A lot of HubSpot landing pages look fine and still do nothing for your pipeline. They reuse the same layout, the same button, the same form, and then everyone wonders why “landing pages don’t convert”.
On the surface the page matches the brand. Underneath, it doesn’t match your funnel at all. The page doesn’t know what stage it is for. The form doesn’t set the right data. The follow-up is either random or missing. HubSpot happily collects submissions, but sales and reporting get almost nothing useful out of them.
In HubSpot, it’s easy to clone an existing page, swap the copy, and call it a landing page. The builder makes it painless to drag modules around and keep everything on brand. That is how you end up with “nice” pages that have no real job in your funnel.
For each landing page, you should be able to answer two things in one sentence:
Who is this page for.
What one action you want from them.
If you can’t answer that, you are not building a landing page, you are just creating another generic page with a form somewhere on it. The brand might be consistent, but the intent is not.
A landing page without a clear offer is just a shorter version of a website page. You need one thing that people are getting in exchange for their details: a guide, a checklist, a webinar, a demo, a consultation, a trial, something that is obviously worth the friction of filling the form.
The easiest way to see if your HubSpot landing page is built around a real offer: read the hero and the button together. If it sounds like “generic headline” + “contact us”, you do not have an offer, you have a brand statement plus a vague ask.
A simple check:
Top of funnel: “Get the playbook”, “Download the breakdown”, “See how X works”.
Middle of funnel: “Watch the walkthrough”, “See the examples”, “Learn how other teams did this”.
Bottom of funnel: “Book a teardown”, “Get a theme review”, “Plan your migration”.
The offer doesn’t have to be cute. It has to be specific enough that someone knows why they are giving you their email and what happens next.
On most HubSpot landing pages, the form is treated like a sticker: drop it in, connect it to “New contact”, and move on. That is why your CRM ends up full of contacts that all look the same.
A form on a landing page should do three things:
Collect only what is needed for this step.
Set properties that describe what the person did and what they care about.
Trigger follow-up that actually matches the offer.
At minimum, each serious landing page form in HubSpot should:
Have a unique, sensible name (not “New Form 12”).
Set one or more properties that mark the offer and the intent (for example, a boolean or multi-select property for “Requested: demo”, “Downloaded: HubSpot theme guide”).
Be tied to a thank-you page and a simple automation, even if it’s just a confirmation email and a task for sales.
If your form submits and all you get is “Form submission on Page X” in the timeline, the landing page is wasting the traffic you fought to get there.
A lot of HubSpot landing pages still use the default inline thank-you message or drop people on a generic “thanks” page. That is a missed chance to move them to the next step in your funnel.
Thank-you pages should:
Confirm what they just got, in plain language.
Show what happens next and when (email, call, access).
Offer one clear next step that matches their level of intent.
If someone just downloaded a guide, the next step might be “see a case study using this approach” or “watch a short walkthrough”. If they just booked a consultation, the next step is simple: set expectations and maybe link to a short intro video so the call is not cold.
HubSpot’s drag-and-drop editor makes it easy to improvise landing pages. That is also how they turn into a mess over time. Every new campaign clones the last page, tweaks a few settings, and adds one more one-off section.
If you already have a custom theme or a reasonably structured marketplace theme, treat landing pages as a controlled subset of modules, not a playground.
Useful ground rules:
Keep a small, named set of “landing page sections” as modules or saved sections: hero + form, benefit list, proof strip, FAQ, etc.
Let marketers assemble pages from those, but avoid random new layouts built on the fly for each campaign.
Have a default landing page template that already has distractions removed (no main nav, minimal footer) so people don’t forget to turn those off.
The point is not to lock down everything. The point is to make the easy path the path that matches your funnel and doesn’t break your theme.
HubSpot makes it very tempting to wire every landing page into one big “master” workflow. It feels tidy on day one and turns into a knot on day ninety.
A better pattern:
One small workflow per important landing page or per offer.
The workflow only does a few things: set or update a couple of properties, send a confirmation email, maybe notify or assign the right person.
Hand off to a more general nurture only when it actually makes sense.
If you have to open a workflow, scroll for a full minute, and read a dozen branches to understand what happens when someone submits a form, that is a sign the setup went too far. Your future self will not thank you for that.
If landing pages are built around real offers, and forms set real properties, reporting in HubSpot becomes much less painful. Instead of “Views and submissions by URL”, you can look at “Contacts and deals by offer” or “Pipeline created by landing page type”.
To get there, you need:
Consistent naming for pages, forms, and CTAs so reports are readable.
Properties that clearly mark key offers and touchpoints.
Basic dashboards that tie those together instead of ten different partial reports.
This is where your audits and cleanup work pay off. If the underlying theme, forms, and workflows are structured properly, you do not have to invent complex reporting tricks to understand what is going on. The data matches the work your landing pages are doing.
If your HubSpot landing pages are on brand but not pulling their weight, the problem is not the color of the button. It is the missing structure: no clear offer, no clean handoff to the CRM, no simple workflows, no obvious next step.
Fixing that is cheaper than another redesign. It is also how you avoid ending up back in audit and migration territory in a year. Build landing pages around real offers and a real funnel, wire them properly into HubSpot, and then worry about the polish. The brand will still be there. The pipeline will finally show it.