It’s a vicious cycle that many SaaS marketers fall into—you’re trying to hit your lead-gen targets, but your budget and resources are tight. So you turn to a quick, one-off campaign to generate some leads.
Then, once that campaign runs its course, you start planning the next one.
And so on. (And so on.)
While this cycle can be effective in the short term, it’s just not sustainable. Running campaigns in this way create spikes in traffic that can quickly die out if you don’t invest in ongoing promotion. They also take a lot of effort to execute (and don’t guarantee returns).
Cue the infomercial voiceover: “There has to be a better way!”
Turns out, there is a better way.
If instead, you invest some time developing ‘always-on’ campaigns, you can drive consistent growth in a much more efficient, scalable way. For instance, if you have core assets (like a webinar, newsletter, or demo page) that you routinely drive prospects to, you can make these work year-round by creating some landing pages that run on auto-pilot.
There are tons of evergreen landing page campaign possibilities, but we’ve rounded up five that we think every SaaS marketer should have in their arsenal. Keep these ones running 24/7/365 for steady lead generation all year long.
1. The “We Solve Your Problem” Long-Form Landing Page
Do your prospects tend to do a lot of research before they start a new trial or demo your product?
This is where an evergreen, long-form landing page shines. Evaluation-stage prospects are hungry for details, proof of results, examples, and info tailored to their experience. They need to be persuaded to choose your offering over the alternatives.
So, for paid search ads targeting transactional keywords, you may want to create a standard SaaS long-form landing page explaining your offer.
Like this one:
Image courtesy of Pitchbook. Click it to see the whole thing.
The SaaS sales page above from Pitchbook has a preview video, a customer testimonial, and a logo bar of social proof to build credibility. It does a great job giving visitors a comprehensive rundown of the product’s features and benefits. All in support of that awesome ‘request a free trial’ call to action.
Why should you build one?
Long-form landing pages help your audience make more informed decisions by providing in-depth information about your software. With more sections on the page, you have room to expand about what sets your offering apart from competitors and the value you deliver.
As a bonus, these pages aren’t just effective for middle-of-the-funnel prospects. They can also help folks at earlier stages of awareness. For instance, people in the discovery stage may not know they have a problem, but they’re likely experiencing the symptoms. The extra length lets you conduct a thorough investigation and lead visitors down the path from the symptoms to the problem to (hopefully, your) solution.
With a long-form landing page that runs 24/7/365, you can show potential customers how their current situation is costing them money, time, resources—or any other problem you’ve helped them identify. You can also anticipate the objections your target customer might have about your software and address them with compelling, long-form storytelling.
2. The “Weekly How To” Webinar Landing Page
You can raise awareness of your webinar through your email and social media channels, and you’ll definitely see some engagement for your effort. (After all, how hard is it to click a little icon?) But without a dedicated landing page, it can be tough as old leather to convert interested people into actual registrants.
It’s easy to forget that once you finalize your content and secure your speakers, you still have to convince your visitors to register to attend.
This webinar landing page that Thinkific built with Unbounce gets it right:
Image courtesy of Thinkific. Click it to see the whole thing.
Promoting an entire digital summit, this page has a large, eye-catching header section that tells the viewer exactly what they’re going to get out of this online event. It also has strong calls-to-action placed above the fold and below the body copy, plus detailed descriptions of the speakers.
Thinkific even includes an FAQ section to help potential registrants get as much information as possible before they make the decision to sign up.
Why build your own webinar page?
If you’re asking prospects to give you their email details and an hour or more of their time, you need to make it clear what they’re getting in return. With a landing page, you can communicate the value of registering for an online or offline event using persuasive elements like benefit-oriented headlines, social proof, and testimonials.
You can also use these pages as an entry point for visitors to explore other relevant content. For example, the bottom of the Thinkific webinar landing page features a short value statement that highlights the benefits of their product in a call-to-action to start a free trial.
Editor’s note. Looking for some advice on how to run a webinar for your SaaS brand? We’ve got you covered: How to Build a Great Webinar from the Ground Up + 8 Examples That Don’t Suck.
3. The Interactive Lead Magnet Page
Let’s face it: the traditional lead magnet is losing its pull. Years ago, you could offer a simple downloadable piece of content like an ebook or a PDF resource and watch your conversions soar.
Today, it’s often a different story. Fewer visitors are willing to part with their email addresses—and if they are, you better have something truly valuable to offer in exchange. To address this, SaaS businesses are upping their lead magnet game by trying out quizzes and other types of personalized, interactive, or tool-based marketing elements.
Here at Unbounce, for example, we developed a free analyzer tool that offers insights on how you can optimize your landing pages:
While an ebook or downloadable PDF can also help to educate visitors, what happens once they finish with that static piece of content? It’s up to each individual to figure out how to apply the learnings, and they’re not always motivated to follow through. That means it’s often the end of the road. They close the book, and they’re done. That’s not great for engagement.
People also have to set aside some time to actually read through your material. In comparison, a quick tool like the analyzer provides each visitor with a personalized report on their specific pages—instantly. No pain, all gain.
And we serve this tool up on an Unbounce-built landing page that converts almost 30% of all visitors. It’s a great way to offer value, all the while serving as an evergreen awareness campaign that’s directly plugged into what we do.
Why should you consider a tool on a landing page like this?
Calculators, quizzes, and other tools are a great way to inject a little fun and—ideally—high value into your lead-gen or awareness strategy. They empower your visitors with insights on their specific situation. And they give you more info about your audience than you could get from a piece of static content.
Interactive lead magnets can also reduce the time your business spends on sales queries and save you time by automatically sending someone’s contact information through your funnel via integrations with your CRM or email marketing platform.
Finally, an interactive lead magnet can help instill loyalty in your visitors. If you’ve helped someone solve a problem, they’re much more likely to bookmark your page and remember you for next time. Plus, you get more credibility because you’ve proven that you know your stuff and understand your audience’s needs
4. The “Newsletter Audience-Builder” Landing Page
These days, you’d be hard-pressed to find a company without an email newsletter. It’s one of the most efficient, cost-effective ways to stay top-of-mind with your audience.
But people also find these newsletters increasingly easy to ignore, easy to tag as spam, and easy to unsubscribe from. That’s why it’s imperative that you keep your list fresh by adding new subscribers.
Sure, you can put a newsletter sign-up button on your website and call it a day. But if you really want to grow your mailing list, you should consider adding a dedicated landing page into the mix. With a landing page, you can experiment with copy and compelling visuals to ensure your newsletter’s differentiating value really comes across.
For instance, Pitchbook’s newsletter sign-up (which is another hit landing page from their team) checks all the boxes. It has a clear headline, uses visuals to show what the newsletter looks like in different formats, and has a short-but-sweet form:
If you prefer to keep things simple, though, you could follow this example from Later. There’s not a lot of text on this page, but each piece of copy serves a purpose. The headline (“Never miss an Instagram trend again”) drives home the key benefit of signing up for their newsletter. And the subheading acts as social proof. (After all, a million-marketer-strong email list is nothing to scoff at.)
The last section sets expectations around frequency, so potential subscribers can feel confident knowing Later won’t spam their inbox with multiple messages a week. And by only asking for an email, they make signing up even more enticing to their audience of marketers (who are usually wary about giving up their personal info, but often do so when it’s in exchange for more data).
5. The “Sign Up For a 1:1 Demo” Landing Page
While you can give your website visitors a small taste of what you offer through videos and webinars, this often can’t compare to leading someone through your product personally—where your guest can ask questions live. This is why offering a free demo is a common step in the SaaS buyer journey and a key landing page you’ll want to have available evergreen.
Visitors at this stage can be pretty close to making a purchasing decision, so your number one priority should be to make this process as frictionless as possible. Fortunately, a landing page is one of the easiest ways to do this:
The most effective demo landing pages are pretty straightforward. They typically have a clean and simple look, a form, a phone number field for an alternative form of contact, social proof, a video, bullet points, or another short message that outlines what users can expect from the demo.
While the “request a demo page” from Skillshare above is missing some social proof in the form of testimonials, all the other important elements are present. It’s easy to follow and the lead-gen form is a reasonable length to help the Skillshare team understand how to tailor the demo.
Conversion tip. You can take things a step further for your always-on demo landing pages by adding a pop-up. For example, you could use this calendar notification pop-up template and have it appear after someone converts. This would prompt your visitor to add a calendar reminder to join the session and ensure your live demo attendance is high.
Evergreen Your SaaS Landing Pages
If you set up these evergreen landing pages as a first step, you can generate a ton of leads for your software without developing campaigns on a typical one-by-one cadence.
As with any other type of campaign though, it’s a great idea to optimize these pages to ensure you’re getting the best results possible. Experiment with on-page elements, the copy on the page, or adding social proof. Even tiny tweaks can have a big impact.
The work of a SaaS marketer is never done, but by building pages for the long term you can create conditions that help you generate leads and conversions—without climbing on the campaign hamster wheel.