Wait, We've NEVER Done an Episode About the HubSpot Landing Pages Tool?!

Of all the things we’ve covered on HubHeroes—from AI-powered sales tools and email marketing strategy to HubSpot’s biggest changes over the years—you’d think we’d hit all the major inbound marketing fundamentals by now. But somehow, we have never done an episode about landing pages. Not once. Not even as a side topic. And I have to ask… how did we let this happen?

Landing pages are one of the most essential building blocks of inbound marketing, yet they’re also one of the most misunderstood and overlooked tools in HubSpot. They’re not just another website page—they’re where conversions happen. They’re how businesses capture leads, guide prospects toward the next step, and—when done right—deliver a seamless user experience that builds trust instead of eroding it.

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Maybe landing pages get taken for granted because they’ve been around forever. Maybe it’s because they’re so deceptively simple that they don’t feel like they need much attention. But that’s exactly the problem. Too many landing pages are treated like an afterthought—slapped together in a rush while all the time and energy goes into the offer behind the form. The result? Pages that don’t tell a compelling story, don’t create urgency, and don’t actually make the case for why someone should convert in the first place.

So today, that changes. George, Chad, and I dive into what’s changed about landing pages over the years, what outdated best practices need to die, and what marketers and sales teams should be thinking about when they build high-performing landing pages in HubSpot. And yes, we’re calling out some of the biggest mistakes we see—from removing navigation (seriously, stop doing that) to landing pages that feel like afterthoughts instead of strategic conversion tools.

If you’re treating landing pages like a “set it and forget it” part of your marketing strategy, this is the wake-up call you didn’t know you needed.

Keywords

landing pages, inbound marketing, HubSpot, conversion optimization, digital marketing, best practices, user experience, marketing strategies, content marketing, lead generation, CTAs, user experience, thank you pages, content gating, AI, landing pages, marketing strategies, conversion optimization, best practices, digital marketing

What We Cover  

• Why We’ve Never Talked About Landing Pages Until Now: Somehow, after countless episodes covering nearly every inch of HubSpot, this is our first time dedicating an episode to landing pages. We reflect on why they’re so foundational yet so often overlooked.

• What Hasn’t Changed About Landing Pages: Landing pages have always had one primary goal—getting someone to take action. We discuss what has remained consistent about high-converting landing pages over the years, from clear messaging to strong CTAs.

• What’s Changed the Most in Landing Page Best Practices: Consumer expectations have evolved, and what worked five years ago won’t cut it today. We talk about the rise of personalization, dynamic content, and how AI is changing the way we think about conversion optimization.

• Outdated Landing Page Practices That Need to Die: From hiding navigation (stop doing that) to bloated forms that ask for way too much information, we break down the common mistakes that frustrate users and hurt conversions.

• The Role of Storytelling on Landing Pages: A landing page isn’t just a form and a button—it’s a chance to tell a compelling story about why someone should take the next step. We discuss how marketers can structure their pages to create a stronger emotional connection.

• The Thank You Page Is Not the End of the Journey: Most thank-you pages are an afterthought, but they shouldn’t be. We explore how to turn thank-you pages into valuable next-step opportunities that keep prospects engaged.

• How AI Can Optimize Landing Pages (When Used Correctly): HubSpot has rolled out a variety of AI tools, but how do they apply to landing pages? We talk about how AI can assist with content generation, A/B testing, and real-time personalization.

• Gated vs. Ungated Content: What Should Actually Go Behind a Form?: The debate around gating content is still alive and well. We discuss when it makes sense to require a form, when it doesn’t, and how marketers can rethink their approach to lead capture.

• Conversion Optimization Strategies You Might Be Overlooking: From multi-step forms to progressive profiling, we highlight the overlooked tactics that can make a massive difference in landing page performance.

• Why Landing Pages Shouldn’t Exist in Isolation: A great landing page is part of a larger ecosystem. We talk about how landing pages connect with email campaigns, social ads, and broader inbound strategies to maximize results.

And so much more ... 

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] George B. Thomas: By the way, if anybody's wondering, I don't have a bunion and we are recording today.

[00:00:04] Although, Liz, it feels like the internet gremlins do not want this episode to come out and it's crazy, but let's, let's roll with it.

[00:00:13] Liz Moorehead: Like, it's actually making me wonder. If the reason why we haven't talked about this topic yet is some sort of big sprocket conspiracy, like, somebody doesn't want this information to get out.

[00:00:25] George B. Thomas: I

[00:00:25] Liz Moorehead: Somebody doesn't want us to talk about this because we actually have a hilarious problem guys. So last week I was doing a little auditing of our topics, just taking a look at things we had done, things we hadn't done.

[00:00:37] And

[00:00:38] George B. Thomas: We've

[00:00:38] Liz Moorehead: you know, one,

[00:00:39] George B. Thomas: the way.

[00:00:40] Liz Moorehead: we have done a lot and we've done so much that sometimes we'll come back and talk about things multiple times from multiple angles. We had multiple HubSpot email tool episodes, multiple HubSpot social media tools, multiple commerce hub,

[00:00:55] George B. Thomas: I mean, listen, Jack Cooper Smith has been on the show three times. Let's just throw that out there.

[00:01:00] Liz Moorehead: Yes, he has. Um, and guys, do you know what we haven't done?

[00:01:04] George B. Thomas: I feel so bad right now. I feel like I'm going to get judged by the entire community right now.

[00:01:09] Liz Moorehead: we have literally never spoken a single breath of oxygen about landing pages before. Landing pages!

[00:01:19] George B. Thomas: I don't, I don't understand how this is that we have never

[00:01:22] Liz Moorehead: I don't either. We haven't even talked about the blogging tool twice, guys.

[00:01:28] George B. Thomas: No, no, yes, yes, we have we went into settings and talked about AI settings

[00:01:37] Liz Moorehead: individual episode per setting.

[00:01:40] George B. Thomas: and not landing pages. What?

[00:01:46] Liz Moorehead: I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed and mad. Do you get what I'm saying?

[00:01:52] Chad Hohn: those before I got here,

[00:01:54] Liz Moorehead: Chad, you were

[00:01:55] Chad Hohn: to accept all of the blame.

[00:01:57] Liz Moorehead: No, you were in the studio audience, and not once did we get a little Chad note that said, hey, have you guys ever thought about talking about landing pages? It's a nice try,

[00:02:06] George B. Thomas: Nobody was

[00:02:07] Chad Hohn: time I mess with landing pages was when somebody wants to store a cookie in the browser or do something weird, you know, technical code wise. They don't ask me about that kind of stuff, so it wasn't even on my radar, if I'm gonna be completely honest.

[00:02:22] George B. Thomas: the words hidden field and cookie come up, then Chad gets tagged in.

[00:02:27] Chad Hohn: Yeah, exactly.

[00:02:28] Liz Moorehead: Fantastic. I'm looking for a dialogue between you and me, George. It's going to be great.

[00:02:34] Chad Hohn: I got I got questions. I mean

[00:02:36] George B. Thomas: party caller that just called in from your desktop.

[00:02:39] Liz Moorehead: Spam question mark telemarketer? I'm sure they have a lot to say about landing pages. You know what, guys?

[00:02:44] George B. Thomas: Maybe they need some.

[00:02:46] Liz Moorehead: We're doing great today, but we are finally bringing oxygen, some light to this very necessary topic. Landing pages are building blocks in the inbound world. They are foundational.

[00:02:58] They are To the point where I would probably say they are taken for granted much in the way that we overlooked them. So today that ends. We are diving into the evolution of landing pages, what's changed, what hasn't and what sales and marketing teams need to be thinking about when building high performing landing pages in HubSpot.

[00:03:18] We're ready.

[00:03:19] George B. Thomas: Yeah.

[00:03:20] Liz Moorehead: Let's do these. All right. So I want to start by looking backward. Landing pages have been around forever. Not just an end on marketing, just in marketing in general, from your perspective and George, I'll start with you. What has fundamentally remained the same? And what has changed the most?

[00:03:38] George B. Thomas: Well, I mean, Listen, the reason that we might have forgot about these is because most mere mortal humans think of them In simple terms, or don't even think of them at all, or definitely don't think of them in a pair of pages, because literally, we're like, let's talk about landing pages. Well, it has to be landing pages and thank you pages, by the way, but we'll get to that.

[00:04:02] Um, it's always been about this focused conversion. That hasn't changed. Like, there's this thing, and we need him to know them about this thing, and, and it's also always been about capturing, uh, attention. And then being able to communicate the value of what it is on the page quickly, and then drive a specific action.

[00:04:27] So, like, if you think about it, like, how do we have this focused thing that grabs attention, communicates the value and drives them to the action that we want. So, like, and so you'll hear like call to action when I say call to action on the landing page, though, it's. It's somewhat copy, but it's also very much like the button is the thing that you want them to click.

[00:04:50] And sometimes I really feel like people will just like throw these together real quick. Like we'll spend weeks, months. On, uh, ebook, a guide, a checklist, um, you know, demo process training. Let's, let's spend three hours and train all the sales reps on how to do. And then it's like, we put the landing page. I was like, but so we don't take the time to, to do it.

[00:05:15] Right. So that's what it's kind of all always been about. Now. We live in a world now where I think we have, if you're not thinking about how AI is impacting the creation or the enablement of your landing pages. If you're not thinking about how smart content is actually leveraged for your landing pages, if you're not thinking about, um, the fact that we humans now have zero time for fluff.

[00:05:43] So think of personalization, dynamic, um, more of, uh, an experience, less of a landing place. I'll stop there. I'll stop there.

[00:05:54] Liz Moorehead: Chad.

[00:05:54] Chad Hohn: Hi, that's a good one um well, I You know I don't traditionally know if I have the context to say like historically what things have been and what are Right or what are currently because I don't really do a whole lot of content marketing, but I do have a couple like I want to frame and understand where landing pages have belonged in the world, but I want to do it from the perspective of like how you hook up landing pages to HubSpot and stuff, right?

[00:06:24] So let's say using HubSpot CMS, right? Well, you hook up your main domain and then, hey, she

[00:06:32] Liz Moorehead: found my mouse!

[00:06:33] Chad Hohn: Oh, it's a great day.

[00:06:35] Liz Moorehead: Sick. Go ahead.

[00:06:39] Chad Hohn: Okay.

[00:06:40] George B. Thomas: winning when you're happy about finding your mouse in a

[00:06:42] Chad Hohn: Oh,

[00:06:43] Liz Moorehead: We're doing great, guys.

[00:06:44] Chad Hohn: Do you have to plug it in on the underneath side real quick to charge it so you still can't use it or is it good? No, we're good. Okay

[00:06:52] Liz Moorehead: We're good.

[00:06:53] Chad Hohn: Okay, um,

[00:06:54] George B. Thomas: we're talking about user experience, can I just 'cause Chad dang gone. It you derailed us. What, in what universe

[00:07:03] Liz Moorehead: Yeah, Chad, it was definitely not me holding up the mouse. Way to go.

[00:07:06] George B. Thomas: In what universe does it make sense to have the plugin? To charge your mouse, on the bottom of the mouse, so you can't use Alright, we're here to talk about

[00:07:17] Liz Moorehead: Okay, so I'll be perfectly honest. My mouse only needs to be charged once every, like, four or five months, and I just plug it in overnight, and then I don't have to do it again for another four to five months.

[00:07:28] Chad Hohn: what if it actually dies when you're in the middle of something then you're just

[00:07:32] Liz Moorehead: multiple Mises. I have

[00:07:33] Chad Hohn: You multiple mis

[00:07:35] Liz Moorehead: I have

[00:07:35] George B. Thomas: you just take a break, I guess. Anyway, not why

[00:07:38] Liz Moorehead: Anyway, so yes, Chad, um, the landing page isn't such

[00:07:42] Chad Hohn: Yes courage right got it

[00:07:45] George B. Thomas: Courage!

[00:07:46] Chad Hohn: that's the Apple joke. Alright, uh, anyway. So, um, like, you hook up, so you have HubSpot CMS, right? Hook up your domain to your website. And then you have landing pages. And there's like some level of like, CMS is paid, but you can still kind of use landing pages a little bit.

[00:08:07] Even if you're not on CMS paid. If you have Marketing Hub. And then like mark landing pages are usually intended to be hooked up to a subdomain. So like, you know, landing. yourdomain. com or whatever. So like, aren't landing pages just an extension of your CMS website in general? And like, really, it's just a website page.

[00:08:33] It's just how the formatting is. That's really the only difference, right?

[00:08:36] George B. Thomas: Well, so, see, and now you're bumping into something that has always confused people historically, like By the way, when, if you have a third party CMS, WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, whatever, you're right, you go into HubSpot, it's a subdomain. And I always used to tell people like, listen, it should be something like Education.

[00:08:58] Or, um, Academy. Or, because, because let's be honest, usually the folks that are getting a HubSpot, back in the day, They're because it's marketing and they want to be able to do landing pages because they want to ebook a guy to check some type of conversion point. And so, yes, it is

[00:09:18] Chad Hohn: be able to track it

[00:09:19] George B. Thomas: right and be able to track it.

[00:09:20] So, yes, it is. A a page, but it is also a page that is especially built to have different analytics than your normal, average bear, which is again, a piece that historically people didn't realize is that CTAs were built so that you could see they got. Viewed, they got clicked, and there was a submission on a landing page afterwards, right?

[00:09:45] So that was the precursor to get them there and understand the metric, metrics of your call to actions of like, viewed, clicked, and submitted. Then you'd get to the landing page. And again, that's going to pull in the information around the conversion. So viewed, submitted, like, and next steps, right? And so here's the thing, the question that I would always get is like, So where do these live on my website?

[00:10:11] Like, well, they live in a subdomain, but here's the thing, you could create a page called a resource center and you could have cards on that resource center and it could then go to your landing pages where they could convert, because then you're gonna bring them back to the website with a thing called a thank you page where you're gonna deliver, and so like it became a whole

[00:10:33] Liz Moorehead: the CTAs in your articles and other places that you

[00:10:36] George B. Thomas: Oh my god, yes, yeah. So it's,

[00:10:38] Chad Hohn: hmm. So CTAs are like an entry point that get you out into the landing page, and then the landing page does something or has some sort of value, and then that brings them back to the website.

[00:10:50] George B. Thomas: Yeah, and here I got to hit upon this, but by the way, I'll, I'll give you a little bit of, uh, behind the scenes, um, stuff. We had a guest in the, in the show notes, not here today, but in the show notes, our boy, Devin saw the topic and started going ham. And Chad and I were even laughing in the green room before we hit record on one of the things.

[00:11:14] Liz, historically, that was a best practice. That irritates the crap out of I think most of us at this point and that is historically landing pages. You would hide the navigation

[00:11:26] Liz Moorehead: Dude, you're skipping ahead. You're skipping

[00:11:28] George B. Thomas: well, well, well, well, okay. Okay. So, all right. Um,

[00:11:31] Chad Hohn: I don't know if I can keep this frustration bottled up.

[00:11:36] Liz Moorehead: Well, I want to at least give my

[00:11:38] George B. Thomas: All right. All right. Go ahead. Let's go ahead. Go ahead. Let's answer it. Then we'll dive into.

[00:11:42] Liz Moorehead: yeah, we, I also have thoughts and feelings about this. So when I think about what's fundamentally stayed the same, the purpose of the landing page. The landing page is to make the pitch on the value of the thing that you have behind the landing page that has not changed.

[00:12:01] What has changed the most is what is considered valuable

[00:12:08] Chad Hohn: Hmm.

[00:12:09] Liz Moorehead: and how you tell the story of that value.

[00:12:12] Chad Hohn: Is what is considered a conversion changing

[00:12:15] George B. Thomas: Oh, that's, that's, that's probably a whole nother episode, bro. Like, to be honest with you, I mean, my mind goes in so many different ways, because Ugh, I don't even know where to start with that. I'm gonna shut up. Liz, keep going.

[00:12:29] Liz Moorehead: No, I, okay. It's totally okay. It's what's fascinating about it is when you think about the landing page, it is existed before there was a HubSpot. Like, landing pages are not, you know, a HubSpot invention and. All it has been is you will give us some information. We'll give you the thing, right? And when I take a look at how landing pages have evolved in terms of best practices and in terms of what we're doing on them and in terms of what we're putting behind them, even what we're putting behind them has changed. Like we've had whole conversations, um, at different organizations I've worked at about like, do we even put anything behind a gate anymore? And we still have some people who are like, everything still has to go behind a gate, but consumers are. There's a higher threshold you kind of have to get over with them in order to get that transaction of information because we've had too many years of not great stuff behind the wall, or quite frankly, bad storytelling at the front that doesn't tell what it is.

[00:13:31] So those are like my high level thoughts, but George, you did start going into. Our next question, and I'm very excited to talk about this one because I think this is where we're going to have a lot of feelings

[00:13:42] George B. Thomas: Yeah.

[00:13:43] Liz Moorehead: come up. And that's the outdated landing page practices that people are still clinging to. And you tapped in, you tapped into the number one.

[00:13:52] So let's get back to this story

[00:13:54] George B. Thomas: I'm not gonna go with that one first, though. We'll swing back around with that, because I feel like you guys have a bunch to say around it, too. So, first of all, one of the things that I have to mention that I still see If I get to your landing page And you want my right arm or my firstborn child for the thing that you believe is the most valuable thing on the planet that I can download.

[00:14:16] Meaning, if you have ten fields on your

[00:14:20] Chad Hohn: Yeah. Mm-hmm

[00:14:21] George B. Thomas: um, um, no, I have stuff to do today. I know that that will take me too long. You're, you're, and especially if you're not using progressive profiling. Right, meaning if it's like, you already know my name, I've been to your website 17 times, why is my first name not in that field?

[00:14:40] Why do I have to type it again? Like, you're not making it simple. For me, you're making, you're creating a hurdle in the way. So like that more fields equals better lead qualification. Can I call bull on that one? I'm just saying more for more

[00:15:03] Liz Moorehead: where's that whoopsie jar

[00:15:04] George B. Thomas: Yeah, the what the whoops whoops. We need we need a sound effect like let's see or something like

[00:15:10] Chad Hohn: Yeah. A little banana peel slip or something.

[00:15:16] George B. Thomas: So, yeah, let's start with that like more fields does not equal better lead qualification and there are better ways to get those pieces of information over time progressive profiling dependent fields queued fields like So you're, you don't feel like you have to collect it all at once, you can collect it over time.

[00:15:34] So I'll start there, and then I'll pass the baton to somebody else to complain about outdated landing page practices since I already queued up one and maybe even have more.

[00:15:45] Liz Moorehead: Chadwick hit us with it.

[00:15:46] Chad Hohn: Well, um, sure. I mean, I, I was, you know, trying to tap into my inner Devon when I, because I was thinking the same thing before he even put it in the notes, right. About like, when I get to a landing page, and I think this may go back to like, people are trying to build a path. For the specific person that they think is on their landing page, right?

[00:16:13] But I'm never that person. Like, you know how like in the YouTube app, or in different Google things, they have like this little button called Stats for Nerds? And, like, you can watch it and it shows you, like, the real time bitrate, and, like, the throughput of the video, and, like, all this, like, nerd stuff, and a graph, and all these things, like, because I'm never, like, the manager, or the CEO, I'm just the person who's trying to help that person.

[00:16:42] And like, when I get to a landing page and there's no main nav, it is the most frustrating thing. It's like when a marketer tries to send Devin an SMS text, if you ever heard that episode, and went ballistic, talking about like, don't send me a text! Not unless it's like, I asked you to tell me when my food's gonna get here, right?

[00:17:04] Or whatever. It's like, basically the same thing. Like, I'm stuck on this page, And I can't just go explore your website unless I literally leave and, like, search your website again. And, like, at that point, I'm just gonna click on your Google ad, because I'm frustrated. You know, like, get out of here. You're gonna charge me five or ten bucks for that, just for the privilege of making me have to come back a second time.

[00:17:28] George B. Thomas: so let me talk about this for a second, because I have taught this, air quotes, best practice.

[00:17:38] Chad Hohn: Mm hmm.

[00:17:39] George B. Thomas: Not recently, but for years. And when we would teach this best practice, it literally be like, hey, make sure you've got your logo on the page, but it's not linked, you know, to anywhere. Um, you want to get them to the landing page.

[00:17:52] The only thing you want is to give them the, the form. Make sure there's no links in your footer. Um, because what we want to do with the stupid humans is treat them like cattle and we're going to actually herd them through the form to get to the green pasture of the thank you page. Now I'm waxing a little bit funny but not funny of like That's, that's, you're basically saying, remove all distraction, point them in the only place they go, because this is how much faith we believe that they can figure out.

[00:18:27] What, wait, like, first of all, that doesn't come from a place of love. That doesn't come from a place of servanthood. That doesn't come from a place of like, good, what I would call good marketing. Now, was it a tactic and strategy that worked back in the day? Hector the yes, is it something that I believe that we should continue to do moving forward?

[00:18:49] I really don't think so if they don't want your ish They don't want your ish But at least create the ish because if they want it then they'll convert on it if you don't have ten Fields in the forum like this is something I believe that should die. Honestly my personal opinion. I think you should die 

[00:19:05] Liz Moorehead: My personal opinion,

[00:19:07] George B. Thomas: oh Hmm

[00:19:11] Liz Moorehead: Like so often the problem with your landing page has nothing to do with the landing page. It's what you're trying to shove behind it. If it's garbage, if it's flimsy, if it's 1 dimensional, your landing page will be garbage, flimsy and 1 dimensional.

[00:19:25] It'll look like a used car car salesman trying to be like, no, it's totally fine that this Mercedes is 10 dollars. Don't worry about it. Like, that's what it's going to come off like.

[00:19:34] George B. Thomas: been wrecked.

[00:19:35] Liz Moorehead: so that

[00:19:37] George B. Thomas: So it's, it's funny that you're bringing that up, Liz.

[00:19:39] Liz Moorehead: God.

[00:19:40] George B. Thomas: It's funny that you're bringing that up because the amount of times I've seen a pillar page convert for somebody to download the PDF version of it and take it with them because it wasn't behind a gate. There was a way to add the service of you can take this thing with you if you want but you can read the whole thing here.

[00:19:58] It's kind of crazy, like, Why more people? I mean, there are some people that are listening to this that have done that, but there are some people listening that are still holding on to the everything has to be gated scenario. But like, it can be ungated gated, which is fun too. Sorry, go ahead Liz.

[00:20:15] Liz Moorehead: No, that's how I've always done it. I love that you brought up pillar pages. So like I've been doing pillar pages now, geez, for a very, very long time back when

[00:20:25] Chad Hohn: Undisclosed number of times.

[00:20:29] Liz Moorehead: It's like 8 years.

[00:20:30] George B. Thomas: It's been a long It's been a long f ing time. That's how long it's been.

[00:20:34] Liz Moorehead: Oopsie jar and

[00:20:36] Chad Hohn: sorry, I was saying it with, uh, Morse code.

[00:20:39] Liz Moorehead: is

[00:20:40] have like 12, 000 words of whatever topic it is that you're talking about at the top.

[00:20:46] You have like your introduction, you explain what it is and then a little tiny box that says, Hey, if you want to download this PDF to read it later, you're good. Go for it. And my landing pages for that were pillar pages regularly had 30 percent plus conversion rates, which is 10 percent over the standard benchmark for B2B. Regularly like that. So there's that piece of it. Um, the other thing I will say is the inverse of what I just said. You have something fantastic, fantastic behind your landing page and you have the flimsiest, saddest landing page I've ever seen.

[00:21:24] Are you an accountant? You'll really like this ebook. It's about accounting.

[00:21:29] In this, you will learn about accounting trends. You will learn about accounting do's and don'ts. And so much more. And that's it. Do you know what I'm saying? And they all look the same. It's like headline, little subheader, three or four bullets. Somebody who's like, I'm just trying to check this off of my to do list.

[00:21:48] You know, it's just, there's no, it's thoughtless.

[00:21:51] George B. Thomas: It's like, it's like you, and this is where I get frustrated because again, I, I leaned into this at the beginning of this episode, but you spend so much time creating the awesome thing. And then you turd out the piece that is most important. Like you, you literally turd out the thing that they have to like embrace it with.

[00:22:09] And so there's like no storytelling. There's a weak or unclear call to action. Like the, you

[00:22:16] Chad Hohn: Mm

[00:22:16] George B. Thomas: this is. And this is the thing that always used to freak me the flip out, too, is, like, talk about the CTAs on the bottom of the blog that Liz mentioned earlier. People will spend, like, 15 minutes throwing that piece of garbage together, thinking that people are just gonna automagically click it.

[00:22:31] No! Like, spend 7 hours on your guide, and then spend 14 hours on your call to action and your landing page. Um, anyway, don't, those aren't real numbers. I'm just telling a

[00:22:43] Chad Hohn: just ratios, yeah. You gotta spend a good amount of time on both. You gotta care about both, right?

[00:22:50] George B. Thomas: Yes. Yeah.

[00:22:51] Liz Moorehead: I think this might be a good time to circle back to that story that you wanted to tell us.

[00:22:55] George B. Thomas: Oh, I took the herding cattle. I did. I did that. Is that what you mean?

[00:23:01] Liz Moorehead: The navigation.

[00:23:02] George B. Thomas: Yeah, yeah. We talked about the no

[00:23:03] Liz Moorehead: Okay. Okay.

[00:23:04] George B. Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Herding cattle. It was the anyway. I'm not

[00:23:08] Chad Hohn: aren't smart enough to figure

[00:23:10] George B. Thomas: Yeah, I'm not trying to herd cattle anymore. I'm just not listen. I'm from Montana. I'll hop on a horse. I'll I'll herd some cattle just not through my landing pages.

[00:23:18] I'm done

[00:23:19] Liz Moorehead: the reason why I asked that is because he, Devin, our guy, mentioned one other thing that I thought was really powerful about, like, please stop doing this, which was When you go to convert on a single thing in a landing page, like I am here to convert on this one piece of product, this one content property, whatever it is that you're trying to give me.

[00:23:40] And one of the things that he mentioned is like, stop asking for me to sign up for 18, 000 other things at the same time.

[00:23:46] George B. Thomas: Mm hmm.

[00:23:47] Liz Moorehead: doing that. Stop showing me if I want to favorite it. Stop trying to get like, I think what happens is that marketers are like, well, while we're here. While we have your peepers, right, can we get you to do these 18 other things?

[00:23:59] And it's a bad user experience. I can feel that you're trying to maximize that touchpoint. And in some cases, a simple like, Would you also like to subscribe to our newsletter? Fine. But when we have too many other things going on, I think that gets problematic. Because it's less about the user experience and more about trying to maximize the value you're getting from that touchpoint.

[00:24:19] George B. Thomas: During the conversion point, I totally agree. And I've seen those forums where it's like, Four other checkboxes. I'd also like to subscribe to these other 17 things. Like, no. Now, here's what I

[00:24:31] Chad Hohn: just uncheck everything.

[00:24:32] George B. Thomas: Oh my god, yeah, never mind. I, I decided I don't want any of it. Forget it. I'll go down the road.

[00:24:37] Thank you. Cause by the way, your offer, It does exist down the road. There is a Target or Walmart to your like, whatever you are. I'm just going to throw that out there real quick. So here's the thing. I want to be careful because I don't want anybody to misconstrue something that might be going through their brain right now during the conversion.

[00:24:54] Yes, I agree with Devon. I agree that there shouldn't be like these other four additional check marks for your other three subscription newsletters and blah, blah, blah. However, let's talk about the thing that needs to be there and that is. Please, by all that is holy, do not just have inline text in that form, but go to a thank you page.

[00:25:13] And when you go to the thank you page, this is what I want to make sure that we get out here is, yes, the first thing should be like, hey, thanks for your interest in XYZ. You give them a big button, they can easily download it. And by the way, that's where a lot of people's thank you pages end. And that's not, that's not cool.

[00:25:30] Again, if I come from a place of good marketing, good experience, because of love, because of servanthood, because I'm value first, because I'm, you know, human centric content creation, I want you to continue the journey and that continuing the journey might look different depending on what the conversion was that they just had.

[00:25:50] For instance, if I convert on an ebook, a guided checklist, a webinar, whatever the thank you page might be like, here's the thing, the webinar video, the download button, whatever. But there needs to be a journey of like, by the way, people who are interested in this also like these blog articles, also watch these videos, also download these other things, whatever it is.

[00:26:10] But think of this page being able to be a bunch of other resources, a bunch of choose your own adventures, if you will, for them to spend more time educating themselves on the thing that they're trying to learn or the brand you that is providing the thing that they're trying to learn. Like, again, spend more time on the experience of the thank you page, maybe, than you did on the actual, like, thing.

[00:26:36] Uh, or, definitely the landing page in CTA, but here's what I want to think in your brain is the expectations. Like, if this is a demo, well then, what are the next actions, what's the time frame, what's the expectations, is there anything I need to gather, do I need to bring, like, so, like, Set them up for success, whether it's through educational journey or the next meeting that they're going to have with.

[00:27:00] Chad Hohn: Yeah, you know what's, excuse me, what's kind of frustrating about, um, like using a embedded HubSpot meeting? Is because it's kind of like an iframe and it's like embedded, right? You have, it's very difficult to pass the chosen meeting time data out to your website to use it as variables in the landing page.

[00:27:25] So like, uh, or in the thank you page, like thanks for booking with Billy at blah, blah, blah time, right? That would be amazing to be able to do just to personalize some things or even put conditions, you know, between now and your meeting, check out these articles or whatever, you know, anyway, just like, or any, any specific topics they chose or something like that, that they wanted to cover to drive what things you're going to show them, for example,

[00:27:53] George B. Thomas: can do some of that from like, if they do this in the form, then go to this page, which then you could have some of that stuff, but, but I understand what you're saying. Also, you reminded me of a thing that I haven't talked about forever, is like, if, if you're using HubSpot, uh, for your form conversion, There is also a way that you can embed the meeting widget in the actual like inline text area.

[00:28:20] So you can, again, if you start to think of user experience, I can have it where they can fill out a form and at the same place where they filled out a form, they can now book that meeting. And once they book that meeting, I can then send them to a thank you page. Like, holy crap, make it easy for me to actually get on your

[00:28:37] Chad Hohn: well without them having to fill in the data in the meeting link again HubSpot like natively added a thing that's supposed to do that too But you have to be on certain plans if you don't have some certain plan then you can't use that feature Yeah, as

[00:28:51] George B. Thomas: get me started.

[00:28:52] Chad Hohn: so I have one more question, too.

[00:28:54] George B. Thomas: I swear,

[00:28:55] Chad Hohn: I Have a

[00:28:56] Liz Moorehead: George is in a mood today.

[00:28:57] Chad Hohn: Yeah, I love it. Uh, about like, okay, so gates, right? And just going back to like, gating things, gating everything, not gating everything, or simultaneously gating and not gating, right? So you put like a conversion to, but it's actually technically not gated or whatever. So in a world where like, A lot of our answers are not just coming from Google search, but they're coming from Google McScraper bot at the top, and people aren't actually going into webpages as much.

[00:29:31] If your content is behind a gate and Google McScraper bot isn't going to fill out your form to get your content to give said answers. Then are you shooting yourself in the foot because then the AI models that actually scrape public content Aren't going to be able to have answers and cite you as a source.

[00:29:54] George B. Thomas: so it's, it's, well, your

[00:29:57] Chad Hohn: I know that's like evolving right

[00:29:59] George B. Thomas: your, your question leads me into a couple of different places. 1, it is definitely another push for the pillar page landing page where they can take the PDF with them because again, you're, you're putting the content out there. Um, it also is something where I would just.

[00:30:15] Fundamentally, think about the process in how you're showing up for the world as well. I want to talk about this? Do I want to talk about this?

[00:30:27] Liz Moorehead: Yes.

[00:30:28] George B. Thomas: So listen, One of the things that you can do right now is you can go to, um, GeorgeBThomas. com forward slash helper. And you'll see a page that you can hit a button, and it'll take you to, uh, another page, where you can start to ask any question that you want to my clone.

[00:30:49] Now, why am I bringing up my clone? One, when you have a clone that holds all of the content that you've ever created, you start to create content in a different way. When you have a clone that people, after a certain amount of messages for free, they put in their email address, um, so they can continue to get the value out of all the content you've created.

[00:31:11] You start to think about conversion in a different way and value based on the content you're creating because you know that the conversion is taken care of and you're adding value first through the clone that you've created based on the content you've created over the last 12 years. You also realize that you create content different because you're not so much worried about the content or the download, but the use of the content or the download that once was there.

[00:31:41] And here's the fun part, is that inside of this system you can also just fundamentally, if they mention a word, you can give them the guide in there. Because you already know that they've already converted. So for instance, you might be able to go over to my clone and mention something like WordPress versus HubSpot CMS.

[00:32:03] Guess what we have? We have a, on the website, a gated version and a pillar page gated version of that. But if you're already talking to the clone and you mentioned it, it'll actually serve you up a link just to download the dang PDF. Here's another thing I'll say, this is, and again, I'm going sideways, but when you start to think about what's fundamentally changing around this, the fact that you can now have sales sequences that align to campaigns that could use documents that are the marketing PDFs.

[00:32:36] You start to think about the conversion differently because the reporting actually swinging back on the hind end of being able to see what so like we live in a world where we need to start just rethinking it all.

[00:32:48] Chad Hohn: Yeah, it's not just website into CRM is conversion anymore. It's, it's marketing content into customer, ultimately.

[00:32:57] George B. Thomas: and listen, I've been this isn't the 1st time I played with this. I literally had a. I won't I won't drop their name, but I had a major player in the hub spot. Um, like in HubSpot. Say, I really love your conversion strategy with your community. What do you mean? I'm just building a community. Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

[00:33:18] You're generating emails. Whoa. Of course I am, but I'm building a community. No, no, no. That's slick how you make it do this. And then they go here. And then I'm like, well, I'm a marketer. Like, you know, but here's the thing. Like, You've got, it's evolving, right? So by the way, I, I didn't, I'm going to step out on a limb.

[00:33:41] I know this is about landing pages, but I'm getting to the place where I even am curious about community in the next couple of years, to be honest with you. And I'm the community guy. Um, I start to ask myself, do I need to have a community if I have a clone? And did people sign up for the community to get access to me?

[00:34:03] And the education, and if that lives somewhere else streamlined and more optimized, would they go there instead of here? Like, anyway. Let's get back to landing pages, that was a rant.

[00:34:15] Liz Moorehead: No, that was really interesting, but here's the thing. I actually want to. You started talking a little bit about AI there, bud, and I want to stay on the, I want to stay on the AI train a second, but more from a tools perspective, right? Because HubSpot has rolled out a lot of new AI driven tools and smart content features, and smart content features have been around for a while, but how can, Businesses based on what we're discussing in terms of what value truly looks like today.

[00:34:43] How can businesses actually leverage these to optimize landing pages in a way that probably wasn't possible five years ago?

[00:34:50] George B. Thomas: Well, I mean, listen, not all of us are a Liz or name your favorite writer, like, you know, and so AI is getting really good at creating copy in a way that it's fundamentally, it's better than many mere mortal humans who can't afford to have a content strategist or a writer on staff. It's just gonna make it better because you, you could listen to an episode like this, or you could do a Google search, and you could get the information that is landing page copy best practices, storytelling best practices, and then be able to create copy that you look at and go, wow.

[00:35:32] That's way better than I would have written it. So, so just in that alone, and then also getting it to look at like, hey, I've created this landing page and this is the call to action. Can you tell me if this is like amazing or does it suck kind when, right? By the way, it doesn't hurt. Like it doesn't care about hurting your feelings.

[00:35:53] If you ask it a legit question, it might be like, well, this could probably do some help. Right. And so. Like, doing that, I think, is even, uh, interesting. And, and by

[00:36:04] Liz Moorehead: That's always a humbling experience even for me as a writer. So I don't use it from like a generative perspective, but I do have it like take a look at things that I've created just like. Like, give me the little once y over, right? And there have been moments where it's like, so if you considered the opposite of everything you've just given me, and that is deeply humbling since, yeah,

[00:36:24] George B. Thomas: Yeah. So, here's, here's the thing I'll throw in here, too. Because we have talked about, like, brand voice and AI content and AI settings. Um, I don't want to talk a lot about it yet, because I haven't started playing with it, but, uh, I have had communication as of yesterday. With a PM that is unlocking the next version of AI powered content creation in my portal.

[00:36:53] So, they're, just like we had wished they're going deeper with what they built, they're going deeper with what they built. So, I think this

[00:37:02] Chad Hohn: they watch our episode?

[00:37:03] George B. Thomas: uh,

[00:37:04] Chad Hohn: Did

[00:37:04] George B. Thomas: I don't know,

[00:37:05] Chad Hohn: It sounds like

[00:37:06] George B. Thomas: maybe, uh. I mean, who knows? But they're, they're going deeper. There's a beta and I'm super excited. And so, again, you have to think about how can you use AI to create better copy, better call to actions, better experiences, um, and, and you, you have to fundamentally understand that you can train it on what are all of the, like, best practices and then you can tweak it as a human to what you believe to be the best practices for your organization.

[00:37:37] Because it's, by the way, this whole conversation, we can't do this conversation and be like, by the way, this is a one size fits all Lunding page episode. Now, these are things that you should think about and then tweak and make it for like your organization. You might need to gate everything. You might need to not gate a dang thing. Like, it depends.

[00:37:58] Chad Hohn: Hi. Uh, yeah, I love I actually was reading through Devin's, like, little footnotes, and I really like what he was mentioning about, like, you just don't have to be a FullBeans developer or FullBeans designer anymore, you can get a lot of that context. Like, if I had to I could probably do fairly decent utilizing either a, some of HubSpot's tools or other resources, AI driven resources out there just to give me a leg up and to be able to make an effective marketing campaign, it might take me a while if I wanted to just not put out mediocre dump, you know, onto the internet.

[00:38:36] Because you have to do a lot of follow up and make sure that, you know, you're, you're having it help you consider stuff you just don't know, because when you're doing something new for the first time, you have all these unknown unknowns in what you're doing, right? And so it's always asking that second, what am I not thinking about is a really, really key thing when working with like those AI kind of tools, it'll really help you consider stuff you never thought of.

[00:39:01] And being able to do it quickly. Is also you know, like I mean if I had to learn all that it's literally what George was just talking about Like if I had to learn all that on my own and go into a whole new skill set It would take me forever in a day to really put out something that I was proud of right?

[00:39:18] Um, but anyway, I mean, yeah, I think I think it's just it's such a leg up

[00:39:23] George B. Thomas: And by the way, let's not even talk about, because again, the landing page is about the conversion, we already said that hasn't changed. Um, think about like, bleed scoring based on that conversion. Also think about HubSpot having the chatbots, or think of like a conversational form. Or think about the fact that you probably have landing pages out there right now that have the old HubSpot legacy form.

[00:39:42] And what would happen if you actually turned that into a multi step form? Like, there's so many different things that you could go and tweak and change and there's, and there's next steps or outcomes workflows based on the conversion. Like, how many, how many people out there right now have a landing page that when they fill out a form.

[00:40:02] It's inline text to a link to where they can download the freaking guide versus a landing page that goes to a thank you page that triggers a workflow that sends a three email series that then now you all said you can score on did they open any of those three emails and they filled out the form and how much time did they spend on the thank you page and did they go to any other resources off of that thank you page and how much time did they spend there and like Now all of a sudden you're starting to pay attention to, like, the journey of the human, and the score of the hu Mm.

[00:40:39] Chad Hohn: Yeah, like I like thinking about the journey of what the person's going through because like a lot of times we're just like, okay, I'm going to find somebody who's going to be a project manager for a thing and they're going to find my page and they're going to go here and they're going to see something valuable and great.

[00:40:54] You know, but like actually thinking about their whole experience of going through that literally like what we're just talking about of having the form feed a meeting link and then like, ultimately, I'd love to have that, you know, meeting data feed the landing page to give a wonderful experience all the way through, right?

[00:41:12] Um, and like, thinking about that perspective, I think is what What is really changing with landing pages and stuff, too. Um, because actually caring about the person going through the journey helps them feel like they're not just a part of your engine to churn out leads, right?

[00:41:33] George B. Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Hey,

[00:41:35] Liz Moorehead: I agree with that.

[00:41:36] George B. Thomas: so one of the things I did, and, uh, same. So one of the things I did, I before we run out of time, I I Liz, you got me on this kick of, like, uh, best practices, frameworks, mindsets, like, you know, like, We talked about this two years ago, and I'm just kinda So I was curious, because I had never really heard, um, Amazingly, like about, HubSpot talk about like a, a framework for landing pages.

[00:42:05] And so I was like, hey, let's, let's see if there's a, a framework, uh, out there. And so, um, wider funnel, a lift model. You guys can, uh, look this up and let me know what you, But at the end of the day, they have six things. that you might want to pay attention to. So value proposition, right? So is the offer compelling and clearly communicated?

[00:42:28] This is why, uh, I have many conversations with Liz, like a lizard. Am I clearly like, do people understand it or am I

[00:42:38] Liz Moorehead: Well, that's the thing. I love that you brought that up. I just want to add a quick thing in here. We make an assumption that the value will be obvious. We make an assumption that when people show up to evaluate whether or not they want to give us their personal information for something, that the value we are presenting is obvious and our trust has already been earned.

[00:43:01] No, absolutely not.

[00:43:03] George B. Thomas: Yeah. So, so value proposition is the offer compelling and clearly communicated clarity. Is the message easy to understand and does it quickly explain the benefits? The benefits to, to the reader, by the way, not to you. Uh, the next one is relevance. Does the landing page match the expectations of the visitor?

[00:43:26] Uh, from the ad, the email, whatever referral sources, does it make sense? Urgency, is there a reason to act now? Limited time offer, deadline, scarcity, some type of piece in there. Um, anxiety. This one is good. Are there trust signals, security assurances, or and testimonials to reduce hesitation?

[00:43:48] Liz Moorehead: Oh, one of my favorite things that I've seen is like when people put landing page videos on their landing pages and they're literally like, I'm literally just going to use your email for this newsletter and then I'm never going to use it for anything else and I'm not going to sell it and that's it.

[00:44:02] That's all that's going to happen. The only thing I will say, though, about the creating urgency, I somewhat disagree with that. I think if there is no urgency, don't fake it.

[00:44:12] George B. Thomas: Oh, yeah. Yeah,

[00:44:13] Liz Moorehead: But I also think sometimes instead of creating, I think sometimes when we think of the idea of creating urgency, we think around it from the perspective of, well, it's a limited time or it's a thing or it's this actually think about the urgency that's happening in their world, right?

[00:44:28] Create urgency around their pain point again, not scare tactics, but like,

[00:44:34] George B. Thomas: yeah.

[00:44:35] Liz Moorehead: have X, Y, Z questions. These questions, X, Y, Z, the answers are right here. This is what you need. This is going to take this exponential pain and make it bitty, right? Like just speak to the truth. And I think that's where the urgency comes from.

[00:44:50] George B. Thomas: I totally agree. I love I love that. And so number six is distraction. And so like, Hub Heroes listeners, what I would want you to do is grab your notepad, a document and and go to your landing pages later today and look value proposition, clarity, relevance, urgency, anxiety, distraction. Okay, let me, let me put it up against this framework and see where they stand and what do I need to tweak or change and, and how will that impact, you know, next quarter, next year, all of that, these changes that you might make.

[00:45:22] Chad Hohn: Good. Good.

[00:45:24] Liz Moorehead: So guys, here's what we're going to do. We made a joke about it earlier about how we've done multiple episodes about multiple things. Guess what we're going to be talking about next week, guys. Landing pages, because we only got through half of our questions today, half. And quite frankly, this conversation we've had has led me to other questions I want to ask you.

[00:45:44] We haven't talked about landing pages in the shortened attention span era. We haven't even gotten

[00:45:50] Chad Hohn: yeah.

[00:45:50] Liz Moorehead: AB testing. I have a whole monologue about smart content that we're

[00:45:54] George B. Thomas: oh god,

[00:45:55] Liz Moorehead: today. So guys. I'm really excited we started this conversation. I want you both to think about you guys have homework for this week.

[00:46:04] And so do I

[00:46:05] George B. Thomas: uh oh,

[00:46:05] Liz Moorehead: find great landing pages

[00:46:08] George B. Thomas: wow, uh,

[00:46:11] Liz Moorehead: great landing pages. We're not in the business of naming names and calling people out, but come with some examples. That's what we're looking for next week. I know. Look at you, George.

[00:46:20] George B. Thomas: I mean, there's,

[00:46:23] Liz Moorehead: You're dealing with landing pages every

[00:46:24] George B. Thomas: there's a plethora of ways that I could probably get us cancelled, just, just

[00:46:30] Liz Moorehead: we don't name names. We don't name names. We're here to encourage growth and learning opportunities. And I say, this is a woman who got yelled at by AI once about her own writing capabilities. So we're fine. But with that George, as we end part one of our landing pages journey, what do you want people to be walking away with today?

[00:46:47] Whether that's one thing or five things, I'm feeling generous.

[00:46:51] George B. Thomas: Oh, wow. Um, that's nice of you. So, because I had multiple. So, one, I want, so one of the things is definitely use that framework that we talked about. But I want you, when you're using that framework, I want you to think about your landing page in this way too. Is it focused on one single goal? We kind of jokingly talked about how it's like, and these three other subscriptions in this thing.

[00:47:16] What is the hashtag one thing? What's its job to do? Right? And then, is it doing that first of all? Yes, no. Okay, well we need to fix that. Now let's use the framework to go ahead and hone in on, on the other pieces. This is my second one that I just can't let go. Is use thank you pages and thank you pages should continue the journey not end it so many thank you pages I get to feel like it's just like the destination of the parking lot for the conversation.

[00:47:51] Thank you pages have to continue the journey. Go look at all your thank you pages. If you're not saying things like. Here's additional webinars. Here's additional podcasts. Here's additional videos. Here's additional blog articles Then you need to be doing that by the way By the way, you have to create that to be able to send them to it I'm just saying so start creating that right now so that you can act anyway

[00:48:18] Liz Moorehead: You know this means, no, you know that this means we need an episode about thank you pages, right? Just throw that out

[00:48:22] George B. Thomas: Well, we needed we need an episode to get these people generate. Anyway, never mind. I

[00:48:27] Liz Moorehead: We need an episode. It's like what? Pimp my ride?

[00:48:31] George B. Thomas: I, I have such an in, oh my God, I have such an interesting conversation I want to have around, um, sitting at a table and somebody seeing my, um, clone being created based on 12 years of historical content creation, to which they immediately said, I need to start creating content yesterday.

[00:48:57] And since the meeting that we had, have been aggressively creating content because it was an unlock for them. Like so many organizations I bump into that are using HubSpot and they don't have the inbound engine. They don't have the human centric value first content creation like soul. Not why we're here.

[00:49:18] Anyway, go check out your landing pages. Make sure your thank you pages continue on the journey and let us know if you found a thank you page that you just want us or landing page that you want us to rip apart in front of everybody because I doubt if you want it, but we'll do it.