Intent & Channel — the two hidden secrets of landing pages

Happy Sunday!

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This week I'll be in Los Angeles, and walking around already, I've seen SEPHORA promoting GXVE Beauty in the windows of the store. It was surreal to see. It's still incredible to think the Sharma Brands team is so mighty, yet so lean.

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Okay, today, we're going to talk about landing pages. I went in depth about this on Thursday for a podcast with Alex Garcia (I'll link it when it's out), but I wanted to write it all out as well because I think this might be easier for people to save or reference back in the long run.

When it comes to landing pages, there are a few main components to the process of building a great page:

1. Concepting
2. Content
3. Wireframing
4. Design
5. Development
6. Going live

In my past emails, which will all be online by next week, I talked a lot about how to concept the landing page (listicle vs hero product vs BYOB, etc) and the UX/wireframe process, but today I want to dive into the content piece, which I think is the most important part.

Think of this living on a matrix where you have two main axes: funnel stage & traffic channel.

Going down the left side you have: Unaware, Aware, Interested,  Ready to convert. Along the top row you have: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest, Google.

In a perfect world, your Google x Ready to Convert landing page is wildly different than your TikTok x Unaware landing page. But, what are the differences?

Positioning. If someone is coming completely unaware of the brand/product, you probably want to focus on the copy that's more relatable to someone not knowing what you're selling. Referencing an iPhone, you'd say something like "The World's Fastest Smartphone Chip lives in an iPhone" versus "The iPhone's all-new 5 core GPU is the Fastest". The first one is much more relatable to someone who has no idea what an iPhone is yet. 

Back in the day, we used to run a Hydrant landing page for prospecting traffic that said, "The fastest way to rehydrate" versus "A lightly flavored and low sugar electrolyte mix." The first one is a lot more relatable. Once I do my research on the product and I move down the funnel as a potential customer, the latter would be more enticing to me. 

AOV. Each channel reacts differently to price points. Meta (FB & IG) and Google seem to be the most unbothered. TikTok and Snap do better with lower AOVs. Pinterest is kind of in the middle. Similarly, each funnel stage reacts differently. Someone who's higher in the funnel is keener to try a variety pack or a sampler with the least amount of dollars spent (i.e. a 3-can sampler with $5 shipping), whereas when someone is more educated through the funnel (note how I said educated and not shown more ads), they're open to spending more.

When I was at Hint Water, we went from selling a one-case 15-bottle sampler pack for $15 with free shipping to 3 cases for $36 with no difference to the conversion rate at all. The reason we could make that jump in AOV is because our ad creative and landing pages went deeper on the story of Hint, why it was started, how much customers loved it, and we talked about the founder too, which helped.

You shouldn't look at raising your AOV as something that could prevent you from converting new customers, but rather think about it this way:

If I don't lower my prices or offer a steep discount, what is my customer getting out of paying for more? If it's a better quality product, or it's always been a high-quality product, then I need to ensure they are fully aware and educated on WHY it's worth more. Focus on bringing them UP to that level of education, don't discount yourself to bring your brand DOWN to their level.

Layout. The channel that the traffic comes from heavily decides how the page might look for site visitors. If someone is coming from Google or Facebook, they're used to clicking on ads and the platforms move slow enough to where you can expect a consumer to spend more time on the page.

If they're coming from Snap or TikTok, the platforms move a mile a minute, and you want your page to be friendly to the fact that they're probably there for <25 seconds. That means big headlines, big buttons, social proof up at the top, and ideally some sort of email or phone number collection to follow up later. 

All these thoughts bring me back to walking into a boutique store. As soon as you walk into the door, someone greets you and asks you a couple of questions which help the store associate decide what route to walk you through inside the store. Essentially with landing pages, you're productizing this experience.

On Shopify, you can't see how someone is dressed when they come to your store, what accessories they have on, and what shoes they're wearing, which are all clues you might use if you had a real store to figure out that little merchandising route. That's why we try to break down our landing pages by channel and funnel stage.

The punchline of this entire email is: Don't just build 1 landing page and expect miracles to happen. Don't expect miracles even with 14 landing pages if the content isn't right and tailored to each customer by matching their funnel stage (intent) and the channel they come from. 

This doesn't mean you necessarily need to make 14 unique landing pages from scratch either. You can probably make 1 per channel and then just swap out the copy or imagery for different stages of intent. You're the best judge of the work required, but don't make it too complicated. 

If you have any questions, reply to this email and I'm happy to answer them! I still get all the replies myself. 😊 

On to some fun stuff... 

Software/App of the Week:

Affirm — My favorite BNPL Software, For Good Reasons

One of the most impactful ways to increase the conversion rate on your eCommerce site is to use a tool like Affirm, a BNPL (buy now, pay later) financing tool for shoppers.

From working with brands like GXVE and Eight Sleep, we've seen that whether you're selling with an average order value (AOV) of $90, or $2500, Affirm helps increase the conversion rate in the cart, the spot where most online shoppers drop off. Affirm doesn’t charge hidden or late fees to customers who use its bi-weekly payment option, and as a result, it also helps increase the AOV of the cart.

Another benefit is Affirm does a lot of marketing on their own, and because of that, they also add social proof to your landing pages, product pages, and checkout flow, as a BNPL provider. Similar to how Amazon Pay or Apple Pay in your cart helps increase conversion rate, Affirm is beginning to have a similar effect, especially for higher AOV baskets.

With Affirm or ShopPay (which is powered by Affirm) as your BNPL tool of choice, you'll join a growing roster of brands like Good American Jeans, Tradesy (saw a 75% increase in AOV), MadHappy, and thousands of other top-tier brands. 

Affirm has generously offered to onboard brands who use this special link and fill out the information at the bottom of this page.

The punchline: There's a reason that Affirm is trusted by organizations like ShopPay to power its installment payments, as well as companies like Amazon, Target, and Walmart.

In my opinion, there's no downside to Affirm. The conversion rate goes up. AOV goes up. Affirm also has a shoppable marketplace with an Alexa traffic score under 5k, which becomes another channel of customer acquisition for you, too.

Enter your info on this page, and get started with Affirm.

Jobs of the Week:

Caraway — Growth Marketing Manager (Paid Social)

Lucyd (CBD Ad Agency) — Manager, Facebook Ads

Stealth Luxury Brand — Head of Brand Marketing 

The last post doesn't have an official job listing online, but click here to email Carla and tell her Nik sent you!

Brand of the Week: 

SolaWave – A science-backed skincare tool for anti-aging and overall better skin.

I first discovered this tool in the Allure Store that I talked about in last week's email, and I now have one on the way. I've since come to learn this entire business is bootstrapped too. 

After using the tool for a few weeks, thousands of customers noticed fewer wrinkles and frown lines on their faces and neck. 

I've got mine in the mail, and I'll keep you updated on the results as my wrinkles go away (sorry Terry Dubrow. IYKYK). 

Try out SolaWave here!

A Few Missed Links:

Mr. Beast did a podcast with Joe Rogan that was incredibly inspiring. Listen or watch on Spotify.

I launched Super Follows on Twitter where I'll break down some of the work we do at Sharma Brands with the numbers and info we don't want to share with the rest of the world. Super Follow here.

Eli Weiss launched a Discord for customer experience nerds (like me). Reply here to join.

Chris Cantino and Crypto Packaged Goods launched a Web3 consulting firm.

That's All for This Week:

I hope you had an incredible week and you can schedule your 9 hour sleeps this week. How do you like the addition of the new sections (Jobs, missed links, etc)? Let me know! Ok, ok, I'm done. Time to get back to your Sunday evening routine! Goodnight!