The importance of a powerful landing page

So you’ve done the hard work. Your digital marketing strategy is firing off at all cylinders and you’ve got visitors clicking away. Any savvy business owner gets that once you’ve done all that hard work to get visitors to your website or shop front, the next big step is to convert them into paying customers. But what’s the best way to get them to convert? Landing pages, that’s what!

A landing page is a great way to drive traffic, improve your SEO and most importantly convert your audience! It can also form part of an effective PPC strategy. Across our industry, companies that create 30 or more landing pages get 7 times more leads than those that use fewer than 10. Landing pages lead customers to a specific product, service, or offer and encourage them to take ACTION. This is your opportunity to create conversions and build up your database.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a major disconnect between the importance of landing pages and their use. Landing pages are the heart and soul of any digital marketing efforts, so why are they still so underutilised?

We’re here to set the record straight and ensure that you are always maximising your digital marketing. Landing pages are much too critical to the success of any business’ lead generation or conversion efforts, to sweep under the rug. Want to find out more? Read on!

What exactly is a landing page?

Let’s go right back to the basics and start with a simple definition:

A landing page is a web page that allows you to capture a visitor’s information through a lead-capture form (AKA a conversion form). They are essentially static pages that are a doorway into your website.

A good landing page will target a particular audience, such as traffic from an email campaign promoting a particular product, or visitors who click on a pay-per-click ad promoting your live event. You can build landing pages that allow visitors to download your content offers (lead magnets, content, webinars, etc.), or redeem other marketing offers such as discount codes, free trials, or testers for your product. Creating landing pages allows you to specifically target your audience, offer them something of value, and convert a higher percentage of your visitors into customers, while also capturing information about who they are and what they’ve converted on.

So when would I need a landing page?

Landing pages can make your marketing and lead-generation efforts even that bit more effective. We’ve put together the main reasons why exactly you need to include a landing page into your digital marketing efforts.

Easily generate more visitors!

If you could do one thing right now to drastically improve your digital marketing efforts, it would be to use landing pages on your website. Too many companies send their top-of-the-funnel traffic such as organic search (SEO) and paid search (PPC) (all their acquisition traffic!) straight to their homepages. You can capture these visitors at a much higher rate simply by sending them to targeted landing pages. Landing pages provide a very easy way to generate personalised content for a specific visitor (based on the campaign they first saw) that you can then easily segment and nurture in the future.

Give your offers a place to live

Marketing offers and landing pages go hand in hand. The idea for your website visitors to ‘pay’ you in contact data for something valuable like an offer, and your landing page is the collections tool. It’s simple really!

Collect insightful information about your prospects

Every time a visitor completes a form on a landing page, you are collecting valuable information about your website visitors. You can then use this information to understand what types of visitors are converting and continuously optimise your efforts.

Understand who is coming back time and time again

Landing pages not only enable you to convert a new warm audience; they also allow you to track reconversions of existing visitors, which you can then use to identify which prospects are more engaged.

Provide omnichannel digital marketing content

A successful digital marketing strategy relies on content – and lots of it! Landing pages are a great addition to any business’s content arsenal since they can be shared in social media, used as the focus of dedicated email sends and in nurturing campaigns, be linked to in PPC ads, and get found in organic search.

Offer insights into the effectiveness of your marketing offers

Every time you create a landing page, you’re creating another data acquisition source for your marketing. By tracking and analysing the metrics associated with your landing pages, you can collect a whole lot of insight into your marketing performance, such as how your various marketing offers compare, how visitors are converting on your landing pages over time, and more. This gives you powerful insight that can help you continue to optimise and improve your marketing.

How do I create an effective Landing Page?

Okay, so now you understand what a landing page is, how they work and why you absolutely, positively need them. But what does a landing page look like? Check out below to make sure your landing page THRIVES!

Headline

The headline is the first thing visitors will likely see when they ‘land’ on a landing page. A great landing page headline sums up the offer as clearly and concisely as possible, and answers the question, “What will visitors who convert on this page receive?”

Copy

The text on a landing page should explain the value of the offer clearly, simply, and in a compelling way. Bullet points can be used to demonstrate clear takeaways, break up large blocks of text, and keep it brief and succinct.

Image

Landing pages that include a relevant image give visitors a tangible idea of what they’ll receive and make landing pages much more visually appealing.

Meta Data & Keywords

Like any other marketing content, keywords should be used in the page title, headers, and text on a landing page to optimise it for search engines such as Google. Make sure that your landing page is SEO friendly by ensuring that it is including the Meta Title, Meta Description, H1’s, H2’s and image ALT tags are all included.

Social Sharing Buttons/Links

These links enable visitors to easily share a landing page with their connections on social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter extending the reach of your landing page beyond your own network of contacts, fans, and followers.

Hidden Navigation

A landing page on which any top/side navigation bars are hidden will minimise distractions, decrease a landing page’s bounce rate, and increase the chances that visitors will stay on the page and convert.

Lead-Capture/Conversion Form

The most critical component of any landing page, the lead-capture or conversion form is where page visitors submit their information in exchange for the offer, converting them into coveted sales.

How can I take my Landing Page to the next level?

So you’ve got all the details to create your very own landing page. You’ve got your ads firing and you’re driving the right kind of traffic to it. The next step is – how to take it further? Constant improvement and optimisation! Here are three platforms to help you maximise your landing page.

Google Optimise

Google Optimize is a web optimization tool by Google. It helps increase conversion rates by working as a platform to build and run a huge variety of A/B test experiments. For users with less testing needs, it’s the best tool, as it is the only free tool in the market so far. You can run up to five tests at a time for free.

All you need to do is integrate it with your website and away you go!

Lucky Orange

Lucky Orange is a conversion optimization tool with features including heatmaps, session recording, conversion funnels, form analytics, and chat. See where your customers are clicking and where they aren’t – it’s the best way to test, change & optimize your landing page.

Crazy egg

Crazy Egg is an online tool that monitors individual pages from your website, giving you a breakdown of where different visitors have clicked and on which part of the screen. You’re then able to improve user experience, increase your conversion rates and boost your bottom line.

So there you have it! The power and importance of a landing page can be the key to unlocking so much more revenue and leads. Above all, ensure that you’re constantly testing and reviewing the results in order to learn how to better improve your landing pages.

So now it’s your turn to go out there, create your converting landing page and rake in that revenue!