If you have been in the email marketing game for even a little bit of time, you would notice that the typical squeeze page is actually pretty bare or minimal. In most cases, it is just a simple field for an email address, maybe a field for a name, and a heading with some text and a submit button -pretty straightforward, pretty simple. Unfortunately, if this is the kind of squeeze page you are going to be promoting, you are going to get pretty much the same results as most other list marketers. In short, you are going to be settling for mediocrity.
You have to understand that,
for you to maximize the amount of people signing up to your squeeze
page, you have to introduce story elements. As I have outlined in
Chapter 4, you can massage story elements into your blog posts,
articles, forum posts and social media engagement. You shouldn't stop
there. The story-telling has to inform -the things that you do before
people get to your squeeze page, the things that they are doing on your
squeeze page, and the things that they will be doing after you collect
their emails.
Sell Them the Dream
I don't
care what kind of product or service you are trying to sell. People
often have a pre-conceived notion of what that product or service is, or
the benefits they get from that service or product. In other words,
they have an ideal. The best marketers are people who can convincingly
communicate their offer in the guise and form of that ideal. This is
where effective story-telling comes in.You are essentially trying to
talk them into buying in to the dream. Of course, the specific forum and
positioning of the story has to be closely related to the nature of the
product. For example, you are selling a money-making program or trying
to convince the reader to join an affiliate marketing network.
You
should base your story on the typical dream of the person who is
looking for that particular type of program or who typically buys that
kind of product.The most common -if not cheesy or outright corny
-example is the idea of making money automatically, while you are asleep
or lounging around the house in your pajamas. There are many effective
squeeze page stories that highlight pictures of exotic tropical vacation
spots, and a person typing at a computer while enjoying a martini by a
tropical beach. Other squeeze pages tell a story paired with pictures of
a person working only a few hours a month, while generating several
thousands of dollars in income on an automatic basis.
All these
different narratives point to an overarching story, that the best online
money-making systems all involve a passive income. This means you only
work once, and then you reap the benefits of your hard work many times
over. Your story must proceed from there. There are so many ways you can
present this story. You can lay out a typical "workday" that involves
the protagonist of your story waking up at two o'clock in the afternoon,
having a long lunch, checking emails, checking the huge amount of money
he/she made at PayPal, and then going shopping either online or to the
local mall.
You get the point. The point is to de-emphasize work
and emphasize the rewards.Of course, the most effective way to sell a
dream is to still make sure it is anchored somewhat to reality. People
can smell fantasy a mile away. If you make your story so fantastic that
it is almost unbelievable, you are sabotaging yourself. You are making
it harder for people to buy in to the dream. The dream has to be
positioned right. It has to have enough realistic elements: so people
can still identify with it, while at the same time, play up the
advantages and benefits, so that their aspirations and wishes are
engaged.
Again, it is a tightrope that you are walking on. On the
one hand, you don't want to be so realistic that the story actually
turns people off. It is so different from how they conceptualize your
product or solution that it gives them pause. It discourages them from
buying whatever it is you are pushing. On the other hand, you don't want
things to be so fantastic and so amazing that it is obvious, from a
mile away, that you are peddling fantasy. At best, people would look at
your squeeze page as unrealistic. At worst, it might come off as an
outright scam. You have to walk this tightrope skillfully.
The
best way to do this is to pay attention to your conversion rate. If your
squeeze page is not getting enough sign-ups, you might want to either
dial down or step up the intensity of certain elements of your story, so
that you can get people to buy in to the dream. Keep in mind that
you are not manufacturing a dream. People already have a dream. What you
are doing with your story is simply relating to that dream. You are
simply trying to speak the concepts that they already have regarding the
product or service you are promoting.
Building Effective Conversations
The
typical squeeze page is just one page. You dump traffic to that page.
Whether you get that traffic through blog posts, articles, or Facebook
Ad buys, the end result is the same: you generate traffic and then you
lead it to a squeeze page. This is pretty straightforward. This is how
most people build a list. In a typical case, they would offer a freebie,
like a free e-book, in exchange for an email. People are offered an
e-book for their email.
Freebies are quite effective. They can
lead people to sign up to your list. Unfortunately, if you are building
your list through freebies, you are only succeeding on one thing:
filling up your list with squatters. That is right. When you give out
freebies -whether it is a digital product, free software or an app -you
are essentially bribing people. Nine times out of ten, the only reason
they joined your mailing list is because they are interested in what you
are giving away. They are only interested in the prize. Once they get
it, they either unsubscribe or they don't open your emails.
In
fact, from my experience, it is worse when people don't bother to
unsubscribe.You have to remember that most email services charge you a
monthly fee, based on the amount of subscribers you have. If your list
is populated mostly by email list squatters, this can be a big problem.
You might think you have a nice asset because you have all these people
on your list. But, if they don't open your emails, much less click on
your links, you are not really making money off these people. These
people are just squatting on your list. They are worthless. Worst of
all, you are paying for them on a monthly basis.
One of the best
ways to avoid this problem is to not offer digital bribes. That is
right. Get away from offering free e-books, free software, or any kind
of digital goody. Instead, use your squeeze page as the final page of a
multi-page conversation. I am going to outline how this works out below.
A Story-Driven Multi-Page Conversation
As
I have mentioned earlier, the secret to effective online sales is to
understand the buying cycle. For people to buy from you, they must first
trust you. To get people's trust, you must first get them to like you.
Finally, for people to feel that they like you, they must first reach a
stage where they think they know you. This is the standard
Know-Like-Trust-Buy stage.
This multi-stage process doesn't just
apply to consumers buying stuff from you. It also applies to consumers
signing up for your squeeze page. You have to engineer your opt-in
process so that this multi-stage strategy uses story elements. The end
of the funnel is your squeeze page. By selling a lifestyle, reminding
them of the dream and playing up the dream, these different pages talk
to your target audience members at many different levels.
However,
they all lead to the same place. They all lead to the dream or the idea
that you are selling.Of course, the different stories of these
different pages must be geared towards key stages of the
Know-Like-Trust-Buy process. The early pages should be focused on
getting the reader to feel that he/she knows you. The next stage is to
tell stories that get them to like you.
Finally, this should be
followed by pages that build on the previous levels and establish a high
level of trust. Once you have established trust, then you increase the
likelihood that people will sign up to your squeeze page. I have phrased
this in broad terms because you have to flesh this out yourself. The
specific forms that these pages take must mirror the actual service or
product that you are pushing. Different pages require different stories.
They take different forms. You need to fine-tune and fill in the
different pages, based on the specifics of the product or service that
you are promoting.
