We don’t have time for quick “tips and tricks”. That stuff ain’t gonna help you get a 500% increase in conversion.

We ain’t no chumps.

We need to change the very fabric of what a landing page is to get those kinds of numbers.

BUT WAIT, we still need to address the elephant in the room. A 500% increase in your landing page sounds catchy, but it presents a problem.

Statistics are kind of, uhh, manipulative.

A 500% increase could mean:

• 1 million people visit your site and 5% convert. That means 50.000 people click on your CTA (whatever that might be). A 500% increase would mean 250.000 are now clicking on your CTA. Number wise, you’d need to take your measly 5% and SHOOT IT UP to 25%. Which would make you a freaking MILLIONAIRE.
  or…
• 100 people visit your site, and 1 guy converts (1%). A 500% increase would mean now 5 people convert. Which SHOOTS your 1% into… 5%.
  Sooo the industry standard.

A 500% increase doesn’t mean anything without numbers.

Because getting your page from 1% -> 5% is far easier than jumping from 5% -> 25%.

And then there’s the other issue.

Who… are the people coming to your page?

Are they long-time fans of your email list who have shown time and time again that they will buy ANYTHING you put out? (And can afford it)

Or are they randos coming in from your PPC campaign to show them your products?

Because the quality of your landing page is one aspect.

The people who come into your page are the other.

Quality of LP * Quality of Leads = Conversion rate

And so this quickly becomes a sneaky question. Cause again, it sounds amazing…

But for the poor marketer you force this task to, well, he’ll become very stressed very fast without some context.

So, unfortunately, we can’t answer this question without more info sadly…

…

But let’s do it anyway.

Let’s say screw it, ignore common sense and tackle this beast of a question.

Here’s what I’d recommend knowing absolutely NOTHING about the numbers, the industry, the leads, or anything.

1) Okay, so we want to create a BIG change in conversion rate.

First, analyze what the conversion goal even is. (What are we going up against here?)

Are we trying to get leads to buy our product?

Are we trying to get sign-ups to the company’s newsletter?

Are we trying to get leads to book for consultations?

Once we know that, we can get a better handle on the situation. (And trust me, we need as much info as we can get at this point)

I’m saying this because maybe, just maybe, a landing page might not be the right strategy given said company’s goals. A lot of times, you’ll have clients who are willing to pay for one type of solution, without knowing there are better alternatives (that you can hopefully charge for *wink wink*) to their problems.

And if somebody NEEDS a 500% increase in their landing page, you better believe there are probably other problem areas worth bringing up in their strategy first that need fixing.

Plus clients will love you for it.

So if you can manage to recommend a more savvy way of reaching your client’s goals, it will be better for both of you.

2) Oh no, you’re still reading.

I guess negotiation is not an option. Alright, let’s do this. Pull up your sleeves, we’ll have to get dirty.

First things first, we need to throw that 500% conversion goal our client wants out the window. It’s just a catchy phrase and it doesn’t hold real value.

Plus, having any sort of hard number over your head will only make you perform worse. It’s unnecessary pressure we don’t need.

Got rid of it? Good.

Instead, what we’re going to focus on is the conversion goal itself.

Ask yourself this: Why is the company doing what it’s doing? What is it looking to get more of?

This could be more sales, more people on their list, more customers doing free trials, etc.

3) Next, analyze whatever the hell the business does for a living.

What it sells and what its offers are. Get familiar with them. Explore their website and social media.

Are their products or services complicated or simple to understand?

Who uses them?

What does it let customers do that they wouldn’t be able to otherwise?

What problems does it solve?

You’ll also want to learn the use cases of their products as well.

Get a sense of the company and the first impression they give off.

4) Now analyze the underperforming landing page in question.

And criticize everything about it.

I mean pfff, just look at it. It’s -500% underperforming from the landing page you’ll make. (that’s how numbers work right?)

Find out why it might be underperforming. What it might be missing or have too much of. But also write down any good elements you like about it. What it does right.

5) Ask the insane person who gave you this task (who I hope is paying you VERY well for this) for the numbers.

What kind of numbers?

Current conversion rate. Amount of leads that visit the page. Stuff likethat.

Oh, and don’t forget to ask them for everything they have on their customer base and lead research.

Oh? They don’t HAVE lead research? You, my friend, have found the reason why their page might be underperforming.

Ask them everything about where the leads are coming from. Google ads? SEO? Social media? Content marketing?

Analyze those ads/content.

Who are they targeting with those ads?

Does it make SENSE to target those people with these ads?

Are the ads bad? Bring up this issue.

6) Next, we’ll want to tackle the ad issue because of what I said before.

Remember the totally accurate and not made up on the spot formula I gave you before?

Quality of LP * Quality of Leads = Conversion rate.

Well, while I’m sure you’re going to use your amazing marketing chops to create a good landing page, you can’t start without knowing who is the target audience you’re going to try and show this to.

OR if they’re even targeting the right audience!

7) Time to do your own research.

You know about the company’s goals and products. NOW it’s time to learn about the people who benefit from those products.

Ask them for info and people you can talk to.

Go to sites, pages, forums, events, and any place you think they would hang out.

See what language they use.

What products they use.

How often they buy products similar to what your company is selling.

What triggers them to buy a product?

8) Take a break to let all this info sink in. You’re not a robot.

Plus, I mean come on, this is stressful work. Take a break dude/dudette!

You probably have 2756 pages of info by now and a boss that’s breathing down your neck asking for something they probably don’t understand.

(Remember we established a “500% increase in conversions” doesn’t represent anything without real numbers).

Take a chill pill.

9) Chill pill taken? Had a good weekend? Awesome, back to work.

Okay, boss still asking for the 500% increase, but we know better. We want to impress them. So we need to remind ourselves that we’re not here to do what the client wants. (*GASP*, I know, shocking. )

Instead, we need to do what the client NEEDS. So, what does the client need?

Well okay, he asked for the 500% increase in his landing page. What you have to do is look for the question behind the question.

Remember step 2? Me neither, but I said to look beyond the conversion rate and more on what the conversion goal means for the business (more sales, more list subscribers, etc). The reason I’m bringing this up now is…

10) You might need to rethink or overhaul the whole campaign, not the landing page itself.

Remember that a landing page is just one step out of many that go into a sales process.

You have to know buyer state, what problems your leads are having, what solutions they’re aware of, where they look for their solutions, what objections will pop up during the sales cycle, and help them understand your product.

What this means is, well, maybe fixing the landing page isn’t enough.

Maybe they’re targeting the wrong people.

Maybe their ads are awful.

Maybe they don’t know where their possible clients are hanging out.

Maybe their product is hard to understand and they’re not disarming objections as they pop up.

WHATEVER IT IS, your goal as a marketer stopped being about increasing conversion rate.

It became increase sales, make them get more consultation calls, whatever your client’s true goal is.

And maybe it’s time to confront the maniac who brought this up to you. Which means…

11) Confront the person that hired you and tell him everything he’s done wrong up to now.

Show him how bad his landing page is, how he might not understand his customers, how his price is ridiculous, and REALLY give it to him.

12) Get fired for the lack of respect you’ve shown during the meeting and never get paid or hired again.

(Apparently, people don’t like being told EVERYTHING they’ve done wrong in their business. Let’s uhh, let’s go back and redo step 12.)

*Rewind*

12) RESPECTFULLY and COURTEOUSLY present your findings and tell them what you’ve discovered.

Hell, go all out with it.

Make a neat presentation.

Give them a rundown of everything that they’ve been missing with the current state of doing things.

Show them how much they’re losing from not changing.

The weak areas and the strong areas. The good and the bad.

And THEN, charge him for the discovery.

Because this info is PRICELESS for the business and its marketing team (if they have one, that is). It’s valuable.

And then, after all that, bring up a few ideas on where to go from there.

Should they make a new campaign from scratch?

Should they make FIVE new campaigns, each concentrating on different target audiences with different problems?

Should you recommend they not even bother selling online since it makes more sense to focus on other types of offline campaigns?

Should you just rework the landing page since it’s the weakest part of their campaign?

Should you rework their offer to better align with the audience they are trying to serve?

Take care of your client. Tell them what possible futures are out there for them and why they should consider each one.

13) Hopefully, the space-time continuum has been kind and you haven’t been fired in this reality (yay!).

With everything presented, you recommend the best course of action.

And then, they (hopefully) ask you to propose how much it would cost to do that action.

You internally celebrate, smile and nod, and create a proposal with everything it would entail. What actions need to be taken.

And if they say yes?

Well, now the real work begins.

14) With the 2756 pages of research you’ve dug up, it’s time to consider everything you learned.

Where should leads REALLY be coming from? Is content marketing enough? Are your leads found mostly on Facebook? What kind of ads should be shown? A/B them when you can.

15) Okay! Now, what about the landing page? What should its conversion goal be?

Maybe it should be to sign them up for a newsletter to do good ol’ fashion email marketing.

Maybe it should be more of a PPC campaign and show them the products they’re looking to buy.

Maybe you lead them to a page that introduces your product to them and offers them to buy. And then if they leave because they’re not ready yet, you set up an ad targeting campaign to sway them to come back when they are ready.

I don’t know! It really, really, really depends on the industry, the product, the people you’re selling to, EVERYTHING. I tackle a lot of this in my newsletter on how to make better landing pages with stuff like this in mind.

But okay, remember we’re trying to answer the 500% conversion question here. So here’s a basic list you need of dos and don’ts:

• Keeping your ad in mind, make sure the intention leads have when they click on your ad matches the intentions of your page. (If people click to read an article, show them the article.)
• Make sure the headline MORE OR LESS matches your ad’s headline. Mostly because of that dumb 3-second rule where leads need to know they landed in the right place. So CHAIRS FOR YOUR KITCHEN -> THE BEST KITCHEN CHAIRS IN HOUSTON. It’s called message match. Learned this from Unbounce.
• Okay, so landing pages can be long or really really short. Depends on the campaign and conversion goals. If you have to explain a product that’s not so simple to understand, or maybe even a service, you’ll need to explain stuff, which makes the page longer. Write down what are the questions that your lead would have upon clicking your ad.
  Questions like:
  ▹What is this thing?
  ▹How does it work?
  ▹What are the risks?
  ▹Is this trustworthy?
  ▹Wouldn’t this be damaging for ___? (Environment, my pet, my child — whatever you can think of.)
• And dedicate sections to explain things around said product or service. You know the ones — it’s what you’d find on most pages you’d see — Hero image, how it works, testimonials, use cases, Faqs, etc.
• Respect the buyer state. (Yes I’m linking the same article twice. It’s important.)

(Warning that the format here ignores the bullet point cause Medium doesn’t let me do paragraph spacing without more bullet points. Boooo)

People aren’t always ready to buy. A process (also known as a “customer journey”) has to take place before clients are in the right mental state to be ready to buy.

Make sure every step in your campaign has this in mind.

Your landing page doesn’t always have to sell.

In fact, depending on your audience’s general buyer state (and the type of campaign you’re running), you might want to hold off on it.

Again, your campaign is getting your leads to go from state A->B->C->D.

It helps to target people who have bought similar products/services in the past. Or better, RECENTLY.

Although that’s a general rule and AGAIN, depends on the industry, product, yadda yadda. A good rule I got from reading Gary Halbert’s Boron letters.

• Use your customer’s language you researched before. It personalizes the experience. But DON’T FORCE IT IN. Use it naturally when it makes sense or to call attention.
• Make sure your offer is useful to your audience. This should have been validated in the first portion, but if it’s not, MAKE SURE IT IS.

Busy CEOs don’t want to read 200-page ebooks. If you think that would have been a good lead magnet, maaaaybe think about it a little more.

• A/B test. Goes without saying.
• Reframe your goal when possible and find new ways to reach it. Remember when I said make 5 new campaigns with different targets? If you, hypothetically, had to do the 5%->25% increase, it’s much easier to have 5 pages that convert 5% than it is to have one that converts 25%. Just sayin’
• Ask yourself how you can qualify leads as early as possible. You gotta research well to know who to target by location, interests, hobbies, job positions, and age.

And then A/B test THAT to see who buys more. (Notice I didn’t say convert more.

There have been situations where leads have converted more in landing pages but when it was time for the final sale…

Crickets…

What I’m trying to say is, a 2% conversion rate on a landing page could lead to more sales down the line than a 5% conversion rate can.

That’s why the 500% conversion question is ludicrous. What you really want is more money in your pocket, not more conversions. This of course depends on the type of landing page you’re trying to run).

• Be unapologetic when you’re selling. If your stuff is good, you have an OBLIGATION to tell people about it.

Oof, rant over. Onwards to the next step. (Yes there’s more).

16) Finish the rest of the campaign (whatever that might entail).

What we just went over would be considered the first part of a typical campaign process, which was really what this whole question is about.

I still have a lot to learn myself about the other stuff, so I won’t expand on what “the rest of the campaign” means.

Again, depends on what the hell we’re trying to achieve or do because every campaign is different. So let’s save the 42 steps of creating great campaigns when somebody asks “How do you increase sales page conversions by 500%?”.

Deal? 😉

17) Congrats, you survived. Good job! Now it’s time to A/B test the hell out of it.

Not only that but a slew of testing. Use whatever is available. Surveys, heatmaps, user tests, anything and everything that fits into your client’s budget. Go wild! There’s just one last step to go through.

18) Get on your knees and pray to GOD it converts.

Like everything, nothing is guaranteed, but hopefully, by this point, you’ve taken precautions to keep the probabilities in your favor. (And make adjustments as the data comes in).

And… we did it!

That, my friends, is how you increase conversions by 500% in your landing pages.

This is of course very generalized and depends on the current state of the landing page/campaign you’re trying to improve.

If the landing page is REALLY bad, getting a 500% increase isn’t that hard to imagine.

Although if we’re talking about a campaign that’s doing relatively well, a more nuanced approach (like the 18 step checklist adventure I just gave you) might be needed.

Originally answered on Quora.