If you are new to digital marketing, you might not be familiar with certain terms, especially if you are unsure what they are and how you can make them an important part of your marketing strategy.
A landing page is just one of those terms we recurrently hear while talking about digital marketing.
Landing pages are often under-utilized or overlooked in an inbound marketing strategy. It seems like a simple page on your website, but it is the most important pillar of your marketing strategy, and if you know what it is and why it is important, you can effectively promote your business.
In this article, we will discuss everything about landing pages. What are they, what is the purpose behind them, their different kinds, and how can you optimize them to gain the maximum benefits for your brand?
What is a landing page?
In simple words, it’s the page where your potential customers or readers land. It’s a stand-alone page where you send your traffic from different mediums like ads, social media accounts, or blog posts.
Not only does the page promote your brand, but it also educates your customers about a specific offer and gives them something valuable. In return, you request contact information from visitors. Now that information is valuable for interacting with them and turning them into loyal customers through different means like email marketing.
In essence, a landing page provides a gateway for visitors to enter a lead generation funnel that is optimized for conversions.
Unlike your other content pages or homepages, a landing page is built for the single intent to draw the focus of visitors to the CTA.
It’s a follow-up of a promise that has been made in your ads or content. Here you made a trade with your potential customers and provided some reward or an offer in return for a small piece of personal information.
Landing pages come in different forms, but each of them comes with the same intent to convince the reader to leave their personal information so you can contact them later with your sales pitches. They can be click-through pages that lead them towards another page like a sales page or simply used for lead generation.
How is A Landing Page Different From a Home Page?
Some marketers drive their leads toward their home page and use it as a landing page. Well, they can certainly do that, but they are missing a great opportunity here. Both home page and landing pages are different pages, and one should not be confused with the other.
A landing and homepage are designed with a different objective in mind. Using the home page as your landing page is simply like diverting your lead away.
A home page is something that represents your identity and everything about you and your business. It reflects all your offers, products, services, your goals, a little bit of everything you do. It is designed to help the visitors to navigate through different valuable content relating to your business.
On the other hand, a landing page is designed for a specific purpose to promote a single offer. Though it resonates with your overall identity, it accomplishes a single goal. It provides something valuable to your visitor and asks in return for their valuable information so you can direct them further through other parts of your marketing funnel.
Why Must You Have a Landing Page?
If you are still confused about why you should have a landing page, then here is a quick sum-up of all the reasons why you should have a landing page.
To Generate leads
Generating leads, turning potential customers into your loyal customers is the goal of every marketing strategy. A landing page helps you generate leads. Directing your traffic interested in one of your offers towards your homepage is like diverting them away as you made them start from scratch, which is not a great idea.
To give your offers a specific page
Creating multiple offers and giveaways is an important part of any marketing strategy. This is done to easily announce different offers from time to time to attract visitors to your business. A landing page is a strategic move to utilize these offers and use them to collect valuable information.
Collect Information for Lead Generation
Though there are several types of landing pages, the basic intent for a typical landing page is to collect demographic information about your visitors. These are not just any visitors. They come through a specific channel that means they are interested in a particular offer. Thus, their personal info like a name, email, or place can help you understand their behaviour and to send them for future offers.
Understand Customer Behavior
The information collected through these landing pages is helpful in sending future offers through several mediums, but you can also use it to understand buyer behavior. Based on this information, you can analyze what part of your campaign is creating better engagement and areas you can improve.
Fuel the Marketing Endeavors
This study of customer behavior can help you design your future marketing strategies based on that knowledge. You can create content based on that information, and by tracking and analyzing metrics from your landing page, you can optimize and improve your marketing tactics to gain more leads and enhance the conversion rate.
Segmentation
A brand’s home page may represent all offerings of a brand which can be too widespread. But a landing page is segmented for a special audience. Different users can be targeted through a well-planned landing page. You can direct a segment of traffic towards a page through ads or other kinds of promotions.
Different Types of Landing Pages
You can have not only one but multiple landing pages to promote your services or different offerings.
More landing pages mean you are multiplying your chances of generating more leads than few landing pages. But that does not mean you can build them mindlessly. If used pre-post, it should be relevant and tempting enough for your potential customers to actually reach the page. Post click, and it should offer what you promised and educate the customers about your brand or services and make sure they feel like they are at the right place.
Here are all types of landing pages that you can build for lead generation.
Splash Pages
Unlike other landing pages where your customers are landing through an ad or other CTA, a splash page appears before your visitors to fill in some information or announce a new exciting offer. You can include them at any part of your funnel, and instead of the lead generation, they are meant to make announcements or simply ask for preferences. It’s a simple copy with the basic information for your visitors.
Squeezing Pages
These are best to be used at the top of the marketing funnel. It prompts visitors to enter contact information like a name and email address in exchange for a valuable offer like downloading a free ebook, a free course, some free coupons, etc.
These are simple short pages with headings and offer a clear call to action readers. They should lead the reader one step further to another link, or they can exit if they don’t wish to proceed.
Lead Capture Landing Page
These are used in the middle of the marketing funnel. They are longer than squeeze pages but shorter than a sales page. You have to balance ask and reward on this page. There is a lead capture form for the reader in return for some reward like free services, consultancy, a product demo, or an exclusive discount etc.
Click-Through Landing Page
Unlike a lead capture landing page with a form, click-through pages use an ad as a middle man between where you want to divert your traffic and an advertisement. It’s the page that links your advertisement to your sales page. It includes a short copy with bold headings and a clear call to action that links to your sales copy.
Sales Landing Page
These are the most important pages to design. It’s the sales copy where you are selling your services or a product. Here you need to convince the visitor to buy something. It can be a short or long copy, depending on the information of your product. It should include a compelling copy that convinces the reader to buy it. These types of pages are usually longer than other landing pages.
Infomercials
These are a bit different from other landing pages, but the purpose is again to promote the brand and make the user a part of your journey. It includes long-form content that contains information about a product or services, your brand, additional information that you cannot include in a formal sales copy. It can have product videos or images for engagement.
Thank You Landing Page
It’s a token of appreciation reassuring your visitors that they have made the right decision. It’s where your visitors are directed when they have entered information or avail of your services. It’s a little token to thank the potential customer, and from here, you can lead the customer further down the funnel or direct them to other relevant offers.
Unsubscribe Page
That’s where your visitors are directed if they want to unsubscribe. Here you have the opportunity to win back your client and turn them into loyal customers. You may apply different strategies to work this through. You can allow them to customize their preferences to only receive what interests them or offer some alternatives.
Referral Landing Page
You can use loyal customers to spread the word about you through this page and ask them to refer your page to their friends. A referral landing page is where they inform visitors on any perks that they might get if they refer their friends to this page.
Viral Landing Pages
These are carefully designed pages with a clear intent to promote your business or brand. But here, you act tactfully and associate your brand with a special cause to create goodwill for your brand. Here content matters a lot, and it could be written, a video or an image, but you intend to touch the heart of visitors, and subtly, you urge them to share your message and make it viral as well.
Components of a Good Landing Page
Now that we know what landing pages are and why you can make them a part of your marketing strategy. Let’s look at how to build a good landing page. On a very basic level, It should be:
- Easy to Use
A landing page should be easy to use. If it is too complicated and you ask for too much information, the reader may bounce off your page and even from your website.
- Focused
It should not haphazardly include everything you do. It should be focused on your single promotional message. A unified and convincing argument can improve the chances of conversion.
- Consistency and Harmony
The ad should be harmonious and consistent, leading the user to a landing page and what they find there. You can only build a relationship of trust if you provide them with what was offered in the simplest possible way. Consistency in your tone and message is important to help the user trust you.
- Promote Visitors to Accomplish The Goal
A landing page funnels the visitors in the direction of accomplishing the goal. It reassures them that they are going well so far, and all it takes is to sign up for a newsletter, request a quote, or register for a free session. It should include a clear CTA.
Let’s look at some of the components of a landing page.
Headline
It should be catchy and concise. In short, simple words, you summarize why visitors landed on this page and what is there for them. It should have the goal to provide the visitor what they were promised.
Copy
The text on the landing page should be compelling and offer valuable information. It should not look like a sleazy sales copy. It should explain the value of your offer in clear, simple words. Break up the text into easy-to-read paragraphs or bullet points, so they are easy to read.
Keywords
Like any other web page, keywords should be used in headings, title, content to optimize the page for search engines. Keyword stuffing will instead deter your visitors from leaving the page without accomplishing the task.
Lead Capture form
The most important part of the landing page is the sole intent of driving your traffic to this page. The form is where the visitors will leave their information like an email address in exchange for the offer.
Make sure the form should not be too lengthy or intimidating. Don’t ask for too much information, and break the form into smaller sections, so they are easy to process.
Image
Relevant images always attract visitors. It can substantiate what they will get in return, like a book, a free coupon, or anything valuable to the visitor.
A Clear CTA
A landing page should have an attractive CTA. You can highlight the button so that it stands out among the others.
In simple words, that’s how a landing page should be.
Testimonials
The best advertisement for your services can be the good words from your customers. It reflects the real-life experience of your customers and helps the potential customers show the same trust. So you can include those testimonials and social proofs into your landing page. It can be a convincing factor to direct your lead towards conversion.
Final Words
A landing page is different from your home page, and it offers a great opportunity for marketers to drive traffic towards a single goal-oriented page. There can be too many types of landing pages, and a website should have as many as you need. You are planning a user journey and, step by step, lead them to conversion and then become loyal customers. The design of the landing page should be in line with your brand’s identity, and it should be optimized to build a relationship of trust with your visitors.
