Focus.

That’s perhaps the most common thing that separates incredible landing pages from average ones.

3 Steps to Determine A Value Proposition For Your Landing Page

One of the most commonly used examples of a landing page that lacks focus is the following Chase Credit Card landing page.

When you conduct a Google search for “bad landing page examples” you’ll find the above landing page included in most of the listicles in the results. Going against the web design company best practices, this landing page does not offer any sort of focus.

Just like this, when you look up good or great landing pages or even consider a landing page that you saw and loved, you will notice that most of them have an element of focus. Most successful landing pages are dedicated to prompting users to take a single action and for good reason.

But how do you make your landing page focused on a single goal?

Sure, you can use design elements like directional cues, CTA buttons with contrasting colors, and a suggestive layout. However, the one element that makes the most impact when it comes to influencing the visitor on a landing page is the copy.

More than any other element, your copy is responsible for engaging the user, getting your message across, and telling them what to do next.

How do you introduce focus in your landing page copy? By figuring out the value proposition.

Let’s find out how a value proposition helps with a focus in copy:

Benefits Of Value-Proposition For Landing Page Copy

Figuring out the value proposition of a landing page isn’t a single-step process. It is actually the final step of a process that also involves figuring out the objective of your landing page, the target audience, and understanding the traffic source.

Executing this process doesn’t just help you determine a value proposition, it also helps you determine what the copy would look like, what the tone of voice should be. In fact, this process can also potentially website design-related decisions like the choice of color palettes and the right layout.

Determining a value proposition also enables you to make your landing page copy skim-worthy. The value proposition, when constructed right, can be used as the main headline of your landing page.

The same can then be used to inform the copy on the rest of the page, introducing the necessary focus in your landing page copy.

Now that we know how determining a value proposition can benefit your landing page, let’s look at the steps involved in the process.

Determining Your Landing Page Value Proposition

Step 1: Determine Your Landing Page Goal

This step is perhaps the most important one when it comes to introducing focus in your landing page copy.

As mentioned earlier, all landing pages should have a singular focus or goal. If you are reading this and building your landing page, there is a good chance that you already have a fair idea about your goal.

For instance, if you are building a landing page as a part of a paid social media ads funnel, you may be looking at goals like more sales or downloads of your ebook.

With a definitive goal in mind, you will be able to come up with a more focused information hierarchy in your landing page.

As the name suggests, information hierarchy is the term used to describe the flow of information on your landing page. On most landing pages, the information hierarchy consists of the following elements:

• Pain Points Of Your Audience: What pain points does your offering address?
• Benefits Of Your Offering: What are the benefits of employing your offering as a solution?
• Differentiators Of Your Product/Service: What sets your product/service apart from the competition?
• Common Objections Against The Conversion Event: Why would someone not want to convert (purchase from you or download your content offer)?
• Call To Action: What is the desired action that you want users to take on the landing page?

Your goal will direct the answers to all the above questions and will also determine which elements of the information hierarchy will be placed above the others.

For instance, if your objective is to make more sales, you may want to put the primary focus on the pain points you are addressing over the benefits of your offering.

This is because when it comes to taking action, people are willing to go further to solve their pains than to experience the benefits of something.

On the other hand, if you are simply collecting emails in exchange of a content offer, you may want to focus on the benefits of your content offer.

Step 2: Determine Your Target Audience

If the goal helped us determine the information hierarchy, understanding our target audience will enable us to determine what information to include under each of the elements of the information hierarchy.

Knowing who your target audience enables you to introduce another dimension of focus to your landing page.

Most landing pages are built to support a targeted SEO campaign or a targeted social media campaign, or a targeted ads campaign. The success of all those marketing tactics depends on your understanding of your target audience (among other things).

It only makes sense to have a targeted landing page that speaks to a focused group of people, talks about their unique problems, and presents solutions that they are likely to find relevant.

To achieve this focus, understanding who your target audience is is incredibly important.

If you aren’t already aware about your target audience, their pain points, and the solutions that they have already tried and eliminated from consideration, you can collect this information from your existing customers.

Based on insights collected from them, you can create a hypothetical ideal customer persona that you can use to guide the copy and design decisions for your landing page.

A great example of this is this free backlink checker landing page by SEO tool RankWatch. The landing page is dedicated to promoting the free use of one of RankWatch’s prime features. It pairs access to the tool with a quick guide on backlinks and how the tool works.

RankWatch figured out that anyone reaching the landing page through a search engine result will be looking for a quick solution and designed a page that offers all the relevant information in a compact package.

Step 3: Understand Traffic Source(s)

As mentioned earlier, landing pages are used to support targeted campaigns. This means that most landing pages have incoming traffic from one or a handful of traffic sources.

Before a user lands on your landing page, they usually click through on a link within an email or on an ad, or on a search engine result.

Knowing and understanding this traffic source will enable you to achieve one incredibly important thing- message match.

As the name suggests, message match is when the messaging on your landing page delivers the information (or offer) promised in your ad or search result, or email. The traffic source also determines the stage of the buyer’s journey in which a particular user is, which can greatly influence the copy you are writing.

For instance, if someone lands on your landing page from a product social media ad, they will most likely be in the consideration stage, already aware of their pain points and the possible solutions. In this case, your landing page should be designed to position your product as the best solution and should focus on benefits and differentiators.

On the other hand, if someone is coming through an email link that promises a free and detailed ebook, they are probably top-of-the-funnel prospects and your landing page should be all about education and awareness.

Step 4: Jot Down Your Value Proposition

With the information, you have collected and attributes you have determined in the previous steps, you can not come up with a value proposition.

But what is a value proposition?

Think of it as an elevator pitch of your offer. The value proposition is supposed to inform the visitor about your offer and what makes it better than other similar offerings, and most importantly, it should communicate this information at a glance.

Best practices dictate that your value proposition should be focused on your target audience’s pain points, should prompt them to take a specific action (goal), and should be consistent with the messaging at the traffic source.

Let’s understand what this means with an example. Let’s say you are creating a landing page for an online fitness coaching service.

If you are an accomplished personal trainer, you may be tempted to boast about your certifications and achievements on your landing page. After all, these are the differentiators that make you better than the competition.

However, it might not do much for your audience. Instead, focusing your landing page copy on the unique fitness-related challenges that you can help your audience overcome might be a better idea.

Another great idea might be to focus the landing page copy on the definitive outcomes (if any) that a user can expect after taking the conversion action highlighted in the CTA.

Once you have your value proposition, make sure you highlight the same messaging throughout the copy of your landing page.

Your objective should be to highlight it so well that even if a person decides to not read the entire copy, and decide to only skim through the page, they still understand your value proposition.

Conclusion

Your value proposition is just one of the many elements of your landing page that determine its success. However, it is also one of the most influential such elements.

I hope that this quick guide will help you move in the right direction with determining and using your unique value proposition to drive success with your landing page.

If you have questions or more suggestions to share with me and everyone reading this article, feel free to drop them in the comment section below.