Every inbound marketing agency has a few tricks up its sleeve; from marketing automation software to lead capturing tricks to the magic formulas for super-converting landing pages – inbound agencies know the secrets to success.
The inbound marketing services offered vary from agency to agency. However, the way the right inbound marketing agency approaches its inbound marketing strategy is what makes the biggest difference.
We'll be honest – crafting an effective landing page, which serves as the initial web page where visitors land, a compelling social media presence, ensuring your online profiles are engaging and active, a user-friendly website design, creating an attractive and easy-to-navigate website layout, and a well-thought-out long-term strategy, encompassing your future marketing plans, is a challenging task. You can't solely rely on marketing automation to ensure their success.
In fact, it's a very rare thing to build the perfect landing page, social media presence, website design, and long-term strategy on the first attempt. There are so many essential elements – the CTA, the imagery, the offer, the form, the copy – that all have to be perfectly placed to draw the eye where it needs to be drawn and convert those customers.
But the good news is you don’t have to get your landing pages perfect first time. Indeed, here’s the first inbound marketing agency secret for awesome landing pages – A/B testing.
Check out the following articles to learn more about Inbound marketing agencies:
- Top 10 reasons to work with an inbound marketing agency
- How a B2B Marketing Agency Can Help Your Business Grow
- How to Win Online with a Digital Strategy Agency
- Growth Hackers: Strategic Marketing Agency Success Stories
Secret 1 – A/B Testing
Sometimes (just as often, in fact) referred to as split testing, A/B testing is the process of creating and publishing two versions of a web page to see which one performs better. A/B testing has proven to be one of the best way to generate leads.
For landing pages, which are crucial web pages designed for specific marketing purposes, you'll create two variants (Version ‘A' and Version ‘B' – perhaps A has a green CTA (Call to Action) button, and B has a red one) – and show them to a proportion of similar visitors. After a few days, you learn that variant B, which resulted from your inbound marketing campaigns, which involve attracting potential customers through valuable content and engagement, entices the most clicks.
So, you work together with your team to roll out that version of your landing page to the rest of your visitors. This collaborative effort can significantly help you grow your business as you continually refine and optimize your marketing strategies.
Then you start again, this time testing out a different variable – say, the image. Here’s an example of a landing page A/B test carried out by courier service DHL. Version A shows an image of a female courier, version B a male courier.
(Image source: business2community.com)
There's no end of variables related to content creation and marketing that can be tested in this fashion, and the more tests you do, the more you learn about building perfect landing pages. This type of testing is highly recommended for your content marketing strategy, ads campaign, collaboration with inbound marketing agencies, and ultimately, achieving inbound marketing success.
However – we know what you're thinking. The perfect landing page will be different for each visitor, right?
Right. Well here’s another inbound marketing agency secret – you can display different landing pages to different visitors.
It’s true. When you use a solution such as that offered by HubSpot, for instance, you can display personalised content – including images, forms, CTAs and everything else – for each visitor to improve the conversion rate of your landing pages. Based on a visitor’s location, source, device, stage in the buyer’s journey, or any other data that you have, you can serve up dynamic landing pages to different visitors, skyrocketing performance.
Secret 2 – Use Video
Here’s a wow-stat for you – videos on landing pages can increase conversions by 80% or more.
(Image source: slideshare.net)
The power of video marketing should never be underestimated.
When someone arrives on your landing page, you’ve pretty much got just the one chance to close the conversion.
A short, engaging video that illustrates the benefits of your product or service and grabs the attention of your prospect can make all the difference between a new sign-up and a bounce.
And of course, once again, you will learn what’s best – long videos, short videos, animated videos, videos with voiceovers, videos without – through A/B testing.
Secret 3 – An Irresistible Offer
You've no doubt arrived at dozens, if not hundreds, of landing pages yourself over the years as you've been surfing the web, signing up for various services, and buying new things. It was not a coincidence. Inbound marketing companies, specialised in drawing online audiences to products and services, search engines that guide your online exploration, and lead generation strategies that convert your interest into tangible results, all played a significant role in this.
But you won’t, of course, have signed up for everything – and neither will have your customers.
Today, people are increasingly careful with their email addresses. They know that as soon as they fill in that form, they will be giving yet another company access to their mailbox, and this means that you’ve got to offer them something pretty decent – darn near irresistible, in fact – in exchange.
As a good inbound marketing strategist, you'll be deploying landing pages to generate leads, and your leads will indeed lead to customers. You don’t get customers without leads – that’s the simple truth of inbound marketing. So, your offer must be for something special.
You may also do search engine marketing to increase your likelihood of getting those leads.
If you go down the eBook or white paper route, then it needs to be truly unique – offering access to information that simply can’t be sought elsewhere (and you may need to invest in some original research to create the value you’re after). Other options might be a free, personalised report or evaluation, or a free consultation with the prospect perhaps via video conferencing or over the phone.
Here’s an example of an irresistible offer from the Self-Publishing Success Summit – a free ticket to the summit worth $997. Notice the design of this landing page – how the important words are highlighted in yellow, how the green of the CTA stands out, the word “FREE” in capital letters, the video, the promise. This is great stuff indeed.
(Image source: self-publishingschool.com)
Secret 4 – Social Proof
In order to entice people to accept offers, your inbound marketing agency will know that prospects are more likely to convert when they can see that plenty of others have followed suit before them.
A great example of this comes from project management application Basecamp.
When you arrive at Basecamp’s landing page, the first thing you see is how many companies have recently signed up (the social proof). Add to that the welcoming sketch of a man literally pointing to the form that Basecamp wants you to fill out, the shortness of the form itself (just four fields), and the great offer of a 60-day unlimited use free trial, and you’ve got a landing page built for conversions. Brilliant.
(Image source: basecamp.com)
Back to You
Landing pages lead to conversions. They serve as the initial point of contact for potential customers and guide them through the sales journey. These pages are crucial for capturing leads, which are individuals interested in your products or services. Leads, when nurtured effectively, can turn into opportunities for sales.
The best inbound marketing agencies specialize in attracting and engaging these leads through various digital marketing strategies. Additionally, a skilled sales team plays a pivotal role in converting these opportunities into new customers, ensuring the success of your business.
If you need help with a sales and marketing strategy for your landing pages, then please get in touch with the inbound marketing experts here at Incisive Edge today.
