No matter how you’ve driven traffic to your landing page, whether through PPC, Social, or Email, it’s essential to create stellar copy that will make your traffic convert. It doesn’t matter what the end-goal conversion is: crisp, catchy, and minimal copy will drive your traffic down the funnel. If your traffic is coming through organically, that’s another story, and we’ll get to that in a bit.

All landing page copy is cobbled out of four distinct parts: the header, where your visitors will immediately learn what you’re offering; the summary, where they’ll learn more about your product; value propositions, where you’ll convince them that your product is better than your competition; and the call to action, or CTA, where they’ll convert.

In all cases, before writing your copy, you have to know who your audience is, which channel the traffic will come through, and what your audience is looking for. Understanding the demographic and expectations of your audience is essential in writing great copy that speaks directly to their intent, converting them quickly.

Your landing page will be the culmination of months of researching your audience through Google Analytics demographics and interests (below), surveying your audience through email or directly on the site, competitor research, and researching the audience specific to the industry you’re promoting.

While you can still write great landing page copy without this information, it’s best practice to commit substantial time to establish your audience’s identity and needs to result in the highest number of conversions possible.

Our Example

For the sake of this blog post, let’s create an example. Let’s say that your business specializes in B2B payment solutions, providing call centers, mobile payments, and payment processing. Your audience consists of small business owners and utility companies looking to reduce the expense of paper bills and make payments easier. The specific product you’re promoting is a text-based payment system called Text2Pay that reminds customers when payments are due and allows them to pay their bills with a single message.

Let’s also say you’ve written an email blast announcing the new service, which you’ll send to customers who’ve previously requested additional product information. The call to action will have customers download a demo to learn more about the product. Your traffic will funnel through your email, and your landing page will be the conversion point, so we’ll tailor the page for this purpose.

What We Know

We know that the audience has already visited your site, and that they’re interested in payment solutions. Because they provided their email address, they’ve already shown intent, and possibly purchased products in the past. This means that they:

• Are current or potential customers
• Are small business or utility company managers
• Know your brand
• Have a need for payment solutions

Now that you’ve written your email, determined your audience, and know who will receive it, it’s time to write the page.

Landing Page Header Copy

It all starts with the header, which should tell your visitor immediately what the page is, what it does, and what you want them to do. Any savvy marketer knows that a visitor’s eye is drawn immediately toward the top left corner, making your header the most important part of the page.

We need to tell them immediately what your product does and what it can do for them:

Reduce late payments and paper costs with Text2Pay.

Here we’ve chosen the two most important value propositions for your customers. They’ll save money and reduce missed payments with this new service, and every company likes to save money. In addition, we’ve worked in two reasons why they should try your product as well as the product name in eight words. Because we’ve peaked their curiosity, the next question your customer will have is, “What is Text2Pay?” That’s where the summary will come in.

Landing Page Summary Copy

Here’s where you tell them a little bit more about your product. Generally consisting of 2-3 lines, it should fully encapsulate the product and make it sound like the only option for your customer’s needs. Our goal is to get them down the page, so we have to keep it short, simple, and catchy:

Text2Pay is a text-based payment solution that reduces payment delinquency, providing payment security and convenience for your customers. Remind subscribers when payments are due and receive their payments 24/7. Download your demo today to learn how Text2Pay works for your business.

In three short lines, we’ve repeated the name of the product, added two additional value propositions while underscoring the first, explained how the product works, and told them what the conversion will be. We’ve also worked in the word “subscribers,” cutting out the need for an explanation of the subscription process. We’ll get to that later, explaining the product in detail when the customer converts at the bottom of the page.

Most importantly, we’ve let the customer know what they’re expected to do before they read the value propositions. That way, your customer doesn’t have to decide immediately whether they want to convert. We have a little more time to convince them. Now let’s hammer home what makes this product unique.

Value Propositions

This is where your traffic will learn why your product is better than the competition. It will consist of 4-5 short and unique value propositions, leading the eye down a bulleted list and toward the conversion button. Your customer is now on step three of the process, so we need to get them excited about the opportunity and ready to press that button:

• Eliminate the expenses of paper bills
• SMS platform guarantees text message delivery
• Adheres to FCC regulations for secure processing
• Payments processed in real time

With these four value propositions, we’ve told them they’ll save money, the service is reliable and secure, and there’s no delay in processing. We’ve positioned this product as a safe and convenient way for customers to pay bills that will save money and result in fewer delinquencies, which is good for the company and the customer. Now we just have to convert them.

Call to Action

Your conversion button should tell your audience what to do next. There’s no need for additional copy here, just a few controlled words to take them to the next step and convert them. While it may be tempting to try something like “Save Money Now” or “Make Payments Easier,” there’s no need to add another value proposition. It not only sounds hokey, but by adding a specific value proposition to the button, you’re focusing the customer on one point in which he or she may not be interested, leading to fewer conversions. It’s best to go with something simple and elegant that tells the story, in this case something like:

Download Your Demo

By clicking the button, your customers will download a demo that gives an in-depth explanation of the product and features. Congratulations, you’ve begun converting your customers and selling more products.

A Note on Organic Landing Pages

While this post focuses specifically on paid and email traffic, the same rules apply for organic landing pages. The biggest difference is that these pages exist as an island outside of your website, and don’t need to conform to the standards and format of other pages. Generally, this is the only page your customer will see before they convert, so you’re able to optimize it for conversions however you wish.When writing organic landing pages, they must exist on your site as a natural extension of your content and theme. Generally, organic landing pages are longer and more in depth, as your customer will visit them by navigating through other pages. They haven’t yet displayed the intent of paid and email visitors, and will take additional time, copy, and value propositions to convert.

For more help with writing great copy for your business check out our copywriting page. If you have any questions or comments about creating great landing page copy, let us know