Media buying landing pages — how to make it sell

Feb 2, 2023 11 min read

Even if you’re just beginning your journey into the world of media buying, you’ve probably heard of landing pages.

“Landing” literally means arrival. This article will tell you more about who “lands” and where. You will learn what a landing page is, how to make it convertible, and how to save money from your budget.

Our advice will be useful not only for beginners in media buying but also for more experienced ones. 😉

Why do you need a landing page for media buying?

A landing page is a one-page website designed with the direct purpose of selling a product or service. A landing page for media buying is used in almost all verticals. This tool is required to send the target audience toward the final stage of the funnel. It forces them to perform the main action (buying a service or product, making a deposit, or subscribing).

Landing traffic can come both from prelanding (intermediate site) and directly from advertising – banners, push, mailings, popunders, etc.

In some niche markets, channeling traffic through site layering is a prerequisite. However, a high-quality final landing page is something you need for both cold and warm public. This page is designed to familiarise users with product benefits or services and the benefits for themselves from their purchase.

It’s challenging to make a landing page that converts. It certainly will not lead them to the purchase if it doesn’t grab the user’s attention. This is a direct path to low-scale conversion and exhausting your budget. Therefore, before you set up a landing page, it’s important to understand what’s getting in the way of acquiring potential clients.

What makes a good landing page?

Selling a landing page includes a catching title and several mandatory blocks:

Information about the brand or project. If there is no information, the visitor will look for it on the Internet (which means they will leave the site without committing a target action).
Characteristics of the product or service. This might be the composition, test results, certificates: everything that enhances visitors’ trust and brings them closer to buying.
Benefits of the offer — free delivery, natural composition, a second unit as a gift, a sample for a symbolic price, etc.
A formulated problem that can be solved with this product.
Price.
Plausible testimonials and recommendations. Ideally, they should be as stylized as possible to resemble social network pages.
Questions section. They usually deal with objections.
Several calls to action in the different sections: “Buy”, “Order”, “I want a set”, “Get credit”, and “Order a call-back”.
Seller contacts: phone number, e-mail, messengers, feedback form.

The length of the landing page is measured in screens. There is no perfect size.

It is important to convey to a potential buyer complete information about the offer but to do it in a concise, engaging, and structured way. No one will want to read a boring “tablecloth” just containing text. Instead, the page should be eye-catching, easy to read and load in less than a second (on all types of devices).

Landing page	Regular site
A single landing page consisting of several sections	A lot of pages with unique URLs and multiple sections
It is created with one purpose – to close the funnel. Therefore, each element used to fill the site should persuade the visitor to perform the target action	It has many functions – to convey up-to-date information, news, instructions, and reviews. Every page on the site has a purpose.
Only a single product is being promoted	A range of products in catalogs are being sold
All the buttons lead to the same action	Broad functionality — you can register, leave comments, compare products, read the blog, and rate

How does a landing page differ from a regular website?

Before making a landing page, it is important to understand how it should differ from a regular site.

A landing page is an effective tool for promoting your offer (unlike the classic single-page site). For example, a business card site is essentially a landing page, but it most often represents the brand, increases recognition and user confidence, but does not lead to profit “here and now”.

Types of landing pages

All landing pages are divided into three large groups:

micro landing pages – minimal design and filling, usually they invite visitors to fill out a form or go to the next stage of the funnel;
single-screen landing pages – they are used where you need to perform a simple target action (watching a video, recording a webinar, downloading a file);
multi-screen – these are full-fledged landing pages containing all the necessary sections to present a product or service. In turn, they are divided into landing stories, landing quizzes, landing showcases, etc.

Landing pages can be divided into several types based on the format and target action.

Selling Landing Page

The task of a selling landing page is to sell a specific product or service here and now. It has a concise description, advantages, and a visible CTA button. The landing page will not sell effectively without a clear structure (as discussed earlier).

Announcement

Creating such a landing page is to present a new product or announce an upcoming event. The user can leave their contact details on the page, sign up for an event, and book a place. An announcement landing is suitable for essay offers (online courses, educational programs).

Prelanding

Before you create a landing page, you often need to make a prelanding page – referred to in media buying circles as a “layer”. In some niche markets, layers are used to channel traffic directly to the landing page.

An example of an effective landing+prelanding link could be a realistic story of a media personality who tried dietary supplements and now recommends them. The prelanding page sends users to the landing page, where they can learn more about the product and order it.

through moderation on advertising platforms. Media buying specialists use this format when promoting offers from “grey” verticals, such as nutra (in particular, dietary supplements, “slimming”), gambling, finance, adult, and other “forbidden” areas.

Combined landing page

It combines all the parameters of the types of landing pages listed above. Differential landing is often used in the SEO promotion of online stores. It enables you to attract traffic for low-frequency queries. For example, to present a product or promotion.

Multilanding

You can create a multi-landing page to save time and increase landing page conversion. This is a single landing page, but it has several versions. The content a user sees depends on their request. To configure such a landing page, you need utm_term – a UTM tag used to segment traffic by keywords. Multilanding is suitable if the media buyer is channeling traffic from social or advertising networks.

Advantages and disadvantages of landing pages

You should know that a landing page is another marketing campaign tool like any other in media buying. It has both advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages	Weaknesses
Increases conversion	Limited information about the offer (it’s often difficult to fit everything on one page)
You can quickly and easily create a landing page yourself for free using online builders	They’re persuasive since the whole site is devoted to one product or service
They’re easy to test, add content, and adapt to current trends	In the long run, the ability to convert only here and now is pointless (if the user leaves the landing page, they will not return for a purchase)

N.B.! Search engines more easily index a static landing page. Dynamic landing pages use scripts that are not usually indexed. Therefore, if you’re looking for high positions in organic SERPs, then choose static landing. Using a dynamic landing page, you will have to rely on paid traffic sources.

How to make a converting landing page for media buying

It’s not as difficult to make a landing page as it was a few years ago. You don’t need to know JAVA, HTML, or CSS. Try creating a landing page yourself for free with landing page generators. You can use popular builders like Wix and WordPress. But it’s better to create landing pages in landing builders for media buying without unnecessary elements. Today’s most popular services are Nethouse, Unbounce, Instapage, ClickFunnels, LeadPages, ShortStack, Hubspot, LanderBolt, and PureLander. There’s a lot to choose from.

It doesn’t really matter how you create your landing page, either yourself or ordered from a freelancer. However, it’s important to make it convertible. Otherwise, you’ll just exhaust your budget. To do this:

You need to strictly observe the structure, using all the necessary components described above.
Do not overload the page with information; present it concisely and visually.
Use a catchy title that will make the visitor want to scroll through the page to the end. However, it mustn’t shock or raise any doubts. Instead, emphasize the urgency – for example, “in 10 days, you’ll lose 5 kg” (just don’t give up, 20 kg in two weeks is a failure).
Make a clear call to action without abstract wording, so the user understands what to do with the page. Don’t place the CTA buttons next to each other, otherwise, none of the options will be selected.
Use a high-quality image with large and relevant offers. Landing page visuals are just as important as the title.

Before you create a landing page from scratch, consider the idea of converting landing pages offered in spy services. You can copy a landing page using plugins, browser extensions, and services that immediately “clean” them up and even provide admin panels for editing purposes. We don’t recommend this, however. It is better to find live and already converting landing pages offered in spy tools and make them unique before launching them.

Is it possible to buy media traffic without a landing page?

There are cases when you don’t need to create a landing page:

A partner site offers ready-made landing pages that easily pass moderation and demonstrate a good conversion rate.
The public is already sufficiently warmed up and ready to perform a targeted action on the advertiser’s website.
When you need to increase company recognition, landing pages don’t matter much for outreach campaigns. In this case, other marketing tools predominate.

If none of the above applies to you, you must create a landing page. Regarding media buying, you’re probably likely to need a landing page.

What to do if your landing page does not convert?

Low or no conversion can be explained in the following way:

the product or service is not in demand;
the target audience wasn’t selected correctly;
an ineffective traffic source was selected;
low traffic quality;
the landing page wasn’t created correctly.

It can be one or several of the above reasons. Often the problem lies in the landing page. But before you give up, you need to analyze the errors, correct them and continue testing.

How to establish that the problem is in your landing page

You’re getting clicks but no conversions – this clearly signifies something wrong with your landing page. The offer may be relevant, the advertising works, and the target audience has been selected correctly, but visitors leave the landing page without completing the target action. What could be wrong?

The page lacks specifics; users don’t immediately realize where they are and what they’re being offered.
Low level of trust. In order to increase it, you have to use realistic reviews with contacts (fake, of course), certificates, and opinions of “experts” and famous personalities. But, don’t go too far with your promises and guarantees.
It’s not clear how to place an order. Visitors need to understand what will happen when they leave their contact details. The effect of “transparency” makes it easier to decide on the target action.
The price is too high. People tend to make spontaneous purchases, to a lesser or greater extent, if the price isn’t too substantial. This is why it’s more profitable for media buying specialists to promote offers with inexpensive goods (or valuable ones offered at a large discount).
Too many “smart” words. Explain the benefits to people in accessible language, backed by scientific terms to add expertise.
A repulsive image. Look at the visual through the eyes of a visitor seeing it for the first time: are the colours too extreme for the eye; do the fonts vary; does the picture distract from the information on the page? And so on…
You need a prelanding page to “warm up” the public for the landing page.

So, now you understand why you need a landing page for media buying and when you don’t. You also learned that even if you don’t have a ready-made landing page from a partner site, you don’t have to pay a programmer. There are plenty of specialized sites for creating landing pages. They offer ready-made templates that will help save money from your budget.

To sum up, we stress again that the purpose of creating a landing page is to “squeeze” a potential client. The conversion rate is important, but it is better to focus on profit when testing. Remember that using the Pareto principle in media buying is useful, so focus on what makes a profit.

P.S. Of course, if you use Smartlink, you don’t need to think about landing pages. When you click on a link, it is selected automatically, depending on the geo, device, and other user parameters 😉

Start earning!