Making a Landing page for your Crowdfunding Campaign
How to make a landing page that converts visitors to backers
You’re already making a campaign page on your platform of choice, so do you really need a landing page before your campaign launches?
Yes, you do.
Landing pages play the most important role in the pre-launch of your crowdfunding campaign.
Landing pages only have one job — to convert your target into eager supporters of your crowdfunding campaign.
So, how do you build a page that will get you better results for crowdfunding campaign?
The answer is pretty simple: if you want more conversions, you need to build a high-quality landing page.
Yes, pretty simple and intuitive.
But, most projects fail, and one of the major reasons they do so is because they didn’t run a successful pre-launch campaign, or they didn’t have a landing page or they Had a badly designed landing page.
So, if you want a successful launch, you need to build a high-quality landing page.
So, what is a landing page anyway?
A landing page is the website your potential customers land on first. They could arrive at it from a variety of ways: an online search, finding it social media, or finding it through ad. How they arrive at your landing page isn’t important. What is important is that this is their first impression of your project.
And you’ll get one chance at a first impression. So you need to make it a good one.
First, you need to get them to do something, like:
- Share their email address
- Like your social media page
- Go to your campaign page (if your project is live)
And second, it will act as the best way to test a number of things, like:
- your campaign story
- your ads (copy/image/video)
- your project’s main benefits
- What resonates with your audience and what doesn’t
This is pretty important, because if you’re running ads and paying for clicks then you want your backers to land on a compelling landing page, one which will hopefully convert them to backers. Successfully converting your target in the pre-launch stage (or even signing up to your email) means your message resonates and will convert when you go live with your project.
So your landing page is a great exercise in managing the expectations you set with everything: from your ads, to how impactful your copy and images are, to whether your campaign project is strong and has market viability.
What to include in a crowdfunding landing page?
The most important thing to showcase on your landing page is your ‘offer’ to your backers.
But aside from your offer, there are a few other distinct features of a landing pages which make them the most important part of your crowdfunding pre-launch campaign:
1. Your landing page will only convert potential backers if you have something valuable to offer.
2. Keep the text short and simple as too much information will overload your readers.
3. Use powerful visuals — A picture goes a long way in showing your awesome product.
4. Optimized your landing page for mobile use
5. Have a strong and simple call to action to create a sense of excitement and urgency (example: Sign up for a special deal)
6. Make sure you have a double opt-in channel for users to subscribe (sign up on landing page followed by a confirmation email) to ensure quality leads
And most importantly
7. Your landing page should be focused on a specific conversion action (collect email or get facebook likes)
If your landing page doesn’t have a conversion action, how can you track and measure the results of your pre-launch campaign?
Landing pages contain minimal distractions
Your campaign page will feature flashy images, gifs, cool fonts, and will expand on your story and your project’s awesome features and benefits.
But your landing page is a simplified version of this, focused on getting potential customers to convert and to build buzz for your actual campaign.
As such, your landing page should be a lot simpler, and should feature only the following:
-Project’s best features
-Exclusive deal or promotion
-Simple email sign up
-Social Media (like, follow, retweet)
-A video
Landing pages are targeted
A good landing page is designed with your ideal backer in mind. Whether that’s a mom looking for a new space age baby blanket, or a group university frat boys looking for a new cooler.
Meaning your landing page should interact with them in some way and speak in their language. To accomplish make sure you:
-Say thanks for landing onto your landing page
-Offer an exclusive deal that ONLY they’ll have access to
-Sell them your idea and main benefit — what makes your project unique and perfect for them
Mistakes to Avoid On Your Landing Page
Here are some elements that your landing page shouldn’t have. Some of them are really obvious, others not so much.
- Too much information
You’ve already given enough information in your ad for backers to give your project a shot by clicking through. Your target doesn’t want more information, they just want to know how to get your offer, so SHOW them how they can register and get their discount.
- Missing a Call to Action button
If you get backers to your landing page, but don’t offer them an obvious call to action button, how can you expect to convert them? The simpler the call to action button, the more effective it will be at getting conversions.
- Long load times
If the elements on your landing page take a long time to load, chances are your backers will walk away without even viewing your page.Get rid of any of the elements adding to the load time.
- Not Testing various versions
Be sure to test different copy, design and structure on your page, and focus on the elements getting the best response.
- Failing to establish credibility
Everyone is scared of giving their email away. Therefore, you need to make your offer sound credible, either through a product demonstration, strong video, or testers testimonials.
Can’t afford a graphic or designer?
There are many options online if you are on a budget. Both WIX and Squarespace offer easy solutions to you if you can’t afford the dedicated skills needed for building a website.
Other options include WordPress for the more code-savvy project owners.
My campaign is live, what do I do now with my Landing Page?
If your campaign is live, you now have to decide what to do with your landing page, as it is no longer the main point of contact of backers.
You can do several things
- Take it down completely
- Use your landing page URL to redirect to your campaign page
- Use it to hype up your campaign
- Have it as a testimonial wall, posting positive comments, press mentions, and adding new videos and images
Now that you’re armed with knowledge, it’s time to go and start building out your Landing Page.
Tags
- Pre-Launch
- Crowdfunding
- Project management
- Resources
