Some of our clients have asked us: ‘Are landing pages funnels?’
Here at Aleph Website, we use both landing pages and marketing funnels to generate leads and convert our audience. It is important to understand the similarities and differences between the two. This article goes to answer your question.
In the contemporary world where internet usage has increased drastically, having a strong online presence requires a well-researched buyer’s journey. A buyers’ journey stands for a process a buyer goes through to become a customer. This process is described by the marketing funnel that includes different stages representing prospective customers’ mindsets.
A sufficient number of different marketing funnel types describe buyers’ journey through different stages. One of the most popular is the Inbound Marketing funnel model that differentiates the attract, engage and delight phase.
Although different funnel types use different frames, the logic of each is the same – to understand buyers’ journey at each stage in order to move them to the bottom of the funnel where conversions occur.
So, what are the most important aspects of an effective and powerful marketing funnel, and what role does the landing page play in the funnel?
Landing pages are a crucial element in the marketing funnel and here is why
When online users click through email, Google, or Facebook ads, they land on a standalone web page called a landing page.
While the goals of the landing page can be different, the purpose is always the same – converting visitors into leads.
The purpose encourages visitors to take the desired action. That can be:
- a webinar registration
- downloading a lead magnet
- signing up for a free trial
- a product demo, etc.
To put it differently, visitors get a valuable resource from the landing page in exchange for their contact information that will help us get closer to them and move them towards the bottom of the funnel where they become customers.
A landing page is a powerful lead conversion tool
When visitors give us a lead, we move them from the top of the funnel toward the bottom of the funnel. Therefore, a landing page is a vitally important element in our overall marketing strategy, and more importantly – a powerful lead conversion tool.
According to a Hubspot article about the importance of a landing page:
“When you know a stream of targeted traffic will be coming to your website, you can increase the likelihood of converting that traffic into leads by using a targeted landing page.”
We say that a landing page is targeted because it’s very specific and created to direct visitors to the relevant content that can solve certain problem or challenges. They don’t want to waste time and explore irrelevant content, so the landing page should give them the right information effectively and efficiently. Therefore, a landing page should have one purpose and one clear call to action.
Landing pages can give us valuable information about our target audience and their preferences
Moreover, landing pages can tell us what our target audience is most interested in and which content is high converting. In this way, we can improve and optimize our overall marketing strategy.
Also, leads that we generated through the landing page, help us collect demographic information about the prospects. This data helps us create buyers’ persona and understand their needs better.
So to answer your question ‘are landing page funnels?’ from this section it is clear that landing pages generate valuable data and insights and this is not necessarily the role of a marketing funnel. A marketing funnel is predominantly used for conversions – which occur at lower-funnel sections.
Landing pages are convenient for testing
Additionally, we can test out different variations of landing page elements by conducting A/B testing in order to improve the conversion rate. For instance, our goal is to lead generation by sending a newsletter, so we create a popup with a subscription form and two variations of a landing page. The only difference between landing pages is a microcopy in the CTA button. After several days when we get sufficient data, Google Analytics will tell us which version performs better and should be implemented on our landing page.
More tips about how to conduct A/B testing can be found in the Elementor article about building a sales funnel in WordPress.
Landing pages are not necessarily a marketing funnel
As previously mentioned, the landing page is a web page where a person lands after clicking through an ad, email, etc. And it should be conversion-oriented (including a specific call to action). But what if a prospect lands on a homepage after clicking through the ad?
Can the homepage be a landing page?
In this case, the homepage is a landing page. Whereas the ‘common’ landing contains a specific offer, a homepage has a range of options visitors can opt for using the navigational tab. The homepage’s objective is not to convert, but to direct visitors to a conversion page via internal links.
The importance of internal linking and Google PageRank for improving landing pages performance
Besides considering how online users experience our website, critically important is how Google ranks it. Google PageRank is a Google Search algorithm that ranks web pages in search engine results. Each webpage has a GoogleRank score (from 0 to 10) that represents quality and importance.
Among the top Google ranking factors are links. The more links that lead to a webpage, the rank is higher. However, Google doesn’t count all links equally. For example, a link from a PageRank 7 is more valuable than a link from a PageRank 2.
Developing an optimized internal linking strategy is very important to increase Google PageRank. Internal links point from one page to another on the same site (same domain).
The most important things internal linking enables:
- passing authority between website pages,
- user experience improvement by helping them find relevant content easily and quickly
- ultimately, it helps Google understand the website’s structure
For more information on an internal link, strategy checks out Moz article about internal linking.
How to use internal linking for increasing traffic to your top landing pages (product pages)
When it comes to creating an effective internal linking strategy, it’s critical to consider the marketing funnel and how it works.
Many clients focus on the bottom of the funnel and link directly to the product page in order to improve the ranking for product pages. However, the top funnel pages are the most linkable web pages and they have considerably more link opportunities, whereas landing pages are not meant to rank for search results.
In light of this fact, targeting top-funnel pages and then linking them to the bottom-funnel page is a far superior link acquisition approach for enhancing the rankings of bottom-funnel pages (product pages).
In other words, when it comes to increasing PageRanks and improving search engine performance, the focus should be on top-of-funnel pages such as the homepage, which should then link to bottom-of-funnel (product) pages. In this way, we pass authority between website pages.
What are some examples of landing pages?
Unfortunately, neither the formula for the most effective landing page nor General ‘Best Practices’ exist. Each business and company is unique, so each has a different audience that behaves differently. This is why testing is a crucially important and valuable way to improve landing page performance.
However, there are a vast number of engaging landing pages we can learn from.
CONCLUSION: Are landing page funnels?
To answer the question of whether landing pages are funnels or not, we have to consider all the above-mentioned. Landing pages are funnels if they’re conversion-oriented and include a specific call to action that ‘warms’ up prospects.
On the other hand, if a landing page is not primarily used for driving conversions, such as a homepage, it’s not a funnel since the objective is not conversion, but promotion engagement with the brand.
References and Contributions
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