Why Landing Pages Are Important For Authors
By Olusomi Oduguwa
Writing as a career path is hard. It takes persistence, determination, and a lot of grit. For many who aren’t a one-hit-wonder, you might have to put in a bit more effort to get the desired result. And so, many writers tend to combine their writing career with a day job and mommy duties to make ends meet while they await the big break. How more difficult can it get?
As a budding author who is trying to find her footing in the industry, truth be told, the sooner your work begins to gain traction the better. You make efforts. You take a bunch of courses. You follow what everyone tells you to do. You go wide and get vendor links for each website. You even put those separate vendor links for the next book in each version to follow the individual terms and conditions (no Amazon buy-links in iTunes books). You’re hoping to get more sales by making the buying process easier on your reader. But you realize that this process is cumbersome, takes a lot of effort, and is time-consuming.
What if I told you there’s a short-cut? A way to make the buyer’s journey easy on your readers, and one that’s easier on you? And you don’t have to learn how to do anything new. If you have a website or a newsletter or CRM manager, you already have the tools and expertise to make this happen. Yes! What you need is to fully utilize landing pages.
You can add one link to all versions of your ebooks without tripping any vendor’s terms and conditions. And you can update buy links without having to reformat and reupload your books.
So, what exactly is a landing page?
First and foremost, a landing page has one intent: give the customer only the information on one product and only one call to action. One book per page with links to buy only that one book.
No other links. No footers. No menu bar. No side bar. Just the one book and the buy links from all the vendors. It’s simple. It’s streamlined. It’s easy to follow. A landing page is a hook you use to draw the bait in. The internet is full of so many distractions. Your landing page is a focal point that helps you get your audience to take a specific and intended action.
Why should authors care about landing pages? Here are a couple of reasons;
- It presents quality leads and conversions when used for subscriptions.
- It increases traffic to your website when used for lead generation.
- It provides a single update point for you and a single buy-point for your customers when used for buy-thru.
You need a good marketing campaign, which entails getting newsletter subscribers, gaining leads, and getting sell-through. That sounds like hard work, but landing pages make it easy.
How To Set Up Landing Pages
Creating landing pages is simple! Chances are good that the software you’re using for your website or your newsletter or customer relations management (CRM) already has this capability. Here are a couple of options to explore.
- Use Content Management Software (CMS) i.e., Wix, WordPress, etc.
- Use mailing list software or CRM i.e., MailChimp, Aweber, ConvertKit, etc.
- Use a landing page software i.e., Unbounce
With most website or CMS sites, look for the term “landing page” and you’ll find their templates. In Wix, you’ll need to go to Settings and select No Header or Footer.
When using CRM or newsletter management sites, search for forms and pages, or look for landing page. Active Campaign does not have a great landing page capability. I have tried it and don’t recommend that. I use them for my CRM, but not for my landing pages.
I haven’t played around much with landing page software. My needs have been properly met with my website hosting software or my newsletter management software.
Importance Of A Landing Page
Readers Undivided Attention
When you send your reader to your vendor page, there are ads and distractions. Your landing page doesn’t have that. Though, they will eventually get to your vendor page, but by going from your book to your landing page and then to the vendor page, they’re more focused with invested intent to buy your book.
Additionally, research shows that on a vendor website the attention span is 30:1 as compared to a landing page that is 1:1. Using landing pages to focus your customer attention is statistically proven.
Database
Landing pages don’t just help your conversion, they retain information. Customer traffic information allows you to determine what campaigns are working and which ones are not. What ad is gaining buy-thru? Which ad is not? Which books are getting read-thru? Which leader magnets are getting the most interest?
Armed with this information, you can streamline your marketing finesse to greater limits and sell more books. Information and data is power.
Conclusion
It is important to note that a landing page’s most important goal is to save you time, frustration, and energy. Your job is to write books but getting those books to your customers is your business. Focus your buyer’s experience through singular actions, to get people to engage in your brand. Each campaign, each link has one goal. Is it getting an email address? Is it reading your next book? Is it sharing your book with their friends? Focus their energies because—surprise, surprise—your readers are just as busy as you are.
