Do Your Landing Pages Hit the Target?

Courtesy of Bogdan Suditu (flickr)

Like any other marketing strategy, building and exploiting landing pages effectively requires forethought and planning.  It’s not necessarily as simple as it might seem at first blush.

As a matter of fact, before we can determine whether or not your landing pages are hitting the target, we need to establish exactly what the target is.

What is the target?

A landing page is a specialized web page designed and built for one purpose, and one purpose only: to capture organic search traffic based around a small handful of keywords or phrases.

So, the target of a landing page is drawing visitors to your website.  More specifically, drawing visitors who have already proven themselves to be interested in the subject discussed on your landing page.

This is an important distinction because it’s theoretically possible to create a landing page that is stuffed with keywords and phrases that have little or nothing to do with the actual product, service or subject matter you’re trying to discuss.  And because search engines are essentially smart robots, these types of sites may succeed to some extent in drawing visitors.  But they’re not going to succeed in satisfying those visitors or keeping them around.  They’re just going to upset them.

So the target hasn’t really been hit.

The same kind of result can come from trying to focus a landing page on too much.  If the subject is too broad or too varied, it may effectively bring in visitors that are interested in something on the page, but they’re not likely to find what they’re looking for in all that mass of information.

Once again, the target hasn’t been hit.

So, to restate the target, a landing page is designed and written to draw in visitors who are interested in the specific topic discussed on the page.

Now let’s discuss hitting that target!

How to Build a Targeted Landing Page

Focus is obviously the key.

Before you start writing, think hard about the subject matter and your intended audience.  You need to make sure your topic is effectively focused.  Ask yourself:

• What do you want them to know about the topic?
• Why do you want them to know it?
• What do they likely know already?
• If you were speaking to them face-to-face, what kinds of questions are they likely to ask?

Based on your answers, consider the topic you’re hoping to share and make sure it’s focused enough to easily cover in a few paragraphs at most.  This will help you narrow your topic down effectively, likely resulting in multiple landing page ideas.

As a practical example, let’s say an auto mechanic and blogger hoping to draw visitors to his blog and hopefully sell some of them his e-book, “Changing Oil for Fun and Profit” decides to build a landing page.  Based on the questions above, he answers as follows:

• Changing oil is easy on most vehicles.  Anyone can do it.  Most people don’t enjoy it, so they’re willing to pay someone else.
• I enjoy doing it.  I’ve made a living at it for years.  I’d like to see others make a living at it by reading my book.
• They know oil needs to be changed.  Some have already done it themselves.
• Is it really possible to make a living changing oil?  What do I need to know to change oil on any vehicle?

Based on these answers, the blogger should be able to instantly realize that 99% of what he discusses on his blog (tune-ups, tire pressure, automotive computer diagnostics, body repair,) have no place whatsoever on this landing page.  Even if he’s the world’s leading expert on installing taillights, his target audience – potential purchasers of an e-book about changing oil – is ever going to find him because they searched for a taillight installation expert.

In addition, he may realize through this process that men and women may react to his information a little bit differently.  Right or wrong, a lot of men feel like they already know this information, while a lot of women may not even be interested, at least initially, in the idea of changing oil.

In that case, he may decide it’s best to create two similar landing pages that focus on the male and female perspectives.

Now, you can start researching keywords and phrases that are currently being used to obtain information similar to yours.  Find a small handful of words or phrases that seem to effectively merge the subject you’ve narrowed down with the target audience you are hoping to draw.

Finally, write the landing page copy.  Use the keywords and phrases naturally and seamlessly in the headline, the subheads, the opening sentences of the opening paragraphs, and peppered liberally (but naturally) throughout.  Make sure it doesn’t run too long.  Use subheads and bulleted lists to break it up and help people find what they came for.

And most importantly, give them something to DO now that they’ve found you!  Let them subscribe for more information, link to your blog if it’s appropriate, pitch your product or service in a straight-forward but non-pushy way.  You’ve got a targeted audience taking in exactly what they asked for.  Don’t leave them hanging!

Finally, your landing page has hit the target!