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B2B lead gen landing pages: the Call To Action (CTA)
Landing pages for B2B - part 3
This is the third article in our series on B2B lead gen landing pages.
Last time I looked at the information architecture of a high-performing B2B lead gen landing page. But I saved one crucial part – the call to action (or CTA) – for a detailed look in this article.
Remember that a lead gen landing page is just a stepping stone in a desired user journey. A marketer designs a landing page to encourage the reader to do something. The CTA is the part of the user experience that invites the reader to take that intended next step:
A CTA often takes the form of an action button.
For a B2B lead gen page, the marketer’s intention is usually to have the reader provide their contact details so that a sales conversation can take place. So the CTA is likely to be a button saying something like “Contact Us” or “Get in Touch”.
The appearance and wording of a CTA will have a huge impact on the performance of your landing page. So it deserves very serious consideration in your landing page design process.
A guideline: choose your CTA to suit an impatient, intelligent, sceptical prospect.
Finally, don’t rule out safe choices for CTAs. Buttons saying “Contact Us” and “Get in Touch” aren’t exciting, but they’re CTA clichés for a simple reason – they work. In a B2B lead gen campaign you probably won’t have the luxury of split testing lots of variant CTAs (see our article for why!) so a safe, high-performing choice might be your best bet.
I like to think of a distinction between the CALL to action – what are we asking the reader to do? – and the MECHANISM for action – how are we asking them to do it?
On B2B lead gen pages, it’s a good idea to focus on a single CALL to action. But it’s a great idea to offer multiple MECHANISMS for action.
To understand why, put yourself in the situation of the reader. Consider these scenarios:
The person in all of these scenarios could be an equally valuable lead. But their willingness to engage via different mechanisms is radically different because of their immediate circumstances.
As digital marketers we don’t know the circumstances of our web visitors at the moment they choose to view our landing pages. (On the internet, no one can tell when you’re in the bathroom!) So the best thing we can do is to offer the visitor a choice of contact mechanism. The person can make their own decision about their most convenient way to get in touch.
Here’s an example from one of our own landing pages. The CTA here is “Book a discovery call”. The button and choice of copy suggests that this will lead to an online booking form – and that’s true. But we also offer three alternative mechanisms for action. Can you spot them? (answers below the image!)
The alternative mechanisms for action are:
Offering a phone number has a secondary benefit – it signals that we’re a real company with human beings on hand who are willing and able to receive your call. Even if the visitor prefers to make contact via some other mechanism, the presence of that phone number helps to engage and persuade. We like to include a phone number on a landing page whenever possible.
Always remember that your landing page’s CTA is in competition with all of those alternatives that are just a click of the back button away. For example if a person is ready to make a phone call RIGHT NOW and your landing page only offers a contact form while your competitors offer a choice of mechanisms for action, you’ll lose that hot lead to a competitor who shows a phone number. Multiple mechanisms for action increase landing page conversions.
The golden rule of marketing priorities: never compromise. Except when you have to compromise.
It is a good guiding principle to pick a single CTA and stick to it. But there are situations where it might be desirable or essential to offer a choice of CTAs.
For example, perhaps you are running a campaign that will naturally bring in a mixture of top-of-funnel and bottom-of-funnel visitors. (A lot of LinkedIn Ads campaigns do this.) You want to encourage the bottom-of-funnel visitors to get in touch, but you’d still like a chance to convert the top-of-funnel visitors – who, by definition, won’t be willing to get in touch with you just yet.
In circumstances like that it’s OK to have a secondary CTA. But make sure it is presented in a way that is obviously secondary in the visual hierarchy of your landing page. Here are a few ways you can do that:
And that’s my cue to wrap up this blog with a reminder to sign up for our newsletter! We’ll continue this series on landing pages next time with a deep dive into the next step in the conversion journey – the contact form.
Have more questions about high-performing landing pages, or B2B marketing in general? Please get in touch, one of our consultants would be happy to chat!
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