If you've ever found yourself scrolling up and down an event landing page, feeling confused about what exactly you're being sold, you know the importance of a solid landing page strategy.

Thoughtful event landing pages should immediately convey what's happening, who it's for, and answer any follow-up questions a visitor might have. However, it's not always obvious to us as internal marketers what's missing from our own pages. After all, we don't have any questions about the info, so our visitors won't either, right?

To help with this challenge, at our February Goldcast Insider Event, Drew Brucker, Goldcast's Director of Brand and Content, hosted Tas Bober, Founder of the Scroll Lab, a consultancy specializing in paid ad landing pages for B2B SaaS companies.

Tas reviewed five event landing pages in real time, sharing the strengths and weaknesses of each page and her revision tips to shift the pages toward higher conversion rates. Things got a little spicy, but in a good way!

Read on for some of the big takeaways from this conversation:

• Lead with a strong hook and include an anchor nav
• Raise an eyebrow (section, that is)
• Tell people about your company
• Write it like you talk it
• Include testimonials
• Use frictionless sign-up forms
• Don't forget the FAQs!
• B2B landing pages FAQs

To see the critiques in full, you can watch the event replay below. And stay tuned for a follow-up session, in which we'll see how those landing pages are faring after they made Tas's suggested changes!

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The first thing to evaluate is whether your hook is strong enough to get people interested in attending your event.

Are you speaking directly to your target audience, avoiding jargon and buzzwords that dilute your message and turn people off? Is the value of your event shining through with the words you've chosen?

Be sure to also include an anchor nav on your page so that readers can easily jump around on the page to the sections they're most interested in. That way, if someone wants to zoom in on the agenda, they can do that without a lot of work on their end.

Tas recommends using an eyebrow section on all landing pages to add clarity. The eyebrow is just a small piece of text that goes right above the title (the eye, in this case) to let people know what kind of event you're hosting.

That means your eyebrow would probably be one of these choices:

• VIRTUAL
• HYBRID
• ONLINE
• IN-PERSON
• FREE

Adding an eyebrow section removes friction for your reader. They can immediately see what type of event they're signing up for and what sort of investment that might mean, time wise. (An IRL event will require more time than an online one and probably lead to additional questions for the reader about meals, etc.)

This is one of those things that seems redundant to marketers because we already know all about our companies. We trust that people will know something about us and understand why we're hosting the event.

Not so!

With all five of the live examples Tas went over, she had to go and separately look up the hosting brand to learn more about them. This creates a ton of friction in the user experience and makes it hard for people to connect the dots without doing a bunch of research.

Make it simple for readers by including a small blurb at the bottom of the page about your company and what you do; you can even link to your main website so folks can learn more about you if they want to.

Read the copy you want to include on your page. Is this how you actually talk to people? If you were explaining to an older, non-tech-savvy person what this event is about, would you use these same words?

Sometimes we think B2B jargon makes us sound elevated and professional, but it really just distracts from our real point. Use active voice, be straightforward with your language, and try to make copy accessible for a seventh or eighth grade reading level so people can easily and quickly absorb it.

It's a natural fit to include customer testimonials for big flagship events or on your product pages, but don't sleep on using them for your more standard events.

If you regularly host events, showcase the different types of professionals who attend and the value they've received. Ask people for feedback after events in a post-event survey, and then use some of the best quotes to drive registrations.

Even though you can include a ton of fields in the sign-up form, only ask for what's absolutely necessary.

If that feels like a huge missed opportunity, remember that you can always fill in the gaps afterward. For example, once you have someone's email address, you can enrich that with HubSpot to find out their company name. Save people time and make it easy for folks to say yes!

Of course you should answer all relevant questions throughout the copy, like:

• Format of event (online, in-person, etc)
• Location
• What time the event begins (and ends!)
• Who should attend
• Who's speaking — include their LinkedIn profiles, if you can, and be aware that a strictly-internal speaker lineup may come across like a sales pitch event to readers
• Cost investment, if any
• Value to audience

That said, people loooove an FAQ section, especially when it comes to events. Even if it feels repetitive to you to regurgitate the same info in your FAQ section, it's worth adding it because a lot of people jump straight there before reading anything else.

Here are some sample questions you might insert into your FAQ section:

• Is this a free event?
• How do I sign up?
• What happens after I sign up?
• Will there be food or drinks at the event?
• Where do I park?
• What should I bring?

Before we get into our own FAQ section, may we remind you the full recording of this incredible talk with Tas is available to watch, any time you like? Watch below, and keep an eye out for the second follow-up session coming soon!

WATCH NOW

Q: Can I use an eyebrow for any information I want to convey?

A: Sure! As long as you're clear on the main question that someone has when they arrive on the page, you can use the eyebrow to answer that. This applies to all landing pages, not just event pages.

Q: How can I measure the impact of an educational-focused landing page on pipeline revenue?

A: Tas pointed out that if you're measuring ROI on an educational page, you have to remember that as many as 30 touchpoints might be required before someone becomes an MQL for a low ACV product. Your landing page is just one of those, so don't get too focused on conversion.

With that in mind, look at page consumption. How are people taking in the info on your page? Use a heat map on every landing page and look at the recordings regularly (1-2x a week for urgent campaigns and 1-2x a month for foundational landing pages).

One of Tas's clients noticed that 15% of all page clicks were going to a question in the FAQ section on the page. That threw up a flag to her that the answer to that specific question needed to be a block on the page so people could immediately have that question answered. Giving readers the information they needed, when they needed it, led to a 265% increase in purchases!

Q: If I can only A/B test one thing, what should it be?

A: Once again, FAQ blocks for the win. The FAQ block is typically the most interacted with section on your page, and you need to make sure that the questions are relevant to your audience.

This means that you shouldn't use this section to ask cutesy, clever questions that no one is asking, like "Why is Goldcast the best company around?"* Instead, focus on questions like, "What happens when I sign up?" or "What do I need to install to use this product?" (If you're not sure what questions to use here, get info from your sales team on the top questions they hear from prospects.)

*Q: Why is Goldcast the best company around?

A: Okay, so maybe someone is asking that question. We'll let our customers speak for us here — check out our customer stories to see the great results we've enabled for clients when it comes to video-first campaigns, building market Mindshare, and content repurposing!

Q: What's a good landing page conversion rate benchmark?

A: There isn't an industry-wide conversion rate benchmark you can use because your company is going to be different from another brand. The best thing to do is go through all of your events and identify a benchmark on your past performance. Then, try to improve. If you're usually at 2% conversion, can you push for 3-4%?

Think about density as well. It's better to have fewer of your target ICP attend than a ton of non-ICP attendees. In some cases, your conversion rate might actually go down once you hone in on your ICP with the tips above. That's okay!

Don't let people sway you on this or get into comparing numbers with other companies. You're your own biggest competition and the one you need to improve for. And, as we mentioned above, be sure to always check in on our page consumption to see how people are interacting with your pages so you can continue to improve.