I feel that the topic of how to create a landing page deserves a blog post of its own because it’s a crucial thing to have on your website.

While it’s true that my focus in this blog post is more on the book promotion, you can use a landing page pretty much for everything.

Want to get your readers to sign up for your mailing list? You need to have a landing page to get people to sign up.

What in the world is the landing page?

If you’re new to online marketing, you probably hear the term landing page being tossed around like candies.

So, what exactly is the landing page, anyway?

For me, I see the landing page as a page where you want the visitors to do a specific action. And the specific action can be something like asking them to join your email list, sign up for a free event or webinar or buy anything that you promote on the page.

It’s not that hard to differentiate a landing page from a normal page.

If you see that the page has no navigation and the only thing you see is a sign-up form or a buy button, chances are you’re seeing a landing page.

The reason for that is because you want the visitors to do one specific thing on that page. You don’t want the visitors to wander elsewhere. If you have the navigation enabled, your visitors will click on the link and leave the landing page immediately.

For the obvious reason, you don’t want your visitors to leave the page. It’s not easy to direct them to the landing page.

So, having the website navigation or any other links for that matter will prevent them from taking a specific action you want.

And that is to join your mailing list or buy the products you’re selling.

How to create a landing page without a website

Yes, you read that right. You don’t need to have a website if you want to create a landing page. But you do need to sign up with the email marketing platform.

Mine is MailChimp. You can take a look at it right here if you’re curious.

So, why do you need to sign up with an email marketing platform if you want to create a landing page?

Well, the reason for that is because many email marketing platforms these days allow you to create a landing page.

What’s more, you can get started with creating the landing page right away too. Just pick any template, customize it according to your author brand and you’re good to go.

Of course, the type of landing page templates available will depend on the email marketing platforms you sign up.

For example, MailChimp tends to focus more on small businesses that sell physical products. So, the landing page templates tend to be more product-based.

On the surface, that seems perfect because authors do have products to sell which is our books. But I find that the template is hard to customize.

I still create a landing page using MailChimp. But I only create a simple landing page with a signup form. The only reason why I bother to create a landing page using MailChimp is simply because I can add tags to the landing page.

Other than that, you’re better off creating a landing page on your website. Or perhaps you can also use a landing page builder such as Leadpages.

With Leadpages, not only you can create a landing page for the email signup. But you can also create a landing page for the webinar signup and even a sales page too.

Leadpages integrates with many different email marketing platforms. If you find that you don’t like the landing page templates that your email marketing platform provided, you can use Leadpages instead.

New to email marketing and not sure which email marketing platform you should use? Well, you can take a look at this page right here if you want to learn more about how to get started with building an email list.

How I create a landing page for the book promotion

Since I can’t create the kind of landing page that I want for the book promotion, I decided to create a landing page on my website instead.

Not only I have full control of the design. But I can also replicate the same landing page design for a different book promotion too.

When it comes to creating a landing page for the book promotion, I only use the Divi theme by Elegant Themes to create a landing page for the book promotion.

In case you’re wondering, Divi is the premium WordPress theme that I use on all of my websites.

The good thing about Divi Theme is that I can create the look and feel of my website in any way I want. And that includes the landing page too.

I admit that Divi requires a bit of a learning curve. And it may not even be appealing to those who want to get things up and running as quickly as possible.

But if you’re like me who wants more freedom to create the look and feel of your website without touching a single code, then Divi can be a perfect match for you.

If you’d like to learn more about Divi, you can take a look at it right here:

Discover Divi by Elegant Themes

Prefer a ready-made template instead? Well, Bluchic has a ready-made template bundle just for the landing page. The bundle includes all kinds of templates from the email signup to the webinar registration page.

If you’re interested in getting the template bundle by Bluchic, you can take a look at it right here:

Landing page template bundle by Bluchic

What you should have in your landing page

If for some reason you’d like to create a landing page using Divi theme or any other premium WordPress themes for that matter, here are the things that you need to have on your landing page.

What type of promotion you’re running

Specify what promotion you’re running on your landing page. Just because you already mention the detail of the promotion in your email and social media campaign, it doesn’t mean that your readers will remember what the promotion is all about.

So, it’s good to let your readers know the kind of promotion you’re running on the landing page.

If you want the readers to enter the coupon code to get a discount, you can mention the coupon code right here.

Make it bold if you have to. Never ever ask your readers to search for the coupon code everywhere. There’s a high chance that they forgot where they come across your coupon code.

The timer

Well, you’re running a time-sensitive promotion, anyway. So, having the timer on your landing page will push your readers to take action fast if they don’t want to miss the opportunity to get your books at a huge discount.

The products

Duh, this should be obvious to you. What’s the point of creating a landing page for the book promotion if you don’t even include the discounted books, right?

This is where you’ll be putting a link to the book page. If you’re like me who is using a coupon link, you can place the link here too.

Don’t forget to remove the coupon link once the promotion is over and replace it with the normal link instead.

It’s possible that some people will still visit the landing page even after the promotion is over. Let them know that they can still purchase your books even after the promotion is already ended. The only difference is they have to buy books at a normal price.

Email opt-in

No landing page is complete without asking people to join your mailing list. You’ll miss tons of opportunities if you don’t ask people to join your mailing list on your landing page.

Since people who come to your landing page are interested in buying your books at a discounted price, entice them to join your mailing list by offering more discounts than the non-subscribers.

Of course, you also need to let them know that you will notify them about your upcoming sales too.

This is where the tag comes in. You don’t want people who want to get your books at a discounted price get mixed up by those who are requesting your free ebook.

It also makes managing an email list a less headache too.

See my landing page for the book promotion in action

It’s hard to see all the things I say without seeing the actual stuff. If you’re curious about how I put all the things I say in this blog post together, you can take a look at the landing page that I create for Science Fiction Day promotion right here.

That should give you a rough idea of what I’m talking about.

Have any questions?

Feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions about my process in creating a landing page or about creating a landing page in general.

Have suggestions on how I can improve my landing page? Well, you can also leave a comment on how I can make my landing page better too. I’m more than happy to take your suggestions and test it for myself.