The Christmas shopping has begun. People are searching for the best deals and are purchasing more than they have all year. Online advertising can be a great tool in order to get the word out about your special offers and landing pages can be a great tool to help those eager customers convert. Let’s start with the basics.
A landing page is, in the most general form, a page that a visitor views after clicking on a link. This could be your home page or any other page on your site, but I would like to focus on custom pages. We previously discussed why landing pages are so valuable and how they help direct a visitor to complete your end goal.
Custom landing pages are especially useful after a customer has expressed interest by clicking on your advertisement. Landing pages are most useful for banner ads, email campaigns, and especially Pay-Per-Click advertising using Google Adwords. The page customers are sent to after clicking on your advertisement can be a page designed to fit customer needs based on the ad they clicked.
An effective landing page could dramatically increase the amount of conversions on your site. Conversions refer to the number of people who turn from a website visitor into a customer or at least get a step closer to becoming a customer. A conversion can be anything from signing up for a newsletter to purchasing your product. Basically, more conversions result in more customer so designing an effective landing page is essential.
The first step to creating a high quality landing page is to keep it simple. Focus the entire page on one goal, such as getting the visitor to fill out a form with contact information. The benefit of designing a custom landing page is that it can be much more simple than your website pages. Websites commonly have a lot information and give many options of where to go next in hopes that a visitor will stay on the site for a long time and view many pages. Keep the visitor focused on your goal by providing only the necessary information.
When a person is taken to a landing page the goal will be (and should be) obvious. The customer will realize that you want information from them in hopes that they may one day be a customer. They can see that you are benefiting when they convert so they are much more likely to convert if they benefit also.
Offering an incentive is a great way to get customers to convert without hesitation. A great way to get your landing page visitors to convert is by offering a coupon. Let’s say you are running a banner ad campaign for athletic shoes. The text on the banner ad could something like “Click here to receive 25% off your shoe purchase.” Then the landing page could include a form where potential customers write their email address so you can email them the coupon. Once they have filled out their information they can be taken to your website to begin browsing shoes and you now have the contact information for a potential customer.
Landing pages can be linked to a vary of advertising campaigns, but they should customized for each segment of customers. If your company is large, or targets a variety market segments then multiple landing pages should be created with the product or market segment in mind. When running a PPC campaign, you can tell Google which landing page to link to depending on the keyword that is selected. Make sure you keep in mind where visitors are coming from in order to link to a successful landing page.
You now have the tools necessary to create a high quality landing page yourself or if it seems like too much work then you can hire a web team to create a custom landing page for you. No matter who creates your landing page, ensure that it will be effective before linking it to your advertising campaigns.