Landing Pages are the gateway to your success. They introduce potential customers to your company, your product or service and the benefits you offer. If you are having trouble getting your customers to convert, the problem can often be found in poorly optimized landing pages.
Landing pages are often overlooked, and businesses put more focus into the design of their Facebook ads than on where the ad is sending their customers. Just creating a Facebook ad is not enough, you need to connect your targeted Facebook ad with an optimised landing page.
A landing page you send Facebook users to is often more important than the ad itself.
Your ad’s job is relatively straightforward – get people to click on the ad. The real conversion happens on the landing page and sending potential customers to the wrong, or a poorly optimised page is likely to reduce conversions.
Should you send your customers to an external landing page?
When creating a Facebook ad, you have the option of choosing to keep your customers within the Facebook platform or send them to an external site.
Majority of Facebook ads link to external landing pages, however, there has been a significant amount of growth with companies choosing to link their ads to their Facebook page instead of an external landing page.
As it is relatively easy to gain insights into user preferences, with a little analysis, you can see where your website traffic is coming from and where your customers are the most engaged. If your target audience spends most of their time on Facebook, then it makes sense to engage with them there. There’s a chance that asking users to leave the platform (redirecting them to an external site) may result in them not taking immediate action.
Facebook is constantly releasing updates and enhancements to both its business pages and ads platform. These changes impact where you should send your customers i.e. with the introduction of Facebook lead ads, if the goal of your ad is to get potential customers to fill in a lead form, then it makes sense to keep them in the Facebook platform instead of sending them to an external site to complete the same task. Facebook offers lead forms, direct to messenger, and the Facebook page as some of the options for keeping your customers within the platform.
Deciding where to send your customers depends on the objective of your ad and what landing page is going to be the most relevant for the desired outcome.
Facebook External Landing Pages – Best Practices
If you are sending customers from your Facebook ad to an external landing page here are a few best practices that you should follow;
Offer a unique value proposition.
People who land on your page want to know exactly what’s in it for them. For example, Unbounce’s website clearly promises a compelling benefit (get more conversions) and how to achieve the results. Always focus on the most important benefit for your customer and place it in the most visible position. Don’t make the mistake of promising one thing in your Facebook ad, but failing to keep the value proposition consistent on the landing page.
Have a prominent call to action.
Ensure there are obvious call to actions throughout the page. If a user is interested in your product but there is no call to action button in sight, they are likely to leave the page without converting. It’s important your call to action stands out and it has been proven that the more contrasting the CTA is, the higher the conversion rate. For example, the image below has a call to action button that stands out. Including action words such as get, do, start etc. is recommended.
Write concise landing page copy.
Your landing page copy should include only the vital information and leave out all the unimportant stuff. Ideally it should reflect your user’s intent and exactly what the ad suggested. Anything different is likely to result in customer disappointment.
Have highly relevant images.
Each image should be of high quality and like every word on the page, should contribute to the final conversion. Images should align with your value offer and be similar to your ad design.
Ensure undisrupted flow.
A clear flow of text and images is crucial to success. When reading a page from top to bottom, each new paragraph or section should flow on or link to the previous one.
Summary
- Landing pages are often overlooked, and businesses put more focus into the design of their Facebook ads than on where the ad is sending their customers
- If you are having trouble getting your customers to convert from your Facebook ads the problem can often be found in poorly optimized pages.
- There is an upward trend in keeping using within the Facebook platform instead of sending them to an external site.
- To optmise your external landing page, the key points are;
- Offer a unique value proposition.
- Have a prominent call to action.
- Write concise landing page copy.
- Have highly relevant images.
- Ensure undisrupted flow.
(Reference: Adespresso)
