Chris Smith - The Conversion Code

6 6.Fessenden, Therese. “Scrolling and Attention.” Nielsen Norman Group. April 15, 2018. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/scrolling-and-attention/.

7 7.Smart Insights. “The Impact of Customer Reviews and Ratings on Conversion Rates.” October 4, 2011. https://www.smartinsights.com/conversion-optimisation/product-page-optimisation/reviews-conversion-rate-impact/.

8 8.Vocell, Jeffrey. “Personalized Calls to Action Perform 202% Better than Basic CTAs [New Data].” Hubspot. June 29, 2018. https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/personalized-calls-to-action-convert-better-data.

9 9.Epsilon. “The Power of Me: The Impact of Personalization on Marketing Performance.” January 4, 2018. https://www.slideshare.net/EpsilonMktg/the-power-of-me-the-impact-of-personalization-on-marketing-performance/1.

10 10.Bold Software. “How Helpful Is Live Chat?” eMarketer. August 19, 2009. https://www.emarketer.com/Article/How-Helpful-Live-Chat/1007235.

11 11.Saleh, Khalid. “The Importance of Live Chat Customer Support.” Invesp. October 11, 2017. https://www.invespcro.com/blog/live-chat-customer-support/.

12 12.Clarkson, Diane. “Making Proactive Chat Work.” Forrester. June 4, 2010. https://www.forrester.com/report/making-proactive-chat-work/RES57054.

In 2003, the IT department at Microsoft invented landing pages in response to poor online sales of their flagship business product, Office. Microsoft.comhad become bloated with information, so they extracted the content about just Office and put it on its own dedicated page and URL. As legend has it, sales of Office immediately skyrocketed by 30%.

The reason landing pages are so effective for lead generation is simple: they are simple. They only have one goal. Compare that to your website, which may have dozens of navigation options or categories to choose from, and you can see why professional marketers use landing pages for any lead generation campaigns involving ad spend. Because as Wikipedia perfectly puts it, “The general goal of a landing page is to convert site visitors into sales or leads.” 1

Unlike the website traffic that Google sends you through searches and ads, where the “preview” of the content is text-based, social media and email marketing allow you to be very visual and descriptive about the lead magnet they can access if they decide to click. This technique, called coupling, increases the conversion rate of the landing page you send them to because they head there with a crystal-clear expectation.

Before you start sending traffic to your landing pages, just like we did with your website's design, you probably need to clean up the landing pages you are already using. More likely, you need to start over and build new ones.

There are many proven best practices regarding landing page design that I will cover ahead. Keep in mind, though, even if you have no design or technical skill whatsoever, there are countless companies (like Leadpages and Unbounce) that make building an effective landing page a couple of clicks. Be sure to search their existing templates by keyword (e.g., “real estate”) to find prebuilt, industry-specific designs.

You could also head back over to Dribbble (or Behance or MarketerHire or Toptal or even *gasps* Fiverr) to hire a designer who will build them for you. The bottom line is that all the bells and whistles in the world on a website won't convert leads at a higher rate than a singularly focused, well-designed landing page will.

People used to sit through two-minute commercials, and believe it or not, couldn't fast-forward them. They listened to the radio, and if an ad came on, they could only change the station to another one with ads. Today, thanks to our phone and social media addiction, our attention is everywhere, while simultaneously nowhere for very long.

Case in point, TikTok and Instagram Reels both exploded in popularity using 100% micro-videos. Even YouTube launched Shorts, vertical videos, all under one minute in length. This new condensed format is not going to go away.

Studies have shown that 58% of viewers watch business-related videos to the end if they're less than 60 seconds, 2 but that number plummets as the length of the video increases ( Figure 3.1). If bite-sized content is not already a big part of your marketing strategy, it better be soon.

Figure 3.1 How a Video's Length Affects Completion Rate

Our brains process visuals 60,000 times faster than text. My daughter can consume 20–30 TikToks in the time it takes me to read one blog post.

Words and long-form content still matter, sure. I wrote an entire book (with Phil M Jones and Jimmy Mackin) called Exactly What to Say for Real Estate Agents . It was instantly a best-seller. I believe in the power of words. I think copywriting should be an obsession for every business and that to show your expertise, you need to go deep and not just wide.

However, writing great quips of copy for social media, websites, landing pages, and emails is a new skill most are still learning. Regardless of your ability to craft clever copy, you need to take a visual-first approach if you want as many people as possible to actually read what you write.

This microwave mindset is another reason why using landing pages is so important: they cut to the chase, fast.

Whether you decide to DIY or outsource the design of your landing pages, I want to make sure you have a checklist of what a “perfect” landing page includes.

Headline:Make it clear, concise, and “coupled.” The headline of your landing page needs to be an extension of the ad, email, or link that brought them to it. If what brought them was “Get an instant offer on your home” or “25 Facebook Ads Templates for Seller Leads,” you would repeat that as closely as you can with your headline.

Sub-headline:We want to continue them down the path the headline started them on with the sub-headline. Using the aforementioned headline examples, a good sub-headline would be “Find out if your home qualifies” or “We spent millions of dollars testing these templates. They work.”

Description:Make sure you triple-check all your grammar, punctuation, and spelling (I'm obsessed with Grammarly). Crossing every t and dotting every i should be mandatory for all marketing and sales copy. If you want a lead to answer the phone when you call, the words in your description matter. Use a scalpel with your copy, not an axe.

Testimonial:The goal of your landing page testimonial(s) or reviews is to establish trust. Using an icon from a well-known and trusted source, like Yelp (restaurants), Zillow (real estate agents), Google (small businesses), or G2 (SaaS), can really have an impact. Many companies are still touting their BBB (Better Business Bureau) credentials more than their public-facing reviews.

Adding things like “verified by” or “trusted by” can also increase conversions. For example, when eyeglass company AC Lens started displaying a VeriSign badge, they saw a 41% increase in conversions.

CTA or form:When the visitor is ready, your primary CTA to click a button or complete a form must be prominent and contain the right copy. 3

What your buttons say makes a big difference in conversion rate. When you use the word “Submit” on a landing page, the overall conversion rate decreases by 3%. Both “Click here” (33% better) and “Go” (20% better) outperform “Submit.” Meanwhile, “Download” (25% worse) and “Register” (50% worse) underperform against “Submit.” 4