Do Landing Pages Really Work?

Dwayne Graves

Do landing pages work? Excellent question.

Short answer? Yes, they work well.

The next question you might want to consider is this: What is it that you’re trying to accomplish with a landing page?

The reason this question is important is because landing pages only work well when your copy, messaging and deliverable match up with the intended goal.

For example, you might want to use a landing page to generate more email subscribers.

Your landing page isn’t going to work if you don’t create a quality lead magnet (your deliverable) to give away… one that your target market gets excited about receiving from you.

It’s not going to work if the copy and messaging on the landing page doesn’t speak well to the inner needs of your prospect.

Do landing pages work?

Absolutely. They work quite well if you learn the ins and outs of marketing that surround the process.

Let’s dig in more.

What’s a Landing Page & Why Use One?

There are three basic types of landing pages that most online businesses use:

Lead capture landing page
Sales page
Thank you page

I’m going to focus on the lead capture landing page because you won’t have a need for a thank you or sales page if you don’t first get good at generating new monthly leads.

The sole purpose of a lead capture page is to encourage visitors to enter their information (typically their email address and/or name) in order to receive your free lead magnet resource.

Your landing page must be free from all other distractions that could prevent a visitor from converting into a lead.

This means it shouldn’t have links out to other website pages or blog posts.

It should focus the reader in with an enticing headline, maybe a few bullet points and then the form where they can enter their email address.

If you do well with your headline, page and form content, then your landing page will work well when it comes to the intended result: converting into a new email subscriber.

How Does a Landing Page Work?

The first step is getting a prospect to visit your landing page. You can drive traffic to landing pages from paid ads, blog posts, social media posts, webinars, podcasts, etc.

The next steps include:

Your visitor fills out the landing page’s form and becomes a new lead
The information entered on the page gets stored inside your email service provider
You start marketing your product or service to the new subscriber via email

Use the tagging features inside your email service provider to understand where your subscribers entered into the sales funnel.

This helps you send out more targeted email communications and nurture leads effectively until they decide to buy from you.

A nurtured subscriber that knows you understand their needs is more likely to become a customer faster.

The best way you can make sure your landing pages work is by asking yourself how to most effectively make the exchange of information a win/win situation.

Your subscribers give you their personal information because they believe that the free resource you’re about to share with them is going to add value to their lives.

If you don’t provide something that creates this belief in site visitors, then your landing pages won’t work well.

Take the time to think through who your avatar is and create a cheat sheet, worksheet, video or some other type of lead magnet that truly resonates with your audience.

Get that right and the result can be a win/win: Your audience should love the value provided by you and you could eventually convert enough of your subscribers into customers to drive your revenue needs.

Assets Needed To Create Landing Page Conversions

Multiple assets exist that are needed to make the landing page process convert well.

Call to Action (CTA)

The first asset is your call to action (CTA). This is your text or image that invites website visitors to take the desired action.

For instance, your landing page might have a button with CTA text that says, “Click Here To Download Your Free Report”.

You could place other CTA’s on blog posts, for example, where you entice a blog reader to click from the post over to the landing page itself.

The better you get with crafting CTA’s that bridge the mental gap that helps visitors visualize how your free resource will help their lives, the better you could see your landing pages working.

The next important asset is the actual landing page

As I mentioned above, make sure that each landing page you use stays free from distractions.

Focus only on the benefits of the free resource being offered and direct visitor attention to the CTA to enter their information in exchange for that resource.

The next asset is your Thank You page.

Don’t make the mistake that many marketers make where they forget to make proper use of the page that new subscribers land on after using the opt-in form on the landing page.

This is valuable Internet “real estate” that you could use to move your subscribers into a more meaningful business relationship with you. Or, at the very least, start that nurturing process the very moment your new leads are excited about what they’re about to receive from you.

One quality way to use a Thank You page is to tell your visitor that their free resource is on the way to their email inbox.

Then, offer them something extra that they weren’t expecting.

For instance, you could include a video on the Thank You page that educates them further about the topic your free opt-in resource was about.

If the video educates enough, you might even consider linking them straight to your product or service offer underneath the video and see if some new leads convert to customers immediately.

Notice that you didn’t give your subscribers the free resource they just opted in for on the Thank You page in this example.

This is important because it trains them to go into their email and look for your name and email.

If they don’t become a customer immediately, then they’re getting used to opening your emails. This should make it more likely that they’ll open the next one in your automated follow-up email sequence.

Conclusion

Do landing pages work?

Yes, and I hope you’re seeing the power of landing pages and are excited about starting to make good use of them.

The next step in your journey is learning how to build landing pages.

I personally use Leadpages for this purpose. You can read my full review about Leadpages here.