How Landing Pages Should Be Used For Your Campaigns
Here’s a fun fact: Venus Flytraps rarely ever trap actual flies. In fact, flies make up only 5% of what they catch.
They’re more likely to catch insects like ants or spiders, and that’s all thanks to the plant’s special process for attracting prey.
On the inside of their leaves (the inside of what looks like a mouth), a sweet smelling nectar is secreted. This nifty little nectar mimics the smells different fruit and plant flowers.
But that secretion is only step one of the process.
Step two is a lot sneakier…
Once an insect ends up in the plant’s “mouth” (attracted by the nectar the plant created), the critter ends up accidentally hitting one of the special trigger hairs inside the plant’s mouth.
Hit it once…
Nothing happens.
But if they were to hit it twice then…
SNAP
That’s when step 3 begins: Digestion.
In the same way that the Venus Flytrap has its process for attracting and capturing its prey, so should your marketing campaigns for capturing leads.
Because marketing campaigns are like Venus Flytraps
I mean, think about it…
- They both have end goals.
- They both share a process.
- And they both use stellar execution to reach that goal (at least they should).
These are the three points we’ll be tackling in this article. But hold on…
Venus Flytraps only have one goal, don’t they?
Does that mean your marketing campaigns should only have one as well?
No of course not, that’s silly…
But then again, what are you really trying to accomplish?
- Are you trying to get people to sign up to your not-yet-released product launch?
- Are you wanting to get people to buy your e-book?
- Are you introducing people to your brand and creating exposure?
Whatever your goals are or how many you’re trying to accomplish, there’s always at least one goal that the other ones are based off of. Or at the very least, one that, if every other objective were to fail, you could say “at least we hit our main metric for success”.
Once that’s figured out, then you can concentrate on your process (Venus Flytrap style).
(And here is where landing pages finally come in.)
The purpose of a landing page
Good landing pages, especially the ones involved in marketing campaigns:
- Recognize what they have to do to help their lead to the next part of the campaign.
- Know the lead’s current buyer state.
- Understand their audience to the point of disarming their worries and building rapport.
And these are important because you can’t look at landing pages in a vacuum. You always have to take into account their place in your campaign.
And in the same way that step one of the Venus Flytrap getting lunch is to secrete nectar, so is a landing page one step in your campaign.
Which brings us to a very important question.
How should landing pages be used for your marketing campaigns?
Because while we’ve touched on what the purpose of a landing pages is, what we haven’t touched on is how they help you reach your goal.
Remember how I mentioned before something called buyer state?
Well, even if you’ve never heard of it before, you might have heard of its more popular term: customer stage awareness (Which is technical jargon for how aware and close your lead is to your product).
It’s usually described as a journey, and it goes something like this…
- Oh no, buyer isn’t aware of their problem
- <They find out about the problem>
- Yay, buyer knows of the problem, but still doesn’t know a solution exists
- <They learn about different solutions>
- Buyer learns solutions exist but might not know about YOUR solution
- <Probably introduce it to them>
- Buyer now knows your solution exists but is probably not convinced yet it’s for them
- <Convincing shenanigans insue>
- Buyer thinks your solution is worth it, so they’re hella’ ready to buy
- <You make it easy for them to buy>
- Buyer buys your thing.
Each stage is called an awareness level, and it’s an incredibly helpful framework to keep in mind when creating your campaigns.
This helps you make sure:
- You consider at what level of awareness your leads start off on at the beginning of your campaign.
- You verify that every step of the campaign process tackles the right objections depending on their awareness state.
- You understand upfront how much work is involved to get leads from point A to B. (For example, more complicated products needing more time early on to help leads jump to the next awareness level.)
Which brings us to the magical world of landing pages
They’re an important tool in your arsenal for taking your leads to the next awareness level. Like so… (read this next bit in your favorite announcer voice):
- Are your leads suffering a problem that your product can fix, but they don’t know it yet? Create some content on a topic related to their worries that persuades them to a landing page for your email funnel!
- Do they know about your product, but they’re just unsure of it not being right for them? Landing page with testimonials and benefits should do the trick!
- Are they almost ready to buy and just waiting for that last little push? Landing/sales page with prices and features here to save the day!
Landing pages! Landing pages! Landing pages!
*announcement voice time over*
So next time you use a landing page, remember where your buyer’s awareness state is. From there, it’s just a matter of figuring out what the landing page needs to have to get people to continue on.
I mean, that’s what the Venus Flytrap does, so why shouldn’t you?
Recap of what you should do before implementing landing pages in your campaigns:
- Determine your main campaign goal
- Make sure your campaign’s process helps you reach that main goal.
- Understand where customer awareness changes in each step of that process.
- Use landing pages as a tool to launch leads to the next awareness level. (Oh, and don’t skip levels!)
And that’s it folks!
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