Improve Your Lead Magnet’s Landing Page Copy With These Tips
Your landing page copy (i.e. the written content on the page) is what will sell or sink your lead magnet offer. You can have a lovely page design, spellbinding images, or an impressive lead magnet offer. However, if you choose the wrong words on your landing page, you won’t convert visitors into email subscribers. You’ll actually scare them away.
Great copy can inspire confidence. A first-timer visitor who arrives on your lead magnet’s landing page may be hesitant to trade their email address for your free offer. But with just a few persuasive words, you can earn the visitor’s trust.
Would you like to write like a marketing pro? Keep reading. In this post, we’ll help you improve your copywriting game in 8 simple tips.
1. Start With a Strong Headline
Your headline is the largest text on the page and most likely the first words your visitor will read. Make every word matter.
The goal is to capture your visitor’s attention by answering this simple question: What’s in it for your visitor?
Perhaps you’ll address a common pain point: Are you frustrated with where you are in life?
Perhaps you’ll focus on the solution: Learn how to XYZ in 30 days
Perhaps you’ll massage their emotions: Tired of being alone?
Perhaps you’ll appeal to logic: Improve Your Sales Conversion Rate by 35% in 10 Easy Steps
Perhaps you’ll incorporate social proof: Join the more than 1,500 people who’ve already downloaded this resource!
You can’t go wrong with any of the above strategies as long as you speak directly to your target audience with a hook that makes them want to keep reading. That’s the entire goal of your headline.
2. Lead With Benefits
Once the headline is done, the next crucial part of your copy is the subtitle or the text located directly beneath your headline.
The text will build upon the idea you started in your headline.
A common mistake here is to describe your lead magnet offer. While it may be tempting, don’t rattle off the features of your lead magnet (for example, the length of your ebook or its table of contents). Instead, make it relevant to the reader. Why should they care about your lead magnet? How will it benefit them?
It doesn’t benefit the reader to know that your ebook is 50 pages. It does benefit the reader to know that after reading your 50-page ebook, they’ll know exactly how to self-publish their own book on Amazon. That’s a relevant benefit.
Always focus on the value that your site visitor will receive as a result of downloading your lead magnet.
[bctt tweet=”Focus on the value that your site visitor will receive as a result of downloading your lead magnet.” username=”beacon_by”]
Don’t focus on yourself. Don’t focus on features. Focus on the goals, dreams, or wants of the visitor by emphasizing what they’ll ultimately gain.
3. Write for Humans
When you sit down to write your landing page copy, think about who will actually read it. Write to them as you would speak to them. Be conversational.
Your copy shouldn’t be scholarly. If the reader has to slow down to think about what you’re saying, it creates friction, and friction reduces conversion.
However, if your copy is friendly and easy to understand, the reader should be able to absorb the message without a problem.
Use language that provokes emotion and encourages immediate action. Words like “limited time,” “now,” and “quick” can get your visitor to sign up right away.
Also, don’t make the mistake of writing specifically for search engines (i.e. SEO). If you unnaturally stuff your landing page with keywords or phrases, your landing page may get penalized by the search engines. Besides, search engines are smarter these days and prioritize content that’s written for humans.
If you truly want to optimize your landing page for search engines, write engaging content that keeps your site visitor scrolling down the page. By the way, our Smart PDFs have built-in search engine optimization and can be easily indexed by search engines. Learn more about our Smart PDFs here.
4. Use Short Sentences
In an effort to appeal to short attention spans, write short sentences. The visitors who arrive on your landing page aren’t looking for a novel. They just need to be convinced that your lead magnet is going to provide the help they’re looking for.
On your landing page, write short sentences. Think 10 words or less. Your visitor is likely to scan the text anyway, so keep it as simple as possible.
Also, avoid getting too fancy with your content. Minimize puns and cute phrasing on your landing page. When your visitor is scrolling down your landing page, they’re likely to miss the joke and get confused.
5. Make it Scannable
As mentioned above, your text needs to be scannable because your visitors are scroll-happy. No one wants to be confronted with a huge block of text. It’s intimidating.
Make your text easy to read with shorter sentences and by making your content visually appealing. Here’s how:
- Use bullets to highlight key takeaways.
- Provide plenty of white space by breaking up larger paragraphs.
- Insert images to provide context to your copy.
- Emphasize keywords and phrases by putting them in bold or in italics.
6. Check for Typos
Typos are no-nos. Inspect your landing page copy for any typos, misspelled words, and grammatical errors.
Errors in your copy will attack your credibility. Your visitors won’t trust you with their email address if you’re not careful with your copy.
Before publishing your landing page to the web, give it the once over. Read it aloud to catch any awkward phrasing. By the way, it’s very common to go word-blind and miss your own errors so ask a co-worker or friend to look it over as well.
7. Incorporate Customer Testimonials
One of the best ways to gain trust on your landing page is to include customer testimonials. Testimonials are known as social proof, the idea that people believe and follow the recommendations of others.
You can employ this psychological tactic on your landing page.
Add testimonials from your actual customers right onto your landing page. The testimonials don’t have to tie directly to your lead magnet, as long as they are an endorsement of your brand.
The best testimonials include the following elements:
- Text that resonates with a pain point or desired outcome of your target audience
- A photo of the customer
- A name and link to their business website, if applicable
8. Shorten the Signup Form
A visitor doesn’t simply land on your page with the idea of signing up for your lead magnet. They must be convinced that it’s worth the exchange of information. They’re initially hesitant because they don’t know you and they don’t want to give you their email address.
However, you can overcome this initial hesitation by getting them to trust you (in the ways we’ve discussed above) and minimizing signup friction. In other words, shorten the signup form.
If you’re asking for more than a name and an email address in your signup form, you’re asking for too much. Asking for phone numbers, home addresses, email preferences, etc. will cause your visitor to hesitate or decline your offer altogether.
Ask for the least amount of information possible. You can always ask for more after they’re on your list, but make the path to signup easy.
Additional Resources
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