5 reasons why landing pages are the reason social media posts don’t convert
Crafting an effective social media post is a skill that marketers spend a considerable amount of time trying to perfect. After many iterations and use of excellent social media tactics, often staff struggle to show how the posts are effective at product or service promotion, and therefore unreliable in demonstrating bottom line impacts.
Even the most well-crafted social post won’t drive bottom line impacts without an equally well-crafted landing page.
A landing page has 3-5 seconds to capture the attention of the reader and convince them your content will be worth their time to read. The overall visual appeal and readability of the page is a huge factor in that decision. Here are five reasons why viewers intrigued by a social media post will bounce from a product or service landing page without taking action:
- It’s Too Content Heavy:
A page layered with line after line of full width body text is an immediate turnoff for any viewer. A product or service page should:
– Consist of short paragraphs
– Utilize white space
– Use of bullet points to help convey information with brevity
– Include a relevant on-page image with visual appeal. (When possible, this image should match the image in the social post for relatability.)
- The Page Titles are WAY Off:
A viewer will skim header titles to gain an understanding of the type of information that is offered before reading (did you skim the bold text before reading this post?).
Think of page titles like a table of contents and use Header 2 and Header 3 titles to convey a quick synopsis of the information on the page. Ensure the titles are in a sequential order for how the reader will make sense of the product or service details.
- Missing One-Liners:
They’re a visual milestone for progress through the content. Add quotes or one line power statements to drive home the benefits of your products and services, but do it in a nutshell.
- Unclear or Missing Call to Action (CTA):
A clear CTA button, to purchase or place the product or service, is a must; multiple CTAs can be used if they’re for the same action. When links to additional information are needed, create text links (that open in a new browser window) to help the user navigate. Text links won’t distract from the main CTA button and confuse the user.
If there’s no CTA on the page, a social media lead can’t convert – it’s that simple.
- Promised Value is Hidden:
The social media post that lead the viewer to the page promised some type of value or reason why they should be interested in your product or service. That value should be highlighted near the top of the landing page, even if it’s only highlighted for the length of the social media post lifespan or ad campaign.
A user will take the time to read more about the value they were shown, but they won’t take time to find the value indicated on the social post if it’s hidden in landing page content. So make sure your product or service’s most clear and convincing benefits are at the beginning of your page.
A well optimized landing page will not only help convert social media traffic, it will help lower bounce rates from social media traffic sources. Bounce rates on pages across website domains vary for many reasons. Pages in a 35-45% bounce rate range are performing well. Anything over 70% is at risk of negatively impacting the value of your site to search engines.
Because social media traffic trends at a higher bounce rate, optimizing product and service pages even just for visual appeal, will decrease the risk of social traffic negatively impacting bounce rates. Visual appeal is not graded by search engines and therefore should not be completed at the expense of SEO value.
Social media traffic is well qualified traffic. These viewers were willing to leave a platform of entertainment and community to hear what you have to say about your product or service. The cost of social media ad placement, post scheduling software/services, and staff training, to create impactful lead generating content for this audience, has the potential to drive significant positive impact to your FI’s bottom line.
But a poorly designed landing page will be detrimental to the success of those efforts and a sheer waste of that purposefully allocated social media ads budget. On the other hand, a well-designed landing page acts as the conduit for social audiences to convert as new members, or existing members with greater share of wallet at your credit union.
Read more about how we help financial institutions with social media and other digital marketing and sales on our Social Stairway blog, or visit our website for more details about working with us.
