A landing page or your website should be a place that you make content available to your prospect in exchange for their e-mail address.
This can be done on your main web page.
Technically I mean it should be done on your main web page.
I will say this now, your website is there for one reason, to provide prequalified leads.
If your website is not doing this you need to change it.
Sometimes you have to provide additional free content before someone will just give you their e-mail address. It used to be people didn’t care, they would gladly give out their e-mail address but now with all the spam people think twice about it. This is why I have my blog. I want to give you so much good information that when you get into a pickle you will seek me out for my help.
Landing pages are basically a web page where prospects are directed and then given a call to action. Again, you might offer a free report on a subject that is not commonly known by your prospect. I do feel this is one of your most valuable assets, your knowledge of your business. In exchange for the prospect giving you their name and e-mail address you will send them a free report. When I say you will give them a free report what I really mean is you will set it up to automatically send them a free report. There are websites designed to help you make landing pages, forms and build your list. Get Response and Infusionsoft are two that I have used. Infusionsoft is more of a complete customer management system and costs about 5 times as much whereas Get Response has some in depth training to getting your first 10,000 leads. Russell Brunson, founder of Click Funnels, is the expert on creating landing pages and guiding prospects to the desired result, delivering you high profit jobs. Some companies pay Russell upwards of a hundred thousand dollars because he is that good. Russell has memberships and courses where he teaches on this subject but Russell comes at a hefty price tag. He just spoke at a Grant Cardone event and generated over three million dollars in one speech. I have paid Russell a lot of money to teach me what I’m about to show you.
Whatever you do, your website should be about generating qualified leads. When a prospect fills out a form on your site they will then receive a series of pre-written e-mails to guide them to an action that you want them to take while at the same time weeding out prospects that you would not want to do business with. This is how you ended up as here. I used a sales funnel from one of my web pages or my blog that provided you information you were seeking in return for your e-mail address. I sent you the info and will continue to follow up with you through automated messages. Many people’s websites are not focused on the customer at all. Most sites just talk about the different products and services that they offer. Boring. Someone is at your website you need to give them a reason to listen to you. Why not offer them something that will be helpful to them.
I like to give reports that are based in something that is not commonly known. In one of my companies, for about 4 years I offered a free e-book, Energy Savings Without Getting Scammed. It was downloaded over 30,000 times. You think you can get some good customers out of 30,000 leads? I should think so, that book generated tens of millions of dollars in high margin business for us even when the economy was in a downward spiral.
Regardless of what you give them it should be something that will help your prospect in some area of their business or home depending on your ideal customer, in exchange they give you their name and e-mail address. Then you can slowly but surely guide them to where you want them to go.
You educate your prospect and they will look to you as their teacher. A level of respect that would be impossible to do with a brochure.
No one reads them.
One more things about free reports, e-books and books. The customer I want is a reader and so should you. If they don’t read then I can only assume they get their knowledge from other sources, computer, the radio or television. There is a reason the television is referred to as the idiot box. Readers tend to seek out information that interests them and usually from multiple sources so if you have information that satisfies their curiosity about a subject they will consider you the expert.
Now don’t panic, you don’t have to become a writer. There are many ways to have these reports made. You can use your recorder app on your phone and talk about a subject, perhaps 3 to 5 minutes a day for about a week or two. Then you can send those recordings off to be transcribed into English. I like a service called Temi, it’s 5 cents per minute and the transcription is pretty good.
Even Fiverr has transcription services and there are many transcription services for as little as ten cents per recorded minute so you won’t be spending a fortune just have someone proofread so that it doesn’t come across as gibberish. You can use this same technique to write a book if you choose, many have. I prefer to write but many best-selling authors were simply interviewed by someone else and then it was transcribed into a book.
Look the fact of the matter is when you write you become an authority on that subject. If your prospects look to you as an authority, they will purchase from you.
If you don’t need prospects who are readers or you prefer to be on video make your own videos. Videos can do the same thing as books. Videos by themselves can position you as an expert by you teaching on subject or subjects. If you prefer video, you might consider making a video and then have the video transcribed and offer a deeper explanation on the subject.
No matter what you do you need a call to action on your websites and landing pages that provides your prospects information that positions you as an expert on a subject and in your industry.
In the early 90’s when I was in the locksmith business we had a standard fee of $225 minimum to open a safe that for whatever reason would not open, provided the customer had a valid combination. The minimum fee was charged if we opened it by hand, without tools. If we had to drill, the minimum charge was $375 plus repairs.
On many occasions customers would tell me they have been trying to get in the safe for hours, or days and it just wouldn’t open. I can tell you that hundreds of times I would walk up to the safe and dial the combination and when I got back to zero, where the fence would drop in, I would move the dial back and forth very fast and in less than 10 seconds I was in. Needless to say some were not so pleased to pay $225 for 10 seconds of work. I would simply remind them that they had been trying for hours or days and it was my expertise that opened the safe, not the amount of time spent.
People will always pay more for an expert and if they believe you are the expert they will pay you more and come to you more often than any other method. So you must position yourself as an authority to your prospects and weed out the prospects that you don’t want at the same time.
One of the best ways to accomplish this is by providing information that will answer a need for them in exchange for their information.
To your lifelong prosperity,
David Mulvaney