Oh, how naive we were.

AI has arrived, and now it’s friggin’ everywhere. Ryan Reynolds is writing ads with ChatGPT for Mint Mobile. John Oliver is talkin’ about AI-generated images in Midjourney. And marketers are quickly discovering how these AI-powered tools can help ‘em spin up entertaining blog content, optimize their social ad campaigns, and analyze their email performance.

But not all AI is created equal. (Or, maybe, some AI is created too equal.) Many of the AI tools available to marketers right now are built using the same generic models—models that weren’t built specifically for marketing use cases. That means their outputs tend to be kinda… same-y. And these tools aren’t optimized to get marketers the best performance from their campaigns.

Mike Kaput (Chief Content Officer at the Marketing AI Institute) and Jess Petrella (Director of Product Marketing at Unbounce) recently talked about the explosion of AI marketing tools and how to evaluate different AI solutions.

Because—as they discuss—not every AI tool is a good fit for marketers.

Hold up—where did all this AI stuff come from?

Real quick, let’s bring everybody up to speed on AI marketing.

A few years ago, true artificial intelligence felt like a sci-fi fantasy—but behind closed doors, some of the biggest tech companies have been pouring resources into AI development. Search giants like Microsoft and Google have been particularly interested in generative AI, which is AI capable of creating text or images. For example, in 2019, Microsoft dumped a $1 billion investment into OpenAI, an AI research and development lab. Not long after, OpenAI launched GPT-3, a language model capable of generating human-like text responses to prompts.

GPT-3 was also made available to other developers via API, meaning other software could (and did) incorporate the tech. Quietly, this was the beginning of a generative AI boom.

We have big businesses like Google and Microsoft putting a lot of money into AI and [adding it to] the regular workflow of their products—products that organizations, individuals, and end users are (by the millions) leveraging every day.

It’s still very early days, but these are signals that [AI] is something that is here to truly and long-term augment […] how we work.

GPT-3 made some waves—but marketers mostly kept on keepin’ on. Then came a pandemic, which brought economic uncertainty: the Great Resignation, the crypto and NFT booms (and busts), and endless talk of recession. The last few years have been weird, to say the least—and amidst it all, marketers have continuously been asked to do more with less.

In 2022, we surveyed 400 businesses to find out if (and how) they’re adopting marketing AI. Nearly half said they didn’t have the budget to do effective marketing, while a third reported they didn’t have the time. And companies were taking steps to address those problems: 31% had already adopted AI marketing tools and another 63% were interested in AI.

We were hitting a tipping point. Maybe some folks noticed it earlier than others—but by the time ChatGPT launched in late 2022, it became clear to everyone that marketing was about to change dramatically.

ChatGPT (built on top of the improved GPT-3.5, then GPT-4) gave us a new, simpler way to work with AI. Ask it a question, it’ll answer. Give it a task, it’ll do its darnedest. ChatGPT was the “aha!” moment in our collective consciousness—followed quickly by a collective “oh, $%!#.”

Suddenly, AI is all marketers can talk about. Google and Microsoft are locked in an (increasingly public) arms race to deploy this new technology, which could totally transform how people find and engage with content online. Many of the tools marketers have been using for years—like Grammarly, Adobe, or, hello, Unbounce—are now augmented with AI, streamlining workflows and optimizing results. Whether you know it or not, you’ve probably used AI sometime in the past week.

And that’s a good thing—at least, for the marketers who are starting to integrate AI into their process.

A marketer not using AI just can’t compete. We like to say at the [Marketing AI Institute]: AI isn’t going to replace you, but a marketer using AI will probably replace marketers who don’t.

AI marketing is here. It’s happening. But this explosion of AI tools has left lots of us feelin’ dizzy. What’s legit? What’s hype? How do you choose between one AI marketing tool and the next?

AI is kinda like a car engine—if most cars had the same one

Imagine a car. Maybe you’re thinking of a Honda Civic. Maybe you’re thinking of a Ford Mustang. Heck, maybe you’re thinking of a Hummer. (Which probably says something about you, from a psychological perspective.)

What makes ’em different? They all have four doors (or close enough). They all run on gasoline and take you from one place to another. What makes people drool over one and laugh at another?

It’s all about what’s under the hood: the engine. (It’s why we’re getting a tenth Fast and Furious movie.) A sports car that can go from zero to sixty in ten seconds is waaaaay cooler than some low-horsepower sedan. But throw in a powerful engine (and a kick-butt spoiler), and suddenly you’re Vin Deisel.

But unlike cars, most AI marketing tools have the exact same engine. Jess explains:

The underlying technology is quite similar in a lot of the tools that [marketers are] leveraging, but what makes certain tools for marketers different—and, at times […] more valuable—is the data sets that are on top of it, [which are] training that base machine learning model.

AI tools are often just user experiences built on top of machine learning models, like car frames built over engines. Those “engines” are, effectively, the AI doing the work of processing inputs and generating outputs. But while most engines are stock, some are souped up—trained on additional data to refine their outputs for certain use cases.

The stock engine works fine. But it’s not specialized to excel at a specific task. And the same concept applies to AI tools.

Like human marketers, AI can be a generalist or a specialist

Let’s take AI writing as an example. 

When you use a platform like ChatGPT, you’re utilizing OpenAI’s GPT model. GPT was trained on the whole internet (with billions and billions of data points), but it’s not trained specifically to produce highly persuasive content for marketing use cases. Think of it as a marketing generalist—somebody who’s really good at lots of stuff but not necessarily specialized for a particular task or outcome.

Many of the most popular AI writing tools (say Jasper or Copy.ai) are also built on top of OpenAI’s generic GPT model—which means they’re also not producing content optimized for marketers.

Artificial intelligence is a bunch of models that need data. So, at the end of the day, the data you train it on determines your outputs. How you train it also matters dramatically.

A bunch of other companies are essentially just providing an interesting user experience that uses the same model that ChatGPT uses.

Compare that with an AI copywriting tool like Anyword, which is built specifically for marketers to create marketing copy using millions of marketing data points to score and predict your marketing performance. Or (shameless plug) Unbounce, which provides AI-powered insights based on our own conversion data to make recommendations as you write.

The benefits of using an AI writing tool trained specifically for marketing should be obvious. You get more refined outputs on your first pass, so spend less time wrestling with prompts. You get content that data shows is proven to be impactful for your audience. You save time and get more conversions.

Proprietary, unique, and extensive data is going to be the only competitive advantage moving forward, because if you’re doing anything related to language, the dataset already exists. OpenAI is using it.

Of course, this “generic AI” versus “specialized AI” divide doesn’t only exist in AI copywriting tools. Because OpenAI has made GPT and DALL-E (its image generation model) available to other companies, generative AI is the space where it’s most common to see companies utilizing the same generic models. But as new models become available for different use cases, marketers need to consider whether an AI tool is specialized for marketing—or if it’s outputs are more generic.

How to find and evaluate specialized AI marketing tools

Choosing the right AI tools for your marketing stack can seem daunting, given the huge (and ever-increasing) number of options available. We’ve seen how much the AI landscape can change, even in just a few months. How do you know which tools are best for your marketing use case? How do you make the best choice for your team and your business? 

It’s all about asking the right questions. As Jess and Mike point out, there are a few important considerations:

1. Where’s the data coming from?

Figure out if the data used to train the AI tool is homegrown or gathered from elsewhere. Knowing where the data came from (and whether it’s of good quality) will help you decide whether the tool is a good fit for your needs. Plus, it’ll help you evaluate whether you can trust the information you’re getting back. 

If you’re a marketer, where the data came from to train the tools that you’re using is truly important. Because unless [they] have millions or billions of proprietary data points, you’re probably looking at [a tool] that is using data that one of the bigger players already has.

For instance, Unbounce’s Smart Traffic uses AI to optimize landing pages based on years (and years, and years) of collecting data from landing pages that convert—or don’t. It’s data that no other company could ever possibly replicate (we dare you to try), giving users a distinct advantage over AI conversion optimization tools that are just getting started.

2. How accurate is the model?

Dig into whether the platform produces accurate, impactful results. Like people, machines are molded by the information they’ve processed and internalized—which is not always correct. It’s essential to be aware of any inherent biases or flaws in the AI tool as they could negatively impact your marketing efforts.

We’ve seen a hundred different stories already of outputs from ChatGPT that sound really confident, but are totally wrong, or reinforce problematic approaches or biases to certain pieces of information.

The goal here is to reduce your work, not make more of it—so be sure you’re not gonna have to double-check everything the machine is doing.

3. Is this realistic? (Or even a good thing?)

Lots of the hype around AI is the idea that it might soon replace human marketers. And while AI certainly is developing at breakneck speed, it’s important to maintain a realistic perspective on its current capabilities. Yeah, it can streamline many aspects of your marketing workflow—but it’s no replacement for things like human creativity and empathy.

AI is a supporting tool to the marketing that you’re already doing, right? It can write a blog post for your from beginning to end, it can write your ad copy. But without the human assessment of those outputs […] it’s not as valuable.

Be wary of companies who promise to singlehandedly revolutionize your marketing strategy and put your marketing team outta work. It’s crucial to work with tools that acknowledge the balance between human expertise and AI-driven optimization.

Specialized AI marketing tools amplify you—the marketer

Yes, AI has made rapid advances in the past few years (ahem, months), and its impact on the way we work as marketers is undeniable. But not all AI tools are the same. The key to making the most of this new technology is recognizing the difference between generic and specialized AI—and knowing when you oughta use which. By asking the right questions and being realistic about its capabilities, you can confidently integrate AI into your marketing stack and use it to its full potential.

There’s no competitive advantage to [creating] generic content—at least in the example of content marketing—with these AI tools. It’s augmenting rockstar writers and content creators with these tools to help them be 10x more productive, 10x more impactful.

But even specialized AI is no replacement for people. (Not until it can hug us, anyway.) The most Marketing of marketing tools are still most impactful when they’re in the hands of talented, imaginative humans. By working hand-in-algorithm with AI, you can streamline your campaign workflow, get more leads and sales, and push the boundaries of what you thought was possible.

AI marketing doesn’t mean the end of real, flesh-and-blood marketers. In fact, these tools are making marketers more effective. With loads of different applications (from research and analytics to copywriting and design), AI is quickly becoming a part of the everyday marketing toolstack. If you’re not using AI tools already, it’s high time you start exploring before you’re left in the digital dust.

But before you jump on the AI bandwagon, you’ll wanna ask yourself a few questions. What do you hope to get from AI? How could it support you in reaching your marketing goals? What inefficiencies or bottlenecks could it solve for your team? When choosing AI marketing tools, it’s important to be super clear about the problem you’re trying to solve—then use an AI tool that’ll get the job done. 

There’s no denying the benefits of AI in digital marketing. AI tools save you time and money, help you increase your productivity, and get you more conversions. It’s kinda like teamin’ up with the Transformers. But does your marketing campaign need Optimus Prime, or would Bumblebee do the job? Perhaps Jazz or Sideswipe are a better fit for the task?

Choosing the right AI marketing tool is key. And today, we’re gonna make it a little easier.

Check out some of the best AI marketing tools available today:

• AI tools for copywriting
• AI tools for email marketing
• AI marketing tools for SEO
• AI tools for social media
• AI tools for design
• AI data analytics
• AI marketing tools for CRO
• AI for customer support

AI tools for copywriting and content marketing

Using an AI copywriting tool is like having your own personal writing assistant—but without the constant need to eat and sleep. (Humans. So delicate.) You’re the boss, and AI is your trusty sidekick who’s always ready to crank out some killa’ content for you. (Or, at the very least, do some of the more time-consuming work for you.)

All you have to do is set the parameters for the content you want—like an editor giving instructions—and the tool will take it from there. Most AI copywriting tools can generate social media posts, Google ads, product descriptions, and everything in between. 

1. Smart Copy

We’d be fools—fools!—not to tell you about Smart Copy. Smart Copy uses some of the most advanced machine learning models to create on-brand, human-grade content for any marketing channel.

Paired with Unbounce landing pages and AI optimization tech, you can use Smart Copy to spin up page variants super fast and provide the highest-converting experiences for your visitors.

Key Features:

• Writes engaging and high-quality content in over 45 templates—social media, ad copy, websites, blogs, taglines, you name it
• Allows you to tailor copy for specific audiences or industries, as well as in particular tones or styles, ensuring your content matches your brand
• Generates whole-page copy for landing pages and provides different variants (perfect for use with Unbounce landing pages)
• Provides both a Google Chrome extension and downloadable desktop app, making it easy to generate content just about anywhere

Pricing: Freemium, then starting at $9/month

2. Jasper

Jasper is one of the more popular AI copywriting tools on the market. Since 2021, content creators from every walk of life (stroke of key?) have been using it to work through writer’s block and generate original content like, ten times faster. Plus, the platform recently added the ability to generate royalty-free images—perfect for pairing with your AI-generated ad and email copy.

Key Features:

• Generates well-structured, SEO-optimized copy in 50+ templates that can help you rank higher
• Provides content generation in more than 30 languages—oui, c’est vrai!—making it perfect for marketing teams targeting a global audience
• Comes with a built-in AI art generator as part of its higher-tiered pricing plans, letting you write copy and create images from a single platform

Pricing: Starting at $29/month

3. Copy.ai

Copy.ai positions itself as a more affordable option than Jasper. (Fight! Fight!) The AI writing tool generates copy for blog posts, ads, social media, websites, ecommerce, and more—much like Jasper. However, Copy.ai claims its competitor gates many features behind more expensive plans—which means they’re the budget-savvy alternative, without any usage limits.

Key Features:

• Provides more than 90 copy generation templates to streamline the creation process for just about type of content
• Generates content in 25 different languages, helping marketers spin up copy for campaigns targeting a global audience
• Offers a Google Chrome extension (so you don’t have to waste time flipping between platforms)

Pricing: Freemium, then starting at $49/month

4. Grammarly

Grammarly has come a long way. Marketers have been using the tool for years to review spelling, check grammar, and make suggestions on clarity and brevity. In March 2023, Grammarly announced GrammarlyGo—its “faster and smarter writing assistant”—which considers the user’s preferences and context and produce more tailored content. 

Key Features:

• Offers some of the most thorough grammar, spelling, and punctuation tools available on the market
• Helps you ensure your content is totally original by detecting duplicate content and potential plagiarism across the web
• Provides suggestions for ways you can improve the overall tone and clarity of your writing, leveling up the quality of your content

Pricing: Freemium, then starting at $12/month

AI marketing tools for email

Email marketing is a tough nut to crack. You might spend hours crafting the perfect email, tweakin’ your subject line, only to get an open rate lower than the chance of being struck by lightning. (That’s roughly 1 in 15,000, by the way.)

But fear not! AI-powered email marketing tools are here to save the day. 

With AI, you can personalize your emails, increase open and click rates, and even convert those pesky unread-ers into loyal customers. These tools can also analyze huge amounts of data, giving you insights into your campaigns that you never even knew existed. 

5. Mailchimp

Mailchimp is probably the world’s most well-known email marketing platform. (“Mail… Kimp?”) Though you could consider them email marketing vets at this point, they’re anything but old school. Mailchimp boasts an integrated analytics suite that helps you track your email open rates, click rates, unsubscribes, and more. They also offer robust AI-powered features that can help you track customer purchase behavior and split test subject lines.

Key Features:

• Provides AI-powered customer insights, including demographic, engagement, behavioral, and sentiment
• Helps you personalize your content with data collected and analyzed by AI, delivering a better experience for recipients
• Offers a customer journey builder that helps you map out personalized experiences based on how people interact with your business

Pricing: Freemium, then starting at $12/month

6. Optimove

Optimove offers a cloud-based email marketing software that delivers hyper-personalized and targeted emails. Its AI technology automatically adapts email content to customers’ preferences and behavior and gives marketers a more sophisticated analysis of customer engagement and what drives conversions. Optibot, their built-in marketing optimization bot, identifies performance-boosting opportunities and helps marketers get the most out of their campaigns.

Key Features:

• Helps you tailor your marketing strategy through comprehensive historical, real-time, and predictive data insights—powered by AI
• Provides valuable insights into customer behavior and trends, empowering you to make data-driven decisions and improve campaign performance
• Lets you create personalized campaigns at scale, ensuring customers only see relevant messages and product recommendations

Pricing: Custom

7. Constant Contact

Open rates not lookin’ so hot? Let’s add a little sparkle to your email marketing game. Constant Contact is an email marketing platform that boasts customizable email templates to help you build campaigns quickly and intuitively. Its AI tools are super-duper helpful in executing campaigns across various platforms like mobile, social media, and desktop email.

Key Features:

• Provides an all-in-one platform for managing email marketing campaigns, including hundreds of drag-and-drop email templates for different use cases
• Provides comprehensive reporting and tracking features, integrating with popular ecommerce and CRM platforms to streamline your workflows and centralize data
• Uses marketing automation and smart technologies to help you engage your audience, expand your reach, and nurture leads

Pricing: Starting at $12/month

AI tools for search engine optimization

If you’re not investing in search engine optimization (SEO), your website might as well be stranded on a desert island. SEO is the key to getting your content noticed and attracting those juicy organic clicks. But keepin’ up with all that keyword research can be a real challenge. 

That’s where AI comes in. AI-powered SEO tools can often do all the boring stuff for you, leaving you more time to brainstorm your next big idea. Plus, you’ll be able to optimize your content like a pro and adapt to changes on-the-fly. 

Below are some AI marketing tools for SEO that’re worth looking into.

8. Surfer

Ready to ride those waves of SEO success? Surfer is an AI-powered optimization tool that boosts your website’s visibility and rankings to catch that sweet organic traffic wave. With its content audit and keyword generator, Surfer will help you hang 10 with the best of ‘em, identifying prime opportunities for backlinking and giving you real-time feedback on your optimization as you write.

Key Features:

• Provides AI-powered content outlining, editing, and optimization to help marketers rank higher in search results
• Offers advanced keyword research tools to help you identify the most relevant and valuable keywords in your content planning
• Gives marketers real-time feedback on content structure, keyword usage, and other on-page SEO factors

Pricing: Starting at $59/month

9. Semrush

Semrush is an all-in-one SEO marketing tool that can help optimize your content, ads, and social media. It’s got a huge keyword and competitor research database, an in-depth content auditing process, and is excellent at identifying backlinking and ranking opportunities. Now, it’s also got an AI writing assistant that helps you optimize your content to target keywords and rank higher in search. Need we say more?

Key Features:

• Gives you the tools to create and execute a robust content marketing strategy, from creation to distribution
• Offers an extensive suite of tools for keyword research, competitor analysis, site audits, and more, helping you improve performance across various channels
• Offers competitor tracking and monitoring, such as their top-performing keywords, backlink profiles, and advertising campaigns

Pricing: Starting at $120/month

AI marketing tools for social media

Tired of keeping track of your social media posts manually? Feel like you’re stuck in a time warp, constantly checking and re-checking your data? 

AI marketing tools are a great way to break outta that social media doldrum. These tools not only help you stay organized, but they also take your marketing efforts to a whole new level by analyzing engagement data and providing real-time insights into your campaign performance.

Consider adding some of these AI social media tools to your toolkit:

10. Later

Hey, wanna post that LinkedIn article… later? Later is an AI-powered scheduling tool for social platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Using smart features, it analyzes your content to find the right time to share for maximum engagement. The result? A steady stream of top-performing content for social media managers who would love having their weekends back.

Key Features:

• Offers AI-generated content to help you create and launch posts across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and more way faster
• Providers a visualized, drag-and-drop social media calendar, letting you plan, organize, and preview your social posts in a super intuitive way
• Provides comprehensive analytics that help marketers track the performance of their social campaigns by engagement, reach, and follower growth

Pricing: Starting at $18/month

11. Buffer

Buffer will have you feeling like a social media pro in no time. With the ability to generate AI content and schedule across multiple platforms from one central dashboard, you’ll be able to sit back and let this management tool do the heavy lifting. Plus, with analytics reports from Facebook and LinkedIn, you’ll have all the data you need to understand your customers’ digital profiles and track your progress over time. Let’s get schedulin’.

Key Features:

• Writes engaging social media content for you with their AI assistant, accelerating your workflow across all social platforms
• Provides comprehensive social analytics to help you identify new insights, plus lets you publish with campaign optimization
• Streamlines the campaign and content planning process with efficient workflows and customizable permissions

Pricing: Freemium, then starting at $6/month

12. Hootsuite

Ah, Hootsuite— the ol’ reliable. This is no run-of-the-mill social media platform. Hootsuite is the savvy marketer’s secret weapon, and has been around long enough to prove it. The platform offers a social media management tool that provides users with a unified dashboard to craft, schedule, and deploy content across multiple platforms.

Key Features:

• Provides a comprehensive dashboard for managing multiple social accounts across different platforms, streamlining the creation, scheduling, and monitoring of social content
• Offers built-in collaboration tools and robust analytics and reporting features that give you granular insight into your social performance
• Allows marketers to generate social content with AI writing tools for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more

Pricing: Starting at $99/month

13. Emplifi

Emplifi is a super robust platform that acts like your personal data analyst for social media. Not only can it track your ROI, but it also gives you a whole suite of tracking features to gather juicy insights about your audience. We’re talkin’ traffic, metrics, demographics—you name it. Plus, it’s got some AI-powered features that help you streamline your workflows.

Key Features:

• Provides real-time social community management so you can engage and respond to your audience quickly
• Offers multi-channel management with AI-backed recommendations for scheduling and posting
• Gives you AI content creation tools to help you craft social posts faster

Pricing: Starting at $240/month

AI marketing tools for design

You know what they say: A picture is worth a thousand words. In marketing, graphic design is the key to delivering a compelling (and high-converting) digital experience. But times are a-changin’, which means you gotta embrace AI design tools to stay ahead.

Think of AI design tools as a creative kickstart—a way to supercharge your skills and take your marketing efforts to new heights. They’re not here to replace your creative process—they’re here to enhance it. With AI-backed design, you can create killer content that will make your competitors green (#00FF00) with envy.

Here are some AI design tools worth checkin’ out:

14. DALL-E 2

Who hasn’t played around with DALL-E? (Seriously, you haven’t developed even one creepy image of a dog-headed pickle? You’re missing out.) 

Developed by OpenAI, DALL-E 2 (the second iteration of DALL-E) is an AI design tool that generates realistic images and artwork from a text prompt. Type what you wanna see, and DALL-E will spin up a few different versions in just a few seconds. 

Key Features:

• Creates unique and creative visual content for just about anything—all from a text prompt
• Simplifies the design process by providing content creators and designers with a quick way to generate images
• Allows users to design visuals for specific requirements (through more complex prompts), giving a high level of customization and control

Pricing: Freemium, then pay per use

15. Adobe Sensei

First of all, cool name. Adobe Sensei is an AI and machine learning tool that enhances graphics with Adobe Creative Cloud. The tool helps marketing teams streamline their workflows, so they can focus more on the actual creating. Sensei also provides insights on what visuals will perform best, giving a lil boost to those conversion rates. It is a sensei, after all…

Key Features:

• Uses AI to streamline creative workflows, enabling you to create better-looking content faster
• Automates repetitive tasks and optimizes aspects of content creation, from image selection to typography adjustments
• Helps you deliver personalized and targeted content, improving your visitor experience and increasing engagement

Pricing: Custom

16. Jasper

Who said you can’t do it all? Not only does Jasper have a copywriting tool, but they’ve also got an image-generating tool. Users can create high-resolution and copyright-free images in seconds using a text prompt. Talk about the best of both worlds.

Key Features:

• Provides stunning, high-resolution images for a whole range of applications
• Offers a great alternative for marketers lookin’ to break free from the limitations of stock images
• Features an intuitive, user-friendly interface that makes the process of designing and generating images a breeze

Pricing: Starting at $20/month

17. Smart Builder

Smart Builder is Unbounce’s AI-powered landing page creation tool. Designed to simplify page creation and optimize for conversions, Smart Builder provides a guided creation experience that helps you build higher-performing landing pages right from the get-go.

Key Features:

• Leverages AI to recommend higher-converting designs and on-page optimizations, helping you maximize conversions
• Offers a drag-and-drop interface that lets you create fully responsive pages with ease—no design or coding experience required
• Integrates with popular marketing and CRM systems to facilitate collaboration between teams and streamline lead gen, tracking, and reporting

Pricing: Starting at $99/month

Data analytics tools using AI

Data can be a lot. Analyzing, optimizing, over and over again. It can be overwhelming to make sense of it all. AI tools for marketing analytics are designed to make it all easier.

These tools are like the wise old wizards of the marketing world, revealing insights and understanding that we mere mortals could only dream of. With their help, you can easily gather and analyze data to help make more informed decisions.

Check out these AI-powered analytics tools to take the pain outta data:

18. Tableau

Tableau turns your data into a masterpiece. This AI platform takes the headache outta data analysis with its intuitive data visualization tools. You don’t have to know a lick of code, and you can still create stunning visualizations that bring your data to life. And with their integrated AI and machine learning, Tableau makes speeds up data analysis and makes it easier to pull actionable insights. What could be better?

Key Features:

• Produces actionable, data-backed insights super fast, including forecasting, clustering, and trend analysis
• Lets users create stunning, interactive dashboards and visualizations that are sharable and easy to edit in real-time
• Integrates data from a wide range of data sources, including Google, Salesforce, Dropbox, and Cloudera (to name a few)

Pricing: Starting at $70/month

19. Polymer

Polymer is another AI analytics tool in the game. They peg themselves as a “no BS” business intelligence tool that help users create dashboards and visualizations in just a few minutes. Not only is their UI super visually appealing, they also have a bunch of great features to top it off.

Key Features:

• Uses AI to analyze your data and quickly turn your spreadsheets into easy-to-understand dashboards and visualizations
• Provides embeddable dashboards and visualizations and lets users easily add graphs, charts, and other graphics
• Integrates with the most popular platforms and makes it easy to import your data

Pricing: Starting at $9/month

20. Microsoft Power BI

About time to level up your data game, no? Enter Microsoft Power BI. This business intelligence and visualization tool helps you slice, dice, and analyze even the biggest data sets with ease. With the ability to import data from spreadsheets and generate AI-powered reports and dashboards, you’ll be able to see your data in a whole new light. So why settle for boring ol’ spreadsheets?

Key Features:

• Seamlessly integrates with Microsoft products (we’re looking at you, Microsoft Excel) and other data sources
• Enables users to create visually compelling and interactive dashboards and reports
• Provides a scalable solution that caters to businesses of all sizes, giving you a flexible approach to your analytics

Pricing: Starting at $10/month

AI conversion rate optimization tools

With AI-powered conversion rate optimization (CRO), you combine the genius of a data scientist with the persuasive charm of a top-notch salesperson, helping you turn more of your visitors into customers. These smart tools can analyze heaps of data to determine the likelihood of a visitor converting, then optimize the experience to make it even more probable. 

Check out the best AI marketing tools that’ll help you maximize your conversions:

21. Smart Traffic

Shameless plug alert. Smart Traffic is our conversion optimization tool. It uses AI to gather audience insights and automatically directs ‘em to the landing page  where they’re most likely convert. While it’s not quite the same as A/B testing, the result is often the same: more conversions. And because Smart Traffic learns in as few as 50 visits,  you don’t have to wait around for weeks until you get enough traffic for a traditional split test

Key Features:

• Lets you create and optimize unlimited variants simultaneously, so you can customize headlines, body text, and visuals for every type of customer
• Analyzes variant performance and generates recommendations based on audience data (like their location, device, and more)
• Learns in as few as 50 visits and gets you (on average) 30% more leads, sales, and signups

Pricing: Starting at $99/month

22. Pathmonk

Pathmonk is an AI-driven CRO platform that helps businesses increase their conversions by providing more personalized experiences for visitors. With their advanced algorithms, Pathmonk analyzes user behavior to provide predictive content and comprehensive reporting for real-time performance insights. Plus, it integrates seamlessly with many of the most popular marketing tools and CRM systems.

Key Features:

• Uses advanced machine learning to analyze user behavior and deliver personalized experiences that engage and convert
• Dynamically adapts content based on user interactions, maximizing conversions and reducing bounce rates
• Provides real-time performance insights through a robust analytics dashboard

Pricing: Starting at $450/month

AI marketing tools for customer support and chat

AI chat tools are helpin’ businesses and marketers automate customer support by simulating conversion prompted by either text or voice.  For us marketers, AI chat tools can be an excellent way to market our products and services by creating a more personalized experience for customers and keeping them engaged.

Here are some top AI chat tools for marketers:

23. Drift

Drift is a great cloud-based AI chat tool created for B2B companies. The AI-powered chatbot provides customers with a more personalized experience and engages with them at every step of their journey. The platform also collects comprehensive user data to provide businesses with actionable insights about customer behavior. 

Key Features:

• Lets you engage with visitors in real-time through live chat and AI-powered chatbots, improving the user experience
• Helps you capture and qualify leads more efficiently by automating initial interactions, gathering information, and connecting visitors with the right person
• Leverages AI-driven insights to deliver personalized content and messaging, increasing conversion rates

Pricing: Starting at $2,500/month

24. Zendesk

If you’re in the market for an AI chat tool that’s as user-friendly as it is versatile, look no further than Zendesk. This cloud-based software is the real deal, offering fully customizable options that are just easy as heck to use. Plus, it seamlessly integrates with all sorts of other apps and media, so you can chat from any channel you choose—whether you feel like typing away or gabbing the phone (Assuming you don’t have phone anxiety, which… Yeah, us, too.) 

Key Features:

• Offers a comprehensive customer service solution that consolidates all of your support channels, including email, chat, and social
• Lets you customize the platform to suit your needs, ensuring a seamless fit with your existing processes
• Provides powerful analytics and reporting tools, helping you track key performance metrics, identify trends, and optimize your support

Pricing: Starting at $295/month

25. Netomi

Lookin’ to impress customers? Netomi‘s AI chatbot software is for you. With its AI-powered messaging engine, this chatbot can resolve customer inquiries with a whoppin’ 70% accuracy rate—all without human intervention. (Just how we humans like it.) So whether your customers prefer chattin’ online, or talkin’ on the phone, or emailin’ away, Netomi’s got ya covered.

Key Features:

• Lets you deliver fast, accurate, and efficient customer service through intelligent chabots and virtual assistants
• Automates routine tasks and common issues, helping you reduce the workload on your customer support team
• Easily integrates with popular CRM systems, messaging apps, and customer support platforms to provide a cohesive experience across multiple channels

Pricing: Custom

The most impactful marketers are doing it with AI marketing tools

Digital marketing is changing, and change can feel overwhelming. With so many tools and techniques available, it’s tough to know where to start.

Rather than replace marketers, AI-powered tools can help you keep up. These tools are literally designed to streamline processes, provide actionable data insights, and save you time and money. Plus, they can take care of the mundane tasks, allowing you to focus on more creative and strategic aspects of marketing.

So leave those marketing dinosaurs behind, and embrace this brave new world.

There have been smaller versions of that, too, ever since that big Big Bang. Events that changed the course of life as we know it. The invention of the internet was a pretty big one. The invention of wheels. The invention of yogurt-covered pretzels. 

And of course, the invention of artificial intelligence. AI is totally reshaping how we work, how we create, how we communicate—and it’s getting more and more accessible each day. ChatGPT, anyone? 

That’s true for marketers, too. Businesses are adopting AI marketing tools to help them get better results from their campaigns—often with less effort and lower costs. We even did a little research of our own and it turns out, more than 80% of businesses believe AI tools will positively impact their business in three years or less. Businesses—and not just the ones running tech startups out of Silicon Valley—are hungry for a piece of that AI pie.

Some marketers are already using AI to create more customized campaigns. Some are still skeptical that AI can deliver results as good (or better than) a real, live person. But one thing’s certain: AI marketing is happening, and even if you’re not gonna adopt AI tools, you need to know what it’s all about.

So, what does AI marketing really even mean? Let’s take a deep dive.

Here’s what you need to know about AI marketing:

• What is AI marketing, anyhow?
• What are some types of AI marketing?
• What concerns are there about AI?
• Will marketers be replaced by AI?
• How do I add AI to my marketing strategy?
• What are some AI marketing trends?

What is AI marketing?

Before we can talk about AI marketing, we need to start by goin’ back to basics. What is artificial intelligence?

Artificial intelligence is just a way of talking about computers that can think—or appear to think—like humans. A brilliant ol’ fella named Alan Turing first proposed the question, “Can machines think?” The answer depends on who you ask (and what we agree “thinking” even means), but it’s generally accepted that machines today can successfully replicate human intelligence in some circumstances.

AI is all about programming computers to perform tasks that normally require a person, like recognizing speech, making decisions, and even learning from experience. If that thought freaks you out, instead imagine having a cute lil robot brain inside your computer, ready to help you out with whatever task you throw its way. Adorable.

AI marketing is just the application of AI for marketing purposes. Marketers in this day and age are using the power of AI to speed up (or even automate) content creation, analyze customer data for insights, respond to support requests—all sorts of things that would normally take time and expertise. Frickin’ cool, right?

Examples of AI in marketing

Maybe this all sounds a little abstract—but marketers are using AI and getting real, concrete results. Here are some examples of what that looks like:

• Peter Letts is the founder of Abyss Scuba Diving. Peter is churning out PPC campaigns and landing pages that see an average conversion rate of 35% . He did it all using an AI landing page builder that takes makes data-backed recommendations gets folks converting like mad.
• Jeff Taylor is the founder of his own digital marketing agency, Taylor Made Marketing. Jeff regularly gets his clients conversion rates 10 times the industry standard. He’s using an AI tool to analyze visitor attributes and automatically route ‘em to the page where they’re (statistically) most likely to convert. Since he started using AI, business has been boomin’.

AI offers tons of benefits to marketers. It doesn’t just get you better results—it also speeds up mundane tasks, reduces the need for additional headcount, and lets you focus on the big picture. Many marketers are adopting AI tools—like copy generators, design assistants, and marketing automation and optimization software—because they help ‘em save money, fill expertise gaps, and free up more time. Show us a marketer who doesn’t want literally all of those things?

Popular types of AI marketing

AI is everywhere. It’s like the sand you find all over your house after that one day playing volleyball at the beach. (Top Gun just made it look so darn fun.) 

Many industries have adopted AI or are in the process, and it’s no different for marketing. So, what types of AI are available for marketers, and how are they used?

AI data analysis

To succeed in marketing, you gotta know what makes your customers tick. AI can crunch the numbers for you and analyze all your juicy data to understand consumer habits. From there, it can predict what products and services they’re likely to buy based on their online history and past purchases. With this intel, marketers can forecast sales, manage inventory, and push the right products to the right people. 

It’s like having an octopus that can predict the future, but without that… fishy smell.

AI content generation

AI can help marketers create all sorts of content for social media, email marketing (hello, subject lines), and other communication channels. Marketers can set parameters around the generated content and ultimately have the final say in what gets sent or published.

For example, we’ve got an AI copywriting tool to help users write engaging content for landing pages, emails, and ads. Spin up some content, keep what you like, and bin the rest. (Also, check out our guide to AI writing and how it can improve your content.)

Though AI can’t replicate human creativity, it can save your team time—and maybe even fuel a bit of inspiration.

Dynamic pricing AI

The retail world’s version of “now you see it, now you don’t!” Dynamic pricing is when prices change based on things like traffic volume or product availability. You know the drill: You search for something, leave it for a bit, and when you come back, the price has gone through the roof. (Not nice, ecommerce website.) Of course, the theory is that prices then drop once demand ebbs. 

For marketers, AI-powered dynamic pricing is gold. They can create campaigns that have a sense of urgency and maximize their ROI, without needing to adjust prices themselves manually. It’s a win-win situation. (Except when you have to pay through the nose for that flight to your cousin’s wedding.)

AI chatbots

Chatbots have become a common feature of the customer service experience. Think about the little chat bubble embedded on many websites, or the responses you get from brands on social media, by email, or by text. AI chatbots can be used to assist customers with various tasks, like placing orders or even working through technical hiccups. (Thanks again, “Brad,” for wishing me a happy birthday while fixing my phone service issue.) 

Chatbots also have the potential to generate new sales opportunities. AI chatbots can make more personalized recommendations by collecting data about a customer’s interests and preferences. For marketers, that means more conversions. Good stuff.

AI conversion rate optimization

Forget about manual A/B testing. Marketers can use AI to automatically select the best version of your content—or better yet, eliminate the need to choose a “champion” entirely. Imagine using AI to quickly spin up dozens of ad or email variants, then letting the machine analyze demographic data to figure out which is likely to perform best for each individual. 

For example, Unbounce has an AI conversion optimization tool for landing pages. Rather than split-testing a couple of variants at a time, marketers can create as many landing pages as they want, then let AI automatically send visitors to the top-converting page for people like them. On average, it gets marketers get 30% more conversions. Just sayin’.

Problems with AI in marketing

Of course, it’s not all sunshine and algorithmically-generated daisies. AI is changing the marketing landscape stupidly fast, and it’s important to also recognize some of the risks that come with this dramatic shift in the way we work.

For example, AI isn’t so great at replicating the emotional intelligence of marketers. Customers still value a human touch, and if their entire experience with your brand is jumpin’ from one artificial experience to the next, it could be a turn off. It’s crucial that marketers don’t let AI replace genuine interaction and connection with their customers.

Likewise, AI lacks human creativity. Generative AI models are incredible for their ability to churn out an absolutely bonkers amount of… well, pretty decent written and visual content. (After all, they were trained on the whole gosh-dang Internet.) But AI doesn’t yet come up with truly original ideas. It just combines other ideas it’s seen before into something that looks kinda new. Marketers can use these tools to accelerate their creative processes, but it you wanna make something great, you’re better off putting in the time to do in the ol’ fashioned way: Thinking of it yourself.

There are other problems with AI, like privacy and data collection. When you share data with an AI tool, you need to be aware of how that data is gonna be used. Imagine you turn over your customer list (with names, emails, phone numbers) for AI analysis. Can you say confidently that the data isn’t gonna be used to train the model, or even show up as generated content for other users? 

And we can take that concern a step further. What says an AI tool is even correct?

AI is only as good as the human-created content it’s trained on, and as a species, we’re, uh… we’re not super reliable. If AI is using inaccurate data and biased information to determine its own outputs, then those outputs are inevitably gonna be inaccurate and biased, too. 

It’s impossible for a marketer to fact-check the oceans of data informing the AI tools they use. The solution, then, is to always filter what you’re getting from AI through your own skepticism and expertise.

Will marketers be replaced by AI?

It’s true that AI marketing comes with a bunch of great perks. But we’re sure most marketers have woken in a cold sweat with an intrusive thought: Are robots gonna replace me? If AI is just so good at this whole marketing thing, what are we gonna need marketers for?

There’s no denying that digital marketing as we know it is in for some big changes. But marketers—being their usual, nimble selves— are already adapting. Our research shows that marketers are fully aware of how AI can help them juggle everyday challenges, supporting and enhancing their marketing efforts. And as of 2022,  31% of marketers were already using AI to improve their bottom line.

With so many everyday marketing tools integrating AI into the mix (think Notion or Canva), the days of marketers using AI without even knowing it are pretty close. So don’t worry so much about AI replacing you. Instead, worry about the other marketers using AI to level up their skills and increasing their impact. (Now that’s nightmare fuel.)

How to adopt AI in your marketing strategy

At this point, you’re probably thinking about adding some AI to your marketing strategy. Go, you! 

While it’s not a magical solution that can solve all your problems, AI can give your marketing efforts that boost you’re lookin’ for. It won’t replace your entire marketing team, but it can automate tasks, improve conversion rates, and help you identify new opportunities to engage with your audience.

But before jumping in headfirst, here are some things to consider:

Evaluate your existing processes

If you’re considering adopting an AI tool, first think about how it’ll fit into your current workflows. That means deep divin’ into your audience, understanding their journey and potential pain points, and identifying areas where AI can help you create a better experience.

Let’s say you run an online clothing store. You could start by (manually) analyzing some of your existing customer data to identify patterns and trends. What are the most popular clothing items that are flyin’ off your shelves? What are the most common reasons you get for returns? What are the most asked questions by your customers?

This will help you identify how AI can best be used to improve customer experience, such as personalized clothing recommendations (you can match this top with this skirt), automated returns processing, and chatbots to answer customer inquiries.

Think about your gaps or inefficiencies

What are some of the frustrations you have with the processes of your team? Think about this in terms of actual manual labor. Think about what things could be slowing you and your team down, and decide where and when to get AI to do some heavy liftin’. It’s all about streamlining your marketing processes.

Let’s say you work for a marketing agency that specializes in social media management for small businesses. You and your team spend a heck of a lot of time manually scheduling social media posts, creating content calendars, and analyzing engagement metrics. Blegh.

You can use AI to tackle some of that manual work. Scheduling posts in advance, optimizing times for maximum engagement, and even creating content based on audience preferences. With all this work outta the way, your team could focus on other tasks that require human creativity. You’d be increasing efficiency and productivity, benefiting your clients and their social media presence—and gettin’ more business as a result.

Plan how you’ll implement new tech

Implementing any new technology into a team’s marketing processes can take lotsa time and effort. To get the most out of AI-powered tools, you’ve gotta know how to use ‘em efficiently so your team (and your customers) can get the best experience. 

Imagine you’re the marketing director for an ecommerce company that sells consumer electronics. You’ve decided to implement an AI-powered chatbot on your website to handle customer inquiries and provide personalized product recommendations. Smart. 

But implementing this technology into your team’s workflow means real time and effort. To get the most out of the chatbot, you’ll need to train it with accurate data, program it with relevant scripts, and integrate it seamlessly into your website. Not to mention training your team on how to use the chatbot—how to monitor conversations, escalate issues to human support, and analyze chat logs for insights.

Be sure you’ve got a plan for how you’ll implement AI tools before you pay for ’em.

Trends and the future of AI marketing

Artificial intelligence ain’t sci-fi anymore. The past few years have seen huge advances in AI tech. Crystal ball in hand, here are some trends we’re expectin’ to see in the future. 

• Concerns about privacy and security will increase. Despite all these great things happenin’ with AI, the trust issues are still there. Consumers are legit scared of their data being collected and used against them. That means marketers gotta start addressing privacy concerns by providing more transparency around the data they’re collecting, and using it only to the benefit of the customer. It’s also time for organizations to beef up their cybersecurity game—because hackers are starting to use AI, too. Businesses will need to take additional steps to protect their customers’ data from algorithmically-augmented outlaws.
• Voice-enabled AI is (still) gonna change marketing. Voice-enabled AI has been the talk ‘o the town for years now. At this point, some of us talk to assistants like Siri and Google Home more than actual people. Still, this conversational AI remains under-utilized in marketing. That’s gonna change. In the not-so-distant future, marketers will need to consider speech recognition technologies in their marketing strategies. In fact, voice-recognition tech was already projected to become a key business channel in 2022. Who needs fingers when you’ve got a voice assistant?
• AI will keep getting better at generating creative work. AI in marketing is getting smarter by the minute. With more marketers jumping on the AI marketing bandwagon, AI itself is learning all sorts of algorithms and refining its content like a pro. The best part? The more data it collects, the more impressive its outputs become. That means we can expect to see some seriously impressive content generated by AI—we’re talkin’ copy, images, videos, and basically any other medium you can think of.

Marketers: It’s time to join forces with AI

AI is the new hotness, and it’s shakin’ things up in the world of marketing. But don’t worry—it’s not here to steal your job. In fact, by combining your marketing expertise with the power of artificial intelligence, you can become more impactful than ever before. Marketers who adopt AI are more effective than those who don’t—because it saves ’em time, helps them with complex tasks, and boosts the results they get from their campaigns.

Likewise, AI works best when it’s paired with a real person. It needs you—to check that the information it provides is accurate, to improve the written and visual content it creates, to keep it from rising up against its human overlords in a Terminator-type machine revolution. Rather than feeling threatened by AI, marketers need to recognize the value that both sides bring to the partnership—and start kickin’ butt and crushin’ conversions together.

Enter: The Internet and the wide, webby world of digital marketing.

And it is wide. With the ability to communicate with just about anybody on the planet—all without getting outta your pajamas—digital marketing makes it a snap to raise awareness about your brand. Choose your marketing channels, create some content, and voilà. You’re in the business of bein’ in business.

But it’s not quite that simple. Here’s what you need to know about digital marketing and how to do it right.

• What is digital marketing?
• What are the benefits of digital marketing?
• What are some types of digital marketing?
• How do you create a digital marketing strategy?

Um, what exactly is digital marketing?

Digital marketing is what it sounds like: marketing that takes place online. It’s a pretty broad term without a universal definition. Still, you can think of it as encouraging people who interact with your digital content—ads, emails, social posts, ebooks, whatever—to become customers. (Or, at the very least, to engage meaningfully with your business.)

There are all kinds of digital marketing. (We can’t even count ’em all on two hands.) You might choose to advertise your business on Google and pay to show up at the top of search results for relevant keywords. You could send an email to your customer list persuading them to try a new product or redeem an exclusive discount. Or maybe you wanna do some good ol’ fashioned content marketing and attract potential customers with educational resources. Ahem.

When you know what to look for, you can see digital marketing happening everywhere. It’s one of the most foolproof ways—maybe even the only way, for some—to get new customers today. Although strategies and tactics will vary, almost every brand does some form of digital marketing.

Why should you be doing digital marketing?

Business has moved online. We don’t really think that statement is controversial, but if you don’t believe us, here are some wild facts:

• In 2022, people around the world spent just over 400 minutes on the web every day. (That’s more than 6 hours daily. Get a hobby, us.)
• Ecommerce sales recently eclipsed $1 trillion globally—for the first time in history.
• It’s expected that 24% of all retail purchases will take place online by 2026. That’s a whole lot of digital cheddar to be made.

So, yeah, Digital Revolution and all that. If you want your business to be successful today, it’s almost a given that you need to be doing some kind of digital marketing. But that’s not a bad thing—it’s incredible. There are all kinds of benefits to digital marketing over traditional marketing methods:

• It’s highly targeted. Most traditional kinds of advertising (like radio or television ads) are one-to-many, which means you’re broadcasting the same ad to everybody. That makes it hard to tailor your messaging to address particular customer segments. Digital marketing is much more targeted, allowing you to customize your ads for people that meet certain criteria: age, gender, interests, and more.
• It’s very measurable. Mass communication is weird. When you run a newspaper ad, it’s tough to figure out whether anybody’s even seen it. Did your sales go up? Was that because of the ad or something else? In digital marketing, you can measure how many people have seen your ad in real-time. Not only that, but you can track what they do after they see your ad, all the way up to when they make a purchase.
• It’s super agile. Traditional marketing moves slowly. Once you’ve committed to running a TV ad, dangnabbit, it’s gonna run. There’s too much effort involved in planning, production, and distribution—not to mention the exorbitant cost—which also means it’s hard to pivot. Digital marketing allows you to move fast. Kicking off a new promotion? The ad can be up in minutes.
• It’s pretty affordable. That depends on the type of digital marketing, of course—but compared to traditional media, it’s a steal. According to a quick web search, wide-reach television ads cost hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars, and it’s tough to determine whether they’ve even worked. Advertising on Facebook, you can get people straight to your website for a couple bucks. That’s tough to beat.

What types of digital marketing are there?

Ooh boy. There’s no shortage of ways you can market your business online. Here are some of the most common types of digital marketing:

Search engine optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization (SEO) means optimizing your website to rank better on search engine results pages (SERPs) for sites like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. The goal is to make it easier for search engines to understand the content on a page and rank it higher in the results for relevant keywords or phrases. And it pays to be first: the top-ranked page in search results gets clicked 49% of the time. 

SEO combines technical, on-page, and off-page optimizations to improve a website’s overall search engine visibility:

• Technical optimizations: You can improve a website’s backend infrastructure to make indexing its content easier for search engines. Common technical fixes include optimizing load speed, implementing structured data markup, fixing broken links, and ensuring the website is mobile-friendly. 
• On-page optimizations: This type of SEO is all about tweaking individual web pages to improve their relevance and authority for specific keywords or topics. That means optimizing page titles and meta descriptions, using header tags to structure content, and ensuring the website has high-quality content that reflects what folks are looking for.
• Off-page optimizations: Building external links to a website improves its credibility with search engines. To get more backlinks, you can create high-quality content that gets cited by other websites, post engaging social media content to build brand awareness and authority or participate in online communities to build relationships with other businesses and influencers.

The obvious benefit of SEO is driving more organic traffic to your website–but it can also help businesses demonstrate authority online by ensuring they show up first in the search results for relevant queries. (If we didn’t show up in one of the top spots for “landing page builder,” you’d be a little worried, right?)

SEO is tricky, though. The big search engines are pretty secretive about what exactly factors into their rankings. They regularly make secret updates to their algorithms to ensure their search results are relevant and high-quality. That means what works in SEO (and what doesn’t) is changing all the time.

Search engines will always try to highlight the best result for any given search query—so first and foremost, create digital content that provides value to your target audience. Make sure you’re addressing the needs of your visitors, then focus on optimizing your headlines and meta information to make Google especially happy.

Content marketing

With content marketing, the goal is to attract and retain your target audience by creating valuable, relevant content that educates or entertains. Executed well, content marketing can help you establish trust and credibility with potential customers—and make them more likely to engage with your brand in the future.

Content marketing is everywhere. (Hey, you’re experiencing it right now!) Popular types of content include:

• Blogs: Blogs allow brands to demonstrate their expertise by sharing valuable information and insights with their audience. Additionally, blogs are easy to share and can be optimized for search engines, making them a great way to drive traffic to your website and improve its search rankings.
• Videos: Videos are an engaging and versatile format that can convey complex information in easy-to-digest snippets. They’re particularly effective at capturing viewers’ attention—plus, they can be shared on social media and embedded on websites, helping you reach a wider audience.
• Podcasts: Podcasts are particularly effective for businesses that want to establish themselves as thought leaders, as they allow hosts to share their expertise and engage in conversations with industry experts. Podcasts can also be listened to on-the-go and offer a unique and intimate way to connect with your audience.
• Infographics: Infographics have fallen outta fashion lately, but they’re still a visually appealing and effective way to present complex information in an easy-to-understand format. They’re perfect for highlighting statistics and insights to your audience and can be easily shared on social channels.
• Social Posts: Social posts are ideal for creating engagement and fostering relationships with an audience. They’re great for sharing news, promotions, and updates with your followers, and can be used to drive traffic to a website or landing page. And with the wide-reaching nature of social media, they give you a way to expose your brand to new audiences.

So yeah—content is basically everything you read, watch, and listen to online. Content becomes content marketing when its aim is to drive some sort of customer action, like getting ‘em to fill out a form, buy a product, or improve their perception of your brand.

Content marketing works very well in tandem with SEO. Brands can improve search engine rankings by creating high-quality, optimized content that attracts links and social shares. This (in turn) can lead to increased website traffic and visibility. You get the dual benefit of introducing yourself to a broader audience and making a great first impression by providing folks with the information they want. 

Creating valuable content is also particularly useful for lead generation. Say you produce an ebook or whitepaper—some piece of educational content that solves a problem for your audience. You can “gate” this resource and require visitors to provide their contact information in exchange for access. Gated content helps you capture valuable leads that you can nurture through email campaigns and gradually move toward a purchase.

Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing

With pay-per-click (PPC) marketing, your ads are presented to visitors on a particular platform—and whenever somebody “clicks” on one of your ads, you “pay.” (Are these “quotation marks” annoying?) The cost depends on your targeting parameters, but it’s usually pretty cheap. When everything goes right, the value of the click (in terms of new sales or leads generated through the ad’s landing page) should more than offset the cost of advertising.

When people talk about PPC, they usually mean paying to have their ads show up at the top of the SERP on Google or Bing. Although PPC is definitely a thing on social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn, too.

When you set up a PPC ad campaign, you can target customers based on things like:

• Keywords: Search engine PPC ads require you to choose the keywords that will show your ads to your audience. Pick keywords related to your product and your customer’s intentions when they’re looking for your product. (And don’t forget to do keyword research.)
• Location: If you have a local business or seasonal product, you can advertise to specific countries, states, cities, or even ZIP/postal codes.
• Demographics: Since everybody’s online behavior is being tracked extensively, PPC platforms usually have a good sense of who they’re showing ads to. (This is doubly true on social media.) You can set your PPC campaign to target folks of a particular gender, age, income, and more.
• Retargeting: In a retargeting campaign, you show PPC ads to customers who’ve already interacted with your website. You can set campaigns to advertise to people who abandoned their shopping cart on your site or visited a specific page.

Social media marketing (SMM)

Social media marketing (SMM) is all about promoting your brand on social platforms like Twitter, Pinterest, or Instagram. It often means organically sharing content to build and engage with a digital audience. It might also mean running a PPC campaign to target ads at a particular demographic on one of these platforms.

Some of the most common channels for social media marketing include:

• Facebook: With literally billions of active users every month, Facebook provides an enormous audience of potential customers. It’s great for creating brand awareness and engaging with customers through comments, messages, and groups. Facebook also offers PPC options, allowing businesses to target specific demographics based on interests, location, and behaviors.
• Instagram: Instagram is a visually-driven platform perfect for brands relying on stunning visuals to showcase their products or services. It’s great for influencer marketing and user-generated content, too. Instagram offers paid advertising, including sponsored posts and stories, as well as shoppable posts that allow businesses to tag products in their photos.
• Twitter: Twitter is great for engaging with customers in real-time—things like providing customer support, answering questions, and addressing concerns. Twitter is also great for sharing news and updates about your business. Hashtags are widely used on Twitter, allowing brands to participate in conversations and increase their visibility.
• YouTube: YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world (after Google), with more than 2 billion active users each month. It’s the ideal channel for brands to share video content, including product demos, tutorials, and behind-the-scenes footage. YouTube also has paid ads, including promo segments that appear before or during videos.
• LinkedIn: When it’s not being flooded with #hustleculture nonsense, LinkedIn is perfect for B2B businesses. It’s a great spot to generate brand awareness, establish thought leadership, and connect with potential customers and business partners. You can also run ads on LinkedIn, including sponsored content and sponsored InMail.
• TikTok: TikTok is a rapidly growing social media platform perfect for businesses that want to utilize fun, engaging, short-form video content. TikTok provides paid advertising options, including in-feed ads and brand takeovers.
• Snapchat: Snapchat is a popular platform among young audiences, making it ideal for brands chasing a more youthful demographic. Snapchat lets you create temporary content, such as stories and snaps, only available for 24 hours.
• Pinterest: Pinterest is a visual discovery platform that is perfect for businesses that want to showcase their offering alongside smaller creators. You can “pin” content to visual “boards” and create blog posts that drive traffic back to your website. Pinterest also offers paid advertising, including promoted pins and promoted video pins.
• Reddit: Reddit is a discussion-based platform that’s ideal for engaging with niche communities. It’s great for sharing content and participating in discussions related to your industry. You can advertise on Reddit through promoted posts and subreddits.

You probably already use these sites pretty regularly, huh? Social media marketing is about connecting with people where they’re already spending time in order to create brand awareness and drive value for your business. (Jeez, that sounds kinda cynical, actually.)

But truthfully, the best social media marketing provides value for your audience, too. You could publish a series of posts that are just flat-out entertaining content. Your audience gets a laugh, and now they think a bit more fondly of your brand. Or you could run an exclusive promotion for your social followers giving them a discount on their next purchase.

It’s that connection that makes social media marketing so powerful. You can build a following of people who actually want to hear from you because they like what you have to say. And you can grow your audience by demonstrating value to folks who might’ve never heard of you before.

Example of a social media marketing campaign:

When creating a social media campaign, try mixing up your post formats. Take a page out of the convenience store Sheetz’s book and use a combo of text, picture, and video posts to maximize audience engagement. For their holiday campaign, Sheetz used a variety of post types throughout December, like this Christmas sweater discussion and this video of a yeti invading its local Sheetz.

And these posts are all from Twitter alone. Sheetz used some of the same videos and photos for its other social accounts, but they made sure to avoid a common social media mistake and customized their posts for each platform. Make sure your content and tone of voice match the platform where you post.

Native advertising

Native advertising refers to the practice of creating and placing ads that match the form and function of the platform on which they appear. (Kinda like a ketchup bottle shaped like a tomato… And we use “kinda” very loosely.) Unlike other types of digital advertising, native ads blend in seamlessly with the user’s browsing experience, making them less disruptive and more engaging. 

These ads can take lots of forms, including sponsored content, product placements, and certain social media ads. The goal of native advertising is to promote a brand or product without overtly interrupting the user’s experience or feeling like an advertisement. 

Native advertising can be a more effective way to reach your target audience. Blending in seamlessly with the platform’s content, these ads are more likely to be received positively by users. This is especially true for younger audiences who are more likely to use ad-blocking software and have become skeptical of traditional advertising methods. (Darn savvy kids—why won’t you buy our stuff?!) 

That said, avoid making native ads that are deceptive. It’s great to run ads that fit the vibe of the platform, but it’s equally important that users can distinguish between advertising and organic content. Misleading practices can erode your audience’s trust, doing your brand more harm than good. Make sure your ads are clearly labeled (as “sponsored content,” for example) and don’t misrepresent the product or service you’re promoting.

Influencer marketing (or affiliate marketing)

Influencer marketing (sometimes called affiliate marketing) is the act of partnering with an influential person in your space (an influencer, if you will) to spread the word about your brand. You get the benefit of introducing your product or service to their existing audience, which might be a lot bigger than your own. They get the benefit of… well, whatever money you pay ’em for the privilege—usually a commission or percentage of the sales they help generate.

That might sound kinda goofy, but influencer marketing clearly works. The influencer industry had a global value of $16.4 billion in 2022, and it’s growing bigger all the time. Short-form video platforms like TikTok and Instagram have helped influencers build audiences into the tens of millions. (People really like being told what to think, apparently.)

But you don’t need to land an influencer with millions of followers. In many cases, a micro-influencer can actually help you build more authority. Micro-influencers have a smaller following than the big names, but they often specialize in niche topics and have more distinct audiences. These influencers make it easier to target your marketing to people who will be most receptive to it.

Example of an influencer marketing campaign:

You might associate influencer and affiliate marketing with products on Instagram, but businesses outside of ecommerce can get in on the trend. PRWeek’s top influencer campaign of 2021 involved a community football club in the United Kingdom.

The Grenfell Athletic club was founded to help residents stand strong after 72 people died in a fire at London’s Grenfell Tower. Two agencies helped the club raise money to support its community through a shirt distributed to 72 influencers in honor of the tragedy. They helped Grenfell Athletic raise £30,000—enough to support the club for three more years.

Email marketing

Email marketing is all about communicating with folks who have already interacted with your business in some capacity. (How else would you have their email?) You can use email marketing to let your audience know about new products, special promotions, upcoming events, or even provide educational content that “nurtures” prospects through the buyer journey.

Email is a particularly valuable channel for businesses that are concerned about return on investment. (Uh, who isn’t?) Depending on who you ask, email marketing has an ROI in the neighborhood of $36 for every $1 spent. Whoa.

That’s partly because email is so affordable. Unlike with PPC, you don’t need to pay an advertising platform every time someone engages with one of your emails. But it’s also because email can be super targeted since you already know a ton about the people you’re communicating with.

By segmenting your audience into different groups—say, depending on how they’ve previously engaged with your business—you can send targeted messages that are more likely to lead to conversions. And once somebody has converted, email can help you maintain relationships, build loyalty, and increase retention.

Example of an email marketing campaign:

A common email marketing strategy is to introduce new subscribers to your brand through a series of introductory emails. Check out how gender-inclusive underwear brand TomboyX begins its welcome email with its mission statement to draw in customers with similar values.

When it comes to building loyalty, emphasizing your brand’s purpose is a slam dunk. (Unless your purpose is, like, drowning kittens or something.) If you plan on creating a welcome campaign for your email marketing, think of how you wanna introduce your business to customers and start with that message.

So, how do you create a digital marketing strategy?

The key to digital marketing success is understanding how customers interact with your business online. When you understand both sides of the marketing relationship—you and your customer—you’ll be able to identify the best digital marketing channels and content types to engage with your audience.

Here are some digital marketing tips to keep in mind before you get started.

Digital marketing tip #1: Know your product/service

You need to know your offering inside and out before trying to market it. After all, if you don’t know your product or service, how can you explain it to your customers?

Before you try your hand at digital marketing, make sure you’ve got a thorough understanding of these aspects of your product or service:

• Value proposition: What’s your brand’s value proposition, and how does your product or service contribute to it? Your value proposition communicates your brand’s core value and helps customers (or potential customers) understand what makes you different. Think of the ways that your products or services deliver that value.
• Features and benefits: Features describe what your product or service does. Benefits show how those features will help your customers solve their problems. When you talk about your business, you should always emphasize the benefits. Think of features as the means by which you provide that value.

This might sound a little basic, but it’s essential to producing digital content that really communicates the value of your offer. Think of all the ads you see that make you go, “huh?” Those marketers haven’t done their homework.

Digital marketing tip #2: Know your audience

Now that we’ve got the product or service you’re trying to sell, spend some time thinking about your customers (or potential customers). It’s easier to make engaging, persuasive digital content when you know how your audience thinks and behaves.

Audience research is a whole discipline of work in its own right—but there are some quick and scrappy ways to do it as a marketer. The most obvious (and, weirdly, the least common) is talking to your customers. These are the folks who’ve already bought what you’re sellin’ (either literally or figuratively). Ask them how they heard about you, what they like about your business, or where they hang out online. Lots of people are more than willing to share.

If you wanna dig a little deeper, you can perform more in-depth audience research using some of these methods:

• Surveys (try a free platform like SurveyMonkey or Google Forms)
• Social media audience analysis
• Analysis of your competitor’s audience
• Google Analytics demographic info
• Audience research tools like BuzzSumo or SparkToro

Once you’ve got some audience data, look it over for patterns in demographics, interests, and online behavior. Put those trends together to create marketing personas—profiles of your typical customers that’ll help you visualize who you’re talking to in your campaigns.

Digital marketing tip #3: Know your channels

Digital marketing happens across a wide range of channels—places where you market your products or services. (We talked about some of the most common types of marketing above.) Marketers use an average of 7.2 channels, so you should use at least a couple to keep up with the industry.

Some examples of your digital marketing channels could include:

• Your website
• Your list of email subscribers
• Your social media channels (e.g., Facebook)
• Your video platforms (e.g., YouTube)
• Your search engine rankings and ads

What channels will work best for your brand? The answer will depend on your audience. As you research your customers, look at where they spend time online. Investigate the sorts of content they like to engage with. And—importantly—figure out how much time and money you can invest in a particular channel before you use it. (There’s nothing sketchier than a Twitter profile with no activity for three years.)

Send your digital marketing traffic to landing pages

Of course, getting folks to engage with you online is only half (or maybe five-ninths) of effective digital marketing. Once somebody has clicked on your ad or email, you still need them to complete your campaign goal—whether that’s buying a product, signing up for a service, or downloading an ebook. You still need them to convert.

And when you need to drive more conversions, you need landing pages.

Landing pages are standalone web pages that keep people focused on your call to action. Unlike your website, they don’t present visitors with any distractions—just a consistent, seamless journey from their first click all the way to your campaign goal.

Your audience gets a better experience. You get more conversions.

I wrote my first piece of copy. The client read it, looked at me, and said, “You’ll work in an ad agency one day.” I was 12.

Call it fate or natural skill, Jeff has been marketing and growing businesses since 1992—long before “digital” was a part of any agency’s vocabulary. Now, he’s got his own agency. Taylor Made Marketing helps home improvement businesses with lead generation through branding, web design, digital marketing, video production, and more. 

But this ain’t your everyday marketing agency. Jeff regularly gets his clients conversion rates above 35%—10 times the home improvement industry standard. That’s led to monster campaign results for the companies that use his services—and Jeff’s well-earned reputation as the handyman who can fix anybody’s marketing.

From analog to digital marketing in a decade

Jeff started out in television and radio advertising. As the internet was going mainstream, he remembers a door-to-door salesman in the early 1990s trying to “con” him into purchasing domain names. Today, some of us buy domains like candy (ahem)—but 30+ years ago, not so much. At the time, Jeff had never heard of domain names and sent the seller on his way. 

Although Jeff didn’t buy up any domains, he still got an early start in digital marketing, dipping his toes in the worldwide web towards the turn of the century. Jeff decided to fully move into digital marketing during the financial collapse of 2008, when businesses were struggling to afford more traditional channels like radio and television. 

Without skipping a beat, Taylor Made Marketing jumped on the digital marketing bandwagon—and they’ve been driving quality leads for home improvement businesses ever since.

Why traditional A/B testing is great—until it isn’t

Like most marketing agencies, Taylor Made Marketing adopted a traditional approach to building and testing landing pages. They would create multiple pages for clients and A/B test them over several weeks or months to find the winning page. When they discovered the best-performing page, they’d tweak one element and start all over again—and again, and again, until they saw a significant improvement in conversion rates. 

Sure, it got them results for their clients—but it was slow, tedious, and the increases were minimal.

Things changed when Taylor Made Marketing discovered Unbounce, and specifically Smart Traffic. Jeff said “buh-bye” to cumbersome and drawn-out A/B testing and “hey, how you doin’?” to AI-optimized landing pages with sky-high conversion rates. 

Smart Traffic uses machine learning to detect traffic patterns and automatically route visitors to the page where they’re most likely to convert. Now, Taylor Made Marketing can test a truckload of pages with multiple variants simultaneously and get faster results for their clients—in as few as 50 visits. That’s lightning fast. 

Before Smart Traffic, we used to build landing pages the old fashioned way and do our own A/B testing one page at a time. We gained some increases that way, but once Smart Traffic came out, we could test a whole bunch of landing pages at once.

It gives us real-time results back about what’s working. Seeing that real-time data across many landing pages made it very easy for us to make the switch to Smart Traffic.

In fact, he regularly gets 35% conversion rates—when the average conversion rate in the home improvement sector is between 3-5%. Jeff says with results like this, it was a no-brainer to switch all his agency’s landing pages over to Unbounce, which they did several years ago.

Putting AI-powered traffic optimization to work

Thanks to Taylor Made Marketing’s decades of experience in digital marketing and their knowledge of Unbounce’s Smart Traffic, Jeff’s clients experience incredible ROI on ad spend. “On a $10,000 ad spend, we have hit 30:1 ROI with Smart Traffic.” If he’s working with a window installation company, for example, he typically sees a 35% conversion rate (inquiry) with Smart Traffic—with an average close rate (final sale) of 50%. Whoa.

Jeff knows you can have the most amazing, splendiferous, high-converting landing pages—but if you can’t close a lead, it means nothing. You’ve wasted your money.

Here—join us over at the whiteboard, won’t you?

Some leads don’t require much work to sell—but typically, you need more than headlines and CTAs to book an appointment.

It’s a universal lesson for every industry. If you use landing pages to drive someone to your online shop, and it’s a terrible experience, there’s nothing you can do to convert the customer.

Jeff stresses that every touchpoint of the sales and marketing funnel needs to be effective. He also notes that if a landing page is converting (like the ones he builds for his clients), but the sales don’t match, then you know where your problem is.

Robots never call in sick, robots never lie

Selling the idea of AI marketing tools to his clients comes easy to Jeff. He uses Smart Traffic to generate leads for his own company—and knows first-hand how effective AI can be. But using AI is sometimes intimidating to his clients because they don’t understand it.

Jeff says giving the robot human attributes helps make it feel more approachable. 

[Customers] don’t know what Smart Traffic is, so we just call it AI and assure our clients that our robots are superior to any human marketer on Earth—and it’s true.

We’ve used personification where we give the AI human characteristics, like ‘it never calls in sick, it never lies, it’s always 100% accurate, it doesn’t make mistakes, it’s smarter than Einstein, Gates, and Musk combined.

(Time’ll tell on that last one, huh?)

Once clients understand how Smart Traffic fits into Taylor Made Marketing’s team, they’re more open to the idea of using a robot to gain more leads. And with conversion rates like the ones Jeff is pumping out for his clients, any home improvement business owner who doesn’t wanna use AI is missing out.

How AI optimization can accelerate your testing

Taylor Made Marketing has seen a tenfold improvement in results for their clients. So, how are they able to help their clients gain such impressive conversions? 

Three tactics have helped Taylor Made Marketing’s home improvement clients turn more leads into customers with Unbounce landing pages and Smart Traffic.

1. Test a ton of pages simultaneously

According to Jeff, one of the best things about Smart Traffic is the ability to test multiple pages at the same time. “We do a lot of testing. We’ll put up 12 pages and find the ones that convert the highest. And then we take those pages and start tweaking them.” The key is testing a whole bunch of pages first, getting those early signals, and then going into testing the finer details. 

Once the winning pages are found, Jeff’s team will adjust one thing—the call to action or the image—so they’re only testing a single variable at a time. (That’s what the kids call the OG A/B testing method.)

2. Build pages for specific audiences

You might assume when you find a winning landing page, it’ll with all of your customers. But the reality is, folks in Texas are different from folks in Sydney or Vancouver (holla)—and expecting the same landing pages to work for these different demographics is misleading. 

I can take a headline and a hero image that’s working beautifully in Atlanta, Georgia, and move it to Houston, Texas, and it won’t work at all. Or find one that works in Houston and move it to San Diego. And it works twice as good in San Diego as it did in Houston, where it was already working. So geography [of your audience] can definitely affect your results.

The same goes for other aspects of a landing page. Take humor, for example. Jeff’s noticed that using humor in their landing pages has helped improve conversion rates. Humor can offer a little escape from reality and reduce stress, even if for a moment. Used in the wrong context, humor can offend people. Right now Jeff says, “humor is working pretty well, but if there’s a national tragedy, [the advertiser] needs to change gears.”

Knowing your audience is essential. And building landing pages that appeal to different people in different locations has increased conversions for Taylor Made Marketing’s clients.

3. Don’t hesitate to test something new

Video can have a huge impact on conversions—especially if a product or service is being endorsed by a celebrity or influencer. Jeff tells his clients, “if you don’t have an established brand, rent one from someone else.” By that he means, find someone well-known (like a celebrity, athlete, or even someone who’s semi-famous in your hometown) and pay them to endorse you. 

We most recently did a test with three very popular landing pages in Nashville, Tennessee. We duplicated them and added video of NFL players endorsing the product. We got almost double the conversion rate on the landing pages with the video. So we were able to prove that video from an NFL player did have a dramatic positive impact on conversions.

One thing Jeff reiterates is that because of Smart Traffic, they are able to test landing pages quickly without having to isolate one thing at a time. The AI learns quickly what type of page resonates with different people, then sends similar people to that page, too. 

Get the best possible results from your campaigns

Jeff points out that things have come a long way since the days of marketing in traditional media—particularly when it comes to tracking.

In the old days, people would say, “How do I know if my television ads are working?” I would say, “Did your sales go up?” And that’s about the only answer we could give. If your sales go up, it’s working. If they didn’t, it’s not working. But today we can track everything, and Unbounce makes that so easy for us.

A/B testing is cumbersome and results slow because you can only test one thing at a time. But with AI, you can experiment with lots of different combinations at once—and know exactly what’s working best for a particular audience. 

If you’re a digital marketer trying to use a one-size-fits-all approach to help your clients or your company, it might be time to explore how Smart Traffic can help you maximize results. And with results like 35% conversion rates and 300% increase in ROI, Jeff’s proven that the next big step in marketing is AI.

Jessica Meher, CEO and Co-Founder of Wonderment, put it really well on Twitter:

So many #SaaS companies today produce the same content mktg formulas as they did 10 years ago.

E.g. ebooks on “the complete guide to X” or blog posts on “5 reasons why.” etc.

This shit works, until it doesn’t. Now’s a good time to invent the new ebook. Get creative.

— Jessica Meher (@jessicameher) February 6, 2018

To generate leads, you need more than quality lead magnets and optimized lead gen landing pages. You need to think outside the box. Try something a little bit different. Maybe even a little bit… experimental.

So: How do you come up with truly great ideas for lead generation campaigns?

We talked to some of the legendary marketers working today and asked them to share their most creative lead gen examples. And believe me—these folks needed quite a bit of convincing to spill their most useful and interesting ideas.

But we got ‘em here for you: 10 unique examples lifted straight from the secret marketing playbooks of the pros. Use these ideas as inspiration for your next lead gen campaign. Or, just keep them handy for the next time you want to try something more interesting than creating another ebook or webinar.

Ready? Let’s get cookin’.

Jump to a creative lead gen idea:

1. Create an interactive tool that generates qualified leads
2. Embed lead capture forms directly in video content
3. Interview a third-party expert (and embed gated resources)
4. Send attention-grabbing direct mail that delights
5. Share a customer experience that builds connection
6. Generate word-of-mouth leads in online communities
7. Promote a personalized template that solves a problem
8. Access new audiences with cross-promotion campaigns
9. Experiment with new types of content (and act on what works)
10. Entertain your audience with a surprising quiz

1. Create an interactive tool that generates qualified leads

There’s a good reason why so many brands—including HubSpot, Moz, and, yes, even Unbounce—have invested time and effort to create free tools. Tool-based marketing is popular because even simple interactive ideas can fuel campaigns that generate boatloads of qualified leads.

For example, Larry Kim, CEO of MobileMonkey, says they developed a Free Keyword Tool for the Wordstream website. Marketers could use it to research and prioritize new keywords in just a few minutes.

And while developing an interactive lead magnet might seem like a lot of work (you probably need someone who knows how to code), Larry says they were able to generate a huge number of leads as a result.

Here’s how the tool works. You start out by entering a keyword or website URL that you’re interested in analyzing. To hone the results, you can also choose the industry and country you want to focus on.

What makes this tool particularly clever is the way it displays the results. Hit the “Search” button, and you’ll instantly be able to see some of the related keywords. But all the other information? It’s hidden, blurred out, or obscured in some way.

This smartly creates a curiosity gap for visitors, who feel like they’ve already started the process of doing research on their keyword. All they need to do is take one teeny-tiny extra step to get their results.

That final step? You gotta give up your email address. Boom, lead generated. And as Larry reports, it’s become a near-bottomless source of new leads:

This simple tool took just 3 months to build, yet has generated over a million email signups.

But remember: Even a simple tool can be expensive to create. When considering your tool-based marketing idea, make sure it’s something your audience will find value in—before you start building.

2. Embed lead capture forms directly in video content

Should you be gating your best content?

I believe it was ol’ Billy Shakespeare who once wrote: “To gate or not to gate? That is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous website traffic, or ask for an email address against a sea of troubles…”

At some point, every marketer faces this dilemma. You have an amazing piece of content—now are you going to give it away for free as a way to attract organic traffic? Or do you gate the content and use it as a lead gen magnet?

Cara Hogan, then Content Strategist for Zaius (acquired by Optimizely), considered these options and asked—why not both?

For their Marketing Unboxed video series, Cara says they took a hybrid approach to gating their content. Rather than lock everything behind a form, they embedded forms into each video—and it’s a great example of creative lead generation.

We created the Marketing Unboxed video series as a top-of-funnel piece of content designed to engage our target audience of B2C and commerce marketers. By including a lead gen form within the video itself, we encourage people to subscribe, but we don’t require it.

The forms draw just the right amount of your attention, without being too distracting. It slides off the video if you move your mouse off the screen, but then pops back on whenever you come back. All in all, it’s a very tasteful lead-generating campaign that Cara says has driven some serious results.

We’ve generated hundreds of net new leads from this video series so far. We’ve only published 10 total episodes, and older episodes continue to earn subscribers over time. Some of these subscribers have since been nurtured to become new Zaius customers.

3. Interview a third-party expert (and embed gated resources)

For many brands, consistent blogging is a key source of lead generation. Every time you put out an article, it’s an opportunity for someone new to visit your site, discover your product or services, and opt in for more communications.

But you don’t need to create all of that content on your own. Interviewing experts in your field (kinda like we did for this article) and sharing their advice or perspective can be a fantastic way to bring in new audiences.

Take, for example, this lead gen example brought to us by Aaron Orendorff, previously the Editor in Chief of Shopify Plus. To help Shopify rank for some valuable keywords—such as “ecommerce replatforming”— Aaron interviewed a high-profile expert in the industry.

Aaron says it’s the quality of the interview that makes this lead gen example work.

Rather than a heavy-handed sales pitch, the piece is an interview with Paul Rogers—one of the brightest and most respected leaders in ecommerce … That objectivity—and framing the article as an honest conversation about a ‘dirty word’—is highlighted throughout.

But wait—how do you actually generate leads with an interview or blog post? Aaron explained that they peppered the article with three separate lead gen CTAs (including an Unbounce popup) to present visitors with downloadable content related to the topic of the interview.

It goes to show: Any piece of content can become a lead magnet, so long as you’re offering real value to your audience.

4. Send attention-grabbing direct mail that delights

Direct mail might seem like an old-school marketing tactic—but that’s exactly what makes it so darned interesting for lead generation. Why not focus your efforts on a smaller customer segment, and put together packages that really get them to sit up and take notice?

For example, check out these direct mailers that Hero Conf sent out to promote their PPC marketing conference. The event organizers used a super creative approach to get the attention of marketers like Casie Gillette, SVP of Digital Marketing at KoMarketing:

Oh man. @heroconf this is one of the coolest pieces of direct mail I’ve ever received! Who knew video could be so amazing in such a small package? pic.twitter.com/aQnlV2y71G

— Casie Gillette (@Casieg) January 31, 2019

Each piece of mail embedded a small video screen to show clips of the presenters who would be speaking at Hero Conf. And while these must have cost a fair bit more than a typical event brochure, Casie says the unique packaging really helped to win her over.

What got me was if you played the video to the end, they had a free ticket offer—you just had to respond to the email they had sent earlier … By placing the offer at the end, only those who watched the video all the way through would learn about the offer. A really cool way to grab attention.

Sure, this isn’t exactly a lead generation example, but the same principles apply. When you connect with your audience in delightful and unexpected ways, they notice—and they’re more likely to engage with you, too. 

5. Share a customer experience that builds connection

Creating a connection with your audience is crucial to effective lead generation. Folks need to trust you before they’re gonna hand over their contact information. And one of the best ways to build trust is with social proof, like customer testimonials and positive reviews. 

Andrew Davis, best-selling author and keynote speaker, has pointed out that most video testimonials are pretty dry. They’re usually just a lot of talking heads, with nervous customers babbling on about all the reasons why they like some marketing brand. They don’t feel authentic.

But there’s also a different type of video testimonial—one that actually tells the complete customer story. And although these can be harder to produce, they can also serve up a different type of indirect lead generation for your business.

As an example, Andrew suggests watching this video on YouTube that recently went viral: Vance’s Incredible 365-day Transformation. The video now has over 100 million views and 120,000 comments on YouTube.

Unlike other video testimonials, this customer story is shot in real-time. It’s compelling, it’s emotional—and it doesn’t have a single call to action.

Instead, Vance mentions throughout the video the diet and exercise program he is using to lose weight. The references start out subtle, but eventually become a main focus of the video. Andrew calls this an “implied CTA” that generates leads by inspiring viewers to take the next step.

A great testimonial video needs no call to action. It actually should create a moment that inspires people to do the next search … It doesn’t need a button, it just invites people who are so inspired to actually check out the next step of the product.

If you want to try this for yourself, all you need to do is start thinking about how you can frame your customer stories more like, well, stories. Connect with viewers on a personal or emotional level, and tease out the results so they get curious to learn more. Then, when it comes time to ask them for something (like an email address), they’re far more likely to say yes.

6. Generate word-of-mouth leads in online communities

For freelancers, consultants, and smaller marketing agencies, you might have to take a slightly different approach to lead generation. While you can still build lists using lead magnets on your website and landing pages, a lot of your success will also come from word of mouth and social interactions.

For example, Nichole Elizabeth DeMeré, B2B SaaS Consultant, says their go-to lead generation strategy has been to build sincere connections with other people in both online and offline marketing communities.

Being an active member of my favorite communities has led me to receive leads from other members, because I’m demonstrating expertise in that domain.

Nichole says that being an active community member on websites like Growth Hackers has often led to them becoming a part of the team, responsible for either community management or growth.

This is a mindset shift from traditional lead generation campaigns. As you build relationships and demonstrate expertise, people will naturally start to think of you or your company for future opportunities. The key is to be genuinely helpful and selfless in your interactions, and to try to build actual friendships with other members of the community.

The thing is, ‘getting leads’ was never my end goal for any of these communities. I was just actively building relationships by bringing value to others.

7. Promote a personalized template that solves a problem

The right template on the right page can be a powerful tool for generating leads. That’s because visitors are willing to give up their personal information in exchange for something practical they can actually use.

But while traditional templates are usually just generic PDF downloads, Ross Simmonds, digital marketing strategist, says you can get better results by making a downloadable template that’s more personalized and interactive.

Almost every audience loves a template. If you can think about a simple template that arms your audience with the steps they need to take to solve a problem, it can be a great win. Even better: Make it an interactive template that gives the user the ability to download it at the end.

As an example, Ross points towards this Free Privacy Policy Generator created by Shopify.

Privacy policies are one of those things that ecommerce business owners know they need, but probably don’t have time to create. And while Shopify could have given their visitors a sample policy or instructions on how to create their own, instead they decided to go above and beyond by building a personalized template generator.

The form you fill out to generate your privacy policy serves two purposes. Not only does it help personalize the template with your company info, but it also lets Shopify follow up meaningfully with every lead that uses the tool. How cool is that?

The template approach is interesting because there’s a true value exchange. If you’re offering a template that is closely aligned with your product or service it can be both a rewarding user experience and a rewarding lead generation tactic.

When you’re coming up with your own lead generation ideas, think about value. “What problem can I solve for my audience?”

Sure, you don’t wanna give everything away to get somebody’s contact information—it’d put you outta business. But it’s important to remember that generating leads is an exchange of value with your audience. They get something, you get something. Give and take. 

Just make sure they feel like they got their email’s worth. 

8. Access new audiences with cross-promotion campaigns

Cross-promotion isn’t a new idea—but it’s something too few marketers think about when it comes to lead generation.

The hard part, of course, is finding the right brand to partner with. If the other company is too similar, then your audiences might already be overlapped. (See also: Competitor.) If the other company isn’t similar enough, then you run the risk of promoting to people who just don’t care about your brand or products.

This is where a bit of outside-the-box thinking can come in handy. Britney Muller (formerly Senior SEO Scientist at Moz) points to this particularly clever example of cross-promotion between Hydrate IV Bar and Live Love Lash:

Rather than partner with another health or fitness company for their cross-promotion, the marketers at Hydrate IV Bar decided to try a different strategy. They thought about different places where their target customers might be available to try an IV bar, and struck up a smart partnership based on that:

The Hydrate IV Bar team was brilliant in thinking outside the box for local lead gen! In what instances are people in a position of stillness/rest where they could also benefit from IV therapy? Lash extensions! This cross-marketing has done very well for both businesses and feels like an efficient use of time for their customers.

And the thing is, there are all sorts of unique cross-promotion opportunities available that marketers might miss. Let’s say you’re a running shoe company, for example. The obvious cross-promotion opportunity would be a sports store, right? But you could also partner with a gym or training facility, and target athletes in the places where they spend the most time. Or, heck—how about a dog training workshop for folks with energetic puppers?

The beauty of a lead generation campaign that leverages co-marketing is both companies get exposure to a whole new audience. Rather than targeting the same people over and over, you’re suddenly talking to lots who’ve never heard of you before—and that can make ’em more receptive to hearing you out.

9. Experiment with new types of content (and act on what works)

Sometimes, the best lead magnets can develop outta projects that have very little to do with your actual business. If you dig into related topics, you can discover whole segments of customers who otherwise might not have been exposed to your brand or marketing.

And when it comes to side projects, Ryan Robinson is a self-described aficionado. Once, he launched a public challenge on his blog to validate a random business idea in under 30 days with only $500.

The project took up a lot of Ryan’s time for that month, even though it was something he was doing on the side. He figured it would just be an interesting way to educate readers on how to validate their business ideas, and perhaps bring in some new audiences to his blog. But he was surprised by the number of leads he was able to generate as a result.

I saw a sizable surge in traffic during my first week of the challenge. Throughout the course of the full month as I updated the challenge post, I picked up almost 3,000 new subscribers on my blog.

To take advantage of all these new leads, Ryan even built a new course based around his learning.

A couple months after the challenge wrapped up, I launched a course about validating ideas to that new audience … This new group of subscribers that tuned in and kept a close eye on my challenge were very qualified leads, and that course ended up generating over $15,000 in revenue during just the first week of open enrollment.

What do they say? “No bad ideas in a brainstorm?” Try approaching lead gen campaigns with a similar philosophy. Experiment. Create new types of content, content on new topics, new content formats. You never know which one is gonna catch fire—and when it does, be sure you’re ready to collect the… smoke.

(That’s a bad analogy. Leads. Collect the leads, is what we mean.)

10. Entertain your audience with a surprising quiz

Online quizzes have been around for years, but many marketers still haven’t discovered their potential for lead generation. They’re powerful because they’re so compelling—visitors actually have fun filling them out, and then get super curious about the results. (“Why yes, I do want to know which piece of IKEA furniture best represents my personality… LACK? This is bullshit.”)

To find a creative quiz example, we went to the quizmaster herself, Chanti Zak. Chanti is a quiz funnel strategist and copywriter who specializes in creating quizzes for lead gen, and really brings a special flair to the quiz creation process.

As an example, she shared this saucy quiz she created to target entrepreneurs for Jenna Kutcher’s website.

The key to a great quiz? You’ve got to surprise and delight visitors with every click, so they stay engaged throughout the process. Throw them a couple curveballs along the way, and then hit ‘em with results that speak to their unique situation.

The results go deep into what uniquely positions you to create a successful business. The custom results meet people where they’re at and are intentionally designed to empower them to take action.

To attract the most leads, you’ll want to create a quiz that speaks directly to your brand and target market. For this example, Chanti created playful questions and answers that really get in the headspace of a budding entrepreneur.

When this interactive and personalized approach is the first impression someone has of your brand, your chances of converting them from onlooker to customer are exponentially higher than with a generic lead magnet.

And the strategy seems to have worked too, with this quiz alone generating over 100,000 leads.

In thinking through your own lead generation ideas, don’t forget that entertainment is valuable, too. People don’t wanna be lectured. (Oh jeez, are we lecturing?) Think about ways you can make your lead magnet delightful and engaging. Life’s too serious as it is—inject a little fun into your marketing campaigns, wouldya? 

Ready to launch more creative lead generation campaigns?

Of course, we’re only scratching the surface with these 10 ideas. There are all sorts of different ways to generate leads, including more tried and true methods. You could host a webinar, offer a free ebook download, run a contest, or buy ads on social media. The opportunities are almost endless.

Whatever you try, the most important thing to remember is this: In order to generate qualified leads, you need to offer up valuable content. Give those top-of-funnel leads something that’ll educate, entertain, inform, or inspire. And for the best results, be sure to pair your lead magnet with an optimized landing page that drives your visitors to take action.

But here at Unbounce, we know that there’s more to a landing page than looks. We want the kind of page that won’t embarrass you when you bring it home to your CMO. One that you can really, you know… build a campaign with.

What we really want is landing pages that convert.

Learn all about high-converting landing pages:

• What a high-converting landing page even is
• The average conversion rate for landing pages
• Best practices for building high-converting landing pages
• Examples of high-converting landing pages

What is a high-converting landing page?

In the simplest terms, a high-converting landing page is a landing page that has a higher-than-average conversion rate. It’s got all them elements that get visitors to take action: persuasive copy (with an irresistible value proposition), bangin’ design and structure (with perfectly-chosen images), and a heaping scoop o’ social proof. 

Of course, there’s no single formula for creating high-converting landing pages. (Although we’ve got some best practices to help you do it consistently below.) We’ve seen beautiful, compelling pages that just can’t buy a conversion. We’ve also seen landing pages built by a toddler (or look like it, anyway) that convert half their visitors.

There’s also the question of traffic quality. If your page is getting a lot of traffic from poorly-targeted ads, your conversion rate is going to be lower than it would be with more qualified visitors. Keep these things in mind before judging your own pages too harshly.

What’s the average conversion rate for landing pages?

“Hold on, Unbounce!” you shout at your computer. “You didn’t say what the average landing page conversion rate is!”

Oh, right you are. We’re getting ahead of ourselves.

The average conversion rate for a landing page is 9.7%. That means only about 1 in 10 people who reach your landing page will complete your call to action—buy your product, download your ebook, trial your software. 

But there are lots of variables. Lead generation landing pages (where visitors need to fill out a contact form) typically have lower conversion rates, whereas click-through landing pages often perform better because the conversion goal is much simpler.

Conversion rates also vary between industries. For example, ecommerce landing pages have an average conversion rate of 12.9%. Real estate landing pages convert at 7.4%. Entertainment landing pages have a whopping 18.1% average conversion rate.

The point? A great conversion rate for you will be different than the rate for your marketing peers, or that store down the street, or your dog. Check out the Conversion Benchmark Report to find out what “high-converting” means for your campaigns. (And learn some data-backed optimizations while you’re at it.)

How do you build landing pages that convert?

(“Yeah, yeah, take me to the high-converting landing page examples!”)

People have created a lot of landing pages with Unbounce (like, so many, you guys)—so we think we’ve got a pretty good understanding of what makes a page convert. Over the years, it’s become clear that nearly all successful landing pages have some key elements in common. (And you better believe our landing page templates were built with these principles in mind.)

High-converting landing pages:

• Have a strong, contextual hero shot and supporting imagery
  Your hero shot (the primary image or video on your landing page above the fold) is the first thing visitors are going to focus on, so you’d better make it captivating. Show your product or service in the context of use: demonstrate how it works and make it easy for people to visualize themselves enjoying the benefits.
• Present a single and focused call to action
  Your call to action (CTA) is the one thing you want visitors to do on your page and your primary conversion metric. Make sure your CTA is obvious (from a design perspective) and compelling (from a copy perspective). Best practice is generally to remove any secondary links that might cause someone to leave your page before converting through your CTA, including site navigation.
• Clearly state your value proposition with a compelling header and subhead
  Why should visitors accept your call to action? Use your headline and subheadline to articulate your value proposition, clearly stating the benefits of your offer and what makes you different from your competitors.
• Outline the features and benefits (with emphasis on the latter)
  Sure, people need to know what your product or service does, but they’re much more likely to convert if they understand the benefits they’ll receive by following through with your CTA. Benefits-oriented messaging (as we’ll see in some examples) is one of the best ways to drive conversions.
• Include testimonials and other forms of social proof
  People are much more likely to convert on your landing page if they believe that others have done it before them and have been happy with the results. Social proof—testimonials, reviews, partner logos—can be a fast and effective way to build credibility with your prospects. (What’s the difference between a prospect and a lead, anyway?)

Some of the best examples of high-converting landing pages

Before we dive into our high-converting landing pages examples, let’s set some ground rules. All of the pages featured below have had at least 500 visitors on the low end, though many have had more than 100,000. They’re also all converting at a rate of at least 30%.

With that out of the way, here are 15 high-converting landing page examples from Unbounce customers (with conversion tips from the people who actually built ’em).

1. Promo

Industry: Social Media / Conversion Rate: 46.94%

Promo’s high-converting hint: Use video to increase visitor engagement and drive conversions.

If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it at least several more times: using video on your landing page is a great way to boost engagement and crank up your conversion rate. In fact, including some moving pictures on your page can increase conversions by as much as 80%. A worthwhile investment, no?

Promo thought so, too, which is why they included a ton of video content on this landing page for their video creation service—from the header, to the explainer video, to the sample videos that visitors can actually use in their own marketing.

Noted Yael Miriam Klass, Content Lead at Promo:

We specialize in creating converting videos that attract viewers and elicit action.

To that end, our landing page has a beautiful and dynamic header video taking up the first fold, overlaid with text that shows a clear value proposition.

Still, video is just part of the equation. You want visitors to convert, and that means getting them to follow through with your call to action. Don’t worry—Yael’s on it: “No landing page can make an impact without direct text and an eye-popping CTA button on the first fold.” Promo nailed those elements, then topped it all off with a swack of testimonials and strong client logos. Great job.

2. edX

Industry: Education / Conversion Rate: 52.68%

edX’s high-converting hint: Simplify your pitch and make the benefits crystal clear.

Us marketers tend to be so close to our products and services that we can sometimes overload prospects with too much information. “Yes, our core offering is X, but how ’bout these bells? What about them whistles?” No, they probably didn’t know about those extra benefits—but at this stage, they probably didn’t need to.

On the landing pages for their online courses, edX’s Senior Growth Marketer Josh Grossman chose to pare the message down to just the main points he wanted to visitors to take away. “Rather than get bogged down in the details of the course, we made it easy for people to understand what they’ll learn using just a few bullet points.” That, and an unambiguous head and subhead followed by solid social proof.

“In our testing, shorter copy worked better than longer copy,” Josh added. “Either you want to learn Python, or you don’t.”

That’s an insight we should all take to heart. Some people aren’t going to want what you’ve got, no matter how much extra information you throw at them. Better to save your breath (or word count) and focus on the people who do.

3. Simply Business

Industry: Insurance / Conversion Rate: 62.26%

Simply Business’s high-converting hint: Present complicated products in an uncomplicated way.

Insurance has always been a complex product. Between liabilities, deductibles, prohibited risks, and loads of other terms we had to Google, just signing up can feel like a crash course in law. And by the time you’re covered, you still might not understand what being covered even really means.

Simply Business wants to change that, and it lives up to its name with this landing page that makes business insurance feel, well, simple.

Rather than risk overwhelming visitors with a ton of information about their policies, Simply Business keeps things light. The headline immediately soothes some of the most common concerns about insurance—that it’s complicated, that it’s expensive—and the bulleted how-to instructions make signup feel like a breeze.

It’s only after visitors click through the call to action that Simply Business introduces some friction in a multi-step form—but by then, visitors have already overcome that first mental hurdle and are much more likely to see it through.

4. Later

Industry: Social Media / Conversion Rate: 57.92%

Later’s high-converting hint: Maintain conversion scent and balance your incentives.

Humans are fickle creatures. They’re easily distracted. They get confused. Mostly, they’re bad. As a marketer, that means you often need to hold their hands—or, for our purposes, hold their noses—through each step of the purchase process.

Conversion scent is the principle of keeping written and visual cues consistent all through the consumer journey. That’s what Later did for this lead generation campaign, as Chin Tan, the company’s Communication Design Lead, explains:

We maintained conversion scent throughout the campaign. The offer matches what’s in the ad, in the email, in the creative before the landing page, and after the page as well.

Chin also acknowledges that the simplicity of the offer contributed to the page’s success. “It’s clear right away what you’re getting: you’re exchanging your email for access to the guide. The form isn’t too long and only requests pertinent information.” Asking for too many personal details at this top stage of the funnel can spook visitors. Make sure your ask matches the value of the incentive you’re offering.

5. The Listings Lab

Industry: Real Estate

The Listings Lab’s high-converting hint: Use straightforward design and focus on the offer.

Another lead generation page, our example from The Listings Lab isn’t the flashiest on the list, but don’t let that fool you: this simple page packs a punch.

First, let’s talk design. The Listings Lab has done a great job of condensing all of the page content into a small space without making anything feel crowded. Visitors don’t need to scroll to understand what’s on offer and why it’s valuable.

“A mock-up of the download helps people feel that it’s a well-produced, real thing that they can read,” offered Yves Lenouvel, Marketing Director at The Listings Lab. “Bold text on the form’s big, colorful button draws people’s attention to the CTA.” Not to mention the directional cue, which is another nice touch.

Still, it’s the benefits-oriented copy that puts this page over the top. The Listings Lab really zeroes in on key pain points for realtors—cold calling, poor leads, long hours—and offers an alternative. “The first piece of copy people see is speaking to the visitors’ pain and then presenting them with a solution.” Read the guide, make more money, get your life back. What’s not to like?

Bonus points for a privacy statement that instills confidence while keepin’ it casual.

6. Twillory

Industry: Clothing / Conversion Rate: 46.85%

Twillory’s high-converting hint: Build custom experiences for your mobile visitors.

We don’t need to tell you that mobile consumers should be a priority. (Although we have been telling you for, like, ever.) By 2017, mobile had become the dominant source of web traffic worldwide at 50.3%—a segment that expanded last year, reaching 52.2%. It’s no longer enough to think of mobile consumers as part of your online audience. In 2019, they’re often the majority. (Check those GA reports, people.)

Aditya Bagri, Digital Automation Manager at WITHIN, described how his outfit is adjusting to a world in which consumers’ first experience with a brand is often on their phones:

Our landing page creation strategy is mobile-first, and optimizing for mobile helps us get first-time viewers down the funnel.

Better than merely building mobile-responsive pages, many brands are creating separate experiences for their mobile visitors.

Enter WITHIN and Twillory. On desktop, this landing page includes videos and GIFs—elements that have been shown to increase visitor engagement and help drive conversions. On mobile, though, we get a stripped-down version that maintains the visual appeal of its big brother while also ensuring lightning-fast load times on cellular connections.

And Twillory gets an extra nod for using an Unbounce popup to give visitors additional conversion incentives.

7. TyresOnTheDrive

Industry: Automotive

TyresOnTheDrive’s high-converting hint: Be clear in your headline and then back it up with social proof.

When it comes to landing page copy, clarity leads to conversions. Your visitors should know within seconds exactly what you’re offering and why they need to care. If they don’t, they’re likely to bounce.

This page from TyresOnTheDrive illustrates the importance of clarity with a headline that immediately conveys the value proposition: “Expert Tyre Fitting At Your Home or Work.” Right away, we know the differentiator is that we don’t have to go to a mechanic—they’re coming to us. Coupled with a quick how-to, a load of testimonials, and a big-brand logo collage, we have enough information about TyresOnTheDrive to make a purchase decision in a very short period of time.

The result? Conversions through the roof.

But great conversion rates aren’t an excuse to stop testing. Chris Wood, TyresOnTheDrive’s Senior UX Designer, described how the company has played with other pitch angles yet keeps coming back to the fundamentals. “We’re finding that more benefit-oriented messaging seems to convert better than pushing offers and promotions.”

8. ooba

Industry: Finance / Conversion Rate: 35.57%

ooba’s high-converting hint: Use a descriptive call to action that tells visitors what’ll happen next.

Yes, it’s important that your visitors know what you’re offering the moment they hit your page. But just as essential is that visitors know what you want them to do—and what will happen when they do it.

This page for ooba (designed by digital agency Signpost) provides a great example of an effective call to action. At a glance, the copy—along with the contextual cues and supporting information—tells us what we can expect when we fill out the form.

“The form is positioned at the top of the page, above the fold, which makes the action we want the user to take clear from the outset,” said Adam Lange, CEO at Signpost. “The contrasting color draws the user’s attention to the end goal, and the descriptive button confirms the action they’re about to take.”

The form asks for a lot of information, but that might actually help build credibility in this context—we’re trying to get a home loan, not sign up for a newsletter. It makes sense that we’d need to provide some details if we’re expecting to be pre-qualified.

9. ClaimCompass

Industry: Legal / Conversion Rate: 30.02%

ClaimCompass’s high-converting hint: Ensure visitors have enough information to convert (and then ask them again).

What’s that old saying? “If at first they don’t convert, try, try again”? (It’s not. Please don’t say that to people.)

However, that’s precisely what ClaimCompass did for this landing page targeting travelers who’d been on delayed flights to, from, and within the European Union, where legislation mandates that airlines pay compensation for significant travel disruptions.

Alexander Sumin, the company’s Co-Founder and CMO, described the surprisingly difficult task of getting people to collect their no-strings cash.

We tried to provide some valuable information and back it with authority—not only the social proof and media logos, but briefly explaining how it all works.

That adds more credibility to the offer, which is important when you’re promising free money.

ClaimCompass recognized that they’d be talking to customers with varying degrees of EU regulatory expertise. (Any GDPR-heads out there?) As such, they knew some people would have enough information to convert right away while others would need some educating.

“The entire landing page is designed to make people click on one of the three CTA buttons,” Alex explained. “If the offer is appealing, they don’t need to scroll further. If it isn’t, the sections below provide more clarity on the process, with images, benefits, and social proof. Each scroll is supposed to get the users closer to clicking the CTA.”

10. Extreme Lounging

Industry: Furniture

Extreme Lounging’s high-converting hint: Run giveaway campaigns to drive leads like crazy.

Extreme Lounging might have the simplest landing page in this list from a copy and design perspective—but, boy, it sure is effective.

The whole page amounts to a hero image, headline, and email form, prompting visitors to register for a chance to win a limited edition chair. There are no listed benefits, no competitive differentiators. (Presumably Extreme Lounging has done some of that legwork before people hit this page.) Here, it’s all about building leads. You want this chair? Cool, give us your email. No reason to make things complicated.

Some marketers will object to the basic style, but it’s hard to argue with Extreme Lounging’s results. They’ve been running a new contest (with a new landing page) each month for over half a year, and although they prefer to keep the exact number under wraps, suffice to say that their conversion rate would make you blush.

It just goes to show: no matter how good you look or sweet you talk, nothing motivates people quite like free.

11. onX

Industry: Navigation / Conversion Rate: 61.15%

onX’s high-converting hint: Match visitor search intent in written and visual content.

Something we at Unbounce have really hammered home over the years is the importance of message match. When someone clicks a Google ad for, say, topographic hunting maps, they expect to land on a page with copy that aligns with their original search intent. Even better? A page that immediately demonstrates the searcher is in the right place through the accompanying imagery.

For a great example, look no further than this page from onX, which (at the time of writing) sports a conversion rate over 50% higher than the average. We asked Ryan Watson, User Acquisition Manager at onX, why he thought the landing page has been so successful:

The landing page creative showed the user exactly what they were looking for from a PPC Google Ads search click.

Correlating the search with an exact visual cue is a must with product feature landing pages and search strategy.

Ryan also credits A/B testing for onX’s high-converting landing page. “We tested many different CTAs, and we found one that worked and got a massive click-through rate.” Hey, landing page best practices never hurt, either.

12. Investing Shortcuts

Industry: Finance / Conversion Rate: 51.32%

Investing Shortcuts’s high-converting hint: Create urgency in your offer whenever possible.

Fear of missing out (FOMO) is one of the most powerful tools in every marketer’s arsenal. People hate it when their peers are having fun, being cool, or making money without them. It’s petty and vindictive, sure, but it’s also innately human. (Man, we’re picking on our species today.)

This landing page for Investing Shortcuts (built by Strikepoint Media) harnesses FOMO to push conversions into overdrive. The copy highlights the meteoric rise of Bitcoin’s value and urges visitors to get in while the gettin’s still good. “This page had the most success when Bitcoin was hot, so it was the right offer and the right time,” explained Jeremy Blossom, Co-Founder and CEO of Strikepoint. Anyone out there still HODLing?

Bitcoin’s popularity aside, a lot of what makes this a high-converting page comes down to good fundamentals. “While it isn’t the prettiest page, the copy connects with readers and builds on their interest in the subject matter while clearly communicating the value of the guide,” Jeremy noted. “The page also uses the ‘featured on’ logos and a high-profile quote for social proof.”

13. MyTutor

Industry: Education / Conversion Rate: 55.29%

MyTutor’s high-converting hint: Present the right offer to the right people at the right time.

So much of a campaign’s success comes down to effective targeting. It’s not just about reaching your target demographic—it’s also about presenting them with highly-targeted offers that make sense in the context of their experience at that particular moment.

Our previous example from Investing Shortcuts demonstrates how an offer can be well-timed for a major cultural event (like the crypto-frenzy of late 2017). This landing page from MyTutor, though, goes one step further. It shows how marketers can connect with their audience at a significant (and even deeply personal) moment in their individual lives, during which the offer is especially meaningful.

Gemma Pearson, Digital Marketing Manager at MyTutor, explains: “This landing page was a fundamental part of our exam results day campaign. It was designed to encourage students who hadn’t achieved the grades they needed to get back on track with a tutor to support their needs.”

Most of us have done poorly on a test, and (I’m comfortable speaking for all of us here) it sucks. The last thing Gemma wanted to do with this page is appear to be scolding or lecturing students that might need a little help.

The relevant, positive messaging—along with timing and a clear CTA—were key factors in this landing page’s success.

It provided messaging that both empathized with their situation and offered a clear solution to get the results they needed.

Now that’s how you make a pitch that resonates.

14. College Board

Industry: Education / Conversion Rate: 77.38%

College Board’s high-converting hint: Set an expiry date on your call to action.

Like the past couple of landing pages, this one from College Board—a nonprofit aimed at expanding access to higher education—is all about using time to motivate conversions.

The goal here is getting would-be college applicants (who’ve already taken the PSAT/NMSQT) to register for an upcoming SAT and improve their chances of being accepted at the school of their choice. That oughta be incentive enough, but sometimes (and I’m drawing heavily on my own meandering academic experience) students need a kick in the pants. And if there’s one thing they understand, it’s deadlines.

College Board makes it super clear how long students still have to sign up for the next SAT by including a countdown just below the top CTA and a hard cutoff date alongside the bottom. Coupled with copy that’s one part urgency (“Seats are filling up fast!”) and another part encouragement (“You’re already prepared!”), this landing page successfully urges students to take the next step in their academic careers.

15. FilterEasy

Industry: Home Repair / Conversion Rate: 34.52%

FilterEasy’s high-converting hint: It’s not always clear why a landing page is successful—and that’s okay, too.

Every so often, you’ll build a landing page that strikes conversion gold. It’s got a higher form-fill rate than you’ve ever seen. It’s driving revenue like crazy. It’s cutting down challengers like Russell Crowe in that movie about gladiators. (What was it called?)

That’s what happened to Rianna Riddle, Growth Marketing Director at FilterEasy. She built a killer page, then found herself grappling with a question we’ve often asked ourselves: what exactly is making this page successful?

“Honestly, we’re still constantly testing to figure out what’s so great about this landing page,” Ri explained. “We’ve challenged it several times, and none of the challengers have beat this champion page—even the ones we were absolutely convinced would beat it.”

The reality is that building high-converting landing pages isn’t an exact science. Sure, there are best practices that can improve your page’s chances of success, and Ri employs them here: straightforward landing page structure & design, strong benefits statements, great social proof, compelling offer. Ultimately, though, the only way we can be confident that we’ve achieved our best page is by continuing to test.

To get the most sales from your ecommerce campaigns, you need to send your visitors to high-converting landing pages.

Unlike product pages, ecommerce landing pages aren’t just about big logos and shiny product photos—they’re about giving shoppers the information, direction, and experience they need to smash that “Buy Now” button. Let’s take a look at some hand-picked ecommerce landing page examples to make 2023 your best-selling year yet.

Everything you need to know about landing pages for ecommerce:

• What is an ecommerce landing page?
• Do I really need a landing page for ecommerce?
• Why not just use product pages instead?
• Examples of ecommerce landing pages

What’s an ecommerce landing page, anyhow?

An ecommerce landing page is a page designed with only one goal, whether that’s getting visitors to buy your product or pay for your service. It’s a dedicated page usually built for a specific ecommerce campaign—and when it’s paired with persuasive PPC ads, it can help you convert a higher percentage of your visitors.

“Why’s that, Unbounce?” Oh, hey, good question!

Unlike regular web pages (which typically have lots of links and distractions), landing pages are entirely focused on your call to action. That means there’s nothing for visitors to do on the page except convert—which means they typically do convert at a higher rate.

Bottom line? You get more sales from the same ad spend and traffic.

Do I really need a landing page for ecommerce?

If you want to get the most possible conversions from your marketing campaigns, you should definitely use an ecommerce landing page. But if you need more reasons to use ecom LPs (as the kids like to call ’em), here are some of our favorites:

• Launch campaigns faster. Web development is a persistent bottleneck for marketers, and it makes it harder to run seasonal campaigns or promote new products. Because ecommerce landing pages are separate from your website, you can often build and launch them faster—especially when you’re working with an ecommerce landing page builder.
• Deliver clearer messaging. When somebody clicks on your ad or email, you’ve set certain expectations in the messaging (by talking about a particular product benefit or discount). If a visitor lands on a generic product page that doesn’t have the same messaging, they’re less likely to make a purchase. Ecommerce landing pages can be customized for every campaign, ensuring perfect message match and a more consistent buyer journey.
• Target specific audiences. Some customers care about Benefit X—others are only interested in Benefit Y. Your product page can’t emphasize the most important information for each audience, but ecom landing pages can. Create targeted ads for each audience, then send them to the custom landing page that’s specifically designed to address their needs.
• Provide a better experience. There’s nothing worse than clicking on an ad for a particular promotion, then ending up someplace that says absolutely nothing about it. Because landing pages are usually paired with matching ads or emails and their messaging is consistent with one specific offer, visitors get a more seamless experience from first click to checkout.

Landing pages vs product pages: Which one should you use?

Pairing ads with product pages can lead to some pretty underwhelming results. According to Monetate, visitors convert half as often when they’re on a product page compared to a custom landing page experience.

That’s because most product pages don’t follow ecommerce best practices, let alone the larger online shopping trends shaping consumers’ expectations. They have boilerplate copy and design that tries to target everybody at the same time (and doesn’t sync up with your paid advertisements). Even worse—most product pages are stuffed with shiny links that end up distracting shoppers and keep them browsing instead of buying.

With landing pages, you can focus a visitor’s attention on a single product or offering and lead them on a personalized journey to purchase. They’re more targeted, customizable, and twice as likely to convert.

27 ecommerce landing page examples

1. LIV Watches
2. TRIBE
3. Ascent Footwear
4. BoxyCharm
5. Thistle
6. waterdrop
7. Infinite Moon
8. Solo Stove
9. Nathan Sports
10.  Meowbox
11. The Savile Row Company
12. The Woodworker’s Guild of America
13. The Coffee Network
14. Heyday
15. Xpand Laces
16. Marley Spoon
17. Spa De Soleil
18. ColdCalm
19. Gradshop
20. AWAY Series
21. Mr. Draper
22. Porcelain
23. Talo Brush
24. Vanity Planet
25. Awayco
26. Patrick Adair Designs
27. Troubadour

Example #1: LIV Watches

Industry: Apparel
Model: Storefront
Page Type: Click-Through

What this ecommerce example reveals: You need to show off your product in different ways

Typical online storefronts have a pretty standard approach to showing off their products. There’s probably a carousel of images at the top of the page and… well, that’s about it. But this example from LIV Watches shows how powerful it can be to spotlight your product throughout the page in multiple ways. 

In this case, LIV is featuring a special edition wristwatch in partnership with pro cyclist TJ Eisenhart. Notice how, as you scroll down, they show the watch featured in different lights, different scenery, and different situations. You get to see a video overview of the watch, close-ups of the various features, and even a pretty slick side-profile that really shows off the craftsmanship.

It’s a great example of how ecommerce marketers can break the mold of “traditional” product landing pages to show customers the details they actually want to see.

What else we love about this landing page:

• LIV creates a sense of urgency with this limited edition product. If you want this particular wristwatch, you know that you need to make a purchase decision fast. (Tick, tock.)
• This brand is—in part—about lifestyle. That really comes through in the video, which explores idealistic sentiments like passion, aspiration, and truth to oneself.
• All of the photography (along with the video and additional animations) really gives customers an up-close look at the craftsmanship, so they know exactly what they’re buying.

Example #2: TRIBE

Industry: Food & Beverage
Model: Storefront & Subscription
Page Type: Click-Through

What this ecommerce example reveals: You can make special offers to close more customers

Setting up limited-time deals or special offers on your regular ecommerce shop can be a huge pain. Standard product pages often don’t properly show off a deal, and they can be pretty rigid if, for example, you only want certain people to be able to access the promo.

That’s why this example from TRIBE is worth looking over. Their marketing team set up an “Exclusive Shortlist Offer” on a landing page, so they could carefully control who the promotion went out to—rather than make it available to every single visitor who happened across their website.

Better still, because this is a landing page built using Unbounce, the team from TRIBE had complete control over how they presented the promotion. To help sell the offer, the team incorporated the value of the deal into everything from the CTA (“Enjoy Your First TRIBE Box for £2”) to the subscription details (“Custom built pack and tailored to your needs”). Very smart!

What else we love about this landing page:

• The focus on athletics throughout the page—including a great training photo underneath the hero section—helps visitors understand the value of these natural performance products, and who they are meant for. (Hint: not me.)
• The emphasis on social proof helps make the offer more compelling as well. Not only are there testimonials from a recognizable customer review website, but there are also familiar media outlets and supermarket logos to increase your confidence.

Example #3: Ascent Footwear

Industry: Apparel
Model: Storefront
Page Type: Click-Through

What this ecommerce example reveals: You should focus on the product details your customers care about most

If you’re selling apparel that’s more function than fashion (like a shoe that’s designed to correct your walking stride), it’s important to put emphasis on the mechanics of how your product works. Case in point: this example from Ascent Footwear.

Not only does this landing page show off exactly what goes into each shoe, but it also explains why that makes such a difference. (Now, I just need to figure out what the heck “ample lateral stability” means.) The page removes all the fluff and focuses on answering one very specific question: How does this shoe actually work?

Compare this to most product pages, which often get lost in the details that don’t matter as much. Manufacturer references, lengthy product descriptions, related products—if your customers don’t actually care about these things, they might just be distracting them from making a purchase.

What else we love about this landing page:

• Ascent uses an expanded view of its shoe to showcase the technical components that contribute to its comfort and durability.
• By including an explainer video, Ascent is able to elaborate on the value propositions of the product without taking up much space on the page.
• The clean, single-column layout and short length mean that visitors aren’t being overloaded with information. That way, they can focus on Ascent’s core message.

Example #4: BoxyCharm

Industry: Cosmetic
Model: Subscription
Page Type: Lead Generation

What this ecommerce example reveals: You can use landing pages to build hype for product launches

Launching a new product is always exciting—but getting the word out to customers can sometimes be a challenge. That’s where this example from BoxyCharm comes into the mix. 

To help promote their new upscale beauty subscription box, their marketing team put together a promotional landing page that builds anticipation for the product and directs interested shoppers to enter their email address. This lead generation tactic proved to be quite useful—when the subscription box officially launched, the team at BoxyCharm already had a big list of shoppers who were interested.

Brains and beauty? This example really is the full package. ;)

What else we love about this landing page:

• The sleek layout, on-brand color scheme, and parallax scroll effect all demonstrate that BoxyCharm has a flair for design. Nice.
• The landing page copy helps BoxyCharm’s brand identity with the #hashtag generation, and the social links included make it easy for visitors to engage further.
• The video gives us a look at the process behind the product and shows that BoxyCharm hears (and acts on) customer feedback.

Example #5: Thistle

Industry: Food & Beverage
Model: Subscription
Page Type: Click-Through

What this ecommerce example reveals: You should always optimize your landing page for mobile devices

Making purchases on your phone is the new norm. According to Google, when people have a negative experience on mobile, they are 62% less likely to make a purchase from your brand in the future. That means for every page you create, you should be optimizing it for smartphones and tablets as well.

This example from Thistle shows how simple it can be to optimize your page for mobile devices. Using Unbounce, they created a landing page for their plant-based meal subscription service that looks stunning regardless of which type of device you’re using.

What else we love about this landing page:

• The page does a great job highlighting the unique value proposition of this meal subscription service: nutrition-optimized, ready to eat, plant-based meals made with high-quality ingredients.
• Thistle knows its audience. They understand how health-conscious their subscribers are, and made sure to include extra info about how each Thistle meal is curated to include the right mix of macronutrients, vitamins, and minerals.

Example #6: waterdrop

Industry: Food & Beverage
Model: Storefront
Page Type: Click-Through

What this ecommerce example reveals: You can target specific audiences to get better results

While your product pages typically have to be generic enough to speak to everybody at the same time, you can build landing pages to speak specifically to one particular audience or use case. This example from waterdrop sets the bar for targeted messaging—and, by converting more than half of all visitors, it makes a compelling case for you to do the same.

Everything on this page is meant for one audience: women. Contextual shots? Women. Testimonials? Women. This brand knows who they’re talking to, and their strategy seems to be working.

What else we love about this landing page:

• The design is spectacular and complements the product well. Can colors be flavorful? This landing page says they can, and our abrupt craving for something sweet and fruity makes us believe it.
• The page also does a good job of leveraging social proof by including recognizable media logos and positive customer reviews.

Example #7: Infinite Moon

Industry: Home
Model: Storefront
Page Type: Click-Through

What this ecommerce example reveals: You should always back up your claims with your best testimonials

Any ecommerce marketer will be able to tell you that reviews and testimonials are some of the most powerful tools in your arsenal. And this example from Infinite Moon and Wallaroo Media shows how you can use them more effectively on a landing page to make a sale.

Whereas on a typical product page you might just automatically surface up the latest customer reviews, the testimonials on this page have been carefully curated to help tell the brand story. Each one touches on an important benefit of Infinite Moon pillows: maximum comfort, serious pain relief, and high-quality materials.

What else we love about this landing page:

• Using lightboxes to give visitors an up-close view of the product and provide additional information means that the page isn’t cluttered.
• InfiniteMoon makes good use of the space above the fold, communicating their value prop through a punchy headline and emotive hero shot.

Example #8: Solo Stove

Industry: Cookware
Model: Storefront
Page Type: Click-Through

What this ecommerce example reveals: You can overcome purchase objections using photos and other media

Are you relying on the fact that visitors will actually read your product descriptions? As a copywriter, I know as well as anyone that (and this is hard to admit) text and bullet points will only get you so far when it comes to overcoming purchase objections. A lot of shoppers skim or skip over the content you write, and they usually end up missing those key product details.

With ecommerce landing pages, you have the flexibility to overcome purchase objections in whichever ways you think will resonate most with your shoppers. 

In this example from Solo Stove, their marketing team uses a combination of text and visuals to answer every possible question you might have about the product as you scroll down the page. (“What does it do?” It protects you from the flame. “Where am I gonna store all this?” It all nests inside the stove. “Can you still roast weiners?” With grooved ridges, this shield makes it easier than ever to get your wiener roast on.)

What else we love about this landing page:

• Combining this product promotion with a limited-time 20% off pre-sale offer is a great way to encourage visitors to click through today, rather than wait until tomorrow.
• The footer at the bottom of the page reminds shoppers that they’ll get free shipping, free returns, and a lifetime warranty. All of these promises help to eliminate risk and build trust in the brand.

Example #9: Nathan Sports

Industry: Sport
Model: Storefront
Page Type: Click-Through

What this ecommerce example reveals: You can get more creative with promotions on landing pages

Consistent visual branding is more important than ever, but it does place limits on how imaginative you can be with your product pages. After all, they have to exist within the greater ecosystem of your online store. You can’t just go changing up the color schemes or formatting for every new product release!

But that’s why so many marketers are flexing their creativity with their ecommerce landing pages instead. Take this campaign from Nathan Sports, for example. It’s so different from the rest of their online store that it demands you take notice (and maybe put on some retro 3D glasses while you’re at it).

What else we love about this landing page:

• The theme is so cool, and Nathan fully commits to it—from the loud, neon visuals, to the flashy animations, to the campaign slogan. Awesome.
• This page might feel like it’s from another era, but today’s best practices still apply. Strong headline, benefits-oriented copy, rule- of-three layout—it’s all here.
• Nathan even includes a custom playlist to help runners get pumped with retro jams from Duran Duran, Blondie, and Run DMC. Someone teach us how to run right now!

Example #10: Meowbox

Industry: Pet
Model: Subscription
Page Type: Click-Through

What this ecommerce example reveals: Any landing page can be improved with a couple of cat photos

OK, I’m going to level with you. I was pretty much ready to finish this article… but I just couldn’t resist including this example. Meowbox is a monthly subscription box with toys and treats for your favorite feline. What’s not to love?

What else we love about this landing page:

• It’s one thing for pet owners to say that Meowbox is wonderful, but pairing customer testimonials with pictures of their cats enjoying the treats adds another level of credibility.
• The headline conveys Meowbox’s main value proposition and, paired with the hero shot, helps visitors understand what they’re getting as soon as they hit the page.
• This is a click-through landing page, but Meowbox includes a newsletter signup form as a secondary conversion goal to try and capture those precious email addresses. No lead left behind.

But wait, there’s more! Take a page out of these ecommerce companies’ landing page playbooks

Example #11: The Savile Row Company

The Savile Row Company is a London-based online retailer that offers tailor- and ready-made shirts, suits, and chinos for men, as well as a selection of womenswear. Their website caters to UK, Europe, Australia, and US currencies and they ship all over the world. Smart cookies they are, the folks at Savile Row and their agency, Blimpp, saw this opportunity for targeting and created landing pages for specific segments—like their page for UK shoppers—which to date has converted 74% of thousands of visitors.

That whopper of a conversion rate is likely a reflection of how deeply targeted this page is. It’s not just for UK shoppers, or UK shoppers looking for men’s shirts, but UK shoppers looking for formal men’s shirts. Complete with everything a men’s-formal-shirt-shopper-in-the-UK needs to know about Savile Row’s fits, colors, styles, shipping, and more.

They’ve made great use of the page’s real estate by including a gallery of options and individual calls to action to shop each vertical within them. Slim fit? Navy blue? Button-down collar? Savile Row directs you exactly where you need to go. If you’ve even scrolled down, that is. The hero section has a clear product photo and CTA to grab a deal of three shirts for £80, along with the assurance of free UK returns, free posting and packaging for certain orders, and the credibility of a well-established company. Communicating that right at the top of the page may be all you need to click “Shop Now.”

Example #12: Woodworker’s Guild of America

Woodworker’s Guild of America is a woodworking community that offers tons of instructional and educational videos for woodworkers and woodworking enthusiasts. They have loads of content and products on their site for sale and download—instructional DVDs, online videos, apparel, tools, and more.

In this instance, they’ve cleverly used a landing page to promote their partnership with a popular industry manufacturer and further engage their community. Members can enter the Ultra-Shear Sweepstakes to win a package of Ultra-Shear woodturning tools, a grand prize nearly 54% of visitors so far have signed up to win. 

This page hits the nail on the head (heyoooo) for several reasons. The page itself is simple and uncluttered, letting the prize take the spotlight. A clear graphic of the entire tool bundle and its hefty $1,120 USD value leave nothing up to interpretation, while the large Ultra-Shear logo communicates their alliance with a quality brand. All of this information is located above the fold, along with a simple form to enter. If visitors want more, they’ll find it below with a description of each tool included in the prize, its features and benefits, and a link to find more product details.

Example #13: The Coffee Network

The Coffee Network is an online marketplace based in Australia that connects home brewers, cafe owners, and office managers with local coffee roasters. Through TCN, they can choose from a huge variety of specialty and gourmet coffee and espresso blends to buy individually, as roaster bundles, or wholesale.

Their Coffee Finder landing page, converting at 45%, makes the search for the perfect brew even easier, guiding coffee lovers through a three-step process to customize their order based on roasting method, strength, and flavour preferences. The headline is super clear, benefits-led, and visitor-focused, with supporting copy that explains exactly why visitors should use the Coffee Finder right above a call to action encouraging them to give it a whirl. All of this is laid over a video background of a silky, rich coffee brew in progress.

Bonus points for the “How it Works” headline nudging visitors down the page, succinct instructions conveying the simplicity of the coffee-finding process, and charming iconography as visual communication.

Example #14: Heyday

Heyday is a New York- and LA-based skincare company that aims to make quality skincare and treatments accessible to everyone. They have several brick-and-mortar locations as well as an ecommerce shop and monthly membership, offering in-spa facials and retail skincare, a huge range of products purchasable online, and free expert content.

The page we’ve chosen to highlight—announcing the arrival of a new spa location in Silver Lake—is as simple as it is effective, and a stellar example of using landing pages to generate buzz and gauge interest well before a launch. Its beautiful, colorful design, unmissable emphasis on location, short blurb that summarizes Heyday’s unique selling proposition, and simple one-field form add up to a page that’s converted 65% of several thousand visitors. That means thousands of leads, thousands of validations that Silver Lake is a spot to open up, and of course, thousands of potential customers.

Blending in a chance to win a three-month membership and offering a bonus entry for following Heyday on Instagram certainly don’t hurt either, both as an added incentive to sign up and a chance for Heyday to further engage the local community.

Example #15: Xpand No-Tie Laces

Xpand is a no-tie, elastic shoelace system that can be installed on any shoe or boot to create adjustable, higher performing, fuss-free footwear. Since raising $1.2 million in crowdfunding to support their launch, they’ve quickly expanded their business and product offerings to meet demand.

As a relatively new product, Xpand’s “Freebie” landing page is a particularly smart way to draw in new customers. It offers a totally free pack of laces—no purchase required apart from the $2.99 shipping—so interested visitors can try out the laces before they buy them. 

This page is heavy on building trust—besides the act of backing up their product with a free sample, Xpand has included several nods to their credibility. They let visitors know that over one million packs have already been sold, as well as adding a logo bar of media features (no big deal, they just appeared on Ellen). They also added a handy series of gifs showing how easily the laces can be installed, how they contour to the movement of your foot, and exactly what they look like in visible and hidden mode.

Example #16: Marley Spoon

Marley Spoon is a meal prep service that makes cooking quality, homemade meals super easy and convenient. They deliver fresh, locally-sourced ingredients for meals you’ve selected right to your door, with step-by-step recipes to whip them up in no time.

Their “Perfect Dinner” landing page draws visitors in with drool-inducing photos of a few delicious dinners you can create, then clearly and visually lays out their value propositions and a list of overall benefits to the subscriber. All peppered with bright, clear calls to action to “Start Cooking” once all those food photos have gotten you nice and hungry. The top of the page contains a navigation to see all of the current recipes on offer, learn exactly how their service works, and a gentle CTA to sign up. At this time, the page is converting at a cool 25%.

Not quite ready to sign up? For those on the fence, Marley Spoon has added an Unbounce Popup to get their newsletter. As subscription-based services may have a higher barrier to entry than a one-off purchase, this is a brilliant way to capture leads so they can continue to nurture visitors toward converting, and bring bounced traffic back.  

Example #17: Spa De Soleil

Spa De Soleil is a leading developer of private label, custom, and pre-formulated skin and hair care products. They offer everything from brand consultation, packaging, and graphic design to custom formulation and regulatory guidance for their clients.

This landing page, targeted at private labels, is a clever way of outreaching and educating prospective clients on their services. Its call to action is to download their private label handbook, allowing them to share their expertise and add to their credibility as leaders in the beauty industry. In lieu of a more direct call to action, they’ve decided to promote a content offering. Not only is this a softer approach for the visitor, it gives Spa de Soleil an opportunity to gain info on prospective clients with a detailed form that asks for company, type of business, products they’re interested in, location, and more.

The photo they’ve chosen for the hero section helps convey the research, development, and formulation services they provide—you can trust that they’re the ones behind every product created. They also instill trust with client testimonials and a list of certification logos, including USDA Organic, Natural Products Association, Cruelty Free, and more, backing up their commitment to natural and environmentally-conscious products. At the bottom of the page, they list only their customer service number, which adds to the feeling of helpfulness. It’s all about learning how Spa de Soleil can help the client instead of trying to sell to them right off the bat.

Example #18: ColdCalm

Boiron is a manufacturer of homeopathic medicines with a worldwide reach of 20 foreign subsidiaries and distribution in 50 countries. Their ColdCalm landing page, to promote one of their cold formulas, is a great example of customizing pages for targeted products.

It’s simple and to the point, with a clear headline and list of symptoms ColdCalm treats above two calls to action empathetic to someone who may be or know someone suffering from them—you can either locate a store to find instant relief or purchase online for future sniffles. An overview of benefits, safety, and product differentiators like quick-dissolving tablets and no known drug interactions address any immediate concerns.

Two customer reviews coupled with a list of reputable, well-known stores that sell ColdCalm create that sense of trust especially important in the healthcare industry. An extra touch, particularly for those interested in natural, homeopathic remedies, is a link to learn absolutely everything about the medication, from its ingredients and the symptoms they relieve, to storage and safety, directions, and more.

Example #19: Gradshop

Gradshop is a manufacturer and distributor of premium graduation apparel and accessories. They service over 1,000 schools across the world, from pre-schools to universities—so they have a LOT of orders, customers, and inventory to manage at any given time.

Their landing page to order a free graduation planning kit is a great way to streamline the purchasing and order customization process, and ensure customers are satisfied with their product choice before placing an order. This undoubtedly reduces the load on their support team to fix or return orders after the fact, and creates a better customer experience overall.

There’s no having to guess what’s included in the kit with a bullet list and photo examples detailing every item—a ton of free samples, color swatches, order forms, and a trusty ebook on graduation planning tips. Choosing a longer form with several information fields is a smart choice considering the value the free kit provides and the convenience of getting that information up front. It allows customers to give specific parameters for their order, and Gradshop to collect information to better understand the orderer and cater to their needs.

Example #20: AWAY: The Survival Series

The AWAY Series is a yet-to-launch video game that puts you in the role of the crafty sugar glider as you fight for survival in the wild. It’s another awesome example of using landing pages before a product is out in order to measure interest and lengthen the promotional runway time.

The AWAY pre-order page piques interest with an immersive, story-like layout featuring gorgeous game imagery, video backgrounds, and a video embed of the full game trailer. Information about the game and its features unfold as you scroll down the page and get sucked into the world of AWAY and see it through the sugar glider’s eyes. The call to action is simple—sign up for a newsletter to be on the waiting list. Now, AWAY’s creators have a list of interested players to contact when the game is ready for launch, and a buildup of anticipation they can leverage for promotion.

Example #21: Mr. Draper

Mr. Draper is a curated clothing service for men, providing stylists who consult on your style preference, budget, and sizes before sending a custom clothing box to try on during a five-day window. Buy the items you love, and the ones you don’t will be picked up by the Mr. Draper team.

Their “Your Stylist” landing page, one of their best-performing pages at a 32% conversion rate, is extensive, thorough, and empathetic to the shopper’s needs. It gives the shopper every detail they’d want to know about the Mr. Draper process, brand, benefits, customer testimonials, pricing, frequently asked questions, and stylists, with brightly-colored buttons to start building a style profile calling attention in each section.

While the entirety of the landing page includes oodles of information for any visitors who may need it, the section above the fold may well render that unnecessary. It’s effective enough on its own to engage those who are more inclined to dive right into the signup process, with a clear explanation of Mr. Draper’s brand and benefits, a call to get started, a photo background displaying some of the clothing available, and logos of media they’ve been featured in to show they’re the real deal.

Example #22: Porcelain

Porcelain is a successful Singapore-based skincare brand that offers customized skin analysis, tailored skincare regimens, in-spa services at four gorgeous locations, and a wide collection of skincare products purchasable from their site. Their “Skin Discovery” landing page invites visitors to submit their interest for a personalized Skin Analysis at one of their locations.

It actively leads the visitor down the page with anchored CTAs linking to relevant sections with more info, or to book an appointment. Photographs of people are used heavily, showing a model with clean, glowing skin as the first image, friendly skin therapists helping clients, and a client being cared for. This emphasizes the personalized attention and human approach they’re committed to, allowing the visitor to envision themselves luxuriating in the Porcelain process on the way to more beautiful skin.

As you’re led down the page, transparency and trust are established—the level of detail they take in assessing your skin, explanation of the holistic approach they take, information on their skin therapists’ training, and the three-step process that can be booked at the bottom of the page. Its guided experience, human focus, and thoughtful detail put into each step of information is reflective of their philosophy and tender approach to your skin.

Example #23: Talo Brush

Talo Brush is a smart toothbrush that syncs to an app monitoring your brushing activity so you can keep better tabs on your oral health. It’s yet another example of using landing pages to build a waiting list pre-launch, something we’re seeing more and more use cases for.

Talo Brush makes smart use of their landing page, featuring a photo of a woman with a big, bright smile and choosing crisp, clean blues and whites for their color scheme. The headline—just four words—both describes the product and weaves in benefits, while the supporting copy clearly communicates a main selling feature with the user in mind. Talo Brush isn’t “the fastest electric toothbrush.” Rather, it “Cleans your teeth perfectly in just 20 seconds.”

As you scroll, a problem is introduced before offering Talo Brush as the solution. If 50% of the population is afflicted by dental health issues—and this number hasn’t changed in the last 25 years—it’s time for some much-needed innovation. As mentioned when it comes to healthcare, trust and credibility is incredibly important. The photos, titles, and credentials for the team behind Talo Brush—including several dental and healthcare professionals—gives prospective customers all the more reason to believe in the product claims.

Example #24: Vanity Planet

Vanity Planet is a one-stop online shop for all things skin, hair, health, and well-being. They use landing pages for individual product pages and promotions, like this one by digital agency MuteSix, for their Raedia Facial Cleansing Brush. It’s an excellent example of granular targeting on a product basis instead of relying on shoppers to browse the entire site.

Lots of white space and high-resolution photography show the quality of the models’ skin to give a visceral feeling of cleanliness and vitality. The “Shop Now” CTA at the top anchors directly to the section where you can buy the cleanser straight from the landing page, with a hefty discount made clear by including the original price.

For shoppers who prefer to browse the page, there’s a lot of information readily available for them: A large promotional video, product benefits and a dissection of features, and customer reviews. At the same time, an unimposing Unbounce Sticky Bar linking to the purchase section scrolls along with them. And why not grab a cleansing solution or brush replacement pack while you’re shopping? A gallery of related products is available to add to your cart in a single click.

Example #25: Awayco

Awayco is a marketplace to rent premium equipment for surfing, skiing, biking, snowboarding, and more, all around the world.

They use targeted landing pages to promote and book specific items, like this one for a custom surfboard they created in collaboration with OneWave and MF Softboards. This works twofold, as a way to promote their service and their partnership. They include a section on OneWave, a non-profit surf community dedicated to raising awareness of mental health through saltwater therapy and surfing. This way, visitors know that when they book this board, they’re supporting a great cause. And that when they use Awayco, they’re supporting a company that supports great causes.

They’ve also embedded a map to show rental locations, making the booking process easy as pie when you’re trying to find the closest shop. And the large shot of their board with the Awayco and OneWave branding, on a quiet beach with the calling waves, is a fine use of their hero section. 

Example #26: Patrick Adair Designs

Patrick Adair Designs is a luxury jewelry company that started in 2015 when Patrick turned his first-ever purchase of a carbon fiber slab into his first-ever creation of a carbon fiber ring. Soon after, he launched a Kickstarter campaign that has since grown into Patrick Adair Designs, with a range of unique, beautiful rings crafted from uncommon high-quality materials like their trademarked Glowstone.

This landing page, another of MuteSix’s creations, is a genius way of providing an extra level of service to both existing and prospective customers. Offering a simple $10 ring sizer gives shoppers assurance they’ll get the perfect fit, emphasizes the attention to detail and customization provided with each ring order, and shows that customer experience is top-of-mind. A $10 credit included towards a future ring essentially cancels out the ring sizer purchase itself, and gives browsers a reason to come back—turning a small sale into a big one. And it’s currently converting at 34%.

Alongside information about the ring sizer, how to use it, and calls to action to “Buy Now” and “Get Your Fit” are a healthy dose of customer testimonials, influencer shout-outs, and details on the process and shipping for Patrick’s custom-made rings to give shoppers everything they need to know before being directed to the product gallery.

Example #27: Troubadour

Troubadour makes bags and accessories that skillfully balance performance with modern refinement. They’re engineered to go from boardroom to mountains, combining smart, sophisticated styling with the rugged endurance required for outdoor use.

Also designed by the folks at MuteSix, Troubadour’s landing page for the Explorer Quickdraw Rucksack takes advantage of every inch of real estate to showcase a new product. A strong headline over a large, professional product photo immediately draws visitors in, with a call to action button anchored to a selection of rucksacks so they can shop directly from the page.

There are several sections to address shopper questions, build trust, communicate Troubadour’s company philosophy, and explore every aspect of the Explorer Quickdraw Rucksack in a variety of mediums. From customer testimonials, product features and benefits, a video going over the rucksack in detail, an Instagram gallery, to their no-commitment return policy and five-year guarantee, there’s no guesswork or leaps of faith required by the customer to hit that “Shop Now” button.

What do the best ecommerce landing pages have in common?

The best ecommerce landing pages target one specific audience, focus on a singular CTA, and include just enough persuasive elements to help a shopper convert. They also:

• Show off the product in multiple different ways
• Make special offers to close more customers
• Focus on the details shoppers care about most
• Build hype for future product launches
• Optimize the shopping experience for mobile devices
• Target specific audiences
• Back up claims with real testimonials
• Overcome purchase objections
• Get more creative with special promotions

Oh, and I should also mention that all of the examples featured in this article were built using Unbounce. If you’re interested, you can check out some of our high-converting ecommerce landing page templates to get started on your own today.

But great B2B landing pages do exist. And the most successful examples aren’t just pretty to look at—they also nail three super important principles. They…

• Create an engaging experience that makes prospects acutely aware of the problem you solve.
• Promote your offer clearly and simply.
• Cleverly lead visitors through consideration, towards conversion.

To help you better understand what goes into a high-converting B2B landing page, we’ve strapped on our marketing goggles and done a deep dive into some of the best examples we could find in 2023. Scroll through to see how these businesses are getting more leads with their pages, learn from their best marketing tactics, and find some inspiration for your next campaign.

Everything you need to know about B2B landing pages:

• What is a B2B landing page?
• Do landing pages work for B2B?
• B2B landing page best practices 
• The best B2B landing page examples in 2023

What is a B2B landing page?

Before we get into those sweet B2B landing page examples, let’s first talk a little bit about what a B2B landing page even is. 

A B2B landing page is a standalone, campaign-specific web page created for a single marketing or advertising campaign. Think of it this way: It’s where a potential B2B customer “lands” after they click on a link from one of your ads,  emails, or social media posts. Get it?

Sending your B2B traffic to a landing page is way more effective than sending folks to your website. That’s because landing pages are designed with just a single goal in mind: getting visitors to accept your call to action (or “CTA,” if you’re feelin’ cool). Your CTA is the goal of your whole campaign, whether it’s having your visitors fill out a contact form or schedule a product demo. A landing page is built to keep people entirely focused on your CTA, whereas websites give visitors the option to navigate around and get distracted by other stuff.

The result? Landing pages often get you more conversions than your website ever could.

Do landing pages work for B2B?

The short answer is “heck yes”—hence the 26 examples we’ve got comin’ for ya. That’s because B2B marketers face some unique challenges in getting new customers and growing their businesses:

B2B sales cycles can take forever. Unlike B2C and other business formats, convincing potential B2B customers to buy is a long game. Gimmicks and viral trends rarely move the needle. When it comes to introducing folks to (and educating ‘em on) your solution, B2B businesses need to be sure each touch point moves prospects closer to converting.

Lead generation is the name o’ the game. B2B businesses need to attract and convert qualified prospects to fill their sales funnels. (And believe us: that doesn’t come easy). One of the best ways for marketers to get these qualified leads is by exchanging valuable content (like an ebook or a whitepaper) for visitors’ contact information.  You need to be able to build and launch lead gen landing pages fast, without a developer.

With all that in mind, landing pages—with their focus on that one singular call to action—are the best option for increasing the performance of your B2B marketing campaigns because they expedite the process of getting conversions.

B2B landing page best practices 

Obviously, we all wanna create B2B landing pages that get more conversions. But what’s the gold standard? Here are some common attributes that all high-converting B2B landing pages have in common:

Strong hero image (and supporting imagery)

Context is everything.  Visitors wanna know what your product or service looks like in practice, whether it’s a piece of fancy software or some sorta consulting program. Your landing page will be most impactful if you give some visual indication of how your offer works in your hero shot. (Bonus if you also make it easy for potential customers to visualize themselves enjoying the benefits.)

Focused call to action

The point of B2B landing pages is to get visitors to accept your call to action. Since your CTA is the main way you’ll be measuring your conversions, you gotta make sure it’s both easy to spot and compelling to read. The best move here is to remove secondary links that might distract your visitors or navigate them away from your B2B landing page before clickin’ on that CTA and converting. (That means site navigation, too).

Unique value proposition 

What makes you different from the many other B2B businesses around that are offering the same service? Why should potential customers buy your product or service? That’s where your value proposition comes in. You can use the header and subheader on your B2B landing page to articulate exactly what sets your offer apart. 

Tangible benefits (supported by features)

Talking about the benefits—the real, tangible value—of a product or service is the best way to persuade folks to act. People need to be able to imagine themselves enjoying the value your offer delivers. Of course, your audience also needs to know how your business provides that value (also known as the features), but they’re much more likely to convert if they understand the benefits they’ll get by clicking on that call to action button. 

Social proof 

The proof is in the pudding, as the saying goes. Think about it like word-of-mouth: we’re more likely to trust a product or service if we hear actual people talking about it positively. So go ahead, include social proof on your landing page. This could be testimonials, reviews, or partner logos. Social proof builds credibility with your audience and gets ‘em to convert faster.

The best B2B landing page examples in 2023

1. ActiveCampaign
2. Shopify
3. B2B Quotes
4. Monday
5. MediaValet
6. Thinkific
7. Yelp
8. Chargebee
9. HubSpot
10. Salesforce
11. Impraise
12. Reachdesk
13. Outback Team Building & Training
14. Zoho
15. Divante
16. Resource Guru
17. TeamSupport
18. Slack
19. Intercom
20. Blink
21. GCC Facilities Management
22. Salesflare
23. Singular
24. Vivonet Kiosk
25. allWomen
26. Raise Craze
27. Unbounce

1. ActiveCampaign

Best practice to steal: Solve the problem your visitors care about most

When someone clicks through to your landing page, you usually have less than 15 seconds to capture their attention and show ‘em that they’re in the right place. This is especially true in the B2B world because decision-makers are trying to solve a specific business problem.

Take this example from ActiveCampaign. They aren’t just targeting visitors who are searching for any old email marketing platform. They’re targeting visitors who care deeply about personalization and segmentation. If this is you, then you’ll breathe a sigh of relief when you read the headline of the page: “Put the right emails in front of the right people.”

Notice how the focus of the headline isn’t on the platform or any specific features that ActiveCampaign has to offer. It’s focused on the visitor and the goal they’re trying to accomplish. That’s customer-centric marketing in action, and hot damn—it’s a beautiful thing to see.

2. Shopify

Best practice to steal: Make the first step as easy as possible 

When qualifying B2B leads, it can be tempting to ask them every possible question your sales team could possibly want to know about. “What’s your name? What’s your phone number? How big is your company? How old were you when you stopped wetting the bed?” It’s enough to make anyone want to click away. (And not just because I wet the bed until the third grade.) 

This example from Shopify proves that sometimes less is more. Rather than scare people away with a big ol’ form of questions on the landing page, they make it as easy as pie to get started with a free trial. All you gotta do is enter your email address and—woah, that’s it.

If cutting down on your form fields makes you nervous, keep in mind that there will still be time to collect more info from your leads later in the sales process. This landing page just helps to get their foot in the door.

3. B2B Quotes

Best practice to steal: Get as specific as possible with your CTA

So many B2B landing pages have the exact same CTA buttons. “Get Started,” “Start Your Free Trial,” and “Request a Consultation” are some of the most popular ones that I’ve come across. And while these can work well sometimes—they’re not always the best option.

This example from B2B Quotes shows how you can get more specific with your CTA to persuade more people to convert. The form at the top asks visitors to fill out some personal info about what they’re looking for, and then ends with a button that says… drumroll… “Get 3 Quotes Now.”

It’s so simple and yet so powerful—by being specific about the number of quotes, the page sets expectations nicely. If the form simply said “Submit” (another super common CTA on B2B landing pages) then visitors would have no idea what they would get when they clicked that button. And if visitors don’t know what they’re getting next, then they have less reason to follow-through.

4. Monday

Best practice to steal: Leverage trust from complimentary B2B services

Monday.com is certainly no bum when it comes to their branding and storytelling. (We’ve all happily sat through a full Youtube ad from them at some point.) But what’s more impressive is their landing page strategy. 

On this page, instead of focusing on their own product and its wonderful benefits and features, Monday also invokes Slack: both as a recognizable brand to establish a sense of trust, as well as to showcase how seamlessly their service works with another popular tool. 

Monday still talks about their main value props, like project execution and collaborative workspaces, but they double their chances of conversions by wrapping their figurative arms around another brand.

5. MediaValet

Best practice to steal: Use the rule of three for layouts and benefit copy

The rule of three is one of the most successful methods for memorizing content—we’ve seen it used in film, advertising, and beyond—and MediaValet’s landing page is no exception.

The digital asset management company applies the rule of three when presenting their key benefits and testimonials. This clear, concise, and easy-to-consume structure is also key to the landing page’s successful layout: it introduces the product, backs up their claims with stats, and provides an easy way for prospects to request a demo. The easier visitors can consume and retain the content on your landing page, the better equipped they are to make a decision to purchase.

6. Thinkific

Best practice to steal: Show visitors what results they can expect

This is an all-around beautiful landing page from Thinkific, but we want to draw your attention to one element in particular. About halfway through the page, they’ve included an interactive tool with the title: “This is how much you could earn on Thinkific.”

This tool on the page includes two fields that you can adjust: how much you plan to charge per online course, and how many students you estimate you’ll have. It’s a really clever way to help visitors visualize their future success with the platform (“Wait, we could be making HOW MUCH?!”), and makes signing up for a 30-day trial seem like a no-brainer decision.

7. Yelp

Best practice to steal: Don’t beat around the bush

Yelp wants you to know that you can list your business on it for free—and it wastes no time illustrating that point. Not only that, their call to action takes you directly to list your business. There are no other hoops to jump through, like downloading an app or grabbing an email. Click the button, and boom—you’re Yelpin’.

Yelp is short and direct with their messaging, speaking to exactly what you’ll get by listing on their platforms. In just a few lines of copy, they communicate exactly what you get by signing up—and why you’d want to. Impressive stuff!

8. HubSpot

Best practice to steal: Try segmenting your leads with landing pages

How do you tell visitors about your B2B tool if you don’t know who they are or why they want it in the first place? Many SaaS platforms face this challenge because they have multiple different target audiences and use cases—which means it’d take up a lot of space on the page to explain every single important point for every single person.

That’s why this example from HubSpot caught our attention. Rather than go into great detail about how all of the different segments can use their software, HubSpot created one short landing page to direct each segment into their own personalized demo. It’s kinda bare-bones, but it gets the job done.

9. Salesforce

Best practice to steal: Let the numbers do the talking

Like the previous example, this no-nonsense page from Salesforce shows you that looks aren’t everything. Because even when you strip away all the fancy design elements and photographs, you’re still left with a compelling case for why you should try their CRM platform.

The secret is in the social proof numbers that they bold on the page. “Discover how Canadian customers have achieved: +37% increase in sales, +45% increase in customer satisfaction, and +43% increase in marketing ROI.” These are exactly the types of results that visitors are looking for when they end up on this page. And of course, the most important number is right at the top: “Grow Your Business with the World’s #1 Business CRM.”

Data can be powerfully persuasive—especially in B2B where customers need to see those hard numbers to ensure they’re making the right decision.

10. Chargebee

Best practice to steal: Don’t hesitate to go after your competitors

Chargebee knows that Recurly, a subscription and billing platform, is one of their top competitors. On this landing page, they go for the kill with a testimonial implying it could take “months” to enter a new market with Recurly, where with Chargebee, it’s only a matter of days.

The fact that this comes from a testimonial and has that social proof backing it up makes it all the more strong. They also use “subscription management software” in their headline, which is how their competitor self-describes. Gotta hand it to ’em. 

This is also a great example of a pay-per-click (or PPC) landing page, meaning advertisers bid on specific keywords and pay a fee whenever their ad is clicked. In this case, Chargebee is paying to appear in Google searches for “recurly” and other branded keywords. They know who they’re up against, and they’re not afraid to duke it out publicly. 

11. Impraise

Best practice to steal: Use landing pages to capture top-of-funnel leads, too

When you think about B2B landing pages, you often think about the bottom of the funnel. Demo requests, consultation calls, free trial sign-ups—marketers often use their PPC budget and landing pages to drive visitors directly towards these goals. But if these folks aren’t ready to make a purchase decision yet, sending them to a page like this can be putting them in an awkward position. It’s a bit like asking the cute barista who smiled at you once (but still spells your name wrong on the coffee cup) if she wants to elope with you to Vegas next week.

That’s where the top of the funnel comes into play. Ebooks, webinars, and other free resources can be great for attracting visitors to your brand and collecting their contact info. From there, you can build a real relationship with each new lead until the point when they’re ready to make a commitment.

Take this example from Impraise. They used Unbounce to create a lead capture page targeting HR professionals. There aren’t any distractions on the page, the focus is squarely on the free resource: “The Guide to People Enablement Programs.” Visitors have the option to download the guide directly on this page in exchange for their email address, or—if they’re already searching for performance management software—go ahead and explore the Impraise platform.

12. Outback Team Building & Training

Best practice to steal: Use Dynamic Text Replacement (DTR) to personalize your landing pages

Marketers sometimes think that personalization doesn’t matter as much when it comes to B2B. But it’s almost always a good idea to get as specific as possible with your landing page so the decision-maker you’re targeting thinks, “Aha, this is for me!”

That’s where Dynamic Text Replacement (DTR) and this Unbounce-built example from Outback Team Building & Training shines. The original headline here reads: “Trusted Source for Scavenger Hunt Team Building Activities in Your City.” But by using DTR and Google Ads Keyword Insertion, the marketers over at Outback were able to replace the last bit of that headline (“Your City”) with actual city names (e.g., “San Francisco” or “Toronto”). 

Using this tactic, they were able to target this one single landing page for people all across North America and give them a personalized experience at the same time. Now that’s efficiency.

13. Reachdesk

Best practice to steal: Put your high-value content front-and-center 

We like to stay impartial, but Reachdesk is pretty darn cool. They’re all about data-driven gifting to create deeper connections in marketing, plus they’re committed to creating a future of gifting with zero waste. But what makes us even bigger fans is how simply yet effectively they’re demonstrating one of the golden rules of high-converting B2B landing pages: creating high-value content so engaging and well-targeted that it makes your audience wanna click your CTA ASAP. 

Even though the guide is all about direct mail (something you wouldn’t guess today’s marketers are thinking much about), Reachdesk draws in the right crowd by talking about the comeback of event marketing and how gifting can make ‘em more impactful. We’re more than intrigued.

14. Zoho

Best practice to steal: Use landing pages to target your competitors

When evaluating B2B tools, business leaders rarely make a purchase based on the first landing page they see. This is a business investment, so most folks want to do their due diligence and research all possible options before making a final decision.

That’s why—for better or worse—competitor landing pages have become a thing. The idea is that you can bid on a competitor keyword or brand name using Google Ads, and create a landing page that directly compares your product or service to the one visitors are actually searching for. 

This page from Zoho comes up when you search for “Mailchimp alternatives,” for example. While you can’t use competitor names in your ads (that can get you in big legal trouble), you can use them at the top of your landing page to help make the page more relevant (and bring your quality score up). It’s an interesting approach that has many companies even bidding on their own brand names to stave off the competition.

15. Divante

Best practice to steal: Where appropriate, bring prospects through several stages of the customer journey

Sales cycles vary per industry, sure, but the process always starts with building interest and (ideally) ends with a purchase decision. And here’s the great thing about landing pages—designed properly, you can take readers through each of these stages as they scroll from top to bottom, without them ever having to leave the page.

This long-form landing page from Divante builds awareness by offering a description of their service (in the first two page sections), they guide prospects through consideration with a list of features and benefits, and then drive conversions by detailing available plans alongside their calls to action (i.e. “Choose plan” or “Ask for pricing,” respectively).

Of course, some visitors will also know exactly what they’re looking for from the start, so Divante includes anchor navigation on this page as well for a choose-your-adventure experience. Thanks to this, more qualified prospects can jump straight to the details that’re most relevant to them (making a longer page like this much more digestible).

16. Resource Guru

Best practice to steal: Help prospects visualize a complex idea with video.

Many B2B products and services solve complex problems. As a result, landing pages need to be designed in such a way that they make it easy for potential customers to understand features and benefits. One way to do this is to incorporate visual elements like videos, images, and even animations—all of which can help drive conversions.

Resource Guru’s landing page is effective because it greets viewers with a large play button as soon as they land. Pressing play is intuitive and launches a high-quality explainer video. They let this video do the talking, then quickly request an action from visitors.

One thing to keep in mind—it’s always a good idea to reiterate all the core points from your video script on your landing page in text. This ensures that even in the event you have a low play rate, prospects can still learn about your offer without having to click play. Whether they left their headphones at home that day or prefer text, it’s good to have a backup plan.

17. TeamSupport

Best practice to steal: Keep it stupidly simple

TeamSupport is a complete product suite of customer support software that empowers their clients to be more customer-centric. Their tagline speaks for itself: “B2B customer support made simple.” And you don’t have to go far to catch their drift: On this landing page, they keep it simple, too. TeamSupport shows you that they put their money where their mouth is by giving you the immediate option of scheduling a live demo with an expert. And they give you some of the key value propositions along with it. 

Sometimes simplicity really wins it all. 

18. Slack

Best practice to steal: Try out new positioning on your landing pages

Most people think of Slack as a workplace chat platform, right? Well, this example shows how you can use your landing page to literally change the way people think about your product or service.

In the hero section, you can see their new positioning in action. Slack isn’t for chatting with your colleagues and sending them zesty memes from the first 10 seasons of The Simpsons. (OK, that’s not all it’s for, anyway.) According to the hero section of this landing page, “Slack is where work happens.”

The page goes on to describe the Slack platform as a “collaboration hub” where you can “create a channel for every conversation” and “find what you need quickly.” In just a few minutes, the page changes your opinion of Slack and makes a compelling case for why your business needs it. Couple that with the strong social proof and case studies, and you’ve successfully positioned yourself differently in the minds of your visitors.

19. Intercom

Best practice to steal: You might have to link out to other pages if visitors need more info

Typically, linking from your B2B landing page to multiple different pages of your website would be a no-no. You want to keep visitors focused on a singular CTA so they are more likely to convert. But in B2B, sometimes folks need more details before they can pull the trigger and decide to buy.

Take this example from Intercom. The main CTA is to start your free trial, but the page also gives visitors the option to learn more about how they can use the platform to acquire, engage, and support customers. Each of these buttons takes you to a different section of their website, with more details on those use cases. It’s not one of our landing page best practices—but sometimes you’ve gotta break those rules to give visitors what they need in the moment.

This way, the page itself works as an offer for people who are interested in getting started right away, and as a route for more problem-aware visitors to explore.

20. Blink

Best practice to steal: Include the right kind of proof to build trust and credibility.

Social proof and testimonials in your B2B landing pages are always important. But while a snazzy headshot photo and a great quote from one of your customers can work in some cases, there are also other ways you can (and should) build trust on your landing page.

This example from Blink shows three different types of social proof you can pack in to persuade visitors. First, they hit you with the logos of some of their “Select Clients,” which include heavy-hitters like Google, Starbucks, Amazon, and NASA. (Damn. That’s an impressive logo bar.) Then, the page shows you some testimonials from their satisfied clients. Finally, they show off some of the industry awards Blink has won over the years to seal the deal.

Including one or two testimonials can be helpful, sure. But when you include this much social proof on a B2B landing page it creates a bandwagon effect that’s hard to resist.

21. GCC Facilities Management

Best practice to steal: Use iconography to make your page easier to follow

It’s so easy to overload your B2B landing page with way too much text that 90% of visitors will never actually read. I know from experience—there’s usually a lot you want to explain about your product or service, and it’s not always easy to do that in 140 characters or less.

This Unbounce-built landing page for GCC Facilities Management (designed by the agency Session Media) shows how clear iconography can help get ideas across in a more visual way—even if visitors don’t read all your copy. Every point on the page is punctuated with an illustrated icon for people who are quickly skimming. They smartly use the same brand colors throughout to give the whole page a nice cohesive look as well (although We’re not sure who has a toilet lid that’s the same color as their carpets). Still, that’s a win for this B2B landing page design.

Want to make sure your page doesn’t rely too heavily on text? Try performing a squint test and see if you can still tell what the page is about without reading any of the copy.

22. Salesflare

Best practice to steal: Answer the big questions your visitors might be asking themselves

Here’s an interesting example from Salesflare that doubles as both a lead magnet and a free trial sign-up page. The page starts with an offer to download a “Free Sales Funnel Template.” But for people who aren’t familiar with sales funnels (like me), they highlight and answer all the potential questions you might have. (“What is this? Why do I need it? And what the heck is a sales funnel, anyway?”)

This B2B landing page goes on to explain that when you’re tired of using free Excel templates (like that one you just downloaded), you can start your free trial of Salesflare. Using the same question-answer approach, the page then covers the benefits of the software and why you should be using it.

The lesson for B2B marketers? Try to get inside the heads of your visitors and answer any questions they have before they even think to ask ‘em.

23. Singular

Best practice to steal: Provide different CTAs for visitors at different stages of their buyer journey

As I mentioned earlier, it may go against one of our landing page best practices, but having multiple CTAs on your page can sometimes be a smart choice. If you’re targeting a broad audience, then visitors who click on your page may be in different stages of awareness (and looking to take different next steps in their buyer journey). Sure, Person A might be ready to start their free trial. But Person B might just want to try a demo. And don’t even get me started on Person C (that guy sucks).

That’s exactly why this example from Singular features a main CTA to enter your email address and “Create Your Free Account”—but it also includes a secondary CTA for visitors who aren’t ready to sign up yet to “Talk to an Expert.” Giving that bit of choice to visitors helps them cast a wider net with their targeting.

24. Vivonet Kiosk

Best practice to steal: A floating CTA can give you a greater chance to convert.

A B2B landing page has one goal—to convince visitors to take action. Whatever the intended next step, it’s your job to create a clear, strategically placed call to action that lets visitors know what to do next. Using multiple CTAs can be distracting to your audience, but a consistent CTA that follows visitors throughout their experience? That’s crystal clear.

Vivonet Kiosk uses a floating CTA button that follows visitors as they scroll down the page. No matter where they’re at, the “Talk to Us About Kiosks” button remains in the bottom right-hand corner of their screen.

25. allWomen

Best practice to steal: Keep it focused and to the point

What B2B landing pages allow you to do—that your website just can’t—is to be laser-focused on one of your products or offerings. What allWomen—an academy that upskills women in the workforce to take on and excel in tech positions—does great with their landing pages is to present information about each of their courses super clearly. Just look at that headline—as soon as you land here you know exactly what’s being offered and if the content that follows is relevant to you.

Want to learn more about allWomen’s landing page strategy? Here’s their story.

26. Raise Craze

Best practice to steal: Know what sets you apart

As a small SaaS company with loads of competitors, Raise Craze can’t waste a single click. And to do just that they make sure to let their audience know what exactly makes them different—whether through their value proposition stamped into their headline, multiple uses of social proof, or even a clever section called “why choose Raise Craze?” that spells it out. It’s landing page 101 to lean into your unique selling proposition to stand out from the crowd.

Wanna hear more about Raise Craze? Dive into their landing page journey.

27. Unbounce

Best practice to steal: Test multiple variants of your landing page

The beautiful thing about landing pages is that you can actually test and see what works best for your audience. That’s what we’re doing here at Unbounce with this landing page for our guide: How to Optimize Your SaaS Landing Pages. Our team wanted to test two variants of this top-of-funnel page—the one above, and this one below that emphasizes the experience of CRO expert Talia Wolf (who helped co-author the guide).

Rather than run a traditional A/B Test, our team decided to use Smart Traffic to get results faster. With Smart Traffic, you can use AI to match each visitor to the variant that’s most likely to convert. (Woah, it’s like we’re living in the not-so-distant future.) After turning this feature on, we ended up seeing conversion lifts across both variants. Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto!

Start Building the Next Great B2B Landing Page

Feeling inspired? A lot of these examples were built using the Unbounce drag-and-drop landing page builder. Get started today with your free 14-day trial, or keep digging for inspiration by exploring over 100+ high-converting templates.

When writing copy for ads on Google, it’s important to think about the experience your visitor is having—from query, to ad copy, to landing page.

If there’s a hiccup along the way or they feel like they might be going down the wrong path, they’ll hit the back button. Worse, they might conduct another search and find another company ready to meet their needs. Additionally, as much as we would like it to, no ad can convert a prospect without a strong accompanying landing page.

In this post, you’ll learn all about Google Ads copy:

• What do we mean by Google Ads copy, anyway?
• How do you write copy for Google Ads?
• What are the best practices for writing Google Ads?
• What are some examples of great Google Ads copy?

“Whoa, slow down Unbounce. How exactly do I get started on Google Ads?” No sweat—check out our guide to Google Ads basics and learn how to launch your first campaign. 

What is Google Ads copy?

Google Ads is Google’s (aptly named) online advertising platform. It’s responsible for a bunch of the ads you see online—at the top of your Google search results, on Google Maps, and across lots of the websites you visit through display advertising. Google Ads operates on a pay-per-click (PPC) model, where you pay ’em a bit of money every time somebody clicks on your ad.  

There are lots of benefits to advertising on Google. The search giant has more than 90% market share and is the most popular engine by a country mile—so you know your ads are gonna get eyeballs. Google Ads also lets you get super targeted with your advertising. You can choose to show your ads to people based on their demographics (age, gender), their search history, and even how they’ve interacted with your brand in the past. 

But getting your ads in front of people is one thing—getting ’em to click is another. That’s why you need persuasive, eye-catching Google Ads copy.

How do you write copy for Google Ads?

There are different types of Google Ads (search, display), but you’ll almost always need copy for these components:

• Headline. Your headline is the most critical part of your ad text since people will likely read it before anything else. Some Google Ads have just one headline, while others might have two or three. A good strategy is to include words your target audience likely used in their Google search. And—as always—make sure you’re communicating your unique value proposition.
• Display URL. Your display URL is the web address that appears on your ad, which gives your potential customers an idea of where they’ll arrive after they click. That said, the actual URL of your landing page can be more specific. For example, you might have a display URL of unbounce.com, whereas the true destination of the ad could be unbounce.com/product/landing-pages.
• Description. This is where you can get into more detail about the product or service you’re advertising. Additionally, it’s a good idea to include a call to action—something you want the people clicking your Google ad to do. Think “shop X product now” or “get Y benefit” to help folks understand what to expect next.

You can see examples of all three of these components in the example below:

The messaging used in your Google ad copy doesn’t need to follow a rigid formula. If anything, SERPs are getting overcrowded with the same type of bland messaging for all ad slots. That’s an opportunity for you to stand out from the crowd.

It’s important you test some different approaches to Google Ads copy to know which performs best with your target audience. Here’s a quick rundown of the major types of ad copy approaches:

• Features: This is about highlighting the physical or tangible aspects of your product or service. If you’re selling mattresses, maybe one key feature is “memory foam.”
• Benefits: Here, you call out the positive outcomes the visitor will have from the product or service. In the case of mattresses, that might be a “more restful sleep.”
• Problem: Focus on the actual issue at hand to relate to the problem the visitor is trying to solve. For example, “tired of awful sleeps?”
• Testimonials: This is when you use the words of your existing customers to leverage social proof. Great mattress? “I’ve never slept better.”
• Reviews: These are third-party reviews of the product or service, not from customers directly. Emphasize your trust signals, like Google review scores or badges from review sites.
• Prequalifying: A technique for weeding out people who might not be a good fit for your service before they click. Say, “luxury mattresses” to signal a higher price.

Once you’ve tested what works best, mirror that on your PPC landing page to create a seamless, compelling buyer journey.

Looking for a secret weapon to help craft powerful ad copy? Meet the Smart Copy Google ad generator. Writing your own Google copy? Pah—that’s for the birds.

What are some key Google Ads copy best practices?

“What makes a good Google ad?” Humankind has been debating this question for decades, if not millennia.

Is it about being concise? Catchy? Direct? Maybe all of the above?

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to writing Google Ads (just like there’s no single way to write any ad)—but following some best practices will help make you more successful. With that in mind, below are eight tips for writing the best ad copy for Google Ads:

1. Use keywords that match what people are searching for

One of the key recommendations for writing strong Google Ads copy is to include keywords that mirror the searcher’s query. By parroting back phrases similar to what they searched for, you can tell them that they’re in the right place.

Keywords in ad copy

In the real world, if you order something from a coffee shop, you expect them to call out exactly what you ordered when it’s ready. If you order an Americano and the barista yells out “Coffee!”, they’re technically correct. But it’s not immediately clear to you that it’s your coffee or someone else’s.

Adding keywords to Google ad copy is fairly simple—but it’s important to make sure the keywords are being used well. Don’t just stuff in as many as you can. An ad that’s saturated with keywords probably doesn’t convey the right message, and could actually be worse than an ad with no keywords. It’s more important to accurately articulate what you’re selling.

Keyword placement in ads can also play a large role. We highly recommend you test keyword placement within your ads to see what works best. Sometimes it’s best in the first headline. Sometimes in headline two. And sometimes it’s best used in a sentence in a description. You won’t know until you test.

Keywords on landing pages

Using search keywords in the headlines and text at the top of a landing page tells the visitor, “You’re in the right place. We have what you’re looking for.” (“This is your caffè Americano,” if you will.)

Unfortunately, swapping text on landing pages isn’t quite as easy as doing it in ad copy. If your landing pages need to be hardcoded, then logic might suggest that you need to create a new page for each different keyword phrase you’re targeting. In our opinion, though, unless you’re driving extremely high traffic through those pages, this isn’t necessary.

Instead, choose some common phrases—likely the most highly searched variants of your keywords—and turn them into headlines. Ideally, the number of pages you’ll need to create will go down depending on the number of keyword phrases you have in your account.

Let’s take an example: Say we’re advertising scheduling software for hourly employees.

A basic headline could be “Employee Scheduling Software,” which reflects a typical search query—easy and to the point. But the page that uses this headline could easily be used for queries that are close to, but not exactly, that phrase: scheduling employees, tools for employee scheduling, schedule hourly employees, and so on.

Try to write headlines that can work for multiple phrases to limit the number of pages you need to make. And do this while also getting as close as possible to the initial search query.

2. Match the specificity of your potential customers

Every time a person conducts a Google search, their query holds a degree of specificity. It’s important that you reflect their demonstrated intent as best as possible.

Let’s get into some copy examples. Here are some tips for how you could adjust your copy based on differing degrees of specificity:

The only piece of copy that’s changed is the first headline—but it creates a much tighter theme with the query and lets your visitors know they’re in the right place.

The same principle holds with the display URL. One of the keys to conversion rate optimization is giving your prospects what they expect. Every element of your ad should indicate that folks are on the right path—including the display URL. Continuing the shoe example above, here are potential pages that you would want to direct people to:

• “shoes”: www.example.com
• “womens shoes”: www.example.com/women
• “womens nike shoes”: www.example.com/women/nike

Obviously, these aren’t real web pages, but the display URLs closely match the query. Each time we add a word—from “shoes” to “women’s shoes” and from “women’s shoes” to “women’s nike shoes”—we learn more about their needs and can match that with a more specific landing page.

Each time somebody searches, they’re telling you what they want. Listen to them and deliver results with as much specificity as you can.

3. Use assets (formerly “ad extensions”) like wild

Assets (previously called “ad extensions”) are pretty much exactly what they sound like: additional pieces of functionality you can include with your Google ad. These give you extra opportunities to persuade potential customers through copy.

There are lots of different kinds of assets at our disposal. Each has its use and purpose, and I’m not going to go into detail on each one. The ones that lend themselves to nearly every business are sitelinks, callouts, and structured snippets.

Sitelink assets

Sitelinks are simply additional text and links that can show up with ad copy. Ideally, you should leverage these to add supporting information to the primary ad copy in the ad group. These are essentially functioning as in-site navigation, but directly in the SERPs.

Callout assets

Callouts are even easier than sitelinks. These are simply a line of text, no longer than 25 characters.

This text can be used to put just about anything that helps support the ad. Similar to sitelinks, however, it’s best if this text is complimentary and doesn’t repeat what’s in the original ad. These can be a quick list of features, benefits, or more information (like “Free Shipping”) if it didn’t fit in the ad text.

Structured snippet assets

Lastly, structured snippets let you create a list within an ad extension. Simply pick the header you want to start the list, then add in values below with 25 characters each.

There are a number of other assets that can be added to any Google Ads campaign. More often than not, it’s best to have as many asset types in place as possible so any of ‘them’em can be called up at any point.

However, there is a caveat. Don’t forget about the main reason for the ad. Sometimes one asset can be throttled and another type will be shown more often, potentially causing performance to drop. Keep this in mind when setting up assets in Google. Have as full of coverage as you can, but don’t sacrifice performance for ad real estate.

4. Leverage dynamic features to customize copy

In addition to assets, there are other features we can use to ensure that our Google Ads are as impressive as possible. Below is a screenshot of the three dynamic ad features offered on the Google Ads platform. You can trigger this dropdown by typing in a { into the ad creation screen.

Keyword insertion

Keyword insertion is the most basic version of dynamic Google ads and is best used if your campaign structure isn’t strongly segmented. Keyword insertion lets you substitute a search keyword in place of the default text in your ad copy. However, the text with the keyword will not be used if the combination of the text is too long. Take a look at the example below:

Here, I added “Women’s Shoes” as the placeholder text. If the keyword that triggers this ad is fewer than 13 characters long, then that keyword text will be added in place of “Women’s Shoes.”

For instance, if the keyword was “Tennis Shoes,” the headline will now read “Great Prices on Tennis Shoes.” But if the keyword is too long, like “women’s running shoes,” then the headline will read “Great Prices on Women’s Shoes” because the placeholder text will stay.

If you build your page with Unbounce, you can also use Dynamic Text Replacement (DTR) to help you match your landing page copy to your ads, saving you bundles of time and crankin’ up your conversions.

IF functions

This dynamic ad feature lets advertisers create “if, then” statements within Google Ads copy based on a user’s device or the audience they belong to.

IF functions can be amazingly powerful if you have different calls to action for folks on mobile devices and people on desktop, or if you wanna offer discounts to users within specific audiences.

If you leverage IF functions to create a different call to action or make a new offer depending on your audience, it’s essential to make sure it’s reflected in the copy on your landing page. Don’t tease a 20% discount in the ad copy, then not offer it once somebody gets to the landing page.

Countdowns

Lastly, countdowns can be an amazing way to create urgency in ad copy without needing manual ad shifts for each day, hour, or minute until the offer expires. All you have to do is fill out the builder widget and Google will do the rest.

With countdowns, it’s imperative that the time in the ad copy and the time on site match up as closely as possible. Pay attention to time zones to be sure the offer isn’t ending too early or running too late in the ads. Each of these could cause performance changes or bad brand association depending on the error made.

5. Always—always!—include a call to action

When it comes down to it, we’re running ads because we want the visitor to take a specific action. For some, that might be making a purchase. For others, it might mean filling out a lead form. No matter the action, it’s important to either use that phrasing in your copy or help them understand what comes next.

Using a call to action in Google ad copy helps frame the visitor experience. It can operate similarly to the prequalifying ad copy mentioned in the next section. Once they understand what you want them to do, it can help weed out people who aren’t interested. This practice helps save you the cost of the click.

Once a visitor has had their expectations set with the ad copy, they should click through to a landing page that mirrors that same call to action. If you’ve asked them to “Buy Now” in your copy, they should be given the opportunity to buy on the landing page. If you’ve only asked them to “Learn More” in your copy, then be sure the landing page houses the information they need to decide whether to make a purchase down the road.

6. Follow through on the promises you’re making

This is important: Your landing page should deliver on what your Google ad promises.

Ad copy and landing pages need to work together. No matter what you say in your Google ad copy, it’s important that the message and offer follow through to the landing page for a cohesive experience.

When this connection breaks down, it could look something like this: A prospective customer conducts a search and clicks on an ad that says “20% off”—only to get to the landing page a find out the offer is expired. Or, worse, there’s no mention of it whatsoever. That’s frustrating.

It’s important to get the visitor thinking about the call to action at the ad copy stage. If that call to action isn’t on the landing page, then those precious characters in the Google copy—as well as the price you paid for the click—were wasted. Your visitors are no longer primed to complete the action you asked ’em to.

Examples of good Google Ads copy

Alright—enough theory. Let’s talk application. Here are a few examples of Google Ads from brands that have got it locked in:

Google Ads Example: Glossier

Product: Makeup

Glossier sure knows what they’re doing when it comes to Google Ads—and (presumably) when it comes to this makeup stuff, too.

Their copy in this ad speaks to “accessible luxury products,” which allows them to address two crowds simultaneously: people who want luxury makeup products, and folks who might wanna try something luxurious but are concerned about price. Glossier emphasizes the “accessibility” of their products and the fact they’re inspired by “real people,” while also using sitelink assets to discreetly highlight all of the ways they’re more affordable than you might think.

Pretty smart.

Google Ads Example: VanMoof

Product: Bicycles

VanMoof doesn’t just create city-proof electric bikes—they also write some pretty dandy Google Ads.

This is an upscale product, and VanMoof knows they need to reflect that in their ad copy. This example shows ’em speaking to their elevated features: One block of text talks about “next-gen electronic bikes” with “high-tech smart features.” Another mentions “automatic electronic gear shifting” and “anti-theft tech.”

These sorts of phrases signal to Google users who the product is for—folks who care about quality and are willing to pay for it.

Elevate your copywriting, from first click to conversion

Like we said, writing copy for Google Ads is a combination of art and science. If great copy were purely algorithmic, everyone would be rich by now.

Follow as many of the best practices above as you can, but don’t forget the reason we’re here: potential customers. We’re always talking to people. The final thing you should do before launching any new Google Ads campaign is give your copy a gut-check:

• Does this offer sound appealing?
• Is this just a bunch of keywords?
• Would I click on this?

That extends to your landing page, too. When you know how to write compelling, grabby, persuasive content for your whole campaign—that’s when selling your product or service gets a whole lot easier.