Landing Page Fundamentals: What Is a Landing Page and Why You Need One

For a PPC campaign or a lead magnet to be effective, they need a few things. Excellent ad copy, strong imagery (if you’re using it), keyword research and the rest. But any PPC campaign or lead magnet worth its salt also needs a good landing page. And no, we don’t mean your home page.

Here at Caffeinate Digital, we’re big believers in an effective landing page.

For us, every PPC campaign and lead magnet should have a landing page which the audience is taken to once clicking on your ad. This could mean they’re taken to a dedicated page on your website or a custom-built landing page specifically for the campaign.

But still, before we get into why you need one, let’s answer “what is a landing page?”

And this is a fair question that many business owners ask when they first speak to any of us here at Caffeinate Digital. Given that we typically push for a purpose-built landing page for our PPC campaigns (for reasons we’ll go into later), it isn’t uncommon for us to answer this very question.

So here it is, what is a landing page and why you need one.

What is a landing page

At its core, a landing page is an entry point to a website. Well, that’s what Google says. And although it isn’t wrong, there is more to it.

When answering “what is a landing page?”, us like any other marketing agency will all say something similar.

A landing page is where your target audience enters your website to fulfil some kind of activity in which the business has enticed the individual through your lead magnet and PPC ad. Whether that be to download a PDF, complete a sale, join a mailing list, read an offer or anything else.

It is a standalone page, designed to bring your potential customer to convert. Whether that means to download, subscribe or purchase.

(READ: Make Better Use of Google Ad Extensions to Maximise Spend & Rank High)

Why you need a landing page

As an overarching reason, the reason you need one is to maximise your fresh leads that are being generated from your PPC campaigns. But really, there are many reasons. The main ones being:

1. To not miss potential conversions

This is pretty much been covered in the above paragraphs. The ultimate reason being that without one, you’re missing out on potential sales.

Sure you may see some success by directing people to your homepage. But this is nothing compared to designing a page specifically built the purpose. That purpose being, to convert.

2. Message match

A key reason is to match your message on an ad, with that on the page that your audience is directed to.

We said that you can use a pre-made page from your website so long as it’s relatively similar to your offering. And you can. But a landing page allows you to customise your landing page to accurately reflect the deal you’re advertising.

By message matching the landing page with the ad and lead magnet, you’re reinforcing their decision to go with you. This is because your page shows them exactly the reason they’re there without confusing the message with other offers.

3. Show professionalism

A quality landing page shows your professionalism and your dedication to your business. If it is well-designed, it’ll fill your audience with confidence that you’re going to do exactly what you said you will on the link they clicked.

4. Gets your audience to the sale without distraction

As previously mentioned, a landing page is a standalone page, designed for one reason: to convert. And a good one does just that. It skips whatever is unnecessary for that particular customer to see. Instead, nurturing them down the page to make the conversion.

Unlike any other page on your website, your landing page will convert effectively due to its single-minded approach. And it’s this lack of distraction through other content that allows that to make that conversion.

The benefits of a quality landing page

When designing a landing page, the function is all that matters. Like previously mentioned, that function is to make the conversion.

Therefore a quality landing page is specifically designed to effectively lead the target audience to the sale. Meaning your landing page is designed in such a way that it quickly moves the individual to the sale in an organic way, without distractions, enabling the individual to make the sale.

(READ: What is SEO and How it Works: A Beginners Guide)

Can your landing page be a page from your website?

It isn’t necessarily wrong to use a page from your website as a landing page. Many businesses do use a pre-created page from their website and may see some success.

We say this isn’t wrong (unless you’re using your homepage) because that business would typically choose a page that is somehow connected to the offer.

Still, the problem with this is that it is incredibly less effective than a purpose-built landing page. There is so much going on on a page, so then your target audience can get distracted or lose interest when navigating their way through. Particularly as it’s possible that they can’t find the deal you were offering in your lead magnet.

Doing it this way means that you’re a lot more likely to end up missing a conversion. And that’s a sale or conversion that you’ve worked hard to get and guide to your website through something they want.

So although you may see some success with a pre-made web page from your website, you’re more likely to lose out on potential profits.

Things to consider when creating a landing page

To create an effective landing page, there are many things to keep in mind:

Fit for purpose

Is yours fit for purpose? You need to make sure your landing page a clear and organic extension from your website and lead magnet.

Strong, consistent and effective design

You need to make sure that your design is strong, ensuring it is clean, to the point and structured aesthetically.

Consistent and affecting branding

Going hand-in-hand with ‘design’ above, is branding. Is it on-brand with your website and the advertisement or lead magnet?

Functional

By this, we mean, is your landing page converting and is there room for improvement? There are many ways to ensure that it is. From design to web copy, to almost everything else.

Mobile-friendliness and responsiveness

Like everything in today’s digital world, any web page you create needs to be mobile-friendly. This goes for landing pages especially, because your landing page is the place where your target audience will convert, often on a whim. And if they can’t get it to fit their device right there and in that moment, your ad was in vain.

Make sure it’s to-the-point

Waffling is never a good thing, but particularly in an effective PPC campaign. Too much copy means that it takes more time for the individual to get to the point of converting. The more time spent reading means a higher likelihood of not converting.

Testing

At its core, an effective landing page is one that’s been tested. We know that landing pages work, but that only happens when you know what doesn’t. So test it and you’ll see results!

Example of a landing page that converts

Below is an example of a funnel that we ran to get people to a landing page that we created for Caffeinate Digital, here in Perth.

We ran an ad offering free gated content on our landing page, to match both the tone of the ad and our website content.

Above, you can see an ad that we ran on Google directing people to a landing page on our website. We did this through a downloadable checklist that was exceptionally well received.

And above is the page that our audience was directed to. This was one page of a five-step journey to the conversion, where our goal was to gather leads, rather than make a sale.

It is very clear that our landing page is on-brand with the rest of our website from the screenshot above of the Caffeinate Digital Home Page.

In summary

Here at Caffeinate Digital, we’re strong evangelists for landing pages. We use them for our website, as well as for our clients. A lot of time here in our Perth office goes into designing and creating them.

This is because we know they work.

We will go further into what makes a great landing page in future blogs. However, we hope you’ve learned that an effective one is one that converts, is on-brand and minimalistic in nature.

Now that you understand the basics, you can now go out and make sure your PPC campaigns are running smoothly from beginning to end.

If you’re looking for someone to build you an excellent that works for your PPC campaign, you can do it yourself. Or you could go to the experts. Here in Perth, we’re one of the fastest-growing digital marketing agencies around and we consider ourselves something of an expert in many disciplines.

So touch base with us and we’ll see if we can help you out!

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