Why You Should Create Landing Pages For Your Blog’s Lead Magnets – Plus, Design Tips!
Are you creating dedicated landing pages for your lead magnets?
Landing pages convert far better than regular opt-in forms and they’re essential if you want to promote your lead magnets on external platforms.
In this post, you’ll learn why landing pages matter, the types of lead magnets you should create landing pages for, and how to create a landing page that converts.
And for those who aren’t aware of what lead magnets are, we’ve included a quick primer as well.
Let’s get into it.
What are lead magnets?
A lead magnet is a lead generation strategy in which you offer something to your audience in exchange for their information, usually their email address.
You offer this in a lead generation form that contains a headline and a few fields where you capture your lead’s information.
Lead magnets come in all shapes and sizes, but the ones you’re most likely familiar with and have likely interacted with yourself are free trials and free consultations.
Subscription and service-based businesses often use these as a way to give leads a taste of their product or service in hopes they’ll be impressed well enough to pay for access to that product or service.
Lead magnets are intended to increase your conversions by making what you’re offering seem more enticing.
Without a lead magnet, your call to action (CTA) will be something along the lines of “buy now” or “subscribe for more.”
A lead magnet helps you capture your visitors as high-quality leads so you can demonstrate the value your product or service has before you ask them to buy.
Basically, with lead magnets, your email list will be larger and will be filled with people who are more likely to purchase your products.
Why create landing pages for lead magnets?
As a blogger, most of your email opt-in forms exist on blog post pages where they appear as pop-up forms, inline forms that appear within your content or static forms that appear in your sidebar, if you have one.
These types of forms are great at getting your readers to subscribe to your email list without leaving your blog post page, which likely contains crucial links that lead to other posts on your site, affiliate products and your own products.
However, there are plenty of reasons to create dedicated landing pages for lead magnets.
Double opt-in
The biggest benefit of using a dedicated landing page for a lead magnet is the ability to do what’s called a “double opt-in.”
Many marketers use a simple approach for email opt-ins: they place an email form on their website, their reader enters their email address into the form, they hit “Subscribe,” and that’s it! They’re subscribed.
The problem with this approach is that it fills your list with people who filled in your email form on a whim. They didn’t have to think about it, and because they didn’t have to think about it or do much to engage with your site, they aren’t likely to keep doing it as you start to email them.
A double opt-in forces your reader to say “yes,” and then say “yes” again.
The first “yes” happens on your blog post page where you promote your lead magnet with a link that opens your lead magnet’s dedicated landing page.
The second “yes” happens on the landing page itself.
You can even throw in a third opt-in option by having your new subscriber confirm their subscription.
The bottom line is that by placing your lead magnet on a dedicated landing page, you wind up with subscribers who are far more engaged with your brand than those you collect from random email forms.
More effective promotion strategy
When you promote a lead magnet on your blog post page, you only have a few sentences or the headline on your email form to convince your readers of the value it provides.
A dedicated landing page allows you to include sections that list the features and benefits your lead magnet provides and feature testimonials from readers who have already used it.
You can even include a section for frequently asked questions.
It’s a really effective way to promote something you know your audience would find value in.
Some of your readers will need more of a reason to take you up on your offer. A landing page gives you a way to convince them better.
Practice
You might not sell your own products right now, but hopefully, you have an idea of what kinds of products you want to sell in the future.
You’ll likely create landing pages to promote these products when you’re ready to sell them.
If you create dedicated landing pages for your lead magnets, you can use the experience as practice for when you’re ready to launch your first product.
Email marketing campaigns and sales funnels
If your lead magnet is part of a larger marketing campaign, especially a sales funnel, you should work harder at promoting it.
This means promoting it with a dedicated landing page and placing links to that page in a variety of different places, including promoting it on social media and through ads.
The lead magnet and landing page will become your “squeeze page” where your visitors will enter your sales funnel.
It’s here where they’ll convert into leads, so you should really give them a pretty good reason to subscribe to your email list and gain access to your lead magnet.
Types of lead magnets you should create landing pages for
You can create a landing page for any lead magnet. However, some types of lead magnets have more value than others.
Landing pages are best reserved for lead magnets that require a lot of ambition to create or provide a lot of value to your audience, such as these lead magnet types:
- Ebooks
- Free course (online or email)
- Free webinar
- Free consultation
- Free trial
- Resources (especially a resource library)
- Workbook
Design tips for landing pages that promote lead magnets
Landing pages that promote lead magnets aren’t much different from landing pages you’d use to promote something else, such as a product.
However, there are still a few design options we feel you should pay more attention to than others.
[Anatomy-of-a-landing-page]
These are the primary design tips we have for creating landing pages for lead magnets:
- Make sure to include essential sections for your opt-in form, headline, benefits and testimonials.
- Keep the content to a minimum, and make sure the landing page is as simple as possible.
- Use a style that matches the design of your site.
- Remove your header, footer and sidebar from the page.
- Optimize the page as much as you would any other landing page.
- Use a landing page builder to make things easier.
Essential sections to include
The most important section to include on any landing page is the call to action itself.
This section should include a headline to grab your reader’s attention and market your lead magnet, an opt-in form, and a CTA button at minimum.
It can also have an image or background image, preferably of your lead magnet.
Put one CTA section at the top of your landing page and the other at the bottom, but don’t add anymore.
You should also include a section that mentions the features of your lead magnet in a way that describes how they’ll benefit your reader.
Lastly, if some of your readers have already used your lead magnet, ask them to describe it and how it’s helped them in a short blurb.
These blurbs are called “testimonials,” and you should include an entire section of them on your landing page.
Keep it simple
You can add a frequently asked questions (FAQ) section to your lead magnet if you feel your readers would benefit from it, but other than that, keep any landing page you design for a lead magnet as simple as possible.
This means no sections that include products you offer, other lead magnets, pricing for your services or reviews.
Use a cohesive style
If you already have a website, you’ll find choosing styles for your landing pages much simpler.
This is because you should choose the same styles the rest of your website uses. This includes fonts, font sizes and color schemes.
When your reader opens your landing page, you want them to know they’re still on the same website.
If the styles you use on your landing page are much different from the styles you use on the rest of your website, you might confuse them and make them think they landed on an entirely different brand’s website.
Remove your header, footer and sidebar
You should use a landing page template that removes your site’s header, footer and sidebar from the page.
This is not an ordinary web page. The goal is to get your visitor to interact with your opt-in form and subscribe.
By removing these distractions, which often include several links, you place the focus where it belongs: the value your lead magnet can provide to your reader.
General optimization tips
Optimizing a landing page can be difficult.
Luckily, we have several optimization tips to help you design more effective landing pages:
- Use a value-focused headline.
- Keep the most important elements, such as your CTA section, above the fold.
- Use short and concise copy.
- Assign a color to your CTA button that contrasts with the rest of your page’s design.
- Add relevant images to keep your visitors engaged.
- Use minimal form fields in your opt-in form.
- A/B test different landing page designs.
Use templates to make things simpler
If you use a landing page builder like OptimizePress, you’ll have access to a library of landing page templates.
You can use these templates to import a design for your page and customize it to your liking with a beginner-friendly interface.
OptimizePress also has several features that are designed to help you optimize landing pages, including pre-built sections for opt-in forms, features and testimonials, integrations with email marketing services, and a funnel builder with stats.
Learn more in our review of OptimizePress.
Final thoughts
If you aren’t creating dedicated landing pages for your lead magnets, now is the time.
They convert far better than regular opt-in forms. There’s no distractions. They keep the focus on the action you want users to take.
Now, you’ll still need your regular opt-in forms to capitalize on traffic going to other areas of your site. But, landing pages are far easier to link to from external platforms. And that’s where they are the most useful. We’re talking about bio links on social, paid ads, YouTube descriptions, and all of that stuff.
Just remember that building a landing page isn’t a “one and done” thing. You need to monitor conversions and run split tests to ensure you’re squeezing the most out of each page.