How to Write Landing Page Copy That Converts

When it comes to landing pages, design and layout are important, but it's the story you tell, the words you choose to elicit emotion that get people to take action. It's the copy that sells. So, what should you keep in mind when developing that copy? Your customer. With every word you write, you need to be thinking about your customer. Here are some tips to help you write landing page copy that converts.

Know Your Customer

This was already stated and will be repeatedly. Before you put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard), you need to know who your customers are and what drives them. Only by truly knowing your target customers can you begin to develop unique and helpful messaging that resonates.

One way to better understand your customers is by developing user personas that represent the individuals who may visit your landing page. These archetypes can help you identify, understand, and communicate the problem your customer is dealing with or the experiences that they enjoy and are searching for.

Customer Driven Copy

Your customers are always going to be more persuasive copywriters than you will ever be. You are too close to your product or service to write objectively. You need to talk to your customers, really get to know them so that you can write copy from their perspective, understanding their frustrations, motivations, desires.

How can you do this? Ask. Reach out to your customers, listen to them. If you can, conduct in-person or over the phone customer interviews to truly understand why your customer chose your product or service, what problem they were facing, their likes and dislikes, etc. You get more from these conversations because they allow for open, non-structured dialogue which can lead to new discoveries.

Surveys are another option, but response rates can be low and you don't have the ability to hear the opportunity to ask follow-up questions. Some other avenues you can take (and are recommended whenever developing landing page copy) include:

Research Reviews & Testimonials Go look at the reviews and testimonials of your competitors to see where they may be lacking, what their customers did not like about their product or service and turn that around to your benefit, use the negatives to create positives for your brand.

Take a Look at Your Chat Log If you have live chat on your landing page or website, you can look back at the context of your customer/prospect questions to see what information is lacking from your landing page (or website). You can also use this information to boost the content of your ad campaigns and directly answer common questions in ad creative.

Group Discussions/Forums Dig and listen in to what is being discussed in your industry vertical or specific to the interests of your customers in different online forums. Think of reddit, Quora, Facebook and LinkedIn groups devoted to your target audience/customer base. Look at the questions repeatedly being asked and create content for landing pages and ad campaigns out of those questions.

What's The Solution?

Always write with the end benefit in mind - what solution or pain point will your product or service solve or what experience/feeling will your product or service provide? At the end of the day, business is people to people and people are looking for solutions that solve problems, they are looking for happiness. Pretty basic.

Start At The End First.

You should have the desired outcome in mind before you start to develop copy. For instance, do you want your customers to complete a form? Do you want them to sign up for a newsletter? Do you want them to redeem a special offer, promo or download a resource? Start with the call to action (CTA) or main goal of your page first. Then, build out your copy to lead customers to want to take that action.

Copy Architecture

You are taking your customers on a journey through your dedicated landing page. You're wanting to move them from where they are (in their search) to where they want to be (solution found).

Main Title & Subhead: What are the questions your customers have and how can you answer them? Right off the bat, in your main page title, you need to let people know what the page is about. The subhead should be more of a 'why they should care statement' - an ultimate benefit of the solution.

Body copy: What are the things your customers are talking about most often, those things that matter most to your customers? Make the benefits your customers have expressed most prominent, not the benefits you think are most important. Tackle objections.

Supporting content: Include testimonials from customers or results of work that support your body copy even more. An actual customer’s testimony and proven results are more trusted, persuasive and compelling than words from a brand directly. Looking to develop landing pages that convert? Rhythm can help. We have designed and developed successful lead generation landing pages for many brands and we can do the same for you.

Additional Resources: 75 Copywriting Resources Create A Buyer Persona Write Better Headlines

[photo cred: Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash]