Landing pages and websites often confuses newer digital marketers and entrepreneurs, especially when starting to use paid ads.
Here’s the main difference: Landing pages are focused on conversion.
This focus on conversion allows landing pages to have higher conversion rates than websites or homepages.
Because the conversion rates are so high, landing pages have become the go to for paid ads.
When to use a website homepage
A website homepage is mainly for visitors who are just exploring and learning more about your brand or business.
Many times, because there’s not just one way for a person to get to your homepage, people from all different levels of familiarity with your business are going to be seeing your homepage and they’re going to want to get to different places on your website.
This broad spectrum of visitor intent means that you need to have a very general page that isn’t speaking to just one visitor intent.
All of this generatlization means one thing, distraction, and while this is great for someone who just stumbles onto your website and wants to explore, it doesn’t get the best results from your marketing.
When to use a landing page
As I mentioned earlier, landing pages are much more focused than a website homepage. Here’s why that focus is so important for your business to get more leads, sales and customers!
Landing pages are only about one single call to action, this focus means that visitors can’t be easily distracted by other things on the page, like with a homepage. This lack of distraction means they are actually paying attention to the copy you have on the page and as a result, you end up with higher conversion rates.
Whether you’re trying to get more leads or more sales, those higher conversion rates mean you’re spending less on advertising to get the same amount of results!
What kind of landing page should I use?
There’s many different types of landing pages you can use, and it varies a little bit by your business and what your goals are…
BUT, there’s two types of landing pages that work for pretty much every business: a squeeze page and a sales page.
In short a squeeze page is a landing page that is used to get visitor email addresses, turning them into leads. People don’t just go around handing out their email addresses, so a lead magnet is often used as something valuable to give to the visitor in exchange for their email.
Squeeze pages are best for people who are new to your business and haven’t had a chance to interact with your business before OR someone who hasn’t purchased anything from your business in a while.
A sales page is just a page where you are trying to sell something. Generally, it is a little different than a product page, like you might see in an ecommerce store, though. A sales page has actual sales copy on it that is trying to sell the person on buying the product (like a sales person in writing).
This subtle difference helps to show visitors, especially ones who are new to your business, the value they’ll receive from using your product.
This type of landing page works with both new and old customers and can be used in a variety of situations.
Where the power of landing pages really takes off is when you use one in a sales funnel. Using a sales funnel allows you to have a squeeze page to collect visitor emails and then send them over to a sales page to immediately try to turn those leads into customers. The best sales funnels can even cover the cost of advertising upfront so your business essentially gets FREE LEADS!
If you want to learn more about making high converting landing pages, grab a free copy of my report, 5 Keys To More Leads down below:
