2. Provide four (4) strategic structural differences and justify them deeply. (12 marks)
Strategic difference 1: A single conversion goal versus brand awareness towards multiple audiences
The strategic difference between a landing page and a brand website is the structural logic each one is built on based on the purposes they serve because they are solving entirely different problems at the same point in the pre-launch process.
A landing page is built around a singular conversion goal. Every web design element on a landing page such as the design and copywriting is based from one question, which is, what does this specific visitor need to see in order to complete this one specific action? In a pre-launch phase, that action is almost always an email submission through a waitlist signup or an early access registration. It is the main focus around the landing page as a whole since all the content in it is created to make the user perform the desired action. The headline is immediately communicating the value proposition that determines in the first few seconds of the user landing on the page whether or not they should read what the page is about. The product image is selected to create desire in the mind of the consumer with a mental image that pictures themselves using the product before they actually buy it. This allows the user to connect with the product based on the experiences in their own lives where they would actually see themselves using it and deciding if it is worth buying. The benefit statements are written to address the most common objections that consumers are worried about before they commit with giving up their contact information because it gives them answers to their problems with having to go to another competitors website and finding the solution elsewhere. The call to action button is worded to make the commitment feel immediately rewarding, that they made the right choice. There is no navigation menu. There are no links to other pages. None of these elements exist on the landing page because none of them serve the single conversion goal the page was built to achieve. Every additional element added to the landing page that does not directly support the conversion action for the desired user is a distraction that reduces the chances of them taking that action because there is no information that delivers a different message for a different purpose that doesn’t align with the contents of the landing page.
A brand website is built on an entirely different structure. The website is built to serve different audience groups that each arrive at your website with completely different questions, different levels of knowledge about your product, and different needs that require certain evidence they need to see before they take any further action. Some of these different audience groups are consumers, journalists, investors, and retail buyers. A consumer arrives asking whether your product solves a problem they have and if your company is trustworthy enough for them to spend their money on. A journalists arrives asking what your product’s technical specifications are. An investor arrives asking you who is founding your team. A retail buyer from a company such as Best Buy arrives asking whether your brand has the consumer demand to justify shelf space. Your brand website has to provide useful content that answers all four of those different questions at the same time because you cannot predict which audience group is going to arrive at any given moment. Each of these audience groups matters in the pre – launch phase because they each play a role in the success of how well the product will do before it even gets released to the public to purchase. This is why the brand website requires open navigation with dedicated sections for each audience. A homepage introduces the brand to every audience group. A product page serves consumers. A blog page serves journalists. An about page serves investors. A contact page serves retail buyers. Each page exists because each audience group has different needs that need to be met.
Strategic difference 2: product demand evidence versus long-term brand credibility
A landing page produces immediate demand evidence because in order to land on the page in the first place comes from a link that is not a part of the website through either an advertisement of some sort or an email. When a consumer submits their email address to join your waitlist, they are already taking action that carries a real cost toward the brand. It costs their privacy, their contact information, and the silent acknowledgment that they are interested enough in you product to want to hear updates from you regarding when it launches. A person who visits your brand website and browses your product page for three minutes has not committed to anything. A person who submits their email address to your landing page has made a small but big commitment that reflects guinea purchase intent because they are interested in receiving news and updates regarding the brand and product. If they have zero intent in making a purchase they would have never signed up in the first place because emails are getting sent to their inbox that they do not want to see. The difference between these two types of data is the difference between telling a retail buyer that your product has generated strong online interest and showing them that 40,000 people have actively expressed their intent to purchase before the product is even available. A buyer from Best Buy is accountable for the sales performance of every product they decide to place on their shelves. If a product they stock fails to achieve the targeted number of sales to justify its shelf space it takes up, Best Buy will lose out on a lot of money. Retail buyers are skeptical when they are approached by a business with no sales history or data to show that their product is a need. A waitlist of 40,000 email subscribers immediately gets rid of that scepticism because it is behavioral data rather than projected data. It reflects actions that real people took under no pressure that would’ve taken place in the stores when employees are trying to convince them to buy it. The retail buyer can look at the data and figure out what a percentage of those people converting to in-store purchases would mean for their targeted sales goal in a certain amount of time. They can see that your marketing message was persuasive enough to motivate 40,000 voluntary actions before the product shipped, before they could purchase it, and learn more. A landing page with a large email waitlist tells the retail buyer that your product has a large enough audience that needs this product.
A brand website produces a long-term brand credibility that is a trust signal to the user that applies to each different audience group. Unlike the demand evidence data within landing pages, the websites brand credibility is based on every interaction and engagement formed over time by any visitor on the website. Having credibility within a brand’s website also mainly revolved around the design and contents of what is actually in the website with regards to how well it is optimized for SEO that appeals to Google’s algorithm. This credibility is immediately recognized by the user when they search for your product in the inquiry and see whether or not your website appears toward the top of the rankings or not at all. Google only shows websites on the first page ranked high that they believe is the most accurate and relevant to what the user is searching for. It comes down to how helpful/useful your content is, having one h1 tag per page, alt tags on images, reducing the image sizes, backlinks, and countless other factors that plays a role in having a credible website. You need your brand website to generate the credibility that makes your landing page believable. A consumer who sees your product advertised, feels interested, and then searches your brand name needs to find your website that confirms to them your legitimacy. Without that confirmation a percentage of those consumers will not submit their email address because they cannot verify that your company is real.
Strategic difference 3: paid traffic efficiency and return on ad spend
A landing page is the destination for paid advertising traffic during a product pre-launch campaign. Every visitor who arrives at your landing page through a paid advertisement has their full attention toward a single decision which is submitting their email address or leaving. The time between this decision is what produces the conversion rates that make paid traffic to landing pages financially worth it. Lets say you spend $5,000 on a paid meta campaign that generated 10,000 visits to your landing page at a 5% conversion rate, you leave that campaign with 500 email addresses from people who have actively expressed interest in your product. Your cost per lead is $10. That list becomes an asset. You can now use it to send out specific emails such as launch day emails because they signed up to eventually purchase your product. You can use it to build a pre-order campaign. As well as a retargeting audience for your next paid campaign. You present the size of that list to retail buyers as evidence that your paid traffic generated you a list of people that will give you a better return on your investment. Sending that same $5,000 worth of paid traffic to your brand website homepage produces a far less efficient outcome. A brand website has navigation menus with multiple destination links, a hero section, a product section, an about section, a blog section, a contact link, and a about us section that gives the visitor multiple interactive forms of content that is competing for their attention as opposed to being devoted to one thing that has a specific message, for a specific group of people, at a specific time. A homepage is designed for exploration, not conversion. Visitors browse, read, watch, and navigate to whatever grabs their attention without being directed toward any specific action. This results in a large percentage of paid visitors to engage with your content without actually completing any action that can be measured because there isn’t a specific call to action that they should be clicking on since there is no specific message that is telling them to do that. The brand website is the correct destination for organic search traffic and for people who have encountered your brand through social media channels or other sources and want to learn more before committing because they need reassurance it is a trusted and credible brand. A consumer who sees your product mentioned in an article and searches your brand name to investigate further is arriving at your brand website with different motives and information need than a consumer who saw your instagram advertisement for the first time. The first consumer wants context and verification. The second consumer needs a conversion path. Sending both of these consumers to the same destination hinders the experience for both of them because they each have different needs. The consumer coming from the paid traffic wants to see exactly what it was that was in that specific advertisement that made them click in the first place because the ad is being promoted for one reason: to convert people to buy the product. The consumer coming from the organic traffic wants to learn more about the brand because they saw their content for a reason and that being based on their digital presence online regarding the content that view and search history.
Strategic difference 4: speed of deployment and strategic timing in the pre-launch phase
A landing page can be designed, written, and published in two to five days with the right tools. The landing pages would consist of: one headline, one subheadline, three to five benefit statements, and one call to action. The design would have: one hero product image, one email capture, and one button. The technical aspects would have: a working domain and using an ESP like Mailchimp to track data that can be used for future campaigns. The entire landing page can be live and collecting email addresses within a week of the product concept being finalised. This speed of deployment matters in the pre-launch phase because the moment you begin collecting email addresses for waitlist signups is the moment the demand evidence starts to build because you have a list of people who have showed interested in buying your product when it releases and these numbers will support your implementation shelf space when dealing with a retail buyer. Every week that your landing page is not live for people to engage with is a week of potential waitlist growth you are losing out on that can make the difference from being put on the shelf or not. If the pre-launch phase is twelve weeks long and you spend six of those weeks waiting for your full brand website to be built before you send out any conversion mechanism, you have already cut your demand period in half which means your waitlist will be half the size it could have been when you try talk with a retail buyer. For all of this to be the most effective you would deploy your landing page immediately within days of your product announcement going public and to already have your website built weeks before it gets sent out to build that trust and credibility with the user which increases the landing pages conversion rate and opens. A brand website requires a timeline of six to twelve weeks for it to be properly built and continuous updates on it to be properly recognized in the algorithm. The company is going to have to hire a copywriter that deals with all the content in the website, a designer to make it visually appealing on every page, and a developer that knows how to properly optimize it for SEO. Each of these workstreams takes time because each depends on one another.
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