Growing by Increasing Conversions — Review

When I started my journey in marketing I started out as a simple copywriter. The work I was given involved writing copy for social media, websites, blogs etc. Having started this so early on and jumping into it without any prior experience, I was doubtful as to whether I was actually doing things right.

To give you a bit of additional context, the companies I worked for were all small startups and had no significantly knowledgable marketing professionals. Naturally, on finding someone who could write and communicate well, I never had an employer who questioned my work. It was only until I started working full time that I realised how much more is there to simple copywriting and the actual power that it holds.

For the last four weeks I’ve been studying more about growth marketing through CXL Institute’s Growth Marketing Mini-Degree and this week I came across a topic that I expected would be very familiar to me, however, while the basics were close to home, I realised there was so much that I hadn’t even scratched the surface of yet. This week I learned about Landing Page Optimisation and Product Messaging; Something I’ve been doing all my career, and yet a topic so eye-opening.

Naturally when you think about growth marketing, the operative word is of course ‘growth’ and in the most literal sense it means growing your company, which ultimately ties down to conversions. Organic conversions is the first step in this journey and this requires mastering:

1. Conversion Research
2. Wireframing and
3. Copywriting

Conversion Research

In my previous blogs you would have noticed some insights towards research and user-centric marketing; while all that definitely holds true, when it comes to landing page optimisation, the conventional rules that you would follow to design other things like a blog or website, don’t hold necessarily true. Landing pages are the first pages that your end-users see when they are redirected from an ad, document, event etc. This means that most of the times, your users have arrived at this page with an end-goal in mind rather than simple curiosity. Psychologically, it is important to understand that humans are driven by two main hormones when it comes to business:

1. Cortisol : the stress hormone
2. Dopamine: The reward hormone

As marketers it is important to leverage these in crafting landing pages to push conversions as a result of urgency and rewards.

Now research into both the user psychology and what your users respond to on your landing page is a given. In brief it should be:

1. Eye Catching/Visual
2. Short with meaningful copy (we will elaborate on that later)
3. And with a logical flow to the entire information architecture.

There are two ways to get this information: Qualitative and Quantitative research. Where quantitative research helps you answer “where”, “what” and “who”, qualitative research helps you answer “why” questions. In this lesson you’ll learn how to conduct a full funnel walkthrough. Here’s a small snippet of some questions you can ask while doing your research:

1. WHAT IS YOUR FIRST IMPRESSION OF THIS PAGE?
2. HOW DOES IT MAKE YOU FEEL?
3. IS THERE ANYTHING THAT STANDS OUT TO YOU?
4. IS IT CLEAR WHO THE SOURCE/BRAND IS?
5. DOES THE SOURCE SEEM CREDIBLE?
6. IS THE CONTENT STRUCTURED IN A LOGICAL ORDER?
7. DOES ANYTHING SEEM CONFUSING?DO YOU HAVE ANY UNANSWERED QUESTIONS?
8. ARE THERE ANY UX ISSUES?
9. ARE THERE ANY BUGS / TECH ISSUES?

I personally found that creating an excel sheet with the answers to all these questions really helps when you need to evaluate your research.

Wireframing

I always had the common misconception that wireframing was a task meant only for designers. I only recently realised just how much content marketers have to contribute to the entire process. Even though it is only the rough skeletal construction of the page, the placing, framing, and designing of the page is something that should result out of your research.

I would suggest looking into the CXL Institute Course on Landing Page Optimisation to get a better understanding of this entire concept. As for tools I have always found https://balsamiq.com/ to be the most intuitive tool to use!

Copywriting

This is a very rough checklist of what you need to know while designing your copy for a landing page:

1. The position of each piece of copy on the page
2. The size of each piece of copy on the page.
3. What order you put your pieces of copy in.#
4. The amount of space / clutter around your copy.
5. The typography of your copy.
6. Directional cues toward (or away from) your copy.
7. Colour contrast vs. background, imagery, buttons

I personally am of the opinion that copywriting is very industry dependent and while you can learn some basic techniques, the main body of your content will come in connection to your domain. So to perfect your technique, this is what you need to keep in mind while designing your copy:

1. Always start with your Unique Value Proposition: This means the Outcome/result your customer wants + unique quality of your product
2. Leverage the motivation of your customers for arriving on your page: Pain Points/Problems, Desirable Outcomes/Drivers, Purchase Prompts/Triggers
3. Highlight the value you bring to your customers: Unique benefits / advantages , How it works, if need be , Aha moments & delightful perks Dealbreaker needs / requirements .
4. Anxiety: Address uncertainties, objections, perceived risks
5. A Good Call To Action: Keep it short and sweet with a punchy verb and the main purpose of the page.

To put into practice all that I have written here, these are a few screenshots of a heuristic research I conducted for an application and a landing page I designed for my company with the principles I learnt from this course.

Usability Testing

Landing Page Designed

Check out the CXL Institute Mini Degree on Growth Marketing to know more on how to:

• Make your sales page copy as easy to scan & read as possible in a digital context.
• Leverage key design principles to control the order, pacing, and emphasis of your copy in your readers’ heads.
• Create actual-size, clickable prototypes of your page copy that you can share with your clients / team.