What is a landing page and why you need one for your Google Ads campaign
In this post you will learn about landing page best practices and the importance of landing page in the success of your digital marketing campaigns.
What is a Landing Page?
In simple words, a landing page is the page where a visitor lands or reaches after clicking an ad or website link. The term and concept of landing page is very important in the field of online marketing and advertising.
The discussion about ‘landing page’ will usually come up during the initial phase of online marketing or Google Ads consultation.
New landing page creation is a step that is hated by businesses. Because of the additional costs and time required to create a new one.
Once the suggestion for a new landing page is put forward by the online marketing consultant that will usually bring up the question – Why do we need to create a new landing page when we have a beautiful website?
Why Do You Need a Landing Page?
The most important reason is, most of the business websites are not created with ‘marketing’ in mind.
Website home pages are created with a more general purpose, for a wide audience. In most cases, business website home pages are not ideal for online marketing efforts. In general these home pages lack the compelling content and design structure which is vital to generate leads and sales from targeted web traffic.
With Google Ads or any other pay per click advertising platform, you need to pay for each click or ad impression. And when you are paying for each visitor from these programs to your website, you should guide them to a page which is ideally created to enable the desired conversion action.
The solution – creating a new landing page
Standalone landing pages are created for this very purpose. Pages created with a single focused objective, which is increasing conversions from targeted web traffic.
Think about your business website as your local shop (yes that is why they are called online shops).
A thoughtfully created landing page will act as your best sales person. Trained and efficient sales personnel can increase sales with their methodical approach and helpful guidance.
In the same way a good landing page helps a visitor to find the required information easily and help in the process of conversions (sales, leads, sign-up…)
For a visitor, getting out of your online shop is very easy. They just need to click the back button. You get only a few seconds to convince a visitor to stay on your landing page. So you need to create a landing page that captures user attention and persuade them towards the desired conversion goal.
A landing page optimized for great performance on all device types will be a great tool to improve your campaign performance.
Advantages of Creating Specific Landing Pages
- You can create pages that cater to specific visitor segments and their needs. This cannot be done with home pages designed for a broader audience.
- The design and content of the page can be used to persuade a visitor towards a single conversion action.
- You can use specific promotional content and offers on your landing page, based on what appeals to your target audience.
- Different landing pages can be created for special promotions or seasonal offers.
- You can test content, design or page elements without disturbing the main website.
- Landing page testing is absolutely vital in conversion optimization. Testing different landing pages and finding better performing pages can help you in getting more conversions without increasing your advertising spend.
Lead Generation Landing Page Best Practices
When you are creating a landing page for lead generation, consider these best practices
- Avoid menus and additional links. Help your potential customer to concentrate on the core message, without any distractions.
- Keep the message consistent – use the same message, offers and price that you use in the ads. This will reinforce the message which enables conversion (leads).
- Use simple, easy to understand language and create clutter free, neat page layout and design.
- Include features and benefits in your content.
Always try to explain the benefits with your service or products features. Benefits give value to features and that attracts customers.
(Example: Feature – 30 mega pixel camera, Benefit – Take stunning ‘high resolution’ pictures)
- Keep the important content above the fold. This will help to get user attention during the most important initial seconds during a visit.
- Content below the fold is equally important. Add a call to action at the bottom of the page too. This will further help in lead generation.
- Use good quality images and videos. Videos are a great way to attract potential customers.
- Use the same images in the ads (if you are using image ads) and landing page. This will help the visitor to immediately ‘connect’ with the landing page.
- Add a clear call to action, guiding the visitor towards the intended conversion goal.
- Add the enquiry form on the landing page. Eliminate the additional steps of moving to another page to fill the enquiry form.
Complicated lengthy enquiry forms will put off customers. So use short forms and collect only the most important information from customers.
- Once the enquiry (lead) is submitted, redirect the user to a separate ‘Thank You’ page. Add conversion tracking code on this page and track conversions.
Accurately tracking conversions is very important in effective campaign optimization and measuring return on ad spend.
- Test different landing pages and find the one with the best conversion rate.
Bonus Tip
The landing page must load fast and it must be mobile optimized.
Now more website traffic is coming from mobile devices. So this is crucial factor in your lead generation campaign success.
Test your landing page speed with this Google Page Speed Insights tool.
Landing page creation and testing is a great opportunity for businesses. It can help you in getting better results from the same amount of spend. And it can help you to reduce your advertising spend (as you will get better results).
Create and test new landing pages. Get better results and grow your business.