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Inner Circle Roundtable of 21st Century Marketers |
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Chapter Thirteen
Capture That Name and Email Address
By Ben Hart
Some websites are designed specifically to capture leads. They are one-page list-building sites. That’s their only purpose. In fact, that’s how I design my lead generation program.
My lead generation program is the foundation of my Internet marketing business model.
As I write this line, my Internet business is generating about $85,000 in sales per month. It will be double that six months from now.
What I sell are information products and coaching programs aimed at helping entrepreneurs grow their businesses by improving their marketing.
The first step is you must have a way to build a big list of opt-in subscribers to your online newsletter, ezine or blog. “Opt-in” means fill-out your sign-up form to receive your free enewsletter or ezine. In other words, by filling out this form, they have agreed to receive emails from you.
This is important. Under the CAN-SPAM law, it’s illegal to send people email who have not given you permission to send them email or with whom you have no prior relationship.
But even if it were legal to send people unsolicited email, it would not be a good idea to do that anyway. You want to be talking to people who have raised their hand and indicated interest in what you have to say – that is, who have told you, by filling out your sign-up form, that they want to hear more from you on this topic.
To build your list of leads, you need four key links in your lead-collection system:
1) You need a landing page that has a sign-up form on it that people fill out to give you their name and email address. Inside this sign-up form, you need language giving you permission to send them email.
2) As an incentive to fill out your form, you must offer something of value for free -- something that is exactly in line with the other products you are selling. I call this an "ethical bribe" . . . because few will fill out your form without a very good reason to fill it out.
3) You must have a way to bring people to your landing page (i.e. ads).
4) And you must have an email broadcast system that stores the names and email addresses of all your opt-in subscribers and that allows you to send follow-up emails on a mass basis to your now growing list of people who have expressed interest in what you are selling or what you are doing.
You'll find a sample "Landing Page" here at: www.FreeSalesLetterBook.com
Notice my domain name. It says exactly what the offer is and it’s easy to remember – important for my radio ads, which say as the call-to-action: “Just go to FreeSalesLetterBook.com”
It's best to show a landing page, not just describe it. People learn by seeing. So take a look at one of my landing pages at www.FreeSalesLetterBook.com
Now, this landing page I’ve put up is certainly no work of art. Let’s be honest, it’s pretty ugly.
I'm not a graphic artist or a techie. I'm a marketer.
But it gets the job done. Professional web designers have ridiculed it as amateur looking. But in all head-to-head tests, this page I put up myself has performed far better than the landing pages (or “opt-in” pages) given to me by professional graphic artists and professional web designers who were supposedly Internet marketing experts.
They thought they could improve my landing page by making it look prettier.
Wrong.
The better the page looked, the worse it did. Ugly almost always works better than pretty in direct marketing – whether offline or online. Who knows why? It just seems to be true.
All I'm interested in is performance, not winning a beauty contest.
This kind of a landing page has been incredibly effective for me in building my opt-in email list of leads.
I have built an opt-in email list of more than 100,000 leads with landing pages that look a lot like the one I have at FreeSalesLetterBook.com
This landing page strategy has been a huge key to building a profitable Internet business for me.
So here are the essential elements that make my "Landing Page" work:
1) I offer something of value FREE as a strong incentive for a visitor to my site to leave me their contact information.
Here I offer a book. You can also offer a FREE Special Report or “White Paper.” The word "FREE" is just about the most powerful word in marketing and advertising. FREE is the right price for everyone.
Other kind of lead attracting “bait” as some marketers call it (I don’t like the term) include:
A free teleseminar or webinar (good for consultants, financial advisors, or if you are running a seminar program)
Free sweepstakes contest or other free prize offering (good for broad-appeal products).
Free Service (i.e. free teeth cleaning if you are a dentist, free room cleaning if you are a carpet cleaner, free oil change for auto service).
Free Case Evaluation (good for lawyers, consultants).
Free Sample (Good for food and consumables).
Free Meal (Good for restaurants. Morton’s Steakhouse sometimes offers a free steak on Monday nights if you bring a guest.)
To get these free items, the prospect is asked to fill out the sign-up form which gives them access to the coupon they can print or the special promotion code they need.
2) I make sure the headline on my landing page includes the key benefit of filling out the form and a strong "call-to-action."
That is, tell your reader exactly what to do and what they will get. Your offer and "call-to-action" must be super simple and easy to understand. Your reader will give you three seconds at most to communicate your message. A big headline that screams the main benefit at your reader is critical to your success.
In this case, the offer is a free digital copy of my 234-page bestselling book. That’s a powerful freebie if you are interested in How to Write Blockbuster Sales Letters.
3) Make sure your FREE offer is exactly in line with the advertisement that brought your surfer to your "Landing Page."
The Google AdWords pay-per-click ad for this particular offer is tied to the keywords “sales letters” and “marketing letters.” My Google pay-per-click ad is always in the top three on page one for anyone who types “sales letters” or “marketing letters” into the search window.
The same for my pay-per-click ads on Yahoo Search Marketing.
So anyone who types “sales letters” or “marketing letters” into Google or Yahoo will be greeted by my ad, which has the headline “Great Sales Letters, FREE.”
The full pay-per-click ad on Google, Yahoo and other search engines and directories where the ad is running says this:
Great Sales Letters, FREE Top copywriter reveals his secrets in this 234-page book. It’s FREE.
My classified ads and small print ads say something like this:
Great Sales Letters, FREE Book One of America’s top direct marketing copywriters reveals his secrets of writing million-dollar sales letters in this bestselling book. It’s FREE to those who answer this ad.
Go To:
So the ad is similar, whether it’s running online or in an physical print publication. The ad is also exactly in line with the offer on the landing page or “squeeze page” as some call it.
I personally can’t stand the term “squeeze page.”
The term implies that we are trying to “squeeze” the contact information out of visitors to our sites by offering something of value free in exchange for the contact information.
The very term “squeeze” suggests a wrong mindset on the part of the marketer. We don’t want to “squeeze” anything out of our leads and customers.
We want to build rapport and cultivate relationships that lead to creating lifelong customers, clients and perhaps even friendships.
The way we start to build rapport and trust is to offer something of stunning value free.
What I offer is no throw-away item. This is a free book – a book that took me about one year to write – a book that is probably the most comprehensive guide ever written on how to write effective sales letters.
So I just prefer to say “landing page” or “sign-up form page.”
Now, let me underscore this point, because it’s so critical to your success.
For your landing page to be effective, it must be a seemless continuation of the advertisement that brought them to the page. The ad might have been a classified ad, a Google AdWords pay-per-click ad, a banner ad, a billboard on an interstate highway, a radio ad. It might be any kind of ad.
The key point here is that your landing page must be a fulfillment of the promise made in the ad. The landing page is where those who answer your ad go to get their valuable free gift. Your landing page is like the fulfillment operation of the old-school toll-free 1-800 number you ask people to call with your radio ads. It’s the place people go to get what you advertised – in my case a free book.
If your landing page is off topic – even slightly off – your visitor will be disappointed and leave.
Let’s say my initial ad is aimed specifically at realtors. And let’s say the initial ad offers a “Free Book for Realtors on How to Write Great Sales Letters.”
But then if when the realtor arrives at my landing page she sees there is no mention of “realtor” in the headline, the landing page will not work nearly as well. The percentage of realtors who fill out my form will not be as high as it would be if the word “realtor” were in the headline.
There must be an exact match between the ad the brings your visitor to your landing page and the headline on the landing page . . . because your landing page must be an exact fulfillment of the promise in the ad.
Can you see now why it’s so fatal to have several goals for a landing page?
When building your landing page, you must decide what is your “Most Wanted Response” (MWR). And then focus only on getting that response.
Do not introduce other options and possibilies.
In all you marketing, you must simply, simplify, simplify.
Ask your reader to do one and only one thing at a time.
With this principle in mind, I make sure my sign-up form is as prominent as possible. I make sure my sign-up form is smack-dab in the center of the screen when a visitor arrives at my landing page because I want there to be no doubt what I want my visitor to do.
This is my “call to action” as it’s called in direct marketing.
Your “call-to-action” is your “Most Wanted Response.”
Each marketing message you deliver should have just one “call-to-action.”
What I want people to do when then see my Google AdWords pay-per-click ad is click on the headline so they end up on my landing page. That’s it.
When they arrive on my landing page, I want them to fill out my sign-up form to get on my list. That’s it – nothing else.
Then when I take my prospect to my sales letter for the 14-day test-drive of my Inner Circle program for $1, all I want them to do is that – get their credit card out and fill out the Enrollment Form for the $1 test-drive.
That’s it. Nothing else.
Every marketing message you create should contain just one, and only one, “call-to-action.”
More than one “call-to-action” creates confusion.
Americans today are hit with 23,000 advertising messages per week on average.
Americans are hit with twice as many ads today than they were even just 10 years ago.
You are lucky if you can get your suspects and prospects to give you three seconds to get your message across. You are lucky if you can get your Web surfer who is zooming from site to site to take three seconds to understand what it is you want her to do and why.
During that those three seconds (at most) that visitors to my site will give me to get their attention, I want them to understand:
o The big benefit to them of filling out my form. In this case, it’s a picture of the book, reinforced by the big headline next to the book.
o The cost – which is FREE.
o The sign-up form they must fill out to get the free book (the “call-to-action”).
And that’s it. That’s actually quite a bit of information to communicate at a glance.
Everything else after these three key items is supporting material – designed to reinforce and explain why my visitor should want to fill out the form. A few people will want to read all this supporting material to make sure they are not being scammed in some way.
The FreeSalesLetterBook.com landing page is just one example of a "Landing Page." There are many variations. I have many landing pages that make other free offers as well – offers that are tied in exactly with the keywords and phrases that surfers are typing into search engines.
Some will wonder “Why is giving away something like a book a good way to qualify a lead? Wouldn’t anyone want a free book?”
The answer is “No.” Not anyone would want a book on How to Write Blockbuster Sales Letters, even if it’s free. Only people seriously interested in growing their sales will want such a book.
If you own a pizzeria, what’s the fastest way to identify the pizza lovers in your area?
Answer: Offer a free pizza to anyone who comes in before 4:00 p.m. today.
If you don’t like pizza, you won’t be impressed with this offer.
If you’re not an entrepreneur, not a business owner, or not a commissioned sales person, you are not going to bother requesting a copy of How to Write Blockbuster Sales Letters, even though it’s free.
Actually, it’s not really free when you think about it, because I am asking people to give me their name and email address. People are very reluctant to give this information to a stranger over the Internet. People need to have a strong reason to give out this information to a stranger. They know they are now going to start getting follow-up emails from me, most likely making sales pitches.
So the price they are paying to get this book (i.e. giving me their name and email address, plus permission to continue communicating with them) is not insignificant – which is why it’s no easy task to get even 20% of visitors to fill out a sign-up form on a website these days – no matter how strong your free offer.
Opt-in rates continue to drop because people are now well aware of what they are opting in for. And people are not eager to further increase the number of commercial offers in their email inbox.
That’s why anyone who takes the trouble to fill out my sign-up form to get their free book is such a strong lead.
Another reason the lead is super-qualfied is that they never would have found my landing page if they were not specifically looking for what I am offering.
Why?
Because that’s how search engines work.
Search engines deliver to surfers exactly what they are looking for as indicated by the keywords they type into the search engine. The list of search results that pop up list only those sites that are specifically on that subject.
So my lead has actually passed three qualification tests:
1) They found me because they were using a search engine to look specically for what I was offering – instruction on how to write effective sales letters and model sales letters.
2) When they got to my landing page, they said to themselves, “Yes, this is what I’m looking for.”
3) They then did exactly what I asked them to do to get my free offer. They filled the sign-up form to get their free book.
This last hurdle is key, because by filling out my sign-up form, they show me not only that they are interested in what I’m offering, but they are “responsive” to my “calls to action.”
In direct mail marketing, this is called “direct mail responsive.”
When renting a mailing list for a direct mail program, a key question I want answered before I rent that list is: “Was this list built with direct mail offers? Or was this list built some other way?”
When I am mailing direct mail offers, I only want to mail to people who I know have a history of ordering through the mail and answering mail. I only want to mail to people who are “direct mail responsive.”
I don’t want to mail to lists that were built with telemarketing offers or who answered a radio ad because people who respond to telemarketing offers or radio offers often don’t respond to direct mail offers.
You want to come at people only with the media you know they are comfortable with, only with media you know they have an established track-record of answering.
So if your visitor actually goes ahead and fills out your sign-up form to get your free offer, that’s a very big deal because you now know three key pieces of information about that person:
1) They were looking for what you were offering. 2) They were pleased by what they saw on your landing page. 3) They are open to doing business with you over the Internet . . . because they just did.
All this is huge. Anyone who meets these three criteria are super-qualified prospects – as is proven by the fact that I am able to convert about 10% of my leads into buyers of some kind.
Here’s what else I know specifically about anyone who fills out my form to get a free copy of How to Write Blockbuster Sales Letters:
** I know this person is interested in increasing their sales.
** I know this person is probably a business owner, a commissioned sales person, or direct marketing professional, or is thinking about starting a business. Who else would be interested in reading this book?
** I know they are readers, open to learning and probably have a relatively high-IQ. Low-IQ people don’t read books like this.
** I know they are high-achievers and motivated to self-improvement because they are willing to at least entertain the idea of reading my 234-page book.
** I know they are responsive to marketing offers like this, because they just answered my offer.
** I now have a way to reach this person because she has just given me her email address. If you can’t reach your most likely buyers, you have no way to sell to them.
So that’s why these little ads with my FREE book offer work so fantastically well for lead generation. In fact, for each advertising dollar I invest, I am able to double my money within 75 days on average with the sales that I make to this never-ending river of leads I am generating everyday, all day long, all night long with this program.
Not many stock-picking experts are getting that kind of return on investment in the stock market.
Of course, to achieve this level of return, you need also to be successful at quickly converting leads into buyers. We will get into this all-important topic next.
So that's the basic formula for how you convert visitors to your website into good solid leads for what you are selling.
In my case, I am selling marketing advice and marketing consulting. So that's the primary method for how I compile my list of super-qualified leads over the Internet.
This formula has worked stunningly well for me.
In addition to my pay-per click ads and ads I run on ezines, blogs and sites read by my target market, I also run small ads in offline business publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Inc, Entrepreneur, Fast Company and other places (mostly in the classified ads or “business opportunity” sections that make essentially this same offer, bringing those interested to my landing page.
And I run ads on radio shows that are aimed at entrepreneurs, again bringing people to versions of this landing page. Soon I will be putting up some billboards along the Interstate highways and see how they perform.
I don't use 1-800 numbers much anymore. I used to use 800 numbers all the time.
I now just bring people to a landing page – FreeSalesLetterBook.com. and other memorable domain names that I own. This is much more cost-efficient than having people call a toll-free phone number. It’s costly to pay the cost of toll-free calls and to pay operators to take the phone calls and fulfill orders.
The sales letter book is not the only “ethical bribe” I offer to capture leads.
I also offer my book Automatic Marketing (234 pages). And I offer a variety of shorter free ebooks, “White Papers” and seminars all focused specifically on certain keywords that people type into search engines – keywords describing all aspects of marketing.
Remember, you want your free offer to be exactly on the subject of the keyword search terms people are typing into search engines.
So if someone is typing “marketing plan” into a search engine, I want to deliver a free book or “white paper” on “How to Write a Winning Marketing Plan.”
If someone is typing “Marketing Tips” into the search engine, I want to deliver a free “White Paper” or publication titled “My 12 Most Powerful Marketing Tips.”
If someone types “marketing strategies” into a search engine, I will change the word “Tips” in the title of the “white paper” to “strategies.”
Remember, your entire marketing campaign from ad, to landing page and ultimately to sales presentation must be a seemless continuation of the same conversation. You must use the same words your prospect uses.
Your prospect is telling you with her keywords exactly what she is looking for.
Your job as a marketer is to deliver it to her – and to telegraph that you are delivering to her exactly what she is looking for by using her exact words.
If you use different words, your prospect will assume that’s not what she is looking for and move on to other sites until she strikes paydirt.
Notice also that my landing page includes an audio version of the message -- and emphasizes the “call to action.” That is, it tells my reader exactly what to do, and why.
I do this because audio is attention-getting. I'm not counting on my visitor to go to the trouble of reading my message. I'll also say it so my visitor is greeted with a multi-media presentation.
I tested a video version, but a lot of folks still have slow computers and slow internet connections. So audio still works best for this purpose.
My sign-up forms also requires a minimum amount of information -- just the email address and the name of my visitor.
That's because I want to make it as easy as possible for people to fill out the form and get their book. Also, people are leery about having to give out too much personal information to a stranger.
The more information your require, the more your sign-up rate will drop.
So just require the bare minimum of information. You can collect the rest later. Just get your visitors on your list.
Now, once you have captured the lead, your next job is to convert your lead into an actual buyer.
You do this by offering your leads a steady stream of useful and interesting information on this subject mixed in with offers -- no longer free offers, but offers that require your leads now to pay something.
And as you move forward, you will need to make sure you have an endless stream of follow-up products and upgrades that are also exactly in line with your previous offers.
Again, all products you offer must be exactly in line with the original free offer that brought your lead onto your list in the first place.
If your lead responded to a golf offer – say, a free video on “How to Cure Your Slice in Five Swings” – you will need to keep coming back with more offers related to golf. You don’t want to change track and offer diet plans to your list of golf buyers.
By the way, your big money is in your repeat sales and upgrade products.
Much more on this critical point later.
As you move forward with your marketing program, you will need to track these four key numbers:
1) How much it's costing you to get a visitor to your site.
2) What percentage of “visitors” fill out your form to get your FREE offer.
3) What percentage of your opt-ins then become actual buyers.
4) What is the long-term value of a buyer on average?
You need to know these numbers in order to know how much you can spend on advertising, whether it's pay-per-click advertising on Google AdWords, or another form of advertising.
28% of my visitors on average fill out my sign-up form.
I am then able to covert about 10% of these to a buyer of some kind.
This, in a nutshell, is how I’m able to generate more than $85,000 per month in sales across my websites. It all starts with a strong lead-generation program. Follow this approach, and you can do the same.
So now let’s recap.
The key to building any business is have a way of building a list of qualified leads or "prospects" – and then converting your prospects into buyers.
The process is really this . . .
First, you find your "suspects."
These are the folks who visited your web site. So you know they have some level of interest in what you are doing or offering because they clicked on your ad. But they have not yet taken the next step of filling out your opt-in form.
Second, you find your "prospects."
These are people who filled out your sign-up or opt-in form, but have not bought anything yet. Your big job then is to covert your "prospects" into first-time buyers.
Converting leads into buyers is the next big step.
Most of this book in fact, is about how you do that. Converting leads into buyers at the highest possible rate is, of course, essential because if your "lead acquisition" program does not lead to actual sales, it's all for naught.
Here are some more examples of websites designed to attract and capture leads:
Defining “Landing Page”
At this point, there might be some confusion about the definition of “landing page.”
What exactly is a “landing page”?
It’s a term we hear all the time in Internet marketing.
In the previous section I define “landing page” as the page I bring people to for the purpose of getting them to fill out a sign-up form so they get on my email list. So my “landing page” is my lead collection page. All my advertising takes “suspects” to my free book offer and sign-up form.
But technically, a “landing page” is the first page a visitor to your site “lands” on.
A “landing page” actually can be any page on your site. More often than not, the search engines with their free “organic” listing of search results will bring visitors to pages on your site other than your Home Page. That’s because search engines want to deliver surfers to pages that are most relevant to what they are looking for, which usually is not a site’s Home Page. It might be an article that’s buried deep in an archive on your site.
So you should think of every page on your site as a possible “landing page.”
This means every page on your site should have some specific purpose. No matter what page your visitor lands on, you never want your visitor to wonder what this site is about, or what you want you visitor to do.
So that’s the technical meaning of “landing page.”
It’s the first page your visitor sees on your site. This is why I advise you to put a sign-up form to get your free offer on just about every page on your site. You will collect a lot of free leads by doing that. And these will actually be better leads than those you find with your paid advertising program – because these leads found you “organically.” That is, they found you completely on their own, without any prodding from a paid ad. More on this key point later.
But for marketing purposes -- for the purpose of this chapter -- I am defining “landing page” as the first page you bringing your visitor to on your site with your advertising and marketing. For my business model, that’s a lead collection page. For others its a sales letter page.
The biggest single mistake people make with their advertising is to take people to their general website where they are given a wide array of options, choices and rabbit trails to run down.
Most businesses waste a lot of money on their advertising because they misunderstand the relationship between the ad and the landing page.
Even the big successful ad agencies and big corporations usually blow it.
When you take your fist-time visitor to your general site, your visitor is likely to get confused or distracted. A landing page should be designed to get your visitor to do one and only one thing.
When someone visits my website for the first time, I want one and only one thing to happen.
I want to capture the name and e-mail address of your visitor, so I can then follow up with offers and information later.
This is my one and only goal . . .because I know that if I fail to capture the contact information of my visitor, the odds that I will ever see that visitor again are just about zero.
And I know I have just one shot, and three seconds at most, to persuade my visitors to give to give me their name and e-mail address. So that’s all I want to do. That’s the one and only job my landing page is designed to do.
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