In my work on marketing operations for the Institute for Humane Studies, I am working with our fundraising team on an online advertising campaign. We have posted ads on websites where potential IHS donors might visit. When people click on our ads, they are taken to landing pages on IHS’ Learn Liberty website.
Landing pages are web pages designed to drive visitors to action. In this case, we want folks to sign up for email updates from Learn Liberty and make a donation to the project.
We are disappointed in the results so far, so we got on the phone with an agency helping us with the project. It turns out a decent number of people are clicking on our ads and checking out our landing pages, but they are not signing up for emails or making donations.
Why?
Our representatives at the agency went through our landing pages with us and pointed out a few changes we could make to possibly improve performance. These were pretty simple changes such as moving the email signup form towards the top and putting our calls to action in an eye-catching gold font.
I should have known better. In fact, I did know better.
As part of getting up to speed for this job I have been researching and studying digital marketing, including building landing pages. Having your calls to action easy to find and “above the fold” is basic advice I already learned.
But I hadn’t put it into practice. I hadn’t built a landing page for a real fundraising project before.
As I continue to do this work and build my skills, I expect I’ll make mistakes in building landing pages and other areas. At some point, the basics of building effective landing pages might become automatic so I can focus on testing more elements for best performance.
Studying will help you try but mastery will only come from practice.