A landing page is a standalone web page, created as part of a specific marketing campaign. Visitors will typically ‘land’ on this page after clicking on a digital ad or promotional email.
Landing pages are great for increasing conversion rates because they are hyper focused on converting interested viewers into buyers. While your website may have many goals a landing page has a single call to action.
Landing pages are so effective because they are designed to close sales. Landing pages are purposefully designed to persuade customers to take action in an encouraging and distraction-free sales zone.
Despite this, many businesses aren’t aware of how effective landing pages can be.
What’s the difference between a landing page and a website?
Your website doesn’t just exist to sell products and services. It’s the central hub of your brand and should educate visitors about your brand mission, business values, and team members. Your website functions kind of like an online brochure; it’s designed both for browsing and conveying a wide range of information.
A typical home page will include many links to various parts of the business. From here your visitors can explore your products and services and learn more about your business as a whole.
Websites are designed to:
- Educate
- Nurture
- Build Trust
A landing page has one purpose. Its only job is to turn visitors into sales or leads. Effective, sales-focused landing pages use hyper-focused copy to spur ‘interested’ visitors into taking action.
Landing pages are designed to:
- Convert Customers
Why should I use a landing page?
Running digital ads, email campaigns, and improving your SEO are marketing tactics we recommended. However, these tactics work to increase website traffic, not conversions. Traffic is great, but it isn’t what makes businesses money.
A landing page works to convert that traffic into leads or sales. Directing ad traffic to your website is effectively a waste of money. Even when designed correctly, most websites only convert 3% of traffic into revenue-generating actions.
Instead, traffic from email, social media or Google ads should be sent to a landing page that matches the language and intent of the original source. From here highly persuasive copy works to educate viewers and close the sale without any distractions.
Benefits of using landing pages:
- Boost conversions without increasing ad spend.
- Get more out of your advertising budget.
- Hyper-targeted to get more of the conversions you want.
- Easy to test using A/B split testing to increase ROI.
- Channel agnostic – works to convert all types of digital traffic.
- Easily convert customers from ad to landing page to action.
How do landing pages work?
Landing pages are typically used for two main purposes, each defined by its goals.
Lead Generation Pages:
- Use a form as the call to action or a phone number to generate increased calls. The form aims to collect data like email addresses, phone numbers and names of visitors.
- Are more popular with B2B marketers or companies selling services or items that require more buy-in, making them great for high-value products.
- Can be used to build up a list of prospective customers to then market towards.
- Sometimes offer something free in exchange for personal details. Eg. An industry whitepaper, ebook or webinar.
- Can be used by eCommerce brands for list-building in anticipation of launching a product.
Clickthrough Landing Pages
- More commonly used by SaaS marketers and eCommerce.
- Click through pages are designed to make a sale or gain a subscriber rather than build leads.
- As the name suggests these pages send visitors through to a checkout page to complete a transaction.
- A clickthrough page is more effective at promoting one product or service, like a mountain bike, as opposed to promoting a wide range of bikes.
Why are landing pages so effective?
Focus is a key factor in making landing pages more effective than website pages. Landing pages offer the ability to gain the audience’s attention and keep it all the way through the buying funnel. Why?
It isn’t just great copy or an attention-grabbing page design that helps convert customers (although this helps). It’s the overall experience customers have throughout the funnel that matters.
Take an email advertising 15% off mountain bikes that leads to a landing page about the benefits of mountain bikes. This is a more effective way to hold the reader’s attention than driving traffic to a web page that features a lot of bikes, only some of which are on sale.
The first example not only meets the expectations of the viewer — to see the mountain bikes they are interested in. It guides them directly towards the offer they were first interested in — buy a mountain bike today and get 15% off.
Providing a cohesive experience for your audience also improves your Google Ad quality score. Quality score is calculated based on the expected click through rate, ad relevance (how closely your ad matches the intent behind a user’s search), and landing page experience (how relevant and useful your landing page is to people who click your ad.)
For a higher Google Ad quality score your ad copy should match the keywords you are using and drive traffic to a landing page that is relevant to the Google ad and the keyword.
Landing pages offer a customised, streamlined experience unbroken by confusion or distractions.
How do I drive traffic to a landing page?
For your landing page to work, you need to send traffic towards it.
- Paid Search Traffic: Send PPC ads to a landing page rather than your home page. Ad copy should clearly match your landing page and have a clear call to action.
- Paid Social Traffic: Running ads on social media is a great way to target audiences that might be interested in your product or service.
- Email Campaigns: Nurture existing relationships or create new ones. Emails should be carefully crafted for each list of prospective or current customers.
- Banner Ads: Also known as Display Ads, banner ads can be used imagery to attract attention and drive traffic to your landing page.
If you would like to learn more about how Ambitious Digital can help implement a successful Landing page strategy specifically for your business, then please book in a free 30-minute strategy call with one of our marketing experts today!