What are Landing Pages and Why are They Important?

20 Feb 2020 Digital Marketing

Landing pages are often considered to be one of the most critical elements of any digital marketing campaign because they are specifically designed to receive highly targeted traffic—usually from an online advertising campaign—and to convince visitors to take a specific action.

As digital marketing experts, the team from FirstPage Marketing understands that landing pages play an integral role in converting users into actual customers. That is why they have put together some helpful information on what landing pages are and why they are important in order to help their clients ensure that they are getting the most out of their online campaigns.

What are Landing Pages?

While a landing page is technically any website page that a consumer can land on, the best landing pages are standalone pages that are designed to serve a single focused purpose, such as selling a product, generating leads, or generating phone calls. Essentially, landing pages are designed to encourage visitors to take the next step toward becoming a customer by convincing them that what you have to offer is worthwhile.

Depending on how many products or services you are wanting to offer to your customer base, it is a good idea to consider creating multiple landing pages targeted toward segmented customer populations. Doing so will help you speak directly to the different types of users you want to target and will increase the odds of converting those users into customers.

Why Use Landing Pages?

Landing pages can provide an easy way to drive traffic to a website, improve a website’s search engine optimization, and build a brand. Since landing pages work by leading users to a specific product, service, or offer and by encouraging them to take action, utilizing landing pages will give one the opportunity to create more conversions and to build a better customer base.

What Makes a Good Landing Page?

Since landing pages are tied to a specific offer, service, or product, it is important to ensure that each landing page is designed to provide potential customers with exactly what they are looking for. Some of the elements that should be included in a good landing page include:

Consistent Messaging

Landing pages that are used as part of an online advertising campaign, such as a Google Ads campaign, should contain information that is relevant to the ads that are sending potential customers to the landing page. This is extremely important because, if a user was interested enough to click on the ad, they will be expecting the landing page to reflect the messaging from the ad. Having mixed messages, pricing discrepancies, or hidden offers can often lead to confusion, higher bounce rates, lower conversion rates, and wasted ad spend.

Clear Calls-to-Action

As soon as a potential customer arrives on a landing page, they should know exactly what you want them to do. Landing pages that are designed effectively will navigate users toward making a conversion by providing clear calls-to-action.

Placement of Site Elements

While using consistent messaging and clear calls-to-action is vital to the overall success of a landing page, there is still a chance that the page might not perform well if the messages and calls-to-action are not placed strategically on the page.

Simplistic Design

In most cases, simple landing pages will outperform landing pages that have too much information, buttons, and links. This is because landing pages with more simplistic designs make it easier for customers to quickly find what they are looking for and to take the next step toward becoming a customer.

Social Proof

Customers love knowing that a brand is used by other people just like them. A good landing page will show potential customers that a company is credible by offering examples of social proof, such as testimonials and online reviews.

Provided Value

In order for a landing page to convince users to convert, the page has to provide a clearly defined value to potential customers. No matter what type of product or service you are wanting to highlight, if the landing page does not provide users with anything valuable—cost savings, free catalogue, exclusive product offerings, etc.—they will not convert.

Carefully crafting effective landing pages can help one make the most out of online advertising campaigns. To learn more about landing pages and why you should use them, get in touch with the digital marketing experts today.