Landing Pages Series: Effectiveness in Marketing Campaigns
by AJ Philippakis, Project Management Team Lead
10/04/2006
What is a Landing Page?
Landing pages are the pages where your visitors first arrive after seeing your advertising. These pages are designed to engage and convince your audience to take the single desired action that you're aiming for. Given that this may be your visitor/potential customer's first experience with your product or service, be sure to take the opportunity to impress. You’ll want to convert each user in order to maximize the return on your invested marketing campaign. In this overview series, we'll examine the definition and application of landing pages and how they can benefit your marketing initiatives.
When to Use Landing Pages
If you are in the midst of creating a new marketing campaign, there are several ways that you may want to push your new message out to the target audience. You could be using Paid Search, Email Marketing, Banner, Radio, TV, or Print Ads. Each of these channels will be extending your brand and communication, attract users to your website, and prompt them to take a desired action. This action could include registering for a newsletter, completing a contact form, or requesting a callback from a representative. Ultimately, the goal is lead generation - keeping your sales pipeline full. Each landing page design may vary in scope and purpose. Some may be as simple as a single stand-alone page suggesting that the visitor register for a newsletter. More robust campaigns may include multiple version of the landing page, each designed for unique target market segments that are driven to your site using specific paid search keywords and measured against ROI goals.
The Lifecycle in Action
As an example, assume that you've launched a new service campaign and are promoting it through web banner advertising. When a web user clicks on the banner, they should arrive on an engaging page whose design and message is consistent with the ad that the user selected. The visitor should be presented with a clear, succinct message and call-to-action that invites them to register to receive a brochure and a call back from your account team. In terms of measuring success, you've defined your key metric as the number of visitors who complete a web form located on your landing page. This creates a measurable lead for your sales team, which may be cataloged by your sales tracking software.
Getting Started
Landing pages should become part of your ongoing marketing initiatives and require a support structure in order to meet your overall marketing goals. Here are a few of the elements of the campaign that we'll review in upcoming articles in this series:
- Design for conversion
- Copy and campaign consistency
- Content management
- Integration into Paid Search campaigns
- Measuring success
In our November, 2006 article I'll take a closer look at the effective use of design and copy.
