Why is this important?  Well, to be honest, your website is bad.

More specifically, its a bad place to send traffic you are collecting via your marketing efforts.

So, while you might have a great-looking and completely functional homepage, it simply is one of the worst places to drop a potential customer when they click on a link in your ads.

Let’s be clear: you should have a great-looking and completely functional website.  Your online presence is crucial for your small business.  When someone wants to know more about your business, this is one of the places they will look.

However, when you are running a marketing campaign, you are actively seeking potential customers. Your campaign will have a specific demographic, and the creative portion of your ad (the text and/or images) will be created to attract the attention of those people.

There is a lot of thought and effort (or there should be) put into a marketing campaign.  So, the smart move would be to capitalize on the attention your ad received by taking the traffic and dropping it on a web page that is specifically designed to retain that attention.

And nothing kills attention than a homepage that isn’t really tailored to the demographic you’re targeting.

So, what to do? Completely change your homepage every time you launch a new ad campaign?  That’s a lot of work, expense, and stupidity.  And as a small business owner, you can not afford to sink resources into that sort of thing.

The answer is a landing page.  A landing page can exist on your website, but it will often have its own URL (web address) and the page itself will be unique to the ad campaign.  It will match in color, imagery and language. It will be just as targeted to the demographic as the campaign creatives themselves.

Not only does this help keep the potential buyer’s attention, it also reassures them that the link they clicked on went to the correct page.  The continuity builds trust, and building trust is a key step in a successful sales funnel. (Not sure what a sales funnel is? We have an article here.)

And, this landing page (get it? Potential buyers ‘land’ on this page, hence the name) is not your homepage, so it can contain just the information and direction a potential buyer needs to take the next step.  Your homepage can’t do that: it has a menu bar, and generally several other links to various parts of the site and often a boatload of information that is irrelevant to the person who clicked an ad and wants only to know about the offer in the ad.

The added bonus to having a unique landing page is that you can better track the traffic that lands there, and what that traffic does once it arrives.  Traffic landing on your homepage is going to be coming from a lot of different sources, and each source has a different reason for arriving.  You won’t be able to tweak your homepage to optimize for an ad campaign as easily as you will on a landing page.

So, what’s the next step? If you are thinking about doing any marketing, you need a landing page.  You can DIY it, and there are lots of tools available to help you, whether you are a new to page building or a seasoned pro. 

But if you’re as busy as most small business owners, you really should consider hiring someone to do it for you.  You have input, but they do the legwork while you are taking care of other things that need your attention.  

Have further questions about what kind of landing page you might need?  Contact The Entrepreneur Advantage for a no-hassle consultation that gives you the answers to continue to grow your business, the way you want to.