What are Landing Pages and Why Should You Use Them for Your Business?

Landing pages can make up to 90% of your entire sales funnel, this post will show you how and why to use them correctly.

 

What is a Landing Page?

A landing page is a standalone page that is different from your homepage or any other page. It serves a single and focused purpose of converting your visitors into customers; converting visitors into leads is the first step in creating a relationship between your company and a potential loyal buyer.

There is no specific rule that you should have just one landing page. In fact, it is advisable to maintain multiple landing pages at a time, as this can help you target segmented customer populations. Having multiple landing pages on your website can provide you with huge opportunities to turn your visitors into prospective customers.

How Do Landing Pages Work?

 

A landing page allows you to make a trade with your prospective customers.

You can provide a special offer, an interesting piece of information, or a deal, in return for them offering their contact information. A landing page typically has a form that allows you to capture a visitor’s information in exchange for an offer. Remember, a homepage with a form on it does not count as a landing page, as it may serve other purposes as well. Homepages and product pages are multi-purpose, while landing pages are single-minded.

While typically, landing pages are thought of as purpose-built pages that are the targets of marketing campaigns, a “landing page” can be any page on your website with no navigation and a form that is used for converting visitors into leads. The lack of navigation is key, as it is the difference between someone getting distracted and browsing away to another page (without taking the desired action) or giving you their information. Landing pages can be created directly on your website or by using a landing page builder like Unbounce or ActiveCampaign Pages. If you wish to use a landing page builder, make sure that you take advantage of any landing page templates they offer. 

Regardless of how you create your landing page, always keep your target audience and the page’s overall goal in mind.

Once your landing page is ready, a visitor will take these steps to become a lead or customer:

• A visitor sees your brand through social ads, search ads, email marketing, or any other marketing campaign, and lands on your landing page.
• The visitor then fills up the form by following the call to action (CTA). This officially converts them from a visitor to a lead.
• The information filled in the form is then stored in your leads database. This way, you receive the visitor’s contact information, and they should receive your offer in return right away – whether that’s directly on the page or through their email inbox.
• You can then market to the contact or lead based on the information that you have about them.

Marketing automation tools such as HubSpot or Marketo will allow you to find out which offer the lead converted on, when they converted, and what other interactions they’ve had on your site. These details can be crucial, as they will allow you to nurture the lead in a more targeted way by helping you decide which marketing actions are most appropriate to take.

You’ll have a much higher chance of a properly nurtured lead converting into a marketing qualified lead (MQL), which can bear fruitful results for your marketing efforts, as it can improve the return on investment (ROI) significantly.

The entire process of using a landing page can be considered a win-win situation for both visitors and marketers. A visitor fills out the form on the landing page because of their strong belief that the content or other offer they are accessing will be valuable to them, and a marketer gladly provides the piece of content to the visitor because the valuable information that the visitor provides on the form can be used by the marketer as a part of future marketing efforts.

Why Use a Landing Page?

Having a landing page can significantly improve your SEO and build your brand. It is also a great way to convert more traffic from browser to buyer as the page is focused on one goal or call to action by providing information about a specific offer or item. With a landing page, you are in complete control as the page allows you to lead the visitors to a specific action. The page leads potential customers to a specific product, service, or offer and encourages them to take action.

A landing page has limited navigation, which keeps a visitor focused on the goal instead of being distracted by multiple links that can take them away from the page. A well-designed, dedicated landing page is a destination for traffic that can convert visitors into customers, especially when a high-quality advertisement promotes a single offer.

Another advantage of a landing page is that it can help you to reinforce your brand, with a consistent appearance, tone, style, and copy. This ensures that even when visitors don’t convert, they can still remember you in the future – priming them to convert on future offers, even if they didn’t bite this time around. 

Why You Should Use a Landing Page for Your Business

If you see landing pages as a costly and time-consuming process and don’t consider using them for your business, it can affect your conversion rate optimization results, and not in a good way.

Here are some reasons why landing page use and optimization should be one of your top priorities:

Improve Your Brand Recognition

 

• If you are running a business, you should leave no stone unturned to drive traffic to your website and improve your SEO and CRO. In order to achieve this, you need to increase potential leads. Landing page optimization is a great way to acquire more leads and increase your chance of a conversion.
• The expertise of a veteran web design agency or content writing services provider can help you get started with your landing page creation and optimization; they can also help you identify the CTAs that effectively attract qualified leads.

Generate Data and Produce Valuable Insights

• The form filled by the visitors on your landing page can help you in many ways. You can use the information to learn more about your visitors, such as their specific challenges, preferred date and time for a consultation, and so on.
• Landing pages also allow you to collect prospect demographics necessary to contact leads. This can be very helpful to move them along your conversion rate optimization funnel.
• A major advantage of a landing page is that it allows you to track user behavior. This is a crucial best practice, as it can produce valuable insights. Linking a landing page to a specific campaign or source helps you to find out which channels are bringing in the most leads. Generating data and insights can also be very helpful in finding out which topics are of most interest to your audience and which campaigns are performing the best.
• Data and analytics allow you to test and compare different landing page elements. This helps you to find out which the most effective version is and which one needs to be improved.
• Landing page forms can be a useful tool; however, they can create a negative impact when they are not utilized properly. You need to make sure that you only ask for the information that you need. Every extra point of information you look for in your form is another chance for your visitor to go “No, I don’t think so.” Requesting a lot of unnecessary personal details can create a negative impression on your potential customers and repel them from your landing page.

Drive Higher ROI by Reducing CPA

• Landing pages increase conversions, which in turn produces a higher return on investment (ROI). By increasing Google PPC Quality Scores (QS), landing pages reduce cost per click (CPC) and cost per conversion (CPC), eventually resulting in a lower CPA (cost per acquisition).
• Quality score is an important factor that determines what Google will charge for your ads, and how effectively they’ll be positioned. Along with relevant ads and keywords, landing pages play a crucial role in achieving higher quality scores.
• A landing page has to be simple and straightforward and should contain relevant, useful, and original content. You need to ensure that a visitor doesn’t have to click multiple links on your landing page to find out what they are looking for. Reducing the number of clicks is an important factor to achieve a higher QS. Along with these factors, transparency and trustworthiness are other important factors that Google uses when grading a landing page.

Benefit Your Business By Growing Your Email List

 

• Usually, a landing page contains a form that asks for a user’s information, such as name, email address, phone number, or company. Of these, arguably the most important is collecting a visitor’s email. When you have a form on your landing page that asks for email, then your landing page allows you to grow your email list.
• You can include an “opt-in” button feature on your landing page. While filling out the form, interested users can click this button to receive emails and offers from your business. Interested users who have selected this feature can be added to your email list. This lets you send them things like newsletters; if there are any upcoming sales and promotions, you can send them those details in advance. This will ensure that your business will stay on top of their mind.

Include Testimonials to Increase Credibility

 

• Landing pages are focused on one particular task or offer. This makes it easy for you to optimize the content, allowing you to facilitate that task as much as possible. This will increase a user’s confidence in your business, as they will realize that you have put thought into creating the best process.
• Including testimonials on the landing page can be a very good idea. Indicating the success that other people have had with the product or service on your landing page is always a great way to make customers feel more secure in their decision to act.

What Makes a Good Landing Page?

It is important for you to send your potential customers to a page that will highlight the special offer you’ve promised them. Your landing page can capture attention for a longer period of time as long as it provides something specific.

Here are a few things that a good landing page does:

• Your landing page can be tied to your company brand, but avoid giving a detailed history of your company. Your customers are looking for something specific and you need to provide them with what you have promised. This isn’t a recipe blog – we don’t need your business’ history in advance. Get to the goods ASAP.
• An overly long or detailed form can be daunting to visitors, causing them to move on. The form should only ask for certain basic details that are needed, which will encourage the users to take advantage of whatever opportunity you are offering.
• Segmenting your customer base can help you target specific consumers through customized campaigns. Whether through inputs in the form or different messaging in the campaigns, you should have a clear idea of why a visitor clicked and what their connection to your company might be in the future
• Your landing page should include a “thank you” note as it is not only polite but also assures the visitors that their registration process is completed.
• Give visitors easy access to other marketing channels by providing links to other offers, social media profiles, or an email list sign-up.

Final Thoughts

Once you’ve done all that hard work to get visitors to your website, the next important step is to make sure that you convert them into leads for your business. Creating more landing pages increases the opportunity to convert visitors into leads. A landing page is an effective lead conversion tool that helps to translate your hard work into sales.