Personalized Landing Pages: A New Way to Increase Conversions by 100% (At The Very Least)
You may certainly think that the figure of 100% was just made up. But it wasn’t. These results were really achieved during a launch of the new website for Sales Benchmark Index, a B2B sales & marketing consultancy service. Before the redesign, they have already attracted over 100,000 visitors monthly, but their conversion rate barely reached 1.5%. Such a rate is considered as low in comparison with an average of 2.35% across all industries. It needed an improvement, so SBI set 3% as their short-term objective.
How was it possible to increase their conversion rate by 100%?
The company decided to change the concept of their website and tailor it to the needs of their buyer personas. In other words, they decided to go personalized.
To create the individual user experience for each customer, SBI developed buyer personas and continued to keep updating them every two weeks. After that, they linked specific pieces of content to each persona and figured out how to come up with a relevant solution for each persona through their website. Finally, they built an individualized website that allows people to choose their role and receive the personalized content. This helped, and they easily reached their goal of 3% rate shortly after a launch.
However, this story shows us only one way to personalize your website among many others. SBI’s case study was completed in far 2015, whereas now we have more sophisticated marketing tools to take advantage of and reach a conversion rate of 5%, 7%, amazing 10% or even higher.
It worth noting, SBI personalized their website, not landing page. I’m clarifying this because there is no match for personalized landing pages when it comes to website promotion. Individualized landing pages often outperform 11.45% — the lowest result among the top 10% of companies among all industries.
Why and how website and landing page personalization may work miracles? Let’s review 5 benefits of this practice and explain why such an increase in conversions takes place. So, personalized landing pages:
#1 First of All, Respect Your Leads
We often fail to sell our product because we underestimate the power of the subconscious. The best marketers in the world were always good psychologists at the same time — that’s why there was no problem for them to pull the right strings in the customer’s mind without being noticed. One of those strings that can’t be ignored in online marketing is a need for respect.
Your leads not only want to see relevant content, they want to feel relevant and respected by themselves. Personalized landing pages satisfy their need by treating them as an individual, not as just another “lamb in the fold”. There’s how:
- they include your name or politely ask how is it possible to call you;
- are focused on the customer’s needs, not the needs of the company;
- save your time spent on search engines by offering exactly what you want.
A well-built individualized landing page resembles a face-to-face talk between a brand and a customer. If generic display ads are comparable to the public speech of a political leader who stands in front of a megaphone on the square and speaks to masses, these landing pages are perceived more like a cosy talk with your fellow partner. More personal = more convincing.
#2 Eliminate Distractions
Personalized videos, websites, emails, messages in social media, etc. are probably the best ways to turn your prospect into your customer, excepting for one flaw. There is nothing they can do if the prospect gets distracted and moves on to your other page or simply goes away, forgetting about the initial intent. And that’s not your fault: there are too many interesting things on the web to discover.
An individualized landing page eliminates those distractions.
Whereas a regular personalized website page contains a lot of navigation buttons, links to your blog, third-party sources or even paid display ads, a landing page offers highly-targeted and concise content aimed at selling only ONE product or service. The only button on this page is a call-to-action. The prospect has two choices: to click on a CTA button or to close the page. If your personalized message is persuasive enough, he or she would likely go with the first option.
#3 Collect Valuable Information
Still remember the SBI story I told you at the very beginning? The cornerstone of their strategy was the development of buyer personas. Your personalized marketing strategy can be different, but you need to know your potential customer in any way.
To customize their website, SBI run an online survey to understand what’s really important to their prospects. You can do the same thing, but a personalized landing page can serve as a perfect tool to develop your buyer personas itself.
There are 2 ways to do that:
- If you already have a basic picture of who will convert and who won’t, build a landing page to sell your product right away. Personalize it drawing on the current needs of your customers and add a conversion form that requires some personal information to be provided. You can use this information to improve the relevance of your content.
- And what if you have no idea who are your buyer personas? Run a test landing page with a free offer of a high value. Your prospects can receive something for free but only after they sign up or provide some personal data. Also, a free offer can be designed as a pop-up notification on your regular landing page.
This is a great example of the free offer from Writeworldwide, a community that distributes free and paid materials to improve one’s content writing skills. To engage a potential customer, they give out one educational material in exchange for your email address.
# 4 Give You More Control Over What’s Happening
When all necessary information is in your database, you control almost everything. You can build a dynamic landing page that automatically adjusts content according to the search query. For example, HouseKeep changes the location. This is how their main page looks like:
And this is how it looks like if the prospect requests “cleaning in Leeds”:
Apart from the location, it’s possible to customize CTA buttons, value propositions, and other parts of your landing page copy depending on what your prospect is looking for.
#5 Complement Personalized Email Marketing and Chatbot Experiences
According to Aberdeen, you increase an email CTR by 14% and conversion rate by 10% while personalizing your message. Wrapping up everything mentioned above, you may imagine how it would be effective to include a link to a landing page instead of your website to an email. A personalized email with a personalized landing page inside is a laser gun that always shoots straight.
Email marketing is effective, but you can go beyond.
There is a new wave of the web personalization — chatbots. If compare these two marketing mediums, it’s a complete whitewash in favor of chatbots. They can boast of up to 60% CTR, while email’s average is only 21.9%. Moreover, they are based on AI and can automatically deliver personalized content to each user.
Let’s assume you have a brand that produces household equipment. You use a Facebook messenger chatbot to reach out to your prospects. It turns out that one young man is looking for a microwave, while another prospect — a middle-aged woman — is more interested in new washing machines. A chatbot can redirect them to a relevant landing page in a second. An email will never be able to do this.
Another way to boost conversions is to place a chatbot on your landing page. This allows your prospect to ask all questions before purchase in a conversational interface. Admit it, we all prefer asking questions before buying something. It’s important to be sure that we make a right decision. We need to justify our purchase, especially if the product is expensive. A chatbot answers frequent questions and justifies a purchase without involving consultants.
There is how personalized landing pages may benefit your brand — conversions are higher, deals close faster, customers are happy.
Also want to make your customers happier but have no idea what suits your brand better?
Ask our marketing consultants — we help businesses to incorporate best personalization techniques in their marketing strategies: personalized video marketing, landing pages, and chatbots. The next can be yours, all you need is to tell us a bit more about your brand in a single message. (Sent via chatbot, of course!)
Originally published at blog.targetmarketing.co on September 21, 2018.
