What Is A Landing Page?
We saw that in the battle of email vs. social media, email wins by a mile. After seeing how powerful email can be for winning fans and customers, we took a look at the best email marketing services for writers. Now, let's get into how to actually use all this stuff. Don't worry, we're not jumping into a deep techno-tutorial. Right now, let's talk about what you actually need to do if you want to grow your email list. It all starts with creating a landing page.
What Does “Landing Page” Mean?
Don't be alarmed by the name landing page. A landing page is just another page on your website just like any other page. You may have heard marketing people say things like Squeeze Page, Reverse Squeeze Page, Marketing Funnel, etc. All of those names are different names for a landing page. The different names are based on how you're using the page and what action you want people to take when they get there.
It's easy to for marketing people to get excited about things and they start using all these fancy words. But the concept of a landing page is super simple. A landing page is the page people land on when they first arrive at your site after clicking a link or an ad somewhere. All the other fancy phrases come into play because marketing people think up exciting names for the different ways you can use the landing page and what action you want people to take when they get there.
Why Use Landing Pages?
You don't always want people to start browsing your website from the homepage. Your homepage will probably have too many different topics. It's like the beginning of a Choose Your Own Adventure book with lots of different paths you can take. With all of those options and navigation links on your homepage, you are hoping that your visitors make the right choices and have success finding what they are looking for.
A better approach is to have your website visitors start right on the page that that has the information they are looking for. A landing page is about one thing – one specific aspect of your website. You want to use landing pages because it gives you a place to speak directly to a person about exactly the thing they came to your website to find out. In other words, it's a direct link into your website straight to the information that matters to them.
How To Use Landing Pages
Landing pages are generally used in conjunction with advertising your website. Suppose you are writing a book about urban gardening. You want to build an email list of people who live in the city and are also interested in gardening. That way, when you finish your book, you can email a bunch of people who already know you and are interested in what you have to say. In other words, you've got a group of people who are waiting to buy your book.
Let's also suppose you have a website. On your website, you have information about you, where you talk about your experience with urban gardening. You also have web pages and blog posts about various gardening tools you like and recommend. Maybe you also have some tips on how to extend the growing season with homemade greenhouses. In other words, you have a website that's rich with great information. You don't want people to get lost in all of that great information and forget to sign up for your email list.
Using Landing Pages With Ads
So, you decide to create an ad to run on Facebook that says something like, “Get The Garden You Thought You Couldn't Have – A guide to urban gardening.” The goal of the ad is NOT to sell your book (you might not have even finished your book yet). The goal is to get people to sign up for your email list.
If you link the ad to your homepage, visitors could get lost in all the great information on your site and forget to sign up for your email list. So, instead, create a specific page where you talk specifically about things that will be super interesting to people who want to grow a garden in the city. Then put a big, obvious, email sign up form on that page. That's the “Call To Action.” You want people to land on this Landing Page, get super excited about gardening, and sign up for your email list. If they then browse around your site after that, great! But everything on your landing page is designed to get people to do one thing – and one thing only – sign up for your email list.
How Do You Get People To Sign Up For Your Email List?
That's a great question and we'll dive into that next. We'll talk about creating lead magnets for your landing pages. We'll go over what a lead magnet is and how to figure out what lead magnets might work for your audience. Before you get into lead magnets and emaill opt-ins it's important to understand what a landing page is. Now that you understand the concept of landing pages, be sure to check out our post on lead magnets (coming soon…).
