Why Landing Pages Are Important

You wouldn’t play tennis without a racquet, would you?

The machine hurtled fuzzy green balls at me with a “fwoom, fwoom” sound every 10 seconds or so. I dodged most of them, but occasionally got pegged in the chest, stomach, or some place worse.

“Fwoom, fwoom.” I was on the court. I was dressed in snazzy tennis gear worthy of Wimbledon. I had top-of-the-line footwear. I kept my feet moving.

I just didn’t have a racquet.

The only ball I was able to return across the net bounced off my head. Not only was I missing every shot, but I was experiencing bodily injury.

You don’t have to be a tennis pro to know that this is insanity. Yet thousands of businesses across the Web are driving traffic to their home page. Smart marketers with effective email campaigns are sending clicks to pages that don’t call the visitor to take action; to buy, call or download.

Landing Page?

Landing pages are pages that are specially designed to catch visitors, taking them directly to information that they are interested in, and asking them to become a prospect or a customer.

We can use a landing page anytime we know why someone clicked through to our site. If we know what they expect, it makes sense that we would create a page to specifically address their needs.

How do we know what the landing page should say?

We know exactly what a visitor is looking for when they click on an ad or link that we created because we wrote it. If we wrote the ad, and it caused them to click, wouldn’t you assume that the page they come to should address the offer made by the ad copy?

This shouldn’t even be a question in your mind (and for most of my readers it isn’t).

Pardon My Exasperation

I don’t like to be rude, but can you imagine what my tennis instructor would have said if they’d seen me getting pummeled by a ball machine because I forgot my tennis racquet?

If you want to score points, you need to have all of the basic equipment. In the game of online advertising landing pages are basic equipment.

Your Home Page Won’t Do

The primary job of the home page is not to convert visitors into leads or sales. Its job is to funnel buyers to pages that either provide information or call the visitor to take some action… or both.

Your home page has a lot of work to do, and as a result, it will probably contain the most links of any page on your site.

Paying for an ad that promises “Software that will improve your business,” and then asking them to sift through a page full of links (About Us, Contact, Our Products, Home, News, etc.) is conversion suicide.

Why not bring them to a page that says “Our software will improve your business, and here’s how.” Then explain why it is good for them and how it works. Then tell them how to get more information, or invite them to purchase.

Why Landing Pages are Important

Landing Pages will make you more successful by generating more leads, sales and business.
Landing Pages will make your visitors love you more. There is no better brand experience that finding what you’re looking for.
Landing Pages will cut the cost of your advertising by increasing your conversion rates. As the cost of generating new clients, you can put more into your advertising.
Landing Pages will keep me from ranting about landing pages

Technique and Practice Are Important

In tennis, how you swing your racquet will determine how many times you score. It is the same with landing pages.

Catch Brian Massey’s enlightening session about writing landing pages during Online Copywriting 101′s FREE 10-day telesummit. Mark your calendar for September 7, 2010 so you won’t miss a second of this hour-long session. Get your FREE pass today at OnlineCopywriting101.com

Tags: Brian Massey, convert visitors, landing pages, learn copywriting