You can find landing pages in all aspects of business from Fortune 500 companies, marketing departments, all the way to your local service-based family run business. Many times they will offer a free PDF information guide, consultation or software program. Usually the offer is simple and might contain only a few snippets of text, maybe a video or other form of presentation and then a big, bold, unmistakable "contact form" to gather your name email and possibly more information if you're interested.
Most sales companies and Internet marketing professionals that spend money on advertising will drive their traffic to a well-designed landing page because it leaves them with a tangible asset in the form of a mailing list. It's important to have the information on your landing page custom tailored in order to gather the precise information that you need from your prospect, beyond just a name and email address.
When Should You Employ a Landing Page?
If you are using money on direct marketing or advertising in the form of solo ads, newsletter ads, banner ads, PPC ads, pop-ups, newspapers, business cards and more. A well-designed landing page will help you draw the most response out of your campaigns by giving your prospects and easy and predictable course of action.
Also if you're looking to collect more than just a name and email from your prospects than a well-designed landing page is what you are really looking for. One caution: you might not try to build a landing page by yourself unless you have some sort of HTML design experience or the ability to use a template design from a software program. Sometimes it's best to hire a professional to develop your lead capture page or landing page design, this will ensure you get the maximum return on your investment.
Important point: a well-designed lead capture page can help you convert nearly 5% of your traffic into prospects which would mean out of every 100 visitors you might get five leads in your email capture list. This estimate is conservative, with the right offer and the right design your landing page could do much better. That's why it might be profitable to learn how lead capture pages work in a funnel system.
How Does a Squeeze Page Differ and What Is It?
Basically squeeze pages will only ask for an email and sometimes a name in exchange for something that will do be delivered by email like a special report, a 10 day email course or maybe a special discount. If the email and name is all you require in a squeeze page is likely the best option for you. It's important to note that simpler is always better and unless you're trying to generate leads to fit into a very complex niche market that requires detailed information. And going one step further with the simplicity of a squeeze page you might have noticed that many big-name marketers are now only asking for their users best email address and nothing more on squeeze pages which greatly simplifies their lead generation but this approach doesn't always work for all applications.
Because in today's market so much data that is being required from prospects, marketers have been moving away from the simplicity of a squeeze page. They are moving into the realm of a lead capture page or landing page. The goal is to get high quality, prequalified prospects on the phone to discuss their offer in more detail so a detailed landing page or lead capture page is the only way to accomplish this, a squeeze page just won't get the job done.
So When Should You Employ a Squeeze Page?
It needs to match your intended prospects. For example if you're offering a free PDF report that requires nothing more than an email to send it to, then that's what you should ask for. Just their email. Contacts get suspicious and lose trust quickly if you start asking for information they really don't need to provide or has little bearing on the offer for its delivery.
Important Point: whenever you can reduce friction in your marketing funnel it is going to help you to generate more prospects. If all you need is the email address from your prospects to facilitate the delivery of your offer then that's all you should ask for. Look at it this way. A squeeze page that is asking for a prospects name AND email is asking for twice as much information as the squeeze page that's only asking for an email. Yep it's only one more question but when you think about it, this is the way you start to understand why simpler is better when it comes to a squeeze page.