Using Landing Pages to Generate Leads

Landing pages are the “action” pages on your website and have one specific goal to accomplish - and that is to convert the visitor who "lands" on it into a lead or a sale.

Unlike an informational page (e.g. a product page, “about us” page or blog post), landing pages are designed to compel the reader to take a specific action in exchange for  their contact information with the purpose of converting them from visitor to lead.  

Some of the common ways to use landing pages to generate leads include: 

• Offering a white paper, ebook or industry report.
• Inviting visitors to subscribe to a newsletter or “members only” content.
• Offering a free trial of a product.
• Running a webinar or other event.
• Giving access to an online utility or assessment tool.

There are 2 types of landing pages: 

Organic landing pages which rely on traffic from natural search and other pages on your website).  They offer your visitors content of value as part of your website and may be part of a resource page, a call-out from a side bar and include normal site navigation.

Campaign landing pages which are focused on targeted campaigns, paid search, online ads or email campaigns.  Those do not typically provide navigation other than submitting a completed lead form.

Either way, here are a few general rules to consider to maxmize your landing page conversion

• describe precisely and briefly what you are offering and/or include a video that describes your offer
• limit navigation
• make the call to action button obvious and prominent
• Include an image
• keep the form as short as possible
• Include analytics so you can measure activity and conversion rate
• Test!  Every audience is different. Test everything possible: different types of offers; different text, size and placement of the call-to-action button; different amounts of text; different photos and graphics, etc. Testing is the only way to determine what works best with your prospects.

Given that traffic and conversions are the two most important measures for web marketing, landing pages are critical to your results when setting up your SEO campaigns, email campaigns, advertising campaigns and even social networking efforts. Testing different landing page variations is also critical to continually increasing your conversion rate. Therefore, in order to use landing pages to maximize your results, it is vital to have a tool to easily create and compare multiple versions.

Marketers and business owners need a tool that makes it easy to create landing pages without writing web code. When evaluating your content management (CMS) and website software options, make sure to select one with this capability included.  Eproneur's Website Content Management System has taken that capability into account and allows you to create landing pages in just one-click.