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      Best Practices for Creating a Great Landing Page Experience (landing page, thank you page, thank you email)

      A Landing Page is a useful tool in acquiring possible sales leads by offering something of value in exchange for contact information. Following these best practices will get you on your way to creating a simple, clean and clear offer.

      Define The Purpose And Choose The Appropriate Template

      • Contact-Us, Free Consultation, Free Trial or Demo:
          • Landing Page, Thank You and Email templates should drive the user to enter their info, and ideally set up a meeting with sales
          • The secondary goal of this type of Thank You page can optionally include a link to your sales calendar
                    Note: if there are assignment rules set up in HubSpot there could be conflicts 
          • Landing pages generally DO NOT include navigation
          • Thank You pages should include generally include navigation
      • Download Content or watch content
          • The primary goal of a Landing Page, Thank You or Email template is to entice prospects to download content, such as White pages and Case Studies 
          • The secondary goal on a Thank You and Email template could be to talk to someone or recommend additional content
          • Landing pages generally DO NOT include navigation
          • Thank You pages should include generally include navigation
        • Sign-up for a webinar or event
            • The primary goal of a Landing Page, Thank You or Email template is to entice prospects to sign up for an event
            • The secondary goal on a Thank You and Email template could be to talk to someone or recommend additional supporting content to the event
            • Landing pages generally DO NOT include navigation
            • Thank You pages should include generally include navigation

        Naming Convention

        The recommended naming convention on a Landing Page should be:

        LP - [landing page name] {optional year month]

        Once You Have Chosen Your Template

          • Define What The Core Message Is:
            • Review Whitepaper and Pillar Page (if there is one created) for an idea of what your message should be
            • Landing Page messaging should have at least:
              • One top-level headline
              • One supporting paragraph
              • Three to five supporting bullet points
        • Get The User To Take Action:
            • Develop the direct response messaging
              • Try telling a quick story, not about how your product is great, but how it will help make the prospect's life better if the prospect takes action
            • Make captivating headlines that entice the reader to take action
                • A bad example of a headline: "Orange Marketing has the best staff in the United States and we can help you increase your MQLs"
                  (although factually true :) this will not get someone to react
                • A better example of a headline: "In this step by step plan, learn how Orange Marketing’s team guided iNymbus, increasing their MQLs by 200% month over month" 
              • Best practices for headlines:
                • Use data
                • Use words and phrases like learn, how-to, or find out and Top Ten!
                • Use language the prospect is familiar with
                    • Try to evoke an emotion based on what you know about the target audience such as using known pain points about the audience:
                      • Example: "Marketers struggle to generate leads; we offer a plan to help solve that pain point" 
                  • Tell the prospect what they are going to get and how it will benefit them
                  • Ask a question (this has to be used right or else it comes off as gimmicky)
                • Best practices for bullet points:
                  • Tell the prospect what they will gain by taking action on this offer
                    • For a Content Offer, pull out some key points
                    • Include Data when you can
              • Make sure colors and text -- align with the Brand
                • Most templates can be modified
              • Images - you can go down a rabbit hole with images.
                • In our opinion, words drive the action and images support the words, so please don't waste a lot of time finding the perfect image
                • Ensure you set a favorite image in settings in case the landing page is shared
              • Do not forget good meta copy in Settings and a good URL. Landing pages get indexed by Google all the time because there are lots of signals indicating good content. 

          Adding a Form

          • Try to minimize the number of forms used, by creating one form for each type of behavior (download or view content, contact-us or have-a-demo, sign up for a webinar). You can use other ways to track the exact download or behavior (most commonly the landing page itself)
          • Choose an existing form - see above
          • Do note enable reCAPTCHA - it is not necessary and is a blocker - it can be enabled on the form or in the landing page, please don't do either.
          • Do not build a follow-up email directly on the form itself, always use a separate email either triggered by the landing page or triggered by a workflow. 
          • Most landing pages allow you to send a follow-up email from the object in the landing page builder.
              • Choose "create follow up email"
          • Remember to redirect the form to a Thank You page
          • Remember to publish your thank you page.

          Thank You emails

          • This is your chance to send a quick follow-up email to a prospect that has requested something from your organization
              • This should come from an individual and have the option to reach out for more information (or even schedule a meeting using a meeting link)
              • Contact Owner is a nice way to go as a default if you CRM is set up with the proper contact owners. Then you can use the Owner's signature with the meeting link in the sign-off. 
          1. Click on the form
          2. On the left-hand side under options choose “send a followup email”
          3. Either select an email from the drop-down or create a new email
          4. If you create a new email save the email as a template (under the email builder “Actions” drop-down and you can use it again
          5. TEST - send the email to yourself a couple of times
          6. Another option on the TY emails, and some landing page templates force this, is you have to build a workflow to trigger the email send. 

          Landing Page Details

          • URL
            • Make sure to use this format:
              {https://www.orangemarketing.com/marketing-plan-whitepaper}
          • Description 
            • Don’t forget to add a description for each landing page
          • Create a campaign 
          • Page title
            • Use this format:
              {Inbound Marketing Plan Guide | Orange Marketing}

          Thank You Pages

          • Naming conventions:
            Thank You - [landing page name] [optional year month]
            TY - [landing page name] [optional year month]
          • Pick a template with a simple format that matches the brand
          • Many times you do not want your Thank You pages indexed by google. Add this code snippet under "advanced options"
            • <meta name="robots" content="noindex"/>
          • The Thank You page is there to fulfill the promise defined in the template
            • If it's a content piece, the Thank You page should be used as a place where they can download the content. Remember to make the file that you are using not followed by google in the cdn and the thank you page can be noindex as well.
            • Secondary would either be to contact someone or engage with other content
          • Tip: if you have a simple sales structure, it's nice to link to a BDRs calendar on the backup page and Thank You email
            • This strategy can often drive meetings
            • Keep in mind if there are sales routing rules this strategy may not work

          TEST EVERYTHING!!!

          • Publish all items and test everything from the perspective of a prospect. Make sure all links work, metadata is defined, thank you pages work, test everything multiple times.
          • Then send to a colleague to test. Don't count on your own ability to see mistakes. This is called QA and is very helpful. It is a good idea to have a rule that everyone has to get their final items QA'd with a colleague. 
          • Not testing is a very frequent mistake. The person who will find your mistake will invariably be the Client and worse, their CEO. By testing the full landing page series, you will catch problems. Don't forget to check the email. 

          A Few Examples of Landing Pages - Create Your Own Best Practices

          White Page Downloads:

          https://info.bitvore.com/using-ai-processed-news-datasets-to-perform-predictive-analytics

          Demo:

          https://info.freightpop.com/freightpop-tms-software-request-demo 

          Request pricing:

          (this is an example of a very basic Landing Page that converts at a high rate)

          https://www.bmc.com/forms/pricing-request.html

          Request a consultation:

          https://www.isostech.com/atlassian-jira-consultants

          Other examples - hiring:

          https://info.hoopshr.com/sales-hiring-lp-ppc

          https://info.hoopshr.com/truck-driver-recruiters-hoopshr

           

          An Article we like

          https://www.contentbacon.com/blog/landing-pages-not-landing-heres-what-to-do