If you are looking to make money online you need to be aware of this very simple equation
The internet equation: Traffic plus Conversions equals Online Success
There are only 2 ways to make more money from your website :-
#1- Get more traffic onto your site, which involves promoting on other websites, search engines and social media, which can add cost if you need it to be effective and in a timely manner.
#2 – Improve the number of conversions on your website, which doesn’t involve any more cost. It is best practice, to improve your conversion rate before getting more traffic, so that you make the most of any traffic and don’t waste resources increasing leads only to waste them. Think of it like pouring water into a bucket, which has a big hole in it.
The success pyramid, illustrated below, shows the likely success rate of website visitor’s either providing their email address or buying from you. Starting from the bottom of the pyramid, X amount of traffic comes to the site, a small percentage of which will convert (give their email address) with a smaller amount actually progressing onto buying something from you. So out of 1000 visitors, you might get one paying customer at the end of the process. If you can increase your conversions to 2 for every 1000 visitor’s you have doubled your sales from the same amount of traffic. Focus on improving sales with existing traffic volume for best results. Don’t focus initially on getting more traffic to start, as this will increase acquisition costs
The conversion system I’m going to recommend works in the following way:
- Generate traffic via PPC or SEO (subject of another post)
- Traffic arrives on focused landing page (known as a squeeze landing page because it’s designed to squeeze the email address from the visitor)
- Traffic is incentivised to provide their email address
- Auto-response email sequence is sent to build relationship with prospect by providing more info, adding value and building trust. Prospect is warmed up to allow sales pitch to be more readily accepted and acted upon
- Sale pitch (via email and taking to a sales landing page) is aimed to help prospect speed things up, save time and money, or make things easier etc.
Let me add just one thing at this point, it is vitally important to add value to your vistor’s/prospect’s lives by providing a product/service that will genuinely help them achieve something, or save something. Don’t get into online marketing just to make money, do it to help visitors in a business-like manner, so that you can sustain your help and provide even more value going forward.
To improve website conversions there are a number of things you need to have in place.
- A focused squeeze landing page and sales landing page,
- An email capture form and
- A system to allow visitors to pay you over the internet such as Paypal.
There are a number of tools available to you, in your quest for online success, some of which cost money and some of which don’t. The system I use for my businesses cost me less than £100 for all of them as one-off lifetime payments, with no monthly recurring subscriptions. I will be happy to provide links to such resources if you subscribe to my email list.
Reduce fear and build trust
Having a squeeze page is one thing, but you still have to make that page effective in capturing visitor’s email addresses. Before a visitor is likely to provide their email address, you will need to prove to them that you are trustworthy. Visitors don’t like to give their email address because they are worried that you will send lots of unsolicited emails, or sell their email addresses onto third parties, who will then go on to spam them with no value offers. So make sure you assure them that this is not the case, to help reduce this fear. Use statements such as:
- We hate spam just as much as you
- We will never share your email address with any 3rd parties
- We will never spam you
- 100% privacy guaranteed
next to your opt-in form to help reassure the visitor. But make sure you keep your promise.
note – There is some evidence to show that the subconscious mind is unable to differentiate between negatively framed words and positively framed words. For example using the word “spam”, even if you’re using it in the context of “We will never spam you“, causes a negative association and can lead to lower opt-in rates than if you were to use a generally more positive phrase such as “100% privacy guarantee“. The best way to determine if this is true, is to run your own test to see what works for you and your audience.
Get the email address and build a relationship
A squeeze landing page should be constructed around one idea or offering. Give your visitor something in return for their email address. Providing valuable free information is one way to do this, in the form of a white paper, e-book, diagram, a free tool, list of handy resources, a cheat sheet, recipe, or video lesson etc. The strategy behind this approach, of giving them valuable information in exchange for their email address, is so that you can build a relationship with them via email, and over time hopefully convert them to paying customers, once they know and trust your brand. It is much easier to sell to someone who you have already had some dealings with, than if they are a complete stranger.
Having something to sell
If you haven’t got something to sell at the end of it, then you’re not going to make any money and you won’t be able to continue provide a great resource for your visitor’s, unless of course you’re just doing it in your spare time for fun, which means you have limited time to devote to helping your audience.
It’s best to start from the sale and work backwards. For instance if the product you’re selling is a cookery coaching program, you can give lots of cooking tips and tricks away for free and have a buying guide for equipment as your opt-in incentive. Alternatively if your product is a photography course, you can give lots of tips and tricks to improve photography for free and have a photography equipment buyers guide as an opt-in incentive.
The difference between a Sales Landing Page and a Squeeze Landing Page
A sale page is the same as a squeeze page but instead of trying to solicit an email address from the visitor, it allows the visitor to buy your product/service.
Anatomy of a landing page
Both squeeze pages and sales pages should contain the following elements:
Headline
An eye catching relevant headline – This should be linked to the source of the visitor, for instance, if they came from a Pay Per Click (PPC) advert, then the headline on your sales pay should be the same as the text used in the original advert they clicked on. They should know they are on the right page once they arrive on your landing page based on what they saw on the previous page.
The headline should address a need or want. It should promise a clear benefit or offer. The headline must encourage the visitor to read on. If it’s not engaging enough the visitor will leave without taking action. If you have used PPC to get the visitor onto your landing page this is a wasted click and has incurred a cost to you, so make sure you test your headlines to get the best chance of conversion.
Call to Action
Have a clear call to action, with action oriented text, “click here to get…“. The whole purpose of the landing page is to get the visitor to take one action. This is the call to action. The one call to action on a squeeze page should be aimed at getting the visitor to give you their email address, or on a sales page it is to buy now. If you don’t get it from them, the landing/sales page has failed, pure and simple.
With just the headline and call to action in place the full bare bones of the offer should be completely evident. Everything else on the page should just support these two elements.
Support elements
Supporting text to expand on the headline promise and provide more detail and also address any possible objections. You will most likely need more supporting text on a sales page than a squeeze page simply because people will give their email address away more easily than money.
An image relevant to the offering
Bullet points of exactly what you are offering in exchange for their email. The greater the value you are providing the better the chance to get that email address or a purchase.
Trust elements – such as testimonials, case studies, customer logos, press mentions, number of followers, customers, subscribers
Risk reducers – such as money back guarantees, free trials, free samples etc.
Tell them who you are. Tell them exactly what you want to do with their email, what offers you will be sending them, and that they are relevant to the offer you are currently providing etc. You will still need to reinforce this on a sales page, even though they should already know you from the squeeze page and your email sequence.
Email sequence
There are a number of email options you can use, some for free, while others have a monthly fee. You can set up auto-responder emails which will send out pre-written emails at set intervals once someone has opted-in.
This can be set to deliver your valuable information directly to their inbox and of course, your sales message and link to the sales page. Growing an active email subscriber base is a key element to online success, because it gives you access to the people who are likely to want your products and services and who already know you.
The old adage “The money is in the list” could not be more true. The key to keeping subscribers on your list is keep providing them with great useful, relevant information, insight and value. If you want to convert them into paying customers you must have something of value, which they’re willing to pay for and that adds more value to their lives than it costs them.
Summary
Converting visitors into customers is key to online success. The elements on a landing page, while crucially necessary can be varied in their construction. For instance there is no one great headline that will work for all products and services. The only way to know what’s best for your particular niche is to test, test and test again. Testing different, headlines, different calls to action, different landing page copy, and different images is crucial to improving your landing page performance.
You can use products like Google Analytics to measure your landing page performance. It is vital not to overlook such a great feedback opportunity. If you don’t know what your audience is doing or not doing, you are left to guess and hope for the best. Of course ultimately your bank account will tell you whether your efforts are providing a return on investment or not in the end, but knowing where your efforts are failing within your sales funnel, will help focus your attention. Are you getting lots of clicks on your PPC adverts but no one is opting-in to your email sequence? Are you getting lots of opt-ins but no one is converting on the sales page?
This is what it takes to become an online success. Having a strategy, working the strategy, testing the variables, measuring and reading the feedback data, testing again, improving all the while in an ever improving cycle.
I will be adding more information about each of the elements of a landing page in more detail in future posts, such as killer headlines, and call to action best practices, so please subscribe to my email list so that I can keep in touch.
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