It sounds intimidating, doesn’t it? Landing Page. Almost as though you’re expecting a Boeing 747 packed full of customers barrelling down the digital runway! However, whether you’re creating a Sydney International or Dubbo Domestic, landing pages are now a critical element to an organisation’s digital marketing strategy and tactics. So fasten your seatbelts as we bring this plane in and get started on the what and the why of landing pages.
What is a landing page?
In ye olde times of the internet, marketers would develop a single website where they would direct anyone who was interested in learning more about the organisation, the products that it offered or the message it was conveying. When social media arrived and uptake rapidly increased, it became evident that social media could generate a large volume of traffic to an organisation’s website. Simply sending them to the homepage of the website was no longer appropriate. Landing pages emerged as a way to fulfil this demand.
Landing pages are simple, dedicated web pages to which marketers direct their social media traffic. They are defined as a web page that allows you to capture a visitor's information through a lead-capture form (also known as a conversion form).
A good landing page will target a particular audience, such as traffic from an email campaign promoting a particular ebook, or visitors who click on a pay-per-click ad promoting your webinar.
You can build landing pages that allow visitors to subscribe to your newsletters, download your content offers like ebooks, white papers, webinars or redeem other marketing offers such as free trials, demos, or coupons for your product. Creating landing pages allows you to target your audience, offer them something of value, and convert a higher percentage of your visitors into leads, while also capturing information about who they are and what they've converted on.
Landing pages can either be created through your current website or CMS, such as Word Press, or you may use a specific platform or tool, like Mailchimp, Leadpages, Unbounce and Instapages.
Website vs Landing Page
A website is often one of the core considerations when you’re getting your digital marketing kicked off. Typically, we design our websites to function as our main hub. With menus and tabs, we try to cover everything from who we are and where we’ve come from, to detailed info about our products and services, as well as adding value with resources, blogs, pictures, pop-ups etc.
So, what makes a landing page different from just a regular website? Whilst websites try to be all things to every person, landing pages can be used more tactically in your social media marketing strategy. They can be specific to a campaign, product or service and are more focused when it comes to our digital marketing activities. Each landing page is created with one goal or job, driving your audience to a specific action, which is what makes them more effective for conversion.
Why should you use a landing page?
Now we know how landing pages vary from websites, the question becomes why you would want to use a landing page.
There are a couple of key reasons as to why landing pages have become an integral component in social media marketing, focused around their ability to convert traffic, their ease of use, as well as their ability to be tested and tweaked.
They generate leads and conversions
Have you ever landed on a website homepage and felt a little confused? Sidebar, links, videos – there’s information but you feel a little like Alice down the rabbit hole. Whether as a customer or as a marketer, sometimes websites can become a little overwhelming.
One of the key benefits of landing pages is that they’re created with a singular function in mind. By removing menu functionality and simplifying your content to drive one action, your audience has only two options – take the desired action, or leave.
By having simple landing pages with one goal in mind, you’ll be able to successfully turn your audience into customers. As Russell Brunson from ClickFunnels says, ‘a confused mind never buys’, so reduce that confusion for your audience.
Of course, not everyone will convert on their first visit. Enter retargeting. As we can with our websites, we can use cookies (e.g. the Facebook pixel) to track and retarget visitors to our landing page. Executed correctly, you will be able to retarget users more effectively and efficiently on their social media newsfeeds in an effort to increase conversions.
They have simple-to-use templates
One feature of many landing page builders is a selection of templates that don’t require coding experience to design, edit and deploy. This means you can still produce and duplicate landing pages quickly and efficiently. The reason you’d do this? You can make sure your landing page content is matched to its source (i.e. Facebook, Instagram, email, etc) and audience (i.e. your different customers).
By ensuring your landing page is primed for a specific audience you’re going to have fewer barriers when people arrive and fewer people bouncing. Matching your tone, content and messaging will greatly impact your conversion rate, compared to sending someone to your website which may have a more generic feel.
This will also build credibility and brand awareness for your audience as the content and messaging is consistent and recognisable.
They can be A/B tested
Landing page tools offer a large amount of data on people who visit the landing page, including traffic volume, click rates, downloads, etc. This data helps to identify whether or not the landing page is achieving its objective and it can also help inform other elements of your social media marketing strategy.
You can trial different formats or content on your landing page to see which converts at a high rate and then proceed with the better performing design. You may trial a different headline, colour, button, hero image or video and see how it impacts conversion.
How does it work? For a period of time, half of the web traffic will see option A and half will see option B, until it is calculated which option achieves the highest conversion rate. A/B testing often delivers surprising results and can produce a significant uplift in conversions. It’s important that you only change one variable so you can determine which tweak was more successful.
Landing page builders may offer the ability to A/B test different elements. You can trial different formats or content to see which converts at a high rate and then proceed with the better performing design. You may trial a different headline, colour, button, hero content (image or video), etc., and see how it impacts conversion.
Conclusion
So there you have it, the plane has landed with our guide to the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ of landing pages. Social media marketing is social media with purpose. Whatever it is you’re selling, you want people to go from your social media profile to a place where they’ll convert into paying customers and that is what a landing page is for. In some cases, we only get one shot to convert our traffic. Whether we’ve driven them there with paid or organic efforts, we want to make sure the content on our landing page is tuned to convert. Tell us in the comments how you may use landing pages for your organisation, and don’t forget to subscribe if you want to learn more amazing social media marketing tips and tricks.
