It’s expensive to get people to your website, and a massive waste of money if you don’t grab them by the collar and sell to them when they do so. At an exhibition, prospects might queue up to talk to you, because they’ve already invested time and money in getting that far. On the web, you don’t get that patience. Your competition is only a back-click away.
Here’s the way most people work, when responding to an advertisement. Firstly, they see a benefit which appeals to them. So they head for the advertiser’s website. Here, the first thing they want is confirmation that they’re in the right place to find out more about the product offering that benefit.
Next, they’ll skim through the product details to confirm the perceived benefit is as they understood it. Having done that, they’ll want to know if the supplier is one they’ll want to deal with. Then they might settle down to read some more detailed information about the product. And finally, if all has gone well, they’ll take the process to the next level, which could be requesting more information, arranging a sales call or even purchasing directly.
This then is a fairly straightforward sequence of information which your landing page needs to offer, in order to maximise the number of people responding to you. If you design a specific landing page to accompany an advertisement campaign, that’s what it needs to do.
As I mentioned yesterday, the problems occur either when people are sent to the site and not given any help in finding this information, or when they’re sent to a page which glosses over the sales story and background, jumping straight to asking them to respond instead. You either need to create a solid landing page which answers their questions, or – if you send them to a standard product page – ensure that it is designed to fulfil this function. Only then will you convert the maximum number of visitors to enquirers. Don’t make them do the work, because they don’t owe you a living.