When I first started learning about internet marketing, I heard this phrase “landing page” a lot. What’s a landing page anyway?
And why would an author need to know about it, whatever it is?
I quickly found out that “landing page” can be any web page, on a free-standing website, on a blog site, or anyplace else that’s used as a destination to send people.
It’s where you want them to “land.”
For instance, if I’m going to lead a group of authors on a tour of the best pubs in Amsterdam (commonly known as a “pub crawl”) I might set up a page on my blog describing the trip, telling people why it’s going to be a great experience, and providing a way for them to get more information or sign up to participate.
This will become the “landing page” for that tour.
It’s where I’ll send anyone who asks about it, I’ll link to it in any articles I write about the tour, and I’ll include it in any emails I send out letting people know about this unique opportunity.
Unfortunately, Books Don’t Sell Themselves
You can see that having a landing page for a product or service or special event makes the marketing a whole lot easier.
And that’s why more authors should be using landing pages for their books, especially when it comes time to dive into your book launch.
All too often authors skip this step, and do something else instead, like:
- Write a blog post about the book
- Create an “ad” and put it into the sidebar of their blog
- Add it to a big “books” page on their website
But none of those things, good though they are, can replace the efficiency and marketing power of a dedicated landing page.
Until now, creating your own landing page hasn’t really been all that easy for most authors. If you try (and I have) you’ll run into problems like:
- having difficulty making a page your WordPress site that looks and functions properly. You can spend many hours wrestling with this and still end up with something that doesn’t work the way you want it to
- buying special software that promises to let you design your own web page, but in fact becomes yet another tool you have to invest time in to learn how to use
- hiring a designer or developer to create a page for you, with numerous meetings and lots of development time, not to mention what could be a significant cost
But there are new solutions coming onto the market all the time, and one I’m pretty excited about is Booklaunch.io.
This looks like about the best solution for authors who want to quickly and inexpensively set up landing pages for their books, and I can’t wait to tell you more about it.
So if you want to know the kinds of things that go into an effective landing page, and how having one can help your book marketing efforts, there are 2 things you can do right now:
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Photo: bigstockphoto.com
