Why use landing pages? Discover the most important benefits of landing pages.
What is a landing page?
At some point or another, probably even in the last few days, you’ve spent time on a landing page.
Perhaps you clicked through to one from an email marketing campaign, a search engine ad or adverts on social media. Or maybe you typed in the URL featured on print collateral like a brochure you were given or mentioned on a packaging insert.
The standalone page you found yourself on, i.e. where you landed, is what is known as a landing page.
Notably, unlike your homepage, landing pages are created for a very specific purpose as part of a marketing or advertising campaign.
They’re designed and written for a particular target audience with conversion as the end goal. As such, there is only one call to action! And unlike regular pages, a landing page is not included in a website’s standard navigation or menu bar.
What is a landing page used for?
If you’re wondering, “Do I need a landing page?” or “what exactly can I do with landing pages?” then don’t skip this part of the post!
There are three main reasons or occasions when you would want to use landing pages.
The first is when you want to acquire leads using so-called lead generation (‘lead gen’ or ‘lead capture’) landing pages that have a form on them.
The second is to build excitement as well as prepare readers for what is essentially your unique value proposition. This click-through landing page acts as the go-between, between your ad and shopping cart. In this type of scenario, the landing page helps move readers down the marketing funnel and propels them to the next stage of their purchase journey.
The third is to land sales via infomercial-style (think sales letter-like) landing pages, where you strive for your audience to read the page from beginning to end—and then make a purchase. For example: A landing page to sell your e-book.
What are the benefits of landing pages?
The best part about landing pages is, you don’t need to be a big business to make the most of them! In fact, landing pages are especially useful to small businesses. You’ll see why when you explore the benefits of landing pages—and why they’re assets worth investing in—below.
Benefit #1: It’s easier to convince readers to convert
Have you heard of the paradox of choice?
Basically, the more options a person is given, the harder it is to make a decision and then act on it.
For instance, buying milk isn’t just about my choice of brand. I also have to choose between whole milk, low fat, or skimmed milk (and multiple variations of those) in addition to milk alternatives like soy milk, almond milk, cashew milk, and oat milk to name a few.
What do I even want or need?! What’s the best for coffee, cereals and baking? In other words: all those options can make shopping for something as simple as milk feel pretty overwhelming!
A landing page simplifies the (online) decision-making process by eliminating all unnecessary and irrelevant noise. How? By focusing on just one topic (or product or service or selling point) and one call to action only, so that the reader knows what to do—and can then go on and do it.
In short: Landing pages increase conversions.
Benefit #2: You can grow your email list
A key feature of a lead capture landing page is the form that collects user data in exchange for a certain product, service, or some other lead magnet. That helps you build your email list.
Aside from email address, you can require your audience to submit their name, phone number, age range, company name and even a job title. Now that you have their contact data, you can email these individuals again as part of a lead nurturing campaign.
But also: What a wealth of information! And that’s precisely one of the benefits of landing pages.
Benefit #3: You can gain valuable insight into your actual audience
Aside from being able to send marketing messages to those leads, the user information you now have on hand helps you understand your actual audience.
Or, put another way, are your readers who you thought they’d be? And what do you need to do to improve your marketing strategy?
Very often, especially when you’re just getting started, you know who you want to target and imagine who your customers will be—that’s not always what happens though. You may end up appealing to an entirely different segment.
Having this insight actually clarifies what the reality is, which helps you can craft better campaigns, write even more compelling copy, and, of course, get a better return on your ad spend.
Benefit #4: You can show you’re trustworthy
It’s not easy to earn customer trust—but landing pages make it easier. And that’s attributed to the distraction-free environment of a landing page. Here, interested parties are presented with a clear, often simple, “pitch” that highlights the value of your offer. But you also use this opportunity to show your credibility by incorporating customer reviews or testimonials, i.e. social proof, on the page.
Keep in mind that landing pages aren’t just well-planned, they’re also strategically structured, worded and designed to convert.
Benefit #5: Strengthen your brand
Landing pages bolster all your other marketing efforts when your brand identity – visual branding as well as copywriting tone, voice and style – is consistent across all touchpoints.
Clearly not everyone that visits your website, views your ad, or clicks through to your landing pages will convert. Sometimes, they’re just not there yet in their purchase journey. Other times, they simply need more time to make a decision.
In those scenarios, it pays to have built a memorable brand; one that users can instantly pick out in a sea of options and return to—but also one that they have positive feelings for and will happily recommend to others.
Benefit #6: Landing pages can improve your SEO
It’s really challenging for a page to rank highly for multiple keywords, which is why highly-targeted pages don’t just stand out – they also improve your page ranking on search engines.
Let’s put that into perspective.
How will you make a page rank for both “bamboo socks for men” and “lotus silk scarves for women”? They’re totally different. But a landing page is dedicated to one topic, so in developing landing page copy, you’re going to use only the most relevant and related keywords. After all, if you’re running a paid advertising campaign, you’re also going to have to bid for those terms and don’t want to waste money.
A landing page promoting your newest line of lotus silk scarves will perform better on search engines when it’s just about lotus silk scarves (and no other products) because you can then focus entirely on search terms like “lotus fabric”, “lotus silk scarf” and “lotus flower silk”.
Benefit #7: You can efficiently promote products and services
Speaking of promotions, that’s another benefit of landing pages! The star product doesn’t have to share the limelight with any other products or services—that’s the only item explained, described, or discussed in detail. Consequently, the reader’s attention isn’t divided. There are also no questions about what to do next, because there’s only one call to action.
Benefit #8: Measuring a campaign’s performance becomes less complicated
Because landing pages focus on only one end goal, it’s so much easier to assess a campaign’s performance. It ultimately comes down to did they convert or not?
A bonus benefit is that – if you plan to run A/B split tests – there are far fewer variables to contend with in order to find the optimal configuration for conversions.