Figure 3.1 How a Video's Length Affects Completion Rate

      Our brains process visuals 60,000 times faster than text. My daughter can consume 20–30 TikToks in the time it takes me to read one blog post.

      Words and long-form content still matter, sure. I wrote an entire book (with Phil M Jones and Jimmy Mackin) called Exactly What to Say for Real Estate Agents. It was instantly a best-seller. I believe in the power of words. I think copywriting should be an obsession for every business and that to show your expertise, you need to go deep and not just wide.

      However, writing great quips of copy for social media, websites, landing pages, and emails is a new skill most are still learning. Regardless of your ability to craft clever copy, you need to take a visual-first approach if you want as many people as possible to actually read what you write.

      This microwave mindset is another reason why using landing pages is so important: they cut to the chase, fast.

      Whether you decide to DIY or outsource the design of your landing pages, I want to make sure you have a checklist of what a “perfect” landing page includes.

NINE KEY ELEMENTS EVERY LANDING PAGE SHOULD INCLUDE

      Headline: Make it clear, concise, and “coupled.” The headline of your landing page needs to be an extension of the ad, email, or link that brought them to it. If what brought them was “Get an instant offer on your home” or “25 Facebook Ads Templates for Seller Leads,” you would repeat that as closely as you can with your headline.

      Sub-headline: We want to continue them down the path the headline started them on with the sub-headline. Using the aforementioned headline examples, a good sub-headline would be “Find out if your home qualifies” or “We spent millions of dollars testing these templates. They work.”

      Description: Make sure you triple-check all your grammar, punctuation, and spelling (I'm obsessed with Grammarly). Crossing every t and dotting every i should be mandatory for all marketing and sales copy. If you want a lead to answer the phone when you call, the words in your description matter. Use a scalpel with your copy, not an axe.

      Testimonial: The goal of your landing page testimonial(s) or reviews is to establish trust. Using an icon from a well-known and trusted source, like Yelp (restaurants), Zillow (real estate agents), Google (small businesses), or G2 (SaaS), can really have an impact. Many companies are still touting their BBB (Better Business Bureau) credentials more than their public-facing reviews.

Adding things like “verified by” or “trusted by” can also increase conversions. For example, when eyeglass company AC Lens started displaying a VeriSign badge, they saw a 41% increase in conversions.

CTA or form: When the visitor is ready, your primary CTA to click a button or complete a form must be prominent and contain the right copy.³

What your buttons say makes a big difference in conversion rate. When you use the word “Submit” on a landing page, the overall conversion rate decreases by 3%. Both “Click here” (33% better) and “Go” (20% better) outperform “Submit.” Meanwhile, “Download” (25% worse) and “Register” (50% worse) underperform against “Submit.”⁴

Mozilla, makers of the popular Firefox browser, increased conversions by 3.6% by simply changing their button copy from “Try Firefox 3” to “Download Now—Free.”⁵

Clickable button(s): A conversion button should stand out and be near or directly below the CTA, either accompanying the message or reiterating it word-for-word. Formstack advises, “The button should be big, bright, and above where a user would have to scroll to it. Orange or yellow buttons for a CTA help to catch a viewer's eye.”⁶

      There are no universal truths for button colors (meaning green buttons or red buttons can also work). Typically, the overall design of your landing page will dictate the best color for its button.

      DO THIS RIGHT NOW

      Canva has a very cool (and free) tool where you can get color palettes instantly by uploading an image (Google “Canva color palette generator” to try it).

      Remove links: Landing pages have one purpose—to capture a lead—so there really shouldn't be many (if any) links to other things. Links take the visitor away, defeating the purpose of getting them there to capture their information in the first place.

      Sometimes, you have to add a link back to your home page to be compliant when running ads. Other than that, in most cases, you will not want to link to anything else.

      Image or video: Think of your images or videos on your landing pages in this context: If someone were on their phone and saw it on social media, would it cause them to stop scrolling? If so, run with it. If not, keep looking for a better option.

Surprisingly, when videos were used on landing pages, in most cases, and for most industries, the conversion rate went down.⁷ That said, I think less leads overall in exchange for them having watched a video before completing a form ultimately produces a higher quality lead.

      If you need help finding photos and videos to use (legally) on your landing pages (or website) that aren't super-cheesy, try Burst by Shopify or Pexels.

      Stay above the fold: Considering how many people visiting your landing pages will be on a phone, you need to optimize what appears above the fold (above the fold is what they can see and click on without scrolling). There is a time and place for long-form landing pages with extensive sales copy, but for the most part, what is above the fold is the gold.

      One of my favorite features from Leadpages is that you can sort all of their landing pages by highest converting. Choose one of their highest-performing templates from your industry, quickly edit it to make it your own, and you're done. This does not ensure that you will have success, but this is an example of data being truly useful. You will find that many of their top performers follow most, if not all, of the nine key elements I went through.

      When a lead fills out a form on a landing page, don't forget to customize the confirmation page. Usually, the confirmation page mentions that they should check their email for the information they requested. I also recommend that you use it to get them to another piece of content that will further warm up the lead.

      For example, a real estate buyer lead might register to access a list of foreclosures. As they do, you include a CTA on the confirmation page that takes them to reviews of people you already successfully found a foreclosure for. You could add a CTA with your phone number, suggesting they text you the ZIP codes they are most interested in, or a CTA to watch a video you made with the six secrets to finding the right foreclosure. In my experience, the CTR on confirmation pages that use this technique is astronomically high.

LANDING PAGE-LESS LEADS

      One of the most underused tactics for lead generation is not driving your clicks to a website or landing page and instead