Squeeze pages – why you need them
Squeeze pages are one of the most frequently used tools by online marketers, and for good reason … they work!
In the previous article I outlined the 5 step sales process that forms the foundation of an effective online sales approach. Click here to read “Five Steps Sales Process” now …
There’s a 6th component to the online sales process too, and depending on your business, it can also be vital to your success – it’s called the squeeze page.
What Are Squeeze Pages?
Plain and simple, they are lead capture tools … short forms that allow web site owners to collect a potential customer’s email address, and then funnel them into a sales process of one form or another.
We’ve all seen squeezes. Sometimes they are a separate webpage with a whole spiel about some product or service being offered, with a small form somewhere on the page to “optin” for more information or some other free offer. Sometimes squeeze pages are just simple pop-up windows that entice us to sign up to a newsletter, or to get a free report.
However they are designed, all squeeze pages serve 2 basic functions:
1. Capture the email address of a potential customer
2. Funnel that potential customer into some kind of sales process.
Capturing that email address is priority number one in your online business. Let’s face it though, we’re all pretty tired of spam and nowadays people don’t just drop their email addresses into any old form they run across online anymore. If you want someone to give up their email to you, then you’ve got to make it worth the (spam) risk for them. I’ll touch more upon how to do that in the next chapter (email list management). For now, suffice to say that you want to give away something of value … for FREE. Something like:
- a newsletter (“eZine” is a more popular term now)
- a free report
- a free trial
- access to a webinar or video series
- etc. etc. …
What Next?
Well, you could simply send them to a nice thankyou page, or you could even send them to a sales page with a “One Time Offer”, just like I outlined in the previous article, “The 5 Step Sales Process.” What you most definitely MUST do, is funnel them into a series of autoresponders to help pre-sell, and then ultimately sell them on your product or service.
I’ll go into more detail about the automatic email responders in the 4th article in this series …
So you’ve captured that ever-valuable lead and perhaps even tried to hook them on a quick “one time offer” too. Most importantly though, you’re building a list of qualified potential customers. What you do next is the single most important part of internet marketing … and it’s also where most folks, even highly experienced internet marketers, fail in one way or another.
The next article covers the all-important strategy for successful email list management …
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Create squeeze pages with ease, using FusionHQ’s squeeze page generator …
Click Here for more information about FusionHQ
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Part 1: The Five Step Sales Process
Part 2: The Squeeze Page – the first step in list building
Part 3: Email List Management – your key to online business success
Part 4: Automatic Responder – why you need to use them
