In the big scheme of things, there are two groups that you market to as a business owner or entrepreneur. Group number one is your existing customers; you try to get more business from them. This is a terrific source of “low hanging fruit” by the way, and I and every other experienced marketer out there will tell you that if you had to choose between marketing to people who have already bought from you, or marketing to new people that might buy from you in the future, choose the former. Group number two that you can market to is new customers or prospects. You are trying to get them to become paying customers. Squeeze pages are an effective tool for getting people in that second group to opt-in to your mailing list so you can begin communicating with them and turning them into happy, paying customers.
A squeeze page is really just any page with a place for people to enter their email address. The reason they are called “squeeze” pages rather than the more boring and generic “opt-in” pages is that the whole purpose of a squeeze page is to get someone to put their email address in that little box and press the “submit” button. So, in effect, you as the marketer are psychologically “squeezing” or influencing the prospect to take that action. Motivation for parting with their email address is provided by offering to exchange something of value for that email address. For example, a free video tutorial, ebook, newsletter subscription, or the like.
Squeeze pages are a fundamental tool that online marketers use to add new prospects to their lists. Once you have an effective squeeze page that converts at a good rate, all you have to do is drive relevant traffic to the page, and you will grow your list. I’m not trying to make it sound like it’s a piece of cake to drive relevant traffic, but it actually can be done with no cash investment or very minimal cash investment of approximately one hundred dollars if you decide to outsource some of the work. Quick side tip about driving traffic: The article you are reading right now is a part of one of my own free strategies to attract interested entrepreneurs and small business owners to me!
Okay, let’s return now to the primary topic of this article. Squeeze pages can and should be used by businesses of all sizes and in all industries. Literally, from IBM to the hair salon, from attorneys to flower shops, squeeze pages should absolutely be part of every company’s online presence. If you look through the yellow pages and pick ten random businesses, you will find that those businesses that are even savvy enough to have websites are rarely collecting email addresses on their site. And if they are, they are not offering a very compelling reason for anyone to give their email address. That is such a huge missed opportunity! It’s like throwing your fishing line in the water with no bait. From a marketing perspective, that is pure insanity, especially because squeeze pages are so inexpensive and easy to create.
In addition, you can create specific squeeze pages targeted at various segments of your market. For example, if your market is “parenting help”, you could develop targeted squeeze pages about “Parenting Tips for Moms”, “Parenting Tips for Dads”, “Parenting Tips If Both Parents Are Working”, and “Parenting Tips for Single Moms and Dads”. This way, your squeeze pages can deliver specific incentives to capture email addresses based on the needs and desires of these particular demographic groups. This strategy of segmenting your market and communicating in a more personalized way with the sub-sets of your overall market is an advanced yet very easy strategy that can have a huge positive impact on your conversion rate (i.e. the percentage of visitors to your squeeze pages that actually opt in to your list.) Obviously, if you can improve your conversion rate, you’ll improve the number of prospects on your list.
Setting up a squeeze page is really just like setting up any other type of web page. You can have a squeeze page set up as a page within your larger website, or it can have its own domain name. Once you have created the web page, you will want an enticing title. Continuing with the “parenting help” example above, it could be something like “Are you sick and tired of coming home from work and having to deal with misbehaving, disrespectful kids?” This clarifies and reinforces the problem that you are then going to propose to solve by giving your visitors a bonus in exchange for their email address. Then, you can have either text or a video below the title (typically on the left side of the page) that further clarifies the problem and mentions benefits of opting in to your page. Then, typically to the right of the text you will want to have a box where prospects can enter their name and email address. This box should be clearly labeled with something like “Enter your name and email below to claim your copy of my invaluable free report right now…” Don’t worry about the perfect layout of your squeeze page, just get it set up, and then you can tweak and continuously improve it after you get some visitors.
Now, you’re probably wondering “where am I going to find this “opt in box” you mentioned?” The answer is, it couldn’t be easier… Your email marketing system (such as iContact, which I recommend for everyone except very advanced marketers) will automatically generate the code for these boxes. You don’ t have to know anything about code or programming, just how to copy and paste a line of code (technical gibberish) from one page to another. From your email marketing system, follow the instructions they provide to create a “sign up form” and then copy and paste the code they give you into the area of your squeeze page where you want the opt in box to go. (The opt in box is the little box where people enter their name and email address.)
If that last paragraph flow over your head, do not worry, you can find someone on eLance or Craigslist that can set this up for you for fifty to one hundred dollars (even less if you use someone overseas). My advice is that you do not try to learn any of this technical stuff yourself. Get in the habit of outsourcing it, and you focus on improving your marketing. One great benefit of this system is that the opt in box on your squeeze page will be automatically linked to your list in your email marketing system. So, when someone enters their name and email address, you don’t have to worry about adding it to your list, it will already be done automatically!
If you have followed these steps, then you have created a squeeze page with the ability to capture the email addresses of your prospects and have them automatically added to your list in your email marketing system. Keep in mind that you can always tweak and test your squeeze pages to see what is the most effective layout, offer, and text to get as many people as possible to opt-in to your list.
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