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5 Ways to Profit From Your Landing Page

Author: Ivana Taylor   |   October 12th, 2011

Is it me or am I the only person that thinks that landing pages are the greatest invention since sliced bread?

I’m reflecting on this as I prepare to pull together an on-the-fly landing page for an industrial client that they’re going to use at a trade show. When the client approached me a few days ago and told me that they were going to a trade show in about two weeks and needed marketing materials, I jumped into action.

Here is my checklist… for creating an effective landing page on the fly.

1. Buy a domain name or names. This may seem obvious, but I’ve found myself waiting too long to buy domain names that are keyword centered around the offer. It’s natural to buy a domain for the name of the product, service or site. But take that extra step and explore domain names that your target audience might search on – especially if you’re in a niche. For example, one company serves the compressed natural gas industry and when I searched for domain names on specific products in that industry that customers might be searching for – they were ALL AVAILABLE! I bought them up and now I can use them to direct customers to the specific pages that they are interested in. So, look for those golden nugget names for your landing page.

2. Invest in design. Whether you are offering an information product or you are a more traditional business – don’t default to tacky. Your landing page is really your sales rep online. Would you buy a sales rep that showed up unkempt and disheveled? Even long copy landing pages can use good design. If you don’t have the budget for a designer and are using a WordPress platform, there is a new plugin called Premise that will create landing pages on the fly. If you have a bit more money to spend, try 99Designs, where you can get high-end design on a low-end budget.

3. Focus on the call to action. Another piece of advice that seems obvious, but isn’t when you get into the details. Really think about what you want your audience to do that will give THEM value and you a new lead. Sometimes we simply default to offering a download or emailing tips without thinking through the entire sales and marketing cycle. This is the mistake I’ve made. I’m currently in the process of doing A/B testing to see what lead generation magnet is most valuable to my visitors so that I can increase conversions.

4. Follow up. There are lots of creative ways to follow-up with your landing page visitors. In my case for the industrial client, I actually redirect them to a FREE assessment and then offer them the opportunity to schedule a FREE consultation. The “Assessment” is actually an online survey. This way I get their email into an email list AND then I start collecting data about my market. QuestionPro online survey software then sends me a notification every time someone fills out the survey. In addition to that, I forward them to the sales rep’s Tungle online scheduling account (that’s free) and this allows them to make an appointment for their free consultation.

5. Measure. Finally, don’t forget to set your baseline – even if it’s not online. Create a starting set of metrics that you can measure your process against. For example, if you’ve been selling offline, keep track of the marketing pieces that go out and what your response rate is to that. Then when you set up your landing page, start tracking how many people view it and how many people sign up. This is all easily done through Google Analytics – and another cool tool that I learned about recently is called Optimizely, that allows you to make changes to your site WITHOUT touching the code.

The bottom line is that a well-constructed landing page is like a digital sales person that never takes a vacation or lunch break. It’s gathering new leads and customers 24/7. And the only effort it requires is the time and energy it takes to set up.

The actual process of setting up a landing page can take 30 minutes or less, assuming that you have your marketing message and call to action already finished. You simply can’t afford not to use landing pages to generate leads or even sales as a significant part of your marketing strategy.

About Ivana Taylor
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