and reinvest it. So there are a lot of good things to that and it definitely, I think statistics show that scarcity and urgency do drive action. It just has to be aligned with the right lead magnet as you set in. All right. Any of the last thoughts, guys?
Ian Cantle: Just one thing that I know we talked a little bit about the buyer’s journey, but I just think that’s really key for people to understand is that you should have a plan. You should understand what your landing pages role is in the overall lead funnel buyer’s journey. And if you don’t, you’re not gonna be as successful. So you really need to think through this process of where in the buyer’s journey does this add this landing page, this lead magnet, and the follow up fit, and then plan accordingly. But your landing page doesn’t live in isolation. So be smart about how you leverage it and it can be exceedingly powerful in attracting people to your lead funnel.
Ken Tucker: Yeah, and we’ve talked about funnels, sales funnels, marketing funnels in past episodes. I just really wanted to make sure we drilled down specifically into talking about. One of the most important aspects of that, and that is the landing page. If you have any questions, go back and check past episodes we’ve done on the entire sales funnel, because the landing page isn’t sufficient. You’ve gotta have the A traffic source, you gotta have some kind of a nurture campaign. None of us care. It’s Oh wow, I got 500 downloads of this ebook, and nothing ever happens because I’m not doing any nurture or follow up. I don’t think that’s valuable for anybody. Cool. Thanks guys. As always. If you like this podcast, please share it with your friends. Please go out there and review us on your favorite podcast platform, whether that’s Apple, Spotify, Amazon, Google, or any of the others that are out there. And we will see you next week.