Understanding landing pages
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You’ve heard marketers talk about landing pages and how important they are as part of a holistic marketing plan. In fact, one of the most effective ways to generate leads is through a landing page. So, what is a landing page, and how do you incorporate it into your overall marketing strategy?
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In this article, we’ll break down everything you need to know about landing pages, including why they’re important and what you should do to ensure your landing page is a success. Read on and discover more about this powerful marketing tool.
A landing page is a standalone web page designed for a specific purpose, typically aligned with a particular marketing campaign. It’s designed to communicate a message with a singular focus and encourage users to take a specific action.
For example, you could create a landing page to announce a special event and include a CTA for the audience to purchase a ticket. Another option may be getting users to provide their email addresses to receive your company newsletter or a one-off digital download like an eBook.
It’s called a landing page because it’s the first page targeted visitors land on when they click on your campaign link. You would usually promote this landing page link through social media, email, and PPC campaigns linked to your overall marketing strategy.
Most businesses use a landing page builder to create their landing page, allowing you to choose free hosting through the builder’s subdomain or host the page through your own custom domain.
Landing pages allow you to create a unique experience for an express goal, motivating the user to act and initiating a conversion.
While your website homepage is also an important marketing asset, there are several differences between a homepage and a landing page.
If you think of your website as a brick-and-mortar store—your homepage would be your storefront where you’d let prospective customers know about all the great products and services you offer.
The objective of a homepage is to get website visitors to explore other pages on your site, so your homepage invariably has several sections linking to different web pages.
We can highlight the main differences between landing pages and homepages as follows:
It’s true that both entry and landing pages are pages users land on when interacting with your brand, but there’s a difference.
An entry page is typically the first page on your website that a user finds and visits, generally through a search engine query. The page they land on depends on their specific search query. This visitor could land on any web page or blog post on your website as their first point of entry.
Landing pages differ due to their specific purpose, leading prospects to take a particular action, rather than serving as a gateway to explore your website.
Landing pages focus on converting the leads you attract with your various marketing channels and strategies.
Building a landing page for your marketing campaign gives you a chance to draw in a specific audience. Through this page, you can present them with a clear message tailored to their needs and free from distractions.
It’s a great way to target a segment of your target market for better-quality leads and conversions. Including a well-executed landing page within your campaign strategy is an ideal way to attract new customers.
Landing pages also make tracking and evaluating your campaign metrics easier, including traffic sources, demographics, and engagement.
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In essence, there are two types of landing pages you could employ as part of your marketing strategy.
Businesses use lead gen (or lead generation) landing pages for—you guessed it—generating leads. This type of landing page asks prospective customers to input personal information that you can use to contact and nurture them through your sales pipeline.
A lead gen page usually offers the prospect something in return for their name, email address, etc. In this case, the prime lead gen page CTA is a form.
The customer data collected can also prove useful for audience segmentation and targeting in later campaigns. Each prospect that completes a form provides you with more information about the type of prospect that’s interested in your products or services.
In fact, lead gen pages can provide you with a wealth of information to boost revenue and improve your campaign success rate.
Some lead gen landing page examples include:
Although the goal is still to generate leads, click-through landing pages ask users to click on a button that directs them to a different page where they need to take a specific action.
The ultimate CTA typically involves a purchase or signing up for a service. That’s why click-through pages often lead prospects to a specific page on your website where they can complete the purchase or signup process.
Here are a few click-through landing page examples:
Landing pages will differ according to brand, message, product, service, and more. However, there are some central elements that all landing pages should comprise, including:
These components form the backbone of every landing page and are essential to an effective campaign.
Now that we know what a landing page is and what it can do, it’s time to examine how this indispensable marketing tool can benefit your business.
These are some of the leading advantages associated with deploying a landing page as part of your marketing campaign strategy:
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We decided to dedicate this section of the article to giving you some pointers on how to create an outstanding landing page experience for your audience. These best practices are the foundation of a successful landing page campaign.
Before you do anything else, make sure you and your team are clear on what your landing page campaign goals are.
Do you simply want to capture leads? Are you trying to get prospects to subscribe to your newsletter? Would you like to encourage users to sign up for a free trial?
Whatever the goal, define it, detail the numbers you’d like to aim for, and set a time frame within which to achieve this goal.
Most businesses sell to at least a few different types of customers. These could be customers in different industries, age groups, geographical regions, etc. Therefore, communicating with each segment requires a slightly different approach to ensure your messaging is relevant to the audience in question.
For this reason, promoting your landing page to a select audience segment makes the most sense. Doing so helps you better understand the target audience, their needs, and how to tailor your messaging to engage with them.
It should go without saying that your landing page content should be engaging and concise, providing the audience with valuable information in an easy-to-read format.
For high-converting landing page copy, start with an attention-grabbing headline that prompts the reader to want to know more. Then, focus on highlighting the benefits associated with your offer rather than the features. You want your audience to understand how your product, service, or information will solve their problems.
Ideally, you should aim to build a landing page that people want to read and share with colleagues and friends. Presenting them with an intimidating wall of text is sure to increase your bounce rate and render your campaign unsuccessful.
While content is part of the user experience, the landing page design, layout, and visual elements you choose all influence the UX and can make or break your campaign.
Think about how your audience will likely read what’s on your page and where you’d like to lead their eye when designing your layout. Make sure you include ample spacing and whitespace around text and images to ensure information remains clear and easy to find.
Incorporate eye-catching imagery, from photos to illustrations and more. But avoid adding images for the sake of adding images—These visual components should serve a purpose and enhance the overall message you want to convey.
If possible, include a video with or without a written explanation. Over 44% of consumers prefer video to eBooks, graphics, articles, sales calls, or presentations when learning about a product or service.
As is the case with email and other marketing content, an effective call to action (CTA) is one of the primary landing page elements. To encourage conversions, it’s best to have a clear CTA above the fold—in other words, within the header section you see before scrolling down the page.
You should also include at least one more CTA further down the page, typically towards the bottom before the footer section.
Your CTAs could be buttons or hyperlinked anchor text, but making sure they are noticeable is crucial. Highlighting them with an accent color or using graphic elements such as arrows to point them out is a great way to draw attention to your CTAs.
Remember to include a form to capture your prospect’s contact details. At a minimum, ask your audience to provide a name and email address to receive your offer. Stipulate that they will receive the confirmation of registration, special offer, or downloadable content via their email address to ensure they provide you with one you can use to contact them in the future.
Building trust with your target audience is no easy feat. That’s why you should use every opportunity to display any social proof and trust markers you have.
These may include customer testimonials and a summary of your Google, TrustPilot, or similar review platform rating with a link to your profile on the platform. You could also include badges representing any awards your company has won or been shortlisted for.
Another great way to establish credibility is to include photos and videos of your products or services. Showing your team at work or a customer using your product gives prospects visual proof of your authenticity as a business.
Even though you intend to promote your landing page through targeted channels like social media and Google Ads, it’s likely still hosted on and associated with your website domain. That means you can optimize it for search, allowing more prospects to find it beyond the campaign timeline.
You’ll follow the same basic SEO rules to optimize your landing page for search as you would any other web page, including:
You can refine your landing page campaign further by carrying out an A/B test (also known as split testing). This conversion rate optimization technique offers a highly effective way to gauge your audience’s response to your messaging and landing page design.
Start by selecting one element you’d like to test, such as your headline or the wording or color of your CTA buttons. Create two versions of your landing page, varying this single element in each—never test more than one element at a time.
Then, launch both landing pages and keep an eye on the metrics to determine which of the two garners the most engagement and conversions. If one performs noticeably better than the other, you can stop sharing the underperforming page and double down on the more successful one.
There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Instead of creating a landing page from scratch, use a user-friendly landing page builder to streamline the process. There are several to choose from, so finding the ideal one may initially seem overwhelming.
To make things easier, we’ve compiled a list of things to look out for when searching for your perfect landing page tool. When sourcing the best landing page builder for your campaign, make sure it offers you the following:
Click below to go to Landing Pages and start building landing pages that generate revenue.
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There are several great landing page examples one could use to showcase the most effective landing page strategies. For illustrative purposes, here are a few excellent landing page examples we’d like to share.
This landing page aligns with the Shopify brand identity in terms of color, illustration, and design. Notice the CTA is right at the top of the page, with three clear benefits listed below the header image. And the final above-the-fold element is a short list of some of Shopify’s world-renowned customers as social proof.
Visiting this landing page a second time reveals another version with a different illustration. This variation tells us that Shopify is running A/B testing on their free trial landing page campaign.
This Slack landing page includes no less than three CTAs above the fold with a short description and UI imagery at the top of the page. These UI images show Slack in use and give users a good idea of what the app interface will look like on PC and mobile devices.
Slack also includes a short list of prominent customers as trust markers and offers its audience a video with further information within this initial section of the page.
MasterClass does a great job of using negative space and color to draw the audience’s attention to the two above-the-fold CTAs. They also included two screenshots from the course material showing Aaron Sorkin, letting prospective students know they’ll receive classes from the screenwriting legend himself.
This Nutshell landing page example shows you how to include loads of information above the fold in a concise manner. It highlights several benefits, includes a client testimonial, awards badges as trust markers, and incorporates two different CTAs.
These different CTAs offer users the option to try out the product for themselves or speak to a sales representative, depending on how they prefer to discover and learn about a product or service.
Nutshell’s innovative landing page builder is the answer to your marketing campaign needs. Our advanced builder gives you the tools to capture and convert more leads, taking your marketing strategy to new heights.
Just take a look at the amazing benefits you can look forward to when you choose to use the Nutshell Landing Pages builder:
Sign up for a free 14-day trial and discover how easy it is to build successful lead generation campaigns with Nutshell Landing Pages. For more information, check out this recording of our recent webinar, which is all about Nutshell Landing Pages.
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