SFR 194: Common Optin Page Mistakes...

Boom!

 

What's going on everyone? It's Steve Larsen, and this is Sales Funnel Radio. Today, I'm gonna teach you guys some of the most common mistakes when it comes to opt-in pages.

 

I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today. And now I've left my nine to five to take the plunge and build my million dollar business.

 

The real question is, how will I do it without VC funding or debt - completely from scratch? This podcast is here to give you the answer.

 

Join me and follow along as I learn, apply, and share marketing strategies to grow my online business - using only today's best internet sales funnels.

My name is Steve Larsen and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio. What's up, guys?

 

I'm excited for today. I'm excited for this. I actually, I've been looking forward to this one. I created recently a whole course about opt-ins - it's a free course! If you go to freeoptincourse.com, there you go. There's the golden nugget of the entire episode.  

 

Freeoptincourse.com takes you through a live funnel build that I did to teach people how to get an opt-in. Now you might laugh at that a little bit. You know, it's like, "Hey this is sales funnel radio." The whole thing starts with the opt-in though - this is a give and take relationship.

 

I remember in college I wrote an e-book, actually two of them. I was so excited. I went and got this e-book written. I got it back from the ghostwriter, and I didn't like it - so I rewrote the whole thing. I was so pumped about it.

 

This was pre-ClickFunnels, I was using WordPress to build essentially a funnel.  I didn't know how to do that though, so I was like hacking out (with the little coding knowledge that I know) WordPress. It was so finicky, it was terrible.

 

It was another one of those experiences for me where I was spending inordinate amounts of time putting together this funnel. It was crappy, and I kind of knew that. And I was like, "Ah, maybe it'll still work though." I patched together a payment processor. I patched together an email autoresponder. It was really hard. I was so stoked about this thing.

 

This was back in the day when I believed that a sale happens because of the product. If you guys have been following me at all, you know that's not true.

 

The sale happens because of a sales message, not the product. Those are two very different things.

 

No one buys because of the product. They buy because of the message.

 

Well, this was before I knew that. This was before I knew any of that stuff. I was so stoked. This e-book was targeted at students, which was first of all stupid because they're all broke.

 

I spent all this time putting this thing together. I think it took me two days just to create the sales letter to just to get people to opt-in or whatever. Guys, I launched this thing, and nobody even opted in.

 

I had so many failures with this stuff way back in the day.

 

I was excited guys. I was proud. I was like, "Yeah, check this out. This is my product". I knew it was really good - it was the reasons why I was doing so well in school. I was putting awesome knowledge in this thing. Honestly really really awesome.

 

But I was so convinced that the product is the reason you opt-in. I was so convinced that the product is the reason somebody buys.

 

So what I wanna do real quick is I wanna walk through the more common mistakes that I see when it comes to creating opt-ins.

 

If you can't get opt-ins, you're already dead in the water. Especially when it comes to putting a sales funnel on the internet - you're already dead in the water.

 

If you can't even get somebody to opt-into your free thing, how you're gonna get them to buy?

 

So what I wanted to do is I wanted to walk through... I wrote a little list here, so you'll see me look up and down here a few times, but I wrote a little list here just thinking through like, "Yeah, these are the most common things that I see as mishaps for why people opt-in or not opt-in."

 

A little while ago, somebody sent me a message, "Hey will you critique my funnel?"

 

So just so you guys know, I'm always willing to critique somebody's funnel. If you guys want me to do that, you can go to stevejlarsen.com. Stevejlarsen.com is where I can critique your funnel. I sell one-on-one hour coaching sessions. We can dive through whatever you want to.

...So there was a guy that I was doing it for, and it was a bunch of fun. I really enjoyed it.  I love these guys. They were so cool. Mad, mad admiration for them. It was some guys over in Hollywood. And it was really really fun. And they worked with a lot of actors. Any, anyways it was really cool.

 

So they sent me out this squeeze page. And I start looking through this squeeze page and their funnel. And the very first thing that I noticed was how many places I could click. And I started looking through the page. (And, you know, I'm not gonna say who it was or whatever) I was looking through it, and there were so many places that I could click. There were so many places that  I could exit. That's one of the defining differences between what a funnel versus a website.

 

Let's think about this. If I have a squeeze page; the goal of the squeeze page is to get someone's contact information so that you can continue to market to them, upsell them, serve them, and add value.

 

If you're not adding value they're gonna unsubscribe anyway. So make sure you're always adding value. However, you're gonna go in, and you're gonna grab somebody's email.

 

Well, the thing is, if I go and I get on a page, and you can look at your squeeze pages now. You can look at your opt-in page. And if you guys don't know what I'm talking about, a squeeze page, an opt-in page, landing page, those are all kind of synonymous terms. Reverse squeeze page/ landing page.

 

There are subtle differences between all of them, but the main premise, the main idea is you're going to get somebody to give you their email address, or some contact info to start the marketing relationship. That's really all it is.

 

Well, I was looking at this guy's squeeze page, and the problem was that it wasn't a squeeze page -  it was a classic website that happened to have an opt-in box on it, and they were treating it like a squeeze page.

 

They were driving a lot of traffic. These guys were spending a ton of money driving traffic to this page. Off the bat, I immediately knew what the problem was.

 

I was looking at their conversions rates, and I was looking at all this traffic coming in. I was looking at their numbers. And the numbers were telling the story.  I mean they were having like maybe 1%- 2%, of people opt-in for the free thing. That's like, "Something is wrong." You should be getting at least 30% in my mind for a good squeeze page.

 

I was looking at Affiliate Outrage. It's a free program. Is it a squeeze page? It is. You might be like, "Well Steven you have a full course you're offering on the back." Yeah, but it's still a squeeze page. I just looked, 71% opt-in rates just in the last week! It's been launched for a while - so it's very exciting to have those kinds of numbers.

 

A lot of my other squeeze pages right now are getting around 62% opt-in rate. I have another one right now; it's like a content funnel. Anyways, it's different. But it's got, it's got a 40 something percent opt-in rate. Which is crazy you guys. Super cool.

 

There are principles behind this. And the first principle I want you guys to know about is that one of the biggest mistakes people make, classic mistake, is: "It's not a squeeze page." They build a website page.

 

Meaning, I go on the page, and if you have links at the top, that's not a squeeze page. You just built a website with a funnel editor. You can totally build a website in something like ClickFunnels. I've done it, I've done it a couple times now.

 

If you have more than one exit from the page, meaning; they should either have to put in their email address, and press submit - or literally close the tab. That is a landing page. Squeeze page.  I'm gonna call them "squeeze pages." Kind of synonymous though. That's like the classic classic blunder though.

 

At the bottom, when it comes to all the legal terms and stuff, I literally put terms and privacy. That's it. And a copyright. That's it. You know. A business address.  I put the legal crap on there. But besides terms and privacy, I don't put anything else on the bottom. I definitely don't have anything on the top of the page.

 

The only way to move forward is to give their email, or whatever contact you're asking for. That's how a squeeze page works. It's the definition of it - it squeezes. Give me some info, and I'll give you some sweet value. That's like the classic number one blunder. Now if you've been a funnel builder at all, you're like, "Duh, Steven I get that."

 

Number two, the one that I see people mess up the most is there's literally just no curiosity. That's it. I look; there's no curiosity. The headline, you've not asked any open loops. The headline is not giving any kind of alluring promise. There's no alluring promise to it. The headline is like the most important aspect.

 

The first time I ever build a squeeze page was with my buddy in college. He and I were doing an affiliate marketing thing. We decided we were gonna leave a class and never come back 'cause it was so boring. We spent probably three hours just on the headline. It almost got to a frustrating pace. It was like, "Come on; we gotta move along faster." But like we really wanted this thing to work.

 

At ClickFunnels we spend two to three days just on the headline It's that important. So if you're just writing 'em on a whim, that's typically the biggest reason I see that people's squeeze pages don't work. They might just have one exit - which is great, it's what you should have - but there's no curiosity on the page.

 

You've literally have answered every one of the questions that you brought up on the same page, therefore why should I opt-in?

 

You wanna increase your conversions? You wanna double conversions? The easiest thing to do is to go in and make open looped statements where they're like, "Hey, what is the answer to that?" It calls out the right person, so they have to opt-in. It's like, "Yes, show me more!" Or "Yes, I wanna know." Or "Yes, give me that free report." Or "Yes, I want the free course." Does that make sense? It's the curiosity.

 

Curiosity drives the human brain nuts. We have to have closed loops. It drives us crazy. In western culture, everything down to our music and our melodic tones resolve - because we need that closure.  A lot of eastern music doesn't. It's totally western culture to have closure.

 

We need closure. Even if it's not real. Even if it's fake. In our lives, people seek closure. Man, that's human psychology. You can use that. So I create curiosity in my squeeze pages, primarily through the headline.

 

Open it up, and say like, "Are you getting the most out of blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, blank? Click down below for the free report. Click right here to take the quiz. Oh, here's your quiz results. Do you want the quiz results? Email/ button!"

 

As soon as I stop the camera right here that's exactly what I'm going to do. I'm going to finish a sweet quiz we're putting in front of one of our funnels now.

 

And that's how I know it will work is because I ask an open-ended question and people can't handle but to actually try to pursue the answer. That lets me get their stuff. That lets me start pushing through the funnel and begin the marketing relationship.

 

Curiosity. Stop telling all of your stuff on the squeeze page. That's not the reason it exists. Remember the function that it exists for. A squeeze page only exists to start the relationship. Not for you to teach all your stuff or make you look like a rockstar.

 

Number three, this is a classic blunder, it kind of ties into the second one. Too much info. Just too much info. Way too much information. You're telling all kinds of stuff throughout it. You're literally bathing them in information. There's selling the opt-in, but then there's just like, telling stuff.

 

If you wanna go see some good examples, again, these are free courses, but if you go to affiliateoutrage.com, watch how hard I'm selling the opt-in. It's a big page. I know it's a big page. But you can see I'm selling, it's a squeeze page. I'm telling a little bit more information than I would normally ask somebody to do, but watch what I'm doing. I present an offer:

 

There's actually a full offer on that page - for something that's free.

 

There is social proof up the butt. There's so much!

 

There are testimonials.

 

There are video introductions to all of the course creators, and all of the people who are in there.

 

BUT... it's very open-ended. I'm not actually resolving any of the questions that I bring up in there. I'll ask questions like:

 

"Well, Steven, how much is this?" "It's free, click here to get it."

 

"Well, Steven, how long is this available?"  "Don't really know. Just kind of testing it out. People have really gotten a lot of results from this. Until then, make sure you get it, so I don't close it out."

 

And it goes back, goes back, goes back, goes back. Opt-in, opt-in, opt-in, opt-in.

 

Here's the issue; so many people instead of continuing to create open loops throughout the page, they start teaching on the squeeze page, and then they wonder nobody's opted in. I

 

t's all about scarcity and urgency. It's all about creating that curiosity. The easiest ways to do that? "Man, don't tell them too much. Don't tell them too much."

 

I had the incredible opportunity to go hang with Trey Lewellen for a little while. Trey, I and his awesome girlfriend were all hanging out. And we were working on his webinar funnel. And he had an incredible squeeze page. It was extremely short. It was literally a headline, an opt-in, and a button. That was it.

 

The headline, an input field, and a button. That's all he had on that front page. And it was cool to see how high his numbers were.

 

And that works really really well when you're talking to a hot audience. When people know who you are. And it works really well, it can work in general, like it depends on what you're doing. Like I don't wanna just say like this big blanket statement; "Oh, small squeeze pages that don't work very well." Or "They do work well." I'm not gonna make a blanket statement. Every scenario is different.

 

But by simply going in and adding in a few testimonials or adding in the Facebook comments element so people can comment straight on there and it stays on there for all the future users who will visit that page - that's all native in ClickFunnels. That's really really powerful.

 

He showed me some screenshots back, and they had like a 50% increase in opt-ins because of it. It was crazy. I can't remember the exact number but it was outrageous. It was a huge increase in the opt-ins.

 

And, anyway, so I want you to know like, there was hardly anything on the page. He opened the loop. There was an input field and a button. That's it. That's like the classic squeeze page.

 

The next thing I already alluded to it, is social proof.

 

Guys, there's been some very fascinating launches in history where somebody will go in, and they'll sell a course with this massive sales letter with all the sales material. And they'll make tons of money. And it's like, "Wow! cool." And they'll close out the cart. Then they just focus on the students that came in; getting them results and gathering testimonials.

 

Then they'll reopen the cart with no sales letter, just the huge sickening amount of testimonials and social proof. And they'll do just as much money with that page as they did with the sales page. Social proof is massive. Massive.

 

You guys wanna know the cool way to get social proof? Go do a free course. What I'm saying is, you could literally just go like on Facebook for two hours and teach something. Pull that video. Download that video. Boom! Now you got a course.

 

Go to your audience,  and say, "Hey, I'm gonna make that a $57 thing in the future. If you want though I could give it to you free now. I'll give you the recording. Give you also some other cool things,"  - make a little mini offer out of it.

 

"So it'll be $57 or literally, just take out your phone, flip it sideways, and just tell me what that's meant to you. Tell me what value you've gotten from me in the future, or in the past. Tell me, answer the question what's it like to work with Steve?"

 

I've done that multiple times now and gathered easily probably 50, 60 testimonials in a week. And then I just go and I'll liter 'em throughout my pages. I know my stuff is good.

 

One of my squeeze pages on a site right now, I've brought it from 45% opt-in rate up to 65%, and it's maintained at 62%. And one of the biggest things I did was I just added a huge amount of social proof. Huge amount of social proof. And that was it. That was really one of the only major changes I actually added to the page. That was it.

 

Social proof is massive. And it's a very easy thing to do. You don't need tons of it. But if you can get like two or three that's perfect.

 

So you got your headline, you got an input, you got a button, some social proof. Done. And that's it.

 

Lots of curiosity. Some scarcity and urgency. I recommend putting a countdown clock on there. Make it an evergreen countdown clock. Countdown clocks make people do crazy stuff. Just put it on there. You don't even have to explain it. You'll get more opt-ins. It's true.

 

So anyways, I recommend also with your guys' squeeze pages that what they're opting in for is so obviously valuable that giving you an opt-in seems like child's play. And what I've noticed is when I do that it starts to increase the reciprocity they feel for me in the future.

 

So anyways, just to run through the list again:

 

#Number one, classic example is somebody who doesn't really understand funnels yet will come in and there's just too many exits. Way too many exits.

 

I recommend using something like an exit pop. I don't care. "What Steven, you want exit pops?" Yeah, I don't care about bothering people one more time before they leave - I may never see them again. An exit pop. Works miracles.

 

I love exit pops. It definitely increases my conversions by a lot. Exit pops are awesome. Too many exits.

 

#No curiosity. You literally are telling everything. It's all about creating open loops. That's what gets them going.

 

#Too much information. If you are gonna put a lot of stuff in there and if it is gonna be a big one, like I was saying, you can go look at affiliateoutrage.com to see this format that I follow.

 

The more of those kinds of things I added in my conversions went up.

 

But everything I put on the page has to do with back to the opt-in. I'm not selling the thing down the road. I'm just selling the very next step I want them to take. opt-in, rather than, "Hey, there's a course down the future that's gonna be this amount" Or "Hey, why don't you get coaching from me?"

 

I'm not selling that crap. I'm only selling the very next step. Just like in an email. The email doesn't sell the product, it sells whatever link is in the email, and then they click on the link, and they go to the page. Then the page sells whatever the very next step is.

 

Too many people sell the thing that's down the road rather than the next step. Easiest way to kill your crap. Don't do that.

 

Same with the squeeze page. You're just selling the opt-in. That's it. The page sells the opt-in. The page sells getting their email address. The page sells getting and going and clicking to the very next step - not what's on the next step. It just that step.  So too much information.

 

#Having no social proof. Which is, I just let you know a cool way to go get it.

 

# Not having a countdown clock.

 

Those are classic very easy ways.

 

#Videos can help, but sometimes I see the way people create a video is an actual hinder to the opt-in. I don't recommend having a video for your opt-in. If your thing requires some explaining to do, maybe, but man it's gotta high pace. It's gotta be exciting to watch. I don't recommend having videos.

 

Affiliate Outrage is probably the only one where I have a video; it took me a while to craft it and make it feel the way it did. Anyway, it's not a normal thing for me to go do because most of the time I find that videos on squeeze pages slow down the rate of opting in. They slow down the rate of consuming, and so I'll put a video on the next page.

 

If I'm doing a reverse squeeze page, if you don't know what that is go look at The Funnel Hacker Cookbook, then maybe you'll put a video on there. But it's not a normal play for me. It's not a normal thing that I  do.

 

So, if you're like "Hey, I can't get more opt-ins" and if you have a video, just take the video off and just try it. You know do a little split test and see what happens? You most likely will get a higher opt-in rate 'cause it won't slow the momentum down so much.

 

Anyway, guys, hopefully, you found this list helpful? I know this was a little more of a tactical episode here, but just know that this is a pretty basic skill in the funnel building world.

 

If you wanna be a funnel builder, get good at creating squeeze pages and list building. That's really what it is. Lists are the only asset on the internet, not the funnel, not your product, not your sales message - it's the list.

 

The list is what will save you if the bottom falls out from under something.

 

The list is the real asset on the internet. Not the product, not the sales message, none of that. All that stuff is transferable. You can take those other places. The list though that's the real thing that you want.

 

So if you wanna be a funnel builder, you gotta get good at opting in. You gotta get good at getting people to opt-in. You gotta get good at delivering value up front. You gotta get good at pulling people and helping them realize, like, "Oh, logically I see what I should give you my email."  

 

Anyway, so I just hope this is helpful to you. Go back to your squeeze pages, and use the list I  went through to look at your squeeze page and play devil's advocate. Like, "Man, yeah, you're right, this does suck."

 

Make sure it's mobile-optimized.

 

A lot of times it's harder to create a converting opt-in page than the actual order page. It's such a delicate place. It's the first time a lot of people will even see you or hear about you or know who you are. That's why I spend so much time on them. Even though, a lot of times, there are not many words on it. It's such a delicate first encounter. You have to make sure that it's awesome.

 

So that's why I wanted to make this episode for you guys today.

 

Make sure you go back, check this stuff out.

 

The funnest thing to go do is start running through people's pages for them for free. Last story here, then I'll end...

 

I can't remember who it was; it was someone related to Harmon Brothers. In the same building that they work out of. And they had this, crap I can't remember, this was a long time ago. I decide, I just wanted to start building more relationships.

 

So I literally opened up my computer, and I started going to these different pages and funnels that I could tell were good, but not quite there yet.

 

They weren't funnel builders, but they had a good product, and I just started recording my screen critiquing people's pages. Then I would just send their support the critique and wait to see what happens.

 

It wasn't uncommon for me to start getting feedback from CTOs, saying "Wow, that was really helpful. Thanks so much." Like, "Oh, yeah, ain't nothin’. By the way, I'm Steven, how you doing?" And that was a really easy way for me to go in and actually create a lot of relationships. I did that a lot.

 

I don't think I've ever told you guys that. Anyway, it's fun. Just go practice. Do it to your own stuff, do it to other people's stuff.

 

Hopefully, you guys enjoyed the episode. Talk to you guys later. Bye.

 

Aww, yeah! Hey, obviously a funnel's already dead if you can't get even get anyone to opt-in.

 

So I spent four hours teaching an audience how to get high opt-ins when they work, when they don't work.

 

If you want access to that member's area, where you can watch those replays, just go to freeoptincourse.com to create your free members account now.