Five steps to writing a powerful landing page for your freelance project

Got a brilliant freelance project but need to make more sales? Read five steps to writing a landing page that will convert visitors into customers.

Your love your freelance project. It’s your opportunity to pursue your passion on your terms, and even possibly attain that mythical work-life balance. But there’s just one problem: you need more customers.

You’ve got a website or blog, and are active on social media, but you need something else. Something that makes it easy to convert readers and visitors into customers. And that’s a landing page.

Why do you need a landing page?

There are five reasons you need a landing page for your freelance project:

  1. It invites people to your website.
  2. It generates traffic.
  3. It tells more facts and details about you and your freelance project.
  4. It promotes your product/service.
  5. It makes you a brand.

In other words, a well-written and wisely created landing page is a door to your project, inviting people to come in and buy.

Five steps to writing a powerful landing page

That’s all well and fine. But how do you write a landing page that your ideal customers will love, and respond to?

Here’s a big idea: your landing page isn’t your website or blog’s homepage, but is a completely separate page introducing you and your freelance endeavours. (It’s also an opportunity to invite interested people to sign up to your mailing list.)

With that in mind, here are five steps to writing a powerful landing page.

1) Get straight to the point

You have 3-5 seconds to hook visitors, make them want to continue reading, and convert this interest into action.

So, when writing a text for your landing page, cut to the chase and use simple but powerful words for readers to understand what they will get if subscribe, order your product/service, leave a comment, share your link, etc.

Check this out:

The landing page of GetACopywriter is brief but informative. The goal is to hook people looking for copywriters and lead them to order. It has simple but powerful words, short sentences, and a clear call to action.

2) Use a hero image

We know that pictures are worth a thousand words in marketing. People think in pictures, and prefer to scan images and headines than read long, commercial text online. So, for your landing page, choose an image describing what you do or what visitors will have if order from you.

In other words, make them heroes. Your picture should feel like: “Oh yes, I’ll solve my problem and win if I choose this freelancer to help me!”

That’s exactly what Bid4papers do with their landing page:

 

This image is trying to tell you that you will have plenty of time to relax while professional authors help you with your writing.

3) Don’t ask too much

If a visitor has to fill in too many forms to reach you, no good will come out of it. Including your conversion rate.

So think of usability when writing text for your landing page. Don’t use it to gather as much data from your readers as possible – visitors don’t want to make too much effort when signing up or subscribing.

In most cases, name and email address are enough to ask for, so keep it simple.

4) Say no to navigation

Your landing page is not a website, so it doesn’t need any navigation menu for visitors to search it. Its single task is stirring visitors into action, not into looking for additional information.

Make it a core of your landing page design: no navigation menu but a single action with a call to it.

Just take a look at the Conversion Lab landing page:

The only ting a visitor can do is click on the button: simple, fast, and clear.

5) Write content on the top

Don’t force readers to scroll down the page to find vital information and understand what it’s all about. Write powerful headlines and engaging content, and place it all at the top of your landing page. And make it easier for target customers to find the information you want to share with them.

Bonus landing page tips

Don’t forget these important points when writing your landing page:

  • Speak the language of your target audience.
  • Make paragraphs short (3-5 sentences).
  • Use clear words and bullet points.
  • Don’t forget about your privacy policy.
  • Create different landing pages for different offers and audiences.
  • Thank visitors: take care of automatic email responses.
  • Don’t focus on your product or service – tell visitors about the benefits of using it.
  • Be concise: don’t write hundreds of words describing your product/service.
  • Be specific: use statistics, reports, surveys, etc.
  • Write for people: forget long, professional terms.
  • Write the way you speak: people don’t like talking to robots.
  • Motivate people to act. Use call-to-action buttons to help visitors decide what to do next.

Why every freelance project NEEDS a landing page

Whatever your freelance project is, you need it to find audience and customers. You might write like JK Rowling, paint in watercolors, bake cupcakes and sell them to neighbours, or design websites. Whatever you do, you have the same need – you want people to know about it.

A landing page is a perfect place to make your name. When you send visitors to a website or your social media accounts, they might get lost on what exactly you do and want from them. It’s much easier to get distracted.

A landing page is a perfect concentration of your most important message. It tells people exactly what you can offer them, and what they need to do next to get it.

So if you don’t want your ideal customers to simply browse your blog or website, but instead take action and respond to your offer, write a landing page to introduce yourself to them.

It’s like a door to your freelance project. Make people want to come in and stay.

Lesley Vos is a freelance writer from Chicago and content contributor to publications on marketing, career, and self-development. You can find Lesley on Twitter, or read more about her here.