Aug 10, 2023
Show Resources
Here were the resources we covered in the episode:
Google Analytics 4 Events Episode
Show Transcript
Are your landing pages leaving something to be desired? If so, your LinkedIn Ads aren't performing as well as they could be. We're teaching you how to make your landing pages super powered on this week's episode of the LinkedIn Ads Show.
Welcome to the LinkedIn Ads Show. Here's your host, AJ Wilcox.
Hey there LinkedIn Ads fanatics, your landing pages dictates so much of your performance that you can get from your LinkedIn Ads. But it's really complex, because a lot of marketers who are responsible for paid social are not responsible for the landing pages or the website. But with landing pages that are inefficient, it makes everything you do look worse. Never fear, I'm about to give you a framework for landing pages that perform on LinkedIn. And let's be honest, every other channel too, because that's kind of how it works. But first in the news thought leader ads now support video. We've shared in the past how thought leader ads could only boost a post that was single image or text only. So now thought leader ads can boost video posts, which I'm really excited about. The more power we can get from thought leader ads in my book, the better. Eric Jones brought up the LinkedIn ads fanatics community that document ads now have their own version of retargeting, which is amazing. The more ways that we can retarget also the better. So now when you run a document ad, you can now retarget anyone who interacts with the ad in any way or just people who performed chargeable clicks on your ad, or those who downloaded the content of the ad. This is awesome! LinkedIn, keep it up. I really hope this means that dynamic ads retargeting, text ads retargeting, and the messaging ad formats, event ads even, I hope all of these are going to get their own retargeting very soon, I want to highlight a review that we got on the podcast Vaanee Goel says, "Such a fantastic LinkedIn Ads podcast. I've been following AJ on LinkedIn for a while. And about a week back, I subscribed to the podcast and started listening to it. When I heard the first two episodes, my mind was blown. It's been just about a week and I've listened to almost 10 episodes. They're incredible, so much content, such great explanations, and very articulate and coherent. I see these helping me a lot. I'm gonna listen to them all over the course of time. Now, thanks for sharing your knowledge with people including me. This is an abundance mindset in its truest sense. And it really helps." Vaanee, a LinkedIn Ads consultant out of India. Vaanee, I hope I'm pronouncing your name right. Thank you so much for sharing that review. That means a ton to me. And as you guessed, I am big on an abundance mindset. So I'm really excited that you're getting a lot of value out of it, as well as everyone else, too. I'm not trying to keep this all for myself. And neither are any of us here in the B2Linked team. We're constantly looking to see how we can share better. And everyone else, I want to invite you to leave a review on the podcast. I would love to shout you out live like this as well.
Alright, without further ado, let's hit it. Our topic here is on landing pages. And it's a really complex topic, because there's so many different elements of a landing page. And I want you to consider the landing pages that you're currently using. And think about ways that you can use these tips to make your landing pages even stronger, or fix them if they're not performing very well. I'm gonna list a lot of different kinds of elements, I want you to know that these are really in no particular order, unless I say this one is really important. And I will say that.
Consistency in Messaging
The very first one is consistency in messaging. Now one of the big
challenges that we run into is that oftentimes, we say something
different in the ad than what we say on the landing page itself. It
may seem like a small thing that in your ad copy, maybe you're
talking about this free content. And then when they go to the
landing page, they don't see you talking about the content in the
same way. But this can be a real source of confusion for your
visitors. So what I recommend is make sure that whatever way that
you're referring to the content in your ad, make sure that the
landing page itself reflects that. Use the same words, use the same
title of content, any way that you can connect that original
thought so that when the visitor gets there, they're not left
confused or wondering if they made it to the right place.
Meeting Expectations
And this leads us to our second point your landing page should
fulfill and meet the expectation that it's been given. So in your
ad, if you're saying something like get access to this free ebook,
if they get to that landing page, and they have to hunt around to
understand, like, where is this ebook? Or is it being offered? Or
was I bamboozled? And is this a bait and switch for something else,
you need to make sure that your offer is easy to find. They clicked
on an ad specifically promising them something, as soon as they get
to that landing page it should be abundantly clear exactly what it
is that they requested and they get access to it right then. This
also means that you need to clearly articulate the value that your
visitor is getting. A lot of times when I audit landing pages, I
notice that right up at the top, this is the area of the webpage
that everyone is going to see, it's the most important, that people
waste time. They start talking about something else, rather than
getting right to the benefit. If you're offering a free piece of
content, your first paragraph should not be about your product or
something unrelated, it should be all about, here's the content
that you're getting access to and here's why it's valuable.
Coding and Backend
We do need to talk about the coding and the back end of the landing
page and website as well. Hey, LinkedIn charged us for 100 clicks,
but when we look at analytics, it shows only 40 visitors came from
LinkedIn. No, this is not LinkedIn trying to trick you or
overcharge you. What inevitably happened is someone clicked on that
ad. And so LinkedIn charged you as the advertiser, but then when
they sent them to the landing page, there was enough of a delay,
the visitor got impatient and left before the page fully loaded.
This is the same issue for all channels, but I definitely hear it a
lot related to LinkedIn Ads. Anytime that you have a redirect
happen, it takes some time for that redirect to occur. When you
click on a LinkedIn ad, LinkedIn reroutes you through a different
link. And so there's just a little delay there, maybe it's a
fraction of a second. And this is exacerbated where maybe you have
a bitly link or some sort of a shortened company link in your ad,
then it has to go through two redirects, which takes even longer.
And then your landing page will take some time to load. Generally
landing pages load faster on a desktop than they do on mobile. But
we know that 80% or more of your visitors from LinkedIn Ads are
going to be on mobile. So my best advice to you is work on your
mobile landing page experience. Make sure that it loads as fast as
possible. Generally, this is going to be on mobile, you want your
page to load in less than one second. You'll obviously want to talk
to your developer about this. Because this is not a skill that most
marketers have is being able to minify their code on their website
and speed things up. But your developer will know this is
incredibly important. Some things that can help here are getting
faster hosting. So if your website is using any sort of like a
shared hosting, that's going to slow it down, because at different
times, the server may be getting more requests for another website
and so it's slower to serve yours up when it's requested. So one of
the best things you can do use cloud hosting, I know it's a lot
more expensive, we've considered exactly the same thing for our
website, but don't cheap out on hosting. Get good, fast, dedicated
hosting support. Another thing that can really help your page load
speed is you'll have a lot of different JavaScript libraries being
called in your code. You'll also have a lot of different CSS files.
There are different tools that developers can use, where they can
do what's called minifying. They minify the JavaScript and the CSS
files, that could mean shrinking them all into just one simplified
file and getting rid of all of the redundant calls there. Or just
making it so the server doesn't have to request as many documents.
This is definitely outside of my paygrade, but I've worked with
developers in this process of minifying, JavaScript and CSS, and
you really can get a big benefit here. Now I've been a digital
marketer for a long time, especially near the beginning of the
WordPress heyday. WordPress is especially susceptible to this. But
what happens is, if you add enough plugins into your website,
because hey, there's so many plugins that do great things, well,
all of those plugins can bog the website down, because every time
someone requests a page, maybe four, or five, or 15, plugins all
have to be called and referenced. So one of the best things you can
do is remove plugins. If you're running off of something like
WordPress, or Drupal. You can decrease your page load speed very
quickly, just by doing some of that. Another thing that I've seen
web developers do is to go through and specifically resize images
just for what they need. So for instance, if you upload an image,
that's like four megabytes, but you're only displaying it as a
thumbnail, even though your web server is showing that only as a
thumbnail, it has to load the whole four megabyte image and send it
to the user. And that slows down the page, giving them anything
else. So there are a few tips that you can give to your web
developers, and hopefully give them a big leg up in speeding up
your pages. I might also suggest have them design the page to be
mobile first, because a lot of times we design a desktop version of
a website. And then the mobile version is just like a scaled down
version of that. But if you build the whole website or page
specifically for mobile, and then maybe have a separate desktop
version, that can help your page load speed quite a bit as
well.
Alright, here's a quick sponsor break and then we'll dive into the design and general appeal areas of your website.
9:57
The LinkedIn Ads Show is proudly brought to you by B2Linked.com,
the LinkedIn Ads experts.
Managing LinkedIn Ads is a massive time and money investment. Do you want to return on that? Consider booking a discovery call with B2Linked, the original LinkedIn Ads performance agency, we've worked with some of the largest LinkedIn Ads accounts over the past 12 years and our unique scientific approach to Ads management combined with our proprietary tools allow us to confidently optimize and scale your LinkedIn Ads faster and more efficiently than any other agency, in house team, or digital ads hire. Plus, were official LinkedIn partners. Just go to B2Linked.com/apply, we'd absolutely love the chance to get to work with you. Alright, let's jump back into our design and appeal of websites.
Design and Appeal
I want you to look at your landing page and your website and assess
how easy it is to actually read the content that's there. Look at
it as a new user, like you weren't the one who created it and see
how attractive is it? Are there giant paragraphs that look like big
walls of text that no one's going to want to start reading. If so
try to break up your paragraphs to where they're just a line or two
a piece. This is going to invite a lot more people to start reading
and keep reading. Think about what you have above the fold. Because
if we know that not everyone is going to keep scrolling all the way
to the end be really thoughtful and intentional about what you put
at the top of the page that you know is going to get read the most
often. And of course, with landing pages, the name of the game is
really minimizing distraction. The purpose of most landing pages is
to get you to either fill out a form or take some action or leave.
That's really lit. Like give someone an opportunity, and if they're
not willing to take it, there's not much there for them. A lot of
times, this means removing links that go anywhere else except that
landing page itself. That means the logo at the upper left hand
corner, you might want to take the link out of that so that they
can't go back to your homepage. You might want to remove the
navigation that's at the top of that page that's global across your
whole website, just to allow fewer distractions and the ability to
leave the landing page that you've crafted. Do you have multiple
popups that could annoy someone, obviously try to get rid of them
or at least minimize them to just like one pop up. Realize that
most of the people who are visiting your landing page are going to
be on mobile and a pop up takes over the entire screen so I would
highly recommend don't use any pop ups if you can. Now the same
thing I think goes for the GDPR cookie banners that you see, I've
seen some really good cookie banners. And I've seen some really
poor ones. Obviously, from a data perspective and from an analytics
perspective, you want as many people to accept those cookies as
possible. So make that really easy. It shouldn't take up the whole
screen, but if it does, you may not want it to take up the whole
screen. Or maybe you do and have it take up the whole screen just
to make it really easy to click accept all. That's totally up to
you how you handle it. But you should look at your cookie banner as
a new user with fresh eyes and see if there's any way that you can
improve it so that it's easier to click accept. Now we definitely
need to talk about form fields. Because many marketers your whole
goal in sending someone to a landing page is to get them to fill
out a form. So first, consider how many form fields you have.
Because if people have to fill out too much information, they're
gonna get bored, they're gonna get distracted, they're gonna get
upset or frustrated. And they may just leave entirely, whereas they
were maybe close to just clicking Submit. There are some big SAS
companies that make us look pretty bad. You may know the ones I'm
talking about, but you go to register for a webinar. And they asked
15 questions about how much you spend, and what your title and
position at the company are. I would try to keep it as short as you
possibly can. First name, last name, email address, if you can keep
it down to a minimum, that's going to help you way more Plus, you
can always enrich that data later at a pretty low cost. So it
doesn't make sense to add more form fields trying to qualify
people. I think we also have to address that your landing page
should be nice to look at. It shouldn't be visually offensive. Now
I will say that I've sat through conversion optimization
presentations, especially from Chris Daly that we've mentioned on
the show before. And in his presentations. He does the results of
AV tests. So he shows you the before the after which versions
tested and then he shares the results. And I will say I was shocked
because in one of those examples, it was the ugliest possible
version of the page. It didn't match the brand colors or style
guidelines. I mean, it looked like a Frankenstein of a page but it
converted better. So I do realize that sometimes ugly converts, but
I also realized that you're paying a significant premium to be
advertising on LinkedIn and every interaction every touch that you
have with someone is a touch with your brand, but it really is nice
to make sure that that touch that they have with your brand, every
touch is on brand. And it feels modern and appealing and isn't a
real turnoff. It inspires confidence that you're good at what you
do.
Social Proof
And next, that brings us to a really important category, here are
things that go on your landing page, which is your social proof.
Wisdom of the crowds is a real thing. No one likes to be the first
person to comment, or the first person to like, or the first person
to click. They feel like a guinea pig, they feel like they're being
tested. And maybe if no one else is willing to do this, then maybe
they shouldn't be either. As humans, we just feel more comfortable
taking the same action that other people have already taken. So I
think a section of your landing page, specifically devoted to like,
here are the companies we've worked with that can quiet people's
fears, because they realize they're not the first ones who are
going through this. You're already proven with other brands like
them, or maybe even larger than them, I suggest the same kind of
treatment with where you've been featured. So if you or your
executive team has been featured, maybe they've been interviewed on
podcasts, or they've been featured on the news somewhere or even in
press releases, you can claim that. You're gonna have logos that
say like, hey, here's where we've been featured. You can pepper in
other elements like case studies and testimonials that help people
realize that they're not alone. And they're making a smart decision
by deciding to work with you. And this relates a little bit to the
coding of the webpage. But I see a lot of marketers get tripped up
here. The way that your tags fire on your page, your JavaScript
tags is really important. If your analytics and conversion tags and
your retargeting tags for all of your different stuff. If they all
load at the very end of the page, then what's happening is these
visitors that come to the page, and if they decide to leave before
the whole page is downloaded into their browser and displayed to
them, then your retargeting is not tracking them, your conversion
tracking is not tracking them, your analytics is not tracking them,
you get the idea. So most digital marketing channels have this
little JavaScript pixel. LinkedIn calls their's the Insight tag,
and they're pretty lightweight. So my recommendation would be to
take all of your least your most important pixels, that would be
your LinkedIn insight tag, maybe your Google Ads tag your meta tag,
and make sure that these fires really early on in the head section
of your HTML. That means even if a user leaves before the page
fully loads, at least they'll qualify to be in your retargeting
audience, if they were on a conversion page, then at least you get
to mark that as a conversion. And your analytics is marking them as
having come from LinkedIn. In episode 105, All about Google
Analytics 4, we told you exactly how to set up page scroll depth
and time on site events. These can be really helpful in
understanding how people are interacting with your landing page. If
you send a bunch of traffic and no one scrolls past 50%, or no one
sticks around long enough to actually read what it is you have,
then there's an obvious issue there. All right, I've got the
episode resources for you coming right up. So stick around.
18:17
Thank you for listening to the LinkedIn Ads Show. Hungry for more?
AJ Wilcox, take it away.
Alright, in the shownotes, you'll see a link to Episode 105. It was the last episode all about Google Analytics 4, so I would highly suggest checking that out if you haven't already. These are things that you can do as a marketer that help you evaluate your LinkedIn Ads traffic better. If you haven't already, make sure that you've joined the LinkedIn Ads fanatics community. That will get you access to our four courses that take you from beginner to expert, and they also give you access to the whole community of other LinkedIn Ads fanatics. You can bounce ideas off and ask questions anytime. Me and my staff are constantly in there as well. Depending on when you listen to this, you may still be able to get in at the lowest cost it will ever be, our founders rates, but you'll have to act fast. Go to fanatics.b2linked.com to see exactly how to sign up. If this is your first time listening, welcome! We're excited to have you here. Make sure to hit that subscribe button wherever you're listening. But if this is not your first time listening, please do rate and review the show. Nothing would be more meaningful to me than going and leaving a review. I would appreciate that so much. And it really helps out the show with any questions, suggestions or corrections on what we've talked about. Reach out to us at Podcast@B2Linked.com. And with that being said, we'll see you back here next week. Cheering you on in your LinkedIn Ads initiatives.