Before we dive into the anatomy of a landing page in HubSpot, let's talk about what a landing page actually is.
According to HubSpot, "a landing page is any page on the web on which one might land that 1) has a form and 2) exists solely to capture a visitor's information through that form" (source).
This means that a landing page isn't really meant to be informative or educate a visitor in-depth about something. Usually, it acts as a personalized gateway to something - an ebook, a video, a meeting with a sales rep. The point of a landing page is to get that visitor's data (name, email, phone number, etc.) and with that information do lead nurturing about your product or service in order to eventually convert that visitor into a customer.
Three factors to keep in mind for your landing pages are the form, description, and personalization. Discover each of them below.
Your form is how you capture the personal information of visitors. Although a form seems very simple, you actually need to think strategically about the personal information you ask for.
In the digital age, people are wary of sharing too much personal data. Just check out a few of these statistics about online forms. They also might be turned off by the length or complexity of your form. In general, shorter forms convert better (but that's not always the case).
You need to sit down and consider, what's the least amount of information I can ask from visitors in order to adequately nurture them as a lead? The two basics are name and email address. But maybe you know that you can't properly qualify a lead with so little information. You can also ask for their phone number, location, company, industry, job title, work email, the product/service that they're interested in, and so much more. In HubSpot, you can use conditional logic to open certain fields based on their responses, and use hidden fields to classify these leads in your CRM.
There is one more interesting piece of logic to how many fields you can include in your form: the more information or resources you offer, the more fields you can include.For example, if you're offering an infographic, name and email is enough. But if you are offering a webinar or product demo, you can (and should) ask for more personal details because the visitor is getting much more in return.
A final word on forms: maybe the most important aspect of forms for European companies is GDPR compliance, a 2018 data protection regulation that governs how organizations collect and process the personal data of EU citizens. Luckily for us, HubSpot is a leader in GDPR compliance and makes it extremely easy for every user to be GDPR-compliant at all times on forms and all other areas.
See an example of an mbudo landing page form below.
Although the form is the most important part of a landing page, a good description can work wonders to convince people to leave their coveted personal data.
Basically, your description will describe what visitors will get after filling out the form. It might tell them the steps that will happen afterwards and the timeline. And what about your CTA (Call to Action)? You can stick with a simple phrase for your button like "Submit" or "Download", or go with something more action-oriented like "Receive your expert ebook".
See an example of an mbudo landing page description below.
A landing page that isn't personalized isn't going to convert very well. What does that mean? It means that your landing page visitors aren't going to leave their contact information and your business will have missed out on a potential customer.
In order to increase your conversion rate, you should customize your landing pages as much as possible. Sometimes it's not possible to personalize generic pieces of content like ebooks. In this case, you simply describe what's inside the ebook and what they will learn after reading it.
However, for specific campaigns geared towards your various Buyer Personas, you might want to create a landing page for each buyer persona. This way, you can target that audience's exact questions and needs in your description and offer. It will work wonders for conversion!
The HubSpot platform was created specifically for Inbound Marketing, so it has a bunch of useful tools to help you develop a well-designed landing page. Inside a Hubspot Landing Page, for example, you have three tabs on the left-hand side to guide you along the way.
This handy tool lets you view your page in a certain format (desktop, mobile, tablet, horizontal vs. vertical), see the page from the point of view of a specific contact, and have a shareable preview to share with team members and clients.
Image source: HubSpot
The optimize tab does exactly that: it optimizes the content and SEO of your landing page. HubSpot uses a unique Content Strategy featuring Pillar Pages and Topic Clusters. If your landing page is also a pillar page or part of a topic cluster, you'll learn what you need to add to flesh out the page. Does your title and meta description include your SEO online keyword? Are you linking back to the pillar page? Do your images have alt text?
Image source: HubSpot
This tool lets you edit your landing page template. If you want to rearrange blocks of text, add a title, or include more images, you can do some of that work right from this on-page editor. However, most of the time, you will have to edit your template in the Design Tools part of the HubSpot platform.
Image source: HubSpot
Equipped with all the above information, you should be on your way to creating amazing landing pages for your business or brand. Looking for landing page templates in HubSpot? The Asset Marketplace has hundreds of choices that are free or paid. mbudo is a HubSpot Partner Agency that can also help you with landing page creation and other HubSpot marketing resources.