As a small business owner, you’re painfully familiar with the grind of marketing.

You’ve invested time and money into your social media presence, email campaigns, PPC ads, and traditional advertising. But maybe you’ve been chipping away at these things for a while but haven’t seen much ROI.  If that’s the case, then you’re probably thinking:  I’m doing everything right—so, where the heck are all my leads?!

We hear you.

If this describes your situation, then it’s possible that your marketing strategy might be missing one key component: landing pages.

Landing pages are the linchpins that tie your other digital marketing efforts together.

But what exactly is a landing page?

Simply put, it is a page on your site specifically designed to convert visitors into leads. It’s the page you want your customers “land” on when they click on a social media promotion or a PPC ad. Generally, they have a clean and simple design that promotes a specific offer.

Landing pages are the primary gateway into your marketing funnel. And there’s perhaps no better way to lead your customers through it than with an attractive and optimized landing page.  Still not convinced of their power? Here are just a few of the ways landing pages can help your bottom line:

Landing pages are lean, mean, lead-generating machines.

Landing pages are built with the intent to get you new leads. They do this chiefly through lead capture forms that customers fill out in exchange for your offer. In other words, people provide you with their basic information to receive something they find valuable. So, you get crucial buyer information, while they get to enjoy some cool swag.

Everyone wins, really.

Landing pages give you the unprecedented opportunity to nurture those members of your target audience that are most interested in what you have to offer

Get deeper insights about your customer base.

Getting new leads is great.

But knowing what makes them tick is even better.

By keeping track of which offers your customers take advantage of, you can better understand what they care about. These insights can help you create better offers in the future. Furthermore, knowing which customers opt in for certain promotions can help create segmented marketing campaigns to target their specific needs.

Give your SEO a bit of a boost.

Every landing page is a shiny, new indexed webpage on your site.  The more webpages you have, the more likely potential customers are to find your content. And just like every other webpage on your site—it should be optimized for search engines.

There’s a lot that goes into SEO. Luckily, because of their simplicity, landing pages are a bit easier to optimize than, say, your home page or a blog post. With that being said, there are a few key elements you’ll definitely want to optimize:

• Title – This is what will appear in engines. Also known as an SEO title.
• Headline – The main heading on the page itself.
• URL – Specifically, the slug. You’ll want to make sure it has your keyword.
• Benefits – These are bullets, or short bodies of text that describe the value of your offer.

Reap long-term benefits with evergreen content.

Evergreen content, like the tree it’s named after, is marketing material that stays green (valuable!) all year-round. On-going offers, or promotions that never expire are examples of this. Other examples include: content you give away for free like e-books, tutorials, webinars, and industry know-how.

Evergreen content should be the bread and butter of your lead-generating strategy.

You should have landing pages for all your evergreen content. While that might sound tedious, it’s a smart investment of your time. Because once created, the landing pages will constantly work for you to gather new leads with very little maintenance needed.

Plus, the more landing pages you have, the more leads you are likely to generate.

Okay, so landing pages are important. But what do they look like?

By now, you know how landing pages can help your business. Next, we’ll take a look at what specific elements every landing page should have and how they differ from a standard webpage.

Create a headline that communicates the offer clearly and concisely.

When visitors click to your landing page, it should be immediately clear what your offer is. This is best accomplished with a punchy headline that explains the offer’s value. Let’s take an example. Here’s a landing page we built one of our clients.

When you arrive on the page, it’s instantly clear what the company is offering: a free introductory webinar. The headline is succinct while also communicating the webinar’s value.

Include relevant, eye-catching images to attract your target audience.

People love looking at pictures! But you should choose the images for your landing pages with care. You want them to be both relevant to the offer as well as appealing to your customer base. This is demonstrated in the above landing page as well.

The offer is for a parenting webinar, so it stands to reason that the target audience would be parents of young children. So, using a picture of a mother with her toddler is perfect in this example.

State your value proposition and benefits so customers know what to expect.

While your headline states what your offer is, you also want your customers to know what’s included  and how it helps them. This can be accomplished through bullet points or short text blocks. Like the headline, however, the copy for your benefits should be kept short and sweet.

Above is another example. Notice how the topics are included in the image, while the benefits are listed succinctly as the bottom beneath the icons.

Create a lead capture form that customers are likely to fill out.

The lead capture form is the most important element of your landing pages. It’s the tool that will convert visitors into qualified leads. So, you want to make sure that will be filled out. One of the best ways to do this is by asking customers to provide with the bare minimum information—like their name and email address.

No one like filling out long forms. And the more fields they have to fill out, the more time potential customers have to rethink your offer. So, you want to make it as easy as possible for visitors to fill out your form, while still getting the information you need for them.

It’s a bit of a balancing act.

Below is an example of a lead capture form that isn’t too lengthy.

When done right, landing pages are powerful lead generators.

Good landing pages have compelling images and concise, benefit-driven copy that entice visitors to fill out a lead capture form in exchange for a valuable offer. Hopefully you now have a better understanding of what landing pages are and how they can help grow your business.

Need help creating your landing page? Let’s talk!