To be in business these days, you pretty much have to have a website. Not only does it brand your business as a legit presence in your industry, but it offers a platform for virtually limitless digital advertising, content marketing, information sharing, and information gathering.
However, your home page is not the same as any landing pages you opt to create—and it’s crucial that you understand the difference if you’re going to optimally leverage the very real, very potent power of landing pages.
A home page is the starting point of your website—it’s the website address you print on your business card, the link you distribute to the wider world, the default entry portal to all the other webpages on your site and all the information it contains. Your home page thus includes your full navigation menu, plentiful links, and any other material deemed essential to your marketplace.
In contrast, a landing page is a single page built for a specific purpose and is far more targeted in terms of both content and intent. The content is a particular ad or marketing campaign you’re running; and the intent is to drive visitors to follow the “Call to Action” (CTA) featured on the page: what you want them to DO (for example, call, email, fill out a form, request a quote) that will hopefully turn them from casual visitors into actual customers.
So while your overall website might be www.prestigeautoshop.com, your landing page would be something along the lines of: www.prestigeautoshop.com/february-tire-sale.
Benefits & Characteristics of a Landing Page
- It’s a stand-alone page—distinct from your main website, with a single focused objective
- It’s often designed for paid traffic—the links that come up at the top of the page when people search for words pertinent to your business
- As the name implies, it’s where the visitor “lands” when they click on your digital ad or Google AdWords link, allowing you to choose precisely where to direct them—not just to any page on your website, but to this page
- It typically zeros in on a specific service or product you offer, both explaining it and identifying the location where it can be accessed
- Its messaging and flow guide the visitor directly to the Call to Action on the page
- That CTA can serve diverse needs: it generates leads (by getting the visitor’s contact information), increases web traffic or followers (by clicking through to your home page or social media sites), promotes e-commerce (by linking to a digital or downloadable coupon), and expands your client base (by scheduling a free demo or consult)
- It increases conversion rates (web views to sales), the “holy grail” of online advertising
- As a result, it can lower your cost of lead and sales acquisition
- Landing pages are unlimited—you can create as many of them as you want, for as many individual products or services that you have
- The more landing pages you have, the better your search results will be
- It is an invaluable and highly accessible tool in a comprehensive marketing strategy
If your goal is to get found on the Internet—and who doesn’t have that goal?—then landing pages are a great way to get there.
To learn more about landing pages, contact RWS at 202-409-8113.