How to Use Landing Pages for Your Website

If you’re familiar with websites, whether or not you are a digital marketing expert, you have probably heard of a landing page. While a landing page is another page on your website, there are nuanced differences in how it is used that you may not be familiar with. When you understand the purpose of good landing pages, you will understand how to use them to generate more conversions.

What Is a Landing Page?

A Landing page is a singular web page used specifically for marketing purposes. Unlike other pages on your website that may have many goals that encourage the user to move through your website from link to link, a landing page generally has one goal (and one goal only). That is to get the user to convert on a Call to Action (CTA). When users click on an ad— usually through a PPC, Social Media Post, or Email Marketing – they “land” on a specific page to one topic, goal, and outcome. The content on the landing page should lead the user to act based on that goal.

Why use a Landing Page instead of any other page?

The short answer – Return on Investment. Although some landing pages can rank on search results, they are usually not built this way, as competition on search sites like Google or Bing is enormous. The landing page’s job is to turn the potential client into a solid lead.

For example, You want to promote a specific service or product on your business website, and you have a promotion in place and an advertising budget for this specific product/promo. You ran a social media post, created a beautiful email marketing campaign, used a few hundred dollars on social media and Google ads, and led the user to the main page of your website – you might sell some stuff.

Still, your budget and efforts are not optimized for the campaign’s success. Once on site, the potential customer has a lot of options to choose from, browse through pages, show interest in some other products you might offer, and suddenly completely forget about your promo that he initially came for. You might get lucky, and he might purchase something, but the odds are against you.

A landing page should lead the visitor to a specific action that was set for the campaign. Let’s say that you offer a free consultation for a “Better Retirement” Your site might offer tools and a lot of information about retirement. Still, the main goal for your campaign is to get leads from potential customers for your service and schedule consultations.

Your landing page should be “disconnected” from the site, at least in the look and design, so the visitor’s attention on the landing page will be on “the benefits” and the “free consultation.” The page clickable elements should be the ones that will “convert” the action, and either “Call,” “Schedule,” or “Submit Information” will be the outcome. that way, your marketing budget will be as close to reality as possible.

Once you finish your campaign, Analytics will be able to show you how many people saw your ad, clicked on it, and how many turned into leads (Conversions). Using a promotional landing page will help you be more precise on specific promos you want to promote and build better ads for your business.

Different Ways to Use Landing Pages

As I mentioned above, a landing page typically has one main goal that it is trying to achieve, but the beauty is that you get to decide what that goal is. Here are a few different ways to use landing pages for your website.

Using a Landing Page When Launching PPC Campaigns

When you create a Pay Per Click (PPC) ad on Google, Bing, or any Social Media Platform, you should create a landing page that is specific to the ad. This landing page should be about the topic of the ad, use the appropriate keywords, or as we call it, “Support the Ad.” It will help your website and those looking for your service with a better experience. (It will also help you with Ad Rank, but we will save this topic for another day)

Think about yourself as a customer. Would you like to look for a power tool for your home project, see a promo that says 25% off your favorite tool, but once you click, you see a bunch of tools, and none of them is the one you were looking for? That’s a bad user experience. You will probably browse for a bit looking for the tool you were looking for, but after you realize it’s nowhere to be found, you will leave the site. The advertiser paid for the click but didn’t get the result. (sometimes, a campaign can be set for branding and exposure, but you were looking for a specific tool.)

Your landing page should be “funneling” the potential customer to a result – Purchase.

So you will create an ad that says 25% off a Phillips Screwdriver Set, and the landing page will show the benefits of this set, a few pictures of the set and usage, a video is much preferred to grab the customer’s attention, and you will top it off with a “Buy Now” Button.

After spending $200 (for example) on the ad, you will see how many people interacted with your campaign. Analytics will show that 200 visitors clicked on your ad, and 50 purchased the Set. That tells you that your average click was $1, giving you a 25% conversion rate. With this information, you can learn that it costs you $5 in advertisement to generate a 1 purchase. The better you choose the right promotion with the right product and an optimized ad, the better your profits will be.

Use a Landing Page To Enroll New Subscribers To Your Newsletter

Sometimes, the best way to sell something is not to sell anything! If you aim to build a large audience that you can use later on, you can create a landing page encouraging them to subscribe to your newsletter. Using a landing page to increase your contact list is effective for marketing because signing up is free. Once you have an audience, you can send promotional emails and product launches.

But how do you do that? I’m sure you came across a “Free E-Book” at some point in your life 🙂 can you remember if that E-Book page that was supposed to teach you how to be a millionaire overnight was one of many products on an e-commerce site, or was it a standalone page with a simple request to leave your name and email just to get it for free? 99.9% it was the latter.

The concept behind those e-book promotions, future product discounts, and early bird promotions comes from a basic understanding of “you give before you receive.” I will give you a tool that will help you or an opportunity to save some $$$ down the road, and in favor, you will give me your information. That way, you can grow your audience and offer your future promo to already “warm” leads, as they already showed interest in your initial promo, so now they can expect your next one.

Use a Landing Page To Promote Your Product Launches

A landing page is a great way to tease a launch date to gather contact information from your audience. Much like you want to encourage users to subscribe to your email list, you want to use the excitement surrounding product launches to gather emails that you can use to promote products, services, and events. In this case, you want to create a landing page based around “sign up to be the first to find out when this product goes on sale….”

This route is pretty straightforward, creating a “Buzz” as people want to be “First to Own It,” and on the advertiser side, it gives you confidence in future sales before you even order the product for distribution.

In Conclusion, landing pages are a smart way of utilizing your marketing budget and turning it into sales, just like everything else, once it’s done right. There is no specific way a landing page should be but to serve the purpose of your campaign.