A landing page, sometimes known as a lead capture page, is a page that appears when a potential customer clicks on an advertisement, a search engine result, or embedded e-mail link. These special pages (no not your home page) will usually display content that is a logical extension of the advertisement or link from which the prospect arrived. Landing pages, like many things on the Internet, have been hyped to the point of exhaustion. However, that still doesn’t mean they are not an important part of any online marketing campaign. Now I don’t want to infer that creating a lead generation landing page that produces a high conversation rate is easy. It isn’t. There are hundreds, if not thousands of variables to consider.

However, many articles I read seem to make the concept sound so complex that I often think the reason most firms just direct me to their home page is cause they are paralyzed they the thought of getting them implemented.

So here are three tips about landing pages you should be aware of (and some visual examples at the end).

Landing Pages Are “Easy” To Create

If you’ve already built out and designed a Web site with your key graphical elements and written compelling copy, then you already have most of the elements you already need in-house. That isn’t to say you won’t need to develop some new graphics or write more focused benefit/ad specific content, but you should already know what are the key copy points and not have to start from scratch.

Landing Pages Can Be Tailored To the Promotion

In my opinion this is the primary benefit of using landing pages. Too often I click on an ad that has a headline of “Easily Integrate Your Sales & Marketing Activities.” The ad then links me to a product page, or worse a home page, and I am greeted with dozens of links. What should I click on to learn about integrating my sales and marketing activities?

With a landing page for this ad you should instead direct individuals to a page that highlights exactly how the CRM product will help me, push me to an on-line demo specific to this product, and give me an incentive to purpose. It can’t be stressed enough that this integration of message between the ad and the landing is the primary reason landing pages help to increase conversation rates across the board.

Landing Pages Can Be Tested & Optimized

It is hard, if not impossible even for a small firm to be able to change their home page or a major product page almost daily in order to test different landing page variables. With landing pages you can create several different pages, rotate them throughout the campaign (this speeds up the process), and test results. You might test the copy, offer, call to action, graphic elements you name it (please only test one major element at a time). Then when you determine which page works the best, you can move it to your primary landing page and watch leads pour in.

Conclusion

I can’t stress this enough. Landing pages, like search engine optimization (SEO), e-mail marketing, keywords ads, you name it can become very complex topics. And if you’ve never utilized any of these marketing tactics you can do a Google search and be buried in thousands of pages of information. And eventually you should go through as much of that information as possible.

But first just throw yourself into the “game” and start trying. Then learn from your experiences (both good and bad). Then you can gauge your experience with all the great information available and eventually put in place practices that will help you as a marketing person met the sales and marketing objectives of management.