If you are brand new to the ever-evolving arena of online advertising, expect to feel overwhelmed right at the start. There is a lot to learn! Happily, there is also a rich payoff for those who take the time and invest the energy to learn it well.

One reason many entrepreneurs and companies fail to achieve their return on investment (ROI) goals in the online arena is because of an ineffective (or non-existent) landing page.

In this post, learn how to optimize your landing page for the best results.

“Landing Page” Defined

When you buy an airline ticket, you have to choose your destination. And if you don’t look carefully at the gate information when you are boarding the plane, you could very well end up somewhere you never planned to visit!

Landing pages are like travel advisors, giving browsing customers options for where to shop or find information.

Let’s say you sell hiking shoes for men. A customer opens their browser, types in a search query related to men’s hiking shoes and is then presented with a page of “hits,” or weblink options they can visit to shop for the shoes.

Since you sell men’s hiking shoes, and here is this customer searching for men’s hiking shoes, you want to be sure they “land” on your page – hence, the “landing page.”

2 Basic Categories of Landing Pages

Where your customer lands has everything to do with how well you have done your research to design the most effective web landing page.

For example, say you have set a goal to add 1,000 new followers to your email list group by month-end. In order to achieve your goal, you will need to design a certain type of landing page – lead generation landing page.

But then you have also set a goal to sell 50 units of your brand-new product by month-end. In order to achieve this totally different goal, you will need to design a different type of landing page – a click through landing page.

Each type of landing page presents your web prospect or customer with a different type of offer. The first is an offer of communication – to stay in touch. The second is a product or service offering – hopefully one that is an exact match with the customer’s needs at that moment in time.

Expert Tips to Optimizing Your Landing Page(s) for ROI

The process of designing a landing page that can achieve a particular goal is called “optimization.” To optimize means “to maximize the possibility of.”

Here are 5 expert tips for optimizing the ROI of a landing page:

Expert Tip #1: Dangle attractive bait.

When an inbound web visitor performs a browser search and lands on your web landing page, you want them to do two things: 1) stay, and 2) take the desired action.

You can accomplish “staying” with a simple, clear design and message. But to get your visitor to step up to the plate and take the action desired, bait is often needed.

Here are just a few examples of desirable bait:

– A sales discount or coupon.
– Entry into a sweepstakes, contest or raffle.
– Freebie offer.
– Charitable donation on their behalf.
– Exclusive deals or sales.

With the right bait, your visitor is almost certain to take the desired action, whether it be adding their email to your list group, making a purchase, sharing your site on social media or something else.

Expert Tip #2: Keep your focus simple.

Perhaps the most common of all beginner landing page design mistakes is to clutter your landing page up with too many offers and/or too much information.

The best results are usually achieved when your landing page has one job to do. If you have more jobs, you need more landing pages.

Expert Tip #3: Tie your landing page with the right keywords and key phrases in your ad sets.

Whether you are using a landing page with Google Adwords, Facebook ads or another type of advertising strategy, you want to be sure you use the right keywords.

There are two different types of keywords and key phrases:

 – Positive keywords. Positive keywords are designed to invite in visitors who are seeking something you offer.

 – Negative keywords. Negative keywords are designed to screen out visitors who are looking for products or services you don’t offer.

Ideally, you want to choose a mix of both types of keywords to associate with your landing page.

Expert Tip #4: Test more than one campaign simultaneously.

With the advent of landing pages comes the ability to more narrowly segment different customer groups. You can even test two different versions of a single landing page offer through a tactic called A/B testing to determine which ad produces the best results.

Expert Tip #5: Analyze, adjust and try again.

Finally, there is no better way to increase the performance of any landing page than by studying what is working and adjusting what is not working.

Your ad and website analytics are your trusted advisors here. Be sure to study who is coming to your landing page from where and what they do when they arrive for the best information about what works well and what needs changing.

These 5 tips are just 5 of the top ways you can use a landing page to increase the return on investment for any advertising campaign you launch. So long as you select desirable bait, keep a clear focus, choose the right keywords, test and re-test and study your analytics continuously, you will keep getting better at designing high-performance landing pages.

By learning the art of designing an effective landing page, you can maximize even the smallest advertising budget to grow your business, increase sales and achieve your business goals.