As with any industry, lead generation is vital within the financial services industry. Up to 75% of financial marketers confirm that lead generation is their primary goal when creating content. So having an effective destination for all web traffic is more important than ever. After all, a well-optimised financial service landing page is the key to any effective financial lead generation campaign.
Without being able to capture a visitor’s details, you cannot begin to move them through the sales funnel. Unfortunately, many businesses struggle to put together a decent financial service landing page.
In the end, visitors click on an ad because they are interested in learning more. If the landing page doesn’t convince them that they should give you their details, then they’ll just click away. If your landing page isn’t set up for success, you’ll end up with a lot of clicks that never turn into leads.
In a nutshell, your marketing campaigns are only as good as the landing pages they send people to. After all, what good is a high CTR if it doesn’t result in any leads? So you need a financial service landing page that is designed to make people convert. While this may sound like a challenge, we’ve compiled seven tips to help you ensure that your financial services landing page delivers.
Many elements contribute to the overall effectiveness of a landing page. That said, even small changes, when combined, can lead to dramatic increases in landing page efficiency. Even an increase in conversions from 2% to 3% is a 50% increase in the number of leads generated. Incremental increases can make a huge difference.
Now, we’ll jump straight into seven ways to ensure that your financial services landing page is optimised to deliver results.
When design landing pages, it can be tempting to try to appeal to every customer at the same time. However, those landing pages which target only a specific audience are significantly more successful than generic versions.
According to Melissa Musgrove of Regions Financial, a one-size-fits-all strategy no longer works, and financial services customers are beginning to demand an individualised experience.
“Successful digital marketing is rooted in customisation. Delivering the right message to the right customer at the right time can only be achieved through personalisation. Every search, social media interaction and website click to contribute to a customer’s Digital footprint. They’re telling us exactly who they are and what they want and need, so it’s our job as Marketers to use the best tools, applying solid strategy and optimising overtime to reach them.”
For example, a fixed-income fund may know that their two key demographics are:
Families looking for predictable and regular income which allows them to plan for upcoming expenses such as school fees
Retirees who are prioritising capital protection overgrowth
Looking at these two audiences, it should be clear that each has distinct needs, which a generic landing page may not address. Trying to address both needs in one landing page would also dilute the messaging.
Creating landing pages for each audience, with targeted imagery and messaging will resonate with each. Doing so will build a better connection and ultimately lead to higher conversion rates.
Another essential step is optimising your financial services landing page is to ensure that the function and call-to-action of your landing page are aligned with the audience’s stage in the buyer’s funnel.
For example, a wealth-management firm could have two landing pages for the same demographic but targeted at prospects in different stages of their buying journey.
Landing Page A: could provide an opt-in for an educational eBook, explaining how a managed fund could form part of a diversified investment portfolio. Doing so would deliver value for someone in the early stages of their investment journey, as they research the topic.
Landing Page B: could offer a calculator for prospects further along in their buyer’s journey, allowing them to enter their portfolio details and receive a free call back from an adviser.
These landing pages are suited to prospects at different stages of their investing journey and serve two very different purposes. They could; however, both be used as part of the same inbound campaign, with leads that come from Landing Page A being qualified and then nurtured towards Landing Page B.
In every industry, the key to success with any landing page is consistency. As we’ve discussed before, “if your ads convey a different message to what they then see on your landing page, they may feel as though they have been misled, causing them to click away and not take any action, which reduces your page’s conversion rate.”
In other words, the messaging you use in your ads should match the messaging on your financial services landing page.
As a matter of fact, messaging consistency is one of the primary reasons that landing pages exist at all. Generally, designing a website is to meet dozens of needs. A marketing campaign is designed to deliver traffic that has only one. If that traffic lands on your website, with dozens of different messages and options, the chances of them discovering what they’re actually looking for decrease dramatically.
Financial marketing campaigns are going to perform their best when they deliver a consistent experience. If your ads are designed to appeal to a specific type of person, with a specific need, then your landing page should also appeal to that person, and directly address that need. That way, when they arrive at your landing page, they will find exactly what they’re looking for and be more likely to convert.
Landing page best practice has developed a lot over the past five years. Constant testing and improvements have led to a set of design and development principles which have proven to deliver high conversion rates. Some of these principles include:
Benefit-led messaging, as opposed to feature-led.
Make use of testimonials and other social proof.
Include a clear call-to-action message, which compels visitors to take a specific action.
Use one call-to-action per landing page. Many times, when people are given a choice, they too often choose ‘no choice’.
Outcome-led call-to-action buttons, such as ‘Get a Quote Now’ instead of the generic ‘sign up’.
Distraction-free design, with no social media or footer links and no top nav, to ensure that visitors have only one option - completing the call-to-action.
By benefiting from the learnings of others and following best practices, your landing page stands the best chance to deliver high conversion rates.
With more than 15 years of experience in conversion-focused design, there are some other best practices specific to the design of financial services landing pages. These include:
Each landing page should include a clear, concise and attention-grabbing headline, and present the Unique Selling Proposition - why someone should fill out the form
Including interactive features such as calculators or quizzes are ideal for increasing lead generation on financial services landing pages.
Rather than a long sign-up form with many question fields, the landing page should include multi-step forms. Forms broken up into more manageable sections reduce psychological friction, keeping things simple and increasing lead generation.
Attention spans have decreased over the years, and any landing page copy needs to be skimmable. It also makes sense to use bullet points to simplify information and to highlight your USP.
Use the space above the fold judiciously. Above the fold, explain what your users should expect, as well as the main benefit of using your product or service.
Offering a money-back guarantee or similar helps to build more trust, which is helpful for lead generation. Another way to reduce visitor anxiety is by displaying the badges or logos which represent your affiliation with other financial institutions. This could include certifications and trust badges, etc.
The problem with some landing pages is that too many businesses struggle with egocentrism. After all, if you spend all your time thinking about your product or service and ways to improve it, it’s natural to want to talk about it. Unfortunately, while you may want to talk about all the things that make your business unique, not many people who visit your site will care.
Most people struggle with egocentrism too, so they won’t care how many hours you’ve invested in your site’s latest features. All they care about is whether or not your product or service will make their life easier.
Depending on who you’re selling to, and what you’re selling, you could answer that question in a multitude of ways. If customer service is important to your audience, you could use testimonials about your customer service, awards your customer service department has won, statistics about response times, etc. But you need to focus on how your customer service will make their life easier - not how awesome your business is.
Your page should address the need that brought them to your page in the first place. They probably clicked on your ad because it addressed a specific problem or need. Your page should focus on how your business solves that problem or need.
If the only thing your landing page does is tell them that your business is great, they’ll probably just lose interest and leave.
It can be easy to overcomplicate things, especially when you’re designing a financial services landing page - which can be a complicated topic. Obviously, there’s a temptation to want to include every bit of information your leads could possibly want.
“What if they want to know about X? Should probably include that. And what about Y? Better add a few bullet points about that. What if Y is a point of concern for them? Should I add a paragraph about that too?”
Before you know it, your landing page is cluttered, and definitely too long. Unfortunately, the fact of the matter is that most visitors won’t scroll very far down your landing page. Those that do probably aren’t reading all of your content.
As we’ve mentioned, visitors land on your page because they have a specific problem or need which they want to be addressed. If your landing page makes it evident that you can address their need satisfactorily, they will convert. If not, they’ll leave.
Keep your forms simple too. Longer forms can decrease conversion rates, so only ask the questions you need the answers to.
However, keeping it simple doesn’t necessarily mean keeping it short. You need to give your visitors all of the information that they need to convert. Ask yourself:
Am I overcomplicating things? If all you need is a phone number, only focus on getting the phone number. If all they need to know is the price, only give them the price.
Would another medium solve this issue? Sometimes, a photo or video can say more than a whole page of text.
The best financial services landing page will keep things simple, with content focused on the needs of the visitors. Forms should only ask for relevant information. Of course, how much information you provide, or how long your forms are will vary from business to business, and page to page, but simple, focused landing pages will almost always outperform more complicated ones.
The key to ensuring that your financial services landing page delivers high conversion rates is to be testing and optimising constantly. By running A/B tests with different versions of your landing pages, and retaining the highest performing version, small improvements can be compounded into larger gains over time.
For example’s sake, let’s look at the optimisation process for a comparison landing page for car insurance. Some optimisations and could include:
For the sake of the example, let’s say the benefit-led message improves the conversion rate by 0.4% - take the pages conversion rate from 2% to 2.4%. This is 20% more leads.
Again, for example, we’ll say that the family image increases the conversion rate to 2.64%.
If this again provides even a 0.5% increase in conversion rates, the page’s conversion rate would increase to 3.16%
As you can see, even small improvements and optimisations to copy and design can make a significant and cumulative difference to your conversion rates, lead generation, and ultimately - sales.
Separate yourself from the crowd with a financial service landing page designed and optimised by Apexure. We have worked on a number of landing page projects with renowned financial service providers and corporates. See how we can aid your lead generation efforts.
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Founder & CEO of Apexure, Waseem worked in London’s Financial Industry. He has worked on trading floors in BNP Paribas and Trafigura, developing complex business systems. Waseem loves working with Startups and combines data and design to create improved User Experiences. Read more
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