The simple answer is that a landing page is the first page you “land on” after clicking a link.

But when it comes to lead generation there is a more complex answer. Most websites contain many pages and are designed to allow visitors to explore. A good landing page is different in that it will be designed to accomplish a single objective and goal. When that objective is lead generation, the goal is to compel the visitor to provide his or her contact information.

When a landing page is designed properly it will focus only on accomplishing that objective. And because of this single focus using landing pages in your marketing efforts provides you with the best opportunity to increase conversion rates and reduce the costs of acquiring leads.

It is often said that today people have the attention span of a goldfish. And when it comes to clicking a link and visiting a webpage if most visitors do not immediately find what they are looking for they will quickly leave.

The home page of most websites simply has too broad of a focus. Our Sumo websites are a good example. They contain a lot of great retirement resources that can really help visitors become better educated on important retirement topics like Social Security, Medicare, annuities, taxes, retirement plans and much more.

But, lets say you place an ad on Facebook that is targeted to people who must transition to Medicare. This is a perfect pool of potential leads because most people find Medicare complex and your Sumo website has an educational video course designed to make Medicare much easier.
Your Facebook ad features this course and contains a link to learn more. You could have that link go to your Sumo website’s home page, or to a special landing page that focuses only on that Medicare course.

The problem with sending them to the home page is that every link on that page that doesn’t deal with Medicare (the reason they click on your ad) is distraction that will dilute your message and reduce your lead campaign’s conversion rate.

Sending them to a dedicated landing page (Sumo websites include dozens of them) reduces the number of options a visitor has so there are less distractions to get in the way of accomplishing the objective of capturing the visitors contact information.

For example, Sumo landing pages do not include a navigation menu bar at the top of the page. So visitors don’t have a way to explore. They came to the landing page because they were interested in Medicare, because our objective is to capture their contact information, we want to keep their focus on Medicare. We want them to opt-in to view the Medicare course.

You might wonder if it wouldn’t be better to send them to the home where they can also learn about Social Security, taxes, annuities, and other retirement topics. The idea would be by casting a wider net you increase the chances of capturing a visitor’s interest. And while this might seem logically it has been proven time after time that the narrower the focus the better the conversion rate. Again, too much information, too many options just servers to increase the distractions that can get in the way of lead generation.

Instead of Medicare let’s say you want to generate annuity leads. You might place an add on a social media platform that briefly discusses the advantages of using annuities to generate income for life.

A person clicks on your ad because they want an easy way to learn more about annuities.

But it won’t seem so easy if upon arriving on your landing page they see an abundance of text. You cannot run the risk of making visitors feel overwhelmed by your landing pages, and this is where videos can help.

A video allows visitors to get the information they are looking for with little effort beyond an initial click of the play button.

Sumo landing pages serve an entirely different purpose than the rest of your Sumo website. When combined with compelling social media ads that promote a single offer, you increase goth traffic and the odds of turning these visitors into clients.

That is the power of Sumo landing pages!