The money is in the list! This is one of the most basic tenets in the world of Internet Marketing and building an online income. Although this is not the be-all of making money online, this is one of the most effective ways to be successful in the online business. If I am going to rank this among the many ways to make money online, list building will be in my top 5. I say this for a variety of reasons but the main thing that stands out is because it is a targeted marketing campaign.
Every list-building project starts with one thing that serves as the gateway to your list: the landing page. You can drive a lot of traffic to your landing page but if your landing page is not appealing or catchy enough, your opt-in rate will not be high. This will translate to a few subscribers and a thin list.
Below are 5 essential tips to building a highly-converting landing page.
1. Keep it Simple
A good landing page should contain just enough information to convey the message that you want the audience to understand. The attention span of people in the internet is an average of 5 seconds and if during this span their interest is not piqued, it is highly likely that they will skip the page and go on to another site. Make sure that you don’t put too much detail in the landing page that will confuse the reader but instead make it concise, clear and direct.
2. Be Specific
Complementing the first point above, making your landing page more specific falls in line with the strategy of keeping it simple. If you want to build a list of people who want to lose weight, your landing page should contain a promise that will show them how they can lose weight and they will get these benefits by subscribing to your email list. It could be that you will offer a short course about losing weight. Or it could be that you will give them a free EBook or a free monthly newsletter if they subscribe. There is no point in discussing the benefits of losing weight in your landing page as the people who want to lose weight probably know this already. Narrow your target market and cater to them specifically.
3. Compelling Offer
People buy or acquire things because either they need it or they want it. Most often than not, the buying experience for the “need it” part is not as exciting as the “want it” part. You will buy a simple pair of jeans because you need it but you will strive to buy that designer jeans that will make you look cooler because you want it. When making an offer in the landing page, you should build it up so that the person reading it will start to transition from the “need it” mindset to the “want it” emotional-mindset state. You can do this by telling a story that will appeal to both mind and emotion and once you are able to achieve this, it is more likely than not that he will sign up to your opt-in page.
4. Provide Value
Your freebie – be it an EBook, mini course or newsletter – should be outstanding in appearance and content. People who have reached your landing are most likely than not to be savvy and knowledgeable. They can easily differentiate a quality product from a gimmick or an inferior one. You may get them to sign up with a mediocre product but once they found out that they get no value from it, they will be unsubscribing faster than you can say “wait”. You want your subscribers to stay subscribed as that is the way you will make money. You would rather spend more effort on the onset building a quality product to sign up and retain subscribers than creating a haphazard product in less time. The latter might get you people to sign up but they will not remain as subscribers because they will likely opt-out once they become aware of the poor quality of the freebie that they got. Although your other products might be more superior to your freebie, they will serve no purpose if you don’t have subscribers to offer them to.
5. Build Trust by Offering Privacy Protection
People want to sign up for your mailing list because they either want or need something and they get the impression that subscribing to your list will in some way meet those needs or satisfy those wants. By offering a privacy clause in your opt-in box, you are also sending a message to your potential subscribers that you value their personal space by not sending a spam or unwanted emails. If you want to be bolder, you can also add a text that says “you can unsubscribe anytime”. Although it is a fact that unsubscribing from an email list is a normal feature of a mailing list, stating it in the obvious lends more credibility to your sincerity which will help increase your sign-up rate.
