Let's say that your marketing campaign is achieving a good response rate of interested potential customers.  Great.

How do you get them to do what you want - for example to leave their contact details?

What you don't do is send them to your website home page. Instead you send them to a tailor-made landing page within your website, with a single-minded message.

Here's a good example

Use our guide to create your landing page

1. Define your primary objective.
2. Keep it simple. Visitors only spend a couple of seconds looking at a landing page before deciding whether to continue.
3. Gain their trust.  Include your logo, guarantees, testimonials and contact details.
4. Create a clear, concise and responsive headline.
5. Use an engaging visual image.

   Mirror the look and feel of the communication vehicle (e.g. the AdWord or email copy, design and layout) that brought them to the landing page.

6. Ideally visualise the 'lead magnet'.

   A lead magnet is something relevant and of perceived value that gets them to do what you want. It might be, for example, a free template, e-book or special offer. In the example below the lead magnet is an instant free quote.

7. Avoid including a navigation bar.
8. Keep the information you request, such as asking for their email address, to a minimum.  And if you specifically want their work email address then ask for it.

   If appropriate, ask them to opt in to receive emails from you in the future.

9. Test, measure and optimise your landing page until you know what works most effectively.
   
   

What's good - and what can be not so good

The five best things about landing pages

1. They can be exactly tailored/matched to the advertisement, so there is a logic between the ad's proposition/offer and the content/answer they click through to.
2. They can be tested and optimised. Keep experimenting with the sequence of your pitch, the copy, colour, format, style, images, offers, etc, until your conversion rate exceeds expectation.
3. They are easy to manage.
4. They are friendly to respondents - but only when tailored.
5. They are quick and inexpensive to produce.

Things you can easily get wrong

1. Too much information is crammed into one page. If you’ve got lots to say then break it up into digestible chunks that respondents can choose to access via a link if it interests them. Otherwise keep the message concise.
2. You immediately ask for the respondent to participate/commit. You need to gain their trust/increase their interest before asking them to complete your form, subscribe, get a download or whatever.
3. Segmentation is ignored. Your respondents may not all have clicked on your ad for the same reason. They are unlikely to all have the same needs. Take this into consideration when writing/constructing your page. Don’t try to speak to all the segments with one message. Get them to click through to a tailormade second page, specific to their segment’s needs.
4. Testing the wrong elements first. Get the audience segmentation and the sequence of your pitch right first before worrying about which combination of headline and image works best.
5. Devaluing the brand. Make sure your landing page delivers a positive experience of the brand. They may be quick and cheap to produce, but make sure they don’t look quick and cheaply produced. A brand often doesn’t get a second chance to make a good impression.
   
   
   

Another example of a well laid out landing page