Learn Internet Marketing Strategies For Your Business

Now that we have the opt-in forms created and our second autoresponder message written, we can get working on a new squeeze page. I think too many people try to have all their messages written before they activate their list (releasing it to the world) thinking they have to have everything perfect. But you can stay a few steps ahead of your readers and they’ll never know the difference – especially if you have planned out your first 10 messages like we did during Day 3.

We’re now 3 days ahead of our readers at this point!

So today’s tasks are to…

• Create a new squeeze page
• Entice new signups with a good headline, benefit bullets
• Include a webform into the squeeze page

Ready?

Keep Your Squeeze Page Simple To Start With

I already have an existing squeeze page for Ask Bob The Teacher, but I need to change it.

I’ll tell you why, but first let me show you what it looked like before today’s steps, and you can probably guess.

(The video looks zoomed in too far because of the image capture)

Here’s why I know it needs fixing…

• It promises something I can no longer deliver quickly enough (personal email reply to every question)
• The page has links to too many other things in the navigation and at the bottom (a squeeze page should have minimal “exits”)
• Simple is usually better when it comes to squeeze pages, and mine was getting too complicated
• I have been asking for too much information (5 fields to fill in), lowering my conversions
• It’s way too long for a squeeze page

And it just plain doesn’t do it’s job the way it should.

With any squeeze page, there are a few key elements that you really need to have. Anything extra is either a bonus, or a distraction. We’ll talk about which later when we split test the squeeze page.

The key elements are:

• A solid headline
• 3-5 key benefit bullets for why to sign up
• An opt-in form that includes some kind of privacy statement

By the way – I learned a lot about squeeze pages from one of my mastermind partners. You can get a free download of an interview I did with Matthew Glanfield on squeeze pages here. And his squeeze page generator system is pretty good if you’re short on technical skills and creativity.

Other than your photo, you don’t need any graphics on your squeeze page. In fact, sometimes graphics can be a distraction.

Overall, your squeeze page is designed to get a decision from your visitors

• Yes – you qualify to be part of my world
• No – you don’t fit, move on

There shouldn’t be any extra links, distracting banners, a litany of all the things you can do for people “just to cover your bases”, etc. And never ever ever ever put Adsense on your squeeze pages if you are serious about building your list.

Here’s a good example of an “ugly” squeeze page that does really well for it’s author, Willie Crawford (note: Willie’s squeeze page is ugly; he on the other hand is not).  Straight, to the point, no guess work at what is happening.

Use Day 1 Goals To Write Your Headline

Before I go jumping into my own squeeze page with a blank slate, I remember I can go back to Day 1 when I wrote up my goals for my list and my customer avatar. Using what I wrote there, most of my creative work is already done for my squeeze page.

I simply take the main goals for my readers, mix in what I know they “look like”, and out comes my first attempt at my headline.

Attention Home-Based CEOs And Time-Crunched Entrepreneurs…

“Discover How To Make More Money, Have More Fun,
Waste Less Time, And Showcase Your Expertise
With These Internet Marketing Strategies To
Promote Your Business!”

“With Your Permission, I’ll Share Profitable Business Tips,
Resources, And Tools With You – For Free!”

I would put Work At Home Moms, since that also describes my market, but I’m going to test out the home-based CEOs and Entrepreneurs first. WAHMs as a concept tend to focus on direct sales, and although I welcome that group, my ideal audience is running a business on their own expertise.

So to address the female market, I’m using the word share in the subheadline instead of “send you”.

At a later date, I may add “spend more time with your kids” in there somewhere as well. But like I said, it’s always a work in progress!

Benefits Should Speak Directly To Your Ideal Audience

For the benefits, I again want to look back to my goals and my ideal audience and address them directly.

Also, as I write what people get when they subscribe to my list, I don’t want to just tell them I’m going to be sending them emails. Nobody wants more email in their inbox! Instead, we need to focus on the end results that they’re really “paying” attention to.

In reality, when someone signs up to your list, and you keep them in the loop, they’re joining an informal membership program. So I’m going to call my list a free membership for internet marketing strategies, secrets, and resources.

As I write my bullets, I also want to include space between each one, so they’re easier to read. And I want to make bold the most important element of each benefit.

At one point, I tried using Mixed Case for my bullets, Like I Do In My Headlines (and this last clause). But that tends to make it harder to read with the smaller font.

After a few quick edits, here’s what I’ve come up with for my bullets:

When you activate your free membership now, you will receive…

• Time saving strategies to get more done in less time so you can finally get more balance with your work/family life
• Free reports delivered to your inbox every month to simplify the essential techniques and technologies for internet marketing
• Simple action steps you can take to overcome the annoying obstacles you face trying to take your business to the next level
• Ah-Ha Anvils – key questions and ideas delivered to you just at the right time to knock you in the head and give you clarity and focus
  
• Monumental Metaphors – I’ll share my own ah-ha moments as I travel and discover wisdom in places we often take for granted
• And
  resource reviews and recommendations – let me help you save thousands
  of dollars and hundreds of hours you’d otherwise waste trying to find the most cost-effective internet marketing services, software and systems for your business.

I use SHIFT+Enter and a space after each bullet to make sure there is a gap between each one. Alternatively, you can increase paragraph space in your paragraph properties.

Include A Your Photo For Branding And Credibility

You don’t need any images on your squeeze page, but I find including my photo and a signature helps to establish credibility and further my brand.

Whether you like it or not, in this age of social media, your photo is your logo. You should be using a good headshot as the avatar on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc. And I encourage you to include it on your squeeze page because it will maintain consistency from when people leave the social network site they initially find you on and go to sign up to your list.

I’m also including an image of my signature.

Now I’ll let you in on a little secret: that’s not really my signature. To protect myself from fraud, I don’t use my official signature online like I would for financial documents. Instead, I went to this nifty signature generator site (it’s free) and put in my name, picked a font, color and angle of writing, and out popped my image.

I also include my website URL under the photo and signature to remind people that I am indeed Bob The Teacher (a lot of people don’t even know my real last name!). It also should help stick in their mind later when they want to come back to the site.

Add The Opt-In Form

The final step is to make the opt-in form stand out a bit, and connect it to my Aweber webform that I created during Day 3.

I like to use a red-dashed border, thickness 3, and the background a pale yellow. You may want to experiment with different color patterns.

Here’s what the HTML looks like for my box:

<table border=“3″ cellpadding=“7″ cellspacing=“0″ style=“border: 3px dashed #cc0000; border-collapse: collapse; background-color: #ffff99″ width=“350″>

At this point, I could tweak the headline inside the Aweber form, but for now, I’m just going to add my own quick subheading in the opt-in box.

Also, since I’ve already used the webform in a couple of places, and I really want to track how my squeeze page does, I made a new webform. I simply copied the first one I made, and renamed it “front-squeeze” and a new ad-tracking of “welcome”.

I copy the javascript HTML, and paste it into my opt-in form on the new squeeze page.

Since I’m going to be using this squeeze page as my homepage, I added a small link under the opt-in form to give people a doorway into the site.

I may remove this later, because squeeze pages shouldn’t have links away from the signup process. But I don’t want people to get frustrated and leave entirely when they can go look at my blog posts before deciding to join my list/membership.

Using Blogi360/QuanSite For Squeeze Pages

By the way, I’m using the Blogi360 system (soon to be renamed QuanSite) to manage my site here at AskBobTheTeacher.com. So this squeeze page is actually a Marketing Pro page without navigation, header, or footer.

I’m using a Marketing Pro page instead of the home page editor because

• the home page always has the header graphic turned on (at least right now)
• it always includes the links to blog posts at the bottom of the page
• I can work on a marketing pro page separately without messing with my actual homepage in case I make a mistake.

Once I finished making my new page the way I wanted, I made my home page redirect to the new squeeze page.

Post Your Squeeze Page!

I’ll continue working on my own squeeze page, and later in the challenge we’ll do some split testing. But for now, it’s “good enough” to put out into the universe. Even 3% conversions are better than 0%, so don’t wait too long to publish yours.

Here’s how my new squeeze page turned out:

You can see the real version (and any changes I’ve made since writing up today’s report) at the homepage of AskBobTheTeacher.com.

I think it looks much better, but the proof is in the pudding. Only with traffic will I be sure that the changes are helping. And later in the Challenge we’ll check into those stats and set up new elements to improve conversions.

Please post a link in a comment below to your squeeze page so we can all see how you’re doing with the challenge!

Tomorrow, we’ll announce the squeeze page to the world with some promotion on Twitter and Facebook, and write the third message in the autoresponder.

Bob Jenkins

p.s. We’re just at Day 5 of the Challenge, but when you finish today’s tasks you have your squeeze page live on the web! The remaining 25 days will be about optimizing that squeeze page, promoting the snot out of your squeeze page (and other places you put your opt-in box), and creating profitable value for your subscribers one reader at a time. I can’t wait!

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