It has finally happened. Agency owners are accepting the realitythat doing business over the Internet is something many customersactually want to do. Some are having a tough time with thistransition because they're still focused on baby boomers, ratherthan on “Generation Y.” The latter group has no problem withhigh-tech business solutions. Many of these “Millennials” don'teven have phone books, preferring to simply text-message instead ofcalling. So while boomers may look at the Internet as optional fordoing business, for Generation Y it's mandatory.

That being the case, innovative marketers are coming up with newways of reaching a technologically savvy market. An excellentexample is something called a “landing page.” A landing page isessentially a direct-marketing tool. It presents a message to avisitor who is directed to the page by a specific source. Thesource could be a direct-mail piece, a broadcast or print ad, or amessage on a business card.
Types of landing pages
There are two basic types of landing pages. “Reference” landingpages present information that educates visitors on topics relevantto their needs and lifestyles. This type of page can include text,images, surveys and relevant links. In many ways, a referencelanding page is much like traditional institutional marketing; thebenefit is keeping the brand in front of a target market. Thesuccess of this type of page depends on who visits the site andwhat sort of information they're expecting to find.
The other type of landing page is “transactional.” It tries topersuade visitors to complete an activity, like requesting a quoteor consenting to be contacted. A visitor's action on atransactional page is usually referred to as a “conversion.” Thepage's effectiveness is measured by the conversion rate, which iscalculated by comparing the number of hits against the number ofclicks answering the call to action.
Benefits of landing pages
To be successful, a landing page should have a clear purpose and areliable way to measure the conversion rate. It's also essentialthat visitors readily understand what they are asked to do, and howtaking that action will benefit them. In addition to those alreadymentioned, some of those actions might include:
o Clicking on a link to your main agency Web site or other Websites.
o Requesting a newsletter.
o Telling a friend about your agency.
o Posting comments or providing feedback on specific issues.
On some pages it may be possible to combine two purposes, but twois the limit. More options will decrease the page's effectivenessand make it difficult to track the conversion rate.
A common mistake is to use an agency Web site's home page or“contact us” page as a landing page. This defeats the purpose of alanding page, since you want visitors to access the page only via aspecific source and to receive a specific message. That way, youcan track your success rate for a particular marketingmethod.
The cost of creating a landing page is usually minimal, and thepage requires little maintenance once published. Simplicity iscritical. After you design a landing page (or have one designed foryou), look at it and ask yourself, “What does this page want me todo?” If it takes you longer than eight seconds to answer thatquestion, you probably should revamp the page. One solution mightbe to break it into two landing pages, so each makes a strongercase for a desired action.
How landing pages work
Understanding how landing pages work is essential for theirsuccessful use. When most agency owners think about Internetmarketing, their thinking begins and ends with their agency Websites. They post all information that any customer or prospectmight want to view on various pages that all ultimately link backto the home page and the site map. With landing pages, on the otherhand, agency owners target specific groups of clients or prospectswith a specific message.
Web sites typically are designed to make it as easy for searchengines to link to as many parts of them as possible. With alanding page, just the opposite is true. An effective landing pageis virtually invisible on the Web, because it's:
o Disconnected from the home page and the site map.
o Not linked to other pages.
o Prevented from being directly accessed by a random visitor.
The page has to be invisible to random Web surfers, since the goalis to get a target group to request a certain action and thenmeasure the conversion rate. To do so accurately, the visitor musthave only one way to get to that page.
How can this technology be applied to agency marketing? Let's sayan agency has a strong contractor market, and also a strongbenefits department. In the past, it would probably mention thesemarkets on its home page, and then provide links visitors could useto access other pages containing additional information. As analternative, this same agency could create a landing page for eachof its lines of business. To get an accurate conversion rate, thesenew pages would not be linked to the main Web site or routinelyused in print, direct mail or broadcast marketing. By controllinghow visitors access the page–say, through a specific adcampaign–100% of the hits on those pages can be attributed to thecampaign.
How many landing pages should an agency have? It depends on howmany customer markets the agency wants to reach with a message.Should there be a different page for each advertisement or line ofbusiness? Why not? Should there be a separate landing page for eachproducer? Again, why not? The more closely you can track what yourcurrent and prospective clients want, the more effectively you cangrow your agency.
Doing business in the future–the near future–will require agenciesto understand and adroitly use Internet technology. This isparticularly true as Generation Y overtakes the baby boomers as thedominant buyers in the market. The agencies that understand thisand position themselves accordingly will benefit in the years tocome.
Ted Baker is the president of Advantage Automation Inc., whichfor 17 years has offered agency-consulting services addressing avariety of management and agency-development issues. He also is anauthor and frequent conference speaker. Ted can be reached at[email protected].