How to Secure More Opt-ins with LeadPages

 

 

LeadPages

A sales page, sometimes called a landing page, name capture page, launch page, squeeze page or registration page is a way to highlight one particular product, service, event or opportunity designed to sell a product, service or to simply collect leads. These are known as the “money pages” of your website.

Money pages usually have a “buy now”, “apply now”, “download now” or “register now” or some other “act now” button on the page. These are known as money pages because they are very lucrative ways to increase lead capturing as well as sales.

There are several important elements of a successful sales page that you should include.

  • Attention Grabbing Headlines — When you consider that headlines are read more than the rest of the copy on your page, they are very important. You should create headlines that are unique, specific, urgent and useful. The words and position of your headline are paramount in increasing conversions.
  • An Opening Promise — You have merely seconds to grab the reader’s attention so it’s important to start off with a promise that catches their attention and imagination. Don’t be boring, long winded, or give away the farm. You want them to be compelled to read more.
  • The Story You Want to Share — Your story is also why people will want to keep reading and why they will want to opt in or buy what you’re selling. If you can weave a story that keeps the reader interested and tells the true story of why you’re making this offer to the audience you’ll have a winning money page.
  • Words That Foster Credibility & Builds Rapport — As you are writing your sales page, include words and details that make the reader feel as if they know you, and that they like you, and trust you.  If you know your audience well enough, you should know what to say and what words to use that let’s them inside your world a little.
  • Subheadings That Redirect — People lose attention quickly. It’s important to include sub headlines to help bring them back into reading the copy. Most people who read online scan from top to bottom instead of left to right as with printed information. Keep that in mind as you build your sales page.
  • Relevant Images — People are visual by nature, so you want to include some imagery. However, don’t let images take over the sales page, but choose images that enhance what you’re trying to convey.
  • Testimonials — By including testimonials you can quell the fears of buyers. This is especially true if you can link to a real person in the testimonial so that the reader can verify the information if they choose to.
  • Solid Proof of Performance — This can be accomplished with testimonials as well as your own story about how the product or service worked for you. Include details about why you came up with the product or service and how it helped you and others.
  • Your Offer — Remember that you are selling solutions, not features, and you want your offer to convey the benefits of buying to the reader. You also want to make the offer so good, that it’s hard for them to refuse.
  • Risk Eliminating Language — Many people do not buy based on fear. The more you can reduce their risks the better. Include risk eliminating language such as “no questions asked, money back guarantee” so that all the risk is yours and not theirs.
  • A Strong Call to Action — Before including your “buy now” or other call to action button, be sure to remind your audience about the benefits of your product or service. Let them know that they have a chance to change their lives by clicking.
  • Responsive Design — This means that no matter which browser or device is used to view your landing pages, they work. Nothing can be worse than clicking an exciting headline and finding that you cannot read it or act now because the page is not optimized for mobile.

You can also add video to your sales pages. A great place to do that is in the testimonials area, or perhaps include a how to video to highlight and demonstrate how the product or service works. Video enhances the sales page by making it more interactive, creating a way to explain in pictures and words the benefits of your product and / or service to the reader.

All that sounds like a lot of work doesn’t it?

Don’t worry. It’s not that hard these days. With software like LeadPages you can have your new money making pages made in less than hour, assuming you already have your images created, testimonials collected, and story ready to tell. Take a look at the list above and ensure that you are ready so you can get your sales pages made fast.

LeadPages can make your life a lot easier and more profitable, because it is designed to lead you through the process of creating many different types of “money pages” quickly and easily having them live in no time at all. They do all the work of figuring out what types of pages work best, all you really have to do is fill in the blanks with your own ideas, products, and services.

What is LeadPages?

LeadPages is a cloud-based software as service, that allows you to quickly and easily create “money pages” that you can use in a variety of different ways, integrating with many other marketing software such as Aweber, Ontraport, Facebook, WordPress and more. LeadPages offers many templates (currently about 50) designed to get results. These are generally templates that have already proved successful for others.

What Does LeadPages Do?

LeadPages helps you create functional, responsive, usable landing pages quickly and effortlessly through a variety of template choices. You just choose the template you want, and then edit it to fit your product and / or service and you’re done. You can download the HTML version or integrate it with WordPress or Facebook. You can also use the link that LeadPages offers instead.

What Are The Benefits of LeadPages?

They’ve already done the research and know what layouts work best and get the highest conversions. It’s fast to use, and easy to understand. It also integrates with other products very well such as social media, webinar, and autoresponder software. You just fill in the blanks, more or less, on the template to craft a landing page that gets results.

Who Can Use LeadPages?

Anyone who wants to increase their opt in rates, sales, and improve conversions should use LeadPages. If you’re running any type of marketing campaign for yourself or a client, you’ll enjoy using LeadPages to get the most out of your offers. You won’t have to come up with the design or layout on your own. There is no point in reinventing the wheel when it already works so well.

Overview of LeadPages

In under an hour, you can build opt in forms, squeeze pages, sales pages, social media pages, webinar promotion pages, optimized 404 pages, video pages, thank you pages, launch pages, upsell pages, pop ups and exit pop ups and much more.

LeadPages has many different templates available. Once you’ve created your account, you can get started right away.

The first thing you’ll see after you create your account and sign in is a top menu that looks like this:

1TopTool Bar

 

Templates — If you click Templates you’ll be taken to the entire list of available templates.

LeadPages™ — Clicking here will show you any pages you’ve created with the option to also create an A/B split test page.

LeadBoxes™ — This is a neat feature that allows you to make just a small box to capture leads instead of an entire page.

LeadLinks™ — Available only to pro customers, you can use this to improve your conversations for people who have already opted in to your list, by this way sign up for things via an email link without other steps.

Support —  If you click support, a window will pop up allowing you to ask a question. Type in your question and then a variety of responses will be given, and if those don’t work you can click “none of these are helpful — get in touch”.

My Account — If you click on this you’ll bring up another menu that looks like this:

2my account

From there, you can upgrade your account, add integrations with your email autoresponder software, shopping cart software, webinar software or others.

This will unleash more functionality for you. You can also use features they are trying out in Beta such as the current Lead Magnet Delivery feature which allows you to upload a file that your leads will be promoted to download. This is also where you will store your images, change “powered by” settings, and more.

The left tool bar is also present. It looks like this:

3left tool bar

This is just a way to access each type of template more quickly. So, if you want to create a Sales Page, for instance, you would click on Sales Pages to view the many different choices of layouts. Once you choose the template you like, you can get started; which is exactly what this demonstration will show.

Choose Sales Pages

4choose sales pages

As you can see you can now choose to use the Template featured, or you can scroll down and look at the many other choices such as Google + Hangout Pages, Super Simple Sales Pages, eBook Landing Page, Long form Sales Page with Video and so forth. You can also sort by conversion rates to see which one converts best.

We are going to choose the eBook Landing Page:

5ebook landing page

Simply move your mouse over the choice and an image will appear that says: Use This Template — click it.

You can also choose to watch a tutorial instead of clicking it right away. The tutorials offered by the LeadPages team are really useful if you feel lost. But, it’s so easy to use that more than likely you will not need them for most features.

Once you click through you’ll be taken the page that enables you to edit the template easily.­

6ebook template landing page

Above this window is a tool bar that looks like this :

7landing page editing tool bar

To the left are many choices about the parameters and page content. This is a small sampling of the choices that go down the left side of the page.

8page content menu items

To edit each part just click on that area to the left, or directly on the area right on the template.

For instance, when you click on the book, a screen appears to the left like this:

9edit book cover

As you can see, you can make the image disappear or change it. This is how it works for every aspect of the page, just click where you want to edit, the ability to edit pops up on the left side of the page, then make the changes you want whether it’s your logo, the text on the page, a menu item, or something else.

Click the area, and then use the editing area to change. For example, you can click on Opinions

10menu bar editing

which will bring a window up on the left like this:

11opinions menu item

Notice that you can change the word “Opinions” to something else by just typing in the box.

Perhaps we want to change it to Testimonials. Simply type in the word you want in the box, then click Okay. Now the top menu under your logo has changed to the word you want.

12changing menu item words

You can proceed with the entire sales page by clicking and changing the words, and the images until you are done and have an entirely unique page. As you click on each area to edit, you’ll quickly create a landing page that works for your needs and is unique to your audience.

For best results, try to replace images shown with images that are the same size. You can find out the size of any image is by right clicking on it, downloading it and checking the size in a graphics program or by using a plugin like Firebug for your browser. In addition, LeadPages tells you in the left side of the menu the recommended size.

14recommended size

 

Once you know the sizes just have your graphic designer make them the size you need. Always click “OKAY”.  When you’re done simply click Save. Then you’ll notice a new feature shows up in the tool bar called analytics.

15editing tool bar after save

  • A/B Testing –If you have a Pro Account you’ll be able to take advantage of the A/B testing features as well. A/B testing is a good way to determine which sales pages work best for your particular audience. Usually you’ll change just one element be it layout or words used and then use both sales pages at the same time and see which one converts best.
  • Analytics — From here you also set up your analytics. Just click Analytics on the top menu bar. Pick a date to get started and you can see how many views or unique views your page has received during a specific time period. Finally, when you’re ready you can publish your new page.
  • Preview — Once you’ve saved you can preview what your page looks like prior to publishing it.
  • Save — You must save before publishing or previewing. If you forget it will prompt you to do it.
  • Publishing — In order for the publish feature to work you’ll have had to set up all the General Parameters. This includes integrating with WordPress, Facebook, Autoresponders or other software.

In addition, you should also set up SEO, tracking codes, style settings, dynamic controls like share buttons, messages that appear with shares and more. You can also set up an exit pop up or redirect from here. In addition, you can help LeadPages with collecting statistics by choosing which industry your niche is in.

Once you click publish, LeadPages assigns a URL to your new page to redirect your audience to. Conversely you can also publish to WordPress directly using a WordPress plugin.

16how to publish

To get the plugin follow the instructions regarding which browser to use. Once you have the plugins for WordPress it’s super simple to publish LeadPages whenever you want.  As you can see, using LeadPages makes the process of creating all your “money pages” much easier and less labor intensive.

You can even choose to download the new page to your computer in HTML format to upload to your own server. There are no restrictions on how you use LeadPages to create. You could actually use LeadPages to create an entire website, although you really don’t need to do that.

Most of the thought to layout and design has already been done by the experts, and only converting designs are used. You can be assured that your LeadPages will get conversions if you send the right traffic to it.

How to Write a Sales Page

sales page

Sales pages in theory cannot be interactive. You don’t want to imbed links and send your prospect to another website and you don’t want them to be distracted by activities.  But you can use tools like video, allow social sharing and other interactive elements. You want your sales page to engage your reader and compel them to purchase.  Sales pages, regardless of the type, have the same goals – to generate a sale.

  • You need to have a compelling headline
  • You need to stress benefits instead of features
  • You need to establish credibility
  • You need a call to action

As users become more savvy, the standard “but wait, there’s more” kind of copy won’t work.  They don’t have time or patience for long drawn out sales pitches.  They want their benefits bulleted, organized by quick and compelling subheads, and stressed early in the copy.  They want the headline to make a promise and provide a benefit.

They want to know exactly what they’re reading and what they’re expected to do.

This means that your copy must be tight and not ‘look’ like a sales page.  Copy that converts readers into buyers provides a benefit right in the copy.  Copy that sells online in today’s market informs.

Assuming that you’re selling a software product that creates sales pages, here’s a quick example.  “How to Write Copy That Converts The Savviest of Online Shoppers – Use Our Simple Blueprint and Increase Profits Today.”  The headline makes a promise “Increase Profits Today.”  It also offers a benefit “Learn how to write copy that converts savvy shoppers.”

Your goal for the rest of the article/sales page is to educate your consumer, giving them a few simple tips about how to convert savvy shoppers.  This way you’re offering your readers a benefit right in your sales page.  You’re educating them and establishing your credibility.

The main difference between today’s sales page and an old fashioned sales page is that you acknowledge the intelligence of your consumer.  Your sales page is quick and to the point, it uses bullet points and easy to follow formatting, it offers information upfront that provides a benefit, and it tells your prospects exactly what they need to do to buy.

Clickbank Guide for Affiliate Marketers

affiliate_marketing

Getting Ready to Submit Your Site to Clickbank

There are four pages you need to setup before submitting your site to Clickbank:

  • Your sales letter
  • Your thank you page
  • Your affiliate page
  • Your Terms of Service / Privacy Policy

In this guide, you’ll learn exactly what you need to have on each of your various pages to get approved by Clickbank.

Step 1: Sales Page Pricing Policies

One thing Clickbank is quite strict on is clarity of pricing and billing.

If you have a one-time billing product, make sure your price is displayed prominently on the website. People should be able to easily find out how much a product costs.

If the product is a recurring billing product, the recurring billing conditions must be clearly displayed. Don’t say a product is “free” if they’ll be billed $40 in 2 weeks.

Example:

1-Show-the-Cost

 

 

 

Step 2: Display Clickbank’s Refund Policy

A lot of marketers want to have their own return policy. For example, they might want to do things like …

1 Year money back guarantee.

Return it for an exchange.

No refunds.

Satisfaction guaranteed or I’ll pay you $100.

There are great reasons to have each of these various kinds of refund policies. However, all Clickbank products must follow one refund policy: A 60 day unconditional refund policy.

2-Refund-Policy

 

 

 

Step 3: Setting Up Your Order Buttons

Your order buttons need to be hyperlinked to Clickbank’s payment processing page.

To do so, use Clickbank’s formula:

http://ITEM.VENDOR.pay.clickbank.net

Typically, if you only have one product, your item number is 1. So for your first product, if your account name is Alex, your order link would be:

http://1.alex.pay.clickbank.net

This link should take you to your payment processing page, once you’ve created your sites and products.

Step 4: Setting Up Your “Thank You” Page

Your thank you page is where users will be directed to after they’ve paid for the product. It’s where they will actually download the product. There are a few things that Clickbank requires be on your thank you page:

A way for customers to reach you. A support email address should be prominently displayed and easy for customers to find on the thank you page.

Let the customers know that their card will be charged from Clickbank or CLKBANK*COM. This is especially important, because customers will often know who you are but not who Clickbank is. If they aren’t reminded, they may dispute the credit card charge later. Make sure this notification is on your thank you page as well.

Make sure the download is easily accessible. If any software is required to use the product (special video players for videos, etc) make sure the download links for those are on the thank you page as well. Test all your downloads before launching.

 3-Thank-You-Page-Sample

 

Step 5: Setting Up Your Affiliate Page

Although an affiliate page is not technically required by Clickbank, it’s highly recommended if you want to promote your products via affiliate sales.

An affiliate page will tell your affiliates about your affiliate program, why they should promote your product, how to generate their links and what they’ll get paid.

It should also provide tools and resources like banner ads, graphics, buttons, sample emails to send out, etc for people who want to promote your products.

Finally, a great affiliate page may even go above and beyond by walking newer affiliates through the process of setting up a Clickbank account.

Step 6: Adding a Terms of Service and Privacy Policy Page

While Clickbank doesn’t technically require this, this is required to use Google AdWords and is also recommended for SEO. Not having TOS and privacy policy can prevent other affiliates from directing AdWords traffic to your site.

A Terms of Service will clearly spell out how your site works and protects you from liability. This is always a good idea when taking a credit card number of any kind online.

The privacy policy will tell your users how their data is being used or captured. This is particularly important if you’re capturing email addresses or using analytics software.

Both of these can simply be placed as the bottom of your page, in the footer.

4-TOS-and-Privacy

 

 

Once you have a good sales letter that’s Clickbank-compliant, a thank you page that’s Clickbank compliant, a thank you page and your TOS / Privacy policy setup, then you’re ready to move on to the next step of setting up your products in the Clickbank system.

 

Adding Your First Product to Clickbank

In Clickbank, each site can have any number of products. A product is defined as each individual transaction where someone has to pay for something.

If someone gets an eBook and an audiobook download as part of a subscription series, that’s one product. If they need to order the eBook separately, that’s two products. Each product has a separate thank you page and order form.

Here’s how to add your first product.

Step 1: Navigate to “My Products”

Start by logging into your account. Then, navigate to the “Account Settings” tab.

1-Go-To-Account-Settings

 

 

 

 

 

Under “Account Settings,” navigate to “My Products.”

 

2-Go-To-My-Products

 

 

 

 

Step 2: Select Add New Product

Once you click on My Products, you’ll arrive at your products screen. Since this is your first time adding a product, your products queue will be empty:

 3-Add-Product

 

Click on “Add New Product” to get started on adding your first product!

Step 3: Filling Out the Product Form

 4-Product-Form

 

Here’s what each field means and how to fill it out:

Shippable Media: If you’re shipping a CD, DVD or physical book for any order, then check this box. If it’s strictly online media, then leave the box unchecked.

Product Type: Check the boxes for what kind of product you are. If they get multiple products in different media types, check all the corresponding boxes.

Item: This is an item number used by you and your affiliates to identify this product. Your customers will never see this number. At this point, with just one product it doesn’t much matter, so just leave it at #1. As you add more products, the item number is what you use to direct traffic to one product or the other.

Thank You Page: Where do they go to download the product once they’ve paid for it?

Product Currency: What kind of currency the product is in.

Product Price: How much the product costs.

Language: What language the product is in.

Product Title: What are you calling your product? Make sure the name is both informative and attention catching.

Once you’re done, click “Save Changes” to save your first product. This is what you should see after your first product has been added:

 5-Product-Added

Adding Your First Site

 

A “site” in Clickbank is defined as a website that sells any number of products. Each site can only have one marketplace listing, even if you have multiple products on that site.

Here’s how to add your first Clickbank site.

Step 1: Navigate to “My Site”

To access the My Site menu, first click on Account Settings.

1-Go-To-Account-Settings

Then click on “My Site.”

2-Click-My-Site

You’ll be presented with the “My Site” options, which looks like this:

 3-My-Site-Screen

Step 2: Navigate to Marketplace Information

Click on “Edit” over Marketplace Information to define how your site will look to potential affiliates.

4-Edit-Marketplace

Step 3: Select Your Categories 

Click on the Main Category dropdown box to select your main category. Then, click on the subcategory to select your subcategory.

 5-Select-Category

Choosing the right category is very important, because affiliates in your industry will be browsing their specific categories to find your product. If it’s mislabeled, your ideal affiliates won’t see your products.

If in doubt, see what categories and sub-categories related products and competitors are in and emulate their choices.

Step 4: Select Your HopLink Target URL

Your HopLink Target URL is where a visitor will go when they come through an affiliate link.

If your site is a one-page sales letter, then the target URL is simply your main website URL. However, if your website is a multi-page website where the front page is primarily content and the sales page is embedded deeper in the site, then you may want to think a bit about where a visitor should land when they come through an affiliate.

Generally speaking, affiliates like it better when a visitor they send lands on a sales letter rather than a content page since salesletters tend to convert better and make them more money.

6-Hoplink-URL

Step 5: Write Your Marketplace Ad

Your marketplace ad is what will pull in potential affiliates to look at your product rather than the thousands of other products on Clickbank.

If you want affiliates to be a major source of traffic for you, writing a great marketplace ad is essential.

Take a look at how other people, especially high gravity affiliates write their marketplace ads. Check out ads from both your industry and top gravity in Clickbank overall.

Emulate ideas, but don’t copy anything word for word.

Here’s what the ad editing section looks like:

7-Edit-Marketplace-Information

Complete your title and your description. Under the description box, the counter will automatically tell you how many characters you’ve used and how many you have left.

The “Appearance in Marketplace” will give you a preview of what your marketplace ad

will look like once it’s published.

Step 5: Set Your Commission Rates

 8-Set-Commissions

Finally, set what level of commissions you want to give to affiliates. Commissions can range from 25% to 75%.

As a rule of thumb, you should pay commissions in the 50% to 75% range to stay competitive. Most of the top publishers pay out 75% and make their money in volume sales rather than ticket price.

Once you’re finished, click “Save Changes.”

Step 6: Check Your Order Form Controls

Under “My Site,” in the “Order Form Controls” section, you can choose what kind of payment types to accept as well as adjust the cap on your product pricing.

 9-Order-Form-Controls

As a general rule of thumb, you should just leave your order form controls at the standard. There’s no reason to disable PayPal or ELV unless regulations say you must in specific industries or you believe it might increase conversions and you’re doing it as a test.

The one option that may matter is the $50 price cap. When your account is new, you can only sell products that cost $50 or under. Once your account has more trust with Clickbank, you’ll be able to come back here and edit your price cap.

If you need to start with a raised price cap right away, then contact Clickbank through the help form and make your request.

Once you’ve saved your marketplace information and order form controls, then your site setup is complete! Note that you’re still not live yet, you still need to go through the approval process.

If you have other products, then add those products now as well. When you’ve added all the products you want, move on to adding your site and writing your marketplace description.

 

Going Through the Approval Process

Once you have your thank you page, your sales letter, your products and your sites setup, then it’s time to test everything with a generated credit card number and then submit your site to be reviewed.

The first step is to go through everything by hand to make sure every page is in order. Remember that Clickbank will check through each and every page by hand before approving your account.

If there are any errors, they will deny your application, ask you to redo it and then resubmit it. This can add as much as a week to the time it takes to get your site up and running. So make sure you check everything before submitting your site.

Once you’re ready, the final step is to do a dry-run using a generated credit card. If you can land on the sales page, use the generated credit card to place an order and successfully go through the whole process, then you’re ready to hit submit.

Step 1: Navigate to My Site

Navigate to “My Site” to access where you can generate a test credit card.
1-Click-My-Site

 

Step 2: Generate a Credit Card Number

Scroll down in the My Site menu and click Edit above “Testing Your Products.”

 2-Edit-Testing-Your-Products

Once you get to the credit card generation screen, click “Generate New Credit Card Number.”

 3-Generate-CC-Number

 

Fill out the CAPCHA form that pops up. Once you click “Finish” you’ll be presented with a temporary credit card number you can use to test your order process.

 4-Generated-Credit-Card

If you’re ready to test your entire sales process, then use this card number to do so. If you still have some setting up to do, then copy this info down in a Notepad file and save it for when you’re ready.

Step 3: Navigate to Your Product Using a Hoplink

Navigate to your sales page using a hoplink. This will allow you to test out your hoplink system to make sure it redirects to the right place, in addition to testing out the sales process.

To generate a hoplink for a product that hasn’t been approved yet, use the Clickbank formula of:

http://AFFILIATE.VENDOR.hop.clickbank.net

If your account name is the same for both, just use your account name for both. For example, if your account name is 12345, then the hoplink would be:

http://12345.12345.hop.clickbank.net

If your products and sites are setup properly, this should direct you to either the front page or the sales page, depending on your settings.

Step 3: Check Your Links

Once you land on your site, go to where your order button is. Check through all the order buttons to make sure they each have the right link. Hover your mouse over the order button and look in the lower left to see if all the links have the right destination.

 5-Check-Your-Links

Click on one of your links to move to the order page.

Step 4: Placing Your Test Order

Once you arrive at the order page, type in the credit card you generated in step 2. Click “Pay Now” to complete the test transaction.

 6-Use-Generated-Card-to-Order

If everything is in order, you should land on your Thank You page after clicking the Pay Now button.

Step 4: Submitting Your Product to Clickbank

If you’ve successfully placed a test transaction and everything worked out, then it’s time to send it in to Clickbank for them to review your site and product for approval.

To do so, first navigate to My Products.

7-Go-To-My-Products

In your products page, you’ll see a listing of all the products you’ve added to your account. On the left hand side, there are four small icons under Actions. The green checkmark is the action that will submit your site to Clickbank. Click the icon to have your product sent to the approval team.

8-Click-Checkmark

Once you click the checkmark, you’ll need to wait 2-5 days for Clickbank to get back to you.

Step 5: Paying the $49.95 Activation Fee

If there was any part of your site or product that didn’t meet their approval guidelines, Clickbank will email you back with requests on what to change.

Once everything is in order, you’ll get an email with a link to pay for the $49.95 activation fee. Once you pay the fee, you’ll get a receipt in your email.

 9-Approval-Confirmation-Email

Once you’ve processed the $49.95, your site will be listed in the marketplace.

Congratulations! You are now a Clickbank merchant.