I was watching a very compelling webinar from Ion Interactive a couple of weeks back and was pleased to see that this cutting edge internet marketing agency is very closely aligned with my own thinking on landing page best practices.
Like me, they preach four best practices for landing page programs:
1. A landing page is not a web page – avoid superfluous navigation
2. In your landing page headline, include the keyword searched
3. Entice the visitor to register by “selling” your value added content
4. Don’t let the registration form be a roadblock to conversions
However, the webinar focused on a fifth best practice that intrigued me no end. They call it “pre-conversion segmentation.”
The idea is to have a “pre-landing” page that helps you segment your visitors into different categories. You present this page immediately after someone clicks on your Google AdWords ad, before you serve up a landing page itself. Once visitors have segmented themselves based on this page, you can then serve up landing pages that speaks most effectively to their needs.
For example, you might have a Google AdWords campaign to promote an ERP solution.
You run a pre-conversion segmentation page that has two big buttons on it and asks:
“Are you: An SMB or An Enterprise?”
This is clear and easy to understand. It causes very little friction for the visitor, who self segments by clicking on one of the buttons.
Now that you know something about the size of your visitor’s organization, you can serve up a landing page that is tailored to speak to particular needs, including access to value added content that’s business-appropriate– e.g. for the SMB you might offer a whitepaper on “Ten Things to Look out For When Selecting an ERP for Small & Medium Businesses,” while for the Enterprise visitor you might offer one on “Deploying ERP across the Enterprise - Ten Tips to Assure Success.”
By including pre-segmentation conversion in your landing page programs you can create significant improvements in conversion rates. Ion Interactive’s own research shows that it can increase conversions by 20% or more. That’s a very nice improvement for a fairly modest adjustment to a program.
I have recently ‘published’ a handy reference presentation on post-click marketing best practices, including pre-segmentation conversion pages. You can download it here:
www.funnelbuilders.com/post_click_mktg.pdf
If, you want to start (or improve) your own landing page program but don’t have the bandwidth, expertise or resources, do feel free to call me. I’d love to help you build out a carefully crafted approach that delivers actionable inbound sales leads.
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Sean O’Donovan is the owner of FunnelBuilders, a consulting company that helps technology organizations develop and implement intelligent internet marketing programs to generate actionable in-bound sales leads - www.funnelbuilders.com