Welcome to episode 5 of the Web3 marketing debate show. In this episode Joseph and James debate what the better solution is when building landing pages for your business.

Should it be that you use your existing WordPress (or similar) content management system or is it better to utilise another system like dedicated landing page software? There are a number of positives and negatives for each option.

The topics we cover are: what one is easiest to use as well as what will give you the best performance results for your businesses website.

Podcast: Ep 05 – Landing Page Software VS Content Management Software

Episode transcript

James: Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Web3 Marketing debate show. I am your co-host James Banks.

Joseph: And I’m your co-host Joseph Chesterton.

James: And today we’ve got another fire starter of a debate. Landing page software.

What is better? Third party standalone landing page software I.e. ClickFunnels, leadpages. Or is building landing pages in your existing content management system such as WordPress the better way to go? Which one is better?

Before we kick things off, I’ll be taking the, do your landing pages in your existing websites content management system side of the debate and Joseph will be backing the why you should use a third party system to do this and keep it separated out.

So, without further ado, let’s kick things off. Now, Joseph, I’ll let you start. Out of building landing pages in your existing CMS versus building them in a dedicated landing page software. It’s the Leadpages, ClickFunnels, so on and so forth. Why is building it in a dedicated landing page software tool better than just building it in your existing website system?

Joseph: Well, it all comes down to the software being built for purpose. Take WordPress, for example. Its aim is to be able to blog and create website pages for your website. Creating landing pages that are dedicated for purpose and specifically around converting leads into your business. Then, using landing page software that’s built for that is far easier to do.

Just the time and cost associated with that. It’s far less having things pre-built for you with layouts that have been tried and tested many times over. Not only that, but then being able to track and see what actually is working with the metrics available through the landing page software and then being able to improve on those landing pages that you build. It simply is night and day different to something like doing it yourself in WordPress or any CMS.

So that’s why I think the landing page software is a better option. What’s your opinion, James?

James: Well, you mentioned that it’s going to save you time, and it’s going to be easier. It’s not. Because here’s the thing. You got to learn another a completely new system. A completely new page builder to then create all these landing pages when, if you’ve already been able to put a site together or you’re familiar with your existing websites content management system. Let’s just say, for example, it’s WordPress. Most people use it. It’s the most popular one.

If you can pull together a page in WordPress, then you can create a landing page in it as well. You just have to change the header and the footer and then adjust the body of it to match the intent of what you need it to achieve.

You don’t have to go and learn another system. You don’t have to pay for another tool. You have to do any complex domain mapping between your existing domain on your existing site to a new one. You have to worry about any of that stuff.

You just create a new page and subtract a couple of elements. That’s the easier way to do it. And you don’t have to worry about another system to manage its simpler.

Joseph: It sounds too good to be true, James. I’ll take your word for it. But at the end of day, which one performs better? Landing page software or WordPress?

James: Okay, let’s back up. If you’re using landing pages, and if your goal and objective is to use landing pages as part of your digital marketing strategy. Then we can safely assume that conversions and the objective to convert your audience and your traffic into some type of conversion goal. Whether be leads whether that be sales, whether that be opt-ins or whatever it might be, is the primary objective.

So why should that stop at the leading page? Your entire website should be fast. It should be performant. It should be optimised for conversions as opposed to, Okay, let’s just have, like, a brochure Ware website. And let’s just make the landing pages conversion optimised.

No absolutely not.

As we know, the pathway for conversion in the modern era is so multifaceted, so multi disciplinary. It’s rare that someone arrives on a landing page and then just converts right there. No, they’ll generally check out your website. They’ll go across all aspects then check out your business.

Any potential page on your site could be a point of conversion. Hence, why when we talk about which one performs better? Okay, yes so fit for purpose. Landing pages do generally perform well but why shouldn’t your whole website perform just as well as your landing page if you make your whole entire website perform well then your landing pages built inside your website will also perform well.

Then you get the net benefit of having everything perform better, not just one or two pages on your site.

Joseph: It’s a good point you make about having a website that works for your business, but we’re talking specifically about landing pages here, So let’s take away the design, let’s take away the speed performance and let’s talk about why landing pages are better. It’s because you can do more things in a easier way and you don’t have to potentially know how to code it.

Landing page software. It’s all about getting landing pages quickly and being able to utilise what the landing pages that have been built or can be built to be able to market to your audience.

So the software itself all the major players include things that are easy for you to see the performance, like the metrics.

On top of that, you could do things like maybe split testing and being able to do tests to ensure that what your pages are set up to do, will do what you intend.

The landing page software companies build these landing pages based on best practises. When you’re building landing pages, you can utilise these templates, and the guesswork is taken out of the equation for you because they built it for you.

And then you just have to slap in your logo, slap on the images and Bob’s your uncle, your away and ready to go. It’s as easy as that, whereas with WordPress, you won’t get those metrics and things that landing page software will provide you. So marketers and people that are in these platforms day in and day out will love it because you can, easily set up landing pages with drag and drop software and you’re away.

So that’s why landing page software performs better, in my honest opinion.

James: Well, I have to disagree with you Joe because the problem is you mention yourself when you’re just slapping a logo and slapping some images and hit the go live button. This is the problem because there’s a completely foreign system to what your websites built in, even if you load in all of your design, all of your typography, your colour palette. It’s a different code base. You will get brand and design inconsistencies with what your main website looks like, which then makes your brand and business look not very professional when you have a website over here that looks one way and another website landing page over here that looks like another way.

As long as you’ve done anything correctly and you build it within your existing website, you’d have to go and reprogram all of your styles and everything is already there, so you have a much more consistent look and feel. Plus, it also saves you time because you don’t have to go and redo all these settings again.

But ultimately in summary. At the end of the day, these are all tools. These are all tools that are used to solve a job. In some cases, it may actually be simpler and easier and better to create the leading pages in a third party tool.

At Web3 we prefer to build our landing pages in our existing client websites where we have designed and developed them from the ground up. That way we make sure the actual core website is fast. It’s free of code errors. It’s optimised properly, and the design and how it’s all put together is optimised for engagement and conversions.

That’s why when we create landing pages in our existing WordPress theme that we create for our businesses, we know that they’re going to work because we make sure the foundation’s are done right. This is what gives us a superior performance. And the businesses can save time because they’re not having to work between multiple, different business systems to try and achieve the same goal.

This is how we do it. But ultimately, at the end of the day, It’s what makes sense for your business and how your business has been set up online. If you need any help and advice on understanding what’s going to work best for your business, then as always, feel free to reach out to us. Go to web3.com.au and get in contact with us today?

So that is another episode of the Web3 marketing debate show. I hope you learnt something new and we will talk to you all real soon.

And that’s a wrap for this episode of the Marketing Debate show. If you liked it, please give us a positive rating on your preferred podcasting platform.

Here’s the previous episode: Paid vs Non-paid Social Media: What to use for your business

And here’s the next episodes: