A landing page is any page someone visits when they first come to your website. It’s often a blog post. I’m guessing that this might be your first time to the Ghost Blog Writers website. But a landing page could also be the homepage, which is often the beginning of the sales process. And it could be a product page. Maybe it’s one that you use for online advertising where you want specific traffic to visit a specific page.
A landing page could be a lot of things, but basically they’re all about getting someone to discover you and then buy what you’re selling.
As you might imagine, writing content for these pages can be challenging. Here are a few things to help in that area.
1. Talk to the sales team
Sales and Marketing don’t always get along in every business. But really they can benefit a lot from communicating. One of the things copywriters should do when creating content for a website is to talk a lot with the sales team. The website is really a salesperson. The sales process isn’t that much different in most cases.
When you’re working on a specific landing page, talk to someone on the sales team. Explain the goal for the page. Compare the page with how the salesperson works through the sales process. Learn what they and the prospect talk about in person or on the phone at that point in the process.
This can greatly help you to learn what you need to include on the page.
2. Include customer stories
Often a salesperson will discuss previous customer stories with prospects. The prospect will probably explain their situation. That will prompt the salesperson to share a similar story. The storytelling allows the prospect to get more details on how the relationship might work. They kind of put themselves into the situation.
This works the same online so it can be good to share the stories of existing customers.
3. Include numbers if applicable
Building on the customer stories would be to include numbers. It might not work for all situations, but for many it will. If you’re in manufacturing you might discuss production numbers and efficiencies. If you’re selling cars you might talk about mileage savings for a previous customer. Numbers can really drive the benefit home for prospects.
4. Allow for scanning
Online readers are going to scan your content. They want to get a little proof that reading it all will be worth their time. Admit it, you probably scanned this post to look at the headlines. And if you’re still reading I guess it was at least a bit intriguing.
Accept the behavior of visitors and embrace it. Make sure you aren’t writing super long paragraphs. Break it up with headings. Use images and graphics. There is a reason books are written in chapters and not long continuous blocks of content.
5. Try to answer all the common questions
Landing pages can sometimes get long. And that can be okay if you design it right. If someone sees something they aren’t interested in they can scroll past it to find what they want. I find that it’s good to include answers to common questions on landing pages. Most people do have questions when they’re thinking about buying something. Again, your sales team can really help with this. And so can the customer support team. Figure out what people are asking at the stage of your landing page and provide the answer so they can move to the next step.
6. Early and late CTAs
Online you’ll often find that people leave your site and come back later. It depends on what you’re selling, but this is quite common. Someone lands on your homepage and reads through the details. They leave and think about it. Then they come back weeks later and are ready to buy.
For this reason I like to include early and late calls-to-action. This way the returning visitor can quickly click on the top CTA and get right into buying. They’ve already read through your content so don’t make them do it again to get to a CTA at the bottom of the page.
7. Audit and update
Your landing page content will never be “done”. You’ll learn what is working and what isn’t on the page. You’ll learn more from salespeople if you continue to meet and discuss with them. Your products and services may change a bit. People will have new questions. Different customers may start to buy.
There are all kinds of reasons that the content will need to change. So it’s important to schedule regular audits fo your landing page so you can review and revise.
Conclusion
Copywriting for landing pages is both easy and challenging. You don’t want the pursuit of perfection to stop you from publishing the page. Do your best with the first iteration and go into it knowing that you’re going to change the page quite a few times and you learn more and more. It’s an exciting process because over time you should see the page bring more and more sales. And that’s something marketing and sales can both agree on.