Three Proven Capture Page Models
There are 3 main conversion models I’d like to go over with you today. In case you don’t know what a “conversion model” is, it’s simply online marketing’s jargon for “converting your visitor/potential buyer to a buyer.”
1-Step Sales Page: Shot in the Dark
The first method is the 1-step sales process. This is where you simply kick someone over to a full blown salespage and you attempt to to sell on the spot. As Fernando and I teach in our Attraction Marketing Formula boot camp (newsletters 5 and 6, entitled “Will You Marry Me?” and “Can I Get Your Number?“) this is very much like a guy going up to a girl he’s never met in his life and asking her to marry him right then and there.
Not only will he most likely get a “NO” for an answer, he’d most likely also get a kick to the balls as the girl scream hysterically for help and calls for help. Yes… Fernando and I do live close to Hollywood, where freaks are a dime a dozen, so that scenario is VERY real.
(I’ll tell you when this is okay to use at the end of this article…)
2-Step Squeeze Page: Let’s Go Out First…
The second method is one you are probably more familiar with if you’ve been around the Magnetic Sponsoring Community at all. It’s the exact system Mike Dillard uses to promote his products.
It simply involves putting up a capture page which gets the reader’s information in exchange for something of value before kicking them over to the salespage.
Think of it as a guy asking a girl out on a date (with the promise of a movie and a nice dinner), getting her to say yes, and THEN asking her to marry him at the end of that date. The key thing is the movie and the dinner of course, the “bribe” as we call it.
(Side commentary: geeze, we men sure are suckers eh? Or wait… is that the other way around?)
2-Step Reverse Squeeze Page: Impressed? Good, Want to Date Me Now?
And the last but not least method is about bribing them upfront without asking for anything in return and hoping that they are so impressed that they’d give you their contact info so you can kick them over to the salespage.
It’s like posting a valuable piece of information (your bribe) right there on your capture page and at the end of that free lesson you ask for the opt in.
It’d be also like randomly buying a girl a drink at a bar and THEN going up to her to chit-chat. You only hope that she
- Liked your drink enough to chat with you
- Like YOU enough to want to chat with you or
- It was one helluva strong drink!
Advantages & Disadvantages
With the 1-Step Sales Page, you get only one shot. Either they love what you have to say on your salespage and take that leap of faith to trust you and buy from you, or they are lost forever. Realize that since their money is actually at stake now, people who are willing to do this are far less than those who would be willing to give up their contact information.
Again, think about a guy asking a girl to marry him right off the bat.
Can it EVER happen? Yes.
But the numbers are far less than if the dude asked girls to go out with him.
With the 2-Step Squeeze Page, you are asking for far less in the beginning – a simple name and email-address. On top of that, you are even offering something in exchange – your bribe. You’ll find that people are far more likely to opt-into your capture page than they would buy had you sent them straight to the salespage.
And realize that a person who may not buy from you today does not mean she will never buy from you. Maybe timing just wasn’t right. So with a squeeze page collecting her information, this allows you to ping her radar once in a while hoping you do catch her on a day when she’s finally ready and capable of buying.
The downside with the 2-Step Squeeze Page is if you are in an internet marketing savvy market, people know the tactics and some would vouch to just give you a fake email just to access your salespage, thereby skipping the entire “Squeeze Page” process.
This brings us to the 2-Step Reverse Squeeze Page process…
The 2-Step Reverse Squeeze Page is quite interesting. You are offering value right up front and letting your bribe do the talking. “Hey, if you like what you’ve seen so far, you should opt-in and get access to even MORE cool stuff!”
Rather than using the “curiosity” factor (which the reader knows can involve false promises) to draw people in, you are using something much more solid and tangible. Actual proof that you do know your stuff and you CAN help your reader. What you end up with is typically a higher quality list and a more responsive one at that. On top of that, you’ll end up with less spam complaints than the 2-Step Squeeze Page.
Of course, you run into the challenge of making sure your upfront bribe is worth its weight in gold and is something your market is looking for. Otherwise it’d be like sending over a Martini to a girl at a bar who doesn’t drink. STRIKE OUT, BUH-BYE!
Rule of Thumb
The 1-Step Sales Page is really only for your warm market. This means if you already have a list of people you communicate with and people on that list know who you are and like your personality, message, product, or whatever it is about you, THEN you can send people straight to the 1-step sales page.
A working example would be Fernando and myself sending out an email telling folks on our list about a new relevant product we created that they should go nuts over. We wouldn’t need them to opt-in again since they are already on our list so we just kick them over to the salespage – leveraging the relationship we’ve worked so hard to establish already.
The 2-Step Squeeze Page is a great system for sure if your market lies outside of online marketing. The reason I say this is because those of us who are internet savvy and who knows capture pages inside and out KNOW that we can easily bypass the whole system if we say… give a false email address. Like any tactic, once it’s been around a while people learn it, know it, and figure out a way to beat it (on top of having a stigma towards it).
This is where the 2-Step Reverse Squeeze Page comes into the picture. Try offering something so irresistible that your reader has no choice BUT to opt-in just so she can get more.
Ultimately, the 2-Step Squeeze Page and the 2-Step Reverse Squeeze Page require split-testing on your behalf.
Last Words on Selecting Your Conversion Model
Odds are if you are just getting started, you’ll want to go with the 2-Step Squeeze Page if for no other reason than the fact that it’s the easiest method of the 3. Then once you have a list and some results to show for, you can experiment with the other 2 methods.
To Affinity and Beyond,
P.S. Click here to learn AdWords Secrets that’ll get you the traffic you need for your conversion model.
["Three Proven Conversion Models" was first published on BetterNetworker.com]
