A landing page is a Marketing Tool. You don’t necessarily need one but it would be useful if you do it right.
I recently explained to a new small business owner that she probably didn’t need a landing page. My stance is that most new small businesses don’t actually need landing pages. Of course, any business could benefit from a landing page, but it’s not a necessity at the start. And here’s why:
At the beginning, all your business website needs is strong imagery, a clear explanation of why you’re amazing, and a clear way for people to contact you.
If you’re an e-commerce or service business, your website needs a detailed listing of your offerings, first. And then, you can consider add a landing page.
WHAT IS A LANDING PAGE FOR?
A landing page on its own is just another marketing tool, good for one thing: to convince site visitors to enter their contact information. A landing page is completely useless and pointless if it doesn’t collect email addresses. That’s the singular purpose of a landing page – on its own.
A landing page should be similar to every other part of your business website – it should have matching brand colors, accents, fonts, compelling imagery etc. Your landing page should match your brand voice.
you don’t need a landing page to collect email addresses.
Any page of your website can do that. Your web developer can include a contact/email sign-up form in your footer, or sidebar. You can activate a pop-up (or slide-in) request for emails from various online marketing companies. These are pre-coded and usually free. Mailchimp & Sumo come to mind.
The idea is that when you ask for visitors’ email addresses you can immediately show the value they receive from giving it to you.
Here is how a landing page does that –> A landing page is a lot of space to showcase value – as opposed to a pop-up, or one line in the footer of a page. A landing page is different from any other page on your website because there’s nothing extra to distract from its purpose. Landing pages only showcase the value, and ask for the contact.
However, the long and short of it is…
Landing pages do their best work as part of a predefined marketing/sales funnel.
The term funnel is meant to mimic a physical funnel, with a large opening at the top where a lot of something can be poured in, and a narrow opening at the bottom where contents are streamlined to their ultimate destination.
Your marketing + sales funnel begins with the landing page. Use quality imagery and strong SEO copy (+ convincing language) to highlight a singular value point. You share the link far and wide. Many people arrive at your landing page. And from those many visitors, the interested ones opt in by giving you their email addresses. And after they opt in, the really interested visitors become your new customers.
A landing page is at its most effective when used to promote a singular, specific and very valuable aspect of your business – some product or service, or bundled combination of both – that people either need or want badly enough to volunteer their email address.
So before you even consider creating a landing page (or two or three), as a small business owner you must first identify something extremely valuable that you can give away (either for free or extremely cheaply) in exchange for the contact information you want. Remember, knowledge is valuable. That’s why so many landing pages provide free eBooks.
YOU NEED A GAME PLAN.
So you’ll give away something neat and nifty. Say you collect 50 new email addresses, from people who want your neat and nifty something.
Super!
What are you going to do with those email addresses?
Before you decide, ask yourself more questions:
- Which of your products or services can most benefit your new subscribers?
- How will you convert them to paid customers? Returning customers?
- How will you communicate with these 50 interested potential customers?
Answer all of these questions, craft your email campaign AND THEN begin crafting your landing page to match. Additional steps in your marketing strategy will depend on your industry and product offerings, logistics, etc.But the exact product and funnel is what you really need. The landing page is simply one part of a bigger picture.
Originally published on Nineke Publishing.