There is only one chance to make a first impression. The landing page is often the first page that your desired customer comes into contact with.
This article was originally published by Ideas Plus Business.
So how do you make sure that it doesn’t close the tab right away?
By acknowledging their feelings, desires, and needs, incorporating them into your offer, and giving them the feeling that you are offering the perfect solution to their problem. And all of this should be recognizable at first glance.
Sounds pretty complicated? It is. But it is not impossible to design a high-conversion landing page that does exactly this task with flying colors.
We’ll tell you how to use landing page optimization to really focus on the customer.
HIGH-CONVERSION LANDING PAGES APPEAL TO EMOTIONS – BUT WHY?
Regardless of whether it is about services, products in an online shop, or B2B business: the customer benefit should be clear at first glance.
But why is it so difficult for many companies? One possible answer: it is much easier to describe and promote what you know.
You know exactly what your offer can do. So it’s only logical to share this information with your target group, isn’t it?
In fact, it’s not that easy.
Let’s change our perspective. If you are looking for a service provider, what are you interested in?
Are you interested in all the technical details and subtleties of the offer in the first step? Or do you want to get an overview and roughly understand what the service can do for you?
The first few seconds and minutes decide whether you take a closer look at an offer. It is precisely in this phase that a good landing page provides visual and content orientation.
A good landing page tells a story – a story of how you can positively influence the life and work of your customers.
Of course, sooner or later comes the phase in the customer journey in which tangible facts play a role. But the landing page, the first point of contact with you and your company, is not the right place for it.
That is why we first exclude this level in conversion-centric landing page optimization and concentrate on what draws the reader to your page – the emotional address.
REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD ADDRESS YOUR CUSTOMERS’ EMOTIONS ON THE LANDING PAGE
1. Emotions influence decisions.
Even superficial objective decisions are always subject to an individual subconscious note – even in the B2B area.
2. Customers don’t buy products or services. They buy a solution to their problems.
If you can make the reader feel that you understand their problems, they will trust you to solve them.
3. People are not always motivated by rational considerations, but work with a diffuse mixture of gut feeling, arguments and needs.
The better you address the emotions of your target group, the more they feel understood.
4. Trust is the most important currency in the business world.
So you should do everything you can to make your readers feel that they are in good hands with you and that you take away their worries.
5. Decision-makers in the B2B process want to take as little risk as possible.
With the optimal address on the landing page you can give them the feeling that you are a professional partner and expert in your industry.
6. Everyone tries to avoid unpleasant feelings.
Your target group wants to feel comfortable with their decision for you.
That is why it is important that you create an emotionally appealing, positive environment – and that starts with the design of the landing page.
7. How does the purchase decision affect your customers’ lives?
By immediately drawing a beautiful picture, readers of your landing page can directly imagine what it could look like and what the positive benefits of your offers are.
8. By putting the customer benefit in the center, your desired customer feels directly addressed and valued with their needs.
The thought “Aha, this company understands my problem!” Often leads directly to the conversion.
9. Nobody likes obstacles.
When it becomes clear at first glance what your offer offers, what problem it solves and what the next step is, the purchase decision is easy.
10. The final decision often depends on small details that the customer is not even aware of.
The better you pick up your readers emotionally, the more likely the decision will be for you.
OFF TO PRACTICE: THIS IS HOW CUSTOMER-CENTERED LANDING PAGE OPTIMIZATION WORKS
The theory is clear. Emotional speech = more trust = more conversions.
But how do you put the principle of customer-centered landing page optimization into practice now?
First of all, it’s always a good idea to take a critical look at your customers’ path so far. What happens when they click on your Google Ads ad?
Where do they land, what do they see first? And what should you see first?
In the first phase, it is about developing a good plan and strategy that will make your post-click experience a dream trip for the customer.
1. Get a picture of your dream customer with a persona!
Who is your target group? As a SEA agency with a conversion focus, we hear these answers particularly often:
- “Everyone who is interested in my industry!”
- “People whom we can help with our offer!”
- “Financially solid companies from my industry with more than 15 employees!”
- “Companies with more than 15 employees within a radius of 15 kilometers, who are currently looking for a partner in my industry, have already thought about their requirements and the market and who have a reasonable budget X at their disposal.”
The ideas of a target group are becoming more and more concrete from top to bottom, but still remain somehow abstract. A persona helps to give this diffuse group a face .
Literally: You define your desired customer very precisely – in the form of a person who stands for all decision-makers in your target group.
The advantage? Instead of having abstract thoughts about the wishes of a company or a theoretical customer, you can work with this fictional person.
The visitor’s needs, wishes, fears and emotions become much more tangible.
The value proposition model is a proven way to create one (or more) reliable personas that you can use to align your content and landing page optimization.
2. Message match and relevance: do all puzzle pieces fit together?
Conversion optimization on the landing page only works if you really have the right offer for your target group.
It is not about selling refrigerators to Greenland. Relevance is the magic word. Is your offer really relevant to the customer you want – or do you just want it to be?
Landing page optimization is the method to give the perfect customer the time to get to know your offer.
Additional persuasion is no longer necessary if you manage to make the benefits clear. The term message match is related to this:
Message Match: The content of the ad that brought the visitor to you matches the content of the landing page.
If your desired customer sees your SEA ad on Google or your sponsored post on Instagram, they should also find the promised content on the landing page.
Classic mistake: Your social media ad looks great and addresses a specific topic.
Then you forward the interested lead to a generic landing page that has nothing to do with the advertisement. The relevance for the customer has fizzled out at this moment.
3. Communicate the emotional customer benefit for your dream customer!
You now have a picture of your desired customer, you know which message you want to convey and you have an idea of what the need is that is behind the search query.
How do you manage to place these pain points on your landing page now?
The solution: create the content based on previously researched needs, wishes and fears of your target group!
It is difficult for many entrepreneurs to put the customer benefit into words.
Our tip: Always ask why ! Why should your target group use your offer? Why is your product better than that of the competition?
It is not about you, it is about the customer.
This is the key to landing page content that picks up on customer benefits and makes them understandable. Of all the 2019 CRO trends , this is certainly the most important point.
THE DESIGN OF THE LANDING PAGE: MANY OPTIONS FOR MORE TRUST
The plan is in place: content, orientation, target group, customer needs and message match with other forms of advertising are clearly defined and woven into an emotional message.
Now the whole thing just has to look good. Web design is a powerful tool to control the emotions of your visitors.
We are not talking about supposed psychology hacks, but rather simple details in the landing page optimization that lead to a professional, trustworthy page.
The ultimate goal? Make it as easy as possible for the visitor to click on the call-to-action.
There are a variety of possible elements for your landing page:
- Build trust on your landing pages (seals, certifications)!
- Use social proof by evaluating your previous customers!
- Support your customer benefits with optimal visual language!
- Place your USP or unique selling points so that you can see them immediately.
- Don’t overdo it with content, you don’t have to explain everything on the landing page!
- Follow the rules of visual storytelling to guarantee a hierarchical sequence of content.
5 TIPS FROM OUR EVERYDAY CRO THAT WILL MAKE YOUR LANDING PAGE BETTER
1. Absolute no-go and most common mistake in landing page optimization.
You talk long and detailed about your product and your service, instead of selling the emotional customer benefits.
The average customer is not really interested in the fact that you have been an expert in exotic server components for 10 years.
He wants to feel that you are exactly the person who can handle his constant server failure.
Sure, a lot of experience is certainly useful and it makes sense to mention this information. But the focus is always on customer benefit.
2. Pictures say more than a thousand words.
We mean that quite literally: The imagery on the landing page is crucial for success in conversion optimization.
The visitor has to find himself and his problem. You can’t do that with randomly selected stock images or (worse) monumental text walls.
You can find out how to do this in our article on visual conversion optimization.
3. Does your landing page pass the 5 second test?
If the visitor visits the above-the-fold of the page (i.e. the area that they can see without scrolling) and cannot say what it is after 5 seconds, the landing page does not serve its purpose.
4. What exactly should the customer ideally do as soon as he finds you and your offer appealing?
Should he pick up the phone immediately, send you an email or register on your site?
Just as important is the thought of what your target group would like to do. Design the call-to-action so that it meets your customers!
5. How do you actually measure whether your landing page works?
It is extremely important to us not to work on the gut feeling when landing page optimization, but to collect reliable data even before the launch.
Rapid user tests can help to identify weaknesses and fix bugs.
In the spirit of performance marketing, you should also think about what defines the success of your conversion optimization.
CONCLUSION: GENERATE REAL EMOTIONAL CUSTOMER BENEFITS AND OPTIMIZE AT THE BEHAVIORAL LEVEL
Let’s get straight to the point: Emotions play an important role in every customer journey. They are the root and the basis for every purchase decision.
That is why it is advisable to rely on customer-centered landing page optimization in online marketing.
With this you manage to accommodate the actual main person – your dream customer – as much as possible.
Of course, you shouldn’t just guess what your target group’s needs and desires are. There are numerous qualitative and quantitative models that will help you get a good, complete picture.
If you know what customers want, you can give it to them. And they will be happy to have found a business partner who understands them so well.
