You earn money when a visitor converts.  Until your visitors convert you are spending money.  No matter what your conversion is, either sell a product or collect and email address, you want a visitor to take that action.  Your landing page must convince the visitor to convert.  The following are several ways which you can increase the conversions of your landing page.

* Do research.
Build your landing to speak to your ideal visitor.  Keep everything the page geared toward that ideal visitor.  A landing page trying to capture a broad spectrum of visitor attention is destined to get a lower conversion rate.

* The headline is important.
Your landing page headline is perhaps the most important marketing message your landing page can have.  You can be guaranteed that almost every visitor will read your headline, even if they read nothing else.  Grab their attention with the headline.

* Match the landing page to your AdWords Ad.
Having your keyword in the landing page headline will get the visitors attention.  It will tell the visitor the page is relevant to what they searched for.  This will increase you chances of the visitor remaining on your page and reading the rest of your sales copy, and converting.

You can use Adwords Dynamic Keyword Insertion to pass the search term to your landing page as a querystring parameter.  This will allow a dynamically generated landing page to use the visitors search term in the headline and sales copy.

* Give the visitor only one option, the option to convert.
Remove any navigation links, outbound links and advertisments from your landing page.  Make sure the visitor doesn’t get distracted by some other link or message.  You want to them to convert, and only convert.  This means keep your message to a single page.

* Remove unecessary graphics or features.
Again, you don’t want to distract potential customers from your message.  Get rid unneeded graphics, CSS or javascripts.  Keep your message simple and focused.  Removing unecessary elements should also increase the page loading time.  You don’t want to lose a potential conversion because your page was too slow to load.

* Give the visitor every opportunity to convert.
Don’t have only one conversion link or form at the bottom of your page.  Make sure your visitor doesn’t have to search for the conversion opportunity.  Popup windows and DHTML windows provide great ways to attract attention and convert.

* Use Testimonials 
Consumers like Testimonials from third parties.  For some visitors, Testimonials may be more persuasive than your sales copy.  When collecting testimonials you can write the copy yourself and simply ask the Testimonial giver to agree with it.

 

This article is a guest post by Joe Pulizzi, founder of Junta42 Match, a free resource to help businesses find expert content providers. Joe blogs regularly at blog.junta42.com.

 

One of the most frequent questions I receive while traveling is about blogging. The questions revolve around how to get started, what to talk about, and what software to use.

I usually reply to these people with questions of my own, which startles them, because so many start thinking about blogging in terms of what they want to say, instead of what their target audience needs to hear. 

Here are 10 questions I frequently ask bloggers just getting started:

1.  Who are your primary and secondary targets for your blog?

2.  What do you want to tell them?

3.  Do you understand what the key informational needs of the audience are?

4.  Are you reading other blogs on that topic, and ones targeting your customers and prospects?

5.  If you are reading, are you leaving comments that add to the online conversation on the blogs you cover?

6.  Do you have a firm grasp on the types of keywords to focus on that would be relevant to your blog?

7.  Do you follow those keywords on Technorati and Google Blog Search?  Do you have alerts set up around those keywords at Google Alerts? (or possibly even use a reputation management system?)

8.  Can you commit to blogging at least two-to-three times per week? (consistency is key, based on the expectations you set with your audience)

9.  What is your ultimate goal in starting a blog?  In one year from when you start blogging, how will your life be different?

10.  Are you looking at blogging as a challenge or something that could be fun?

Of course, I don’t ask all of these in fear I would scare them off, but these are the general starter questions.  These questions should be the same for individuals as well as businesses.

The majority of blogs out there don’t make it.  The worst thing you can do as a business is start a consistent dialogue with your customers and then stop.  Better not to do one at all.

Remember, blogging is just a tool.  Some businesses aren’t ready to commit resources or change their culture (full transparency) to adapt to a blog.  That’s okay.  But all businesses must understand the power of blogging.  Your brand is what people read about and talk about online. You have to decide if you want to be a part of shaping that conversation around your brand.

 

 

This article is a guest post by Joe Pulizzi, founder of Junta42 Match, a free resource to help businesses find expert content providers. Joe blogs regularly at blog.junta42.com.

 

One of the most frequent questions I receive while traveling is about blogging. The questions revolve around how to get started, what to talk about, and what software to use.

I usually reply to these people with questions of my own, which startles them, because so many start thinking about blogging in terms of what they want to say, instead of what their target audience needs to hear. 

Here are 10 questions I frequently ask bloggers just getting started:

1.  Who are your primary and secondary targets for your blog?

2.  What do you want to tell them?

3.  Do you understand what the key informational needs of the audience are?

4.  Are you reading other blogs on that topic, and ones targeting your customers and prospects?

5.  If you are reading, are you leaving comments that add to the online conversation on the blogs you cover?

6.  Do you have a firm grasp on the types of keywords to focus on that would be relevant to your blog?

7.  Do you follow those keywords on Technorati and Google Blog Search?  Do you have alerts set up around those keywords at Google Alerts? (or possibly even use a reputation management system?)

8.  Can you commit to blogging at least two-to-three times per week? (consistency is key, based on the expectations you set with your audience)

9.  What is your ultimate goal in starting a blog?  In one year from when you start blogging, how will your life be different?

10.  Are you looking at blogging as a challenge or something that could be fun?

Of course, I don’t ask all of these in fear I would scare them off, but these are the general starter questions.  These questions should be the same for individuals as well as businesses.

The majority of blogs out there don’t make it.  The worst thing you can do as a business is start a consistent dialogue with your customers and then stop.  Better not to do one at all.

Remember, blogging is just a tool.  Some businesses aren’t ready to commit resources or change their culture (full transparency) to adapt to a blog.  That’s okay.  But all businesses must understand the power of blogging.  Your brand is what people read about and talk about online. You have to decide if you want to be a part of shaping that conversation around your brand.