How about a sure-fire way to absolutely dominate your competition in the Google AdWords game? Focus on your landing page. It IS the landing page, stupid…and many companies have stupidly taken the advice of so-called Google AdWords experts and played the game all wrong.

While your competitors are focusing on things like keyword research, writing good ad copy, attractive headlines, and worrying about what to bid on keywords, YOU should be focusing on your landing page. Oh, yes, focus on the other aspects of running a successful Google AdWords campaign, but never lose focus of the most important piece of the whole puzzle…your landing page.

So what is a landing page? Let’s start by defining what a landing page is not. A landing page is not the home page. It COULD be, but in most cases we have found that the best page in a website for the customer to “land” when they click on your ad is the page that has the information that the searcher was looking for.

For example, if you are a legal firm that offers a wide variety of services, and a prospect types in “accident attorney” doesn’t it make sense to send that prospect to the page in your website that talks about your services for accident victims? What if you sell all different types and colors of widgets and your prospect types in “green widgets”, would you send him to your home page or to the page that has pictures and pricing of the green widgets that you sell? Duh.

In fact, having the wrong landing page is perhaps one of the most common mistakes that newbies and (unfortunately) the “pros” make. I challenge you to do a search in Google and click on some of the ads that display for that keyword and notice how many times you end up on a page that has absolutely nothing to do with what you searched for. Chances are that you will have to do some clicking around to find out exactly what you want. Not good.

There are also ways to take advantage of captivating the searchers attention by using a little “keyword magic” on your site, where the keyword that the prospect searches for is automatically inserted into the headline. For example, let’s say that someone types “defense attorney” into Google and you had bid on that keyword. Your ad appears, the prospect clicks on your ad, and they land on your website. Now imagine a huge headline that says, “Looking for a defense attorney?” The prospect is now overjoyed because they easily found exactly what they were looking for.

But in the next moment another prospect types in “malpractice attorney” and your ad appears because you offer those service as well. When the prospect clicks through to your site they see a headline that says “Looking for a malpractice attorney?” Same site; same landing page, but different headlines. Wow! With the proper tools and the right expertise, this “magic” can easily be accomplished.

There are other things that must be done to a landing page in order to help you get more conversions. A few of them are as follows:

1. Keep it simple. Remove anything that would distract your prospect, such as excess navigation links.

2. Have a clear call to action. If I had to guess how many websites using Google AdWords have clear calls to action, my guess would be about 2-3% of them. Trust me. LOTS of money being wasted here.

3. Judicious use of audio or video on the landing page. Using audio or video you can easily satisfy requirement #2. Not only can you give your visitors a sense of warmth, but you can tell them exactly what to do in order to contact you so that you can help them.

Of course, there are MANY more things a proper landing page should include, but you are starting to get the picture. Proper Google AdWords campaign management may begin with good research and a good ad, but that’s not where it ends. “It’s the landing page, stupid,” and if you are having trouble, then get professional Google campaign management.

Here’s a question: When someone clicks on your banner or PPC ad, are they directed to your home page? If your answer is yes, then you may have many customers needlessly wandering around your department store, too.

So, for successful Web marketing, here’s where landing pages come in. A landing page is the page visitors should reach after clicking on your banner or PPC ad. The landing page has two main goals: 1) convince your visitor to stay, and 2) move the visitor toward the action you want them to take.

Great! How do we accomplish these two goals?

1. Use a Headline that Clearly Refers to the Ad They Clicked On
Experts agree this is critical to an effective landing page. Your visitors saw something that caught their eye, peaked their interest, and that’s why they clicked on the ad. What they see next, the place the ad leads them to, should correspond with what got them interested in the first place. This is what will maintain their interest for a while longer and keep them from clicking on the back button.

2. Give Your Visitors a Clear Call to Action
Whether you want them to click on the “add to cart” button, call a toll-free number, or download a free trial of your software, this must be crystal clear, and the copy on the landing page should lead them to take this step.

3. Write Quality Copy
Here, the word “quality” says it all. Write a clear, persuasive message. Present benefits, advantages to your target visitor, why they should consider your offer; this is exactly what they want! Don’t go off on a tangent. Needless to say, there should be no spelling or typographical errors. And use vocabulary that is appropriate to your target audience.

4. Remove Clutter
This goes especially for navigation bars, images, and links to other pages within or outside your web page. Remember, you want to keep the visitor focused on your landing page until you can convince him to take the action you want him to take. You can’t afford to have him wandering around your website or worse yet, leave your website entirely.

5. Test Your Landing Page
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. You might have to test several landing pages until you find the one that gets you the conversions you want.

And this is our ultimate goal: conversions! That is the metric you should really care about, the one that takes the customer from “Just looking!” to “Where do I sign?” If you design your landing pages with this important goal in mind, then you’re in business!

Affiliate marketing, while a quick and easy way to get started with earning money online is also a highly specialized form of marketing. There are several techniques and strategies that you can use to promote your affiliate products online, but very few work better than using a landing, or squeeze, page.

A landing page is mostly used in affiliate campaigns that utilize pay-per-click marketing, but should also be used with email marketing, paid ads on websites, and article marketing. Think of it as a place where you funnel all your traffic to distribute to other parts of your marketing campaign.

One of three things should happen once someone visits your landing page. One is they opt-in to your email list by signing up or a free download or video. Another would be to directly click to the merchant site for a direct sale. The last would be that they click to a blog, or listing of articles and information. Without one of these three things happening your landing page isn’t doing its job.

5 Successful Landing Page Tips for Affiliate Marketers

• Open With A Compelling Headline – Catching the visitors attention as soon as they visit your site will pull them further into your page.

• Develop An Emotional Sub-Heading – Most people miss this part, but you want to create an emotional pull after you capture their interest with the heading.

• Make it personal – Affiliate marketing isn’t an anonymous form of marketing anymore. Keep the copy on your page personal in nature to build rapport and trust.

• Use a testimony or two – Let your visitors see reaction, recommendations, and praise from other customers.

• Ask for a response – Affiliates usually use a “Click here for…”, but what really works is to come out and ask. Ask them to download your free gift, ask them to click to the merchant, and ask them to visit your blog or articles.

I want to show you three insider secrets you can implement right away that can potentially double your landing page conversion rates and sky rocket your sales!

Secret #1:

Stop talking about yourself on your landing page! Your website visitors don’t care about you, they care about what you can do for them. For the most part people are selfish – we care about how a site or page will help up and not about how great the person is.

I have found that just cutting in half the amount of time I talk about myself on a landing page has dramatically increased my conversions of people giving me their name and email.

Why?

Because people listen and read better when you talk about them!

Secret #2:

Always have a split test running on your landing page. You must always be testing different ways to offer your landing page offer. You have to try different colors and different wordings. Also change up the layouts as well.

Over time if you test a bunch of different version of your landing page you will find that you can double or triple the conversion rates! These little tests really add up over time.

But the problem is most people don’t do it and there for don’t see the results. Even a small change to your headline can mean an increase in 50% conversions overnight. Try different things and see how fast you increase your subscriber rate…

I did one test recently and doubled the amount of optins I get overnight! That adds up over a year… Don’t delay in doing this.

That said, a mediocre landing page has the power to “un-sell” your prospective customers…so you need to make a spectacular one!

How can you be sure that your landing page doesn’t repel your potential customers?

Follow these simple steps to create a landing page that will sufficiently satisfy your prospect’s emotional and rational needs, and make them confidently take the desired action!

What Is A Landing Page?

A landing page, also known as a lead capture page, is a web page where traffic is sent to convert, particularly into a lead or a sale.

For best results, your advertisements should direct to your landing page instead of your website’s home page. Your ad attracts the prospect’s interest, but landing pages pick up where the ad left off, and leads your prospects to complete the transaction.

Generally, each landing page focuses on getting your visitors to purchase one product or service, whether it’s a direct sale page or a list they can join.

If you only send traffic to your website’s home page, it’s a safe bet that most of your visitors will not magically find the page that prompts them to take the desired action!

(It has been said that every page of your website should function as a landing page, but that’s a topic for another day.)

Crown Your Landing Page with a Headline That Addresses a Problem

But not just any problem: Address the problem that your prospect may be experiencing that prompted him to click through to your landing page from your ad.

Use your headline to enter into the conversation that he’s having in his head. Involve him, and he will read all the way down to your subscriber box!

Some good examples of headlines that address a problem are as follows:

• “Are You Getting 7 – 9 Hours of Sleep, But Still Lethargic the Next Day?”

• “If You’re a Lame Duck When It Comes to Dating, Look No Further…”

• “Tired of Not Getting All Of Your Taxes Back In April? Find Out How You Can Get Every Red Cent Back Next Year!”

You might have noticed that two of those headlines were questions. Using questions as headlines is a tried-and-true technique that marketers have been using for centuries-questions beg your brain to find an answer, and will relentlessly agitate it until you do.

Thankfully, the answer to your question is not far away…

Use a Subheadline That Resolves Said Problem

If you don’t answer that annoying question or give them a solution right away, you will lose a substantial amount of your valuable traffic.

Remember, most (if not, all) web surfers refuse to pay attention to your page for too long…you must grab their attention and really electrify them about your product or service!

The trick is not to give them too much, however. You don’t want to give away the whole farm, so to speak. Your subheadline should solve the problem described in your headline and promise satisfaction, but should leave something to be desired-the rest of your landing page will fulfill that desire, and get them to convert.

Showcase Your Credibility

Whether you’re selling a product or building a list with your landing page, ease the collective mind of your customers: Prove that your business is credible and trustworthy.

This means you should convey that they can trust your company with their email address, their other contact information, and most importantly, any sensitive billing information. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes: Would you feel safe after buying anything from a website without a secure payment button or badge? Of course not!

Outline Your Product’s Main Benefits…Not Just The Features

There is a method to this madness, and it’s not complicated: Your customer simply wants to know what’s in it for them.

While benefits result from features, it isn’t enough that you list the best features of your product or service-you must give your visitors the experience of owning it for a little while. Let them imagine what it would be like to use it, or have it ready for them when they really could use it.

So for example, if your company specializes in web hosting and design, you may want to list the benefits as follows:

Instead of: “We are knowledgeable in HTML, CSS, AJAX and JavaScript!”

Use: “Our experts can design an attractive, professional website for you!”

You may place a page on your website, such as an “About Us” page, where you can go into detail about your certifications, but in most cases your landing page should outline the benefits rather than the features.

Support Your Claims Using Fact Rather Than Fiction!

You have a headline that addresses a real issue your customer is likely experiencing, a subheadline that promises a solution, displayed your credibility and illustrated the benefits…now it’s time to back up your offer with cold hard facts.

Don’t be discouraged, this part is incredibly easy! Just recharge your copy with a few simple fixes, like so:

Instead of: “We’re cheaper than the competition!”

Use: “We can prove that we’re 40% cheaper than the competition!” (Of course, provide real statistics to demonstrate this.)

Other great proof and figures to provide are: The overall return on investment your clients have experienced with your product or service, social proof (testimonials and case studies, etc.), the actual discounted percentage your customers can take advantage of during a sale or promotion.

Close Your Landing Page With a Clear Call to Action

While the quality of your landing page content is instrumental to converting your traffic, it cannot realistically serve this purpose if your call to action isn’t clear as a bell.

Your call of action can be spread as anchor links throughout your landing page, placed after each new topic or idea, or even just once at the end of your page. Either way, your instructions on how to take the preferred action must be foolproof.

If your prospects must click a button to purchase your product or service, show them. (You can even show them how: Research shows that secondary button feedback, such as the Submit button changing color when a cursor hovers over it, does yield more opt-ins!)

If your page requires they submit their name and email address to receive more information or to get a free offer, let them know not only where they can do this, but re-iterate what they get for doing so.

The goal of your call to action is to get your prospect to take the desired action, and you must make it as uncomplicated as possible so that anyone can do it without much thought.

Sit Back And Watch Your Conversions Grow!

Simply put, a converting landing page is a big deal when it comes to successful internet promotions…but it’s not impossible! Without a doubt, you can achieve more sales and signups by fine-tuning your content, and including a crystal clear call of action. Once you’ve nailed the perfect landing page, trust me-you’ll know!