How To Make A Blog Part Twelve: How To Build An Effective Squeeze Page

In the last post of the ‘how to make a blog’ series we discussed the benefits of building your own list and how we can do that via your blog.

Now let’s move onto another strategy of building your list…via a squeeze page.

What is a squeeze page?

A “squeeze page” is a one page website and its sole purpose is to either capture the visitors email address (in return for your free giveaway) or in some cases, to make a sale.

But by far the main reason is to capture the visitors email address.

When building an on-line business, highly-effective squeeze pages are essential for daily lead capture because without those leads network marketers don’t have a business!

Only a few days ago, David Risley did a survey and the results were shocking. Only 44% of bloggers do any king of email marketing. You can read the full post here:

SHOCKING: 56% of Bloggers Do No Email Marketing. Why Not?

There are five main components of an effective squeeze page:

• An attention grabbing benefit related title

• A brief description of the product being offered

• Bulleted benefits of owning the product

• A call to action

• Building trust

Let’s cover each component:

An attention grabbing benefit related title

This is where we talk about features and benefits. You see most people talk or describe the features and totally ignore the benefits.

A few years ago I completed John Carlton’s Copy Writing course.  Best course I have EVER joined.

And John summed up ‘features and benefits’ with the following few words:

“The fan is the feature the wind is the benefit”

Honestly now…if you were selling a fan, how many of you would describe the features like the color, the material its made from and the fact it was made in Japan.

So what?

OK, I know many people will buy the fan because it’s made from lace or just looks nice or…

But why do most people buy a fan?

To keep cool i.e. the cool wind the fan produces. That’s the benefit.

So when you write your attention benefit grabbing headline, remember John’s words:

“The fan is the feature the wind is the benefit”

Oh and one more thing…do you know what the main reason for the headline is?

To get your visitors to read the next section…

A brief description of the product being offered

This is another area where many go wrong.

They miss the word ‘brief’ and go on and on and on.

Your description should be benefit related as well.

Keep it short and enticing and make your visitor read the next section…

Bullets

In the bullets section you want 4 – 6 enticing statements but they better be good ones!

It only takes one awesome bullet to make people opt-in.

Bullets are like “one-two” punches in boxing.

You know what I mean?

You see boxing trainers shouting out ‘one-two’ and the boxer throwing a left punch quickly followed by a right punch (or right then left!).

I write my bullets like that. The first punch is a feature and the second punch is the benefit.

So to write bullets like this:

1. List the features of the product or service or whatever you are providing
2. Ask the questions ‘So what?’ and ‘And that means?” to provide a benefit
3. Add the feature at the beginning of the bullet and the benefit at the end

For example:

Feature: 10 inch lace fan

And that means?

Benefit: instant coolness with one wave of the hand

So the bullet could be:

This 10-inch lace fan provides instant coolness in one simple wave of the hand

Great bullets take time to write. When you write yours don’t think ‘that will do’. You want to write the best ones you can.

A Call to Action

Another big mistake made by website owners…the call to action.

As website / blog owners…we know how to opt-in. We know (in most cases) what we have to do to receive the free giveaway.

But guess what?

Many of our visitors don’t know what to do.

Make your call to action, really stand out and provide simple instructions.

Display ‘arrow’ images pointing towards the opt-in. Explain in simple terms exactly what they need to do to get their free offer. Tell them what will happen next…after they have entered their email address.

Trust

Your visitors are concerned about giving you their email address. They think they are going to be scammed or sent thousands of emails or you’ll pass on their email address to someone else.

To build trust takes time and people have to get to know you but you can still build a little trust.

Here’s how:

1. Add a photo of yourself
2. Add a signature
3. Add contact us, privacy and disclaimer links in the footer of your squeeze page that when clicked on open up to a new page providing details on those subjects.
4. Product an image of the free giveaway
5. Add some real testimonials

Adding all or some of these will help build instant trust.

Ensuring your squeeze page covers these 5 components will help improve your opt-in rates.

But there is one more thing you MUST do:

Monitor, Test and Experiment

Monitor the amount of opt-ins you receive.

Change things on the squeeze page – see if it makes a difference to the number of opt-ins you get.

As I say above just tweaking one bullet could make all the difference.

If you are using WordPress to build your squeeze page you could use the A/B Text plugin.

This plugin enables you to have a number of different variations of your page. So visitor ‘one’ will see a different squeeze page to visitor number ‘two’ and so on.

I use it on my home page. My home page changes depending upon when you visit and I monitor the number of people that click over to my blogging services page.

That way I can tell which home page converts better and make necessary adjustments.

What about a WordPress Plug-in that builds Squeeze Pages for You?

Here’s an awesome tool that solves the problem of building squeeze pages – say hello to SqueezePlugIn.

You can build highly effective squeeze pages easily with the drag-and-drop interface.

SqueezePlugIn is also endorsed by Yaro Starak a very well-known/well respected guy in the blogging world.

In the next post on the series, “How to make a Blog” we shall cover the topic of “Monetizing with Google AdSense”

The previous blog posts in the ‘how to make a blog’ series:

Part One: How To Make A Blog: Getting Your Niche Right Is Crucial

Part Two: How To Make A Blog: Finding The Best Keywords For Your Chosen Niche

Part Three: How To Make A Blog: Monetizing with Affiliate Products

Part Four: How To Make A Blog: Monetizing with Digital Products

Part Five: How To Make A Blog: Choosing a Domain Name and Hosting

Part Six: How To Make A Blog: The Tools I Use To Make A Full-Time Income

Part Seven: How To Make A Blog: Are you Content with Your Written Content?

Part Eight: How To Make A Blog: Perfect Your SEO Habits

Part Eightb: How To Make A Blog: 12 Steps To Boost The SEO Of Your Blog Posts

Part Nine: How To Make A  Blog: How To Get Hundreds Of Backlinks Every Day

Part Ten: How To Make A Blog: How To Market Your Blog To Generate Income?

Part Eleven: How To Make A Blog: How To Grow Your On-Line Income With List Building