Over the last year I have fallen in love with landing pages. They have changed the way I do business and more importantly the way I generate subscribers and clients from my blogs. I have generated thousands of subscribers for my first email list in only nine months using landing pages.
But I often get the question “what is a landing page and why do I need one if I already have a website?”
Good question. First let’s look at the differences between a website and a landing page.
Basics
First a website is a bunch of different pages that make up your site. These often include blog posts, about pages, product pages, testimonials, blog posts, contact pages, etc.
A landing page is one single page on your blog.
Goal
The goal of a blog is to educate your visitors through your blog posts. Your blog also lets visitors get to know more about you and about the services and products you offer.
The goal of a landing page is to convert a blog visitor into an email subscriber. Why do you want email subscribers? Because email subscribers are loyal, will visit your blog and be the first to purchase your products and courses.
Focus
A blog is general and the target market is pretty generic. For example if you are running a blog that talks about parenting, saving money and blogging you have a lot of things to focus on.
A landing page is specific. A landing page is focused on one niche like paying off debt or getting kids to sleep at night. The entire page is geared towards one target market or idea.
Structure
A website is a group of pages under one domain name.
A landing page is a part of the main website but looks different from the other pages on a website. A landing page will not have a navigation menu or a sidebar. It won’t have the distracting items that will be on the main website pages.
Why do I need a landing page?
The next question I get is why do you need a landing page if you have a blog? The reason for this is simple. A blog alone will not give you as many email subscribers as a landing page.
I know that seems hard to believe because on a blog you are speaking to everyone. That reason alone should mean more leads. But that isn’t the case. A dedicated landing page will give you many more leads than your blog. Why is that? I think there are three reasons why this is true.
1. Direct Attention
When someone lands on your blog they click a few pages and then move to the next blog. Why is this? Because you aren’t giving them a reason to stay. You aren’t telling them what to do. They click on the posts they want to read and then leave. They aren’t drawn to a special opt-in offer so they leave without giving you their email address.
Research says that we have the attention span of a goldfish. That’s about three seconds long. You have three seconds to capture someone’s attention when they visit your blog. That’s pretty hard to do.
Instead with a landing page you have the opportunity to catch their attention immediately. You do this by creating an attention grabbing headline. A headline that speaks to their issue and the problem they are facing. Right away you solve the goldfish attention problem. Your headline draws them in and gives them a reason to keep reading. It’s this small action that leads to visitors filling out your email form.
2. Niching down is rare
Most bloggers want to capture every email subscriber that they can. I get it– so do I! But I also know that the more I cater to specific niches in the blogging world, the more email subscribers I will get. Most bloggers worry that if they don’t try to capture everyone they won’t capture anyone.
But the good news is that you will actually get more leads by targeting one market. Why is that? Let’s say you run a blog about parenting, getting out of debt and starting a blog. Well you will have parents that visit your site that don’t care about starting a blog. You will have bloggers that love your blogging tips but aren’t interested in personal finance.
So if you have an opt-in that is about parenting, the bloggers won’t sign up for it an vice versa. Instead you should have a landing page for parents, one for bloggers and one for personal finance. If they land on a page that is just for them they feel compelled to find out more.
Plus people are busier than ever. They don’t have time to search the internet to find answers to their questions. If you can give them all the answers and wrap it up in a nice guide they will give you their email address.
3. Look like a hero
When someone visits your blog do they have a reason to subscribe to your email list? More than just “Sign up for my email list to get blog updates!” People aren’t going to find value in that. Sure they like your blog, but we guard our email addresses with our life. We need to know if we hand them over there is value on the other end.
Landing pages are great because you provide immediate value to your niche. You solve one specific problem for one niche. You create an opt-in offer geared towards first time parents or new bloggers. You speak to them, you speak their language. You find out what their pressing issues are and you write a solution. When you do that you become their hero. You solve their problem and they trust you. They are happy to give you their email address in exchange for this information.
A Common Fear
Unfortunately most bloggers won’t take my advice. They won’t create landing pages for one niche. The main reason for this is fear of losing out on leads. Fear of not capturing all the people that visit their website. Fear of alienating potential followers by not including them on the landing page.
If this is you, I have great news for you–you can do more than one landing page!
In fact I recommend that you do many landing pages on your blog. For this blog I plan on having 5 landing pages about different topics. I also plan on adding more as this blog grows!
The key is to market them to different niche groups. Create a landing page for first time parents and then advertise it on Baby Center or in Facebook groups for parents. Or create a landing page dedicated to home DIY’ers and add it to your Pinterest boards. The great thing about landing pages is you can have as many as you want as long as you are niching down to a target market!
To get email subscribers from your blog you must direct your traffic. You don’t want to direct them to the home page of your website and give them too many options. You don’t want them clicking around and reading posts without ever giving you their email address. Instead be the boss of your website visitors. Use your marketing to show the visitor where you want them to go on your site. Even better give them the exact information they are looking for. This is how you to can generate an unlimited amount of your own blogging. This is how to make your blog actually work for you!
Where are you directing people to on your website? Are you just doing a catch-all method on your home page and hoping that people will give you their email address? Please share with me how you are getting leads from your blog in the comments below! Thank you!
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