When working with driving traffic to your website, you want to make sure you have a squeeze page or Opt-In form on your website. In my estimation, NOT having an opt-in form to capture leads is one of the biggest mistakes you can made as a website owner. Driving traffic and not having any way to follow up with your visitors can be a futile effort. Having a website puts you on the right track. Not having a opt-in form or squeeze page is just siting there.
Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.
—Will Rogers
Be sure you have a squeeze page
A squeeze page is one of the most versatile tools in internet marketing today. It can be integrated into your web site, or it can stand alone as a fully functional one-page site. A squeeze page is simply an e-mail converter: It offers an enticing free product, such as a special report or eCourse, in exchange for the visitor’s e-mail address and permission to follow up. Your squeeze page must do two things:
- Capture e-mails, and
- Automatically send a sign-up confirmation and follow-up e-mails.
The key to a successful squeeze page is knowledge of your target market:
What will it take to entice your visitors to opt in?
This squeeze page offers two free gifts in exchange for the visitor’s e-mail address: a free eBook and a free 21-part eCourse.
You only have one opportunity to convince visitors to enter their contact information. It’s vital to give visitors a compelling reason to opt-in.
There are many places to get good auto-responder programs for following up on your new leads. Constant Contact is a popular program that makes it easy to keep in touch with prospects and customers.
Research shows that it can take as many as seven or more follow-up e-mail messages to convince people to buy your product or service. That’s why it’s so important to have an automated follow-up program built into your squeeze page.
Offer a free e-consultation on your squeeze page
The offer of a free e-consultation or mini-course is a great way to entice visitors to opt in. People love to buy packaged learning. The offer of a free mini-course is one of the most effective tactics for convincing visitors to leave their contact information.
When you have a new lead in your database, the most effective tool for follow-up is an auto-responder course that’s automatically programmed to be sent to your leads.
Most people don’t have time to take full advantage of all the free offers they sign up for on the Web. Even if your initial offer of a great free product entices visitors to opt in, they may never actually take the time to read it. And if they don’t read it, they won’t remember you.
That’s why it’s vital to follow up with auto-responder e-mails. When you research your target market and know what your customers need and want, you are in a position to take full advantage of auto-responder programs.
Some marketers follow up immediately with a series of seven daily e-mail messages to keep pushing the customer’s hot buttons. Others prefer to send an immediate confirmation of sign-up, and then program the first follow-up e-mail for one week after sign-up.
Your follow-up e-mails are an ideal tool for building your brand. Sharing your knowledge and expertise with prospects is the best way to build trust and establish yourself as an online expert. Offer a series of brief tips in your follow-up e-mails to keep your business, product, or service in the minds of your potential customers.
Always include a clear call to action in your follow-up e-mails. Your resource box is the ideal place for reinforcing your brand and including a call to action. Your resource box is also the best place to embed a link to your sales page. That way your prospects are only a click away from completing the sales cycle.
If you do not have an autoresponder, you can get a month free trial over at Constant Contact! If you need help, let me know and I will get you started!
I don’t use those. Because I find them a real problem when one uses a tablet, a phone, or a browser that folks simply consider one they won’t include in their designs.
But, I do provide offers of reports, book discounts (on tomes I did NOT write), free handouts, etc. By clicking on a link in my blog that requires a true autograph (i.e., a valid eMail).
On the other hand, I don’t send out eMail to my subscribers- unless it’s to apologize for double posting (sometimes I have to change a link on my site because the original site has moved) or to offer some discount ONLY to my subscribers. (That’s about thrice or four times a year.)
It is all about your market, what they are expecting, and how they respond. WIth ANY information you read, you must always tailor your actions based on your audience. Thanks for stopping my, Roy!
This is in my bucket of important and urgent to-do list!
Thanks for this valuable reminder, Paul.
Get going the, Maria – LOL! I like that your About page is completed! Just keep checking off the items on your list! You will get there! Persistence, not Perfection.
I tried this about a year ago, but didn’t have it well-planned and ended up with a lot of spam and sploggers. I’m about to take my blog in a new direction for which this strategy may be more appropriate. Thanks for the reminder.
Tammy – there are ways to help prevent spammers from submitting all that junk! More about that on the training tomorrow/Friday!
Paul, you are so right, and I have been wanting to implement a squeeze page for several years. I am currently designing my own new website, using WordPress. I also have Constant Contact. So how can I use CC to create a squeeze page? I appreciate your suggestions!
Kebba – Sorry for not replying sooner – I just ‘found’ your comment here. You can sue Constant Contact with your squeeze page! Create your copy / text that you want and then incorporate your Constant Contact form on the page for folks to opt-in to your freebie.
Now, if you are selling a product (i.e., creating more of a sales page), it will be a little more difficult since you need to incorporate the sales process in with this.
What did you have in mind?
Trying to create one for a new project. Feeling unsure about the graphic and wondering if I am offering enough for this new list. The ultimate goal is to sell an info product I am creating, and the opt-in offer will give them a taste of what they can expect. Still working on it. I hoped to have it all ready by the end of this challenge, but that may have been overly optimistic!
Here is one tip, Jeanine – put the squeeze page up and see if there is interest! If not, STOP working on the product. If no one is interested now, they probably are not going to be interested when it is finished either. However, if you get a lot of demand, you know that people want it and you will be inspired to complete it! Just a thought…