10 Good Reasons for a Landing Page by Art Hendela

Landing pages support your advertising and marketing efforts with information specific to that campaign. Your landing page allows you to determine the effectiveness of your campaign.

Here are 10 good reasons to create a separate landing page to support your marketing efforts:

1) Identify who visited.
Landing page sites can offer a premium or reward which asks the visitor to fill out a brief form with contact information. Adding a survey can add even more value by starting the qualification process. Having a small premium such as a gift card or a free product sample encourage people to have a salespeople to discuss the product offerings. With paper ads you never know who actually saw your ad.

2) Inform your visitors.
Landing page sites are created to give more information than can possibly fit in traditional advertising. Paper ads are limited by space. Television and radio ads are limited by time. Your landing page is not bound by either. Information about your offer can be expanded. Visitors might fill out a form to get a premium, give permission to follow-up, or perhaps register for a newletter. In any case, your landing page becomes your gateway to turn a prospect into a customer.

3) Expand the geographic scope.
Newspaper ads, magazine ads, and direct mail pieces are incredibly expensive. They charge based on size, color, length of the run, etc. They may be limited to a particular geographic location or charge extra for a wider geographic edition. If someone wants to go to the newspaper store at 3 AM and that store is closed, they miss seeing your ad. Landing pages are much more cost effective. They are available 24 hours per day, 7 days per week around the world for as long as you wish to keep them.

4) Allow flexibile content.
Once you sign off on traditional ad copy and the ad is run, there is nothing you can do to change it. Landing pages give you the opportunity to see what is working based on traffic analysis. If necessary, you can change content and emphasis immediately.

5) Separate visitor statistics.
Landing page sites keep your web visitor statistics separate from your main web site. If a person visits your landing page, then you can be very sure that they saw your ad or other promotional material. When your advertising sends your prospects only to your main website, you cannot tell if the person visited because of your ad or because they happened to find you on the internet.

6) Add different types of content.
If you are running a television ad, you are limited to verbal and visual message for a very short period of time. On the radio, you are limited to only a verbal message, also for a short period of time. If you are running hard copy ads in newspapers, magaizes, and direct mail, you are limited to a visual and text message. With a landing page you are not limited. Your message can be presented in a variety of ways. You can add a video clip. You can add an audio clip. You can add pictures that change over time. Of course you'll have the text copy too.

7) Increase search engine placement.
You can create links to your main site from your landing page and track the traffic that is driven to your main website. External links to your main site are one way that determine how search engines rank your site in search results.

8) Focus your customer contact.
You can stay in contact with a person visiting your landing page that permits you to track who they are from your contact form. If the prospect does not become a customer now, you may be able to contact them in the future if you offer something similar or with different features.

9) Reinforce your brand.
Landing pages that use the same styles as your ads and main website reinforce who you are in the market. Your corporate identity says a lot about you. Having multiple places that emphasize your branding can help your prospects think of you first.

10) Enhance the perception of your business.
Landing pages help enhance the perception of your business as a quality provider of goods and services. A company that has a landing page separate from their main corporate site shows a commitment to servicing that customer. You are perceived as a company that does things right.

Conclusion
With the high cost of traditional media for limited space, landing pages become a very cost effective way to increase the information that gets into the hands of your customers. The ability to gather visitor information allows you to target your customers. In today's economy, leveraging every customer contact is more important than ever before.