The Ultimate Guide to Landing Pages for Language Schools (and How They Can Help You with Your Marketing)
Do you ever think about how to turn people viewing your website from one-time visitors to future students? People may wander around and check out all the different tabs and pictures but at the end, will they try out your courses, or will they forget about you and move on with their life?
This is where landing pages come in. It’s a popular marketing solution to direct newcomers to a certain action, such as leaving their contact info, signing up for an event, tryout class, free intake you are offering. Anything that means they’re not just passing by anymore – they’re somehow connected to your school now!
If you want to find out what landing pages are and how to create one for your language school, keep reading!
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What is a Landing Page and Why Language Schools Need It?
A landing page is the page you see first when you click on a link to a website which can be provided on social media, in an email or in an ad.
It’s different than the homepage because it serves a different function!
The main feature is that it is much simpler and doesn’t have all the tabs and links that you have on your main website:
Our home page WITH top & bottom menu
Our lead magnet landing page – no menu (no header or footer).
That’s because it has one particular goal, usually requiring an action from the user and for that you need their attention drawn to the important information and the action, not away from it!
All you need is some eye-catching graphics, some short informative message that will explain what you are offering and finally a call-to-action (CTA) button. A call-to-action button can mean clicking „buy the product”, „enroll in a free trial” or „sign up to receive a newsletter”.
Landing pages are very versatile and can take different forms to best suit your current marketing campaign and maximize its success.
Why would you want to create a landing page for your language school?
Whatever your marketing strategy is, usually at some point you’re going to direct people to your website.
And you should never direct anyone to your homepage – be it from ads, social media channels or collaborations!
Why? You don’t want them to get distracted by tons of information and a complicated offer scattered around on different pages. And certainly you don’t want them to get overwhealmed, leave and lose potential clients.
Your main goal with every marketing action redirecting to your website should be to either get a sale or get someone’s email address (which, over time, you can turn into a sale).
Here’s a simplified ONE main rule when it comes to landing pages is:
ONE page, ONE call to action
or, in other words
ONE page, ONE goal: nothing to distract people from taking that ONE action you want them to take.
You can use a landing page to ask people to leave their contact info by offering them free learning materials or a free quiz, invite people to sign up for a free trial of your new course, give a discount to new clients or anything else you can dream of!
And, obviously, a landing page can be a sales page – so an online “leaflet” highlighting all the benefits of your courses, showing the price and allowing people to enroll in your courses.
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What Are the Different Types of Landing Pages?
There are different types of landing pages depending on their main goal. Let’s have a look at the two most common ones:
1. A lead magnet landing page.
A lead is someone’s contact info such as an email address. When they land on your page, they’re encouraged to leave their lead (so usually first name and email address – don’t overdo it!) to get some free materials in return.
This can be a newsletter, a sample of educational materials sent to their email or results to a test or quiz done online. A lead magnet can also mean offering discounts or a free trail for your courses.
Gathering leads of people potentially interested in learning the language you’re teaching by offering them a smart lead magnet is a crucial marketing action! You can reach them later and market your offer more directly. It increases the chance that they will eventually decide to buy your courses and stay with you longer as a customer. Not everybody makes decisions on the spot! Make sure you don’t lose contact to people that are interested in your products, so they can come back to you later.
Are you interested in reading more about lead magnets? We’re preparing an article on how to create lead magnets for language schools that people actually want and need – make sure to sign up for our newsletter to be the first one to know when it’s out!
2. Sales pages, on the other hand, focus on persuading the visitor to purchase your products or courses.
On a sales landing page, you need to tell your potential students how your courses can improve their life. The point is to try to answer your clients’ needs (so-called ‘pain points’) and show that you’re offering what they had been looking for.
Here are a few must-haves of a successful sales page:
· a strong headline,
· informative description emphasizing best qualities of your course and who’s it for,
· some testimonials from previous sudents telling why they are happy with their course (if you can include a photo of the student it’ll work even better!),
· any type of data that can prove your product or course being effective (like the % of people passing a certain type of exam),
· a short FAQ section to answer any objections that clients may have before purchasing.
· the most important one: a call-to-action button – in this case directing the viewer to purchase the course or sign up an intake.
Sales pages can take longer or shorter form, and they both have some pros and cons. Usually longer pages make more sense for more expensive or time-consuming products or services. However – if you are creating a sales page in a language that is not a native language to your clients (so for example in English for an international audience), a long form can require too much effort from your potential students and might end up with them losing that initial impulse to buy.
That’s not all of course. You can use landing pages for customers trying to unsubscribe from your email list to try to convince them otherwise or to say ‘thank you’ to customers who signed up for a course or a lead magnet and offer them additional products or services. The only limit is your imagination 😉
The Anatomy of Successful Landing Pages For Language Schools
Landing pages can take many different forms from very short pages with eye-catching graphics to long form sales pages that you can scroll and scroll for ages.
Depending on the purpose you can use different elements and styles but there are some universal rules about what you should include:
· Firstly, get rid of tabs and outside links – you don’t want to distract the viewer or direct them outside of the landing page.
· When you have a clean canvas, you need a good headline to grab the viewers’ attention.
· You can also use different pictures or infographics to help you make a stronger impression.
· Then you add a description of your offer with informative and persuasive arguments.
· And finally, the most important is the call-to-action, like a form for leaving contact information, a ‘purchase’ button or a ‘sign up for a newsletter’ element.
All components need to work together as a guiding system leading the visitor from being moderately interested in what you have to offer to the desired action (from landing on your page to clicking the button).
Landing Pages for Expat Language Schools
Whether you decide to create a sales page for a new language course or your first lead magnet page with a quiz or a discount, it’s important that you optimize them to your target audience.
Here are some adjustments worth considering before you put up your first landing page:
You need to remember that your target audience are expats and English is not their native language. It’s better to start from a simple description or slogan and gradually add details and elegant arguments as the page goes on.
This way you don’t lose viewers’ attention or confuse them at the beginning. Make it easy to understand what you’re offering and what are the main benefits. If people feel like learning more, they’ll keep scrolling and reading.
Since they’re living abroad, expats probably communicate in their second language all day long. Looking at a page full of long blocks of text written in a complicated manner will probably feel tiring and may make the viewers simply click off the page. You have an even shorter time to grab their attention.
That’s why it’s better to focus on being straight to the point. Make your description easy to follow and use everyday language. Forget about dragged-out paragraphs of text - this is not the best place to showcase your literary talent even if it’s very impressive 😉
Use lists and bullet points. It makes things easier to read, understand and refer back to.
Shorten your paragraphs by pushing the sentences to the next line whenever it makes sense.
We’ve created a landing pages to-do list with actionable steps for you to follow in the upcoming two weeks. Created specifically for language schools!
You can access the to-do list library by leaving your email address below:
How to Create Your Own Successful Landing Page in 3 Simple Steps
1. Define the outcome
What is it that you’re offering?
What are important features of the product, course or free resource? Is it a year-long group course, an online one-on-one lesson, or a summer course? Are you offering a free trial or a discount for new students? A guide, quiz or a checklist?
Knowing what you’re selling or giving away is the first step in coming up with arguments to encourage people to purchase or sign up.
2. Define who’s it for
Who is your target audience?
Try to think about their situation, age, personalities and so on. This will help you to think about what problems they have that you may solve with your product.
Your arguments will be far more effective if they’re specific and relatable to the viewer. For example, college students may have different priorities and needs than people in their forties. How can you persuade them that this is a perfect solution for them?
To read more about this topic read our article about creating your own client avatar - click here.
3. Why is your offer better than other ones available on the market?
Finally, think of benefits that come from choosing your offer – even if it’s “only” a free resource!
Remember, that if anyone will leave their email address with you – you need to convince them that it’s worth it! Email databases are actually being sold on daily basis – and they ain’t cheap either! So lay out what will you be able to deliver in exchange for your potential student’s email address. How will your freebie change their life for better?
For sales pages focus on showcasing what is it that makes you better than your competition. Is it your location, prices, or maybe experienced teachers?
Finding those arguments is important to seal the deal and help the customers choose you instead of moving on to look at other schools on the internet.
In these 3 simple steps you can gather arguments to create a simple but effective sales page!
Conclusion: Make Your Marketing Campaigns More Effective with Conversion Optimized Landing Pages
Marketing campaigns run on social media or via email shouldn’t end when the person lands on your website.
At the end of the day the purpose of marketing is to increase sales and engagement with your business. And for that you need to guide the potential customers as long as possible.
Creating a landing page for a certain offer, product or to gather leads is a great way to increase the effectiveness of your marketing strategy.
Such pages should be optimized in terms of conversion rates. That means that they should help direct as many viewers as possible to become clients. For that you need to encourage them to take action and make strong arguments.
Also, when you’re talking to a non-native audience you shouldn’t blindly follow rules which you find on the Internet. You need to be more straight to the point and remember about using easy to understand language not to lose your readers’ attention.
Remember that although it requires some additional work, using landing pages is a great way to make sure the effort you put into your marketing pays off!
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