I have this conversation a lot. I say to a new client “Do you have a Landing Page”. “Yes 
I do” is the answer, and he or she quickly navigates to their website. “That’s your website, where’s your landing page?” “It’s right here” they say pointing to the home page. And so it goes. Sadly, many business people don’t know what a landing page is, often mistaking the website homepage. A landing page is a webpage that acts as a lead capture page. It allows you to capture a visitor’s information through a form on the page.
A landing page that captures traffic from a particular audience is the best. They are usually aligned with an email campaign or a pay-per-click ad. Usually they have an inducement for the visitor to leave contact information. Inducements can free information, such as an eBook or white paper, free sample of a product, or entry in a raffle. Landing pages help you convert more of your visitors into leads. By including the form with the offer, you make it easy for the customer to complete the information required for the lead. Having a landing page eliminates some of the confusion about what a visitor must do to receive an offer. Having the offer, requirements, and form on a single page makes completing the form much easier and simple. This increases the conversion rate significantly.
Once you decide to launch a landing page, what are some of the things you need to do to make it effective and get it found on the web? Clarity is important. Make sure your title, description and layout convey the importance of completing the form to the visitor. Make sure the incentive is strong enough to persuade the prospect to fill out the form. Eliminate the distractions. Remove links from your landing page. You don’t want visitors wandering away from the task at hand – filling out the form. Keep your form simple and tidy. Only ask for the information you absolutely need for the lead. Usually this is a name and an email address. If you want a phone number, keep that space optional. Most people don’t like phone calls from businesses, whether they fill out a form or not. Once you engage them, you can ask for a phone number.
Include social sharing buttons so your prospect can share the landing page with friends and colleagues. There are a couple ways to go about doing this. You can manually set up a link to Facebook and LinkedIn. They’ll look like this: http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=[INSERT URLHERE];
http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=[INSERT URL]. Twitter is a little more complicated since you have to direct the viewer to the exact tweet. A Twitter link looks like this:
https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=[INSERT TWEET HERE]. An easier way may simply to paste the share buttons of each site into your landing page. Each site makes it easy to find the code necessary to incorporate a social sharing button. Going in this direction will create more of an official look, and will add validity to the site by counting the shares within each site. Counting provides social proof of the site’s popularity. Don’t get too concerned about how you share the page. The worthiness of your content will be the deciding factor in how well your site gets shared by others.
Once the prospect submits the form there are a couple steps you can take to “lock them in”. Follow up with the lead by directing them to a thank you page. You can set up an auto-response email. In your email, besides thanking them, you can suggest other offers they can take advantage of. Track you conversion rates closely to get a good idea on what works and what doesn’t. As what offers work become clear, make changes in your pages to increase the conversion rates and create more leads.
Once you have a lead, nurture it. Many leads are qualified but not ready to buy. What do you do with those leads? First, act quickly. Seventy-eight per cent of new leads do business with the first company that responds to an inquiry. Send an email within 24 hours of the time the lead filled out your form. Send other information to the lead that is relevant to the initial inquiry. Become a resource for the lead in the information you send, advice you give, and the products and services you offer. Let them know other kinds of help you provide. In other words, stay on top of them.
If you’d like more information about landing pages, visit https://onlinemarketinginct.com or call (203)882-0171.