Your Income Producing Activities: Why Landing Pages Are Important

bywealthysage

406 followers

Updated 10 months ago

Introduction

This article is about the importance of landing pages for monetising your website. Landing pages are a key tool for online marketers, as they can help you to increase conversions, target your marketing campaigns more effectively, and track the results of your advertising efforts. In this article, you'll learn about the benefits of using landing pages, the key elements of a successful landing page, and how to measure the effectiveness of your landing pages to maximise your online revenue. Whether you're new to online marketing or looking to optimise your existing strategies, this article will provide valuable insights into how landing pages can help you to achieve your goals.

Context

In a recent post on Wealthy Affiliate, @Phil1944 made a plea not to overcomplicate landing pages. As an active member in the community, Phil sees lots of Wealthy Affiliate members struggling with landing pages. Phil's approach is quite simple. He says the first thing you need to understand is why it's called a Landing Page. This is not because it has any special structure but because it's a simple page that you want interested visitors to land on to monetise your website.

While I agree with Phil's desire to keep things simple, I feel this issue is of such importance to making money online that more explanation is required. I use Jim Rohn’s guidance below to support this. Also, as there are many frustrated website owners struggling to make money online, I feel it's important to raise awareness to the wider range of fundamentals available from sales and marketing.

Jim Rohn defines fundamentals as… “those basic principles on which all accomplishment is built.” We are fortunate that Rohn applied the term “fundamentals” to the concept of success. He says there is nothing new in this insofar as... "fundamental principles belong to the ages." If you are looking for fundamental success, the type of success online that endures the test of time, it’s therefore important you build on a solid foundation. Rohn described “success” as a simple process, as follows…

“Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying the fundamentals of success to life.” ~ Jim Rohn.

And, the key is always... “stick to the fundamentals.”

What, then, are the fundamentals for success in what it is you set your mind to do? According to Rohn, there is always a half dozen things that make 80% of the difference to what you are trying to accomplish. If you get those 6 things correct, they will make the most difference to the outcome. This is true no matter what business you are in… “It is those half-dozen fundamentals that count.“

I've therefore prepared this short article on income producing activities and the importance of landing pages in monetising your website to help plug what may be a gap in knowledge of many website owners. If you read to the end, you'll discover my take on the fundamentals of income producing activities and why landing pages are so important to your success online.

About Income Producing Activities

If you want to earn money online, it follows that you need to focus on income producing activities. I'll briefly explain what these are before going on to address the important functions played by landing pages in making money online.

Let's therefore get straight to the nub of things. It's a matter of doing the right things repeatedly if you want to secure success in your business online. The question arises what then are the activities you must perform to gain customers and build a sustainable business online?

In order to get an answer to this, it's necessary to understand the sales process for working online. Sales is perhaps the most important aspect of any business. Without sales, you have no customers and without customers, you do not have any business.

Here is how Perry Marshall summarises sales and marketing...

“Traffic, conversion, and economics form a Power Triangle that governs everything in sales and marketing.” ~ Perry Marshall

So, there you have it in a nutshell... There are 3 elements to selling anything: (i) traffic, (ii) conversions, and (iii) economics, but not necessarily in that order.

The “Power Triangle” states that in order to sell something, you need to get traffic or eyeballs in front of your offer and then convert some of that traffic to get a percentage of your leads to opt-in to your mailing list. You then need to get some of those prospects to buy your products or services. Economics means you have to make a profit on what you sell, after considering your costs to generate traffic.
Profit is the bottom line. It determines whether you stay in business over the long term, or not. Once you are making a profit, you can then re-invest some of the profit to get more traffic and convert that traffic into more sales, which means better economics.

According to Marshall, and contradictory to what many say, when you start your online business, you need to first consider the economics of your sale. Instead of thinking how to get more and cheaper traffic, you should focus on making your offer attractive to your target audience. Conversions and achieving profits from your sales are therefore your initial priorities.

This means you should never waste funds on traffic if your sales offer is incomplete. Traffic is your third consideration despite what most gurus may teach you. Many, of course, are selling traffic products.

"Asking for financial advice from a financial planner is like asking a barber if you need a haircut." ~ Warren Buffet (Source: AZ Quotes).

It's also important to note that the conversion process described by Marshall is twofold. The first stage is at the front end of your sales funnel where some leads are persuaded to subscribe to your email list, while the second stage of conversion is to send follow up emails to your subscribers to lead them down through the funnel. This second stage process "warms" some leads to prospects, and converts some prospects to buyers.

In summary, then, if we look at what it takes to generate a reliable online income, there are 3 key income producing activities that experienced marketers follow. We can describe these in the following 3 step process:
• Step 1: Advertise to get traffic.
• Step 2: Send the traffic to an offer to build your list (Conversion 1).
• Step 3: Build a relationship with your list and then sell stuff (Conversion 2).

The fact of the matter is that you cannot advertise and sell direct to strangers. You first have to turn some strangers (leads) into prospects and then some prospects into buyers. While many will say that "Traffic is the lifeblood of your business", it is actually conversion of your offers to obtain profits for your business that requires most focus.

The stark reality of this is that operating a website by itself to make money is fraught with difficulty. Apart from web development skills you will also need to acquire marketing knowledge and develop skills in list building and email marketing.

Why Landing Pages Are Important

There are several reasons why are landing pages are important. These are outlined below. First, it's important to appreciate that landing pages occur at the cusp between website and email marketing activities. This means that until you become proficient in both website development and email marketing, you are unlikely to make consistent money online.

Landing pages can help you to achieve your marketing goals. Here are some of the benefits from using landing pages:

First, landing pages can help you to increase the number of conversions you get from your marketing campaigns. When you create a landing page, you can specify the keywords you want to target and the demographics you want to reach. This means that your landing pages can be designed to be both highly focused and persuasive to your target audience.

Second, landing pages help you to target your marketing campaigns more effectively. This is because you can create different landing pages for different target audiences and range of different offers.

Third, landing pages help you to generate more leads for your business. This is because landing pages typically include a form that visitors can fill out to get more information about your products or services. So, when visitors land on your landing page, you can request them to provide their contact information in exchange for something of value, such as a free ebook, checklist or discount code. This allows you to build a list of potential customers you can then market to in the future.

Fourth, landing pages help you to track the results of your marketing and advertising campaigns. When you create a landing page, you can track how many people visit that page, how long they stay, and what actions they take. This information allows you to see how well your marketing and advertising campaigns are performing and to make necessary adjustments.

Fifth, and this is simply an expansion of the first point about conversions. The bottom line is that landing pages are key to your monetisation activities as they can help you to sell more products or services.

Given the range of purpose that landing pages are used for, read on to learn what a landing page is and the different types of landing page which are in frequent use by online marketers.

What is a Landing Page and How Many Types are There?

A landing page is a standalone web page that is created specifically for an online marketing or advertising campaign. It is designed to increase brand awareness and convert visitors into leads or customers, depending on the stage of conversion. A landing page is used in conjunction with paid advertising, such as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, to drive traffic to the page, or via email follow-up series to traffic that you own. In order to increase effectiveness, the landing page should be used in conjunction with a tracking system to allow you to measure the results of your campaign.

The key features of a landing page include:
• A clear and concise headline that tells visitors what the page is about.
• A strong call to action that tells visitors what you want them to do.
• A relevant and persuasive message that is tailored to your target audience and convinces visitors to take action.
• A well-designed layout that is easy to navigate, with an easy to fill out opt-in form.
• A mobile-responsive design that looks good and is easy to use on all devices.
• A strong guarantee to reduce risk and testimonials to provide social proof and build trust.

Moreover, there are different types of landing pages depending upon the goal of your marketing campaign. This should be evident from the section above on the importance of landing pages.

However, the range is narrow, as summarised below:

1. A sales page is a type of landing page that is specifically designed to sell a product or service. It typically includes a lot of information about the product or service, as well as a strong call to action. Sales pages should only be used to send to traffic that you own (your email list).

2. A lead capture page is a type of landing page designed to collect leads for building a list of potential customers that you can then market to in the future, while...

3. A squeeze page is a specific type of lead capture page that is focused only on collecting the minimal amount of contact details.

While this more or less wraps things up, I'll conclude with the top 6 takeaways from the discussion, the point being that if you focus on these as the "fundamentals", as described above, you cannot go far wrong with your marketing efforts.

What You Need by way of an Online Marketing Strategy

In summary, a successful online marketing strategy requires a balance between focusing on your offer, conversions and economics, and building relationships with your audience through list building and email marketing. By finding this balance, you can create a sustainable business model that generates reliable income over time.

The top 6 takeaways from this article are:
1. Focus on your offer, conversions and economics before worrying about traffic.
2. Use advertising to send traffic to a lead capture or splash page to add subscribers to your email list.
3. Build relationships with your audience through list building and email follow-up to subscribers.
4. Provide valuable content to your audience to establish trust and credibility.
5. Never advertise directly to a sales page as it's essential to "warm" your leads up before trying to sell anything.
6. Remember that people usually only buy from people they know, like, and trust.

By following these key takeaways, you can maximise the effectiveness of your online marketing efforts and achieve better results in terms of revenue and profitability.

Concluding Remarks

If there is one conclusion in all this, it is that it's your offer that counts. If you are in any way unclear about your offer, don't waste time, effort and money on traffic.

The number of folk making money online is only a small percentage of those who try. It's a question of doing the correct things daily. A good place to start is on the Income Producing Activities and don't be fooled by the adage "More Traffic, More Signups, More Sales. There is more to online marketing than "traffic" and more to "traffic" than meets the eye.

“You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine.” ~ John C Maxwell