When it comes to links in social profiles, link building, and many other online marketing strategies, most people make one tragic mistake: they link only to their homepage. If you want to make the most of your efforts, however, linking back to a conversion optimized landing page is essential. Today, we’re going to look at the times you need to link to a conversion optimized landing page and how to make it entice visitors and lead to conversions.
Where to Use Conversion Optimized Landing Pages
The first question you probably have is where you should be linking to conversion optimized landing page. The answer is just about everywhere. Here are some top spots to consider replacing your homepage link with a conversion optimized landing page link.
- Social Profiles – While there are some places where you want to use the shortest link possible (like your Facebook page about description), there are other places you can get away with longer links that will still be clickable, such as your Twitter website link, one of the three links in your LinkedIn contact info, the links within your Google+ introduction, and similar areas.
- Status Updates – Most people won’t tweet out a link to their homepage. But some will tweet things like “Check out our newest products.” and link to a product category page. Instead, you might want to consider tweeting about one particular product and creating a landing page just for that product.
- PPC – Are you buying clicks through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google AdWords, Bing, or another ad network? Are you paying for banner advertising? If so, then you really want to make your investment count by making sure the advertisement directs visitors to a converting landing page.
- Link Building – If you’re building links only to your homepage, stop. Stop now. You’ve probably got plenty of them. Start finding the keywords that are most profitable for your business and create landing pages that make them more profitable.
- Guest Author Bios – When you write a great piece of content, people want to know more about you and what you have to offer. Don’t just link to your homepage – link to a landing page that will flow with what your new audience wants from you.
By adding landing page links in these places, you can almost be guaranteed to see a boost in conversions from social media, search, and content marketing.
How to Get People to Click
The next question about using conversion optimized landing pages is how to get people to click on them in the above-mentioned areas. The answer lies in the wording. For example, let’s say you’re trying to build your email list. All you need is a dedicated landing page and a free piece of content for new subscribers. If your service focuses on Facebook, then maybe you have a free guide to creating the ultimate Facebook page. Whenever you link to your landing page, focus people’s attention on the offer to reduce friction points. Use lines like these.
- Download our FREE guide to creating the ultimate Facebook page.
- Learn how to attract more fans with our free guide to creating Facebook pages.
- Learn more about how a great Facebook page can turn fans into customers.
If you have a great freebie, then getting people to click shouldn’t be a problem.
How to Get People to Convert
Once people come to your landing page, the best way to ensure a conversion is to make the goal of your landing page the main and only focus. If you want someone to buy a product, then the page should have nothing but information about that product and an Add to Cart button. If you want someone to sign up for your mailing list, then the page should have nothing but information about your free giveaway and an opt-in form.
This means no sidebars, no headers, no menus, no ads – nothing that can distract the visitor from the conversion goal. As far as copy goes, the words or video on your landing page should tell visitors about a problem they could be having, how you can solve it, and alleviate any fears that might stop the visitor from converting. Long form sales pages and to the point opt-in pages tend to work best in most industries, but ongoing multivariate and some A/B testing is always a good idea to see what drives the highest conversion rate in an effort to decrease your average cost per lead and cost per acquisition metrics.
Your goal today: Think about all of the places you could use a conversion optimized landing page, and get to work either creating those landing pages or updating your links. You won’t regret it!
Screenshot taken 12/02/2013 of www.180fusion.com/snapshot
Screenshot taken 12/02/2013 of http://parkviewcredit.com/s-badcredit/
