We’re exposed to up to 10,000 ads each day.
So why is it that we pay attention to only a very small percentage of them?
I’ll tell you why: It has to do with selective attention, which is, “the process of directing our awareness to relevant stimuli while ignoring irrelevant stimuli in the environment” (source: Simply Psychology, 2018).
It’s the same reason why we sometimes tune out when people are talking directly to us, rambling on about themselves, but somehow manage to perk up and pay full attention when we hear our name mentioned in another room.
Selective attention prevents our brains from being overloaded with information; if we paid attention to every single thing that went on around us, we probably wouldn’t be able to function very well. As a result, we tend to tune out all the noise that isn’t relevant and pay attention only to the things that matter to us.
Selective attention is the reason why your landing pages must be personalized. Because if they aren’t, your website visitors are going to tune them out just like all the other noise out there.
But don’t worry; we won’t let that happen. In this blog post, you’ll find out how to create a personalized landing page that succeeds in harnessing the attention of your website visitors.
But first…let’s define exactly what we mean by “landing page.”
Landing page does not mean homepage
Google defines a landing page as any page through which a user enters a website. So, according to Google, a landing page could be an about page, a product page, or even a homepage.
But a homepage is not a landing page (unless your website is a one pager that only serves one purpose.While a homepage provides a general overview of a brand and all the products or services it offers, a landing page should only focus on one thing: conversion.
Personalize your landing page for your audienceS
Before creating a landing page, you need to understand exactly who you’re targeting. Ideally, you should create a unique landing page for each of your buyer personas.
If you’re using email marketing to send people to your landing page, then you’ll probably have a bit more data to go off of already, such as first names and an idea of how engaged people are with your brand (like whether or not they have opened or clicked on your previous emails). This type of traffic can be considered warm or hot traffic, since these are people who have already interacted with your brand before.
If you haven’t already, segment your contacts based on their demographics, behaviors, interests, or whatever else you know about them and might be relevant to your brand. That way, you’ll obviously be able to personalize both the emails and the landing pages that you’re directing them to even more.
The best way to get this kind of information is to ask it via the forms your visitors have to fill to subscribe to a newsletter, download a piece of content, or create an account on your site. Now, don’t ask too many questions or you’ll risk reducing your conversions. DoggyLoot, for example, asks only one question when users subscribe:
Presumably, they will then send out targeted emails to prospects based on the size of their dogs—which will (hopefully) bring them to equally targeted landing pages.
But don’t limit your questions to the form. You could also send out emails asking for additional information down the road (in your welcome series could be an opportune time to do this).
For example, if you sell vacation packages, you could send out an email asking recipients where in the world they most want to travel to. From there, you can direct them to landing pages that focus on those destinations.
To get even more granular, you could use an analytics service, like Woopra or Marketo, that tracks individual behaviors on your site.
What if you have no data on your visitors?
If you’re sending people to your landing page via Google Ads, for example, then you might be speaking to people who have never interacted with your brand before (cold traffic) and you won’t have all that data to take advantage of.
Instead, you’ll have to start by crafting an idea of the buyer personas you intend to target and make assumptions about them based on what they’re searching for.
Ready to get personal?
Once you have a good understanding of your buyer personas and who you’re targeting, you can go ahead and start crafting personalized landing pages that cater to each persona. Here are just a few ways that you can personalize those pages:
1. Know where your visitors are in the buyer’s journey
Is your visitor ready to make a purchase? Or are they just browsing? Or maybe they’re somewhere in between.
How are they feeling when they land on your page? Anxious? Excited? Calm?
These are all things you should think about when creating your landing page.
For example, visitors coming from Facebook generally aren’t looking to buy. So the way you speak to them and even what you’re offering might change accordingly.
If your visitors are coming from Google Search Ads, however, then you know that they probably have a higher intent to buy since they are actively searching for terms related to your brand.
Your landing page should therefore take into account where your users are coming from, the relationship that you have with them (if any), and where they are in the buyer’s journey.
You can do this in real-time (meaning the visitors will not even see that their experience is personalized) using tools such as Kameleoon, Optimizely or VWO.
2. Mention your competitors (if relevant)
People are inevitably going to search for your competitors from time to time…so why not take advantage of that?
For example, I just did a Google search for “HubSpot CRM” and here are a few of the ads that popped up:
I clicked on Monday’s ad and was brought to this landing page:
Notice how the copy in the ad matches the copy on the landing page. There are no surprises. They mention that they are a “simple alternative” to HubSpot, allowing me to presume that they are very easy to use (a point which they reinforce in one of the bullet points below).
Compare that with the more general page I land on when I do a search for “Monday CRM”:
As you can see, Monday presents different landing pages based on what people are looking for in the first place. This might seem obvious, but many brands don’t do this.
Take the other project management platform, Clubhouse, for example. When I did a search for “Monday CRM,” this was one of the ads that showed up:
But then I click on the ad and am directed to this landing page:
It’s a beautiful page, but nowhere do they mention anything about Monday! It’s a complete deviation from the ad (or at least the ad headline). And keep in mind: consistency is key to increasing conversions.
What’s more, this page is not a landing page. It’s the homepage of the website.
It would be far more effective if Clubhouse took into account what the user was searching for (the competitor) and then tailored the landing page accordingly.
3. Cater to a certain type of person
Let’s say you sell a software product that’s all the rage with both marketing professionals and CEOs. The way that you sell your product and the copy on your page will vary depending on who you’re speaking to, so you’ll probably want to create a landing page for each of those buyer personas.
Here’s another example: I just did a Google search for “coworking space Barcelona” and this is one of the ads that popped up:
Which brought me to this page:
Then at the bottom of that landing page is this section:
As you can see, CoBuilderHub doesn’t try to appeal to all remote workers here. This landing page is made for one specific type of remote worker: the digital nomad.
Sure, their assumption could be off base. If I were searching for the keywords “co-working space Barcelona,” I could very well live in Barcelona full-time or even be a native of Barcelona. But they made an assumption; and in doing so, they were able to personalize their landing page all the more.
4. Geo-localize your content
Another way to personalize your landing page? Find out where your visitors are coming from and then tailor your page accordingly.
For example, I live in Spain. I just did (yet another) CRM search in Google. This time, I searched for the keywords “CRM tool” and was presented with a few ads. I clicked on one of them, which brought me to this page:
Then I clicked on another ad and arrived at this page:
Notice at the top of that page, there’s a message in Spanish (telling me that I can now navigate the site in Spanish). Below the form, the landing page also tells me that they recognize I’m in Spain, but give me the option to change my location.
Once I click on the “Hola” CTA at the top of the page, the landing page changes to be all in Spanish:
Assuming that I’m a Spanish speaking visitor, which landing page do you think I’d be more likely to convert on? The one that speaks to me in a foreign language or the one that (literally) speaks my language?
Most likely it would be the latter.
But translating your landing page into the local language isn’t the only thing you can do. You could also mention the user’s city throughout the page. For instance, I did a quick Google search for “rent a car Barcelona” and stumbled upon this ad:
Which brought me to this page:
Notice anything wrong with that landing page? For starters, the ad (yet again) directs me to the homepage and not to a landing page that’s built for the ad.
The ad also leads me to believe that the company is specialized in Barcelona car rentals…but nowhere on the page itself do they mention anything about Barcelona (except in the auto-populated form fill)!
It would probably be more effective if the headline instead read something like “Best Car Rental Deals in Barcelona” or ‘Best Car Rental Deals in Spain,” with a background image that was also location-specific.
Then at the bottom of the page, they show me car deals all around the world, which is completely irrelevant to my search:
Why would I care what a car rental costs in France or Germany? I’m looking to rent a car in Barcelona!
5. Target based on user behavior
With behavioral targeting, you take into account the actions of your website visitors, so that you can create more personalized ad campaigns.
For example, you might look at things like:
- What pages your visitors viewed
- What ads and links they clicked on
- What they have purchased in the past
If you sell shoes, for example, and see that a portion of your website visitors are primarily clicking on high heel product pages, then you can make a pretty safe assumption that those prospects are female and like to dress up.
On the other hand, if you see that another portion of your visitors are clicking on women’s sneakers product pages, then you can probably assume that they are female and prefer a more casual look.
From there, you can set up targeted campaigns and landing pages that speak to those two audiences.
6. Don’t make it about you
Dale Carnegie once said, “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”
To that end, make friends with your audience. Rather than making your landing page all about your company and what you have to offer, make it about your audience. Personalize your page to their needs and wants.
Your customers don’t care about how great your products or services are. They care about what you can do for them. So make sure you clearly convey that on your landing page.
Moreover, understand how they’re feeling when they land on your page and where they are in the buyer’s journey. Get as personal as you can and use all the data that you have to your full advantage.
For your PPC ads, make sure that your ad matches your landing page…and whatever you do, don’t send people to your homepage! For Google Ads, cater your ad and your landing page to the terms that people are searching for.
Summing up
To sum up, here are just a few ways that you can personalize your landing pages:
- Know where your visitors are in the buyer’s journey
- Mention your competitors
- Cater to a certain type of person
- Be location-specific
- Target based on user behavior
Finally, however you decide to personalize your landing pages, be sure to continually test and try new things to find out what works best for your audience.
If you do all of that, then your landing pages are sure to strike a chord with your visitors—and convert.
