Landing Page Open Topic for Oct 31st

Oct 31, 2012

What is a Landing Page

During my research, I discovered that a landing page is the most important

Component of an online marketing campaign strategy. The Landing page is the first page you land on (where the title landing page comes from) and are also the pages that all of your online advertisements direct your websites visitors to.

The main goal of any landing page is to have visitors register any form of information with your site. The information will be used to track and record data about your prospects.

Google’s web definition of a landing page is as follows.

Web definitions

“In online marketing a landing page, sometimes known as a lead capture page, is the page that appears when a potential customer clicks on an advertisement. The page will usually display sales copy that is a logical extension of the advertisement or link.”

Insert Video Here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at_EFa0bO4U

A good example of a landing page that I happened upon is Netflix’s landing page. Netflix’s business model is heavily reliant on converting visitors into paying subscribers. They are trying to achieve a signup rate that will have customers pay them a monthly fee, and the landing page that they use is equipped for optimal viewer retention.

To be able to tell how successful your landing page is you need to know the “3 Key Metrics.” These three key metrics are used to measure your conversion success rate.

The first is your “Conversion Rate” your conversion rate is best described as the number of visitors to your site that turn into a sale or another desired outcome.

The second metric is your “homepage abandonment rate”, which is best described as the number of visitors to your site that end up closing the page before making a purchase. Numbers for this will often be high as most visitors will often just like to look around or accidently end up on your site. The third metric that you need to know about to have a successful landing page is your “cost per sale.” It is important to understand how much it costs to make a sale, because it is important to get the advertisement that fits in your budget and prospected outcome.

Information obtained from

http://www.copyblogger.com/landing-pages/

Mobile Marketing Channels

Mobile is now bigger than ever, everyone has a cell phone which is why more and more marketers are bringing marketing to mobile. Some major channels that are used in the mobile marketing process are:

• Organic Searches

Organic Searches are what comes up on google which are completely natural and not paid for the advertisement. The adds highlighted at the top are paid for. It is the marketers goal to get their ad to the top of the organic searches but very often companies will pay to get in the Mobile PPC.

• Mobile App Store

A recent survey conducted stated that more people use apps than the web. The reason for this is because they are easier to use. This is very important to know as a marketer because apps can be a huge marketplace. By creating your own app you can gain a ton of user traffic and promote your product. Ex. Starbucks has their app that lets the user buy their coffee right of their phone and when they get to Starbucks they just flash their barcode and get their drink. This app allows the user to gain rewards such as free drinks the more drinks they purchase.

• Text Message Marketing 

Some companies will use text messaging in order to text certain deals to their customers. This is not typically used because many customers will start to get annoyed by receiving messages on their personal phone. This can also be used for contests where the user will send a message in order to enter a contest. 

Here is an interesting website I found dealing with text message marketing: TXT impact

• QR Codes

QR codes is very quickly emerging as a massive mobile marketing channel. QR codes let the user scan the code on an advertisement and instantly gain content from that ad. 

Ex. A magazine will have a QR code on the back allowing the viewer to scan the code in order to sign up for a subscription. 

Here is a video summarizing how mobile marketing works: 

Privacy on the Web...or lack there of.

Every second 8 new users go online, in North America alone there are close to 1.7 Billion users online. People on the internet don't just surf pictures and research, a computer is not just a work or homework tool anymore. People go on the internet today for millions of reasons, some good..some bad

                              
In 2011 every 1 in 13 people in the world belonged to the popular Social Media platform Facebook. Facebook as you know allows users to have the ultimate internet experience, staying connected to friends, updating each other on current events, posting pictures and videos about whats going on in daily life. We put everything on Facebook, even our birthdays, where we live, phone numbers and places of work. Some people even update their status about where they are right now.Unfortunately Facebook didn't come with a manual on how to protect yourself and your information online, actually 15% of Americans have never checked their social networking privacy and security account settings. (National Cyber Security Alliane (NCSA)-MacAfee Online Safety Study, 2011).

So how private is the web anyways, you can make your pictures private, hide your name and your personal information. But do you ever wonder how those ads on the side of your web pages seem to know exactly how old your are? Its because big sites like Facebook and Google, compile your information into a database which help them narrow down their ads, to specifically target you and others like you. Some large sites will even bid off these lists to other online advertisers. 

In reality most people feel decently private with their stuff all over the internet, the mentality is "everyone else has their stuff up, why not mine" and also we don't believe that Google or Facebook are going to splash gossip or pictures around, the worst they usually do is try to scam us into clicking on their ads. Unfortunately there are sites that are the complete opposite. In 2007 a site named TheDirty.com was created  as basically a platform for juciy gossip. People go to dirty.com to personally bash another person, the site holds pictures of those people and personal information, whatever the poster wants to say about the other person, stays on the site. In recent these could be things like an address, names of freinds and family and even nude photos!

For example, because of the lack of privacy settings available on the web, and places like this site, this young women named Liz was posted up on the dirty and has suffered greatly in regards to jobs and friends, take a look.

 

So there you have it "there is no such thing as privacy". Nik Richie and his site are still up and continue to allow "haters" post pictures and information on this site.

Fortunately there are some superhero web nerds out there that have posted a few things you can do in order to try and protect your online content. here's the link

consumerreports.com- Privacy on Facebook


And also here's a video about Privacy fix a program that searches out your privacy holes and fixes them for you. 

 The moral of the story, watch what you put online, you may be the next Dirty.com celebrity!