Recently updated on February 8th, 2021 at 07:12 pm
Next Day Flyers Blog Series:
Part 3: Regarding Your Competition – Landing Page Dos and Don’ts
When you think about developing landing pages, don’t focus on creating more simply for the sake of more. What you want is to aim for landing pages that give you higher conversion rates. If you’re using PPC (pay-per-click advertising) you might expect a rough average of around 3% in conversions. Some industries seem to routinely get higher conversion rates, others (such as high ticket items) usually get far less. But whatever rate of conversion you get now is your baseline. That means your goal should be to improve on that number no matter what your industry average. To create the strongest landing page possible, there are certain things you want to make sure to include and other things you want to avoid.
Don’t Focus on Your Brand if you are the First
When you are the first company to offer a new product category (no competition!) your landing page message must first focus on educating consumers about that product type and why they need it. In essence, you are letting them know they had a need they hadn’t been aware of before. This creates demand for the product category (called primary demand1). If you need to create primary demand you don’t have to spend a lot of resources on why people should use your particular brand because, so far, you are the only brand. Note: educating consumers on a new product category can be costly which is why it’s not always the best choice to be the first.
Don’t Answer in Clichés
Do not answer questions about why you are better than your competition with industry buzzwords and clichés1 – you need to “get real” and respond with solid information that actually means something to the customer.
Don’t Focus on Slamming the Competition
You shouldn’t use your landing page to talk about all the bad things you have to say about your competition. All that does is keep your competitors name in the customers’ mind and it makes you appear nervous2 about your competition which does not instill trust.
Don’t Forget there’s more Competition than your Competition
Will the real competition please come forward? If you are offering services on your landing page your greatest competition is really consumer indifference.1 Your goal should be to inspire the reader to action no matter what anyone else out there is doing.
Landing Page Dos
Do be Aware
You need to know as much as someone shopping for your product would know.2 For instance, if someone else has lower prices most customers today will know this. This doesn’t mean you have to match that lower price but your landing page copy must address it in some way whether that is price matching or why your product/service is worth more.
Do look at Competitors’ Landing Pages
Go to your competitors’ landing pages, observe their layout, what you like and don’t like, and go through their conversion process. Pay careful attention if you get confused or lost, and then make sure your landing page and conversion process don’t make the same mistakes.3
Do use Unique Content
This should go without saying, but a large number of people seem to be okay with copying someone else’s content. You must invest the resources to create original content that is unique to your landing page. Using someone else’s copy, a competitor’s or other is against copyright laws, but also makes you look less than upstanding in the eyes of a customer. Not to mention original content is important for good search engine ranking.
The bottom line is; your landing pages need to convince the reader of your value no matter who your competitors are, or how many of them there are. It’s not so different from what your mom told you when you were little, “There is only one you.” So, when you set out to create awesome landing pages that will smoke your previous conversion rate, mentally thank your rivals for helping you to notch up your product and services because ultimately this means that what your customers will get is even better than before.
