Writing Better Copy, Part 3: Landing a Great Landing Page

Landing pages are an integral part of successful Internet marketing campaigns, and that means you should be carrying around an arsenal of ways to write effective landing page copy. Technically, any page on a website can be termed a landing page, since all “landing page” really refers to is the page a user “lands on” when they first visit a website. But for our purposes here, we’re going to be talking about those pages people land on in response to an ad of some sort, whether it’s a PPC ad, a banner ad, a link in an email, a link from Twitter, or something else along those lines.

When we use these methods to bring people to a site, we have some responsibility when it comes to what we deliver when they actually land. First and foremost, it’s your responsibility to ensure that the page they are lead to by an ad will actually deliver on what that ad promised. That means if your ad says they will find a specific product when they click on it, the landing page should immediately demonstrate that they’ve indeed found what they were looking for. Promising one thing and delivering something else is a sure way to NOT make any money.

Once you’ve got that goal in mind, then you can craft your copy. The following are some helpful tips for writing landing page copy. These tips should apply no matter what your product is, but you should always tailor things to suit whatever venture you’re undertaking at the moment.

• Write a great headline that directly relates back to the ad that brought the visitor to the landing page. If possible, try to use as much of the same wording in the ad as you can. This is the easiest way to ensure that your visitor knows the page will deliver on what the ad promised, and it will keep them reading.

• Write to deliver the message, not to be creative. You may have a vocabulary that rivals a Webster’s dictionary, but now is not the time to show off your linguistic gymnastic skills. Your copy should be clean, clear and easy to understand. If you can inject some humor or sparkle without taking away from the point, so much the better, but don’t add extra words for no reason.

• Get to the point as soon as possible. Your most important information should be at the top of the landing page, because you want to get all of your cards on the table as soon as possible. If people have to scroll or read a huge wall of text to pick out the important thing at the end, you’ve wasted their time and yours, and are much less likely to see a conversion. Bullet points are a great way to get that done quickly and easily. Use clear, obvious calls to action in conspicuous places so the reader is never in doubt as to what the next step is. If your copy is on the longer side, distribute your calls to action in various places throughout the page.

• Write the message, then edit for length. Many professional copywriters find it helpful to write until they’ve said everything they needed to say, regardless of length. Once you’ve done that, you can go back and edit it for clarity, directness and to fit in the space it needs to fit into. If you only have enough room for, say, 400 words, but you try to write just 400 words right off the bat, you may find you miss getting some important information in there.

These are just a few of the more basic tips for writing landing page copy. Once you get them down pat, you’ll likely find that you see more conversions than you did before.