Landing pages are a wonderful marketing strategy – one that can be used by every vertical and in every situation. Here’s the low down on this killer marketing strategy!

What is a landing page?

First, let’s get clarity on landing pages. Landing pages are no more than simple HTML web pages – synonymous with squeeze pages and capture pages. The purpose of a landing page is to acquire visitors’ emails (and possibly other demographics).

Why use landing pages?

There are two main reasons:

1. When you advertise your business, you want to have some accountability for each of your advertising partners. Are they delivering a return? Do you even know? Landing pages are an excellent way to monetize your advertising campaigns. Because you can track each campaign with a unique landing page, for a very minimal cost, you have absolute figures without relying on some third party to monitor your advertising stats.
2. You want to appeal to your target ed audience as much as possible, so by setting up a landing page for each campaign you are able to co-brand your landing pages with the same look and feel of the referring publisher site, or simply cater to or leverage the language used in your ads. You will be able to test your landing pages as well to achieve optimal results.

Why build a list?

If you setup your pages properly, and consistently drive traffic to them, you will find your list growing steadily. But why have a list at all? Let’s start simple – would you prefer to end out an email once a month to 300 people who “might” be interested in what you do or sell, or, send out that email to 3000 prospects that put THEMSELVES on your list?

So now this is common sense, right?

How do I get them on my list?

Glad you asked! There are a ton of tools out there to help with your email marketing efforts and really, that’s another subject for another time. Basically, you would setup an account, create a form and copy/paste it onto your landing page – that simple, seriously.

Here’s two list building automation resources we recommend:

When should I use landing pages?

Excellent question! All the time! Every marketing campaign you send out and every marketing strategy you put together should always loop around to a landing page, if possible.

In your radio ads, send traffic to www.yourdomain.com/radio.
In your magazine ads, send traffic to www.yourdomain.com/mag.
In your television ads, send traffic to www.yourdomain.com/tv.

I think you get the point… If you are trying to determine your ROI for each of your media placements, then be sure to use simple, affordable landing pages to segment your leads and track each campaign independently.

Building a business online can be a rough task. With so many business “experts” pulling you in a hundred directions with their advice, it’s nice to come back to “core” concepts and refocus your online marketing efforts.

I’m going to share with you the 5 fundamental thoughts I have when it comes to building business online. This is not hype or pie in the sky, but rather a clear mindset for planning your business marketing strategy, especially when it comes to the marketing online.

Build Your Email Marketing List

The more emails you have on your list the more profit potential you have in your business. This is a huge void for most small businesses. If you don’t have a tool in place to manage your list, get one ASAP. Make sure your site has a form to get new subscribers.

Automate Your Marketing Processes Online

You can use great tools like this business marketing automation tool, or even have your own custom application built. Processes include, client account setup, account management, subscription management, email marketing, customer incentives, affiliate management, credit/points management, shopping cart, online payments, recurring payments, etc… the list of processed that can be automated online is just ridiculous, I’ll leave it there for the sake of brevity.

Leverage Social Media & Web 2.0

You can use videos, audios, pdfs, social groups and profiles, contests, giveaways or even a referral process with rewards. Social Media and Web 2.0 are not synonymous with Social Networking Sites, but rather embody the concept of virtual, word of mouth marketing. This is one of the most powerful, yet least understood marketing strategies of them all! No one is going to have all of the answers, be very WARY of those claiming to have the “final answer”, as it were.

Think subscriptions

Subscriptions, and more specifically, automated subscriptions is the best move a business can make. If you only sell products in your business, you may have internal sources for recurring revenue. Just spend some time thinking about what is valuable to your clients and how to turn that into a monthly subscription.

Selling a product one off is great and all, but it’s much nicer to have the base of passive residual income flowing! Not only will you profit more, but if your exit strategy is to sell your business, then you’ll want some residual income flowing, to demand top dollar!

Get in the news

I sometimes feel sorry for retail establishments that have no news about, but most of the time it gets me excited! Why? Because I know I can help them generate returns with a well executed press distribution strategy. Anyone can submit a press release, but not everyone has the reporters calling them!

And of course, the most fruitful of all strategies…

Use Common Sense

I knew you’d get a kick out of that one.. what I mean by that is, know what you’re getting into and plan ahead so you can have a well rounded marketing strategy that encompasses these 5 core concepts.

If you are looking for some expert video training for getting your business online, take a look at Maverick Money Maker Series – I know you’ll be impressed!