Dear
Software Marketer,
I’m
continually surprised by the number of companies
that don’t bother to create a landing page.
What’s a landing page?
A
landing page is a web page specifically created
to be the first place on your website where
prospects “land” in response to a promotion.
Instead
of sending prospects to your home page, you send
them to a landing page. What are the benefits of
creating a landing page?
-
When you send prospects to a home page, they
may not be able to find the information
they’re looking for as easily amidst all the
“clutter”.
- You
can continue to lead your prospect through a
particular sales process (e.g. to take the
next step which could be to download a white
paper or sign-up for an e-zine).
-
Since a landing page is a direct extension
of the sales process that got the prospect
to your page in the first place – rather
than being “brochureware” –it can be written
in a more targeted way and is more effective
than a generic home page.
-
When they land on a landing page, prospects
will feel that you are catering specifically
to their needs and concerns.
-
With a landing page, you can more easily
measure response and/or conversion rates.
How do
you create a landing page?
It’s
essentially no different than creating any other
web page, except that you view it as the next
step in your sales process. So, you’ll tend to
write a landing page to one very specific
audience and want them to take a specific
action.
Actually, one could argue that ALL web pages
should be as focused as landing pages are. In
fact, one of my clients is considering selecting
their audience and then using personalization
technology to serve up the most appropriate web
pages. Every visitor will follow a particular
path through their website (although, of course,
we’ll build in flexibility, too).
The more
you can target your prospects, the better, so
this approach makes a lot of sense and could be
far more effective than the typical
“brochureware” or “brochureware plus a bit more”
approach that I feel is still the norm.
That's
it for this issue of "The Software Marketer's
Toolkit". If you have any questions, comments or
an issue that you'd like to see covered, please
send me an email:
paul@paularinaga.com.
To your
software success,
Paul
Arinaga
paul@paularinaga.com
www.paularinaga.com
Tel: +32 2 782 0207
download pdf (51 kb)
Next
month: "Magic words: how to hypnotize your
audience”
