Marketo is mostly known as an email marketing system, but they have extensive landing page functionality that can be used at all levels of a funnel. By building a scaffold using their guided landing page template, we’re able to create as many variations as can be accounted for.
Starting A Guided Landing Page Template
The best way to begin creating a guided landing page template is to come up with a solid design containing all or most elements and sections that will be used in our client’s landing pages. This includes elements like buttons, typography, headings, and tables, and sections like headers, testimonials, forms, sliders, etc.
Coding out the layout using a CSS preprocessor (Sass) is my preference, I use a BEM naming convention in order to build for long-term projects and keep everything organized
Keeping all possible element variations as class modifiers (e.g. button background color or padding) helps immensely when converting our now static template to a dynamic LP creator.
Some rules that we like to follow:
- Testing the layouts. We try it out in as many browsers and devices before converting to a guided landing page template. Once we begin replacing strings and areas with Marketo variables it’s increasingly time consuming to go back and add to the design.
- Keeping our code clean. Since we’re making changes to the HTML syntax after the fact in order to make it Marketo-friendly, Busybee Marketing always sticks to a standard coding style in terms of spacing, indentation, and line breaks between major sections.
- Get it ready for Marketo. Accounting for the most amount of elements, sections, and each of their modifications is our best bet for keeping our sanity when making limited updates in the future.
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Converting The Layout To Marketo
Before jumping into the Marketo code, we next make a list of each of the elements and areas that are going to be set for modification. This allows us to normalize variable names, sometimes consolidate the amount of variables, and more importantly hand over to our clients for their own reference.
We also use that list to write the meta tags that are used to associate variables to the editor. Everything that should be edited is now converted to Marketo variables;
- Images. We use a placeholder generator called placeimg to drop in sections where images will exist.
- Forms. Marketo has an extremely powerful form builder and it’s at this time that we create those for future embedding.
- Strings and integers. Sometimes the most extensive portion of the template, it traverses most sections.
- Booleans. True and false variables that can be used for section display, class modifications, and template functionality.
When all is said and done, we’re looking at custom dynamic landing page builder that can be integrated with all aspects of Marketo. Guided landing pages are highly functional and are part of the backbone of digital marketing within Marketo. Learn more about our email marketing services here.