You’ll find many differing opinions when it comes to the choice between directing your firm’s web traffic to a dedicated landing page or an organic webpage on the primary website. There are strong arguments to be made for both options, but either way, the choice isn’t as simple as it usually appears on the surface.
Like nearly every other component of digital marketing, context should determine both strategy and execution when it comes to deciding whether you want to rely on your existing webpages or create and optimize new dedicated landing pages.
Define Your Goals
Before you can make your choice, you need to define your goals regarding the campaign type you will be running. For instance, if you’re planning on conducting a paid advertising campaign built around display and remarketing, it’s possible that your primary goals might include building brand awareness or increasing traffic to a specific practice area or blog piece. In that case, you will want to direct your users to an organic webpage on your primary site so they can reach the related piece of content that you want to boost.
If, however, you are planning to promote an ebook or an infographic through a social media or paid search campaign, then your primary goal is most likely to generate conversions. Specifically, you’ll be looking to trade a quality piece of marketing collateral for user information, such as a verified email address or phone number. And when the goal is to generate conversions, you want to eliminate distractions. In these cases, you should turn to a dedicated landing page.
Coordinating Dedicated Landing Pages with Individual Marketing Campaigns
While the numerous pages on your firm’s website are designed to educate and intrigue your potential clients, dedicated landing pages should always be designed with one goal in mind: to generate quality conversions that eventually become quality clients. Therefore, your landing page should be closely coordinated with whatever campaign you are running.
If you are attempting to drive traffic by using a paid search campaign, the content that is placed on the landing page (copy, images, video, audio, etc.) should align with the text of your ad and the keywords that you are using to capture traffic in the first place. Not only does this help increase your paid campaign’s quality score and ad rank, but it also ensures that you are attracting the right sort of traffic and eliminating wasted spend. If the ad doesn’t noticeably align with the landing page, visitors will be quick to recognize the disconnect (intended or otherwise) from what they expected and they’ll almost always bounce before converting.
Keep It Simple; Keep It Real
As you begin work constructing your landing page, bear in mind that simplicity is the name of the game. Remember, distractions are the enemy here, so any feature that could potentially conflict with your goal (conversions) should be avoided. This means no sidebar, no sliders, no top-level navigation, and no outbound links. Stay on message, and don’t give your visitors any incentive to leave the page or seek information that is not directly related to the intended messaging.
If this means that you have to create different landing pages for different messaging, then by all means do so. In fact, this is a likely scenario as well as an accepted best practice when it comes to dedicated landing pages. Your firm likely represents clients in several different practice areas, which means that you could create some form of a marketing campaign for each one and then direct traffic to the appropriate tailored landing pages.
A/B Testing
In addition to coordinating your dedicated landing pages closely with the type and messaging of your campaigns, you should also create two versions of each landing page in order to A/B test the efficiency of each. Done correctly, this will allow you to review the analytics for each page and adjust your strategy accordingly in real time.
Once your test establishes a clear-cut winner (be sure to allow plenty of time to develop a large enough sample size), you should use the knowledge you’ve accrued to develop a new “B” version of the landing page and pair it against the page that won before. By testing your pages through multiple successive rounds of competition, you can refine your landing page to achieve a very high degree of optimization.
When comparing your landing pages, try to limit your variables in order to accurately assess what works and what doesn’t. Specifically, you should be playing close attention to the following:
- Headlines
- The length, voice, and tone of your body copy
- Images and video
- Testimonials
- Page forms
- Any other type of content that is prominently placed on the landing page
If you want to experiment with a page that succeeded in the past, it’s probably wise to limit the amount of traffic that you assign to the “B” version of the page. After all, you know that the existing version works, and you don’t want to squander potential conversions while you find out that the new version doesn’t perform as well.
The most important thing to remember is to trust the numbers. The whole point of A/B testing is to identify efficiency with strict objectivity, even if that means that your personal preference or gut instinct doesn’t prevail. When it comes to marketing, the most effective idea should always win, regardless of how that might affect your personal sensibilities.
Contact LaFleur to Learn More
As landing pages become more and more common, many marketers are beginning to incorporate best practices for landing pages into their organic webpage creation. Chiefly, they are focusing on delivering highly specific messaging, limiting distractions, and including content that will drive conversions. This is a testament to the definitive value of landing pages as well as to a marketing culture that prizes lead generation above all other metrics.
We hope to hear from you soon, and we hope that you are able to incorporate some of the advice we’ve provided in your current marketing strategy. To learn more about creating, coordinating, and optimizing your dedicated landing pages, please contact LaFleur today by calling (888) 222-1512 or by filling out a quick and simple contact form. Better yet, read our free ebook to see how it’s done!
References:
101 landing page optimization tips: an opinionated guide to conversion. (n.d.). Unbounce. Retrieved from: http://unbounce.com/101-landing-page-optimization-tips/
Florez, F. (2013, June 10). 5 reasons to use a landing page instead of your homepage. Lander. Retrieved from https://landerapp.com/blog/5-reasons-to-use-a-landing-page-instead-of-your-homepage/
Yu, J. (2016, August 9). Landing page conversion: organic & content optimization. Search Engine Watch. Retrieved from https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2399909/landing-page-conversion-organic-content-optimization
