Did you know that there are differences between landing pages and your regular website? This article examines those differences and how to create a great landing page funnel.

Most who aren’t familiar with online marketing assume all websites serve the same purpose. They’re a way to deliver information about your business and maybe attract some sales.

That’s not actually the case. In fact, there’s a huge difference between your business website and some of the other web pages that you can create.

Take landing pages for example. These may not deliver a lot of information about your business. But they funnel more people into your sales channels. This makes them one of the most effective lead generation strategies.

Before digging into the details of landing pages, here’s a case study that shows how effective they can be.

Case Study – DG Institute

A leading Australian real estate and property development educator, DG Institute has a lot going for it. Its leaders understand the particulars of commercial law. Moreover, they have deep experience in the property investment sector. The company leverages this knowledge to hold seminars and events throughout Australia.

We work with DG Institute whenever they create a new event. Our method of online lead generation starts with a Facebook ad. Crucially, this ad leads to a specially-designed landing page. This page offers a little more information about the event and allows the visitor to register on the spot.

Targeting the ads correctly is a crucial part of this strategy. We draw upon DG Institute’s client database to build a client profile. From there, we use Facebook’s “Lookalike Audiences” tool to find people who fit that profile. Furthermore, we also advertise to selected people based on their interests.

Here’s an example of a typical ad:

Which leads to a landing page like this:

 

It’s clean, simple, and tells the visitor exactly what they’re signing up for.

Using this online lead generation strategy, we’ve found thousands of leads for DG Institute. In fact, our work has led to a 10x return on investment.

Our most recent 21-day campaign proved particularly effective. It involves the creation of over 100 ads and generated 1,462 leads at a cost of $22 per lead. Each of these leads hit the landing page above before completing registration.

That’s the power of landing pages in action. But you still may not understand their true purpose. Let’s look at what they are and how you can create landing pages that generate leads.

What is a Landing Page?

Landing pages are essential tools for use in your digital marketing strategy. They’re standalone web pages that are separate from your regular website. Instead, they’re used exclusively as part of a specific marketing campaign.

Simply put, they’re where your visitors land after clicking on an online ad.

A landing page usually has a registration or contact form as its main feature. This is because they aim to generate leads immediately.

It’s that simplicity that makes them such effective tools for lead generation. Landing pages lead to higher conversion rates than your website when used in advertising campaigns.

How Are Landing Pages Different From Full Websites

There are several differences that you’ll see between a typical website and a landing page.

The most important is the previously-mentioned focus on the call to action (CTA). Landing pages offer up the form you need visitors to fill in immediately. You may have a similar form on your website. But it’s accompanied by a ton of other information about your business.

That level of information is the second difference. Your website is an information tool that tells your visitors more about your business. That’s not the purpose of a landing page. You’re relying on your ads to inform the visitor. The landing page is just where they go to register their interest in your product or service. It may offer some basic information. But it doesn’t go in-depth like your website does.

There are also differences in the ways that visitors find them. You’ll often rely on organic search traffic to drive people to your website. You serve up quality content and try to rank for specific keywords. The better you do, the more people will visit your website when searching for your keywords.

Landing pages rarely generate organic traffic. Instead, they’re the focus of your paid advertising campaigns. People usually reach landing pages via Facebook and other online ads.

Here’s the key information. A landing page is technically a website. But it differs from your main business website. A good landing page focuses on generating leads, with no other distractions. Visitors can navigate through the rest of a website once they’re on your landing page. They either sign up or bounce away. It’s this simplicity that allows them to generate more leads when used as part of a paid advertising campaign.

Five Tips for Creating Landing Pages

Now that you know what landing pages are, you need to know how to create them. It’s not as simple as slapping a registration form onto a blank webpage and leaving it at that. There are several design techniques that you can use to make your landing page more effective.

Here are five tips for creating landing pages.

Tip #1 – Match the Offer to the Audience

This is perhaps the most important tip of all. If the offer on your landing page doesn’t match what the visitor needs, they’ll bounce away. That’s wasted money on a click that could have gone towards an interested party.

This is where creating effective advertising strategies comes into play. Don’t cast your net too far. Your landing page must serve a specific customer need. From there, your adverts must relate to that specific needs.

Let’s say that you have a seminar focused on finding good locations for property development. Your ads and landing page must reflect that specific customer need. You might think that creating an ad for other aspects of property development will help you to reach a larger audience. And it will. But much of that audience may not have a direct interest in your location-based seminar. They may want other property development information that your landing page doesn’t promise. That’s a lost visitor and more money out of your pocket.

Here’s the key. Know what your audience wants and focus your landing page on that. Anything else is just a distraction.

Tip #2 – Keep it Clean

Speaking of distractions, your landing page must contain as few as possible. Anything that pulls the focus away from what you’re offering is a bad thing.

You have one goal with your landing page – making it easy for visitors to convert.

There are all sorts of ways that you could distract away from that goal. You may provide too much information. The page might have a cluttered design. You could obscure your contact form or make it unclear what you want the visitor to do.

All of these distractions lead to a less effective landing page. These are the features of an effective landing page:

  • A clear contact form that’s placed as the centre of attention.
  • A background that doesn’t distract away from the form.
  • The use of a colour that contrasts with the background for your “register” or “submit” button.
  • An eye-catching picture or video.
  • Some basic supporting information about the product or service you’re offering.

If you’re struggling to envision this, just take a look at the example in the case study.

Tip #3 – A Succinct Call to Action

Again, this is about making the point of your page as clear as possible. A longwinded CTA does nothing to attract conversions. It just confuses your visitor and could lead to them leaving the page.

Keep it as simple as possible.

Avoid longwinded CTAs that go into detail about what the visitor gets when they sign up. Instead, limit your CTA to about seven or eight words. The best examples follow a simple template:

“Sign up now to receive XXXX”

A multi-line CTA just offers the visitor more things to consider. Tell them what to do and what they get for doing it.

Tip #4 – Use Trust Signals

If a visitor doesn’t trust your offer, they won’t convert. Many landing page campaigns fail because of this. After all, the visitor just arrives at your page directly from an ad. They don’t have a lot of context to go on beyond your offer.

Trust signals strengthen their belief in the offer. They legitimise your business and the landing page itself.

So, what are trust signals? The basics include a phone number and physical office address. This immediately tells the visitor where to go if they have any issues. And email address also helps here, but phone numbers are more desirable.

Any affiliation with major brands can also help to build trust. Trust badges often do the trick here. It also helps to have some social media presence on the page. A “Like” and a “Retweet” counter adds to your company’s legitimacy.

Tip #5 – Don’t Ask for Too Much

A multi-page registration form is a huge turn-off for visitors. They don’t want to take too much time out of their day to register with you. The entire experience should only last a couple of minutes.

Much like with your copy, you want to keep the form as simple as you can. Only ask for the bare minimum amount of information that you need from the visitor. In the example above, we ask for a name, phone number, and email address. There’s also a drop-down that the visitor can use to define what they need.

That’s it. The form takes a few seconds to fill out and the visitor is on their way. Moreover, the form doesn’t ask for details that the visitor may consider to be too personal. Such details include physical addresses and payment information.

All of that can come later. You’re attracting leads with your landing page. Rely on your sales team to turn those leads into actual customers.

The Final Word

When combined with a suitable online advertising strategy, a landing page can create hundreds of leads. You just need to recognise that they’re different to regular business websites. To create an effective landing page, you must:

  • Keep it simple and clean.
  • Don’t ask for too much information.
  • Don’t go into too much detail about your offer.
  • Provide trust signals to the visitor.
  • Ensure your offer matches the visitor’s needs.

This improves the chances of the visitor converting, thus creating a more effective landing page.

Of course, landing pages aren’t your only method of generating leads online. There are plenty more techniques that you can use. Do the following to learn more:

 

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