Content Writing: Getting Started On Landing Pages

What Is The Purpose Of A Landing Page?

The purpose of any landing pages is to get your reader to perform a specific action, also known as a call-to-action (CTA).

Blog Posts vs Landing Pages

A landing page is a page on a website that is not typically timely or updated often. It’s the place to showcase your businesses products and services.

Landing pages are different from blog posts (but blog posts can be landing pages) – while blog posts will still have call-to-actions, they are not just trying to sell a service or product. Blog posts are articles that when done right, are more personable, marked with a date, and tagged with an author. Like this blog post, the specific action can be to generate awareness about a topic.

A Landing Page Must Have’s

Any solid landing page should have the following:

1. A strong headline (80% of your landing page value)
2. Solid-body copy and images
3. A clear Call-To-Action (CTA)

Customers do not always read your landing page copy. They scan, skim, and allow their eyes to jump across the page, but they do not (usually) read every word.

So focus on the what customers pay attention to:

• The headline.
• The subheadline (usually).
• The pictures.
• CTA buttons.

After that, customers may or may not read sub section headings, bullet points, short paragraphs, and image captions.

However, when creating your service page content, you will want to start backwards with your CTA…

Starting With The Call-To-Action: Focus On The Outcome

Whatever you consider being your conversion step, everything you write should support that call-to-action. This should be the central focus of your writing. You need to have a clear goal for your landing page. What is it you want from your customer? What do you want your customer to do?

Your CTA is often in the digital form of a purchase button, a signup form, or a contact form/button. The page goal is to convince the visitor (potential customer) to complete that action:

• Don’t just write, “click here” or “Sign Up” on it. Instead, provide specific details about what you want people to do.
• Use words that appeal to making a decision right now, be pushy with your copy, customers need to be told what steps to take next (Not “click here”).
• Action verbs take precedence ex: “Buy” vs “Buy Now” – the now creates immediacy in the reader’s head.

For instance, compare these two call-to-action phrases:

1. Are You Ready to Subscribe?
2. Subscribe Now!

Which one catches your attention? Hopefully, the second one. That’s because the phrase proves definitive and authoritative. It tells the reader exactly what to do.

You can experiment with your button copy – split test your button copy to see which words bring you the highest conversions. You can also have a secondary CTA to support the primary goal.

And if you need some CTA ideas:

1. “Yes, I Want X!”
2. Snag/Grab/Seize/Score/Gain X Now!
3. Start Your Journey Toward X
4. Activate X Today!
5. You’re Running Out of Time!
6. Join X Other [Category] as Subscribers to My Email List
7. Get Your Free X
8. Reserve your spot now!

Researching Your Content Topic: Targeting The Right Personas

Your customer has landed on your landing page, but what do you write that keeps them here and converts them?

Know who you are writing for and start with in-depth persona research – Define your target audience’s demographics and characteristics, so you are aware of their habits, what they want and need, and how they speak. Your copy will be much more focused, clear, and direct when you have one target audience in mind, rather than a largely undefined audience.

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.”

Harper Lee

A great tool to help build out your personas is Make My Persona from Hubspot.

The Problem, Solution, And Benefit

Once you have a solid understanding of your customers, break the body content into 3 topics; The problem, solution, and benefit.

The landing page body content should contain the following 3 items:

1. Establishing the problem.
2. Presenting the solution.
3. Showing the benefits.

Be clear on all 3 of these before continuing.

Tip: Make sure your copy covers these three topics within the first 5 seconds of seeing the page.

There should be absolutely no confusion as to what the reader will be getting from the landing page. Go back to the Call To Action and make sure they fit together.

Establishing The Problem

Clearly define the customer’s problem/s. You should have the problem clear in your head by the time you have created your customer’s personas. These pain points are what got them searching for a solution – or better yet, the solution with the best benefits.

Present The Solution

What is the solution to the customer’s problem?
Spent only a little time on this because your customers don’t care about the “solution” you’re trying to sell to them.

Why?

Customers already know the solution they’re looking for. They are capable of learning virtually anything thanks to the internet and search engines. In fact, not only do customers know the solution, but they also know the features they are looking for, the requirements the product must meet, and benchmark pricing.

If you are pitching only your solution, you’re not giving your customers what they need and want. You need to pitch benefits (or lifestyles). It’s okay to mention your solution because that’s a signal to the customer that they are in the right place — but don’t push that solution. Instead, push the benefits.

Show The Benefits

Ask yourself: Why would they choose you instead of your competition? You all offer the same solution, so what benefits does your solution have?

Think in the perspective of your customer. Identify what makes your product or service uniquely the best solution.

Turn the features of the solution into lifestyles, time-saving, stress-relieving, and trending benefits.

Don’t get hung up talking about your accomplishments, awards, expertise, etc. If you want to highlight those things, let them come up naturally in your testimonials from your past customers or clients.

Try to come up with at least 3 benefits is possible – however, some situations, the landing page does not require that many.

Selecting A Target Keyword For SEO & PPC

Selecting a keyword to target essentially means claiming territory on a certain phrase that is being searched.

Ask yourself, what would they be searching that your landing page should appear? Think back to your solutions and benefits, and even your CTA.

Example: John has an air conditioner stopped working and is making a funny noise. John will go to a search engine and search for a term like “air conditioner repair man”. John is expecting to find search results of someone who can repair his air conditioner.

Breaking it down, Johns problem is a broken air conditioner, the solution is someone who can repair his air conditioner. That is the Problem and Solution covered… and the benefits?
Maybe it is same day repairs (fast turn around), or cheaper than the competition, or maybe john is looking for a locally trusted air conditioner repair man. These benefits are what help you stand out from the crowd and are related to your business.

The content of your page should match the search intent behind your selected keyword. You should also target synonyms for your topic and problem.

Example: Sarah wanted photos of her wedding and wanted someone to take them for her. Instead of searching for wedding photography, she searched for wedding photographer. Her intent was looking for someone to take photos, not looking for photos of other people’s weddings.

Writing Your Landing Page Copy: The Killer Filler

Here is the flesh of the landing page – the information that helps shows your value.

We have a template ready for you to use and edit: Landing Page Template

Intro Sentence

Start with an intro sentence or paragraph that covers the problem, solution and benefits that puts the most important information first. It can be 1-3 sentences and should be short sweet and simple.

Short Benefits

Write up 3 or more benefits – these are often displayed with a short heading and a 1-3 sentences about the benefit. These are sort of an introduction for the skim readers – be sure to have headings for each of these benefit sections.

Detailed Benefits

Now comes the details of the benefits and solutions. For each of the above benefits listed, you may want to go into detail here. 1-3 paragraphs with a supporting image to help convey the value. This content can be in any format such as paragraphs, lists, numbered points, etc.

Social Value/Proof

These are things like reviews, video testimonials and “In The News” content. 1-3 reviews or a single video testimonial is enough to help show your value.

FAQs (Optional)

Add in any FAQs about the topic that you may have not covered above. 3-5 faq groups can add a lot of value to the page. And if you strucutre up your FAQs with Schema, you can have your FAQs appear within Google Search – more visible real estate!

Followup CTA

You should then follow up with your CTA again. The visitor having gotten this far scrolling, might as well give them the next step, right?

You can include a short blurb to help them convert – a final sales pitch.

Note: It would be best to write your content in a distraction free area and not on your website just yet. The Hemingway App is a great place to start as it has a bonus feature. But a word document works just as good. Later, you will copy your content into the website where it needs to go – but if you were to give someone a word document, your body content alone should be able to sale them on your call to action.

Tips:

• Less is more. Only write what is needed for the customer to convert on your CTA. Nothing more.
• More “you’s” and less “we’s” will help increase their interest
• Use normal words, like the ones you’d use if you were talking to a ten-year-old. For example, why use “convivial” if you can use “friendly?”
• Use short paragraphs, rather than long blocks of text. Any paragraph over five lines long can be hard to digest.
• Use active language in your copy and avoid passive voice.
• Use captions on your images.

Writing Your Headline: Conveying A Clear Benefit

A good headline should hook your reader’s interest immediately. It grabs attention, showcases value, and tells readers what they’ll find on the page. Because of this, it’s smart to spend some time working on your headlines as if they are the most critical component of your page.

It should convey a clear benefit within 60-70 characters – that is the size that appears within Google for you title to show.

On average, five times as many people read the headline that read the copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.

David Oglivy

The best service page headlines don’t rely on clickbait. They shouldn’t purposefully withhold information. Rather they offer customers something promising that they go through the rest of the landing page and eventually click the call to action button. Leave the clickbait to the blog posts.

Some headlines will do better than others for different industries. See what is working for your competition and adapt from them. Some words will do better than others in your headlines – try using powerful and emotional words over fact or logical words. You can also A/B test your headlines with Google Optimize.

Reviewing Your Landing Page Copy

Questions to ask yourself:

• Is it difficult to figure out what the page is about?
• Is it obvious that your landing page will meet the customers need?
• Does the key text speak directly to the customers about what matters?
• Is the content immediately relevant?
• What’s your unique perspective?
• Does the copy speak in the language your customers uses or in your language?

Remember: There should be absolutely no confusion as to what the reader will be getting from the landing page.

Tip: Make a copy of your content in a document somewhere that is not your website. Just in case you lost the page or it does not save.

Helpful Writing Tools

Copy your content into the free Hemingway App. It’s like a spellchecker, but for writing tyle. It makes sure that your reader will focus on your message, not your prose.

Check your content with the SEO Writing Assistant. Check if your texts follow our best SEO recommendations.

The Layout, Formatting, And UX/UI Greatly Matters

The formatting of the text is just as important as the phrasing. The copy needs to be formatted in a way that makes it easy for readers to scan and find the information they need in a few seconds.

Great copy is formatted using a combination of:

• Bulleted lists
• Short paragraphs and sentences
• Font formatting such as bolding and underlining
• Pull quotes
• Headings and subheadings

“The greatest value of a picture is when it forces us to notice what we never expected to see.”

John Tukey, American Mathematician

Check your headings and subheadings are structured correctly. Run your new page through this free tool HTML Headings Checker. You will have to do this once your page is published and edit the page accordingly.

Analyse & Measure Your Landing Page Performance

Now that your landing page is live and been seen a few times, it is time time to check the metrics. Other than the obvious landing page conversions, there are metrics you can look at to help understand if your landing page is working as it should.

User interactions with your landing page are gold.

You should be tracking your customer’s interactions with your landing pages. These metrics can tell you almost everything wrong (or right) with your landing page.

Here are four key metrics to focus on:

1. Total conversions. Just how many CTA’s can be your copy driving? This should be your main metric to focus on.
2. Conversion rate. That is perhaps one of the most essential metrics for landing pages. The conversion rate may be the percentage of clients who convert immediately from your landing page. The success of  your landing page will be different through industries, but the higher it really is, the better.
3. Bounce rate. The bounce rate is the percent of buyers who navigate from your landing page after viewing only 1 page. Typically, you are trained to believe high bounce prices are bad. Nevertheless, landing page bounce rates tend to be high since they give your audience two options: convert, or leave.
4. Time on page. Instead of worrying about bounce rates, focus on how long customers stay on to your pages. That is a significant metric. The bigger the time on your own page, the greater engaged your viewers are. They’re more prone to convert if they are engaged using what they’re reading on your own page. A higher time on site is a superb metric to gauge the quality of your content.

“Data beats emotions.”

Sean Rad

Conclusion

The main functions of a landing page:

• The headline captures their attention and entices them to stay on the page
• The copy acquaints them with your offer
• The call-to-action button gets you the conversion

There’s a definite science to writing successful landing pages. Once you’ve broken the steps down into smaller tasks and set your goals, you can write a landing page that will boost your conversions.

What techniques do you use to write your conversion copy?

Example Landing Page

Below is a general layout of a page using Content Blocks to structure the content of a service landing page.