Thursday, 1 August 2013
What Is a Landing Page?
A landing page is a Web page that is created
specifically to respond to a marketing campaign you are running. You can’t
provide all the details and the opportunity to make the purchase in a banner
ad, so you develop a landing page to follow through from the banner ad. When
your target market clicks on the banner ad, they are taken to the landing page
that was developed specifically for that ad. The action you want the target
market to take might be to make a purchase, join your e-club, view a virtual
tour, or use your services. The key is that the landing page is usually geared
toward a conversion, or converting the browsers into buyers. The way your
landing page is developed depends entirely on your business objectives, your
target market, and your offer itself. The landing page should focus on the one
thing you want the visitor to do—keep it focused. The presentation and the
content, or copy, of your landing page has a huge impact on the ability of the
landing page to close the offer. We begin with a look at content for your
landing page. There are a number of points to make note of when preparing
content for a landing page:
1. Your landing page should be a continuation of your ad—repeat
and expand on the offer presented in your ad. The ad is designed to generate
interest and the landing page is designed to close the sale.
2. Your landing page should emphasize the benefits of your
offer—this is what justifies the purchase.
3. Your landing page content should flow from the advertisement.
If your ad promotes your virtual tour, then when visitors click through to the landing
page they should be given the opportunity to take that virtual tour. Take your
target market where you want them to go. Tell them what you want them to do.
4. Your landing page should “speak” to your target market. Use
their language and buzz words. Use the appropriate tone for this particular
target market.
5. Your landing page should have a dynamite headline. Grab their
attention!
6. Your landing page should be written for scanability. Internet
users don’t read, they scan.
7. Your landing page should promote the “value-added” portion of
the offer that will help with your objectives. Free gift on arrival, a coupon, a
discount toward a future purchase, or the number of reward points earned with
purchase—all of these add to the value of the offer.
8. Your landing page should create a sense of urgency—get your
visitors to do what you want them to do NOW! If they leave your site without making
the purchase, it is often unlikely you’ll get another opportunity. Using
appropriate calls to action like “Call Today!,” telling the target market that
“there are limited quantities” or “limited space available,” and techniques
like time-stamping the offer with an expiration date create a sense of urgency
that encourages the target market to take immediate advantage of the offer.
9. Your landing page content should minimize risk. If you have a
moneyback guarantee, emphasize it! Anything that helps to close the deal should
be prominently displayed.
10. Your landing page should ask for the sale—maybe multiple
times and in multiple places. You don’t get what you don’t ask for.
11. Your landing page should include content that enhances your
credibility— things like client testimonials or product or service reviews.
Content that helps establish credibility also helps build trust, which is key
to doing business online.
12. Your landing page should be optimized for the search
engines. If you are running a promotion for just a couple of days, then odds are
you do not want your landing page indexed by the search engines. In this case
you would use your robot’s exclusion protocol in your robots.txt file to tell the
search engines not to index the page.
Once you have developed a dynamite landing page, you will want
to do some testing to maximize your conversion; very few people get it perfect
the first time. You will want to test different page content, format and
lengths, different jargon and tones, different layouts, different offers, and a
number of
other things to find the right balance to best sell
your product or service.
