Our previous 8 Daily Golden Nuggets covered many topics of email marketing. Today we'll switch gears into a new topic that is directly related to all your email marketing, and that's your website Landing Page.
Every marketing strategy should have a message and a call to action.
Typical calls to action are:
• "Visit our store"
• "Visit our large showroom"
• "Give us a call"
• "Fill this bag with unwanted gold and bring it to us to sell"
• "Visit our website"
• "Click this link for more information"
• "Sign up for your own wish list"
• "Scan this QR code for more information"
We assume you will have website links in all your digital advertising. Those links shouldn't simply direct people to your website home page, or to a web page which is only somewhat related to your ad.
Instead, you should create a Landing Page that is very specific for your ad. The content on that page should command attention without the normal distractions that might be on the rest of your site. Typical distractions would be left link navigation and right announcements.
Have you ever done print advertising?
Whether it's newspaper, post card, magazine or even the local coupon mailer?
What's the creative process you go through to create your ad?
Every small business owner needs to wear many hats, and creating advertising is one of the more frustrating hats for many people. You have worries like writing a headline, picking a photo for the ad, writing the copy for the body of the ad and finally coming up with a call to action. Maybe you simply hire a marketing person to create the ad for you and she gives you example layouts to choose from.
The landing page design process needs as much tender love and care as the process to create the original advertisement.
You can't simply slap a photo on a page with bullet points and a headline. What value is that? Instead you need to design a landing page with a balance of function and aesthetics. The jewelry you sell is attractive, and somehow that needs to be conveyed on the landing page.
There is no magic internet layout. Maybe there was a few years ago before the web became highly interactive, but not anymore. We do know there are common things that get attention, though, like the words "online catalog" and "store hours" and "contact us" but everything else is pretty much unknown until you start testing.
The landing pages you create to match the upcoming Holiday Season could be designed around the same theme, yet all specifically created to match individual ads. Also, note that landing pages will have varying degrees of success depending on the original advertising medium.
For example: Perhaps you are trying to sell your polishing cloth and your jewelry cleaning solution. You could send an email inviting someone to visit your website and watch a jewelry cleaning demonstration. Sending an email invitation to watch a jewelry cleaning demonstration video might have poor success if sent during the work day, yet amazing success if sent at 6pm.
You have to simply be aware of what you are showing your customer and what call to action you are asking them to take and compare it to the usability/value of where and when you ask them to take that action. Then craft your landing page taking into account where the customer will be, what frame of mind they will be in, and what further action you want them to take after visiting the page.
If you don't get the where/mind frame/future action worked out, your advertising campaign will flop.
These Daily Golden Nuggets never seem long enough to cover the topics we really want to cover, so in tomorrow's Nugget we will give you more specific guidelines on landing page construction.
