How to Make Client-Converting Pages That Sell

Imagine this scenario…

You’ve just landed a sweet advertising deal that’s going to drive heaps of targeted prospects your way. Oh joy! Can you taste sweet victory yet? Except… you’ve told your advertisers to send their traffic to your website home page. Or your blog home page. Or… *gasp* your contact form {oh the horror!}.

All that advertising. And all that dead silence.

Where are all the new leads? Why aren’t prospects banging down your door?

Because you didn’t drive them to a targeted landing page that delivered exactly what they were looking for in that moment. (Yep, on top of being superhuman in your ability to deliver services you’re supposed to read their minds too.)

So let’s remedy this pronto so you never have to suffer this scenario *again*.

First, you’ll need something to give away. As freelancers who offer services we often don’t consider that our expertise translates well into information and that our prospects are clamoring for that information. Read this article here for more information on topics and types of giveaways you can create for your prospects. Here we’ll be focusing on the nuts and bolts of your landing page that’ll get people to request that information…

How to Create a Client-Converting Landing Page

The objective of your landing page is to get your visitor to enter her email address to request info you’re offering (or a piece of software or any other freebie you’re giving away). We refer to this visitor-action as an “opt in.” This is vital to your success as a freelancer because it allows you to build a relationship with a large number of people who, if you communicate to them often and appropriately, will consistently convert over time into clients.

This frees you from awkward cold pitches and wasted time in drafting numerous proposals without resultant sales.

So first let’s look at the page as a whole…

Target your landing page to your visitor, based on how they found you.

For example, if you’re creating a paid advertising campaign like Google Adwords, create a landing page for each of your individual ad groups. Each ad group should focus on a central theme or keyword. This way you know exactly what someone searched for to find that landing page and hence you’ve got a clue to the conversation already going on in their head. For more information on this, make sure you grab my free Marketing & Sales Freelancer’s Handbook here!

Clear everything off the page except your offer.

This is more important than it may first seem. A landing page’s sole purpose is to get your visitor to take a single action: to opt in. Because its purpose is singular, providing your visitor with any other choice will severely cripple your page’s conversions.

This includes any links on the page. Remove any site navigation, links to your home page or to “more information,” etc. The only links that should appear on your page are legal links such as terms of service or your privacy policy.

That said, let’s break down the landing page into each element and discuss how to craft the best headlines, write compelling copy, and design your opt in form, plus how to put it all together. Placement, colors, even font types can affect how your audience responds!

Write a Headline with a Specific Promise

I recommend writing five to ten headlines to get your juices flowing. My first and even second headline ideas are rarely the best of the bunch. I’ll cover headlines in more depth in other articles, but for our purposes here, let’s focus on the type of headlines that will inspire your prospect to opt in…

1. If your landing page is plugged into any kind of search optimization or paid advertising campaign where you know the keyword terms visitors will search to find you, be sure to incorporate as many of those keywords into your headline (without being ridiculous or jeopardizing the integrity of the headline and its promise).

2. Get inside your prospect’s head. What is her primary challenge? What is she looking to solve? What could you promise to reveal or teach that would absolutely get her jazzed and filling in her information?

3. Your headline should be large enough to dominate the page, but not so large that it drives your key content below the fold (where the visitor has to start scrolling). Best converting headlines are red and use Impact font or something similar. Another high-converting color is blue. Orange has been shown to deter sales and action.

4. If you have the ability, I highly recommend creating your headline and sub-headlines as graphics rather than HTML. It’s not necessary, but it allows you to add just a bit of styling and quality that dresses up the page nicely. Image matters.

Write a Brief Summary of What They’ll Get

Below your headline, write a short-and-sweet explanation of why you’re providing this information and what they’ll learn. This should pique their interest – not actually give the tips away (that’s what the giveaway is for!).

Example bullet statements that drive opt ins:

• The single biggest marketing MYTH that accountants [i.e. YOUR TARGET PROSPECT] follow and how it may be crippling your business
  
• A simple tweak to your website’s graphics and their placement that increases conversions by 200% on average
  
• The never-discussed 7 coding practices that keep your end user happy and maintain 80% user retention rate on average even after 6 months!
  
• The project management approach that will slash the time and money you invest in website design by getting you what you want the *first* time around (plus how to yank sheer brilliance out of your graphics designer)
  
• Why your savvy competitors will leap ahead next month with their social marketing (and how you can get there first!)

As you can see, powerful bullet statements are about THEM, they use quantifiable data like percentages, number of tips they’ll learn, or dollar amounts. Great statement starters are “Why,” “How,” and reference a simple tweak, a secret tip, a popular mistake or myth they’re falling victim to, etc.

Be sure to bold or italicize a few key phrases or words in one or more of your bullet statements to make sure scanners catch the key pieces. Just don’t over do it.

Place a Video or Image Above Your Opt In

Create an attractive image of your giveaway, it’s title, or screenshots of key pages or sections within it. Especially if your giveaway is a video, consider doing an opt in video explaining in 2 minutes or less why you’re offering the giveaway and what they’ll learn when they download it. Basically your video will reiterate your bullet statements and summary (but don’t you dare regurgitate what you wrote word-for-word or look like you’re reading from a script. It kills the effect and will harm your opt in rate).

If you have an opt in video, I highly recommend you split test three versions of your page to see which converts best:

• Landing page like above with featured copy and small video
• Large video featured first on the page, just under headline, set to autoplay with featured text below it and opt in to the right
• Large video featured just under headline, set to autoplay with no text and opt in either just below it or to the right

You’d be shocked at the difference in opt in rate depending on how you deliver your opt in offer. TEST TEST TEST!

Hook Your Opt In Form to Your Chosen Email System

I use Aweber and highly recommend them for a low-cost robust email marketing system. However another phenomenal best-practices email system top marketers use (and that we recommend all our clients use when we’re handling a multi-million dollar launch) is iContact.

I like Aweber because it’s highly affordable yet it allows you to do just about everything you could ever want to do with your sales funnel and email marketing (except resending an email to people who didn’t open the original – something iContact does do). You can use Aweber’s web form templates to create snazzy form designs in the case that you don’t have web programming and graphic design skills, plus it’s easy to sequence emails as described in my Marketing & Sales Freelancer’s Handbook.

Make sure you customize your opt in confirmation email, make a welcome email that your new subscribers receive immediately, a thank you page they’re taken to once they submit your opt in form, and that you make your giveaway accessible online and link to it in your thank you page and/or welcome email. (For more in-depth explanations of each of these steps be sure to grab the handbook. Don’t want to repeat myself!)

Test Everything Before You Go Live!

The last thing I’ll say here is be sure to opt in to your own form and test the whole process to make sure everything gets delivered appropriately, all links work, etc. I also like to get inside the head of my subscriber when I’m reviewing the process. How is this going to sit with someone who doesn’t know me and this is their first experience of me? Will they have any questions I haven’t addressed here?

And that’s it! Now you have the secrets to the landing page universe. May the force be with you.