When you're spending time or money on SEO, AdWords, or email marketing, you're wasting resources if you're not using conversion-optimized landing pages for your campaigns. You’ve invested a lot into getting prospects to your page—now you need to get them to take action! But what makes one landing page convert like crazy and another page lose prospects that could have been perfect leads? Let’s look at 5 characteristics of a high-converting landing page.

When someone talks about how great they are, you tend not to believe it. And you might just perceive that person as arrogant. But when your friend gushes about how great someone is, you’ll probably listen. (Unless you’re my friend Andy, who still thinks Adam Lambert’s music is garbage, no matter how much I insist otherwise!)

When you’re trying to get a prospect to take action on a landing page, whether it’s to schedule an appointment or fill out a download form for an eBook, it’s not enough to say “It’s great!” You have to offer up some proof.

Social proof is "the concept that people will conform to the actions of others under the assumption that those actions are reflective of the correct behavior." If you can integrate believable social proof into your landing pages, you’ll increase your conversions exponentially. Here are three ways you can do that.

You work hard to get website visitors to a landing page. You’ve probably written blog posts, promoted them on social media, maybe even run an AdWords or other digital campaign. You put a lot of time and money into getting people to  your landing pages. So you don’t want to waste that opportunity.

Landing pages are a different animal than homepages or other pages on your website. The visitor likely has little inclination to roam around and look for information patiently—he or she probably arrived wanting something specific. Landing pages have unique requirements to be effective.

Whether you want people to register for an event, request a consultation, subscribe to an email list, or access an eBook, the one single goal of a landing page is to convert that visitor to a known lead. Here are 10 elements of landing pages that convert.

We all understand the power of having amazing premium content. “Amazing” as in the kind that is targeted and relevant to your target personas. You know, the type of offer that visitors are happy and willing to give you their email address and phone number (and whatever else) for, because it’s something that they need and/or is going to benefit them. Yes, we get it. Unfortunately, creating amazing premium content does not guarantee leads. In fact, it’s only half of the equation. If you don’t promote them correctly and have a landing page that is designed to convert, you’ve (sadly) wasted your time.