Having a landing page without a website is not only possible, but it might also be the best way to develop your online presence. In this guide, we’ll explain how to create a landing page without a website.
The plain answer is “YES”, you can create a landing page without a website.
A landing page is a singular page that is independent of a website. It contains no internal, external, or affiliate links. The point of a landing page is to ‘convert’ clients. In this context, conversion means that the client follows through on a call to action (CTA). These are employed for marketing campaigns with a clear and self-contained purpose. Examples here would be encouraging users to subscribe to your monthly newsletter, or short time seasonal offers of goods and services.
The old way of thinking of your website as the sun to your digital media solar system is outdated. Social media and paid campaigns have become one of the most important tools at your disposal to develop both a network of clients and trust.
Building landing pages are there to direct your traffic towards both your social media and website. Most importantly, landing pages without a website are objective-driven. In other words, you tell your clients exactly what you want them to do.
This allows you to drive sales, subscriptions, or any other goal. Creating a landing page without a website is perfectly fine.
The purpose of a landing page is to motivate visitors to take an action. The action can be related to lead generation or direct sales. Marketers can use landing pages at all sales funnel stages. Whether it is to encourage visitors to sign up for a newsletter or a trial or download a checklist, we can do it all in a targeted manner through landing pages.
It is great if you have decided to invest in landing pages. But before jumping in, you must have a clear vision of why you want to create landing pages in the first place. Let’s explore some of the major situations in which landing pages save you effort and time.
Brand and product evolution through time is important. But changing the whole website just to launch a new product or service can be a tedious task. Also the doubts about whether the new launch will work or not can create a lot of anxiety. Here, creating landing pages is an easy way to test out your new idea in the market. A landing page dedicated to this new idea can help you generate early sign-ups, a database of interested users, and much more.
Investing in PPC campaigns works great to appear at the top of SERPs and attract consumer attention. But if the paid campaigns redirect to your website, the chances of conversion can decrease as visitors can get distracted by the numerous pages, offers, and services, present on the website. For a more targeted approach, PPC campaigns must be paired with landing pages. Your PPC campaigns can focus on specific services and a landing page should be used to highlight the benefits, features, and USPs of it to make sales.
Suggested Read: How to Drive Traffic to a Landing Page
While a website requires a lot of effort and investment, a landing page is comparatively easier and more economical to build. When it comes to quick customisation or replication, the flexibility of landing pages is better than websites. All these benefits together should make landing pages a must-have for all new and old brands.
A website acts as the epicentre of your online presence. Your website allows the user to explore your brand. It includes all the information you want to share with your clients. There are generally multiple pages with internal, external, and affiliate links. Links to social media pages and company blog posts are also included.
Technically, you can have a landing page without a website. You can host a landing page independently of a website. So, it’s easy to have one without the other.
Marketing strategies always depend on what you are trying to communicate with your clients. Using a landing-page-only approach may be quicker to set up in the short term. There is one major problem with creating a landing page without a website approach - building trust.
The act of buying a product or service is one of good faith. When a customer purchases a product or service, they are essentially saying ‘I believe this product can meet my needs. In other words, they trust that you offer what they are looking for. Branding is essential in building customer trust.
The internet is filled with a number of scams and fraudsters. This makes getting the trust of your potential customers more difficult than in face-to-face settings. The best way to build trust is by showing the brand is established.
Related: Ways To Increase Landing Page Social Proof For More Conversions
If other people are satisfied with your product, you become a ‘safe bet’. Building a website is one of the first steps a business takes in constructing an online presence. By not having a website, you risk customers thinking, ‘well, they don’t even have a website, why should I trust them?’ This is not the case anymore.
The website-first argument is one-sided. As social media keeps evolving, many businesses may choose to drop the traditional website-centric online strategy. Many now favour a more social media-driven approach.
Building your social network is the fastest and surest way of building trust. If clients are connecting with you across different platforms, it signals to new customers that you are who you say you are.
A half-hearted Facebook page is not going to cut it. For a social media-centric approach to be successful, you need a solid campaign. This is where landing pages help you build your audience.
Native social media ads and PPC ads linked to a landing page have shown to be effective, both in converting new customers and growing a social media following.
Landing pages should focus on one conversion goal. In this light, it makes sense to focus on understanding how to build landing pages.
Each goal needs its own independent landing page. Having a singular landing page is not helpful. Building landing pages should be a part of a well-thought-out campaign.
When a customer clicks on your ad, they have already shown interest in your product. Imagine the client as a shopper at a market. They have walked through the crowded market and arrived at your stall. They have shown interest, it is now time to make the sale.
So, if you have a clear marketing objective (such as increasing leads, sign-ups, or sales), building landing pages is the best option. Follow these simple steps to create a landing page without a website and get your marketing campaign up and running.
Make sure your ad and landing page gives the same message. The headings should be the same and the formatting similar enough to show continuity. A user clicking on an ad for watches does not expect to find a landing page with a selection of fridges. The reaction would then be to back-click. This is called bouncing.
This brings us back to trust. If you promise a free e-book with each subscription to your blog and no e-book is delivered, you will lose trust.
With a PPC ad campaign, you pay for each and every customer visiting your landing page. If you aren’t converting, you are losing money. By employing landing page metrics and A/B tests, you can monitor how well your landing page is doing and make changes accordingly.
Ensure your landing page is direct. Your copy should be direct and to the point. Remember not to compromise on quality for clarity or create a content-heavy pages. Your words should still be exciting and draw the reader in.
Employing images and videos in your landing page helps to keep your copy short while showing your product at its best.
Converted customers can be redirected to a thank-you page. This gives you a chance to link to social media sites and display more of your product. Make sure to use every chance you have to connect with your clients.
There are millions upon millions of people conducting web searches every minute of every day. Picture them as potential clients browsing a market. It’s your aim to direct them to your stall. The most logical sales tactic would be to set up a stall in the busiest part of the market and direct traffic towards it by telling potential clients about you, your brand, and what you offer.
This is the purpose of an SEO landing page in a nutshell. You want to rank highly on the first page of Google (or another search engine, Google just happens to be the most popular).
This is the page with the most traffic, and should be the location of your ‘stall’. Your SEO landing page then tells your story - the sales pitch. The page then aims to convert the customer - the sale. With SEO landing pages, the conversion isn’t as important as introducing your client to your brand.
Multiple landing pages will also help with your SEO scoring. If a customer searches for your business and a landing page comes up, this will be seen as trustworthy as a website. Ideally, you should target multiple keywords while building landing pages. But targeting multiple on the same page does not work.
By using the multi-landing page approach, you secure your SEO ranking. Each landing page targets its own keyword, building your rank. Some key things to remember when designing your SEO landing pages are:
You are targeting specific keywords related to your business. The goal is to be on the first page of Google when a user searches your chosen word. You want to ensure that your keywords are well thought out.
High search volume keywords are great, but it is very difficult to rank organically for them. PPC for these words can be very expensive. A good variety of medium volume and high volume keywords is best to use in your landing page design.
This is the term for how often your keyword is found in your text. It is good to use it often, but too often and Google will dismiss it as being low-value content. It is also important to find related keywords and use them in your text. This greatly increases your SQ density.
The faster your landing page loads, the higher you will rank. Google Page Speeds is a useful tool for comparing your page loading speed to industry standards.
These are a serious no-no. These techniques are illicitly employed by users trying to boost their rank. If you are caught using them, your landing page (or even your whole website, if they are hosted in the same domain) may be removed from Google completely.
This is a blow that can take years for your brand to come back from, if it ever does.
A microsite is a middle ground between a website and a landing page. A microsite is a short, singular page introducing the reader to your company. These microsites can be a hit and miss. Often, readers don’t like scrolling through one very long page. If well-designed, without too much text, these microsites can be effective.
Using videos can help keep the microsite short while still providing all the information your clients need. Videos can help to reduce the amount of text used whilst not compromising on detail. These microsites can be a nice step for businesses that aren’t ready to launch a full-scale website but want some more detail added to the landing page marketing campaign.
Ultimately, “not if you want to be effective”.
A website is a great addition to any business. Even though they are technically not dependent on each other, websites on their own are not enough. If we carry on with our market analogy, just setting up a website without landing pages or social media is the equivalent of just setting up your stall without a sign or salesperson.
Many businesses need a website, particularly those who work in E-commerce. Web traffic doesn’t just find its way to your site on its own, however. This is where building landing page comes in. The internet has grown far beyond what anyone could have predicted. It seems obvious that your online presence needs to grow too.
Doing a quick Google search for “best landing page builder” or “free landing page builder” will return a flurry of hits. The task, however, can be daunting for a person who is new to the digital marketing scene.
There are still many technical questions to be answered, such as “how do I create a landing page from scratch” “do I need a domain name for a landing page?” These can be figured out on one’s own, but they are only the tip of the iceberg. Often, even if you use landing page examples, it may not be enough. How to create landing pages for various offers and announcements should be done carefully as it is great opportunity to target high potential leads.
To get better at landing page creation, we would advice you to first start off with some free tools.
When a platform offers to build a landing page for free, it is normal to get suspicious about the quality of its deliverables. That’s why we also explored platforms that come off as email marketing tools, or websites companies can use to create free landing pages. We examined all the free landing page design tools on five basic but essential aspects. Take a look at how to build a landing page with the use of free landing page builders.
One of our first concerns was to find free landing page builders that were easy to use. Complicated processes for designing custom landing pages make it harder for beginners to get started. We tried to find platforms that kept it simple without compromising the quality.
We checked the free plans of all the potential platforms to ensure that basic features were present to create landing pages.
A landing page should get easily integrated with your CRM and other sale processes to make lead generation efficient. We have included those free landing page designing tools that provide crucial integration features.
A custom domain is critical to building credibility and brand awareness. Setting up a landing page that provides custom domains helps brands project a robust online presence.
Flexibility in creativity helps build better landing page designs. Platforms that offer free multiple customisations and templates to build a landing page are great advantages for every marketer.
As a startup, we all know investing in landing page premium plans is challenging. Many companies put a lot of money and time into expensive landing page designs only to get average results. The core problem is the lack of experience in building effective landing pages.
But with the new-age little to no code landing page builders, inexperienced marketers can also get a gist of marketing through landing pages. Such tools can rapidly create landing pages with forms and images through the drag & drop method, which is game-changing. It makes the landing page more accessible and practical for inexperienced users.
What makes this idea of easy-to-build landing pages even better is the availability of many free platforms providing such services. Here is a list of the top five lifetime-free landing page design tools for startups and small businesses.
First on this list is ConvertKit, a cloud-based lead generation and email marketing automation solution aimed at small businesses and bloggers to grow their traffic and turn their email subscribers into paying customers.
Launched in 2013, despite being quite new to the market, the platform offers robust features that many other old email marketing brands like MailChimp and Aweber provide.
Covertkit has three plans: Free Plan, Creator plan, and Creator pro plan.
To start setting up a landing page on Convertkit, select a template from an extensive list of categories divided into different groups, such as ebooks, event hunts, and newsletter sign-up. These templates are designed with conversion rates for that specific goal in mind, making it a beneficial way to get the most effective landing page for your needs.
Convertkit is on this list because you can also use it to create lead generation forms.
After you’ve decided to create a form, you must select its display format. You’ll see three options: Inline, Modal, Slide in, and Sticky bar.
No matter which format you choose, you’ll see a few options for templates. Each option includes a visual representation of how it will appear, and you can change the form template anytime!
Once you’ve selected your template, you’ll be able to get started on making it look and work the way you like.
After submitting a form, there’s a separate tab for editing a custom thank you page — again, an essential part of creating a seamless user experience.
One more feature we like about Convertkit is thank you page for the new subscribers for opting into your content while letting them know their click worked.
When you create landing pages on this platform, it offers multiple custom domain options even if you use it on the free plan.
Sunny Landing Pages is a full-featured landing page software for SMEs and enterprises. This online landing page system includes 100+ templates, a drag-and-drop editor, analytics, SEO management, and much more in one place.
A do-it-yourself landing page generator.
100+ conversion-focused landing page templates to choose from present under different categories.
All landing pages are mobile-friendly and responsive.
Drag-and-drop landing page builder allows you to build stunning landing pages in minutes.
Multiple custom domains can be added. However, DNS configuration is required.
Landing Page form integration with email marketing software and CRMs, including MailChimp, Constant Contact, etc.
You can also get email notifications for leads on your landing page.
Next on the list is Systeme.io, a SaaS software. This platform lets you strategise and fully manage your marketing and sales workflow.
Systeme.io has four plans: Free Plan, Startup plan, Webinar plan, and Unlimited Plan. The free plan can send unlimited emails to unlimited subscribers with unlimited templates. You can add one custom domain, but it needs DNS configuration.
In Syteme.io, you can get unlimited file storage space for $0 per month. It’s enough for beginners to use this to learn about marketing and generate leads and sales.
In this tool, you can create a blog, get payment integration through Stripe and PayPal, and use each service in Automation like rules, workflow, Tags, email campaigns, 1-click upsells, A/B test, coupon code, and so on. (By the way, all these features are included in their free plan).
GetResponse is a multi-featured marketing platform with a landing page builder, a drag-and-drop editor, and mobile-responsive landing page themes.
It offers a built-in image editor, sample images from Shutterstock, and gifs from Giphy.
Easy integrations with products and services from other sites like Etsy and BigCommerce.
Offers landing page conversion funnel builder for a complete marketing strategy.
Some of the most essential GetResponse features include email templates, landing page creator, email notification, an autoresponder, and a custom domain, but DNS configuration is required.
GetResponse’s email and marketing automation tools are easy to understand, even for users who do not have a background in technology. Under the 30-day free trial, you can access all the premium features of the tool. After the trial ends, one can still access the platform but with limited features. GetResponse also offers pricing packages that are flexible and come with many extra features.
GroovePages is an extremely powerful sales funnel and landing page builder with several features that simplify the building process. It includes a drag-and-drop editor, pop-ups, progress bars, free hosting, wireframe blocks, customisations, and more to create a landing page for free.
Design unlimited high-converting sales funnels and create simple landing pages.
Automated Email Marketing Platform (known as GrooveMail).
Lead Generation Form.
One project site.
One custom domain.
Free hosting.
One funnel.
One funnel template.
Premium blocks.
Wireframes blocks.
Groove Sell.
Groove Affiliate.
Groove Mail.
Unlimited Products.
Five videos.
These five tools will surely be helpful for marketers who are on a quest to build a landing page for free. These free tools allow companies to try their hand at landing page campaigns and examine how it works for their brand. The free plans and trials give every small or big enterprise the opportunity to market effectively to their target audience.
You can use all the recommended free landing page design tools at once to understand which suits you better.
As we have emphasized, you want more than just a singular landing page. You want a digital marketing strategy. This is no small task.
Coming up with a digital marketing strategy is complex and requires multiple levels of expertise, from technical to design to content. Apexure is a well-established voice in the digital marketing industry.
At Apexure, we focus on building user-friendly, conversion-driven landing page designs. Our team of landing page experts has assisted over 300 businesses from all around the globe.
In addition to designing landing pages, we will help you to monitor and test your pages. Trust us, a landing page without a website is no problem. Contact us today!
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