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What's the Point of a Landing Page?

A landing page is a static page that appears when someone clicks on an organic search result, online advertisement, marketing email or other marketing promotion.

If you’re like many business owners who have just gone through the process of building their own website, you might be thinking to yourself, “I’ve designed a killer website, so is it really worth my time and energy to create a whole separate page for ads?”

The short answer is yes. You absolutely need to create a landing page for your online promotions; in fact, most businesses could benefit from creating multiple landing pages for each promotion or campaign.

If you’re now asking yourself, “OK, landing pages are important, but if I invest my time into building them, will it be worth it in the end?”

Not to worry. There are many benefits of using landing pages, and many ways you can use them.

5 ways to use landing pages on your small business website

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#1. To increase conversions

When you entice someone to click on a link for a pay-per-click ad or a Facebook ad, the last thing you want is to send them to the home page. It’s actually much more effective if you send them to a landing page instead.

Your homepage has a lot going on. Not only are you introducing your business, but you’re giving a brief overview of everything you have to offer. When you’re advertising one service, product or another aspect of your business, and you send your visitors to your homepage, it can quickly confuse the issue.

An effective landing page should be simple, straightforward and focused solely on the service or product you’re advertising. It should also make it clear to visitors exactly what they need to do in order to take advantage of the offer they're interested in.

#2. To gather information about your visitors

When it comes to advertising and marketing, the more you know about your audience, the better you’ll be able to connect with them and meet their needs. There are a lot of great ways to gather information about your audience these days, but one of the most effective is by building a landing page for your website.

Most people think of a landing page as where they send people who have clicked on an ad, but landing pages are effective for more than just making sales. Landing pages are the perfect place to learn more about the people who visit your website.

In exchange for offering up information, you need to give your audience something in return. This could be an e-book, an in-depth guide or information about your prices and packages.

Whatever you offer, it needs to be compelling enough so that your visitors don’t mind offering up payment in the form of information, and once they do, your sales team will be able to more effectively target their pain points, wants and needs.

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#3. To test the effectiveness of your campaigns

Not only are landing pages a great option when you want to learn more about your audience’s needs, wants and pain points, but they’re also a tremendous help for testing out the effectiveness of your campaigns.

By tracking data from the landing page, you’ll have a better understanding of how engaged your audience is, as well as what makes them engaged.

There’s a lot you can learn from tracking the data on your landing page, including which specific campaign led audiences to the page, which offers or topics are generating the most interest and which campaigns are giving you the best return on your investment.

With these kinds of insights, you can determine exactly where your marketing dollars should go. You’ll also have the information you need to fine-tune your campaigns to make them more effective in the future.

#4. To grow your email list

Email marketing is a tremendous way to get your name out there these days, and it’s so versatile. Whether you’re announcing an upcoming sale, promoting a new service or product, or announcing a change to your business, email can help you get the word out effectively and efficiently.

However, there’s no point in putting together an email if you have no one to send it to!

Lead generation is one of the biggest reasons for creating a landing page. When people visit your landing page, ask that they fill out a form with their email address. Once they provide you with their email address, those visitors turn into leads that can be nurtured into customers.

Make sure to include an “opt-in” button in your form. This will allow your visitors to opt-in to receive emails, newsletters, announcements, etc. — all of which are correspondences that will help you remain at the forefront of their minds.

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#5. To boost organic rankings

Many of the pages on your website are focused on multiple things at once. Think of a product category page or even a services page. Product category pages feature multiple products, and service pages feature a list of all services offered.

While these more general pages are great for ranking for the more overarching keywords that describe your business, they won’t help you rank for the more specific keywords that drive the most qualified organic traffic to your website.

For example, let’s say that you’re the owner of a local plumbing company. Your service page might be ranking for more basic, general keywords, like “plumbing services” or “local plumber,” but there’s too much going on for it to rank very highly for more specific keywords, like “drain cleaning” or “water heater repair.”

By dedicating an entire landing page to a specific service or keyword, you’ll have a much better chance of ranking for it organically.

Furthermore, when you create ads for that specific service or keyword, you’ll have a dedicated page to send your visitors to.

There are so many reasons to build landing pages for your website. Start building effective landing pages with the Websites 360® website builder today!

Originally published 2/18/20