by: AskPat 622 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 622 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions five days a week. We have another question today from Danielle, but before we get to her question, I do want to thank today's sponsor, which is Braintree.
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All right, now here's today's question from Danielle.
Danielle: Hi, Pat. My name is Danielle, and I am from Indiana. I have a website, it's www.TextPanther.com and I have a question. It's a WordPress site. I was wondering, Amy Porterfield talks a lot about giving downloads and freemiums with each podcast or each blog, and I know you do a lot of that as well, and I know she talks about Leadpages. My question is, do I need to have Leadpages? Does that make the most sense, or can I use my WordPress site to somehow do that?
And the other question, kind of piggybacking off of that, would be, I know she does AmyPorterfield.com download 96, or whatever, and you can just go there. Do I need to buy a domain name for each one?
Thank you very much for listening to my question, and I hope to hear back.
Pat Flynn: Hey, Danielle. Thank you so much for the question. I love that you're talking about these freemiums and what's called content upgrades sometimes. These are great additions to any post, any podcast episode, any video that you have. Typically, they are very relevant to that actual piece of content, instead of something that is an overall web, like your entire website, is just one that you can find on every single page. No, these are ones that are specific to that content, and these work really well for converting new email subscribers to your email list.
Do you need Leadpages to do this? No, absolutely not. You do not need Leadpages, but I will say that Leadpages makes it very easy for you to convert these listeners of yours, or your readers, into people who will be on your email list, because they have a number of different tools. But, more importantly in terms of the lead magnets, or the content upgrades, or the freemiums that you'll be offering in addition to your regular content when people subscribe, Leadpages makes it really easy for you to have those be automatically sent to those people. You actually upload that freemium or that content upgrade to Leadpages, to their servers, and when they subscribe, an email will be sent directly to them, and they'll be able to download it. It makes it really easy. That's a huge, huge benefit of using Leadpages, and if you have multiple of these
But, more importantly in terms of the lead magnets, or the content upgrades, or the freemiums that you'll be offering in addition to your regular content when people subscribe, Leadpages makes it really easy for you to have those be automatically sent to those people. You actually upload that freemium or that content upgrade to Leadpages, to their servers, and when they subscribe, an email will be sent directly to them, and they'll be able to download it. It makes it really easy. That's a huge, huge benefit of using Leadpages, and if you have multiple of these freemiums, and many different kinds, and they go in different places, it makes it a lot easier to organize, too.
It can get a little crazy, but yes, you can do this on your own, and if you use any other email service provider it can be done. You need to create a separate list, for example, and have that list live on that particular post where that content upgrade is going to be published and actually promoted. And the reason for that is because you want the follow-up email to, after they subscribe, actually link them to either a page on your website, or they can then download it directly from there, or a link to directly download it from an email. Again, it would still be automated, but it would have to be on a separate list, or a separate segment, which they get put into depending on which page they subscribe to, and then that initial follow-up email, the one that they get after they subscribe, would have that specific content upgrade into it.
Now, the problem with that is, it gets even more crazy once people who are already subscribed try to download a new one. And the thing is, you don't really want to have people have to reconfirm their email or anything like that, so with other ones like AWeber and, you know, really any other email service provider, it can get pretty crazy. But with Leadpages they know that, for example, if you use Leadpages, if people are already on your list, and they're entering their name and email to get another content upgrade, it's not going to have them go through the whole process of reconfirming and going through the whole autoresponder sequence again. It knows that they are already on your list, and it will send them that lead magnet.
Now, one thing you could do, too, if you don't want to get Leadpages to solve that problem is to, before you give away that lead magnet, you send an email out to all of your existing subscribers saying that you have this free gift for them, and it's that new lead magnet that will then only be available to people who are already on your list or who sign up on that blog post or that podcast episode that is coming up where that will be promoted. Hopefully, that makes sense.
Now to answer your last question, do you need to buy a domain name for each freemium download? No, you don't need to do that. You don't need to buy a totally new domain name.
What Amy does is, she uses a tool called Pretty Link, which is a way for you to create these nice links that then forward to any other link that you want, that is typically a lot longer and harder to remember, or you just want it easy for people to get to that place by going to a nice, neat one. And so, she has those ones set up to go to directly what that download is, and that's really handy, because it's real easy to use, and Pretty Link is free and keeps track of how many people actually click on those links.
That's how I'm able to drive people who listen to the podcast, for example, to the show notes by saying, “Go to SmartPassiveIncome.com/session12,” or “SmartPassiveIncome.com/session200,” and that'll redirect people directly to the actual link, which is for episode 200.
What I do for some of my lead magnets, however, is I do buy a domain name for some of the more prominent ones that are more sitewide, so for example, EbookstheSmartWay.com, that'll redirect you. Just basically, I tell the domain to forward through GoDaddy, essentially. I tell it to forward to the regular link for where “Ebooks the Smart Way” lives, so EbookstheSmartWay.com. There's also EmailtheSmartWay.com and also AffiliateMarketingtheSmartWay.com, and those are all three different lead magnets that any of you who are listening to this right now can check out and download for free. You'd get on the list and see how that process works.
But I have those specifically set up because I mention them in several different places, and it's just a lot easier to get to, because it's exactly the name of that particular book, and it's not necessarily a content upgrade, because it's not related to a specific piece of content. It's something that's more promoted sitewide and more timely throughout one's journey here on the blog and on the podcast.
Danielle, I hope that answers your question and gives you some thoughts. Is Leadpages needed? No. It's not needed, but it does help out, and it makes it very easy for you to manage the content upgrade delivery process. That is a big feature of theirs.
If you want to check out Leadpages, you can actually go through my affiliate link, which I do earn a commission from, at no extra cost to you, and that is AskPat.com/Leadpages. You can check that out there.
Danielle, thank you so much for the question. I appreciate it. We're going to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show. And for those of you listening, if you have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com. You can ask right there on that page. And I want to thank you all so much for your awesomeness, and for listening in, and your time and attention.
And here's a quote today to finish off, with Seth Godin, and that quote is: “Marketing is a contest for people's attention.”
It's really what it's all about. That's why Gary Vaynerchuk says he daytrades time and attention. That's what it's about.
Cheers. Take care, and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Bye.
