A landing page is a special, stripped-down page in your website that’s dedicated to capturing information about your site visitor. In order to entice your visitor to give you that information, landing pages usually contain special offers — like a free e-book, or other information product, or a special offer related to a product or service.
The reason a landing page is usually stripped down, meaning that it doesn’t contain the navigation, footers or sidebars your other site pages do, is because a landing page should be solely and exclusively focused on capturing the person’s contact information for future promotional use.
Each special offer you put in your site should have its own dedicated landing page and you should promote that page as if it were a home page for a separate site — submit it to Google and market it to your audience online and off.
Common uses of landing pages are to promote e-books and other information products, and sign up for trials and demos of a product or service.
Sending your site visitors to a landing page dedicated to that specific offer increases the likelihood that they will complete your form and share their contact information with you.
Creating an effective landing page
1. Try to make your offer as compelling as you possibly can. Use clear, simple language about what you offer and how it will benefit them. Don’t try to say too much. You can sabotage yourself with too much information. Stick to what’s in it for them.
2. Keep your form simple. Ask only what you really need to know about the person: their name, company and email address. Asking for more than that can reduce your success rate. Remember, you want their contact information so you can stay in contact with them with other email and promotions and you want to be respectful of their trust in sharing that information with you.
3. Keep any distractions on the page to a minimum. Visuals are helpful but they should be directly related to the download or special offer.
4. Include social sharing links on the page and encourage visitors to share the page with others.
5. Be sure to follow the form submission up with a thank you page or auto-response email. It keeps the visitor engaged, creates a sense of relationship, and is more professional.
6. Speaking of relationship, be respectful. Don’t be overly familiar in your tone. Submitting a form to get a download doesn’t necessarily mean they are ready to be in your inner circle. Being too familiar can be a real turn off.
7. Track the responses to your landing pages in your Google analytics., so you can tell which of your promotional efforts are bringing results.
8. You can’t just put a page up and expect it to attract results. You have to promote it and work to drive traffic to it. This includes talking it up on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, in your email signature, on other pages in your website, in Google AdWords and other online campaigns and email marketing campaigns.
Statistics vary, but it’s safe to say that half of the leads that come from landing page contact information are not yet ready to buy. So you have to nurture them until they are ready. This includes staying in contact with them through email campaigns and site content. And the sooner you respond to their form submission, the better. They should receive a follow up from you within a day of their form submission.
— Chris Quinn, principal and brand strategist
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