3 Reasons Why Your Marketing Needs Unbounce’s New Smart Builder [Announcement]
Whoever said, “life is a journey, not a destination,” clearly wasn’t a time-strapped marketer trying to dig themselves out from under a mountain of tasks by the end of the day.
(The quote is often attributed to the 18th-century poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson. Hmm, yeah, not exactly someone with conversion rates top of mind.)
![Kevin Malone from the office working](https://media.giphy.com/media/9psHrHyIXciY6lCz8B/giphy.gif)
When it comes to building landing pages, you’re not doing it for the journey, are you? In fact, you probably wish you could just skip over the whole thing and get straight to the destination: more conversions.
And that’s why we’ve launched Smart Builder (Beta), powered by Unbounce Conversion Intelligence™.
Smart Builder Lights Up a Direct Path to More Conversions
Smart Builder is our new AI-powered landing page builder that uses over 10 years of data (that’s 1.5 billion conversions!) to provide marketers a guided building experience. It speeds up (and smooths out) the journey to publishing high-converting content—no more guesswork, no more endless iterations.
That means you can spend more time watching those conversions roll in.
So how exactly does it work?
To get started, all you’ve gotta do is share a little bit about your business and campaign—your industry, audience, and conversion goals. Smart Builder will then provide templates, section components, and even copy recommendations. It’s pretty dang spectacular, if we might say so ourselves.
Smart Builder helps you adopt conversion intelligence—a new approach to marketing that pairs your know-how and creativity with AI to get better, faster results than you could on your own.
The thought of working with AI might give you the heebie-jeebies—and hey, that’s pretty normal. The AI black box can stir up a lot of distrust among marketers. You see the input and the output, but what the heck goes on in the middle?
When you work with Smart Builder, you’re involved in this middle process—the magic only happens when you merge your creativity and expertise with its AI-powered insights. As Unbounce customer Zoe explains, you’re still in the driver’s seat. Think of Smart Builder like a trusty co-pilot.
![Zoe Alexander, Marketing Project Manager, Pantheon Design Ltd.](https://mk0zofoqaluvgdskgvsb.kinstacdn.com/photos/Victoria-Harkes-headshot.png)
I’m naturally a creative person so, whenever I design landing pages, I get really excited—and also overwhelmed because of all the possibilities. Smart Builder is helpful in that it actually guides me through the process, and it saves me a lot of time that I’d spend researching all my competitors’ pages, looking at different copy, and then coming up with my own. The very fact that it can suggest recommended copy in itself is amazing and very helpful. — Zoe Alexander, Marketing Project Manager, Pantheon Design Ltd.
If you’re ready to shift your approach to marketing, it’s time to flip the switch. Once you see how easy it is to work with Smart Builder (and all the problems it can solve for you), you’ll never look back.
Sorry, Ralph. We’re focused on the destination.
1. Build a Landing Page With the Team You Never Had
When Unbounce first launched its Classic Builder, the goal was to make the building process accessible to anyone—no developer required.
But as a marketer of a small business, the reality is you’re not only working without a developer. You’re also likely working without copywriters and designers. In other words, you’re tackling all the marketing tasks alone.
![Tina Fey high-fiving herself](https://media.giphy.com/media/l2JJA5fbJ5o328Odi/giphy.gif)
Smart Builder was created with you in mind. You don’t need specialized skills or an entire crew to work the dang thing. In fact, it’s the opposite—it gives those skills to you.
You’re no longer working alone—meet your new team
Smart Builder is your Design Assistant: Not so long ago, landing page templates were a huge blessing. Instead of building a page from scratch, marketers could start off with a foundation, which saved them time. Now, there are so many options that it’s become a curse. If you’re not a designer, picking a high-converting template can be overwhelming.
That’s where Smart Builder comes in. It uses the information you provide—about your audience, industry, and goals—and recommends the ideal layout for your campaign right away. If you’re not sold, you can look through some alternatives it’s picked out for you as well.
![Zoe Alexander, Marketing Project Manager, Pantheon Design Ltd.](https://mk0zofoqaluvgdskgvsb.kinstacdn.com/photos/Victoria-Harkes-headshot.png)
I’m always excited to build pages for campaigns and I like designing—but it quickly gets overwhelming. The Design Assistant makes it so I don’t need to look at competitors, do the research, and can trust that you’re going to tell me what’s going to work. — Zoe Alexander, Marketing Project Manager, Pantheon Design Ltd.
Smart Builder is your In-House Copywriter: The 15-second rule states that you have less than 15 seconds to grab your reader’s attention. Your headline—a mere few words—plays a big role in captivating your audience right away. Sounds like a lot of pressure (and the perfect trigger for some serious writer’s block).
With Smart Builder, you can ask for copy recommendations to help you create those snappy headlines. Based on conversion data in your industry, it’ll serve up several alternative headlines (and rank ‘em by how impactful they’re predicted to be).
Smart Builder is your Developer: Using landing page templates, you might feel like your creativity is constrained by the layout. If only you could swap out that section, drag up that headline, or stretch that photo—then it’d be perfectly on-brand.
![Smart Builder product demo](https://mk0zofoqaluvgdskgvsb.kinstacdn.com/photos/SB-mobile-image.png)
Now, you can bring your ideas to life. With Smart Builder’s responsive templates and grid system, everything snaps into place as you customize your page. Fiddling around with resizing and double-checking the mobile design are things of the past.
Editor’s Note: Smart Builder is still in beta—which means there are more features to come. For example, soon you’ll be able to generate high-converting recommendations for even more copy on your landing page. As Smart Builder grows smarter, so will your team. Try it out today!
2. Know What Converts Before You Click “Publish”
Marketers are working harder—but for most, results seem to be getting worse. What gives?
In an increasingly competitive landscape, you know you’ve gotta put in the effort. You’ll spend hours researching best practices and considering all the different elements. (“Green and orange are both high-converting CTA colors, so I should go with one of those, right?“) But despite this effort, you still wind up guessing what’ll perform best. (“My favorite color is orange—I’ll try that.”)
And that’s the crux of the problem.
Marketers are publishing their landing pages without truly knowing what’ll convert their own customers.
![Christian Krohn, Unbounce customer and Owner, Patient Clicks](https://mk0zofoqaluvgdskgvsb.kinstacdn.com/photos/CI_Manifesto_Profiles_Christian_Krohn.jpg)
I have hunches, hypotheses, and ideas of what I think will work well. Sometimes we’re right, sometimes we’re wrong. There have been times when we put authentic images in a landing page to replace a stock photo—a cheesy stock photo—and the authentic photo will do worse than a stock photo. You never know. — Christian Krohn, Unbounce Customer and Owner, PatientClicks
Unfortunately, if you wait to publish your page to see what converts, you’re at risk of squandering your budget. And when ad clicks are now coming out at 16 bucks a pop, most businesses can’t afford that kinda testing. You’ll have to bring in a whole lot more conversions to offset those that bounce.
![Cost per click rising](https://mk0zofoqaluvgdskgvsb.kinstacdn.com/photos/ad-spend.png)
With Smart Builder, you can expect a higher return on ad spend because each decision you make is guided by industry-specific conversion data—not on guesswork, intuition, or what Joe says worked at his last job. (Damnit, Joe.)
When you’re confident in your landing pages’ performance, there’s less stress reporting ROI and managing a leaner budget—something that remains a top challenge for marketers year-over-year. Only 37% of marketers feel very confident making budget decisions. With Smart Builder, you’ll get to consider yourself one of them.
3. Win Back Time to Grow Your Business
Do you often feel like you’re being pulled in so many directions that you can’t get anything done?
You fall behind, you rush your work, and then you see lackluster results. While you’re probably bummed, you also know it’s the best you could do with the time you had. (“It ain’t a homemade lasagna, but this soupy Kraft Dinner will have to do today. Mmm, soupy good!”)
Landing pages are one of many tasks vying for your attention, which means that optimization practices—like building landing page variants or mobile-friendly landing pages—are usually an afterthought.
Here’s why that’s a problem.
If you only create one landing page (even if it’s eye-catching as heck), you’re limiting yourself to one audience segment. With variants, you give your landing pages the highest chance of success by appealing to many different kinds of visitors.
Let’s say you own an ice cream shop: You wanna highlight all your flavors to lure in every sweet tooth—not just those who crave chocolate and vanilla, right?
With Smart Builder on your side, you can create variants that look good on any device in a fraction of the time. Using its responsive grid system, swap in different sections, reworked copy, or fresh design elements, and you’ve got yourself a completely new page. Just like that, you have the time to optimize and truly deliver unique experiences. (Where are my tiger ice cream fans at?)
![Victoria Harkes, Marketing Manager, SchoolBundle.](https://mk0zofoqaluvgdskgvsb.kinstacdn.com/photos/Victoria-Harkes_testimonial.png)
[Smart Builder] saves me so much time. I don’t have the time to dig into anything specific and become an expert. Could not recommend that more to literally anyone that has to deal with any writing or content creation. — Victoria Harkes, Marketing Manager SchoolBundle
So go wild. Create variants that highlight different selling points. Or feature different hero images. Swap around the copy and sections. Try out those bold ideas. There’s no need to block off extra time in your calendar.
![Differen hero images on landing page](https://mk0zofoqaluvgdskgvsb.kinstacdn.com/photos/bg-image2.gif)
Because when you find ways to speak to each and every prospect, you’re on your way to growing your business. #BigBusinessEnergy.
Lookin’ for the cherry on top of your Smart Builder experience? Once you create a few variants, turn on Smart Traffic, our AI-powered optimization tool that automagically reads your visitors’ attributes and sends them to the landing page most relevant to them. Unbounce customers see an average 30% lift!
Marketing Ain’t What it Used to Be
Have you noticed that your workdays are becoming longer and more challenging than before? Your tasks are piling up because you’re spending way too much time (time you don’t have) figuring out what’ll resonate with your prospects and convert them into customers.
No, you’re not overanalyzing it. You’re caught in the middle of a big change to the marketing world, which is making the competition fiercer than the cast of America’s Next Top Model.
Over the past few years, the internet has gotten incredibly crowded. Advertising space is in high demand and online buyers are being bombarded by more choices than ever before. What’s that mean for marketers? A double whammy of towering ad costs and the challenge of standing out from an ever-growing number of competitors.
What’s the solution? You’ve gotta change how you think about landing pages.
To build relevance, you gotta build smarter
In order to attract and convert your audience, your landing pages need to feel tailored to each and every visitor according to their needs, preferences, and expectations. They need to be relevant. But you can’t build relevance quickly and accurately with the landing page builders offered today.
Why? Because most page builders rely on your marketing intelligence alone.
That means you’re expected to manually build variants for your different audiences. It’s assumed that you have the expertise to confidently say what is (and isn’t) high-converting, or that you have the superpowers to predict what will convert ahead of time.
![Why marketing intelligence isn't enough](https://mk0zofoqaluvgdskgvsb.kinstacdn.com/photos/Screen-Shot-2021-07-12-at-2.18.26-PM.png)
Building relevant landing pages isn’t so easy on your own
This is why you gotta start working with conversion intelligence. More and more marketers are catching on. In fact, marketers’ use of AI increased by 190% from 2018 to 2020. It’s become pretty darn clear the next big power move in marketing is adopting AI and practicing conversion intelligence.
That means—for your landing pages—the answer isn’t more time, expertise, or predictive superpowers. What you need is a landing page builder powered by AI. You need Smart Builder.
And it’s come at the perfect time.
The Future is Smarter, Too
At the pace the consumer world is changing (and with how little time you have), we couldn’t just tell you to get out there and build more, better, and faster. We had to create a builder that’s smarter, so you can grow smarter, too.
But it doesn’t end here. Our goal is to continue to grow and evolve our conversion intelligence offerings to help you optimize the entire conversion funnel—pre-click to post-conversion.
Conversion intelligence is your competitive edge. As long as you show up, we’ll keep up our side of the bargain—which is providing you with all the right tools to maximize conversions. Today that means building relevance. But what will consumers expect next? With that question as our North Star, you’ll always remain light years ahead with Unbounce.
Ready to flip the switch to a smarter way of marketing? It starts with Smart Builder.