A landing page is a standalone page designed for a specific marketing campaign, such as to capture leads or warm up potential customers to the product being sold. Dedicated landing pages should have no global navigation and all links that don‘t represent the conversion goal should be removed. Landing pages are used to collect personal information or “warm up” prospects before pushing them deeper into the sales funnel. Message match is the ability of the landing page to reinforce the messaging presented on the link that was clicked.
1. What is a landing page
A landing page can be any page that someone lands on after clicking on an online marketing call-to-action. Dedicated, promotion-specific landing pages are what we’ll be focusing on. Dedicated landing pages are standalone pages that are designed for a specific marketing campaign.
By standalone it has no ties to your website, like global navigation. In essence it floats alone, only accessible from the link you’re providing in your marketing content (the call-to-action in an email for example).
The purpose of a landing page falls is to capture leads that enable you to market to people in the future, or to “warm up” potential customers to the product you are trying to sell to them before sending them further into your sales funnel.
This creates the need for two types of landing page – a lead generation page and a click-through page.
Lead generation landing pages The most valuable piece of information you can get from a lead gen page is someone’s email address – which gives you permission to continue talking/marketing to them. Once you have a lead’s permission, you then try to convert them into a customer by combining the two most powerful 1-to-1 communication tools a marketer has – email and landing pages.
Click-through landing pages Click-through pages are designed as a conduit between a marketing ad and it’s final destination. The goal of a click-through page is to “warm-up” the visitor to the product/service you are trying to sell. Commonly used for ecommerce, click-through pages provide enough information to inform the buyer, making them ready to purchase, before pushing them further down the funnel – probably to a shopping cart or checkout. Landing pages live separately from your website and are designed to only receive campaign traffic. As we’ll see, this separation allows them to be focused on a single objective and makes analytics, reporting & testing a simpler task.
2. Dedicated landing pages vs. homepages If you compare a homepage vs. a landing page you can see why landing pages are so important to your marketing’s success. Your homepage is designed with a more general purpose in mind. It speaks to your overall brand and corporate values and is typically loaded with links and navigation to other areas of your site. It’s designed to encourage exploration. 
Your landing pages are designed for one purpose only. Think of the links on your page as leaks. Each link on your page that doesn’t represent your conversion goal is a distraction that will dilute your message and reduce your conversion rate. Homepage – Consider a homepage which contains over 60 links. Landing Page – It has only one call-to-action. Perfect.
It’s immediately clear what you are supposed to do on this page, complete the form to download the data sheet. Landing pages should have all navigation and extra links removed so there is only a single action for your visitors to take. Click your call-to-action.
3. What are landing pages used for? To collect personal information (generate leads) in exchange for: Consultation services or booking meetings for someone to request your time or services. or “Warming” prospects up to your offering before you push them deeper into your sales funnel. Never start a campaign without a landing page. And make it pretty!
4. The power of message match Message match is an essential part of why landing pages can be so successful. Message match is the ability of your landing page to reinforce the messaging presented on the link that was clicked to reach the page. Most visitors are impatient and will leave your page within a few seconds of arrival if you don’t reinforce their intent with a matching headline and purpose.
