What is a landing page and why do we need it

Landing pages are essentially just a method of capturing visitor info via conversion forms. They essentially turn visitors into leads, by offering them something in exchange for their information. Well-designed landing pages target specific groups and squeeze out info about who they are and what they’ve converted on. Any marketer worth his salt will tell you that getting someone to visit your site is only half the battle, the other half is won with landing pages. This is what makes people stay and engage in the content rather than clicking away.

How do they work?

Landing pages work much like any other except that they require user participation in order to give out whatever is being offered. If, for example, you were offering free promotional material for an upcoming book, you’d direct people to a landing page. Said landing page would contain more info about the promotion and make it appear more appealing. The only thing they’d be required to do is fill in their information, thereby turning themselves into leads and providing you with info about who came for the offer and why. This eventually leads to an email address and the buttering up of leads and that keeps them coming back.

Generate leads

As mentioned above, one of the core reasons why landing pages are a good investment is because they turn anonymous visitors into email addresses with information attached to them – leads. This information gives valuable info to a company’s marketing team and tells them exactly what kind of traffic they’re getting. This traffic directly influences future attempts and provides information about target groups that have shown to be responsive to the type of service being offered. Leads can eventually be nurtured and sucked in deeper into the services provided, simply by tweaking offers and topics based on their likes and preferences.

House marketing offers

This just comes down to simple logic. Your marketing offers need a place too. By putting a wall between the visitor and the valuable offer on your end, you essentially make them “pay” for the service by leaving their information. This sort of gating requires very little on the user’s end, but can mean a world of difference to marketers, providing mandatory leads as opposed to catching a few stragglers that decided to leave their info out of good will. With the right design and thought-out content, landing pages can net a company more leads than it can handle.

Collect lead information

Something mentioned above: lead information. An email is always great to have, you have an address where most of your offers can be sent off to, but what really matters is the information that is collected. By creating a profile for the demographic your particular offers attract, marketing teams can further tweak existing sales while better-focusing the next wave of “bait” to reel in more customers. The benefits of having these so-called well-defined marketing personas are quite extraordinary considering they only require something trivial like a short form.

Gain insight into marketing effectiveness

Building on the previous segment, by gaining insight into the who’s and what’s in your marketing campaign can give pointers into which direction one might need to go. By tracking site metrics, we are essentially provided with insight into marketing performance, which offers fared better than others, the conversion rate of visitors on your site etc. A local web design company from Sydney stressed the importance of these metrics, regarding them as a treasure trove that can help keep your proverbial ship afloat.

The gist

As one might surmise, landing pages can make or break a marketer’s dream. By influencing the flow of traffic and essentially farming leads, they provide a company with not only a growing user base but, more importantly, real-time feedback about how they’re doing as a whole. They improve sales, usually have an attractive and snappy layout, what’s not to like. There really are no downsides to investing in one, sure, the upfront costs might go either way, but they earn their keep pretty fast. After all, today’s marketing is all about investments, and this is the smartest one you can make.