Last updated on February 28th, 2025 at 12:29 am
Everyone is talking about the importance of landing pages. But do you really need one?
Today we are going to discuss three reasons why a landing page is crucial for success…
What is a Landing Page?
Okay, so before we get into our main topic, let’s make sure that we all agree on definitions. What exactly is a landing page?
A landing page is a web page that is designed with a specific conversion goal in mind.
There are two main types of landing pages:
- Lead generation landing pages that are designed to convert visitors into leads by persuading them to provide their contact details, typically their email addresses, in exchange for a lead magnet.
- Sales landing pages that are designed to convert visitors into paying customers by persuading them to buy a product or service.
In theory, the term “landing page” is an umbrella term that includes both lead generation landing pages and sales landing pages.
In practice, though, when people use the term “landing page”, they are usually referring to the former.
That’s why today we are going to focus primarily on lead generation landing pages.
Now let’s get into the three reasons why landing pages are crucial for success:
#1: Landing Pages Convert the Best
Conversion rate is a metric that is used to measure the effectiveness of web pages. It shows what percentage of visitors took the action that you wanted them to take.
It’s calculated with this simple formula;
(Number of conversions / Number of visitors) x 100 = Conversion rate
For Example:
If 100 people visited your landing page and 10 of them provided their email addresses then the conversion rate of that landing page is 10%.
(10/100) x 100 = 10%
Obviously, this is a super simple example, you don’t really need a formula to know that 10 out of 100 is 10%.
Now let’s take a look at a more complicated situation.
If 7549 people visited your landing page and 387 of them provided their email addresses then the conversion rate of that landing page is 5.12%.
(387/7549) x 100 = 5.12%
Of course, in this day and age, no one is manually calculating conversion rates, it’s all done automatically by whatever app that they are using.
Still, it’s important to know this formula so that you would understand what exactly the conversion rate metric means. Anyway, what does all this have to do with landing pages?
Landing pages are a type of web page that converts the best. This shouldn’t be surprising given that they are designed with a single conversion goal in mind.
In practice, this means that creating a landing page and driving traffic directly to it will probably be more effective than presenting that same offer on a traditional website.
Unbounce did some interesting research where they analyzed lead generation landing pages across 10 different industries with a total of 74,551,421 visitors. What did they find?
The average conversion rate of a lead generation landing page was 4.02% but there was also a significant variation between different industries.
As you can see in the chart below, average lead generation landing page conversion rates range from 2.6% in the higher education industry to 6.1% in the vocational studies and job training industry.
While these conversion rates may not seem that impressive, they are almost certainly better than what you’d get with traditional websites in the same industries.
Moreover, you need to keep in mind that these are just the average conversion rates, which means that if you are willing to put some effort into your landing pages, you should be able to do better than that.
Of course, you still need to optimize your website for lead generation, but you shouldn’t rely on it for that.
Also, keep in mind that while lead generation is the most common conversion goal, you can also use landing pages to get people to:
- Follow you on social media
- Participate in surveys
- Provide feedback
etc…
Basically, whenever you need to persuade people online to take a specific action, a landing page is probably your best bet.
These less common landing page use cases might require more creativity, but they are also severely underutilized and therefore can help you gain a competitive advantage.
#2: Landing Pages Can Help You to Generate Leads
Now let’s talk about lead generation.
A lead is a potential customer who has:
- Expressed an interest in your product or service
- Given you their contact details (typically an email address)
Note that only people who meet both of these criteria can be considered leads.
Someone who has merely visited your website is not a lead and neither is someone whose contact details you somehow obtained without their permission.
There are several ways to generate leads online but the most effective one is creating a lead generation funnel and driving traffic to it.
Here’s how it works:
- You create an irresistible lead magnet that you offer to the potential customer in exchange for their email address.
- You create a landing page for that lead magnet.
- You drive traffic to that landing page.
Once the potential customer gives you their email address, they become a lead and enter your sales funnel. Then you can start selling them your products and services via email.
Let’s take a closer look at each of these three steps:
Create an Irresistible Lead Magnet
A lead magnet is a freebie that you offer to potential customers in exchange for their email address.
Digital lead magnets can be anything that people can either download to their devices or access online:
- An eBook
- A video masterclass
- A video course
- An email course
- A webinar
…etc.
For Example:
We have a whole bunch of digital lead magnets.
Here are some of them:
- “The Funnel Hacker’s Cookbook” (eBook)
- “Death of a Website” (webinar)
- “Funnel Scripts” (webinar)
- “Secret Funnel Strategy” (webinar)
- “Funnel Builder Secrets” (webinar)
- “5 Day Lead Challenge” (online course)
There are also physical lead magnets that are known as “FREE + Shipping” lead magnets where you offer the potential customer a free physical product but ask them to cover the shipping.
For Example:
Our co-founder Russel Brunson has written three best-selling books on the subject of growing an online business.
They are available on Amazon but we also use them as “FREE + Shipping” lead magnets – you can get physical copies of these books for free if you cover the shipping.
Regardless of whether you choose to use a digital lead magnet or a physical one, you need to make sure that:
- Your lead magnet offers a solution to a problem that the potential customer is struggling with.
- That problem is either the same one or related to the one that your paid product or service addresses.
Here’s something that you should keep in mind when it comes to lead magnets:
People won’t give you their email addresses unless you offer them something SUPER VALUABLE in return.
That’s why the key to designing an effective lead magnet is creating something that your dream customers desperately want…
And then offering it to them for free!
Create a Landing Page for That Lead Magnet
Once you have your lead magnet, you need to create a landing page for it.
There are three main landing page formats:
- Short-form landing pages, also known as squeeze pages, that typically are just one screen in length, have very little copy besides the headline and the subheadline, and only feature one image.
- Medium-length landing pages that typically are several screens in length, have multiple paragraphs of copy, feature several images, and include various other elements such as customer testimonials.
- Long-form landing pages that go on forever, have several thousand words of copy, and feature a variety of images, videos, social proof, etc.
We recommend starting with a squeeze page because you don’t yet know whether your free offer will resonate with your dream customers.
Here’s an example of a simple, yet high-converting squeeze page:
Once you have validated your lead magnet idea, you might want to consider creating a medium-length landing page for it. That can help you increase its perceived value.
As for the long-form landing pages, they are an overkill for digital lead magnets but might make sense for physical “FREE + Shipping” lead magnets.
That’s because, with a digital magnet, all you are asking for is the potential customer’s email address, which shouldn’t take much persuading.
However, with a physical lead magnet, you are asking them to part with their hard-earned money, so it makes sense to treat its landing page like a sales page.
Whatever format you decide to go with, we don’t recommend building your landing page from scratch if you don’t have any previous landing page design experience. Why?
Because there are established landing page design best practices that you should follow if you want to maximize the conversion rate of your landing page.
And if you are not a designer yourself then the easiest way to ensure that your landing page complies with those best practices is to use a proven landing page format.
Our software, ClickFunnels, includes a template library that features high-converting landing page templates for all the most common use cases.
So why waste time reinventing the wheel when you can simply do what’s been proven to work?
Start Driving Traffic to That Landing Page
Once you have your lead magnet landing page, you need to start driving traffic to it.
Paid advertising is the best way to do that because paid traffic is targeted, predictable, and scalable.
All major social media platforms allow you to run ads on them;
- YouTube
- TikTok
Pick the platform that makes the most sense for your business, create an ad campaign, and start running ads with a small daily budget.
Once you figure out how to do it profitably, you can begin scaling your campaign and experimenting with other platforms.
You don’t want to remain completely reliant on paid traffic forever, though.
That’s why you should also invest in building traffic-generating assets such as:
- A social media following
- A company blog
- A YouTube channel
…etc.
This will allow you to diversify your traffic sources so that you wouldn’t be dependent on a single traffic generation method.
And always drive traffic to your landing pages because that will allow you to make the most of it.
Meaning, use your social media, blog, and YouTube/TikTok to promote your lead magnet as opposed to promoting your products or services directly.
#3: You Can Use Landing Pages to Build a Pre-Launch Email List
Are you preparing for a product launch?
You can use landing pages to build your pre-launch email list.
The most straightforward way to do that is to create a simple lead generation funnel.
Say, if you are planning to launch a book, then you can build a pre-launch email list by using the first chapter as your lead magnet, creating a landing page for it, and then driving traffic to that landing page.
In fact, you can even do it without a lead magnet, with just a landing page that encourages people to sign up to be notified when the book becomes available. That’s not ideal, though.
A simple pre-launch lead generation funnel like that can work well, but if you want the best results, we recommend building a proper product launch funnel instead.
Here’s what the product launch funnel looks like:
Page 1: A squeeze page
Page 2: Video #1
Page 3: Video #2
Page 4: Video #3
Page 5: Video #4
Page 7: A product order page
Page 8: An order confirmation page
Building a pre-launch email list is the single best thing you can do to make your launch a success, so start working on it ASAP!
Build Landing Pages That CONVERT With ClickFunnels!
ClickFunnels has everything you need to create landing pages that convert:
- Proven landing page templates
- Visual editor that you can use to customize those templates
- A/B testing functionality that you can use to optimize your landing pages
What’s best is that we have a free trial which means that you can check out our software without any risk!