Week 3: Build First Opt-In and Sales Page
Introduction to List Building
List building remains the cornerstone of successful Internet Marketing.
The basic techniques have not changed much. Offer a free gift that is valuable enough to make someone want to part with their email address. Collect the email addresses and start to run emails. This is step one to building trust.
People buy from people they know and trust
A newer idea is to build a bridge between the gift collection action and a potential offer that is somewhat related to the gift. This gives another chance to add to the trust and some people will actually buy this early in the process.
Week 3 Challenge
The challenge for week 3 seemed simple enough.
- Find a free gift.
- Build an opt-in page and a collection page
- Make a first offer. That requires a product to sell.
The smart place to start is to identify what product to sell and then use that to shape the thinking of what would be an appropriate gift (called a lead magnet). It also requires a way to build the pages – a page builder. Good news: I have 4.
Complication: Squeeze Work Into One Day
My challenge had one small complication. I only had one day to get the work done because Friday was my wife’s birthday and our wedding anniversary celebration. We planned a long weekend away to catch up with friends and family. There is nothing like a deadline to focus the mind.
Now, I suffer from shiny object syndrome. I have bought tons of materials that could be used as a free gift (called a lead magnet). I have bought private label rights and master resell rights on a wide range of topics. More specifically, I am part of the excellent Automated List Profits lead magnet membership. That was a good place to start. This month’s pack includes a lead magnet on Sales Funnels which would be very pertinent to what we are doing. Then I figured out it would be smarter to start with deciding what offer to make and work backwards to the lead magnet. This is both easy and hard. Easy because there are lots of affiliate products and services out there and they mostly come with sales pages already done. One just has to search JVZoo or Clickbank or Commission Junction to find products. Hard because they all have some sort of lead time to find, to research and to get approvals.
Add in that I prefer to promote products that I have solid experience of using. This is the big problem with shiny object syndrome = lots of stuff one has bought and has rights to sell and have not used them to know if they are worth promoting.
Applying the SOS Strategic framework
This is when I stepped back to my Shiny Object Syndrome (SOS) cure sheet.
- Do not buy anything new.
- Use something that you have already got.
- Use the strategic framework I talked about in my SOS video and post. This
tells me that I only needed to decide the things showing – everything else is not needed at this point – here is the picture.
Detailed Action Steps
These are the steps.
1. Decide on the strategic focus: I have long wanted to promote tools I use for affiliate marketing.
2. Decide on the product focus: One of the page builders included a business in a box on the topic of Copywriting. Copywriting is the guts of affiliate marketing success. I also have other copywriting products I can promote.
3. Use the Copywriting business in a box which has both lead magnet and a first offer product
4. Choose the Internet components. Domain: Banner ad on MarkCarrington.com which is hosted at Hostgator. Autoresponder: Getresponse account already operating. Page Builder: Dictated by Business in a Box platform which is Fusion HQ.
5. Design the clickable image for MarkCarrington.com. I used Canva.com to do this. The challenge did not really cover how we were going to drive traffic to the opt-in page. I have chosen to use the clickable image for now until I see how they propose to use the blog.
6. Modify the Business in a Box funnel to streamline the content and to get the job done. I just made a copy of the existing funnel and tweaked a few things (simpler wording; changed discount on the sales offer).
7. Test that the flows were working. Getresponse integration was not working which meant that double opt-in was not working correctly though it was doing double opt-in. Good news is the internal autoreposnder was collecting emails and I can fix the Getresponse integration manually. Check sales page and payment cycle including the discount coupon. All working as planned.
8. Decide where to host the completed funnel. Currently the funnel is working to a different domain to MarkCarrington.com, QuickSecrets.com. It only has the copywriting funnel on it – so I decided to leave it there but replace the old funnel with the new funnel. This also brings in all the legal pages from that site.
The funnel works.
Things Still To Do
- The bridge page is structured differently to the suggested approach. I plan to split test that later. Fusion HQ has great split testing tools. I know from the existing funnel that the sales page is not working well – only made 2 sales from 11,000 hits both soon after launch.
- Resolve the Getresponse integration. It looks like an outdated API key – easy to fix.
I have laid out the guts of the story in the video.
Resources
This is the stuff I use.
Domains: I use 1and1.com because they are cheaper than the market leaders especially on renewals and the offer excellent customer support should things go wrong. I do not share domain registration and hosting providers.
Hosting: I have a reseller account at Hostgator. Customer service is also excellent 24/7. Server reliability has been flawless for me. I am using shared servers for now – load times can be a factor especially for users on the other side of the world to the servers.
Autoresponder: Deliverability is the key part of using an autoresponder. I use Getresponse who had undeniably good deliverability when I started. Pricing is good especially when your lists start to get large. With my link we each get a $30 credit.
Copywriting: Copywriting is the heart of marketing and selling. Find the words that compel people to buy. Grab 5 marketing checklists to start your journey here http://quicksecrets.com/copywriting
Page Builder: Fusion HQ works and has great features. They appear to have closed down their affiliate program. They are also falling behind in developing the product which is a big pity. The IT geek in me loves what it does but he knows he will have to switch to one of the other shiny objects he has bought. I have a few. I will test one out, switch over and start promoting that when I know it works.
Credits
I own the image used for the Featured Image. I took the photo on one of my cycling trips.
