It’s been said that first impressions are important. This statement is quite true—even though they are subject to change over time, first impressions can last, often persist in the back of our heads. This is especially true in the business world and can even be applied to as simple a thing as a website.
Enter website landing pages.
A landing page is a single, specialized web page that people go to when they click on a link, like a social media post, a Google banner ad, search results, from your email marketing campaign, etc. Its entire purpose is to receive these visitors and turn them into customers by driving conversion, which means a landing page must lock in purchases, downloads, subscriptions, or any action that aligns with a marketing campaign’s goals.
How Do Landing Pages Work?
After clicking a link from Google’s search results or a different site, your target audience will arrive on the landing page, or lander (or LP), which is less a stage of limbo, and more like that part of a flight where the plane touches down and maneuvers to taxi into its gate. The landing page is the lights on the airport tarmac and those guys with the orange batons—it directs visitors into where you want them to go.
You want these targeted visitors to go down your sales funnel by showing them an offer that they, specifically, could be interested in and should take advantage of. Likely, any of your target audience that ends up on the landing page will indeed be interested because it is made to be specific, which means chances are high for a conversion.
Why Do I Need a Landing Page?
If you’re an affiliate marketer, why would you need a lander when you already have a page with great integration and tools, have expertly done, relevant content, and have a pretty good sales pitch, all of which you are sure has landed you more than a couple of sales?
Websites usually have a 2% conversion rate. In truth, this number is not bad, but it can be better. Hubspot has found that having and increasing the landing pages on a website can increase the conversion rate by 55%.
This is because highly-focused content about a single product can improve conversions. Bloggers should keep in mind that a post, while important when it comes to driving conversions, has the primary job of pulling visibility. Readers often do not read an entire article and just look for the information they want, potentially missing affiliate links.
On the other hand, landing pages are hyper-specific to a singular product or feature, unlike an entire website that advertises multiple products and is condensed, unlike a specialized blog post.
A landing page will help focus the attention on one important point—whether that is a new service or product, a big sale, or any other campaign outside your usual marketing efforts—serving as a final nail in the coffin for your sales pitch. Essentially, a lander is an entire page that serves as a call-to-action.
Two Types of Landing Pages
1. Landing pages for clicks
This type of landing page has the goal of moving visitors further down your sales funnel and ever closer into conversion by getting them to click through to a different page on your website.
This type of landing page is often used on eCommerce websites to drive sales, but can also encourage subscriptions to services or newsletters.
In affiliate marketing, these landing pages lead to a third-party website owned by the seller, with similar goals, or even just to redirect and add traffic to the affiliate business’s website.
2. Landing pages for lead generation
This type of landing page is used to gather data about potential customers, especially their interests that align with the business.
Landing pages made to generate leads always come with a contact form, intending to get information like the visitor’s name, email address, age, sex, and other relevant information. This information can be used with existing marketing tools to improve targeting efforts and enhance any existing marketing campaign to turn the visitor into a customer, with the bonus of adding them to your email list.
A business will usually offer free products or services to go with the landing page, like free consultations, giveaways, ebooks, and coupons, a free trial to a service, etc. to convince the visitor to fill up the forms.
But before any kind of landing page can work, it has to be carefully designed and written, tailored to achieve its specific goal.
A landing page must have a few factors that can make sure it is not only successful but also effective.
What Makes a Good Landing Page?
1.) You Only Need One Landing Page
A landing page should never be more than one page long. You want a contained landing page because you want a visitor to move along and do so as soon as possible. An extra page is dead weight and is one page too many.
Multiple sections are the way to go if you feel one page is too limiting, but even then, you should reconsider the amount of text if it ends up being too crowded.
You can and should create an effective message with visual techniques. Use headers, sub-headers, buttons, still images, or even GIFs or videos to drive it home. What’s important is that you can encourage them to click.
2.) A Good Landing Page Has a Clear and Concise Copy.
You only have a short amount of time to retain a potential customer’s attention. Make it quick, and make it squeaky clean.
You have to figure out a way to compress information about what you’re offering and why they should be interested in it so that the visitors can understand why they should patronize the business and how they can do so.
3.) Landing Pages MUST Have CTA.
When it comes to text, do not forget the call-to-action. The CTA is usually a short phrase on a button that moves the visitors into the next stage toward conversion.
The CTA is important as it serves to clearly state what people should do next—which is what you want them to do. It’s a road sign meant to remove friction in moving the user down the sales funnel toward a smoother conversion path.
With that in mind, your CTA should always be clear and concise, convincing enough to warrant a click. You want direct language, like “Subscribe Now!”, “Click Here for More”, and while this may deviate from the tone of your content, a persuasive CTA works best.
Use action-oriented words relevant to what want your visitors to accomplish, verb first.
4.) A Good Landing Page Uses Good Buttons.
The button adds a visual touch to your CTA, so you want it to as eye-catching as possible. Buttons are important as, again, it helps signal the visitor about what to do next.
The button should be designed to stand out from the rest of your landing page, isn’t flat, and should imply that it is indeed clickable. A good button can almost seem to have a magnetic pull of its own—a customer’s cursor will instinctively hover over it as they skim the text on the screen.
5.) Landing Pages Use High-Quality Visuals.
What words can say can sometimes be summed up by visual elements. When it comes to a landing page, images and videos can help summarize your message into something more compact and memorable that is easily digestible in one short look.
Videos especially are more engaging and can make high-converting landing pages.
6.) Landing Pages Must be Simple.
While text, design, and visual elements can add a lot to your message’s delivery, there is such a thing as adding too much.
Give your landing page some breathing room—this makes it look cleaner and more professional. Great design composition of landing page features can help direct attention to a location, and with extra space, there is enough room for the CTA to pull attention to itself.
7.) A Good Landing Page Allows Social Media Sharing.
You don’t have to leave all the advertising to yourself. The power of the internet is that information is very often readily accessible and easier to share.
Make it so by adding social media sharing options in your landing page design. This can give your readers the option to spread it to people they know, giving you added exposure.
It’s also a good idea to have a social media account for your own use so you can better reach your audience on different platforms. Encourage your visitors to give you a like or a follow.
8.) A Good Landing Page is Mobile Responsive.
Good landing page designs should be optimized for all types of devices, including mobile phones. Mobile responsive landing pages can help make sure that viewing on the mobile phone will give the exact message and same goal even with a slightly different layout.
9.) Landing Pages Should Maximize Forms.
Forms allow business owners and those involved in affiliate marketing to gather the information that can help them land more clients.
As always, keep your forms concise—only ask for information that can help you in lead generation for a campaign. You can do better to encourage visitors to fill out forms to throw in giveaways, like a coupon or a free trial.
10.) Landing Pages Must Have a Privacy Policy.
If you are gathering personal information through forms, always include a privacy policy on your landing page. Gathering data for lead generation is extremely helpful, but you owe your visitors the reassurance that you won’t be selling their information elsewhere.
11.) A Good Landing Page Says Thanks.
Don’t forget to say thanks after a conversion. More than establishing rapport, it’s common courtesy to express gratitude after they’ve made a purchase or subscribed to a service.
If they’ve inputted their email, they are effectively in your mailing list, and some landing page builders will allow you to automate thank you emails after a customer accomplishes certain actions.
So there you go. Those are the things you need to keep in mind when you build a landing page.
There might be a lot to keep track of, so the next thing to figure out is landing page builders to help you with the landing page set-up.
Landing Page Builders
A landing page builder is simply a tool that allows one to create landing pages and design them freely for business use or affiliate marketing. Some of the best landing page builders even have built-in analytics and marketing tools that keep track of performance.
A website builder can offer some features for creating pages, but a landing page creator is more optimized for building and managing your landing pages.
Why do I need a landing page builder?
Business owners and affiliate marketers will find landing page builders useful because:
- You don’t need coding or design knowledge. You can forego worrying about design to focus on content. Some landing page creation tools have easy-to-use, drag-and-drop editor software that anyone can use to create a landing page.
- Landing page templates. You can easily save time by choosing a premade landing page template. Some landing page templates have also been tried and tested, so you no longer have to figure out which works.
- Mobile responsive page designs. You can optimize your landing page for any device.
- Landing page performance tracking. You can keep tabs on your landing pages with built-in tools or integrated Google Analytics.
- Landing page tools. The best landing page builders allow integrated services for additional plugins, some even assisting in email marketing and lead generation.
- And many more.
Landing pages are just much easier to design, build, and manage with great landing page creators.
What are the characteristics of the best landing page creators?
1. The best landing page builders are easy to use.
From the easy-to-use, drag-and-drop editor and design tools, to landing page templates, a landing page builder makes it easy for one to build pages on their own in a short period of time.
2. Landing page creators must be flexible.
A good landing page builder provides you with the basics but lets you explore options to your liking. It must let you build custom landing pages from premade landing page templates, and add images and videos to your lander with intuitive an drag-and-drop editor.
3. A good landing page creator can integrate tools you are already using.
Your landing page builder should let you integrate your customer relationship management and/or email marketing tool. This can help save you the effort of having to manually add leads each time, in addition to other benefits.
4. Landing page builders should let you create landing pages for any device.
As mentioned earlier, your landing page builder must allow you to optimize your content for any device. Unoptimized pages may be difficult to view on mobile causing you to lose conversions.
5. A landing page builder must have analytics tools.
The best landing page builders have built-in analytics tools or allow the integration of Google Analytics. You can check on a lander to see how it performs and make necessary adjustments to improve, as well as increase the effectiveness of your campaign over time.
6. A good landing page creator has good value for money.
OR it can be entirely free. And no, we don’t just mean a landing page builder with a free trial. Free landing page builders exist. While paid plans might be better overall, a free landing page builder may still have basic features that are good enough to assist you.
If there is a chance that you find free landing page builders lacking but want to have a page creator with good features, there are low-price options for one such as yourself.
How to Create a Free Landing Page in 4 Steps
1. Pick a landing page template.
With a landing page builder, you can build pages easily with no coding skills. Simply find a template that resonates with you, especially one with a format that has been proven to work, and start from that.
2. Add and enhance photos.
Good visuals are a large contributor to what makes high-converting landing pages. Choose photos or videos that set the mood and add value to the design, something that aligns with your message with a wow factor.
3. Make the design fit your brand.
Consistency is key. Even when it comes to visuals, keeping everything aligned helps give your material a sense of cohesion while increasing brand recall.
4. Choose a URL or custom domain.
A URL serves as your landing page address and will serve as one of the first things that visitors will see as the page loads. Use a custom domain to keep your URL clean, concise, and consistent with your branding.
Tips on Finding the Best Affiliate Programs to Promote
As an affiliate marketer, landing pages shouldn’t be the first thing on your mind. You have to figure out what kind of products you should advertise in the first place.
Here are a few tips to keep in mind when looking for an affiliate program.
1. Sell what you love.
Sell a product that you have used and can legitimately recommend. Your readers, especially your subscribed audience, keep track of your content out of trust, so you owe them sincere recommendations.
Promoting products that you are familiar with will also make content creation easier.
2. Focus on your niche.
If you need an idea of what to promote, take a look at your content. Your niche pulls a specific demographic, so picking affiliate products with a target market similar to yours can benefit both parties.
As an affiliate marketer, you want more conversions, and strategic targeting is a way to do that. Advertising something that does not relate to your content is like taking a shot in the dark and hoping for the best.
Learn more: How to Choose a Profitable Niche for Affiliate Marketing
3. Keep track of your competition.
It’s not underhanded to take a look at your competition for their strategies, content, and the products they promote. Because of being in the same niches, chances are the affiliate program is an option for you, too.
4. What does your audience want?
Engage with your audience and get to know them, and conduct surveys. Hear out their demands so you can provide the supply. It’s a great way to turn your visitors and subscribers into conversions!
5. Do your research!
Lastly, check and recheck. Affiliate programs may come to you, but very often you’d have to seek them out on your own. Don’t forget to be thorough when it comes to researching products, as a good way to lose customers is by recommending a product you didn’t thoroughly look into that turns out to be questionable.
The Best Free Landing Page Builders
The best landing page builders provide intuitive options and tools to let you take your pages to the full potential.
Here are a few notable options:
Ucraft
Ucraft offers a free landing page creator good for online content creators and small businesses. It uses a drag-and-drop interface for easier creation, but since it’s primarily a website builder, its free trial version has limited design options for pages.
Carrd
Carrd is a single-page website builder, letting you create pages for purposes ranging from portfolios to landing pages in a short amount of time. Select from a variety of templates, customize with intuitive drag-and-drop software to add text, images, and videos, and publish your free landing page even without signing up. The free trial version, however, does not allow you to create contact forms.
Launchrock
Launchrock is a free landing page builder that claims to be one of the fastest ways to create a new site and get customers. You can create landing pages by specifying the product, choosing templates, and customizing the design and even the domain. It’s less intuitive as a landing page builder but provides more options that aren’t locked behind a priced plan.
Umso
Formerly known as Landen, similarly provides a quick way to create landing pages by initially providing you a questionnaire so your options can be tailored to your needs. The options and templates may be limited, but they are flexible enough and adjust to mobile devices. The free trial for this landing page builder does not offer email service integration, however, so it’s good to keep that in mind when making your selection.
Landbot
Landbot is a unique landing page builder as it lets you create dynamic and interactive landing pages, which is great as an engaging landing page is great for conversions and lead generation.
Landbot lets you generate a landing page with a conversational chatbot that guides your visitor through signing up for a service or purchasing a product. The page creation itself uses a chatbot to guide you throughout the process of building a page, giving you a taste of what it does. Aside from the chatbot feature, there are other customization options that you can use for free. The only catch is the free version limits your chats to 100, but this is likely enough for small affiliate marketers.
Grapedrop
Grapedrop is relatively more difficult to use but makes up for it through deeper flexibility and customization. The landing page builder allows you to manipulate virtually any element on your landing page and provides templates to ease the process. The free trial version, much like most on the list, will retain their branding on your landing page and will limit form submissions to only 10, so it’s good to keep that in mind.
Convertflow
Convertflow is another click-and-drag landing page builder with a variety of options is both customization and hosting. It auto-adjusts to different devices and lets you split up long forms into multiple pages, making it more digestible, less intimidating, and more likely to generate sign-ups. The free version will limit you to 500 unique visitors per month, so this might be a catch depending on the size of your site.
Google Sites
Google Sites is unique from most on this list as its primary purpose is not as a landing page builder, but its tools are good for building a free landing page useful for generating leads. You can use Google Forms to build a form and implement it in Google Sites. What’s more, Google Sites can allow you to easily integrate other Google products all for free. Using this method is not as easy as the other options, however, and you may find it lacking compared to more specialized page builders.
The Bottom Line
The sales funnel is a winding, bumpy road, and it’s easy to lose customers along the way before they can ever patronize an affiliate product. Landing pages smoothen this process by providing a pitstop, signboard, and billboard all in one to make sure it’s easier for you to seal the deal.
With coding knowledge, you can make a landing page on your own, but using a landing page builder makes the process of creating and managing these landing pages easier. They can provide templates with proven performance, customization, and often multiple tool integration, and some of them even for free.
There are multiple options, and even a free landing page builder has tools that make it usable despite restrictions. But keep in mind that eventually, especially as you grow, these restrictions might no longer be insignificant. Paid versions will always be more intuitive, useful, and restriction-free.
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