Conversion Strategies for Social Media & Landing Pages

When aiming to boost conversions between social media and landing pages, it’s essential to focus on strategies that ensure your landing pages are credible, relevant, and provide valuable information. By doing so, you can effectively engage visitors and increase the likelihood of turning them into customers.

Social Media

In today’s ever-evolving technological culture, social media has become ubiquitous. For example, it is an online meeting place where people can converse about different things. It can be used as a tool for buying and selling merchandise. It can showcase the skills and talents of one or more individuals, and it can be used as a powerful marketing platform covering just about anything and everything that can be marketed.

In addition to the few examples listed above, the technologies that make up social media platforms are also constantly adapting to other technologies as a means by which the interface between a given technology and social media becomes as user-friendly and seamless as possible. One well-known example includes landing pages. These have been in existence for some time and are well-known to tech-savvy marketers, but may not be as easily recognizable to the average Internet user.

Landing Pages Defined

So what exactly are landing pages? Scott (2013) offered that “A landing page is simply a place to publish targeted content for a particular buyer persona that you are trying to market to, and they are used not only in search engine marketing but also in other marketing programs” (p. 370). Ryan and Graham (2014) illustrated many other ways of driving traffic to landing pages, including using them in conjunction with digital display advertising (pp. 86, 89-90, 93-94, 96); e-mail (pp. 103, 116); mobile formats (pp. 139-142, 183); rich media (97); and social ads (p. 142).

Social Media and Landing Pages

How, then, does social media play a role when it comes to landing pages? Ryan and Graham (2014) indicated that “Social media ads now represent the majority of the ads seen on the web.” They also suggested “…the same ad can be used as long as the landing page, keyword, and message are living in harmony” (p.142). Bly (2018) noted that “If you’re sending people to a landing page, you’ll need to optimize it with persuasive, relevant content and a clear [call to action], tailored to specific search queries” (p. 92). It would seem reasonable to believe, then, that the use of social media with landing pages would have the same requirements to make them effective as mentioned above.

Conversion Defined

When it comes to conversion strategies for getting social media and landing pages to work effectively with one another, it is important to understand just what conversion is. Ryan and Graham (2014) regarded conversion as “…really anything that an advertiser wants to measure to help determine whether the campaign reached its primary objectives or not” (p. 40). Bly (2018) suggested that “The conversion rate is the number of prospects who reach or land on your sales page and accept the offer” (p. 217).

Landing Page Strategy #1: Credibility

One strategy recommended by Bly that could potentially be considered a conversion strategy is to make landing page credibility a priority, “right on the first screen.” The ways in which to do this include using logos and company names in page banners, using official seals where applicable, and using the testimonials of others to further establish credibility (p. 177). By making sure viewers are confident in what they are seeing on any given landing page (including those associated with social media) it could be posited that more of them would naturally buy in to what is being marketed as a result.

Landing Page Strategy #2: Relevance

Another strategy discussed by Ryan and Graham (2014) involves making sure that when an ad is clicked on, the resulting landing page should be “targeted/relevant”; the authors also observed that in instances where traffic is directed to an obscure endpoint, it is a “wasted opportunity. In most cases meaningful conversion won’t occur because consumers will follow the path of least resistance” (p. 93). This would seem especially important as a conversion strategy for the connection between social media and landing pages as whatever initial impetus the former might have to entice the potential buyer would likely only lead to conversion upon being directed to the latter, which then continues the pitch initially delivered.

Landing Page Strategy #3: Informative Content

Finally, Scott (2013) noted the following: “You need to build landing pages that have specific content to enlighten and inform the people who just clicked over to your site from search engines” (p. 370). The idea of having the same standards in place for those who click over from any source makes sense, especially in view of the observations made by the authors above. It also makes sense that people who have the information they need about what is being offered (especially when it carries credibility) would be more likely to complete the intended transaction from the landing page, potentially resulting in a higher conversion rate.

Key Takeaways

The best strategies to use when dealing with conversions between social media and landing pages include those that ensure the landing pages are credible, that they are relevant, and that they offer sought-after information that will enlighten the individual(s) driven to them as a means of increasing conversions.

>> Learn the marketing basics that will turn heads for all the right reasons.