The future of print media is in flux. Newspapers and magazines are trimming their pages and their staffing as subscribers and advertisers dwindle. One thing for certain, the Internet isn’t going away.
It’s foolish not to pay attention to new ways you can use the Internet to ensure the profitability of your business.
One great way, you can put the Internet to work for you is by creating special landing pages that appeal directly to your best prospective buyers.
This kind of landing page is similar to a direct mail piece. It has a specific offer with enticements for the visitor to buy or sign up now. It also has an easy response mechanism.
What’s cool about a landing page response is that with the Internet the response can happen very quickly. All your customer has to do is click and boom, you have a sale or you have a new lead!
Of course, it’s also easy for your customer to click away. But that won’t happen if you truly have a great offer, a qualified prospect, and a well-crafted landing page.
This landing page differs from your Home Page or any other page on your website. In fact, your visitor may not even be able to navigate to your website from your landing page. That’s because often it’s best to keep your visitor focused on your offer, whether it’s signing up for an e-newsletter, downloading a white paper, or actually purchasing your product.
How do you drive visitors to your landing page? You can advertise the landing page Web address through any of your advertising media: broadcast, print, Internet, etc.
A common method is with pay per click ads. These are the paid ads you see at the top or right side of the screen as a result of an Internet search. Pay per click costs can be very affordable even for small businesses as small geographic regions can be targeted.
A furniture dealer in Anytown U.S.A. (pop. 50,000) can order pay per click ads that only appear on the computer screens of the people searching for furniture in his town.
Another benefit of landing pages is that they can help you evaluate your other media ad placements. By placing landing pages at several different Web addresses, you can test which ads running on radio station A, radio station B, or radio station C are bringing more traffic to your website.
With everyone from the gardener to the lawyer all using the Internet to make or research their purchases, it really makes sense to make the most of the Internet.
(© 2011 Katherine Andes)
