How’s your online marketing performing? Are you getting the results you want? Are the people clicking on your ads or your email CTAs taking action when they land on your site?
Bottom line, are you getting the phone calls or form fills you need? If not, landing pages may be what’s missing in your strategy. Here’s why.
Message Relevancy
If you’ve created a good ad and targeted effectively, you’re probably getting qualified clicks. But getting prospects to click your ad isn’t your ultimate goal. You need people to make a purchase, or you need to capture those people’s contact info for lead nurturing or for Sales to follow up.
The more specifically you address the pain points of your prospects, the more likely you’ll capture their interest. But you can’t stop with the messaging of your ad. You need to reiterate that same message that caught their initial attention in the copy on the page where they land after clicking. Why? Hundreds (probably thousands, but I haven’t read them all) of split tests show that ad-specific copy on landing pages outperforms more general copy. Just Google “message match on landing pages” or “ad specific landing page copy” to see a few.
Think about your own experience browsing the web. Which scenario would you be more likely to take action in:
- You click on an ad for “The project management tool for visual thinkers” and you get taken to the home page of a company that makes several different software solutions. You see the message “Software tools for growing companies: grow your revenue, grow your ROI. Learn more»”. You click the “learn more” link and get taken to a products page that lists all their products. You find the one that looks like the project management tool you’re interested in, and click another “learn more” link to (hopefully) find out how you can test out the tool and see if it’s the answer to your project management frustrations. You arrive on a page detailing the benefits of the tool that was advertised. Finally. Now you start searching for a “demo” button or “free trial”. If you haven’t gotten distracted by your phone, email, social media, HipChat or Slack notifications, or a coworker stopping by your office by now, you may actually fill out a form to get a demo or a free trial.
- You click on an ad for “the project management tool for visual thinkers” and you get taken to a special landing page with the message “Lists of to-dos just not working for you? You need a project management tool for visual thinkers.” You read a brief bullet-pointed summary of benefits, a couple of testimonials, and see a form headlined “Get a free 15-day trial. No credit card required.” You fill the form. Bam. You can now test out the software, and the company can now follow up with a series of lead nurturing emails.
No Distractions
Landing pages allow you to minimize distractions. Yes, you want prospects to learn about your company, what makes you unique, and check out your case studies — AFTER they’ve given you their contact details so you can nurture them towards becoming a customer. You don’t want to leave anything to chance.
When you use landing pages, you can leave out social icons, in-copy links, and even your main navigation menu. After the prospect fills your form, you can show a “thank you” page that has all these elements, so he or she can explore.
SEO Rankings
When you’re using a landing page that focuses on a specific issue or specific service/product type, you have a much better chance of getting that page ranking in search results, for a couple of reasons.
One, search algorithms want to show relevant results. If someone searches “visual project management tool” they’re not going to see a homepage talking about “software tools for growing companies” in the results.
Second, engagement is a key factor that search engines use to determine ranking placements. If your page has a high bounce rate, or if people aren’t doing anything on your site, it won’t rank as high as a similar page where people are spending time reading it and filling out forms.
How Landing Pages Fit Into Your Online Marketing Strategies
- Landing Pages and Segmentation — If you serve different verticals or different markets, you can use landing pages to speak a relevant message to each group. More relevant messages = more conversions.
- Landing Pages and SEO — As we just mentioned, landing pages can help your search rankings. But they also result in higher conversions when a visitor arrives on the page and is able to quickly and easily complete the action he or she came to do.
- Landing Pages and PPC (such as AdWords) or Social Media Ads — With landing pages, you can make your ad message and page message match exactly. You can focus on the issue that captured the prospect’s interest — the one you know is a winner because he or she cared enough to click on the ad.
- Landing Pages and Email Marketing — You can use landing pages to identify what topics your prospects are interested in and what issues resonate with them. For example, if someone fills out a form to attend a webinar on “3 Key Performance Indicators Every Startup Should Be Measuring”, then you know that if you send emails about KPIs and metrics to this person, he or she is likely to engage with them.
If you’re not using landing pages in your online marketing strategy, you’re missing out on conversions you could be getting. Well-crafted landing pages are essential for any successful online marketing campaign.
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