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?
The components of an effective squeeze page
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:
- List the features of the product or service or whatever you are providing
- Ask the questions ‘So what?’ and ‘And that means?” to provide a benefit
- 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:
- Add a photo of yourself
- Add a signature
- 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.
- Product an image of the free giveaway
- 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
I understand we’re not to add comments that are ‘nice post, thanks’, so I say ‘fab post, extraordinary timing, thanks a bunch!’. Kidding aside, less than two hours ago I listened in on a AWeber-sponsored webinar on landing pages, sign-up forms and the whole shebang. A full 75% of participants, yours truly among them, admitted to not doing any testing, but intending to do so. So if only 44% do any form of email marketing, and 75% do so without testing of their pages and forms, those who do both are part of minority of 11% at best. Boy, am I glad to have signed up with you/webuildyourblog! The likelihood of my becoming an eleven-percenter has just increased by 111%. Other than that, nice post, thanks:-) ~Beat
Beat
Thanks for sharing your webinar experience.
It’s true – get this email marketing right and it can work really well…because of all the people that do such a bad job of it!
The vast majority just want to sell stuff to you.
Here’s another stat for ya:
95% of your email marketing should be sharig your best knowledge and advice.
Andrew
Hi Andrew,
I have to say it, This is a great break down for making a squezze Page. I would still be working on mine if you had not helped me with it.
This squeeze page plugin that wordpress has sounds like a great idea.
Now when it comes to A/B Text plugin is that something that I need to consider? I have a plug in that rotates my affiliates, is this the same thing?
I always learn more from you, thanks Andrew.
Blessings always,
Debbie
Debbie
The A/B test plugin will show different images, text etc on the same.
So visitor one sees something different to visitor 2.
By showing differnet images / text etc, you can test and see which “converts” the best.
Andrew
P.S. Sounds like you have given me an idea for a new blog post!
Glad that i could help and thank you for letting me know who the A/B plugin works.
Blessings to you,
Debbie
I wonder if people don’t do squeeze pages because they don’t know what to sell/give away? I admit I haven’t done much with it yet, but I’ve got a plan and hope to have something going in the next couple of months.
Amy
Be warned…I’m going to be blunt.
If people don’t know what to sell/give away, they should NOT be in the niche they have chosen.
Andrew
Andrew
I started blogging about photoshop because I love photoshop and to share my knowledge! I never thought “what to sell/give away” . but now I am thinking on earning money from blogging.. by designing some logos , website and more..so that may be the case with those people
Gaurav
Yes, that sounds like a way forward. Good luck.
Andrew
wow these are inevitable tips to follow.
Totally candid to you i want squeze page to get more visitors.
Corinne
I agree with you…there are many email lists that are just out to spam you and try and ‘sell, sell, sell’.
I suppose in every area of life there are people like that.
And it makes it even harder for the decoent honest ones!
Andrew
Andrew: I’m working on a squeeze page right now, and working to update an existing one, so your post is timely as usual. Here’s my question though, is the standard format for squeeze pages getting too, well, standard? Have we reached a point that if they all look the same (copy, bullets, buy now, copy testimonials, buy now) that people will stop paying attention to them. In that ‘oh, they’re selling me something’ kind of way?
K
Kathy
You certainly have a point. Hence the reason for testing.
There are several variations you could use:
Video
Just email address opt-in (no name)
Images/cartoons
Andrew
Andrew,
Well done. These tips are not only important for squeeze pages, but for any sales page or other communication when your goal is to precipitate some sort of action.
I’ve found the ore emotionally charged the piece is, the more effective. People will opt in to get something they want more than than sometng they need on many occasions. They’ll justify it with logic later.
Steve
Emotion does help as long as it is not too ‘hypey’.
Andrew
I’m actually a beginner to Squeeze page and stuff, and about to write my first e-book. And was actually looking for a way to promote it just to share knowledge plus to increase my blog’s subscribers base. Thanks for the good explanation, apart from that, it encourages me to read the rest of the part of this post too.
So Thanks for the awesome write-up. 🙂
Amit
I hope it helps and I also hope you like the rest of the ‘how to make a blog’ series.
Andrew
It is right that we bloggers capture a lot of emails through squeeze page but email marketing is not too effective these days. There are many other ways to get a sale and to enhance the sales.
Azam
I disagree with you. Perhaps YOUR email marketing experience doesn’t work.
The fact that you mention ‘sale’ in your commnet twice tells me your email marketing could be far too ‘salesy’.
Andrew
Thanks for posting useful information about squeeze pages. In fact, these are great means to collect valid email addresses. You can utilize the opportunity by prompting the user to take action at the end.
I bet you’ve built a LOT of squeeze pages too! Always great advice on your site and one I recommend to clients again and again. In fact you’ve given me an idea – I could put links to this series in an autoresponder to my email list 🙂
Joel,
I have!
Thanks for recommending my sutff.
Andrew
Lol. Andrew, you’re right. Hopefully those who need to get out will do so.
Simply great, especially the feature-benefit thing. Really intelligent. But all the others are great advices too. I’m not really pushing my email list honestly, and I know I should, it’s on my to do list, but being subscribed to some I must say that at least 80 percent of them after a while become useless as they just push affiliate products or “my friend has a great deal on his website”, “Act soon” and so on. Boring to death and uneffective.
But I’m very interested in the next post as despite having increased traffic even with the always going Google dance I’ve seen in the last couple of months a definite decrease in my earnings with Adsense plus anytime I look at my pages I always see the same old ads. Either I’m in the wrong niche with very few businesses involved or advertisers are running away from Adsense. Probably to FaceBook.
Happy weeekend!
Andrea
It depends upon the niche but I think an email list is far more lucrative than adsense.
I will write about adsense but I don’t use it myself – I think it cheapens a site.
Andrew
I have a few domains related to my product that I have not done anything with but now I might create a squeeze page to use for each and direct to my main site or sell product directly. Thanks for the inspiration.
Matt
great – I hope it works out.
Andrew
I got the same problem Corrine has and it seems that we do not have the control to block them. Do you have any solution to this problem, Andrew?
Raymond,
If you class them as spam, some email services remember that and then treat their future ones as spam.
Andrew
Thanks Andrew. I tried that but most of them keep coming and I don’t know why. Perhaps they use different email address each time they send the spam email.
In my opinion, split testing is the most overlooked opportunity by website owner with squeeze page.
If it is done right, it can skyrocket the conversion rate.
Raymond
You are right. I would say less than 10% of bloggers do any sort of split testing.
Andrew
Effective blog posts contain timeless, relevant and helpful information. By following a few simple guidelines, you can keep readers’ attention and ensure repeat visits..
Great information, I haven’t used any squeeze page yet, will do one soon. I found your point on “features and benefits” useful.
Excellent post , you really did go into depth with this one. Glad to see a weblog featuring twelve blog posts on great topics featuring viable and unique content. Glad I’ve stumbled upon your page. Keen to read the future post.
Thanks for those kind words, Anton. I hope you like the complete ‘how to make a blog’ series.
Andrew
I think other than first taking action, the monitor, test and experiment portions are quite important.
I recently read Dan Airley’s book “Predictably Irrational” about how we make decisions. I think anyone with an opt in page should read it or they should just hire you to help them Andrew.
Bruce,
Thanks for recommending such a book. I do love books, especially when recommended by a friend.
Andrew
Wow! It really amazing how squeeze page work out. I will try this ASAP. Thanks!
Great post! But, it is hard for me to pay 97$ for the WP squeeze page plug-in. Any ideas where I could get a cheaper plug-in or try to do it myself for free?
Mary
I’m not sure about a cheaper plugin.
You could build it yourself if you can code!
Andrew
This page is really helpfull to me! Cause I pay to buy squeeze page normally! but now I can try out your tips by myself!