How to Use Landing Pages for Marketing

 What is a landing page? A landing page is any web page that you can “land” on. If you found this blog article on Google, you clicked and landed on it. Landing pages can be make-or-break experiences for users; not only do they need to look appealing, they also need to be engaging.

Given the strategy involved with landing pages, marketers and advertisers build them as standalone web pages that focus on a single goal. As standalone pages, they have no links or affiliation with the rest of your site. Instead of landing on these pages through Google, users arrive on them through a call-to-action from an outside source, such as an email.

In marketing, the purpose of a landing page is to either boost interest in a specific product, or to capture a lead so that you can market to future customers. Choosing one of these purposes will provide you with your single goal.

So how can we effectively capture these leads or promote a product? There are two types of landing pages that you can build for marketing purposes: lead generation and click-through.

Lead Generation Landing Pages

A lead is information about someone or something that companies use to identify potential customers and business opportunities. The most important aspect of a lead generation landing page is a form.

The Goal

Whether your goal is to get people to register for a webinar or to download a whitepaper, you’ll need a form to collect the interested party’s contact information (e.g., name, email address).

You should always incentivize potential customers. Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling had a quid pro quo arrangement in Silence of the Lambs, and it will work wonders for you and your customers. Would you ever give someone your personal information without getting something in return? Ensure that your form and incentives are clear and that you deliver on what is promised or guaranteed.

Once you have someone’s name and email address, in addition to knowing of his/her interest in your services, you can reach out to him/her with future marketing opportunities. These leads are more qualified than those of visitors who randomly stumble onto your site and fill out a form asking for more information.

Click-through Landing Pages

”Clicking-through” a website is just as it sounds, a user navigates through multiple pages on a site. Click-through landing pages are primarily used for ecommerce funnels, and unlike lead generation pages, they may involve the creation of multiple landing pages .

The Goal

When building click-through landing pages, your goal is to engage customers and provide them with enough information so that they feel confident enough to make a purchase.

For example, the first page a potential customer lands on could describe a product you sell. Not only will you provide detailed information about that product, but you might also explain why it’s superior to your competitor’s products. This landing page should also contain a link to another page on your site that you’d like the visitor to navigate to next. In some cases, you may want this link to direct customers to a page with even more information. The idea here is to build a strong case for your product and so that the visitor will feel as if he or she is making an informed decision.

The final page that the customer lands on should either be a shopping cart or a form, depending on whether you have an ecommerce site or not. If customers are able to purchase products on your site, make this process easy for them and allow them to select the product and pay for it on the spot.

If you do not have an ecommerce site but you’d still like to fully inform customers of your services, allow them to click-through and land on a registration or contact form. Even if they don’t commit to purchasing something in that moment, ideally you’ve still provided them with enough information to entice them to want services from you. This will also help you weed out people who weren’t interested enough to read on and learn more.

So there you have it. But before you run off to start building your own landing page, consider the goal that you’d like to achieve. Once you’ve settled on a strategy, write content that is clear and engaging. Last but not least, remember to test all of your forms and links. Afterall, as with the case with your products or services, it doesn’t matter how flashy they look if they don’t work as intended.