What the heck is a landing page, and why do I need one? A landing page is a web page that is designed to motivate a specific audience to visit your website. The link to this page is usually presented in direct mail, emails, Facebook advertising campaigns, pay-per-click ads or social media posts. Basically, your landing page should get visitors to subscribe, fill out a form or contact your business.

So, what’s the difference between your website and your landing page? Well, even though they both generate leads for your business, your website should be designed to provide details, improve your business’ online visibility and display case studies. A business website, that is well designed, directs your visitors to take certain actions.

Your landing page, on the other hand, is designed for a for one specific audience. The benefits it brings makes them perfect for driving leads. Here are 7 things a landing page can do for your business.

1. Providing Direct Support For Your Business’ Goals

Researching a fresh niche? Promoting a recently launched product or service? Just need more customers? How about increasing your sales? That’s where a landing page comes in. Whatever the goal your business needs – landing pages are the way to go. They can be targeted to a specific set of people and you can measure how successful you are in achieving your that goal.

When we say specific, we mean nitty gritty specific, the kind of specific that you can’t design a website for. The actions you can lead people to take include providing contact information, subscribing to your newsletter, purchasing, requesting consultations, or signing up for a mailing list.

2. Sending Your Conversions Through The Roof

In the same way that your website can move a visitor to perform a certain action, so can your landing page. Your landing page pushes a call to action. It defines an action that you want your visitors to take and presents it in the easiest way possible. Your business benefits from more conversions, since conversion generally leads to sales and sales means more cash for the business.

3. Obtain Well-needed Insight and Data

Linking a landing page to a particular action, source, content, or campaign can show you the channel that generates the most leads, the offers and topics that interest your audience most or the best performing campaigns. You can track your visitors behavior. This allows you to scale your target market, as well as your campaign strategies, making you more effective.

Implementing A/B testing also helps gather more insight. You can use several landing pages over a period and determine the effectiveness of each. They need not be drastically different. You could possibly use a different video, different text, layout, colors or even vocabulary. In this way, you will see what works for your business and what doesn’t.

4. Higher Returns On Investment In Paid Search Campaigns

Paid search campaigns depend on click through rates. What better way to increase your click-through rates, than with a landing page? For instance, let’s say your business is a shows in search results when an individual searches for “kitchen design” in a search engine. You could direct them to your website’s homepage or another webpage within. However, your homepage gets individuals to your site. A landing page quickly turn that visitor into a qualified leads.

When you have a landing page designed particularly for a certain ad campaign, it will direct visitors to one webpage. This page will show them what they are interested in, making it more likely for them to contact your business or complete your form, and voila a new lead. In view of the fact that the user has found exactly what he/she is searching for, and the landing page takes them closer to their ultimate goal, there is an increased likelihood of the visitor clicking that link and going through the steps.

Compare the above, to being directed to a webpage that has general information that may not even present a clear path to the information that you desire. Ah! Other links may divert your visitors’ attention or they may get overwhelmed by the information, reducing the likelihood of them contacting your business and becoming a lead.

5. A Lengthier Email List

If your landing page is meant to generate leads, that is, get you form submissions or phone calls, it may have a form, or a link to one that collects the visitor’s company, email address, name and/or telephone number. A form that requests an email helps to grow your mailing list.

Upon completion of the form (or somewhere in it), you can have a button or checkbox that allows the person to indicate whether they would like to get offers and emails from your business and also what kind. Then, you add the persons, who have indicated, to your list for announcements, news, promotions, and sales (linked to other landing pages) to make sure that your business is informative and current.

6. Increased Credibility

Content and elements on a landing page can be optimized to achieve the particular objective or task or to direct the user in the path that it is geared towards. Setting a clear course of action for your users and assisting them on that path lets them see that you understand their problem and you have spent time thinking about and designing the most suitable solution for them.

If that isn’t enough, show them what other people have to say. Testimonials on your landing page about the focus service or product are an excellent way to go. Your customers are sure to feel more secure knowing that your solution has worked for real people with real problems, similar to their own.

7. Everybody Knows Your Brand

Ensure that your landing page has consistent branding. That way people readily recognize your brand when they see it. The landing page should look like something they have seen before that is associated with your brand whether the content, feel, layout, look or style.

It should especially resemble the page that it links to. This benefits you by ensuring that user engagement opportunities with your brand are increased. Their familiarity with your brand grows. This is especially important in light of the tendency for clients to purchase products or use services from businesses they know or have seen on a regular basis. Ensure that they remember your business.

To top it all off, landing pages are designed to influence user actions with regards to your business’ goals. They assist with improving your customer relationships, how successful your marketing campaigns are and how much you know about the kind of people your business attracts. Landing pages are for a developed for a particular target audience, and to capture them and turn them into a lead.

Definitely test out a landing page in your next marketing campaign and see the results!

Many small business owners at some point in the past 10 years, sincerely believed that they did not need to marketonline. Nowadays, most of those small business owners have given in and gotten a website at the very least but that is just about it. Do they give thought to search engine optimization? What about branding or even offering a platform for e-commerce. How about using social media to engage customers?

“Traditional” business owners may see these things as fads or time wasting pursuits. True, these things do require a bit of time, money and effort. However, the professional and more up-to-date marketer sees the obvious benefits. Why though do views differ when it comes on to online marketing? Is it really necessary for small businesses in this day and age, or is it possible for small businesses to stay afloat and thrive minus the online strategy?

Why views differ?
There are a plethora of reasons cited by traditional business owners to support their claim that online marketing is not necessary or doesn’t really add much. Not all business owners who don’t see the need to market online have the same reasons.To be fair, some of the supporting points they raise bear merit, but others can be easily set aside when the facts are carefully considered.

• All my customers are offline.

Businesses that gain their customers through networkingandexisting partnerships often believe and adhere to this statement. While this is true, they fail to consider the fact that the reach of their existing marketing strategy would have to be offline if they are marketing offline.Putting things into perspective, of the 5 billion searches on Google daily and the excess of 1 billion active users of Facebook, even a few must have some interest in your business.

• My business doesn’tneed more customers.

This reasoning is a bit difficult to argue with. We all know that thereis always room for improvement. True, you may not want to have the added responsibility that goes with expanding your business. It’s great if the customer base you have is satisfactory and profitability is at the point where youhavenoreal interest in growth. However, you need to be sure that you can depend on those customers to support you in the long run.

• Marketing onlineisn’t effective for my business.

If you have attempted marketing online before and were not successful or not as successful as you expected, that doesnot mean that marketing is the problem. Rather, the issue could lie in how it was designed or executed. Don’t for once think it is a small business thing, it happens even to the best. What you need to do, is to improve your strategy,pursue new channels, secure new partners, broaden or better focus your target and increase the accuracy of the data you use.

• Online marketing is a fad

Online marketing is definitely not short-lived. Types of marketing online or off can be fads. However, most of the established fields of online marketing have survived for over a decade. Instead of fading away entirely, they may change their form. That still is no excuse to avoid joining in to get your share of the patronage.

•Online marketing is too costly. The approach that we take to marketing may cause us to see it as another expense. However, marketing is an investment. If you do it properly, you will get back way more than you put in.

• I don’t understand it. Not understanding online marketing now doesn’t mean you won’t ever understand it. Research is so much easier with ready Internet access and online communities that can and willassist you to understand. Otherwise, you can hire an agency orcontractorto provide designing, execution, and management services with regards to your campaign.

Having broken down most common objections, here’s why you need to jump into online marketing sooner rather than later.

Consumers Expect You To Market Online.

Generally, when we first hear of a business, most of us will immediately search the internet for a social media page orwebsite to either learn more or find out if such a business really exists. Stopping in for a visit doesn’t cross our minds. Neither does searching a phone book (unless it’s online or an app of course).By default we and by extension, people expect that you to have a website; if you don’t, this casts doubt on your legitimacy as a business or you get relegated to the bottom of their list of available options.

Bottom line: Consumers expect to find you at least mentioned somewhere. Reviews and listings in online directories are good. A search engine optimized website and blog are even better. Couple that with a Facebook page and pretty soon you’ll be thinking e-commerce.

Online Marketing is Always Available

Continuing on the above point, let’s say persons were willing to call your business or even stop for a visit. Unless you are a 24-hour business, you can’t always be available. That’s where your online presence picks up. Customers can still be engaged and get some questions answered while you remain undisturbed. If they forget to visit your physical location, let’s say, to find out the products you offer, your online marketing strategy can do that for you wherever they are at whatever time they want to know.

Keeping Up With or Staying Ahead of Your Competition

Not every business owner will share your reluctance to develop and execute an online marketing strategy.Who knows if your competitors aren’t capturing your more tech-savvy customers?What about “robbing” you of your prospective customers and giving a better first impression to just about anyone in search of businesses like yours in yourlocality. If they already have, every day you delay an online marketing strategy of your own is one day for them to increase their lead.

Rate of Change

Change and trends are usually the biggest factors in determining what will work. Technology is readily accessible and it is used without a second thought. Reliance on online services and stores is also on the rise. Dependence on the Internet increases with its speed and the improvements on mobile devices and dependence on physical structuresare on the decline.Consequently, as time goes by, online marketing’s importance increases consistently. You may not see it now but what of next year. Remember this investment is long-term.

At the end of reading this, you may still not think you need online marketing and you may be right.If you don’t have any kind of online marketing going, you are blocking your potential and maybe even setting yourself up for collapse in the future. Your business may be doing well without an online presence; this doesnot necessarily mean that you are better off. You won’t regret your attempts at online marketing.

Most business owners put their focus on usability and a good design when getting their website started. They put emphasis on generating web traffic, marketing their site through various means like social network campaigning and cold emails. While these are important there are a few other things to consider.

For one, you want to convert. That means you want visitors to your site to take some sort of action. This is for more reasons than one. All your efforts are useless if the persons visiting your site don’t make a purchase, sign up or subscribe to your mailing list. Not only that but they increase your website’s bounce rate which lowers your SEO ranking causing search engines to think that it is not relevant to the keywords that itis indexed for.

When you are doing a website for your start-up you can’t spread yourself thin applying every piece of advice that you get. There are some things that you can’t afford to overlook. Here are 5 of such. You can always research and at to the list.

1. Ensure your value proposition is communicated conciselyand clearly

At the top of your priority list of things to communicate is the list of productsand/or services that youoffer or will be offering. This information should be communicated upon visitors entering your site. You may choose to use a short title that isa simple statement with a subtitle to give more details.You may favor usingvideosorpictures,just keep them to the point and your message clear. A value proposition is by no means a slogan.It basically sums up the problem you offer a solution to, the way you are able to achieve it and why they should choose you.

Youalso need to draw attention to your value proposition.From time to time you may want to change the presentation style, although the statement may remain the same.

2. Have a clear call to action

The Call To Action is theimage,button, or link that you want your visitors to click to be well on their way to becoming a customer. For eCommerce sites, the checkout or add to cart button would be the call to action. For marketing or service sites,the subscribe or sign-up button or linkwould be the most likely choice.In the early stages of your startup and for your blog the Call to Action would also be for them to subscribe to your mailing list. The call to action needs tostand out, be easily identifiable and located in different sections of your website.

Your choice of images,text, and videos used on the website should be in support of your value proposition and move your visitors totake your desired action.

3. Have good web design and give users a great experience

It should be a pleasure for users to interact with your site, not only because of the beautiful things you have filled it with but, also because of the way your site works. The aesthetics should be on point but your site structure should be easy to follow and navigation should be easy as well. You need your visitors to understand and believe the value proposition that you have sold them. Youalsoneed to build credibility and get users to trust you and if everything works and feels good, you will speak to at least 75% of your website’s visitors.

4. Complete contact information

We tend to overlook the value of this until we are in a bind, need to get in touch with a business and we can’t seem to find their number or email address listed anywhere. Nearly all visitors may need to see your contact information at some point in time and even if they don’t need it, some will notice that it is not there. When your contact information is on your site, this helps your customers to see that you are interested in them and helping them solve any problems they may have.

You may want to consider having a separate contact page or includingaddresses,email,links to social media profilesandphone numbers in the footer throughout the site.

5. Clear, convincing and well-written texts

A good choice of words,correct grammarandaccurate spelling are vital. The textual content on your site that you use to sell your service or product is termed copy. They should put the meat on the bones of your value proposition. In the end, you really are trying to influence the visitor to decide to purchase from you. You may want to engage the services of a professional,experienced copywriterto tailor your content to suit your target audienceand businesstype.

As you grow, you can focus on more things. These are pretty much the bare essentials; what you need to start with. Anexcellent SEO strategy is important, but it is most effective, when you get the resulting traffic on your website, engage the visitors and use the means at your disposal to convince them to become a customer or at least consider it.

One of the most exciting experiences is planning your own venture and seeing it come to fruition. After you have gotten it off the ground, you recognize the importance of marketing. At which point, you may begin to wonder about the best way to reach the masses, drive results in your business, make your business resonate and being wildly successful, fulfilling your dreams on a very small budget?

Consider why start-ups need to be marketed. Start-ups are designed to create solutions to problems their users face. In order to connect with the right users, those who want to utilize your services or products, you need to market personally to them.A start-up needs its own brand identity in this competitive and fast-pacedworld sooner rather than lateras slow growth can prove damaging.

Then too there is traditional marketing. You may be wondering why we recommend usingdigital marketing as opposed to traditional marketing methods. The first and most important factor at this point is cost. You are able to have a wider reach and focus on those who are most likely to use your services without spending large amounts. This targeting prevents wastage and you are able to make digital marketing work on almost any budget.

How though can digital marketing be of assistance to you? Digital marketing helps increase awareness of and positions your business and brand. You are able to build a steady stream of trafficand get the first few users. Marketing digitally also drivesonline salesandleads.

Although there are budget and possibly time constraints within a start-up, they must have a few tools or techniques that can be leveraged at a minimal cost. Here are a few of these tools and how your business cango about making use of them.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Search engine optimization is cost-effective and provides a way to measure benefits that are for the long-term. The organic traffic (that is visitors to your site that are not directed there through paid means) and overall visibility of your site increases, the higher your SEO ranking is. A high SEO ranking builds your business’ credibility, is free branding and is able to work for you 24/7.

To increase your SEO ranking
*Design your site to be responsive (mobile friendly) and secure. This is of utmost necessity if you are engaging in e-commerce on the site.
* Make sure that all your pages are functional.
* Ensure that you use appropriate tags, headers, and descriptions. You may also want to do this so it is easier for users with special needs to make use of your site.
* Design your pages to load quickly. Pages to focus on would beyour contact page and any others which you anticipate high traffic for.
* Ensure that your site content is relevant, memorable and a talking point. That way users will talk about your site.

Content marketing – Creating and sharing materialthat stimulates interest in your products and services increases traffic, gets you more leads, and increases awareness of your brand. It also gives a good first impression and forms the basis for great relationships with potentialand current clients.

To make your content marketing more effective
*Publish relevant, informative and engaging content regularly.
* Come up with original ways to make your sales propositions.
* Start a blog, write stories, and collaborate with other publishersto publish your content and increase your market.
* Include user stories in your write-ups.

Social media marketing – Social media marketing is a very dynamic form of marketing. It can pull users in and engage them. It provides you with statistics and even detailed feedback straight from your customers in real time. It is cost-effective and helps give your start-up a voice. Not every social media platform is suited to every business or at least what you want to accomplish. Choose a platform in line with your business and your desired outcome. You can choose from Facebook, Google Plus, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest,Tumblr, andTwitter.

What to do on social media platforms
* Think of why someone would join your community or want to follow you and post along that line.
* Don’t be anxious to put lots of content on at once. Post your first few pieces of content and watch the feedback.
* Respond to chat in a timely manner.
* Use features such as groups and add-ons effectively.

Email marketing – Email marketing is simple. It offers a cost-effective,and personal strategy that can be tailor madeand measured. It has been proven to generate high returns on investment (ROI). Email facilitatescommunication with any size audience. Thereareabout three email user accounts for allTwitter andFacebook user accounts combined.

Getting emailmarketing started
* Choose an email marketing service provider. You could try a do-it-yourself platform. Amazon SES,Aweber, Constant Contact andMailChimp are a few.
* Set up a calendar.
*Ensure that you are not always selling. Try to make most of the emails about free services.

Growth hacking – This is an innovative, low cost and relatively new alternative to marketingtraditionally. Your sole focus will be growth and everything you do will be geared towards that.

How to go about it
* Set up referral programs.
* Go with exclusivity.
* Offer a free service or product.
* Offer something that makes your product go viral.
Get the handle on these tools and techniques and not only experience the excitement of starting right but also the exhilaration of soaring successfully.

Growing a small business starts with ensuring that you build strong relationships right there in your locality. It is imperative that your prospective clients get an excellent first impression of you, so they will like and trust you.

The person or company a consumer chooses to purchase from is usually more than just an afterthought. Most people generally research a business that they plan to buy from. Your online presence, like a physical storefront, creates an impression in the minds of your potential clients. Unfortunately, many small businesses, don’t invest a lot of time into increasing their online visibility.

Research may turn up a few online reviews on sites such as Yelp. However, most times their businesses are not listed with Google My Business, their Facebook page is almost non-existent and often times they don’t even have a website.

Growing a small business starts with ensuring that you build strong relationships right there in your locality. It is imperative that your prospective clients get an excellent first impression of you, so they will like and trust you.

Below are a few of the keys to creating a local website to aid the growth of and help your small business flourish.

Draw attention to your contact information

The contact information of the business should be located that customers are likely to see it, whether they are looking for it or not. When your contact information is visible in more than one place on your site creates the impression that you are open and readily accessible, should your customers require information or assistance. When persons are making purchase decisions, they are assured in knowing that you are available if they need anything.

Your readiness to be contacted, also serves as a form of quality assurance. If you are not willing to share your direct contact information you create an impression of doubt about the legitimacy of your business in the minds of your customers.

The extra effort that you put in to be accessible is also recognized and rewarded by search engines. Search engines like Google have been seen to give a small boost to those businesses with their contact information placed on the homepage, especially when that same contact information is also visible on online directories.

Remember your target market

When building your site, you need to bear in mind who you are making it for. When purchasing your service or product, your customers will have to navigate through your pages, images, and choice of words.

Whether you are selling cars to the general public, packaging material to a local manufacturer or childcare products to parents, you have knowledge of your products, business, and jargon that your prospective client likely does not. If you immediately jump into talking about the pistons on an engine to the general public, you will lose them.

True, using the jargon does make it seem like you know what you are doing. At the same time, the customer really does not need all that information to come to an informed decision.

When your prospective client visits your website, they would like help to solve their problem. They have placed their confidence in your ability to take the information that they have provided you with and provide a solution that is tailored to them with the personal touch small businesses are noted for.

You also need to think about how your site is designed and the way in which your users will experience it. Be sure to factor in the impression that the website creates on your target market when designing with your locality in mind.

Avoid a site that creates the impression of a corporate level business as individuals may be intimidated or come to the conclusion that you are high priced. Instead, ensure that the language and funnel used moves prospects along to the section of the site that they need so they can obtain the information to deal with the problem facing them.

Cater to mobile devices

With the ever increasing pace of life, likely, a large number of your clients will be viewing your site on the go. Mobile devices are the media of choice to do this. Keeping this in mind when designing your site will mean that it will be responsive; that is changing the content to allow ease of reading and navigating minus the extra scrolling and resizing on any device that they use.

Asking your prospective clients to zoom in and out of pages and interact with tiny navigation buttons and links may be asking them to find some other business that is more convenient.

To keep your expense and effort within reason and practicality, you need to think about what would be most important to a client that chooses to view and interact with your site using a mobile device.

If you are a local restaurant, mobile users of your site would not need such information as your company history or your vacancies on the fly. However, they would likely need to information on your specials and general menu. Contact information is also among the things that any site needs to have readily available to mobile users.

Small and medium-sized businesses are lagging behind where mobile websites are concerned with nearly 95% not having a mobile platform. This represents an area where SMBs can get ahead and improve to stimulate growth and foster trust.

Keep your site content fresh

A lot of the online marketing done by small businesses is like a nine-day wonder. The enthusiasm to keep the website and social media page content fresh can wane after a while. Allowing the website design and language to become stale creates the impression of a business that is dated and behind time.

Let people see what working with you will be like. You want to create the image of being established and professional however you also want your prospects to see that you are able to relate to their problems and why it matters to them.

Better than any jargon, maintaining fresh web content relating to the problem(s) that your prospects face, helps distinguish your business as having the expertise and being able to furnish solutions.

When they see you address the problem, they become aware that they have access to resources locally to answer questions or provide some other assistance.

You are also able to use your web content on social media. Based on your prospects’ interactions, you can determine what is best to drive your ads. You may also be able to get a mailing list or just create a repository for those persons who need just need information.

Keeping your site fresh requires effort but it keeps your business current and is crucial to growing a local business.

In conclusion

There are many other things that you can factor into your website design. However, this list represents a good starting point on the essentials when getting your website designed. When hiring a website developer, these should be high on the priority list of keys to your website’s success.