Do I Need To Run Landing Pages? How Do I Create A Landing Page? (25)
Do I Need To Run Landing Pages? How Do I Create A Landing Page?
Just directly linking to an offer probably won't put you into profit. And if you've been doing that, you're probably wondering what you can do to improve the situation.
Well, there's good news: there's a magic ingredient you can add that will often catapult your conversion rates upward.
That ingredient is a landing page.
Alternatively, you might be running pop traffic. In that case, all you can run is a landing page.
In either case, read on to learn how to create them and why they work.
Landing Pages: The Bridge Between Ad And Offer
A landing page is a simple Web page that is designed to do one thing and one thing only.
It's designed to persuade people who have clicked on your ad that they should sign up for your offer.
Why do you need this?
Well, the chances are that your offer wasn't specifically designed for the campaign you're running.
Maybe you're running a campaign for people who like Asian women, for example, but linking to a general dating site. Or perhaps you've included the age or state of your visitor in your ad - but they're not mentioned on the offer page.
A landing page lets you take that information, and reassure people that the offer they're being sent to is for them.
It's almost like being able to design your own offer, exactly for the people you're targeting.
Do I REALLY Need A Landing Page?
If you're running a campaign that you could potentially direct-link, you might be wondering if you really need to invest the time and uncertainty into making a landing page.
In short: probably, yes. About 95% of the time, a good landing page will improve your conversion rate, for the reasons listed above.
However, that doesn't mean that it's not possible to get profitable without a lander. And if you're still learning AM, it can be good to get the basics down before you start messing with landers too.
Even if you're more experienced, it's a good idea to split-test your landers against a direct link, just in case this is the rare offer that converts better without a lander.
For more help deciding on whether to run a lander, read these two threads: http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...ding-Page-Need and http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...hat-does-it-do .
How To Make A Landing Page
Landing pages don't need to be complicated. In fact, a well-designed, beautiful, complex landing page will often convert worse than a very simple page.
You can easily design a landing page in simple HTML, or in a tool like Adobe Muse.
A basic landing page will consist of:
- A Headline - This should usually echo the headline or text of your ad. Often I just use the ad headline again! What you're doing here is telling users that this is the right page for them, and offering them a benefit.
- An Image - You don't always need an image, but usually a landing page will convert better with a relevant image, particularly an appealing one. For dating or adult, for example, an image of an attractive guy or girl works pretty well.
- Sales Text - The bit where you persuade your viewer to sign up! Usually, the best way to write this is as three bullet points, each either promising a benefit linked to your angle or overcoming an objection ("There won't be anyone in my area!" - tell them that the site has people specifically in their area.)
- CTA - Just like the calls to action on your ad, a call to act - either a button or a link. Linking this to what they'll get is a good idea: "View Pictures Now!" beats "Sign Up Now!"
Here's a simple template for a Web landing page - it's not fancy, but it works. Just copy the HTML, then change the text, add an appropriate image, and add your link.
If you need a mobile landing page instead, go to this tutorial and follow along there
<head>
<title>INSERT YOUR HEADLINE HERE</title>
<style>
.container {width: 800px; margin: 0 auto; background-color: white; padding: 20px; }
.image {float: right}
h2 {font-size: 36px; font-variant: small-caps; text-align: center; color: red}
.cta {font-size: 40px; }
ul {font-size: 24px; }
li{ padding: 20px; }
body {background-color: #333}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div class="container">
<h2>A compelling headline that makes readers want to read on!</h2>
<a href="LINK GOES HERE"><img class="image" src="LP_Image.jpg"></a>
<ul>
<li>This is a benefit that they'll get!</li>
<li>This is another one! Look, it's short!</li>
<li>And a third one for good measure that introduces some scarcity!</li>
</ul>
<p class="cta"><a href="LINK GOES HERE">A SPECIFIC BENEFIT OF SIGNING UP »</a></p>
</div>
Learning to design landing pages is an art, and there's loads of information on how to do it out there. See the bottom of this post for links to loads of useful landing page tips.
But for now, you just need to get to grips with the basics - even a simple landing page will usually give you better results than direct linking.
How To Use Landers
Create a landing page for your campaign - either using the template above or using one of STM's free landers.
Upload it to your VPS or your CDN, and set it up in your tracking software.
Check that it works and that you can click through it to your offer (VERY IMPORTANT! Don't skip this step).
Now, if you were already running ads, you'll need to replace your existing tracking URL on your traffic source with the new URL for your landing page. You may need to do this for each ad - if so, only do it for the ads you haven't eliminated, of course!
Tips For Landing Page Design
Landing Pages are one of the biggest parts of affiliate marketing - and so there's lots of great info out there.
- Stack That Money actually has dozens of free landing page templates to download, ready to run: check out STM's free landers.
- The Spy Tools on STM and elsewhere link you to landers that are actually working, right now. Definitely spend some time checking out what the competition is doing!
- One of the most popular styles of landing page is the "Rules Lander": here's Finch's great post on exactly how that works and how you can use it.
- Loading times for your landing pages are IMPORTANT. Here's one of my guides to Getting your LP load times right down.
- Finch recently shared a bunch of great nuggets for improving your landers
- Unbounce is a landing page creation tool - and whilst they're not affiliate-specific, their blog is incredibly useful reading.
- And the book Ca$hvertising is incredibly useful for AM in general, but also for landing pages specifically.
Thank you Caurmen!
Great information to work on for someone new to this industry. Thank you so much!
Thank you Caurmen! I can do some basic HTML code to get a very simple landing page but i am never satisfied when i see other marketers' eye catching landers. I always end up direct linking. I ve tried some drag and drop landers like instapage , squeezmatic but not a signle penny conversion lol i myself was thinking why the heck would someone click on this mess. Anyways the best part is finding you guys for help and inspiration Thanks again
No worries! Happy to help.
Any tutorial here about AWS S3 ? it was suggested by Lander DS so do you guys recommend it ? and how does it work ? cost ? .. Thanks mates
@medabor - Yep, we have a complete S3 hosting tutorial right here: http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...-Cost-Way-Ever!
Originally Posted by caurmen
Originally Posted by medabor
Originally Posted by cmdeal
Thank you caurmen, question for you. Where do you get offers? Are they coming without landing pages? On sites I am using for offers usually all offers come with their own landing pages; are you saying you can create better landing page than they provide with the offer?
@barion - when we refer to "landing pages" here, we're talking about what the offer owner would call "pre-landers" - a page that comes before the offer's own page.
And yes, you can almost always create a landing page that will give better results than just linking to the offer directly. There are a bunch of reasons for that:
- The biggest one is that only you know what angle you're using. If you're using a "don't get stuck late at night with a dead battery" angle on your banners, sending visitors to a generic battery booster lander will get you some conversions - but "warming them up" with a landing page targeted at the same angle, which increases their desire for the solution and reassures them that the install page you're sending them to will solve their problem will work much better.
- Sales psychology works in favour of the pre-lander. Whilst you might think that getting people to click through an additional page would reduce your conversions, in actual fact, by increasing the amount of effort they've put in to get to the offer ("we esteem more highly that which we have worked to achieve" - true even if the "work" was minimal), by getting them to agree they want the offer (salespeople work hard to get prospects to say "yes" to smaller things before they go for the close, because it increases conversion rates), and by asking users to visualise life with the solution we're proposing, pre-landers pretty reliably increase conversion rates.
- Many offers assume that affiliates will be creating landing pages, and thus don't try to sell particularly hard on their own offer page.
- Some offers just don't have very well-written landers!
Hope that helps!
Yes, you do - just get a cheap .Info or similar domain. You don't need a .Com.
Great post! He really is the king here.
For anyone interested,
-Zach
I want to create a custom landing page for lead generation....where the customer doesn't have to go to the generic landing page at all since i'm targeting a certain demographic & I want to tailor the landing page to them. How can I do this? PHP? Do I have to send the landing page to my affiliate manager and let her do it?
If you want to avoid the offer page altogether and use a custom offer page you'll need to get in touch with the offer owner, yep, probably via your affiliate manager.
This is something that's normally only doable if you're already running significant volume, but no harm in asking.
Great thread. Thanks caurmen. I hear many are ripping pages using adplexity although I hear you need to be careful with the coding as the original might have code that needs to be changed (I need to learn more on this). I have clickfunnels and it has private domain options. Would that load fast enough for POP traffic or would I be better off loading the HTML code to a CDN or VPN or using a different page building software alltogether?
I've not used Clickfunnels, I'm afraid. I hear good things from some people.
However, I'd almost always recommend running the HTML from a CDN. That sounds like the best route for you in this case, particularly if you're not using Clickfunnels to build your landers.
Hey Zachary I was thinking about setting up an
Great Insights,
what do you think about landing page builder for Facebook traffic? I am new here and I think I can make the Amazon Server work with HTML, but I also enjoy a good landing page builder. So do you have any major concerns? Speed? I wonder if the difference will be that big for Facebook traffic?
Originally Posted by berlian
Another concern would be compatibility issues, especially in the mobile world where there are tons of devices in use... so you need to make sure the LP is responsive and adapts to the various screen sizes.
With FB, since it's gonna be "clicked" traffic, the users will likely tolerate a BIT longer loading speeds, but the responsiveness is very important. So I guess it would depend on a particular LP and how well the builder generates it. Many marketers are using builders so it apparently works for them, so if you have a good one that is proven, it might be worth a shot.
Originally Posted by berlian
First and most importantly there is no redundant code added to the landing pages.
Landers are all lightweight, so you won’t have to sacrifice on your page performance in exchange of using a landing page builder.
Besides the technical aspects that help on getting the best loading speed, Landerlab comes with hundreds of ready to use templates, visual landing page builder, and advanced code editor.
Originally Posted by platinum
Originally Posted by the visionary
Originally Posted by platinum
Originally Posted by the visionary
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