Five Elements of an Effective Landing Page

The goal of any landing page is to get your prospect to respond to the offer set forth in your marketing campaign – registering for an event, completing an information request form, downloading a whitepaper, etc. Here are five elements you should have in place the next time you are creating a landing page for your marketing campaign:

1. Stick to One Offer: It is easy to say, “Well, we got them to our website, why don't we give them information on all of our different services, and list out the clients we have worked with in the past, and create links to the articles we have written on this topic, and on and on…” Your landing page should have one specific action that you want the prospect to take – register for an event, complete an information request form, download a whitepaper, etc.

Distracting prospects with other information or additional offers will drastically reduce the number of leads you are able to capture.

2. Create a Clear Call to Action: Do not hide the call to action at the bottom of the page, making the prospect scroll down to get to it. The action you want them to take should be the main focus of the page. Create a clickable button beginning with the action word corresponding to what you want them to do – register, contact, download, buy, etc.

Prominently place this button above the fold on the page as well as in various places as they scroll down. The call to action button should be visible at all times as the prospect scrolls down the page.

3. Capture Prospect's Information: Regardless of what the offer is, create a response device to capture the prospect's information. For example, if your offer is a free downloadable whitepaper, create a call to action button to download the whitepaper and intervene with a short form they must complete to finalize the download. If the prospect is interested in what you have to offer they will be willing to exchange a small amount of information about themselves. Additionally, they are pre-qualifying themselves as interested prospects giving you legitimate reason to follow up (do not forget this step).

However, beware that asking too much information may scare the prospect away, while asking too little will not allow you to determine whether or not they are a qualified prospect worth your time to follow up. It is up to you to determine the right amount of information you want/need to qualify your prospects.

4. Keep Design and Copy Consistent: The overall design look and feel should be consistent with the marketing piece driving the prospect to the landing page. If possible, use the same images, design elements, and colors. Repeat the copy and offer. This helps to build credibility, reinforce your message and the benefits, and increase awareness and conversions by reassuring the prospect that they are indeed in the right place.

5. Keep Navigation and Links to a Minimum: Once you have them on your landing page, the last thing you want them to do is click out to another page on your site without completing the desired action. To minimize this, simply strip the page of main navigation and keep the amount of links to a minimum. Only create links on the page that are directly relevant to your offer. And, if you must create a link, be sure to have it pop-up in a new window so your landing page is not lost.

For the next marketing campaign your company undertakes, create a designated landing page. The time it takes to do so is minimal and the results can be astounding. Your prospects are visiting your website. Make sure they are enjoying the visit and doing what you want them to by providing a nice place to land.

Landing pages were important back in the day of email marketing, because if you included a link in your email, that was the page the permission marketer would land on if he clicked through.

Landing pages are even more important today because they are the page that someone clicking on a Google Adwords ad sees.

A landing page (in fact, every page) can only cause one of five actions:

* Get a visitor to click (to go to another page, on your site or someone else's)
* Get a visitor to buy
* Get a visitor to give permission for you to follow up (by email, phone, etc.). This includes registration of course.
* Get a visitor to tell a friend
* (and the more subtle) Get a visitor to learn something, which could even include posting a comment or giving you some sort of feedback

Pure Definition:

The pure definition of a landing page is just what it sounds like: it’s the page your website visitors arrive at after clicking on a link. It could be your home page, or any other page in your site.

What a Landing Page should be:

The best use of a landing page is not what it is, but what is can do. Your landing pages should provide a customized sales pitch for the visitor. The best way to do this is consider where the person has come from, and who they are. By providing a good match, your chances of engaging the visitor goes up, as should your conversion rate.

Well crafted landing pages almost always sport better conversion rates than simply dumping people into the home page of your site. It makes sense. When you drop people into the homepage of your site, it’s akin to asking them to fend for themselves. They arrive and spend a couple seconds before giving up and hitting their back button to move on to you competitor.

Give the same visitors exactly what they were looking for and you will have a captive audience. Be careful not to provide too many distractions in the form of links, or you are likely to lose them before they read your entire message.

When to use a Landing Page:

You should create targeted landing pages anytime you can control where people will be coming from, and your goal is a specific transaction such as sales, registrations, sign-ups, etc. This is particularly true if you are paying for the traffic, with banner ads, sponsor links, or pay-per-click.

What else does Google say about landing pages...?

"The best way to figure out whether your keyword, ad, or landing page is relevant and useful is to put yourself in the shoes of a user. Do your ad and landing page include language that makes sense in the context of the keywords you have chosen? For example, if you have selected the keyword 'hiking shoes,' have you made sure that your ad mentions hiking shoes or related name brands? Does your landing page actually offer the name brands you mentioned, along with detailed information about this shoe type?"

"Targeting your keywords, ads, and landing pages in this way likely will lead to several positive results. First, it can help you gain the trust of your customers and therefore keep them coming back to your site. You will also minimise the money spent on clicks from users who might not be interested in what your website offers. And finally, you can increase your overall Quality Score and lower the minimum bid necessary for your ad to appear."