13 Lead Generation Landing Page Examples & Best Practices

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Your messaging is stellar, your offer is intriguing, and your CTA is compelling. You run well-optimized campaigns that reel people in and make them click. But, your lead generation landing page conversion rate is abysmal.

So why aren’t page visitors converting into potential leads, subscribers or customers?

High-converting landing pages are an invaluable asset to lead generation marketing. That’s especially true for marketers that sell high-priced products or services. Fortunately, the solution is deceptively simple.

If you’re struggling to acquire customers, check out our post about how to generate leads, first. Then, read on to learn exactly how to create a lead generation landing page that’s optimized to get results.

What is a lead generation landing page?

MARKETING
TERM
DEFINITION

Lead Generation Landing Page

A lead generation landing page is a bottom of the funnel web page designed to capture contact information in order to turn anonymous visitors into leads.

For businesses with long sales cycles, this time between attracting a visitor and closing the sale is essential.

A lead capture page is the start of the conversion process. Once you capture your visitor’s contact information, you can nurture the lead throughout the sales cycle.

It’s ideal to keep forms as short and easy to fill out as possible (we’ll get into why later). However, you may want to collect additional personal information to create more targeted content. For example, phone number, job title, budget, timeframe for need, number of users, or company revenue would give you a better understanding of your contact list.

Lead generation landing page best practices

Whether your business is focused on ecommerce, SAAS, or B2B lead generation, your digital marketing performance hinges on high-quality traffic that converts. Without an optimized landing page template, you’ll see poor ROI across social media, organic search, and email marketing campaigns.

Use these best practices to create and optimize your landing pages.

1. Lead generation landing page design

On lead gen landing pages, the messaging and design choices do the heavy lifting to hook visitors and keep them moving at a quick pace towards the conversion event, typically a form submission. They should be able to identify main ideas right away and feel enticed to learn more or register or download immediately. If there’s ever a time to make expert design choices, it’s now.

Keep the landing page’s style consistent with the rest of your brand. And follow the golden rule of good design: strive for plenty of white space. Give your text, images, videos, and CTA buttons room to breathe against a clean, distraction-free background. Make sure your text is easily scannable, with titles that stand out. Break up long blocks of text with H2s, images, bullet points and calls to action.

2. Audience segmentation

One difference between lead generation pages and “core” website pages is that lead capture landing pages are built for specific audience segments. Many pages on a website are typically built for the website’s entire audience. You wouldn’t design a separate homepage, for example.

Build different lead capture landing pages for specific audience segments, and when appropriate, for specific audience personas. But, make sure to use web page templates to keep the process scalable. If there’s something unique about an acquisition channel or your messaging within the channel, you may want to create targeted landing pages per channel, as well. 

To make sure each page reaches its intended segment, pair it with a targeted new customer acquisition plan. Do keyword research to identify the terms a particular segment would search for. Then, optimize the page for those keywords.

Build a paid search campaign around the same keywords. Launch an advertising campaign in targeted websites, or through audience targeting via a DSP. You can also take advantage of the powerful segmenting options in LinkedIn and Facebook ads to run campaigns targeted to each audience segment.

3. Grab their attention above the fold

Years ago, it was a web page design best practice to keep important information and CTAs above the fold. Today people are perfectly comfortable scrolling, especially on mobile. That doesn’t change the importance, though, of how you design the default viewing experience at the top of the page.

The best lead gen landing pages capture a user’s attention immediately, and then compel them to convert or to scroll and learn more.

This means that it’s critical to display the conversion CTA above the fold, even while also including the CTA further down the page.

In the case that you have a long-form landing page, you need to make people want to scroll to read more. Include visual cues or a messaging cliffhanger, for example. The important thing to keep in mind is that the area above the fold acts as your initial salesperson, and needs to get the prospective lead to take action — either converting or scrolling.

4. Use a strong headline

Great SEO copywriting starts long before your audience gets to the page. Your headline will also help tell the page’s story in the SERPs, your ad copy, and any time you reference or link to the landing page.

Here are some tips to write a powerful headline for your lead capture landing pages:

• Identify the pain point your audience struggles with the most, the success story that would hit them hardest, or the question that’s most likely to pique their curiosity.
• Make sure the headline clearly identifies the page’s overall purpose. Then, refine the headline until it’s compelling, intriguing, and emotion-evoking.
• Consider your original headline a working headline and re-evaluate it once the page is written. Brainstorm at least a dozen potential headlines to consider. It’s common for punchier headline ideas to emerge during the writing process.

5. High-impact messaging

Make the message throughout your landing page as high-impact as your headline. Use persuasive words such as You, Free, Instantly, New, and Why. These words elicit an emotional response in the brain which drives decision making. Furthermore, they hammer home your value proposition.

You should also share results from customers who are similar to the target segment. Identify and address pain points, and keep your messaging consistent throughout the page.

Your messaging should also stay consistent over different customer touch points. If you used certain language to make people click on a CTA but the landing page doesn’t make good on your promise, you’ll lose people. The messaging on your landing page should reinforce the messaging used to promote it.

6. Benefits and offers

Highlight the immediate benefits of the offer, not the general benefits of working with your company. Too much of the latter will bore or even annoy your audience, because that’s not what they came to the page to learn about. Remember your visitors’ position in the conversion funnel and sell them on the benefits of taking the next step.

For example, if you sell CRM software and your landing page promotes an ebook people can download after they enter their contact information, focus on the benefits of the ebook.

• What will people learn?
• How will knowing the information improve a business outcome or enrich their life? 
• If you want to talk up your brand, explain how and why your company is uniquely equipped to offer the information included in the ebook?

Read more about funnel phases in our post: What The Heck is ToFu, MoFu, BoFu?

7. Compelling CTAs 

The best lead generation landing pages convince users to take action. Here are some of the most successful CTAs that get users to submit a signup form or hit your desired action button.

• Download an ebook or whitepaper
• Subscribe to a newsletter
• Schedule a demo
• Start a free trial
• Reserve a spot (e.g., webinars, events)
• Get access to insider info
• Schedule a consultation
• Get an audit or checkup

Once you know the broad idea behind your CTA, get creative about the language. Keep CTAs short, sweet, and action oriented. Make design choices that guide the user to the CTAs, or use popup options with caution. Many brands choose at least one accent color that pops, giving them something to contrast against their other brand colors so they can highlight the most important parts of the page. Your calls to action are the place to make use of an eye-catching accent color.

8. Easy forms

Ultimately, the goal of your lead generation landing page is to get visitors to fill out a form. So, obviously you want that process to be frictionless. First, choose an online form builder that works for your site. Then, find ways to simplify the process for your users.

To make your lead capture forms as fast and easy to fill out as possible, ask for only the information you really need. For example, the customer’s name, email and possibly their phone number. If you need to know additional details, reformat your question so it’s multiple choice.

For example, if you sell software and you want to know your lead’s revenue, format the question like this:

“What is your annual revenue?”

• Under $1 million per year
• $1 – $99 million per year
• $100 million – $999 million per year
• $1 billion – $10 billion per year
• Over $10 billion per year

The first option forces users to write more. The second one is as easy to answer as a click or a drop-down selection.

In addition, include an opt-in checkbox that informs users that they will receive emails from you by submitting the form.

9. Appeal to urgency

Limited-time offers instill a sense of urgency by making visitors feel like they’ll lose access to the deal if they don’t take advantage of it immediately. Give your promotion or offer a deadline and share it clearly on your lead generation landing page. Then remind your audience why they don’t want to miss out!

10. Social proof

Robert Cialdini, social psychologist and author of the New York Times bestselling book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, lists social proof as one of the most effective ways to influence someone’s behavior and decision making. With this in mind, feature customer testimonials, reviews, and other forms of social proof on your lead capture landing pages to reassure your visitors and make them want to join.

If you’re trusted by major brands or have been featured in well-known publications, share their logos prominently. The visual cues create an immediate sense of familiarity that reflect positively on your brand. Ultimately, social proof builds trust — an essential ingredient in the conversion process.

11. Build trust

Users are often wary of filling out forms on landing pages because they know these forms are designed to bring people into the sales funnel. How can your visitors know they won’t be inundated with sales calls and emails three times a day? Or worse still, end up on a list that’s sold to other businesses?

Social proof is one way to build trust and improve brand reputation. But, it’s not the only signal people will look for. Take care of the basics first: make sure your website is secure and that every link and button is functional. Then clearly explain your privacy policy and let your visitors know how you’ll use their information. If they have to enter their credit card information to sign up for a free trial, be upfront about if or when a recurring charge will occur and let them know how they can opt out.

12. Emotional appeal

Even the most rational people are driven by emotions first at a base level. They might use logic to support or reject a gut feeling, but that gut feeling must happen first before the rest of the decision-making process kicks in. 

The neuroscientist Antonio Damasio found that people have an extremely difficult time making any decisions (like to fill out your landing page form or not) absent emotions. In other words, emotions are just as critical to a person’s decision to take action as any logical reasoning involved in the process.

With this in mind, create a landing page that mimics how people think: evoke an emotional response first, and then use your data or reasoning to support the action you want them to take.

13. Make sure it’s just as effective on mobile

Many websites see more than half of their traffic come in through a mobile device. Make sure your website uses a responsive design that’s attractive and user-friendly on a mobile device. This is especially true for forms! Nobody loves filling out forms on their phone, so if they’re not as painless to use as possible on mobile, your audience won’t stick around. Even if your website is responsive, adapt the design for desktop and mobile to control the experience across devices. 

Lead generation landing page testing

When you’re using SEO to generate leads, it’s vital to test everything. Here are some best practices to maximize results.

A/B testing

Compare two different versions of the same landing page to see which one performs better. When you have a clear winner, set it as your new control and test alternate versions against it moving forward. Over time and through successive A/B testing, you’ll have high-converting lead generation pages. Features you can A/B test include CTAs, messages, design choices, video vs. image, page length, forms, offers, and headlines.

Useful A/B testing software includes Optimizely, VMO, AB Tasty, Omniconvert, Adobe Target, Google Optimize, and Convert.

Form optimization

Your forms are a critical component for A/B tests so you can make sure you’re not bringing people all the way to the last step only to lose them. Pay careful attention to the amount of questions your audience will tolerate. If there’s a significant difference in conversions between a simplified form and one with extra questions, decide whether it’s worth it to secure that information. If the extra questions keep you from swimming in unqualified leads, it can be worth it — but you need to know the full impact on conversions before you decide.

Useful form technology solutions include:

• Leadformly
• Formidable Forms
• Formstack

Behavioral intelligence

Use heatmaps, session recording, and other behavioral intelligence tools to see how people interact with your site. Note where they scroll, what they click on, and where their eyes linger. Behavioral intelligence helps you move beyond numbers to create a literal map of how people experience your site so you can pinpoint exactly where your page draws people in or loses them completely.

Good options for behavioral intelligence software include:

• Decibel
• Clicktale
• FullStory
• Mouseflow

Best lead generation landing page examples

We searched the web for some examples of great lead gen landing pages that each stand out for different reasons.

Airbnb

The Airbnb “Overview” page is short, simple and straight to the point. Despite the minimal text, Airbnb is able to communicate exactly what hosts could earn with their simple tool. And they follow it up with landing page copy that earns their audience’s trust.

This landing page is heavier on content than our first example, but a smart use of space keeps the content from overwhelming the user. Key findings are broken into attractive feature boxes, and the form remains the central focal point of the page. The sparing use of orange on the page helps the CTA stand out, and the benefits to the user are clear.

Tidio

Tidio’s Live Chat landing page solves customer pain points and explains how easy the technology is to implement. This type of lead generation landing page works so well because it talks about outcomes and solutions first. Then, the page discusses the details about how they solve common customer service problems.

Brosix

Brosix created this lead capture page specifically for Capterra referral traffic. It focuses on four major areas: why they offer their service, trust signals, main benefits and a call to action. Interestingly, they opted to remove pricing to keep the form succinct because users got that information from Capterra.

Terakeet

At Terakeet, we created a landing page for our new enterprise SEO white paper. We focused on results-oriented messaging and social proof to showcase the value of the free downloadable. The publication logos and the client results below the form field also earn the audience’s trust and make the white paper even more compelling.

Landingi

Landingi’s lead capture page is, ironically, for a tool to build landing pages. It works great for numerous reasons. First of all – it starts with an animation that shows how easily users can create a landing page. The “I want to try it!” CTA is a clear signal for users that they can start with a free trial before making a buying decision. But, they also include pricing information for transparency.

A funnels section describes one of the newest features available in Landingi. And, for a little extra push, this landing page also showcases a testimonial from a renowned marketing expert.