Landing Pages: What You Need to Know

In terms of general web design, there are few elements of a marketing campaign that are more important than a landing page. At its core, a landing page is just a specific page on a website that visitors accessed via a link through some other channel. Diving deeper, however, they're an essential part of things like your PPC (pay per click) campaigns for a number of important reasons.

Keep in mind that the goal of your PPC campaigns is to drive people to a specific website. When that website is an optimized and targeted landing page, you have a much better chance at converting a passive visitor into an active lead by preserving the original momentum they had when they clicked on your link in the first place. The same is true of social media - a link to a landing page built around a particular topic will always have more traction than a general home page as far as converting leads is concerned.

Simply put, landing pages are invaluable when it comes to generating new leads. But if you want to build and execute landing pages effectively, there are a few key things you'll want to keep in mind.

The Major Elements of a Landing Page

If you're running a lawn services business that just sent out marketing emails to prospects outlining a new promotion you're running, you wouldn't want to only include a link in that message to your business' home page. You would want to direct them to a more specific landing page, which in this case would include elements like:

• Specific information about the offer the prospect was interested in, confirming that they've made it to the right place.
• More information about why the offer is important and what the visitor stands to receive that they wouldn't get elsewhere.
• One or more calls-to-action, directing the visitor to perform a specific task to receive said offer.
• A form that is used specifically to collect user data like contact information.

To continue with this example, let's say that you're trying to generate new leads and you've recently written an e-book about the benefits of hiring a professional lawn services company in Kansas City, Missouri.

• You create your landing page outlining the details of the offer (in this case, the fact that the visitor is about to download an e-book).
• You populate your page with a fresh design, engaging graphic images and photography. Even a video or two will help to keep things compelling.
• As readers get farther down the page, they're getting more excited about the idea of downloading this e-book. Maybe you even talk about why an e-book is better than a print book on the same topic.
• At the bottom, you have a "call-to-action" outlining the precise step that you want the reader to take. In this case, you would say "fill out the following form with your name and email address to download this great new e-book or something to that effect.

Why Landing Pages Are Important

Landing pages are mission critical to your larger lead generation efforts in part because they're so specific. The main page on your website exists to do many things - it outlines your products or services, it provides more information about your company, etc. It's easy for someone to get lost in the "noise." A landing page, however, is built for one thing - collecting lead information. It's both easy for someone to provide their information AND easy for you to capture it. They're short, they're sweet and they're to-the-point.

Most importantly, however, landing pages help preserve an active connection between you and your visitors. It explains exactly what "job" you want them to do and what they get in return, making it much more likely that someone will provide you with the information you need beyond doing so "out of the kindness of their heart."

If you're interested in building and managing more successful landing pages for your lead generation and capture efforts, or if you'd like to find out more information about how services like graphic design and photography solutions can make your existing pages more effective, please don't delay - contact Ridpath Creative today.