How I Use LeadPages And Why You Don’t Need A Real Website
I am an affiliate with links to an online retailer in this blog post. When you read what I have written about a particular product and click on that link and buy something from the retailer, I can earn a commission. Please note that I only recommend products that I truly believe in and use in my business. Please read my full disclaimer here
Ok marketers, do you really need a huge blog or website to do affiliate marketing?
Not really? Read my article How To Do Affiliate Marketing Without A Blog Or Website, where I break down for you how to start affiliate marketing without a blog or website.
Do you really need a huge eCommerce site to do eCommerce? Nope.
Some people get overwhelmed by the idea of having to buy webhosting, build a website menu, design a website and all of that.
There are easier ways to build a website to promote a product and the good news is that you don’t have to hire a web designer or spend hours trying to put a website together.
In this article I am going to speak about a handy tool called LeadPages that I use as my marketing arsenal.
I use it to create one page blog posts, design landing pages, lead capture pages, sales pages, eCommerce one product pages. The sky’s pretty much the limit but you need to know how to be a little creative with it so that you can get what you want out of it.
What You Will Learn
- What is LeadPages
- Why LeadPages
- How to build a lead capture page
- How to build a one-page blog post
- LeadPages for eCommerce
- How to add affiliate links to your pages
- How to use it for lead boxes
- How to analyse your pages
- How to automate everything
- Other features of LeadPages
What is LeadPages?
LeadPages is a landing page builder. So it builds one page at a time although you can interlink to several pages all within the LeadPages platform.
Unlike your conventional websites, like this one you’re reading, you don’t need to set up webhosting yourself or spend a lot of time designing your website.
If you were interested in doing that then check out this article here.
LeadPages has its own hosting so if you were to create a landing page here, you will be given a LeadPages subdomain like yourname.leadpages.net.
Although it is possible to have your own custom domain where you can mask that subdomain using your own domain.
LeadPages is not only a landing page builder.
It also allows you to generate leads with a lead capture page builder. It helps you to generate sales with their sales page and checkout functions.
If you have a website or blog you can include pop up lead boxes inline with your text as well to capture leads.
You can also build out a complete sales funnel from opt in page, to bridge page to sales page.
If you want to do a webinar, yup! That’s something that you can customise as well as they have the features to help you create one.
Why LeadPages?
I’ve been working online and I have tried so many landing page builders like Clickfunnels, GetResponse, Aweber, BuilderAll.
But I keep coming back to LeadPages because it is so easy to use and its design templates are stunning.
They look insanely professional and for anyone who does not have a creative bone in their body, the templates that they provide make it easy for you to change the text, drag and drop your own images and you’re done.
The price point is also amazing.
When I started with Clickfunnels, I was not able to maintain my payments because it was quite pricey at $97 a month.
I needed to find an alternative builder and was put onto GetResponse but this did not have the feature to allow me to build a sales funnel. Neither did Aweber. Although both are superb for email marketing.
Then I was introduced to BuilderAll and whilst that is the marketer’s ultimate tool as it has everything a marketer dreams of at a really nice price of $29.99 a month, I still was not happy because the drag and drop elements were sloppy.
LeadPages is perfect because it has everything that you need that Clickfunnels, BuilderAll, GetResponse and Aweber has all in one and the price point is ideal at $35 a month.
How To Build A Lead Capture Page
Building a lead capture page is quite easy when you don’t need to worry about coding or design.
The great thing about LeadPages is that they have over 130 mobile responsive templates that allow you to choose which one fits your brand or your style.
Once you have selected your template you can either preview it or work on it to make it yours.
In preview, you get to see how the page responds. It also offers you inspiration for your own page so creativity is not really necessary.
After selecting your template to work on, the editor makes it easy to edit the elements of the lead capture page so you can add or takeaway from it as you like.
The editor also has widgets that you can drag and drop onto your lead page to customise it. So if you want to add a headline, text, image or video, simply drag the widget and position it where you want it to go.
What I love about LeadPages are the helpful automatic guides that show up to assist you in dropping your widget so it snaps into place and creates a neat outline of what you want.
Other features for your lead page include the countdown timer, social share buttons and a calendar.
You can also customise the sections of your lead pages by adding background images, changing the default colour, increasing or decreasing margins and adding or taking away borders.
For marketers who love tracking, LeadPages allows you to easily put in place your pixels so you do not have to worry about source codes.
The one thing I despise about webpages is those that do not help you in adding pixel codes to your sites. If you are not tech savvy like I am, LeadPages makes it easy for you to add tracking pixels or other meta data to your web page by giving you a box to complete.
If you are using Facebook to promote your page and you want to make sure that Facebook pulls the right information for your page when it is shared, LeadPages also ensures that this is done correctly by having a Facebook Open Graph platform where you can add whatever text you want to appear on Facebook.
How To Build A One Page Blog Post
So this part is probably going to be the most exciting for wannabe bloggers who really don’t want to go through the hassle of designing a blog but want a website to write a blog.
Kind of ironic right but I hope you get my drift.
With a little bit of improvisation LeadPages helps you to create one page blog posts where you can add content for a product that you want to promote.
To do that you can use their blank templates, their letter templates or one of their sales templates.
To make it blog-like it will require you to add a few links here and there but that’s about it.
You can transform these pages into a blog-like post and promote any affiliate links that you want.
Here is an example page that I created into a blog-like post.
I could have gone on to add a comments section to finish it off but I did not want to do that.
You can see how the links at the top of the page lead to my actual website and blog, giving the impression that the page forms part of a wider website.
If you wanted to optimise the page for SEO, LeadPages allows you to add meta data to your page with their SEO platform.
Simply enter the data in the fields provided and save.
By completing these fields will help Google index your page and rank it in the search engines.
LeadPages For Ecommerce
Sometimes you don’t want to create a huge eCommerce store like I taught in my tutorial on How To Build An Online Store using Shopify.
You may only want to sell one product.
Well thankfully LeadPages helps you to create a one page eCommerce page to promote a single product with an eCommerce channel.
There are four eCommerce page templates and one thank you page template that you can use.
Once you have created your page using the available templates you can integrate your payment processor such as Stripe to collect payments from your customers using their checkout feature.
You can also build your email list at the same time with an opt in form before the visitor purchases or after they purchase.
How To Add Affiliate Links To Your Pages
Another great thing about LeadPages is that it is easy to add affiliate links and secure them so they do not cause link juice to be carried over to the affiliate page.
You may have known that Google penalises web pages that have too many affiliate links on them, referring to them as non valuable pages.
Google advises affiliate marketers to use nofollow tags at the end of their affiliate links to avoid this.
LeadPages conveniently allows you to add nofollow tags at the end of all your affiliate links.
To add your affiliate link simply grab your affiliate link and highlight the text that you want to hyperlink. Select External URL then paste your affiliate link in the pop up.
Select Save then tick the box Use NoFollow. This will automatically add the no follow tag to the end of the affiliate link so that your link juice does not pass to the affiliate offer.
You can then customise your link by changing the colour or making the text bold. All links are automatically underlined.
How To Use It For Lead Boxes
LeadPages have opt in boxes that you can embed into your website using a bit of code that LeadPages gives to you.
Instead of taking your visitors to another page, these leadboxes pop over the website allowing them to enter their details without having to navigate away from the page.
It’s very simple and streamlined to add these boxes to your website and you can even change the colour of the boxes so it suits your brand or style.
If you want your box to pop up at a certain time or pop up on exit as someone tries to leave your website, LeadPages takes care of that by giving you the option to configure how you want your box to perform.
Personally I use lead boxes as part of my blog and include them where it makes sense to invite my visitors to sign up for my content upgrade or courses.
Once the visitor enters their details, I can then direct them to a customised thank you page or take them back to the content that they were viewing so they are not distracted.
I found this feature of LeadPages to be exceptional.
The only other piece of software that has this feature which I have used before is Aweber although Aweber’s forms need some serious updating so that it looks more modern.
I have yet to see this feature on Clickfunnels or Builderall. I suppose because they are not blog friendly.
How To Analyse Your Pages
What good is your web page if you don’t know how well it is performing or what your visitors think about it?
Every marketer knows the importance of tracking and optimising your webpages for better conversions.
LeadPages offers on page tracking allowing you to see how many people visit your page and perform a desired action on it such as opting in.
You can even split test pages allowing you to test the performance of pages against each other.
Their simple to use split test feature allows you to create two pages. Their analytics then tell you which version gave more conversions.
The split test feature is only available on the Pro and Advanced plans starting from $48/month.
If you prefer not to get the Pro or Advanced plans you can always use a rotator tool from Clickmagick which allows you to rotate your links sending equal amounts of traffic to the link.
Clickmagick has a free 14 day trial then is $12 per month after.
How To Automate Everything
Ok so you have created your blog post or have your lead page created and you are ready to get some sales.
Once you have put everything together you can either use LeadPages Facebook Ads integration to drive traffic to your pages.
LeadPages tracks everything for you on page and you get to track your ads’ performance on the Facebook Ads platform.
If you do not want to use LeadPages Facebook Ads feature then you can create a Facebook ad directly on the Facebook platform and direct traffic to the LeadPages webpage.
If using a blog post make sure that all your affiliate links are working properly.
If using a lead capture page to generate leads, make sure that your opt in forms work properly and that your leads are directed to the correct email list via the LeadPages email service provider integration.
If you do not want to build an email list using a third party software, LeadPages allows lead magnet deliveries. They capture your leads’ email addresses and then send the lead magnet what you want your lead to receive.
They also have their own email marketing software called Drip.
This is how you can automate an entire business model if you want to generate sales.
Even if you have a product to sell or are doing eCommerce you can use the same set up of sending traffic to your web page via Facebook Ads or whatever advertising mechanism you want to use. Then allow LeadPages to take all payments for you via the integrated checkout feature.
Other Features Of LeadPages
So I have outlined the main features of LeadPages that I use and love.
Other features that you may want to know about include:
- Drip LeadPages own email marketing software
- ConvertedU LeadPages training platform where you can learn all about marketing
- Webinar integration You can integrate webinar software with LeadPages. So if you are promoting a webinar you can have your lead opt into a lead capture page, then direct them to a webinar that you host directly on LeadPages.
- WordPress Plugin LeadPages integrates with WordPress so if you have a website or blog and you want a lead page to pop up automatically on visitor arrival or exit, you can add code to your WordPress website using the LeadPages plugin.
- LeadLinks you can have your leads opt in to different lists or webinar schedules with links added to emails. All the user has to do is click on a link for the function to work. LeadLinks is only available on the Pro and Advanced plans starting from $48/month.
- LeadDigits if you aren’t online you can also capture leads via a mobile device. Text messages capture email addresses and automatically add the lead to an email list or webinar. LeadDigits is only available on the Pro and Advanced plans starting from $48/month.
Wrapping Up
Well that’s all folks. If you want to do affiliate marketing and want a simple platform to host your links, you really do not have to build a complicated website.
You can use LeadPages as a webpage builder to promote a single or several products on a single web page. You can use it to capture leads on a lead capture page and even generate sales with their sales pages.
I feel like LeadPages is an all inclusive marketing tool that every marketer and semi-blogger should have.
At a price of $35 per month the features that you get are incredible.
Were there any features that you have in your builder that you think LeadPages might need? Leave them in the comments. LeadPages has a suggestions menu that I frequent to make useful suggestions.
Cheers
So helpful article.
Hey Sudhir thanks for the comment. Glad I can help.
This is EXACTLY what I’ve been looking for! You’ve got yourself a fan fo lyfe! Thank you!
Awesome. Thank you so much Jackie. Glad I can help.