AP 0184: How Do I Set Up a Landing Page?

AskPat 184 Episode Transcript

Pat: What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here. Welcome to Episode 184 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me.

As always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions, five days a week.

Awesome. Now, let's get to today's question.

Abhishek: Hello. This is Abhishek. Yes, I want to ask: How to just make a landing page for, a website or whatever, and how to embed that affiliate link, which we are promoting, into that landing page so that I get opt-ins from customers who just visit my website, and so that I can make my email list because it is the most efficient way of marketing, through email. And even the best one. So, I just only don't understand how to do this part, and even to install that autoresponder in there so that I can reply to my subscribers.

Pat: Awesome. Thank you so much for the question, Abhishek.

Now, there's a couple components to this. First, let's talk about what a landing page is, and then how we can create one. And then let's talk about how we can promote it and we'll also get into a little bit about email service providers too.

So, first of all: what is a landing page?

Well, a landing page, the definition of it is essentially a page that people land on; that you direct people to, where they accomplish or are forced to just make a decision on one thing. You know, it's also known as a squeeze page. I mean, there's some differences between the two, but when you think about it, a squeeze page or landing page, you want people to go to that page, and you want them to accomplish one task.

Yes, there are landing pages where there could be multiple things that you want people to do; multiple actions that you want people or visitors to take, but the best landing pages are all directed toward one specific action. The copy, the images, the graphics, everything, all to have that person be forced to, or squeezed, to do that one thing on that one page.

And there's a lot of different ways to create it. Probably the easiest and quickest way to do it is, if you have a WordPress site or any site, you can essentially just create a new page and have that, and just essentially go into it thinking about: “Okay, what's the one thing I want people to do when they get on this page?” Whether it's a sales page or something where you're trying to collect some sort of data, like an email address or some other sort of data, like, you know, phone numbers, or addresses, or survey type stuff.

Perhaps it's to promote a specific event that's coming up, like a webinar. Or it could just be a part of the sales process. Maybe one of the many steps involved to get people to take some sort of big action or transaction down the road. And, like I said, the easiest way to do this is just to create a new page on your site. A new WordPress page, and then have all the copy and images and everything you want people to do there. Hook up the email service provider, put an opt-in form or a button for your product or whatever the case may be. That's the easiest way to do it, and it's most likely free if you already have WordPress up and running.

However, there can be some things that go along with that that make it not quite as easy. It's hard to customize all the things that you want done, and a lot of the times, a landing page looks good and works really well if it looks a little bit different. Sometimes if you take the sidebars out, if you take the navigation out. Again, those are all other options that you don't want people to do when people land on that page.

So, there's a lot of tools and services out there. I, for one, recommend LeadPages. A lot of you probably knew that was coming because I am actually an advisor for the company, and it is definitely the easiest and best way to create high-end landing pages that really do convert. And what's cool about LeadPages, just so I can sort of promote them a little bit here. You can sort all the templates that are already existing, hundreds of them, more are being created all the time. You can sort them by conversion rate and actually keep track of which ones convert the best for specific things like getting people into a webinar, collecting email addresses, selling products, and things like that. [Full Disclosure: I'm a compensated advisor and an affiliate for LeadPages.]

So, if you want to go through my affiliate link—yes, I do get paid if you go through that link. But it is, like I said, a company that I am an advisor for, and I do highly recommend, if you want it, AskPat.com/LeadPages will take you to LeadPages, and you can check out the pricing and options there. [Full Disclosure: I'm a compensated advisor and an affiliate for LeadPages.]

Now that's the creation part of it, and, either way, whether you use LeadPages, or another tool, or you just create a new page on your site, one thing you can do to make it easier for people when you promote it eventually is to have it redirect through, you know, a nicer sort of link on your site. Whether you use a tool like Pretty Link, which takes those really long links and makes them really nice and short. Especially if you're using LeadPages, a lot of times the LeadPages links, or URLs, are quite long, and those are hard to just say on a video or on a particular, you know, podcast episode, for example. If people are listening, those can be hard to remember. So you could shorten it up using a tool like Pretty Link, or you can even buy your own domain and have it redirect forward through to that page, which I do quite often.

If, for example, you go to EbookstheSmartWay.com, that goes to a particular page that I created a long time ago when I promoted that for ebook. EbookstheSmartWay.com that will redirect you to a landing page on my website that promotes that book, and then it's essentially an incentive to sign up for my email list. You get that book if you sign up to my email list, and now that's probably the first thing I'm going to mention as far as promotion of your landing page.

A lot of people think of landing pages, they think of, like, email addresses, yes. But you also want to give away something in order to get that email address. That, by far, works out better than just saying, “Hey, subscribe to my newsletter,” or “Join the list,” or even “Join the community.” When people get something right away, they are more likely to subscribe to that email newsletter and take the action you want them to take on that landing page.

A lot of what people are doing now are using this sort of two step, often, process, which is something that LeadPages also gives you the ability to do using their LeadBoxes feature, which allows you to give an incentive or get people to put in their email addresses without first showing an email field and a name field, or one or the other, it actually shows a button like, “Click here to get your free whatever.” They click it, and then the email and the name field comes up, or whichever ones you choose you want there, and then they are more likely to fill it out because those are the only options they have when they get there.

What it does is it turns your page into a giving page. That landing page becomes a place where you're giving something, not taking something. Even though the ultimate goal is to get there in the email address, but when you sort of show people that there's an email and name field right away before even telling them anything, then they automatically assume, or a lot of people will automatically assume, that you're just there to collect their email address. But if you say, “Hey, here's this free ebook. Here are the quick bullet-points of what it's going to do for you and why you should get it right now. Click here to get it for free, or get free instant access.” Boom. They click it, and they'll send you their email address to get that in exchange. So that works really well.

Where else can you promote? Or how, you know, redirect, and you have incentive there. Yeah, that's great, but how do you actually promote that specific page? Well, there's a lot of different ways you can do that. Obviously, you can use the platforms that you've already built. If you have a blog, or podcast, or video platform, say, on YouTube, for example, you can obviously mention those links. Whether you use a short link, or just even having a link in the description of those videos, or in the show notes of your podcast episode, or directly in that blog post. When people click on that, they head on over to that landing page. So, of course, if you have a platform already, that's where you can promote it.

A lot of people are also promoting landing pages using paid advertising. Back in the day, it was typically using Google AdWords. Now, a lot of people are into Facebook advertising. However, I wouldn't discount pay-per-click on platforms like Google AdWords. People are still finding great success with that. And, also, we've had a few people in the past, in recent episodes of the Smart Passive Income podcast, talk about success on other platforms, such as Twitter advertising. And also Bing and Yahoo which are less popular, but as a result, your ads might be able to stand out and you'll probably pay less per click to get people back to your landing page.

But, again, you have to think about, when you're paying for advertising, that's cold leads, or cold potential leads that are going to come into that landing page. How is that first impression when they come to that page? How are you actually going to draw them in? What's going to make them want to stick around and also help them understand that they need to give you something? Whether you're selling something and you want them to give you money, or an email address, for example, whatever the case may be. One of the hardest things to do, or to master, is: how do you get cold traffic coming to your site to understand that that's a place they need to be, and also to give you something. So think about that, and make sure that the ads are congruent with what's on that page. So those are really important things to think about. I mean, you can have the highest click-through rate in the world with your advertisements, but when people land on the page, if it doesn't match up, you know, there's going to be some incongruence there and people are going to leave. So, you want your bounce rates to be very low in that regard.

Guest posts and mentions from other people as well. If you have a network, for example, if you have friends and colleagues in the same industry as you, who know you put out good stuff, I mean, you can obviously have them help promote for you. That's sort of a given. If you're writing guest posts you can even mention a particular link at the end in your bio to get a free, you know, gift or whatever, and that can drive people to a landing page. And that's not quite cold traffic, because you sort of warm them up in that guest post, and that's a great strategy.

SEO is also another one, although I wouldn't count on SEO specifically, so you're going to have to do some proactive work to get people to your page. And, again, make sure that you have that incentive there so when people land on that page they are likely, if they are on the fence, to give you their email or keep moving forward with you down that transaction to a webinar, to a product, or whatever the case may be. Just, you know, keep the audience in mind. They're not just numbers, they're actual human beings on the other end.

And in terms of email service providers, I mean, to install and create an autoresponder sequence, yes, you'll definitely want to hook up with a company out there. There's a lot of great ones out there. I specifically recommend AWeber. If you go to AWeber.com/askpat, that's a company that has sponsored this show before. That's the company that I use for my particular email list. But there's a lot of other great ones out there too. Mailchimp, Constant Contact, GetResponse. There's also higher-end ones like InfusionSoft and ONTRAPORT, which do a lot of cool tracking things and will allow you to, sort of, you know, track a user's experience through your site and have them, you know, based on different actions they take, move to different lists and get onto different autoresponders. Really cool things you could do there, but quite advanced and we'll save that for another episode.

So, Abhishek, I hope that answers your question. A lot of information there on landing pages in terms of, you know, how to create them, how to promote them, and also how to keep people moving down through your autoresponder and into whatever actions you eventually want them to take.

Thank you so much, and if you're listening to this, hopefully you are, you didn't give us your email address. Please send me an email with your email address so we can send you an AskPat t-shirt. Everybody who gets their question featured here on the show gets an AskPat t-shirt.

For those of you listening, if you have a question you'd like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com and, you know, we'll hopefully get your question aired on the show.

And, as always, I like to end with a quote, and today's quote is from David Brinkley. He says, “A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.”

Love that. We're always going to get bricks thrown at us. How can we take those bricks and build something amazing?

Cheers. Thanks so much, and I'll see you the next episode of AskPat.