Landing Page Academy » Chapter 1: An Intro to Landing Pages in Marketing » Lesson 2/3
To fully understand the need for building landing pages, it'll be safe to start with the marketing funnel term. Simply speaking, it's a multi-step model that shows the process of turning visitors into customers.
The funnel usually starts with an advertisement, with a landing page marking the second stage of the funnel – this is where it starts to narrow down. A marketing funnel ends with a conversion, which means meeting the campaign's goal (whatever that might be). So if you want to advertise your product or service, you'll need a place where you can direct all those people who can click on the ad.
And that place is a landing page.
A landing page should never be the first stage of your marketing campaign. It’s a landing page, so it means someone has to land on it from somewhere else. And that somewhere else might be an advertisement in social media, but also an email or a banner in a local news portal. There’s a very important term that comes with it. It’s called a message match. Basically, it means that you should create an ad that corresponds to the landing page – both copy and design-wise.
Poor message match can – and probably will – kill your campaign and burn your money. Keep in mind that as internet users, we’re hardly ever fully focused on what we do. We open multiple tabs and windows, eventually getting back to them after some time. What do you think happens if someone clicks on the “Learn English in 3 months” ad and goes back to it after a while just to see a random Shakespeare’s quote at the top of a landing page?
Example: If your ad says “Learn English in 3 months”, the headline of your landing page should relate to it, saying – for example – “Fast-paced English Course for Beginners”. That’s a message match.
Since there are at least five different reasons that make using landing pages a smart and effective choice for your company, I broke this down for you, so you can easily focus on one thing at a time.
Remember what I’ve told you in the first lesson about landing pages serving a single purpose? That’s the key. A better focus means more high-quality conversions, more truly-interested leads and, eventually, more sales. Trying to sell on your company’s homepage is like setting up a minefield and sending people to the other end. Some might get to the end, but the majority won’t make it to the conversion.
A well-built landing page increases chances for conversions to the maximum and, thus, saves you a lot of money (which you will burn otherwise for dozens of poor leads and visitors who won’t even make it to the form).
It’s not like you start a company with a ready-to-use website. If you want it, you need to build it first. But is it really necessary? If you’re just starting, you may want to keep your budget strict, and that’s where landing pages work great, too.
Building a landing page doesn’t require hiring a specialist – there are tons of landing page builders on the market, and the majority of them allow people to create their own landing pages even without any coding skills. There's still a lot to learn, but building landing pages is within the reach of anyone who is willing to spend a little time finding the best tool and studying it.
If you're not really a one-man army type, you can successfully use landing page builders for teamwork – let the designer edit a template, a content marketer fill it with copy, and – if you need it – check the results afterwards to see if everything's in order.
The third reason is that landing pages are a great way to save both time and money. Designing, programming and setting up a website is time-consuming (for us, it took more than six months from planning to releasing our new website, even though it was still just a rebranding). Of course, our website is much more complex than any landing page, but even a simple website can cost much – both in terms of time and money.
If you’re considering the landing page approach, you’ll need a builder and a domain, and that’s pretty much it when it comes to costs. Of course, that’s assuming you’ll be creating landing pages yourself or within your team. Even if you’re a newbie, the drag and drop interface and templates are there to help you build a good-looking and effective landing page in no time.
Also, you’ll get more precise information about your customer’s interests – you may then compare your ad’s effectiveness and draw some conclusions for future marketing campaigns.
Example: If it’s summer season, you can run three different campaigns, selling women’s shoes, men’s shoes and children’s shoes, on three different landing pages. Such approach will deliver you less leads in general, but they will be more focused, and offer-oriented.
Almost every company needs leads, and landing pages are the best in capturing them. In order to acquire potential customers, prepare something for them – a free webinar, an e-book, an online course… anything that comes to your mind and may be useful for your target audience. Also, if you’re running a diverse business, selling – for example – handmade shoes, you should use different landing pages for campaigns targeted at different recipients.
Your company’s homepage is a place for all sorts of information, but it shouldn’t be expanded infinitely. Keeping your website clean means not mixing up its goals (be it informing, allowing visitors to contact, or presenting your company’s offer) with your marketing objectives. Even if you have a nicely working website, you should market your offers outside of it, on a landing page. Such an approach guarantees even higher conversion rates because people who organically visit your website are more likely to get interested in one of your special offers.
That’s all for now. In the next lesson, you will learn how to start building landing pages. You’ll learn the anatomy of a landing page and I’ll show you a simple example that can be built in half an hour.
Let us know what you think about Landing Page Academy, and we’ll send you a handy Landing Page Checklist in return. The checklist will help you make sure your landing page is ready to rock!
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To answer the question from the title of this lesson: if you’re looking for an easy to use, highly-effective way to capture leads or sell products – you need landing pages. If it’s a time- and money-saving tool you seek, you also need landing pages.
Also keep in mind that:
1. Landing pages help in keeping people focused on your offer – no distractions.
2. You can use landing pages even if you don't own your website yet.
3. It's easy to create numerous landing pages and use them for various reasons.
More tips on how to use your newly-got knowledge are in the coming lessons. Want to discover the key elements of a landing page? Hit that "Next lesson" button!
