The Basic Landing Page to Thank You Page Funnel

The landing page to thank you page funnel vs your standard flow of traffic.

Creating a purposeful flow to convert potential clients into leads

“Funnel” in digital marketing lexicon is pretty broad.  At it’s most basic definition, it’s the purposeful path you create to take potential customers through the conversion process.  The key word there is “purposeful” as that’s what really separates your funnel from the default flow of web traffic through your website.  In this article, we’ll look at the basic landing page to thank you page funnel and talk about it as a foundation for your ad spends.

In the example above, your potential client searches for something online or sees an ad you’ve put out there.  They click the link which takes them somehwere on your website.  Best case scenario, they like what they see and connect with you via phone or email and then become a client.

That example isn’t a very efficient or optimized funnel.  In fact, it’s not really a funnel at all – it’s more the default flow of traffic.  Hopefully though, it lays the foundation for what we’re talking about here.

Yes.  It can get more complex.

As you start designing those funnels with purpose, they can start getting more complex quickly. One example of that might look like this:

We’re not going to go through this entire funnel step-by-step.  At a high-level, this funnel starts with a paid advertising campaign looking for users to register for a webinar.  It points visitors into an series of webinar signup landing pages.  It then uses a series of automated emails, text messages and retargeted social ads to incrementally walk the original “ad clicker” deeper into the process.

It’s important to note that each touch point in this funnel has a dedicated “Thank You” page.  This is where the user is redirected once they’ve taken the desired action.  We’ll look at this more shortly.

A complex, multi-layer funnel like this can be extremely effective.  For now though, we’re going to step back and take a look at a much simpler funnel:  The basic landing to thank you page funnel.

The basic landing page to thank you page funnel

A well put together funnel accomplishes two things.

First, it provides a really efficient path for the user to convert – to become a lead or customer for your business.

Second, it limits the variables and collects useable data – allowing you to test and confirm what’s working and what’s not.

The basic landing page to thank you page funnel accomplishes both of those things.

The basic landing page to thank you page funnel

Step 1:  The Ad Itself

We’re not going to go into the ad space right now, but in most cases, that will be the start of your funnel.  The goal is to put solid creative behind a solid hook, driving people into your funnel.  We’ll dig deeper into various ad and audience targeting strategies in a different article.

Step 2:  The Landing Page

You almost never want to send paid traffic to your homepage and just hope that it works out.  There are just too many variables.  In almost all cases, you send your paid traffic to a dedicated landing page for that specific ad.

This accomplishes a few things:

Step 3:  The Thank You Page

Ideally, once the user has taken our desired action, we should typically be redirecting them to a “Thank You” page.  While it’s a nice touch to give “thanks” to the user for interacting with your brand, the purpose of the thank you page goes deeper.

First, the only way to get to that thank you page should be by taking the action you wanted the user to take.  They’ve signed up for your 14-day trial as an example.  This allows you to accurately report back to your analytics tools that a conversion has happened.  In turn, we you measure the effectiveness of your landing page(s).  As you start testing different version of your landing pages, this gives you a clear way to determine what changes are moving the needle.

Furthermore, a pageview on your thank you page is a great way to tell your ad platform(s) that a conversion has happened.  This allows you to stop wasting ad dollars on showing that ad to someone who’s already converted.  It also provides extremely useful data to your ad platform’s algorithm – helping that algorithm more accurately determine which users in your audience targeting are most likely to convert.

Optionally, the thank you page gives you opportunity for the up-sell/cross-sell.  That might be a true upsell where you’re asking the user to then commit to more (another purchase, an add-on, etc).  It could simply be asking for additional information.  Think surveys, mailing list signups, or whatever other information that would be helpful for future conversions.

A great foundation to build on

There are countless small businesses throwing ad dollars against the wall by sending their traffic into their homepage.  Those businesses could instantly make huge improvements to their ROAS (return on ad spend) by implementing a version of this very basic funnel.

Businesses already implementing a version of this funnel could likely make significant improvements to their key metrics (things like conversion rates) by building on that foundation.  There are so many amazing tools out there to help capture leads and move them through your buying cycle.

If you’d like to talk about your funnel, no matter how complex, reach out.  We’d love to help you make it more effective.

A few currated articles on landing pages, thank you pages, and this basic funnel:

Anatomy of The Perfect Thank You Page – by Optinmonster

10 Ways to Add value to Your Thank You Page – by ConversionXL

13 Great Landing Page Examples You’ll Want to Copy – by Hubspot