In an earlier post last week I outlined how to create simple and effective B2B landing pages. When I was catching up on my litany of RSS feeds over this weekend I came across this article in Marketing Profs highlighting their Top 5 Best (and Worst) things about landing pages.Almost everything I had covered in my earlier post was covered here. ..except for the following observation that speaks about self directed user segmentation (see clip). This is also a great strategy if you find that your visitors are still varying widely by interests or needs.

On a side note, the article also speaks about the negative effect of landing pages on the brand. While I do believe that to some extent this is true it can be minimized by making the landing pages in high quality in both design and messaging…but I digress!

clipped from www.marketingprofs.com No segmentation—clicks are treated as a commodity. Not all clicks are created equal. Ad response traffic often contains a spectrum of different audience segments. They clicked on the same ad, yes, but not all for the same reason, not all with the same needs. The one-page format of landing pages makes the same pitch to all of them, oblivious to their distinctions. If the page focuses only on one segment, it disenfranchises others; if it tries to speak to all segments at once, its passion and relevance to any one segment are watered down. A better approach is to use a landing path where the first page induces a one-click directed behavioral segmentation choice from respondents—a branch in the path depending on the segment the respondent selects—and then you can speak with conviction and authority to each segment’s specific interests on page two.

Chances are good that if you do even a small amount of online marketing you have come into contact with landing pages.

Landing pages are described in Wikipedia as “a specific web page that a visitor ultimately reaches after clicking a link or advertisement”. This could be anything from a search campaign in Google to a banner ad placed in a local business association. These are almost always transactional pages that exist to help fuel the customer conversion, whether it is to purchase a product, download information, or simply sign up for an email newsletter.

We place a lot of importance on these pages as they are the gateway to all customer interactivity with your company. Get it wrong and you could miss out on a lot of potential revenue. It is especially important in the B2B realm - where the value of the conversion is typically greater.

So in an effort to help you get off on the right foot I have compiled a list of tips that have served me well when creating successful B2B landing pages.

1. Carry the message through from the advertisement: Do everything you can to make sure that you aren’t pushing your traffic to a “one size fits all” landing page. If the ad that brought them was about a particular feature - then highlight that feature. If it was a discount that brought them to you…don’t waste time talking up the feature set. It may be more work to create multiple landing pages…but you will definitely get more conversions
2. Personalize the content: I’ve seen marketers spend hours segmenting a list and crafting a highly customized message that speaks directly to each recipient…only to forward them to a generic landing page once they decide to take action! If your email program allows for personalization of content… drive that personalization through the link in the email and into the landing page. If you want to see how you can do this through using simple javascript, see this earlier post.
3. Keep the form simple and above the fold: You can test this yourself, but I have ALWAYS gotten better response when the form is above the fold. And of course, its always better to limit the amount of information to only that which is necessary. Do you really need to know the state when you have the zip code? If possible its even better if you can…
4. Pre-populate the form: Want to know the easiest way to increase conversion? Pre-populate the form on the landing page. If you are driving traffic from an email campaign then you already have alot of this info…don’t ask them for it again! Again, you can do this using simple javascript.
5. Minimize outbound links: You spent alot of money to get the visitor to the landing page so it is perfectly acceptable to drive traffic to a landing page optimized for conversion. As long as you are giving the visitor exactly what the ad promises…you are not entitled to give them access to every page of your website. If you want to force a conversion or an exit…then that is acceptable. I will usually offer a few ancillary links if they aren’t ready to take action, however…the intent is obvious and I try to do everything I can to encourage the dominant call to action.
6. Optimize them for search: It makes a lot of sense to optimize each landing page for a few specific (usually long tail) keywords. Since you will be driving alot of traffic to these pages they will likely gain relevance and therefore prominence. A good way to encourage volume traffic is to link to these landing pages from your website, add them to your sitemap, andkeep them as close to the design and layout as your web site pages (while keeping in mind #5). There are too many SEO tips to cover here…I suggest reading up on any number of SEO blogs available.
7. Keep the messaging to the point: The tendency is to try to do too much with the landing page copy. Its perfectly understandable since we ask so much of this page. But the fact of the matter is that this is no time to beat around the bush or push a lot of marketing fluff. Get to the point, offer real benefits, and answer those last minute questions that may be that last barrier to taking action.
8. Use visual elements to peak interest: A picture is worth a thousand words. The more you can do with images (or even better…embed a presentation) the more likely you are going to pique the interest of your visitor and encourage them to take the desired action. Leave nothing to the imagination…because nobody buys that way.
9. Set a testing plan in place: Don’t just create the landing page and then hope that everything goes right…start testing some combinations of messages. With Google releasing Website Optimizer to the public for free you can immediately begin seeing what headlines and action calls your visitors are responding the best to.
10. Monitor your results closely: I single out my landing pages for special treatment in my Google Analytics…in the form of goals and campaign tracking. This will provide a lot of opportunity to understand campaign traffic segments in relation to goal conversion. I also like to use Crazy Egg’s heat map and confetti view to track specific click behavior. Mine the data…and you will be able to make key insights that help your conversion.
11. Survey them: The best thing you can get from #10 is quantitative data…thousands of reports that will tell you all of the activity that has taken place…but it will not give you the “why“. Why did they choose Product X over Product Y? Why did they decide to leave without converting? Why are people who come from email more likely to convert than from search? Surveying on exit or conversion can help fill in those gaps that analytics cannot.

The most important thing to consider when crafting a landing page is to never sacrifice your message for short sighted gains in SEO or web analysis. Keep your primary focus on the customer and being as thorough as possible in describing the benefits or your product and/or service. Do only those things that make sense for your customer and watch the conversions come in!

I have created a lot of landing pages since I joined the internet marketing community. I was trying to keep track for awhile and eventually gave up - my last count was somewhere around 5 hundred individual landing pages that I designed, maintained, and tested. ..all for various employers, companies, and clients.

The reason that these pages were so important was because they were the gateway from all of our internet marketing efforts. If you clicked on a banner, search listing, affiliate link, press release, or anything else we used for online promotion - you were taken to a unique landing page. We even tracked print response by driving activity online. There was no campaign we ran that did not have its own landing page to test and measure its success.

So at this point I can say that I am somewhat knowledgeable about landing pages. Lets have some fun and check out two LED sign manufacturers that use pay-per-click advertising to drive traffic.

Here were the top two listings…

LED Signs by BigBrite
Free Shipping, Low Price Guarantee
Order Signs Online or Call
BigBrite.com

Watchfire Digital Outdoor
LED billboards designed and
manufactured to last. Free paper.
www.WatchfireDigitalOutdoor.com

(I removed the google tracking so it wont charge them if you click)

There are obvious differences. Lets start with BigBrite.

The first problem is that BigBrite pushes everyone to the homepage. While there are instances where this may be suitable in this one it is not. None of the information from the ad is reinforced on the homepage where there is no coherent message other than to BUY NOW!

If you aren’t ready to purchase - then what? I guess you can aimlessly navigate around the site to find what you are looking for but my guess is that you would most likely leave before you found it.

Lets contrast that with Watchfire.

This is a landing page that reinforces the message from the ad - encouraging those visitors to sign up for the white paper. They aren’t trying to sell you a sign right away - instead they want to help you inform yourself on making the decision - and open the line of communication. They realize that you aren’t going to pick up the phone right now and tell them to “Sign me up! And while your at it heres my credit card info!” Their interest is to persuade you over time to make the purchase. (BTW, these signs are NOT cheap)

Watchfire also minimizes noise on the landing page by removing all navigation and links. While they do not intend for you to buy today they still need to capture some return from your visit so they are not taking any chances. You can only take the action they intend. This is a fair trade since they are not bombarding you with anything you didn’t already expect from the ad.

When thinking about landing pages keep in mind that most of the traffic coming to your site are first-time visitors, all coming at different stages of the buying process. Very few are looking for the immediate purchase so understanding that most likely wont sell to them on this visit will probably drastically change your approach. If you look at this as more of an opportunity to begin a relationship with your customer you will most likely see more long term rewards with a more responsive customer when you go to re-sell, up sell, or cross sell.

I have been testing this tool for a few months now and I am excited about its release to the public!

This finally brings sophisticated split and multivariate testing to the small business marketers that don’t have the budget for an expensive tool like Offermatica. The beauty once again is that Google provides it for free.

My personal experience with it has been great.

The power of Website Optimizer tool is evident. It is very easy to set up simple test right away - it took me 30 minutes to get my first one set up. You can test simple page elements or entirely different layouts - the choices are entirely up to you. All that is required is a little knowledge of html and what makes sense to test. Everything is available to you - long term and short term tests, A/B splits, or large multivariate tests.

Once note: Some people may run into issues if they are running a fairly sophisticated content management system or don’t have access to the back end. However this shouldn’t hinder using it for landing pages unless they are tied to your CMS as well. Landing pages are arguably the most important pages of your site so it makes sense to begin there. Detach them and begin testing!

And for most websites the implementation will be simple across all of their web pages.

What is cool is that combined with Google Analytics, this is extremely powerful. Now you not only have a place to measure traffic in aggregate, but a easier way to do testing. No more having multiple landing pages to keep track of - just set up your tests and the data comes pouring in.

You will still need to know what to do with that data, however. Check out this post for a little help.

So with the launch of this new product you no longer have to spend thousands of dollars to compete. The playing field is leveling and the small business marketer can rejoice. Now its time to roll up your sleeves and get dirty with testing and analytics!

For those of you that are building out multiple landing pages I have a simple javascript that may help you with passing variables from campaign url strings into your landing pages.

For example, if you have landing pages that contain identical forms and only need unique “lead source” information you can use this javascript to pull a variable passed in a url string to change the lead source information.

Place the following code where you would normally put your hidden lead source fields.

<script>
function getQueryVariable(variable) {
var query = window.location.search.substring(1);
var vars = query.split(”&”);
for (var i=0;i<vars.length;i++) {
var pair = vars[i].split(”=”);
if (pair[0] == variable) {
return pair[1];
}
}
}</script>
<script type=”text/javascript” language=”JavaScript”><!–
document.write(’<input ‘);
document.write(’ type=”hidden” ‘);
document.write(’ name=”lead_source” ‘);
document.write(’ value=”‘ + getQueryVariable(”ls”) + ‘”>’);
//–></script>

You can then access the page with the variable attached to the url:

www.yourwebpage.com/landingpage.html?ls=leadsource1

The variable populates the hidden form field with the lead source information.

<input name=”lead_source” value=”leadsource1″ type=”hidden”>

When the user clicks submit the information will populate in salesforce.com eliminating the need for multiple landing pages.

You can also use this in correlation with you analytics link ids to maintain consistency in your reporting. Just change the variable in this line of code:

document.write(’ value=”‘ + getQueryVariable(”change-this-value”) + ‘”>’);

You can be creative and use this script to pass multiple values if needed…think about personalizing the landing page from a personalized url string in an email. You could pre-populate a form or even personalize the landing page with their name or any number of attributes in the email database!

Best of luck to you!

The concept is drilled into our head over and over to test everything…that “time spent testing is time well spent”.

Don’t mistake me when I say that I agree with this. I truly believe in smart marketing.

I just have one thing to add to that however - few people are willing to write it and fewer are willing to say out loud.

“Not all testing is necessary.”

If you are a small business owner or marketer you probably don’t have a ton of free time - so you have to spend your time wisely if you choose to do any testing at all. So the mantra to “test everything” is really quite unrealistic for the SMB trying to stay afloat.

I appreciate the idea of “left brained marketing”, but at some point you have to use common sense as to when and how you spend your time.

Does it really matter that my headline is cornflower blue instead of teal? You could (and Ive seen it done…) spend months split and multivariate testing that variable…with little to no effect.

Instead, make larger changes. Form placement is a great place to start. Or change the specific call to action or headline copy. These will yield more significant results and give you a better understanding of what works.

Also, If you do the cornflower blue test and you have a significant difference in results it is more likely that other factors are influencing the data…like time of day, marketing campaigns, unexpected traffic, ect. It is possible that your customers truly love teal headlines - but I probably wouldn’t go betting the house on it.

There is a reason we have a right brain, without it we would forever analyze but never take action. Find the most effective way to use your time - and leave the colorful headlines for later.