I don’t care what business you’re in, what you’re selling, or what you offer, this statement remains true:
Landing pages are critical for digital lead generation.
Landing pages themselves may look pretty simple to create on the surface, but creating a landing page that actually converts isn’t as simple as it may seem.
Landing pages support you in targeting specific keywords, niches, and targeted audiences, which helps you create highly specific content for segmented audiences.
Creating a high-converting landing page is a lot easier than it might seem. They have ONE headline, ONE unique selling proposition, and a single call-to-action (CTA). By simplifying the message and intent, you clarify the message, thereby increasing your lead-gen results.
Bottom line? High-performing landing pages are a component of every successful inbound strategy. As a financial advisor, you would do well to invest time into optimizing your landing pages as they are an effective way to generate leads and grow your business.
A landing page helps you capture highly qualified data about your website visitors, without which you would have a difficult time understanding your audience. You need these insights to be able to reach them in a meaningful way, nurture them through the buying journey, and ultimately, convert them into high-value loyalty clients.
Why Financial Advisors Need Landing Pages
Whether you’re creating a landing page for lead generation, a marketing or ad campaign, or to promote a webinar or event, they have many benefits for advisors. Here are just a few.
- Landing pages help you collect detailed customer data. Landing pages are an effective and efficient way to collect data from your audience—right down to contact information and detailed demographics. Adding a contact form to your landing page is the first step to supercharging your conversion metrics.
- Landing pages are hyper-targeted. Landing pages are designed to be ultra-specific. You can create variations of your landing pages to target specific keywords or audiences, meaning you can really drill down on your messaging—CTA included.
- Landing pages focus on a specific goal. The simpler the message, the easier it is for people to respond. Decide on your goals in advance. It could be to sign up for your e-newsletter, downloading a white paper or tip sheet, sign up for a webinar—whatever makes sense for your campaign. Singular goals clarify audience intent, which makes it easier to market to them going forward.
Six Landing Page Best Practices
Before you start creating your landing pages, consider these six landing page best practices.
1. Keep the action above the fold
“Above the fold” refers to copy that occupies the top half of a newspaper (remember those?). In the digital age, it describes what you see on a web page before you scroll. It’s the first thing your visitors see when they land on your page, so you need to make the most of the opportunity.
Make sure your most important information is right up front. Your headline, unique selling proposition, and CTA all need to be above the fold. Try not to clutter up the space with more information as it will dilute the message.
2. Don't ask for too much info
The more fields on your contact form the less likely your landing page visitors will take action. First name, last name, and email address are usually sufficient. You might add an optional text field so they can add more info if they want. Make it as easy as possible.
3. Make it foolproof
Your landing page visitors should immediately find what they came there for, so put that info right up front. If they have to scroll around or your messaging is unclear, you may lose them. If you need to provide instructions, do so in clear and simple language. If you make it so easy that a child could do it, you’re on the right track.
4. Declutter your page design: remove navigation and other distractions
Landing pages focus on a specific goal. The best way to ensure all action is directed to accomplishing that goal is to remove potential distractions. Remove unnecessary links, including links back to your home page or other products. You don’t need to include site navigation or additional CTAs. Keep it simple.
5. Optimize load times
There are a lot of compelling statistics to show that most website visitors will bounce if a page takes more than three seconds to load. The chance of losing the site visitor increases by 32% from one to three seconds, to 90% in three to five seconds. Ten seconds in, you’ve lost them all. Optimize for all possible devices and bandwidth to ensure your page loads fast.
6. Say thank you
Your landing page is a workhorse—but the real magic happens after conversion. In other words, if all that your visitors receive after they’ve taken the desired action is a pop-up thank you message, make no mistake—you are leaving money on the table. In best practice, send a personalized email thanking them for taking the action, and make it specific. Reference what they’ve done, tell them what a great decision it was (and why). Congratulate them. Welcome them into the fold and tell them what they can expect going forward. If they’re signing up for a newsletter, make it clear how often they will hear from you. Ask them to whitelist your email address and get them excited about what’s to come.
Crafting Your Follow-Up
So here we are, nearing the finish line. Your landing page has done its job and now you have a ton of qualified leads to follow up on. The most effective way to ensure those leads convert to customers is to implement a strategic follow-up email sequence.
These days, very few sales occur after just the first meeting. Statistically, 80% of sales happen after a minimum of five follow-up emails, so take that into consideration when you’re crafting your message and you will improve your conversions dramatically. You need to establish trust, and often you’re dealing with more than one decision-maker, so what you say really matters.
Related: Set Content Objectives to Earn (and Keep) More Advisory Clients