Why it is essential to set up multiple landing pages for your marketing campaigns
From content to PPC
By IAGUEN DAVID
What is a landing page, and why are they important?
Landing pages have the singular purpose of encouraging web visitors to take a specific action. These visitors are your potential customers, also known as leads. They might arrive from an online search, social network, partner website, or pay-per-click advertising campaign. A strong landing page always contains concise, value-driven copy and a call to action, which is usually accompanied by a form where visitors can leave their contact details. Landing pages also follow the principles of responsive web design so they offer an optimized experience on mobile devices, which are now responsible for 68.1% of all web traffic. Today, the gold standard is AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages), which are designed to load very quickly and use minimal bandwidth on the small screen. Fortunately, thanks to these standardized frameworks and tools, it’s now very easy and cost-effective to set up a robust landing page. Without a landing page, marketing campaigns lack a straightforward and measurable way to increase conversions. This is why they are one of the most important elements of any digital marketing campaign.What are the differences between landing pages and homepages?
To understand what landing pages represents, it’s important to know how they differ from regular homepages. Homepages may direct visitors to one or more destinations, and they relate to the overall brand image and vision. As such, there are many possible links and entry points. In other words, a homepage is analogous to a book cover or storefront. By contrast, a landing page has a much narrower focus, with the singular goal of converting visitors based on a predetermined action. Because of this, content and navigation options are purposefully limited. In many ways, they’re analogous to a catalogue insert for a special offer. Under very specific circumstances, some brands might temporarily replace their homepages with landing pages.What are the advantages of using landing pages?
Landing pages ultimately generate more leads and conversions from a marketing campaign. This is largely because they’re tailored to specific audiences. Because landing pages are so targeted, you can be very specific with your messaging, images, and offers to ensure they’re aimed at exactly the right audience personas. In addition, thanks to the possibilities afforded by dynamic web content, you can have your landing pages display different content to different people, based on factors like time of day, geographical location, or even the unique attributes of your visitors.
Another clear benefit of using landing pages is that they provide actionable, data-driven insight into what works best. This is especially the case with A/B testing, in which you create different landing page versions for different campaigns or referral sources. Then, by reviewing the data collected, you can instantly see which channels are bringing in the most conversions.
The characteristics of a successful landing page
Landing pages might look straightforward enough to create, owing to the relative simplicity of their designs and minimal amount of written content. However, building an effective landing page takes careful planning, not to mention a clear understanding of your target audience and what you want to achieve.
The title is usually the first element visitors will notice, and therefore one of the most important. It should succinctly answer the question of ‘what’s in it for me’ when a new visitor lands on the page. Following this should be a short paragraph explaining your unique value proposition. If you’re advertising a fairly complex product or service that needs a little more explanation, then it makes sense to use a few bullet points to highlight its key benefits. Relevant imagery is also a must, especially given the short attention spans people typically have when visiting landing pages.
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is also an important element of a landing page, though it’s vital to remember that your content should be tailored to the needs of people first and foremost. That said, you should still use relevant key words and phrases in the page title, subheading, and descriptive text.
Social sharing links and buttons can also help drive more traffic (and, as a consequence, more conversions) to the landing page. However, it’s important not to include any other navigational elements, since the number-one goal of any landing page is to keep people on the page until they follow your call to action.
Understanding the different types of landing pages
Landing pages fall into several categories, but they should always serve one specific purpose regardless. The most common landing pages are lead capture pages, the primary objective of which is to collect information, such as names and email addresses. These play a vital role in permission-based marketing, and they’re often used in the middle of a sales funnel. A variation of the lead capture page is the squeeze landing page, which often appear as popups or serve in place of homepages for brands selling a single product or service.
Another common type is the click-through landing page, which doesn’t include a form to fill out, but instead serves as an intermediary between the ad and the page that it will ultimately direct the visitor to. This might be a product page, particularly in the case of complex products and services that can’t be properly introduced in a simple landing page. Click-through pages contain just a brief explanation of what the visitor can expect by continuing and a bold call to action that leads to the final destination.
Last, we have sales landing pages, which are specifically designed to convince people to buy. Creating a compelling sales page requires a thorough understanding of your customer’s needs and their current position in the sales journey. Sales pages are ideally suited to the bottom of the sales funnel, since their ultimate aim is to encourage visitors to click the ‘buy’ button.
Conclusion
There’s no doubt that landing pages have huge potential to generate leads and increase sales. Despite this, half of companies still focus primarily on directing traffic to their homepages. The main reason for this is that they lack a strategy for creating and testing multiple landing pages. Fortunately, this is where comtogether can help. Contact us to learn how we can help your business grow with effective full-funnel marketing campaigns.About the author
