How To Build A Squeeze Page (Lead Generation Page) That Converts!
One of the most important skills to learn for a new digital marketer is “How to Build a squeeze page (also known as a lead generation page or an opt-in page) that converts.
A squeeze page is a specific kind of landing page on your site which has the sole purpose of getting people to join your email list. Usually you will need to offer some sort of free gift to get the visitor to your page to give you their email address.
This is sometimes known as a lead magnet or an “ethical bribe”.
It should therefore be fairly obvious that it is extremely important to maximize the conversion rate on your squeeze page. Getting traffic to your squeeze page can be a hard enough job itself so you don’t want your hard work to be wasted by a mediocre squeeze page.
The better it converts, the more prospects you get. The more prospects you get, the more sales you can eventually make.
So what are the best ways to get your squeeze pages converting like a dream? Here are 13 things you should be doing on, not just squeeze pages, but every landing page you create to ensure that you’re capturing every prospect possible:
- Get to know more about your potential customers. On your squeeze page you will be speaking directly to your prospective customer. So make sure you know who they are and what do they potential want from you? You’ve got to know your customer and use the words and images that will appeal directly to them. If they feel that you know what their needs are then they will be much more receptive to your message.
- Don’t make things unnecessarily complicated. This is so important! For some reason people seem to think it’s a good idea to try to create a work of art with flashing banners and bold colours. I’ve seen squeeze pages that are cluttered with so much stuff you don’t know what to look at first. So what happens? Rather than try to figure out what they are supposed to look at or what they are supposed to do, many people will simply close it and go and look somewhere else for the information they want. Remember, you’ve got about 3 seconds to capture attention and hold it. Keep the clutter out and only share the information the visitor needs to get them to take action right now. Any more than that and you’re confusing them – and losing sign-ups. Forget this rule at your peril!
- Do Frequent Split-Testing. There are usually lots of different things on your squeeze page that you can alter to try to improve the conversion rate of the page. Some of the most important things to test are your headlines, your colours, your fonts, graphics, form, and your opt-in button. In fact, you should split test just about everything on your site to get it tuned up and converting as well as possible
- Create a punchy and powerful headline for your squeeze page. You can and should use different font colors and sizes, but you only want one focal point to draw the eye in and capture attention, and that should be your headline. The key thing in creating an effective headline is to tell the prospective customer what the most important benefit is that they will get from signing up and getting your free gift. Everything else should then flow from the headline.
- Stay Focused and Consistent with your message.
In other words, don’t use a headline extolling the benefits of weight loss and then in the body of your squeeze page talk about the benefits of exercise unless it’s in direct relation to weight loss. If Your potential customer thinks your message is ambiguous then they will click away and look elsewhere for the information they are seeking. - Keep your message consistent across your site too. If you are selling your own digital products and your sales page for example is for a product that teaches self-defence strategies, then your squeeze page should also be about self-defence strategies (or better still – one key self-defence tactic), not martial arts in general. This might sound blindingly obvious, but you would be surprised how many times you might see a squeeze page on one topic which then builds towards to a sales page on something completely different. And then people wonder why they aren’t seeing results from their up sell to their paid products!
- lt’s all about the benefits. I should probably have put this point further up the list because this is just so critical for the success or otherwise of your squeeze page. Remember, you’re not selling a manual on self-defence, you’re the satisfaction of disarming an attacker and putting him on his ass! You’re not selling steak, you’re selling the mouth-watering aroma, the taste and the satisfaction. Tell people all about how they will benefit from the product – not what it’s made up of.
- It doesn’t matter what you think – it only matters what the customer thinks! So you think you’ve found the perfect headline? The perfectly worded bullet points? Just the right fonts and colours for your text? Don’t become too bought in to these things. Remember, it doesn’t matter what you think – it only matters what converts the best. This is why the split testing we mentioned earlier is so important
- Make sure everything that matters is “above the fold.” In case you aren’t sure what we mean by above the fold – think of a newspaper that is folded in half. If you look at this folded newspaper you will only see the top half of the page unless you physically look below the fold. On a website page, the term above the fold refers to what a customer sees on their screen without having to scroll down. Now a visitor to your squeeze page might be happy to scroll down but they will only do so if they see enough straight away to convince them to do so. That’s why you need to get all your best benefits and important points made right at the top! It should show the headline, the bullets and the opt-in form. The below-the-fold-area is for those prospects who haven’t quite decided to opt in yet and want more information to help them decide.
- Don’t be shy! Tell them what to do. If a potential customer has landed on your squeeze page then it’s probably because they’re looking for something. Don’t be shy but at the same time don’t try to be clever. Just make it clear what they will get and what they need to do to get it.
- Be Sensible with colour choices. Don’t be tempted to use bold or loud colours to grab attention. They are more likely to put people off completely. Use opposing colours on the color wheel to create contrast, and then test the results you get. There are no hard and fast rules on this and it’s impossible to say what colours will work best for your market. A lot of it depends on your offer and your audience, so you’ve got to test it for yourself and decide what works best.
- Build trust with your customers. Make sure you show potential customers that you can be trusted. If you have testimonials from other happy customers then make them available for new customers to see too. Get a logo designed professionally and display it on your page. Add your contact info at the bottom of the page and show that you are a real person that can be contacted if necessary. If you’ve been in business for years, state how many. If you’ve won awards, place those on there as well. Don’t clutter your page with this information, but do make it available to show that you are a serious person and someone who can be trusted.
- Ask Questions Where You Know The Answer Will Be Yes. This can be an incredibly powerful way to boost your conversions because it forces the customer to think about what they might be able to achieve when they use the product you are offering. Some good examples might be: Are you ready to fire your boss and start your own profitable business? Do you want to lose a stone in 7 days? Do you want to learn a new language in less than 30 days? Do you want to earn $10,000 per month? These are the sort of questions that has a person thinking “YES” and so they are subconsciously in a “yes” frame of mind when you ask them to sign up
Create a punchy and powerful headline for your squeeze page. You can and should use different font colors and sizes, but you only want one focal point to draw the eye in and capture attention, and that should be your headline. The key thing in creating an effective headline is to tell the prospective customer what the most important benefit is that they will get from signing up and getting your free gift. Everything else should then flow from the headline.
lt’s all about the benefits. I should probably have put this point further up the list because this is just so critical for the success or otherwise of your squeeze page. Remember, you’re not selling a manual on self-defence, you’re the satisfaction of disarming an attacker and putting him on his ass! You’re not selling steak, you’re selling the mouth-watering aroma, the taste and the satisfaction. Tell people all about how they will benefit from the product – not what it’s made up of.
Start using these tips and strategies when you are building your next squeeze page and you will find that your opt-in rates are dramatically improved. Don’t forget to also go back and update your existing squeeze pages.
Soon you will be building your lists on steroids – and we all know that the money is in the list!
Chat Soon
Dave
Thank you for your post. I can see that the critical message from your article is customer and customer experience.
You are absolutely right that before we design our landing pages, we need to know our potential customers. We need to speak directly to our prospective customer. Ensure that we know who they are and what do they potentially want from us. After understanding and knowing our customer, we use the words and images in the landing pages that will appeal directly to them. If they feel that we know what their needs are, they will be much more receptive to our message and thus are willing to optin our list.
It is kind of you sharing this useful message, which will be helpful for us to design successful landing pages and build our lists.
Hi Anthony. You are quite correct about getting the research done first. I know it can be time consuming but getting to know your market in depth will make you better able to answer the questions they will ask.
This also helps in the design of all your landing pages so you can customise them to your customers needs!
Hello David and thank you for this helpful article. Converting is one of the things I realised I’ve been real poor at, my site is getting lots of traffic but my niche is more like a news niche and I can’t find what product I could promote and definitely without that I can’t really build any list and yet I hear some people say the money is in the list. Otherwise I’ve recently started working on a new site which I’ll be able to create some squeeze page that converts.
Hi Donny. Yes its very true that the money is in the list and while you can make money online without a list, it is so much easier when you have got that database of customers who know, like and trust you.
The best way to find something to offer your potential customers as a free gift is to find out what questions people are asking within your niche and then research the answers and put it onto a downloadable product