Landing pages are simply the best way to improve your chances of finding success and profitability in affiliate marketing. Through the use of customized landing pages you can convert cold and targeted traffic into high value leads like never before — especially when zoning in on a specific niche or target demographic audience. Most online marketers know that importance of landing pages, but when it comes to creating their own, many are lost at where to get started and what direction to take. The good news is that landing pages are just as important today as ever before, and they are also now easier, faster and more cost effective to create as well — thanks to our in-house landing page builder (which we dive into later). In this detailed guide we are going to walk you through everything you need to know about landing pages, such as why they are important, when to use them and of course… how to make them.
What is a Landing Page?
A landing page is the pre-sell page a visitor is sent to before hitting the actual lead generation page. Landing pages are used to increase conversions, engagement and the value of leads generated. This is usually done by highlighting the benefits of an offer and enticing the user to fill our the registration form or complete a purchase on the next page. For example, if you wanted to promote a dating offer, it would be in your best interest to create a landing page that was built around your demographic audience and relates with their interests, versus sending the visitor directly to the main page or registration page of the dating site. Here is a good example of a dating landing page that would work well. 
This would be a perfect landing page if you were targeting a demographic of “single men” who are “looking for single women”, that also live in the “San Diego, CA” area. Not only would the landing page be more appealing than sending traffic directly to the advertiser’s main page, it would also grab the target audience’s interest and make them want to take action and join the dating site. However, this likely wouldn’t be the case if you were targeting these same demographics and sending the user directly to the advertiser’s main page as it would be too generic.
Why Do You Need to Use a Landing Page?
As mentioned, landing pages are used to peak the interest of the user and to make them take action. The more relevant your landing page is to your audience, the more likely they are to convert. In reference to why landing pages are needed, that comes down to a few different factors, such as how and why you are promoting an offer. Landing pages are usually needed for the following reasons:
- To increase conversions
- To target a demographic audience
- To comply with advertising network rules
- To capture partial lead data before a full registration or sale is attempted
In most cases, no matter how or where you are planning on promoting an offer, a landing page is used to increase conversions — however, when it comes time to promote an offer through paid advertising (like search advertising on Google), a landing page is usually required as sites like Google, Yahoo and Bing won’t allow online marketers to promote an offer directly through their affiliate link. While this may seem bothersome to new affiliates, its definitely worth the time and effort to build out your own affiliate offers so you can further split test conversions, traffic sources and your audience. For example, someone searching for “free credit report” might not be looking for the same service as someone searching for “how to increase 650 credit score” — but the same person would be a valuable lead to a credit score related company. This means it would be in your best interest to approach the traffic for each of these keywords differently with a unique pre-selling landing page.
When to Use a Landing Page or Just Direct Link?
As important as landing pages are, sometimes they simply aren’t necessary — such as when you advertising through media buys, email and social networks. Direct linking also works well with the following types of affiliate offers; Email / Zip submits Contests and surveys Downloads or installs Quick lead generation forms In most cases, these types of affiliate offers have a simple call to action and usually lower payouts. When this is the case, there isn’t a big need to “sell” the offer, as people usually want them or they don’t. 
When setting up an ad campaign with social media or through media buying, the affiliate offers you promote are usually based off the target and demographic of users on the site. With this being the case, you don’t need super advanced ad tracking to find out if the offer will convert or not, but you will want to setup advanced tracking so you can see what sites and traffic sources are converting best.
How to Create a Landing Page?
Now that you understand why, when and where to use landing pages, it’s time to start creating a few of your own. When it comes to creating landing pages, you have a lot of options.
- Hire a designer to create your landing page
- Create your own landing pages in software / html editors
- Setup your own web hosting and use a WordPress landing page theme
Each of these options are nice, but they also have a big learning curve and/or will cost you a decent amount of money to setup. If you were to hire a graphic designer to create a landing page for you, it could cost anywhere from $200-$600+ for a design, which might not even look like what you originally wanted in the first place. You can also design your own landing page, but this will require you to learn a graphic design program, configure your graphic design into HTML and also setup web hosting and a domain to house your landing page. The same applies for using a WordPress landing page theme… you would need to figure out how to use the theme software and setup your own site, domain name and web hosting. In the world of affiliate marketing, keeping your costs as low as possible is one of the best ways to improve ROI and stay ahead of the game. Starting each ad campaign off with a few hundred dollars being invested into your landing page is not the way to go. As online marketers ourselves, we understand how complicating, expensive and time consuming it can be to create landing pages.. So what did we do? We created one of the best drag and drop landing page editors, that is simple enough for anyone to use, while also providing high quality landing pages that convert like crazy. Not only can you create your own landing pages from scratch, you can also work off any of our 100+ landing page design templates. 
In addition to our state of the art landing page editor, we also have a powerful backend system that allows you to track, analyze and split test every aspect of your landing page and ad campaigns — which is a must for every successful affiliate marketer.
Creating Your First Landing Page with AdsBridge
With a good understanding of what landing pages are and when/how to use them, it’s time for you to start designing your own. While there are many methods for doing this, we highly recommend you give our drag and drop landing page editor a try. To start creating your own landing pages, you can take advantage of our special membership level at just $19 per month which caters to newbie affiliate marketers, and allows for up 100,000 visits/clicks per month. As a member of AdsBridge, you will also have full access to our traffic distribution system, our leading page editor and much more. In the next chapter, we will be covering everything you need to know about properly setting up your ad campaign and how to track and analyze your traffic and lead data.