ScaleStation Blog: Insights on HubSpot & Digital Marketing

9 Proven Tips for High-Converting HubSpot Landing Pages

Written by Dharmesh Porwal | 25/10/2024 8:43:28 AM

Landing pages are the backbone of any effective online marketing strategy. They’re the go-to destination for converting visitors into leads or customers, guiding users toward taking a specific action—whether it's signing up for a newsletter, downloading a resource, or making a purchase.

But not all landing pages are created equal, and this is where HubSpot stands out. With its robust suite of tools, HubSpot allows you to craft landing pages that are not only visually appealing but are also optimised to convert.

In this blog, we'll explore what makes a HubSpot landing page tick, why conversion rates are crucial, and how you can ensure your pages are set up for success. By the end, you'll have a solid understanding of how to create landing pages that deliver results and enhance your marketing ROI.

What are HubSpot Landing Pages?

HubSpot landing pages are standalone web pages specifically designed to capture leads and drive conversions for your marketing campaigns. Unlike a traditional webpage, which often has multiple links and distractions, a landing page has a singular purpose: to encourage visitors to take a specific action, such as filling out a form, subscribing to a newsletter, or downloading an ebook.

Definition and Purpose

A landing page is the point of entry for a visitor following a marketing campaign—whether through email, social media, paid ads, or organic traffic. HubSpot’s landing page builder enables marketers to create these pages easily without the need for any coding skills.

You can build and customise pages using drag-and-drop templates, ensuring they align perfectly with your brand while offering a clear path to conversion.

Unique Benefits of HubSpot

One key advantage of HubSpot landing pages is their seamless integration with the HubSpot CRM. This integration allows any form submissions from your landing page to be directly saved to your CRM, making it simple to segment, nurture leads, and ensure timely follow-up. 

HubSpot also provides tools for A/B testing, personalisation, and analytics—allowing marketers to continuously optimise their pages for higher performance.

Role in the Buyer’s Journey

Landing pages are particularly effective in different stages of the buyer’s journey. At the top of the funnel, a landing page may be used to offer an educational resource, like an ebook or webinar, to capture early interest. 

In the middle of the funnel, you might use landing pages to offer product demos or case studies that provide more in-depth insights into your solution. At the bottom of the funnel, landing pages can drive conversions by promoting trial sign-ups or sales consultations.

In essence, HubSpot landing pages serve as strategic touchpoints that can nurture leads through every stage of their decision-making process.

Why Are Landing Page Conversions Important?

Conversions are the lifeblood of any landing page, and they’re the key metric that determines its effectiveness. When a visitor lands on your page, you have a unique opportunity to guide them toward a specific action—whether that’s signing up, purchasing, or engaging further with your content.

But why do these conversions matter so much?

1. Generating Leads and Sales

The main goal of a landing page is to encourage visitors to take action. When properly optimised, it can effectively capture leads, which can then be nurtured and transformed into customers over time. However, conversion rates for landing pages differ greatly based on factors like industry, purpose, and audience.

Every form fill, downloaded, or signed is a step closer to building a pipeline of prospects who can eventually turn into long-term customers. The more targeted and compelling your landing page is, the more likely it is to convert visitors, generating a higher volume of qualified leads and, ultimately, sales.

2. Improved ROI

Landing pages are critical in determining the return on investment (ROI) of your marketing campaigns. Think of it this way: you’re putting in the effort to attract traffic through ads, social media, emails, or other channels. 

If those visitors arrive on a poorly optimised page, your efforts can fall flat, and you could miss out on valuable leads. A high-converting landing page means more results for your marketing spend, maximising your campaign’s effectiveness and boosting your ROI.

3. Customer Insights

Landing page performance provides a wealth of information about your audience. Analysing metrics like conversion rates, user behaviour, and A/B test results helps you understand what resonates with your visitors and what doesn’t. This feedback loop is invaluable for fine-tuning your messaging, offers, and page design to better align with your audience’s needs. 

With continuous testing and improvements, you can create landing pages that are more compelling and conversion-focused.

Conversions are the bridge between visitor interest and business results, and optimising your landing pages is a step toward achieving your marketing goals more effectively.

What is a Good (and Bad) Conversion Rate?

Landing page conversion rates can vary widely depending on industry, page purpose, and target audience. Understanding what qualifies as a “good” or “bad” conversion rate helps set benchmarks and realistic goals, as well as identify areas for improvement.

Average Conversion Rates

Generally speaking, the average landing page conversion rate across industries hovers around 2.35%. However, the top-performing landing pages boast conversion rates of 10% or higher. 

For many marketers, aiming for a 5-10% conversion rate is a solid goal, though it can differ based on your industry and the type of offer on your landing page. A landing page promoting a free resource might convert higher than a page requiring a more significant action like a product purchase.

Factors Affecting Conversion Rates

Several factors influence your landing page’s conversion rate:

  • Design and Layout: A sleek, attractive design not only boosts the user experience but also highlights crucial components like the headline and CTA for maximum impact.
  • Message Clarity: Clear, concise, and benefit-driven messaging can significantly improve conversions by addressing pain points and solutions effectively.
  • Audience Targeting: If the traffic coming to your landing page is not relevant or targeted, conversion rates can suffer. Ensuring that your page aligns with your audience’s needs is crucial.
  • Mobile Responsiveness: With increasing mobile traffic, pages that aren’t optimised for smartphones and tablets may see reduced conversions.

Bad conversion rates often result from cluttered layouts, unclear messaging, slow page load times, or a mismatch between visitor intent and what’s being offered.

Setting Realistic Goals

Setting conversion rate goals depends on several factors: the current performance of your page, your industry average, and the traffic source. For example, a landing page receiving traffic from targeted email campaigns might naturally convert at a higher rate than one receiving paid ad traffic. Start by analysing your existing conversion data and setting incremental improvement goals—e.g., increasing from 3% to 5% over time.

Ultimately, understanding what’s good or bad requires knowing your industry’s benchmarks and continuously testing and optimising your pages to improve over time.

9 Tips for Creating High-Converting HubSpot Landing Pages

Creating a high-converting HubSpot landing page is both an art and a science. The balance lies in combining visual appeal, user-centric design, and compelling messaging to nudge visitors toward your desired action. Let’s dive into nine essential features that help maximise conversions on your HubSpot landing pages.

1. Make Sure Your Landing Page Has All The Essential Components

Landing pages, often called “lead-capture pages,” help turn visitors into leads by either getting them to complete a transaction or share their contact details. For this to work smoothly, your landing page should include the key elements:

  • A catchy headline with an optional sub-heading
  • A short explanation highlighting the value of what’s being offered
  • At least one relevant image
  • Optional extras like testimonials or trust badges
  • Most importantly, a form to gather the visitor’s details

2. Remove The Main Navigation

When someone lands on your page, your goal is to keep them focused. If there are other links on the page, like your site’s navigation, you might accidentally pull their attention elsewhere, which means they could leave without taking action. 

And let’s be honest, no marketer wants that! A great way to boost conversions is by ditching the main navigation on your landing page. It’s that easy!

3. Align The Landing Page Headline With The CTA

Make sure your call-to-action (CTA) and landing page headline say the same thing. If someone clicks on a CTA for a freebie but gets hit with a surprise condition on the landing page, trust is gone. 

And if your headline doesn’t match the CTA, visitors might get confused and think they’ve ended up on the wrong page. Keep things clear and consistent so there's no confusion. What you promise in the CTA should be exactly what they find on the landing page. Simple as that.

4. Keep It Simple: Less Is Better

You’ve probably heard the saying, “keep it simple, stupid.” That same rule works for landing pages too. A messy, cluttered page just confuses and overwhelms visitors, creating friction. Instead, make good use of white space and stick to clear, straightforward text and images. Keep it clean and easy to follow.

5. Highlight The Value Of Your Offer

Focus on the benefits of your offer with a short paragraph or a few bullet points. Don’t just list what’s included—make sure to show why it matters. Highlight the value and give visitors a reason to download. Instead of saying, “Includes product XYZ specs,” try something like, “See how XYZ boosts productivity by 50%.” Make it clear how your offer solves a problem or meets a need your audience cares about.

6. Build More Landing Pages To Boost Lead Generation

HubSpot’s Marketing Benchmarks Report shows that businesses see a 55% jump in leads when they go from 10 to 15 landing pages. The takeaway? More landing pages mean more chances to capture leads. 

Plus, having more pages lets you create targeted content that speaks directly to your different buyer personas, boosting conversions. To add more landing pages, use a simple landing page builder, create fresh offers, adjust existing ones for specific personas, and repurpose your current content. We dive deeper into this in our blog about why you need more landing pages!

7. Request Only The Necessary Information

You might be wondering how much info to ask for in your forms. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer, but the key is to only ask for what you really need to qualify leads. Generally, the shorter the form, the better the conversion rate, since fewer fields mean less effort for visitors. 

The longer the form, the more it feels like work, which can lead to fewer sign-ups. However, more fields might also mean higher-quality leads, as those who fill it out are more serious. The best approach? Test different form lengths and see what works best for your business.

8. Use Imagery That Highlights Your Product

Strong product images can help persuade customers to try out your product. They also break up text and make your story more engaging.

Your visuals don’t have to be just photos—they can be graphics, videos, or charts. Whatever increases the chances of conversion works.

Custom images are ideal because stock photos might not give off the authentic vibe your brand needs. Keep visuals clean and simple, avoiding anything that distracts, like carousels or auto-play videos. And make sure there’s enough contrast between your images and text for easy reading.

The key is to pick images that match your message. For example, use a graph to show how a customer’s business grew after using your service.

9. Monitor and Optimise Landing Page Performance

Regularly review your landing page analytics to see how it’s doing. Keep an eye on important numbers like conversion rates, bounce rates, and how long people stay on the page. Try A/B testing to play around with different headlines, CTAs, and visuals to see what clicks with your audience. Making small adjustments here and there can help boost your landing page’s performance over time.

Building a High-converting Landing Page

Creating a high-converting landing page on HubSpot isn’t just about design and copy—it's about building an effective strategy from the ground up. By setting the right foundation, focusing on user experience, and constantly iterating based on data, you can craft landing pages that consistently drive results. 

Here are some key steps to ensure your HubSpot landing pages are effective from the start.

1. Creating a Strategy

The best landing pages are built with a clear goal in mind. Before jumping into the design process, define what you want your page to achieve. 

Are you collecting leads for a newsletter? Encouraging sign-ups for a webinar? Your objective should be specific, measurable, and aligned with your broader marketing goals. Once your objective is set, tailor every aspect of the landing page—from headlines to visuals—to guide visitors toward that single action.

For example, if the goal is to drive ebook downloads, your messaging should emphasise the value of the ebook and its benefits, and your CTA should be direct, like "Download the Ebook Now."

2. Optimising for SEO & User Experience

SEO is crucial for increasing the visibility of your landing page, ensuring it reaches your target audience. Use keywords strategically in your headline, subheadings, and meta description to improve organic search ranking. HubSpot’s built-in SEO tools can help optimise your page for better search performance.

Equally important is designing for a smooth user experience. A clutter-free layout, legible fonts, and a logical content flow ensure visitors have a seamless journey from the moment they land on your page to when they hit that CTA button. Make sure your page is mobile-responsive and that all elements load quickly to keep users engaged.

3. Crafting an Irresistible Offer

The offer on your landing page should provide value and be relevant to your audience's needs. Whether it’s a free resource, a discount code, or a product demo, make sure the offer is clearly stated and compelling enough to drive conversions. Use your headline and copy to highlight the benefits of your offer and create a sense of urgency where appropriate (e.g., “Limited Time Offer”).

4. Leveraging Personalisation and Smart Content

HubSpot's personalisation tools allow you to tailor content based on your visitor’s lifecycle stage, behaviour, or demographics. If someone is a returning visitor who previously downloaded a guide from your site, show them content that aligns with the next stage in their journey—perhaps a webinar invitation or a product trial. Smart content makes your landing page feel more relevant and increases the likelihood of conversion.

Leverage HubSpot’s Breeze AI’s content agent to craft tailored content that fits your brand’s voice and uses CRM data to make it more relevant.

5. Iterate and Improve

Building a high-converting landing page is an ongoing process. Continuous testing is key to finding what works best for your audience. Use HubSpot’s A/B testing capabilities to compare different elements—like headlines, CTA text, form fields, or images—and see what drives the highest conversions. Analyse the performance of your page regularly, identify areas for improvement, and make incremental changes to optimise its performance.

The feedback loop of building, testing, and iterating ensures your landing page remains aligned with audience needs and adapts to trends or preferences over time.

By following these steps and using HubSpot's powerful tools, you can build landing pages that are not just visually appealing but also drive meaningful conversions and business results.

Want to know how to create HubSpot landing pages that convert? Check our our guide.

Let ScaleStation Build Your High-Performing HubSpot Landing Pages

Looking to take your landing pages to the next level? At ScaleStation, we specialise in building HubSpot landing pages that not only look great but are crafted to drive results. Our team works closely with you to understand your goals, create compelling content, and design pages that engage your audience. From strategy and design to tracking KPIs and optimising for conversions, we ensure your landing pages perform at their best.

Don’t leave your conversions to chance—partner with ScaleStation and transform your landing pages into powerful tools that convert visitors into leads and leads into loyal customers. Contact us today to get started!

Conclusion

High-converting landing pages are essential for driving your marketing efforts forward, and with HubSpot's suite of tools, creating pages that attract and convert visitors becomes much more manageable. 

By understanding what makes a successful landing page—from crafting compelling headlines and CTAs to leveraging personalisation and analysing key metrics—you can optimise every aspect of the visitor's journey and ensure your campaigns deliver results.

Remember, the best landing pages are built with purpose, regularly tested, and always improving. Whether you’re just starting out with HubSpot or looking to refine your current pages, focus on providing a seamless user experience, clear messaging, and a strong value proposition.

The power to boost your conversions is at your fingertips. Use these best practices to create HubSpot landing pages that not only look great but also drive meaningful results for your business.