Landing Page Touchdown

Landing pages are the new direct marketing approach towards “getting” in front of your clients. Landing pages are where your clients are going to end up when they have clicked on an ad that you’ve placed and are usually contained within your web site.  

Consider landing Pages as a “Swiss army knife”. They are useful in many ways: selling the exact product the client wants and thus employing a “sharp shooting” effect for your marketing efforts; educating the client and yourself about likes and dislikes with your service or product line; they give you adjustment levels on how to direct your overall marketing based on their popularity, etc.

 Landing Pages consistently increase campaign conversion rates by 25%, 50% or more. These are pages that are available to link to from your website or email, or subscribers can type the URL into their browser bar to see the content.  Because you have about 3 seconds to grab attention, make sure these pages are optimized, short and to the point, includes at least 1 CTA (Call To Action) and contain light but great looking imagery that attracts the eye and makes the web visitor like you and your product.

How Do Landing Pages Work?

Email
Usually (if you decide to employ email to carry on your message), landing page URLs should be included in this type of communication, right next to a CTA that encourages the reader to click on your link. Traffic is sent from a link in an email to a landing page designed to prompt a purchase.  For a newsletter landing page, the conversion activity is entering an email address into a form and clicking “Accept.  If you’re asking users to register for a newsletter, ask for only an email address.

Send auto-generated email each time a person registers.  One of your CTAs could be the free offer of 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. 

Conversion
A visitor taking the desired action on a transactional landing page is referred to as a conversion. The efficiency or quality of the landing page can be measured by its conversion rate, the percentage of visitors who complete the desired action. 

Since the economics of many online marketing programs are determined by the conversion rate, marketers constantly test alternatives and improvements to their landing pages.  Long term, the online business battle will be waged over conversion rates and return on investment (ROI), not traffic acquisition; by that I mean unnecessary traffic vs. intended traffic for the purpose of looking for your specific product or service.

When you know more about prospects; their motivations, needs, and preferences, you can provide the information they need to pull themselves into a conversion. 

Double or triple your online conversions, leads, and sales by creating and testing effective landing pages. One of the biggest mistakes you can make in online marketing is to simply put up a landing page for a product and accept whatever conversion rate it generates as the final number – the “best you can do”.   

Even after a customer has decided to accept your offer, the conversion can be lost.  Any flaw in site functionality and usability can cause you to lose the conversion, so ensure your privacy information is posted and there are no hiccups in form processing. 

Campaigns
Get a visitor to tell a friend; get a visitor to learn something, which could even include posting a comment or giving you some sort of feedback. Landing Pages are common in internet marketing campaigns, especially email and PPC marketing management. An ineffective landing page can ruin even the most successful ad banner and email campaigns.

The more you customize your landing pages to meet the requirements and fulfill the expectations of visitors from various campaigns, the better your conversion rate will be. 

Another example of a landing page are those created for display campaigns, so when you click on a banner or sponsored graphic, you are brought to a specific landing page.  Even if your search campaigns worked well so far without landing pages, ignoring them as the final step in optimizing your online marketing campaigns will cost you money. 

Conclusion:
Landing pages are the bridge and gateway to your website. They can be very effective at generating leads for your business and money in your bank. Landing pages should offer clear, simple navigation, allowing your site visitors to find product overviews and details easily.

Landing pages are excellent when you ran out of options to get more traffic with less cost and effort; they are a great way to monitor the success of your ads and marketing message.

 Claudiu Geanta is a serial entrepreneur and founder of Design by Satori Inc. & Satori CG Inc.. He helps businesses promote their presence on and off line. He is also an accomplished web designer, book writer and photographer. You can follow him on Twitter.
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