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The term "landing page" crops up a lot in marketing articles; so what are they, how do you create them and how can you use them effectively?
What is a landing page?
In marketing terms, it's a specialized page that visitors are directed to once they've clicked on a link, usually from an outside source such as a Pay Per Click ad. The page is usually tightly focused on a particular product or service with the aim of getting the visitor to buy or take some form of action rapidly that will ultimately lead to a sale.
The basics of developing landing pages:
There a few questions to ask yourself when creating a landing page:
* What are you offering?
* Who do you wish to appeal to?
* Why would they be interested in your offer?
* What do they need to do to participate/purchase?
Write down all your ideas, make it as lengthy as you like. Then, bring it down to it's core elements, making it as motivating as possible without it being over-hyped.
Call to action
Ensure you have included a call to action towards the top of the page.
A call to action is simply telling the potential client what they need to do in order to receive whatever you are offering e.g. "purchase today!", "buy now, limited offer!" or "subscribe now!"
Short statements
There's no need to get long-winded on a focused landing page. Your sentences should be brief or dot-points, but provide valuable bite sized chunks of information.
Length of pages
This will vary greatly and there doesn't appear to be a general consensus as to how long a page should be. I feel that the more costly an item is, or the more unique it is, the more content will be needed to convince a buyer to purchase or explore the possibility of purchasing further; but remember that calls to action should be within easy reach throughout the page and not have to be hunted for.
Ask and answer questions
Ensure that the major questions someone may have are addressed in your marketing copy. Pose a few questions yourself, then provide the answer.
Logical sequence
Ensure your marketing copy follows a logical sequence and that you don't bounce around from point to point as it will only serve to confuse.
White space, headings and colors
Where appropriate, use headings and blank lines to organize your content so it is neat instead of a textual barrage. Separate some elements with different, but complementing colors.
Provide a bonus
Everyone loves a freebie and on a landing page it can be especially effective. Even if the visitor doesn't take up on the main offer, by offering a free report that requires their email address in order to download, it will give you a second chance at acquiring their business through ensuing follow ups. For example, a free newsletter subscription will allow you to to build a relationship over time with more cautious clients.
Fast load times
Remember, not all the world has a broadband connection, and even if the bandwidth is available, you shouldn't feel you need to use it all. You need to get your message to the potential client as quickly as possible, so while your page needs to look good, it also needs to be lean.
PPC driven landing pages
If you are using Pay Per Click advertising to drive traffic to your landing pages, you may want to consider using different marketing copy based on your different keyphrase bids. It's a little extra work, but given the prices of PPC traffic, it could be well worth the time.
Let's say you are promoting, a cheap but good quality product - let's call the product a "Flomble". Some of the keyphrases you are bidding on may include:
"discount flombles"
"quality flombles"
"discount flombles cheap"
The "discount" keyphrase attracts the interest of those whom economic issues may be a primary concern. The "quality" keyphrase appeals to those whose primary concern is, well, quality  . The last phrase is targeted to those who want a balance.
Search engine considerations
If you are creating multiple landing pages with only slight variations in text, it's wise to ensure that these pages are kept away from search engine spiders. Make your general purpose landing page available for indexing, but use a robots meta tag or robots.txt directive to exclude the others. This is to prevent search engines from assuming that you are trying to spam their listings and consequently having duplicate content penalties applied. |
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