Your industry landing pages are like mini-homepages for your key markets. This article outlines the critical components of an industry landing page and how to organize them.
Part seller, part storyteller, part persuader, and part connector, an industry landing page in a diversified firm plays a pivotal role in shaping early client perceptions. It acts like a mini-homepage — presenting a very clear slice of the firm to a distinct and specific type of client. Its job is to demonstrate that the firm has a distinct combination of both tangible expertise and deep experience that is valuable to clients in the industry vertical while enticing them to dig a little further. And, it needs to do all that very, very quickly.
I believe there are 5 components of an effective industry landing page, and they’re loosely prioritized as follows:
- A Point-of-View
- Services
- Case Stories
- Thought Leadership
- People
#1 — A Point-of-View
Your clients work in the sector each and every day. They don’t need you to recount the macro trends shaping their industry. They already know what they are. In fact, they’re struggling with them right now, which is probably why they’re here. So, why recast them? I tend to believe that generalized statements of market dynamics are more likely to dissuade a client from believing your firm has valid expertise than the other way around.
A compelling point-of-view speaks to today, tomorrow and yesterday. It speaks in the language of the client and demonstrates that your firm has something tangibly interesting (and hopefully different) to say. It should pinpoint the most pressing industry challenges as you see them, present your vision for the future, and quantify your past successes. This last part is critical. Your point-of-view needs to quantify your experience. This could be industry rankings (if your an A/E firm), projects delivered (to provide a sense of depth and experience), or some measure of impact (collective cost savings or revenue gains).
Ideally, it should do all these things in no more than 5-6 sentences. If a client reads nothing more than your point-of-view they should have a clear understanding of how your firm thinks and the depth of your past experience. The point-of-view is usually the far most important element of the page. As such, it should demand highest priority real estate. Ultimately, your point-of-view is there for one simple reason — to encourage clients to take that next step with your site; to dig a little deeper into the landing page and connect with other areas such as thought leadership, services and case stories.
#2 – Services
Once you’ve established your point-of-view you want to make it very easy for a client to understand how you can help. Every firm is a little different so the exact approach will vary. This could mean simply providing a short list of your most relevant services or it could be more of a service statement describing the nature of your expertise. Either way, to the extent possible, your services should be described more in the language of your client than in the language of the firm. Finally, assuming your firm is well positioned this should include some specialty services (and potentially products) that have been custom developed to solve the specific pressing industry challenges you articulated in your point-of-view.
Your services should be featured relatively prominently on the page and should feel like a clear derivative of your point-of-view — if a good point-of-view represents a compelling vision of the future for potential clients in the industry, your services are the tools that get them there.
#3 – Case Stories
Your point-of-view shapes your vision for the industry, your services outline how you take clients there, and your case stories validate that you have the experience to do it. On an industry landing page it’s not necessary to list a lot of case studies. In fact, it tends to be more effective to feature a small selection of your most notable client projects — well respected clients or projects with high quality, data-driven outcomes.
#4 – Thought Leadership
A good industry landing page should include a small sample of your firm’s relevant thought leadership. Depending on the nature of your firm, this might be as simple as a short sampling of recent blog posts or it could be summaries of your latest primary research studies. Regardless, your firm’s thought leadership demonstrates that you have something important and relevant to say. Hence, it should have a fairly prominent role on your industry landing page. If yours is an A/E firm, it will likely be subordinate to your industry-oriented project portfolios. If yours is a management consulting firm, it will likely be the other way around.
#5 – People
Last, but certainly not least, a good industry landing page prominently features a small sampling of your firm’s industry and practice leaders. After all, clients hire people. They want to be able to see and gauge the experience of the people overseeing their work with your firm. Utilizing the 3 P’s Methodology, from the industry landing page a user should be able to quickly access bios of key people that feature both their authored thought leadership and key projects they’ve lead or been a part of.
Wrapping It Up
If you’re in the midst of prototyping your new site or planning for a redesign, I hope this article provides a good starting point for thinking about your industry landing pages — in my experience, critical yet often overlooked site pages. In no particular order, here are a few examples of landing pages I like (some of which have been screen captured in this article — I chose all pages on Healthcare from a mix of consulting and A/E firms so you can compare and contrast more easily):
