Before we get into
the intricacies of squeeze pages, there's a concept you need to recognize and
put into place while you are
building a list with any method.
From the first
contact with your subscribers or customers, you should be quietly building a
relationship with them that is friendly, helpful, honest and full of readily
available information they need.
When you think
about it, everything we do is based on relationships that we've created ,
usually without thinking too much about it...just letting it happen naturally.
With an mailing
list though you need to manufacture this relationship.
How do you build a
personal relationship with so many people? In this high-tech, "moving at
the speed of light" Internet marketing scene, you might be surprised that
it all depends on ancient principles you were taught by your grandparents or
parents:
- Good manner.
- Taking an interest in the needs of other people
- Providing help when it is needed
- Being honest in all your dealings with anybody
It's just good old
fashioned customer service!
To start with,
after you get a sale or subscription to your blog or newsletter, your
autoresponder should send them an email you created with a "Thank You message". That email should also explain that they have to
confirm their subscription in order to get their download link or whatever was
promised when they signed up. Directions
on how to confirm their subscription should be explicitly stated.
From this point on,
your relationship building with that subscriber will be through email marketing. Don't get nervous
about a new concept when you are just learning about squeeze pages. Email
marketing, from your standpoint, is what you are doing when you send an email
to any customer or subscriber.
Take a look at what you are
already doing:
When you send a
personal email trying to get a date with someone or pleading with your brother
to help you fix your car, you are already email marketing. All of us market
constantly. We just do it with a different focus, depending on who the target
is and what we want from them. And we never think of it as email marketing. You already have a set of skills you can
adjust slightly and use in your business.
One of the best
tips I was ever given and still use today is when you're writing an email to
send to your list, write it to just one person – this helps you to find
that 'personal tone' that is the secret to success.
Remember marketing
is just promotion, selling or advertising.
Consider this.
You've felt the need to build relationships since your birth, starting with
your parents and siblings and moving on, as you grew older. In one way or
another, you've been marketing yourself as your desires and needs expanded.
Remember thinking
up ways to get the keys to your dad's car when you wanted to impress someone on
Saturday night? What do you think you were doing when you solicited the
neighbors for lawn mowing jobs or babysitting? Take those skills you've used
all your life and use them to talk to your customers with emails.
When you first
start to create a personal business relationship with your customer you have to
consider two things: what your motive is and what your customers want. The secret
to selling is providing what the buyers need and making it available.
Here's what you
need to decide before you create any web pages or marketing messages:
- What
do you want your customer to do?
Subscribe? Buy? Refer?
- What
response are you trying to get?
Questions? Answers? Sales? Affiliations? Joint Ventures?
When you can answer
those two questions, you will have narrowed and sharpened your focus. Take that
focus and use it when you are building relationships or web pages, particularly
squeeze pages.
Here's several ways to start building relationships:
One way to do this
is to stay in touch with different types of emails. Do not send an email to your customers every day. Initially, they will get sent two emails from your
autoresponder. One will thank them and ask them to confirm their email address.
The next will send the report they wanted or links to their download and the
bonuses you promised.
After that, give
them a break and follow up several days later with a simple inquiry about their
satisfaction with your product or service. Give them a contact method, email
address, help desk or phone number, in case they are having difficulty with
your products. That's it! No selling, no
marketing, no links to sales pages. This will start building their trust in
you.
In a week or so,
send an email with some related content or specific information your customer
might need. This can be about new trends in your niche or helpful information.
A gentle marketing approach would be
to suggest that they can receive more information on the topic by following the
included link to that information.
When they follow
the link, your web page would have graphics and data about your products that
may or may not be of interest to them. You are marketing without being
gratingly obvious. Just make sure that, when they follow the link, they land on
the information they wanted in the first place. Do not make them crawl
through several pages before finding what they want. It irritates your
customer and ruins your credibility.
One simple rule of
thumb that might be helpful to you is to remember how you feel when you are
constantly bombarded with email sales pitches every day or several times every
day. Responsible marketing with emails to your customers is the only way they
have to determine who you are and whether or not to trust you.
Too many marketers
treat their subscribers like fools. But what would you do if you got nothing
but sales emails every day? What would be in it for YOU?
Nothing – of
course, which is why people unsubscribe from lists that hammer them with sales
emails.
Some say that, for
every sales email, you should send two just
informational emails, occasionally including one with a surprise free
gift for download on your website. Others ignore that advice and go their own
way. It is, of course a personal choice based on your own marketing campaign,
but you might want to check out what successful marketers do and remember to
"Copy Success."
Once you decide on
your specific
marketing approach, it is important that you maintain a steady
email plan that keeps contact with your customers without irritating them. Do
nothing that will make you lose existing customers, who are almost 10 times
more valuable and not as fickle as new customers.
One of your major goals
will be to draw customers into your business, making them virtual friends that
feel like they have a stake in your success or are a valuable part of it. The
emotional trigger you are accessing here is the need for a sense of belonging
to something like a community.
One way to do this
is to offer all your subscribers and customers free membership in a forum
dedicated to niche topics of interest to them. They can ask questions, meet new
friends, give advice, offer help when they have the solution to a problem and
share experiences. That keeps them involved with you and open to buying your
products.
What you've built
with a forum for
your customers is trust, a source of information 24/7 and a
sense of community. Those are very critical emotional triggers that will build
loyalty and credibility. If you chose this avenue, it is important for you to
be an active member of your own forum. Your personality and personal contact
with your members is what will keep your members involved with you.
If you are looking
for topics to suggest or products to develop that your customers or forum
members want, just ask them. An email from you asking what information,
instructions or software they need will probably give you enough topics to keep
you busy for months. It also improves your standing in their eyes.
Another way to draw your subscribers into a relationship with you is to
run an occasional contest with a prize that has some value to the niche members
on your list. If your niche is golf, for example, run a contest asking for the
best way to improve a golf problem, like "How To Easily Get Out Of A Sand
Trap" or "How to Putt Like A Pro."
Your prize, might be an eBook compilation of the solutions you got from
your subscribers (identifying each contributor and expanding on their
suggestion), or one you wrote yourself about some aspect of golfing that is not
a rehash of old data. A golf shop might be willing to donate a box of golf
balls in exchange for a plug.
Keep what you've learned in your mind and let's get down to some
specific aspects to creating and using squeeze pages to increase your
conversion rate.
How To Get The Most Out Of
The Squeeze Page System
