You have all the prerequisites for selling online: you got your products, signed up with Google Adsense or other affiliate marketing schemes and you have already prepared your ad copy and posted it in your affiliate sites. You are ready to become the next online millionaire. But is there something you forgot? Probably not, but have you prepared your landing pages for your business?
What Is A Landing Page?
A landing page is simply that page on your web site which users see first, either when entering your site or when opening a particular part of it. In affiliate marketing, this is the specific page you want potential customers to be directed to immediately after clicking through on your ad.
More often than not, all the other pages on a website are quite similar to it, with common examples being e-commerce sites. Others even use their website’s homepage as a landing page. Are they making a mistake, or should you do likewise?
How Powerful can a Dedicated Landing Page be?
While pointing your web traffic toward your home page is perfectly standard, you could do much better by giving your web visitors a specific landing page. Here are three reasons why a landing page is important and also why it pays to create a good page, rather than a just fine one.
Reason 1: It’s All About Conversions
When you’re into the business of marketing affiliate-endorsed programs on the web, it’s nearly impossible that your merchant doesn’t pay a commission on a per-click basis. If at all a visitor clicks on the ad they’re seeing at a site, your buy; the visitor is then forwarded to your landing page, and you pay the affiliate for their service. In any case, the act of a visitor to your site buying a product is the main criterion of earning through a merchant scheme.
If no such conversion is occurred, and more people are getting directed to your site, then you keep on losing more and more money. The only way that you can make sure that money is not lost, by any means whatsoever is by conversion and conversion only.
In case your ad does not lead to a proper landing page, it means it’s like advertising with a product but no store to sell it. That’s not going to help much while having an enticing ad, but there isn’t any apparent way that visitors can purchase the product. Therefore, landing pages are very important in turning ad clicks into actual sales.
Reason 2: Homepage or Other Pages Aren’t Enough
The number one mistake that many people do is use their website’s homepage, or at best another page within the site like a “contact us,” as the landing page for the PPC ad. Homepages do so much and usually have plenty of links that can be distracting.
The same off-page focus may be debatable here about contact or product pages. For any affiliate program to take off, the landing page should be very specific with regards to the content and select keywords of the PPC ad and be directly related to the action you need the visitor to make, which could involve buying your product or actually just obtaining lead information.
Conclusion
If you’ve joined an affiliate marketing program to save on advertising expenses and bring in better returns, yet you don’t have any kind of landing page in place, then you might be relentlessly spending without getting much back in return. If you do not have a landing page for your ads, then you had better create one now. And at that, you need to have a great landing page, not just any landing page.
