Why a compelling landing page is crucial to your B2B marketing success

Landing pages, when done well, are highly effective conversion tools that enable you to transform your B2B marketing prospects into customers by capturing their information through a lead-capture form.

They are action-oriented, stand-alone web pages that serve a single and highly focused purpose - to move your potential customers through each stage of their buyer’s journey, from the top of the funnel (or the awareness stage) where they may be seeking out information to solve a problem, right through to the bottom of the sales funnel (or the decision stage) where they are ready to “buy.”

Well designed landing pages enable you to segment your prospects, to direct them to a specific product or service and, most crucially of all, to encourage them to take action.

So why are they so pivotal to the success of your inbound marketing strategy? And what are the key attributes of great B2B landing pages?

At their heart, landing pages work on the principle of fair and equal exchange. You offer your useful and informative content (whether it be an ebook, white paper, webinar, consultation or free trial) and, in exchange, your prospects provide you with their valuable contact information.

Just how much information you can realistically expect your prospects to divulge however will depend on the value (or your audience’s’ perception of the value) of what it is you are offering.

What makes a great landing page?

First and foremost, it’s crucial to remember that a landing page isn’t your company’s homepage. This isn’t about your brand. It’s about your offer and its relevance to your prospects. So your landing page should be a targeted and standalone page that directly relates to the content you’re offering.

So what are the key elements that make a great landing page? Here are 8 criteria to keep in mind when creating landing pages for B2Bs:

1. A succinct and engaging headline - Your headline is the first thing your prospects will see when they land on your landing page, so it’s the perfect opportunity to present your unique value proposition - that statement that encapsulates your offer and communicates a tangible benefit.

2. Concise and persuasive copy - Once you’ve drawn your prospects in with your headline, the next step is to backup your claims. Less is more when it comes to writing copy for landing pages. So while it’s important to answer questions and provide useful information, you should avoid bloating your page with unnecessary wordage.

Experiment with dividing text into smaller, digestible chunks and making use of bullet points to highlight the key features of your offer. And try to avoid writing from your own perspective. Focus instead on creating copy that describes ‘what’s in it’ for your prospects.

3. A single offer - While it may be tempting to impress your audience by offering a range of associated content you think they may be interested in, you run the risk of confusing or distracting them, so make sure that your landing page focuses on your primary offer.

4. A form - Your form is where your prospects will submit their details in exchange for your offer. Ideally, the number of fields in the form (or how much information you’re looking for your prospects to provide in exchange for your content) should match the quality of the content you are offering.

A short form makes signing up easy but you may run the risk of losing out on other valuable info. Conversely though, too many “required” form fields can risk feeling like a chore for your prospects. So the key is to balance the quantity of information you’re after with the quality of the content you’re offering.

5. An attention-grabbing CTA - Once your prospects have filled in your form, your ‘submit’ button is hugely important in telling your prospects exactly what it is they need to do next. Make use of ‘action’ verbs that clearly explain the specific action you want your prospect to take - whether that’s to Download Now, Create Account, Sign Up, Book a Consultation etc.

6. An image - A compelling and relevant image on your landing page can serves as a useful visual representation of your offer and provide your prospects with a taste of what they can expect to receive.

7. Relevant keywords - Including your keywords strategically on your landing page (in the page title, headers and text) will help to optimise your landing page for search engines. But try and avoid doing so at the expense of producing clear, concise and relevant copy. Shoe-horning in your keywords for the sake of it ( or keyword stuffing) can make for clunky and tiresome reading for your prospects, and risk you being penalised by search engines.

8. Stripped-down navigation - The primary goal of your landing page is to guide your prospects through the process of filling in and submitting their information. So you’ll want to remove anything peripheral (including side/top navigation and hyperlinks) that may distract or confuse your prospects, or worse still, result in them leaving your page before they’ve converted.

Landing pages are also invaluable in enabling you to collect specific demographic information about your potential customers - whether it be their company size, job role, what drew them there in the first place or their reason for clicking.

And once they’ve converted by filling in your form, you can build up an understanding of how engaged they are in your business, by monitoring their activities through your website.

The great thing too is that your landing pages can be linked to your other B2B marketing strategies - so you can share them in social media, link them to your paid social or pay per click (PPC) campaigns or use them as the primary content for your email marketing efforts.

And the more landing pages you have, the merrier. Having multiple landing pages for your various offerings enables you to segment your market and to provide a variety of highly targeted and enticing content that is aligned with your prospects’ buyer's journey.

Well-crafted and compelling landing pages are, in many respects, the heart and soul of your inbound marketing strategy, so taking the time to ensure that you follow best design practices will be vital in bolstering your B2B lead generation efforts.