Why is a landing page relevant? 🛬
For every early-stage startup having a great landing page is crucial. After talking to potential customers and identifying the main problem, it’s one of the early steps to validate your idea (BEFORE you work on the product). More and more startups grow a (social) community first and then launch their product/MVP in this community (I am a big fan of this strategy).
Why a great sales landing page is important for early-stage startups (especially for SaaS):
- great way to collect sign-ups and grow a community and
- hopefully, convert them to free trials and first paying customers
- storefront and first impression for potential investors and first employees
- a key part for your performance marketing campaigns
- branding and SEO relevance
10 hands-on tips for your landing page
The following 10 hands-on tips are marketing & sales specific. I am not writing about any design or technical tips. For landing page design tips I can highly recommend Steve Schoger or Distillery.
#1 Have a sticky CTA in the menu
Make sure you have a sticky CTA (e.g. Free Trial) in the scrolling navigation. This will increase the visibility of your primary Call to Action and drive conversion. Preferably only your CTA button is sticky (and not the rest of the menu).
#2 Have a powerful CTA Button in every section
A great landing page consists of different sections, including a hero section, problem section, solution section, How it works, Social Proof, Pricing, and FAQs. Make sure that you have a CTA button in every section of your landing page.
Think about a powerful Call To Action button. Maximum 3 words. The more powerful the message of your CTA, the higher the conversion. Here are some powerful CTAs:
- Get started
- Free trial
- Book a demo
- Sign up free
- 14-day free trial
- Request access
- Join waitlist
#3 Social proof section
Social proof is great to become trustworthy. It’s especially important for young startups without strong branding. Provide testimonials from first customers who have benefited from your product. Share their unique story and how they benefit from your solution. The goal is that your visitors relate to your testimonials. Test the following social proofs:
- testimonials of your customers (Testimonial videos, quotes, and images)
- share number of happy customers (e.g. Join 100+ happy customers)
- pr coverage (e.g. featured in Forbes, Huffington Post, ProductHunt, Techcrunch..)
#4 Headline matters (aim for 6 words headlines)
80% of the visitors only read the headlines, only 20% read the rest of your landing page. So make sure you nailed your headlines. The headline captures the attention of the visitors.
Here are some tips for headlines:
- aim for 6 words headlines - keep them short
- use a dark color to make it easy to read (contrast of colors)
- include strong words and adjectives
- include (odd) numbers (e.g. 105% increase of revenue)
- use action headlines (e.g. Get Free Access today)
#5 Conversational tone
A conversational tone means you try to write the way you would normally talk to your customer. You’re not trying to impress them with your vocabulary (not too technical or industry jargon). Talk directly to the visitor of your landing page, speak to one person and ask questions. Make sure the language you choose fits your target customer persona. Conversational tone works better for products targeting consumers, prosumers, and SMBs, not perfect for enterprise customers.
#6 Keep the copy short and easy to understand
Keep the copy short and simple. A good rule of thumb is that every section should not have more than 3-5 lines of text. Make sure that you speak the language of your target customer. A common mistake is having too many details or too technical text, not optimized to convert visitors to leads. Your landing page is basically a sales page with the goal to convert sign-ups.
#7 Add ‘exit pop-ups’ and engaging Lead Magnets
It can make sense to add exit pop-ups to your landing page. They stop visitors before they leave your page with the goal to collect the email address. Popular exit pop-up call-to-action are free e-books, webinar invites, special discounts, or gifts. Be creative and add value to your visitor.
Another interesting strategy for collecting email addresses (and convert them later to product sign-ups) is using engaging elements like revenue calculators, lead quizzes, or videos. The goal is to engage visitors with your content on your page and send them the result via email (e.g. revenue potential) in exchange for their email. Make sure you have good email marketing automation/follow-up emails in place.
#8 Product Videos are powerful
Visitors love product demo videos. It’s an easy and engaging way to check out your product. If you are early-stage it’s fine if your product demo is produced on a low budget (a great tool to do screen recordings for product demo videos is Loom - check out the best digital tools for startups). Here are some tips for a good product video:
- keep it short (under 2 minutes)
- use some background music or talk to the viewer
- if it’s a personal screen recording, then show your face to make it more personal
- don’t explain features, talk about values and benefits
#9 Sell benefits, not features
In the solution section of your landing page, focus on selling the benefits of your product and don’t just explain the features. The only reason why your product has those features is that they are (hopefully) beneficial for your customers. You need to sell values, not features. For example: if you are building a marketing automation tool and offer a feature called automated follow-ups, the benefits of this feature are for instance:
- higher response rate
- increased retention rate
- higher engagement
- happy customers
- more sales
#10 Use High-quality product images
People love to see how the product looks like. Use high-quality product images - and try to barely use any stock images. And keep in mind that the images need to correspond to the text of this section.
Bonus: 6 best-practice SaaS landing pages
Here are 6 examples of great landing pages for SaaS companies:
- https://capsulecrm.com/
- https://calendly.com/
- https://unbounce.com/
- https://webflow.com/
- https://www.helpscout.com/
- https://www.shopify.de/
Looking for support?
👉 If you want me to check your specific landing page, feel free to reach out to me (Mentorcruise or via Linkedin).
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