It’s an important skill to learn, regardless of what you’re selling.
You gotta qualify your web traffic. It took me a while to figure this out.
Here’s what happens when you DON’T qualify… you’ve probably experienced this too when you were first starting out…
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Not all traffic is created equally
You start promoting your website everywhere you can think of, you HOPE that somebody will click on your spammy link, and you HOPE that they just so happen to be interested in whatever you’re selling, and finally you HOPE they’re in the mood to buy..
That’s a lot of hope, but I’ll show you how to get results faster.
As a newbie throwing your link all over the Internet without much direction you can get a lot of traffic to your site, but you’re nearly always gonna have a low conversion rate.
What’s a conversion rate? It’s the number of people who take the action you want them to, divided by the number of people who had the opportunity.
If 100 people visit your webpage and 10 opt-in to your mailing list, that’s a 10% conversion rate.
You can count anything you like as a conversion, but online it usually means the number of people who subscribe to your mailing list, or the number of people who buy your stuff.
For example, the Video Sales Letter (VSL) I wrote for the Easy Peasy Newbie Guide converts at 17%, but generally, if you’re getting above 2% on your sales page then you’re doing better than average. Not that you should settle for being average though.
A quick way to increase your conversion rate is to.. yep you guessed it; qualify your traffic.
So stop posting your link all over the Internet for the sake of SEO and start putting it ONLY in front of the people who might be interested.
This is how you’re going to target the right people, and start qualifying them as buyers.
That’s when your ad headline comes into play.
Your headline has to serve a couple of purposes, the first one is to repel anyone who might not buy from you. The second is to suck in the ones who might.
Why do I say ad? What’s wrong with organic traffic? Well nothing, free traffic is great and I love it. But I wouldn’t depend on it to feed myself or my family.
Remember when Google changed the rules (again) with the introduction of the Panda update and suddenly thousands of businesses went bust overnight?
Learn from that; even if you’re doing everything ‘right’ at the moment there’s no guarantee that Google will still condone it tomorrow, or next week.. or whenever. They can penalize you anytime, for any reason.
So stop investing huge amounts of time in SEO.
Instead, think about lead acquisition – it’s an easier, and more profitable route.
Lead acquisition
It sounds like fancy B2B jargon.
Besides that being completely obnoxious and true, it makes total sense for us to invest in leads, or prospects, who might become buyers.
But why wouldn’t you just go for the jugular and sell right off the bat?
Well, in a lot of cases you gotta warm people up first. If you barge in and start shouting BUY MY STUFF at them, they’ll probably walk away.
Nobody LIKES being sold to. Handing over money is a painful experience for us.
So instead, it makes more sense to send traffic to a ‘lead capture page’… ugh, more obnoxious jargon, and collect their email address so we can put our best foot forward, demonstrate that we provide value and follow up with them (pitch to them) as often as we like.
We gotta bond with them first, let them know we’re legit and they’re in the right place.
I talk more about the bonding process on a blog post over here.
Essentially, a lead capture page is a way to offer prospects a reason to join your email list.
A free guide, a checklist, the format doesn’t matter, as long as it’s something that will genuinely help them to solve PART of their problem, that they can access in exchange for their email address.
It’s an ethical bribe.
Emotions influence us to buy
Ok, you’ve done a couple of things here:
You’ve put your ad in front of targeted traffic and the headline is going to pull in leads.
Now we tie everything together by finding the emotional need of your audience and rubbing it in their faces. It’s not as bad as it sounds.
Let’s imagine you’re in the weight loss niche and you’re targeting people who’ve tried everything.. they’ve done the diets and joined a gym, but they’re still not getting the results they want?
How do they feel? Frustrated, right? That’s the emotion you need to hit them with, and promise them you can make that pain stop.
Now you’re putting your message in front of targeted traffic and appealing to the people who are desperately looking for a solution.
You’re looking for the people who are looking for you.
Win-win.
Segmenting
Let’s pretend that you now have buyers coming to your page and spending money with you.
You’ve done a great job of qualifying them, and your revenue is up.
But it doesn’t stop there.
What happens after the sale? Do you just let them ride off into the sunset with the product? Not a chance. You segment your email list; separate the buyers from the prospects.
This lets you communicate with the two groups in different ways.
If you’re still trying to convince prospects to buy from you, then you’re gonna have a different conversation than with the people who’ve already purchased.
You might also want to give added value to your buyers, and make them feel cared for and looked-after. To reaffirm they made the right decision to buy from you, and so they might buy from you again in the future.
I do this by giving all my buyers ‘surprise products’ for free, usually ones that I’d never announced – ones they didn’t even know existed but will help them on their journey.
This keeps them coming back, and sets me apart from my competition.
All good right? Now you’ve learnt a valuable lesson from Toby about qualifying buyers.
You’ve also learn the importance of going for the right kind of traffic, the right emotional pressure points to squeeze, and how to make customers feel valued even after the sale.