Landing Page Basics - Part 2 - Technology & Testing

[MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome to Legal Marketing 101. I'm Toby Rosen. Welcome back to our series on landing page basics. This is episode two, and we're talking about technology and testing. Imagine you're sitting at your desk, ready to tackle your marketing tasks for the day. With a few clicks, you open your favorite landing page builder, like lead pages, and you're instantly greeted by a world of possibilities. Templates, drag and drop design features and seamless integrations, all at your fingertips. It can be pretty overwhelming, but technology has become a completely indispensable asset. It has totally transformed the way we approach marketing and it has revolutionized our ability to reach and engage with potential clients. So in part two of the landing page basic series, we're going to explore the key considerations and compare some of the most popular landing page builders to help you make a more informed decision. First and foremost, you're gonna want a landing page builder that offers user-friendly features, obviously, especially if you're not a tech-savvy individual. Look for builders like LeadPages, Instapage, or Unbounce. These are the three that I primarily recommend. And you wanna look for platforms like this that provide drag and drop functionality, a lot of pre-designed templates, and just generally an intuitive interface. These builders, particularly the three I've mentioned, allow you to really easily create and customize landing pages without having to code. Next, we're gonna look at the integration capabilities of the landing page builder. You'll probably wanna connect your landing page with other tools in your marketing stack, things like your CRM software or email marketing platforms. Leadpages and Instapage, for example, offer some really seamless integrations with a bunch of different CRM and email marketing providers which will help you automate and streamline your workflow and have all your data in one place. We've talked about the merits of that quite a bit. After that, we'll take a quick look at the analytics and reporting features. This isn't really the most critical thing as I generally advise your main analytics operation be somewhere else, but it's good to know about. All the products I've mentioned and really just most products in general, they offer some sort of integrated analytics capability, but they'll also offer integration with Google Analytics and probably the other options you may be using for website analytics. At this point, if your landing page builder doesn't support your analytic solution, you should probably be worried. And then we come to my favorite subject, which I say quite sarcastically, the design elements of the builder. Personally, I'm a fan of lead pages because it's really centered around templates and data and conversion optimization, but it does have a bunch of strong customization options. That said, if you want to go completely custom, look at things like Instapage and Unbounce that allow super extensive customization options like really detailed HTML, CSS, and JavaScript editing, and you can really just recreate your website with these tools. These advanced customization features will give you a lot more flexibility in creating something that's unique and visually appealing that really reflects your brand and ultimately will generate some more leads. I'm not really going to dive into any of the typical things you should look for in a software product like good customer support and so on, but when you're doing your due diligence, the items I've mentioned will keep you on the right track. But let's not get sucked into shiny object syndrome as it were. All this tech is great if and only if we have a plan for how to use it. to all of that, you may have even thought, "Why would I use this software? I can make my WordPress site or my Squarespace site do all of that." Well, now we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about testing. Testing is really the key to unlocking the full potential of your landing pages. The testing options these platforms provide allow us to experiment, analyze, and make data-driven decisions to continuously improve our conversion rates and our revenue. I've talked a little bit about A/B testing on the podcast before, but really quickly I just want to reiterate a concept that's really very important in marketing and pretty uncomfortable to most businesses. We don't know what's going to happen when we launch a campaign. Every experienced marketer has seen a campaign that they thought was incredible do a giant belly flop when they launched and they've seen some surefire stinkers knock it out of the park. With experience, you do absolutely develop an intuition and sort of a rolodex of things that work and things that don't work, but without some data it's really hard to be certain in any particular situation. How good marketers take things to the next level is through testing. One of the most popular and effective testing methods is, in fact, A/B testing, also known as split testing. A/B testing involves creating two or more versions of a landing page or a particular marketing asset, each with specific variations in elements like headlines or images, call to action buttons, colors, things like that. These versions of the same creative are then randomly presented to visitors, allowing you to determine which variation really performs better in terms of achieving the conversion rate or the sales rate that you're looking for. To run an A/B test effectively, start by clearly defining the goal of your test. It could be that you're trying to increase click-through rates, or maybe improving form completion, or just enhancing overall conversions. Next, develop a hypothesis based on your insights and experience. For example, if you suspect that changing the headline will make a significant impact, your hypothesis could be changing the headline to be more specific will increase click-through rates. Now, it's time to implement the test using your chosen landing page builder. You split your audience into equal segments and direct each segment to a different version of your landing page. In most of the builders, that's already built in. Let the test run for a sufficient period to gather statistically significant results. And remember, it's essential to have a large enough sample size to ensure the validity of your findings. 5, 10, 20 people might not be enough to be statistically significant. Once you have some data back from your system or from something like Google Optimize, analyze the results. Compare the performance of each version based on the predefined goals. Did the variation with the changed headline actually increase click-through rates? Or did it do something different? Did it change another metric that we care about? Now, make a note of the insights gained from the test, and we're going to use those to inform plenty of future iterations and improvements. The really critical thing here is what you learn, actually go back and implement it into your pages, and test again. Beyond A/B testing, there are a lot of additional testing techniques that can enhance your understanding of user behavior and continue to optimize your landing pages. One such technique is called heat mapping. It's really interesting. Heat mapping tools like Hotjar or Crazy Egg provide visual representations of user interactions on your landing pages. By analyzing the heat maps, you can see things like where users are clicking, where they're scrolling and where they're spending the most time on the page. This data will also help you make more informed decisions about the placement of your most important elements like forms and headlines. And at the end of the day, this is going to improve overall user experience and lead to more conversions. Now testing can be really interesting and you may disagree, but I think it's really fun to geek out on the data we get from testing. We learn about our clients, their behaviors, their commonalities and their differences, how we can serve them better and ultimately, the most interesting part, how we can make more money. AB testing and heat mapping are really just the tip of the iceberg though. Things like multivariate testing, usability testing, those can get us even deeper into the weeds here. What's really the most important thing though is the systemization of this process. Without it, we're just wasting time and money. For every test, it's super important to clearly define your goals and develop a hypothesis, conduct your tests and record the results, and then actually implement your findings into your marketing. By adopting a mindset of continuous testing and optimization, you'll be able to unlock the full potential of your landing pages and achieve better conversion rates and generate more revenue. Okay, Toby, that's enough with the nerd stuff. What should we actually be testing on our landing pages? To get into this, I'm going to rattle these Office bullet points, so grab something to take notes or check out for the transcript when that's available for download. Number one, design elements. When it comes to design, small changes really can make a big impact. Test different headlines and subheadings to see which ones resonate better with your audience, whether it's different color schemes or visual elements or different fonts. You can do different things to create a visually appealing and cohesive design. Remember what you're trying to do is to capture attention and guide visitors towards your call to action. Number two, calls to action. The CTA is really the pivotal point that drives conversions. Test different button placements, different wordings of CTAs, and a lot of different designs to find the combination that compels visitors to take action. a simple change in just color or font or phrasing can boost conversion rates by 2, 3, 5, or 10 times. Do not underestimate the power of an effective call to action in driving conversions. Number 3. Contact information. The way you present your contact information can impact visitor trust and engagement. Test different formats for displaying phone numbers and email addresses and even social media links, or try not displaying social media links. Some visitors may prefer a clickable phone number, while others might prefer a contact form or a chatbot. You're going to have to just find the balance that works the best for your target audience and for your users. Number four, forms and buttons. I touched on this with design elements, but the length and layout of your forms and the buttons can really drastically affect conversion rates. Test all the different fields you can try from full name to just first name, first name and last name, or try different button sizes and styles. I like Amazon's orange, but people like different colors. Key forms really concise when possible and include only the necessary fields. The easier it is for visitors to complete the form, the higher your chances of a conversion are. Number five, the content of the page. The content on your landing page is obviously crucial for conveying your message and your value proposition. Test as many different variations of text, images, videos, and testimonials, and other types of content to see what resonates most with your audience and what generates conversions. It's important to tailor your content to specifically address their pain points and to highlight the benefits of working with your firm. Number six, site speed and performance. In today's mobile first world, visitors expect really speedy and seamless experiences, especially depending on your target market and how fast their internet may be. You need to run tests on your landing page's load times using tools like Google's Page Speed Insights and GT Metrics and look at the overall performance. You can do things like optimize your images or leverage caching and minify code to improve site speed. Faster site will reduce bounce rates and keep visitors engaged. Number seven, mobile usability. of adding on to number six, with the majority of users these days accessing the internet on mobile devices in most markets, 60% plus, it is, I'm just going to say vital, but you can understand how important it is to optimize your landing pages for mobile usability. Test the responsiveness, test the navigation, test readability, test if links work on a bunch of different mobile devices and different screen sizes for different devices. Try them on Wi-Fi, try them on cellular. Make sure your landing page is really easy to navigate and the content is easy to access and it's easily digestible for those smaller screens. More than half of your audience is looking at it that way, that's really where the most important part of your audience is. Remember, with all this technology, testing is going to be an iterative process. And there's a ton more than the seven items I just listed to test on your landing pages and really throughout creative and all of your marketing. I do think that those seven things are the most critical and will keep you on the right path, but you'll find a really endless list of things to tweak and listen to client feedback, find out what they care about and what resonated with them. Take note of the results from your tests and refine your landing pages continuously. What works for one audience and one practice area or one segment of the practice area might not work for another. They might work in one town, but two miles down the road, they may disagree. So it's important to really be continuously experimenting and optimizing and looking for new ways to reach and connect with the people in your market to ultimately generate leads. Keep track of those testing efforts and continue to build upon those successes. That's it for Legal Marketing 101 this week. Check out rosenadvertising.com for more. Thanks.[MUSIC]