One of the keys to a successful landing page is making it easy for site visitors to share and pass on to others, which means making sharing options a focus on your page. That’s why it’s so important to omit your site’s navigation, footers and other common elements from the page. To reduce distraction to other pages and control focus on just what is being offered in the landing page and promoting it to others.
Encouraging visitors to spread your offer to their Facebook friends, Twitter followers and LinkedIn connections can increase your traffic many-fold, even exponentially if it’s a compelling enough offer. You may even consider offering incentives to share — bonuses or additional freebies.
If your site was created in a CMS like WordPress, setting up social sharing is just a one-click plug in away. Remember to include sharing options on the thank you page they see after they submit your form. That’s often when someone is most likely to share.
Facebook and LinkedIn
It’s easy to promote your offer on Facebook and LinkedIn. You have an audience that’s already interested in you and you can say what you like. Our primary advice is to be brief and draw attention to your offer with clarity.
To promote your landing page in the 140 characters of a tweet is a bit more challenging. Be sure to include an “@your company” mention in your tweets. It’s important for people to have this context so they can connect you with your offer.
Make the main part of your tweet the name or brief description of your offer. Make it sound catchy but easy to understand. Prioritize clarity over cleverness. Try to make your description include why someone would want to act on your offer.
And, obviously, include a link to your landing page – not your site. We see this mistake all the time. Keep your focus on driving traffic to your specific offer.
Finally, include a link to your tweets. Let Twitter shorten your link automatically and use the short version.
Consider A/B Testing
If you have a large audience, you should consider A/B Testing to see how effective the elements of your landing pages are. This can help you hone in on characteristics that will increase your response rates. For example, you can create two landing pages, one for the top half of your list and the other for the bottom half of your list, (top and bottom not meaning more or less likely candidates, just top and bottom of the physical list,) you can experiment with the size of your type, the color of your headline, the style of your photo, or even an aspect of the offer. Such tests can help you see which aspects of the page bring better response rate. You’d be surprised what you can learn from such tests.
Just remember that for A/B testing to be helpful, only one aspect of the page should be different each time. Otherwise, you can’t isolate which aspects are more or less popular or effective.
A/B testing is not for all circumstances. It’s not, for example, for you if you have a small list or highly narrow and small audience. Such an audience might perceive you as sending things too often. But if you audience is large and constant, the lessons learned from A/B testing can increase your success rates substantially.
Your Thank You Page
After someone fills out your form, they should be directed to a thank you page, where the download or delivery of the offer takes place. This page should look more like other pages in your site and should include your navigation, footers, etc. That way you have a chance of tempting them to move to a different page or offer in your site. A great thing to do is double-down on your offer — provide a second offer related to the first one. Not to get their contact information, though, you already have that, but to solidify their confidence in what you have to offer them.
Remember to repeat the title and description of the offer they just responded to on the thank you page. It’s good reinforcement and it builds trust that you’ve just done what they expected and delivered what you said you would.
If your offer was for an e-book or whitepaper, this usually means a pdf they can download or a video they can watch. If your offer relates to a consultation, remember to tell them how you intend to follow up, whether that’s a phone call or a message in their inbox.
Remember to include social media sharing options on your thank you page as well. This is at least as important on your thank you page as it is on your landing page. Make sure your sharing links go to your landing page, not your thank you page or your home page. Otherwise, those visitors will be able to get your dowload without filling out your form!
Finally, setup your content download to open in a new window, so your thank you page stays on their screen longer. This way they can address their attention to the content they just downloaded and still have your thank you page with sharing opportunities open on their screen. When their done reading, the window will still be there and they just use it.
— Chris Quinn, principal and brand strategist
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