This blog post was inspired by an email I received from a reader of the blog who was in the direct sales industry.

Her question to me was:

One thing I’m stumped on as well is what value to give others … I’m feeling like I can’t yet position myself that way as I’m still trying to figure it all out.

I realised that a lot of people knew they had to get leads into their business but did not really know the process for getting those leads.

So I decided to create this piece of content in the hope that it will give you some insight into what you should be paying attention to, on your online journey.

What You Will Learn:

• What are leads and why you need them in your business
• How to attract leads with a lead magnet
• What’s the best format for your lead magnet
• How to create your first lead magnet
• How to promote your lead magnet
• 3 Major reasons why you may not be getting leads in your business

What Are Leads and Why You Need Them In Your Business

Leads are people who may be interested in what you have to offer. They are prospects who have seen or engaged with your business before and have asked for more information from you, to help them consider whether they want your offer.

So let’s say for example, you have a blog and on that blog you have created a content upgrade for A Blogging Blueprint Guide.

The person who provides their name and email address to receive that content upgrade, becomes a lead or subscriber that you can re-market to via email.

Consider the example of a brick and mortar store. When someone walks into a store, they become a lead to the store owner as someone who may purchase their item.

You can therefore see and understand why having leads in your business is necessary.

If every lead you generate to your business has the potential to purchase your product or service, then that lead is profitable and helps your business make money.

So if your business, whatever it may be, is not getting leads on a daily basis, then that is a major problem.

If no one knows that you are open for business and they are not seeing your content or you are not talking to them about your content, then there is no way for them to be inspired or encouraged to purchase your product or service and you should aim to fix that.

That is what this blog post is for and I hope that by the end, you will work on generating your first lead or subscriber for your business.

Once you know how to generate a lead, you will know how to get more of them as it’s simply a matter of repeating the process.

How To Attract Leads With A Lead Magnet

First of all, let’s address the topic of what exactly is a lead magnet.

A magnet attracts things to it right? Well a lead magnet is something that attracts leads to it.

So it is any piece of content that will attract your visitor to become a lead. They become a lead by exchanging their contact details, whether their name and email address, for that piece of content.

Therefore if you’d like to generate leads for your business, consider creating a lead magnet.

Your lead magnet should be something that is of a high perceived value by the visitor. Think for a moment, about your niche and what do you perceive as valuable information, that you know, that you can teach to others?

This should stir your ideas for your own lead magnet.

My subscriber said that

I’m feeling like I can’t yet position myself that way as I’m still trying to figure it all out.

Don’t think that you cannot create a valuable piece of content because you’re new to all of this. I like to think that everyone has something that they can teach to others. If you’re struggling for ideas here are a few places you can go to for help:

• Ask people who represent your ideal client or customer what their biggest problem is?
• Go to niche-related forums and see what people are asking. Don’t know any forums? Ask Google.
• Do you belong to any Facebook groups? Get suggestions from the members by asking a question about their biggest problems.
• Look at what your competitors are doing. Model after their lead magnets. You can even opt into their email sequence to see what they’re saying to their leads.

And if you’re still unsure what valuable content you can create, there are websites that can help you with this by offering their own products for sale which you can then give away.

These products are known as Private Label Rights products. In internet marketing, private label rights is where the author of the product sells the intellectual property rights to the purchaser, giving the purchaser the right to use their work and mark it as their own.

So if seller A creates an article or eBook and sells it to person B, person B can now claim to be the author of the article or eBook when they buy the private label rights to the product.

Some great PLR websites are:

• IDplr.com
• The PLR store
• Resellers Superstore

If you are concerned about creating your own valuable content to be used as a lead magnet, then you can purchase products from the above websites and use it as your own lead magnet.

What’s The Best Format For Your Lead Magnet

A lead magnet can come in the form of a PDF report, an eBook, a video, a short email course, a podcast, a checklist, a workbook. The list is endless.

You can decide what form suits you and your audience and if you don’t know, then split test it.

The form may also depend on what you want to teach. Do you need to be visual in conveying your information? Maybe a video is the best way to deliver the message.

Can the information be documented and will be easy to understand? Then text may be the better option.

How To Create Your First Lead Magnet

Make sure that your lead magnet looks professional and attractive. Even if you do have a good piece of content to give away, sometimes the way our lead magnet is designed can turn a would-be prospect off.

It can also lead to unsubscribes if there is no motivation to finish going through the content because of a lack of proper attention in compiling the lead magnet.

For designing eBooks, PDF reports or any text document, I would recommend Canva or PicMonkey. These design tools are awesome for crafting the perfect report.

For creating videos you can use Screencast-O-Matic to record your video and upload it to YouTube or Wistia.

If you’d like to incorporate images into your lead magnets you can use Unsplash which has some beautiful, royalty free images or Shutterstock which provides millions of royalty-free stock images.

Aside from the design, make sure that your headlines for your lead magnets are interesting.

No one is going to opt in for your lead magnet if the hook is boring. Here are a few things to consider when writing your headline:

• Does it solve a problem? Example, 21-day challenge to lose belly fat
• Make it specific. Example, 10 ways to work from anywhere in the world
• Is it easily digestible? Example, free home-buyers 15 point checklist
• Does it arouse curiosity? Example, learn how I generated $10,000 in under 2 months without a product. This last one I actually did and wrote an eBook about it.

How To Promote Your Lead Magnet

Where exactly does your lead magnet fit into your marketing? Obviously it needs to be the centre of everything that you do for your business because it is going to help you meet new people who you may end up working with one day.

If you have a website or a blog, you can start filtering your visitors by installing your lead magnet there. If you’re using WordPress as your content management software, you can install your lead magnet on the top bar using a plug in like WPFront. Do you see that top bar right on top of this blog post? That’s what it will look like.

If you don’t yet have a blog, learn how to start one here. 

You can also use LeadPages to create your landing pages and publish it on your WordPress website or blog by using the LeadPages plugin.

If you do not have a website or blog but still want to get leads for your business, LeadPages can act as a standalone landing page which you can promote via traffic channels such as Pinterest, Facebook, YouTube or Twitter.

This is how I am able to generate leads from Facebook by simply adding a link to my landing page and asking people to opt in for my lead magnet.

I do the same for Pinterest (you can check out Pinterest Traffic Avalanche for a Pinterest traffic strategy).

3 Major Reasons Why You May Not Be Getting Leads In Your Business

So you may already have implemented some steps to getting leads but you’re finding it difficult to get one person to bite.

Here are a few things to consider:

You do not have enough traffic

Traffic is an absolute necessity for any business. From traffic you get leads. So if your traffic numbers are low, then this could be a good indication as to why you’re not getting any leads into your business.

Consider traffic generation strategies that increase the number of visitors to your website. The more people that see your website, the more people are likely to opt in for your lead magnet if it’s a good one. 

A good opt in rate for any lead magnet is 40-50%. So if you have 95 visitors to your landing page per day, that would mean that you can potentially have 38-48 leads per day.

Increase your traffic and get more leads.

People do not want your lead magnet

As already mentioned, if your lead magnet is boring or not enticing enough, people are not going to opt into it.

A good way to see what type of lead magnet works, is to test it with your audience.

I would recommend having two to three different types of lead magnets (if you are just getting started and don’t yet know your audience, make your lead magnet brief content) and see what is converting.

Once you know what your audience wants you can then create better lead magnets based on their desires.

Your landing page is not attractive

How your landing page/lead magnet looks to a visitor, is a good indication of whether they will trust you enough to provide their contact details in exchange for your lead magnet.

Poorly designed landing pages can cause visitors to abandon the site without even considering what it has to offer. When designing your landing page, I recommend using software that will create professional looking websites.

I use LeadPages because it is inexpensive at $37/month and their templates are beautiful. Do not be tempted to use free landing page software. Some do not allow you to track important elements of your marketing, their functionality is clumsy and frankly they can make your website look spammy.

When you’re starting a business, be prepared to invest in these tools if you want to stand out and be considered an expert by your audience.

Wrapping Up

I have given you the 411 on leads and how to get them for your business. These steps can be applied to any business model.

In fact, if you know how to create a lead magnet and what type of lead magnet to use in your business, then you’re on your way to selling your products and services.

Here’s a useful and very simple formula for you to remember when building any business:

Traffic + Leads = Sales

That’s it! That’s all there is to generating sales. Have a stead flow of traffic from traffic channels like Google, Pinterest, Facebook or YouTube, direct the traffic to a blog or website, offer them a freebie which is your lead magnet and follow up with them in an email sequence to generate the sale.

This was a super long post! Show me some love in the comments and let me know what you thought!

Related Articles:

• The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Starting A Successful Blog
• The Ultimate Email Strategy For Bloggers and Marketers
• The Complete Guide To Automated Sales Funnel For Any Business 

Cheers,

The post How To Get Subscribers And Leads For Any Online Business appeared first on I Am Dawn-Marie.

It doesn’t matter what type of business you own. Whether you’re a freelance writer, a cake maker, a real estate agent; if you want to take your prospect through a structured path to know more about your products and service, then a sales funnel is the answer.

In this post I am going to give you the complete guide to sales funnels.

So you will learn what it is all about and how to create one. So many people still ask me what the heck is a sales funnel and whilst I wrote a post about network marketing sales funnels, I think it is necessary that I cover one for all businesses.

What you will learn:

• What is a sales funnel?
• The anatomy of a sales funnel
• Why should you use a sales funnel?
• Tools that you will need for a sales funnel
• How to design a sales funnel?
• Examples of sales funnels
• Build your own sales funnel challenge

What is a sales funnel?

A sales funnel is the process of taking someone through a path where they are first interested in your business, then they get to know about your business through education and finally you close the sale after they have considered your business.

The ideal sales funnel will also filter out people who do not match your customer avatar and only permit those who are genuinely interested to enter in the funnel.

After all people who are similar to your customer avatar are the ones that truly matter.

If you think of a how a funnel looks you will see that it is larger at the top and narrower at the bottom.

A sales funnel has the same effect. So many people will come through your business but only a few will make it to the end which is the sale.

Everyone is not the perfect client for your business, so using a sales funnel will help you only speak to those that are interested and will not waste your time.    

The Anatomy Of A Sales Funnel

I am going to break down for you how a sales funnel functions.

There are three steps in a basic sales funnel but as you become advanced in marketing you will learn about longer sales funnels where there are more steps such as up-sells, cross-sells and down-sells.

If you are new to sales funnels then I’d recommend that you stick to a basic sales funnel and master it, until you can implement a longer funnel.

Top – Awareness

At the top of your funnel, which is the wider part, you are exposing everyone to your brand.

You are showing as many people your product or service since at this time you do not know who is likely to be interested.

The biggest mistake that business owners make, is that they see everyone as a potential client.

Everyone is not a potential client until they take their first step through your funnel. From the time they enter into your funnel, they will start to qualify themselves and as they go through the funnel you will be able to pull different qualities out of them to see if they are representative of who you want your client to be.

So at the top of the funnel this is where you will get people to show an interest.

This involves you spreading your message about your brand, what your unique selling point is, how you can solve the person’s problem and the product or service that you offer as the solution.

More than likely when you show your brand message to everyone, 40% or more will show an interest.

This 40% will take the first step of opting into your sales funnel.

Middle – Education and Consideration

After you have introduced your brand to an audience and you have segmented that audience into those who are interested from those who are not interested, it is time to reduce that figure further by educating your prospects about your product or service.

This happens in the middle of the funnel (the bridge page) and is called the education and consideration phase.

It is where you educate your prospects about what you have to offer and you sell them on how you can solve their problem.

For example, if you are promoting an ESL (English as a second language) course and you want attendees for that course then the bridge page can provide useful information to your prospects about who the course is for, who it is not for, the course features, the course benefits, the pros and cons of taking the course and the price of the course.

You can even go so far as to teach your prospects something of value so they can trust your expertise. This is all part of building a relationship.

So if you own the course this would be a strategy I would use to get the prospect to know you, like you and trust what you’re saying.

If you are promoting an affiliate product for example, you can still teach the prospect something about the product so they can make an informed decision about whether it is for them.

Remember that during the education phase, you should not focus so much on the sale. You should focus on providing as much value as possible to help the prospect make a buying decision and enter the consideration phase.

End – Sale

Finally after you have educated your prospect and they have considered your product or service, they may be so convinced that it influences their purchase.

Great! You have a sale.

But sometimes it may take the prospect some time to think about whether they want your product or service.

This is where a huge percentage drop off and only a very small percentage moves forward with the sale.

Conversion rates from bridge pages to sales is less than 5% so don’t be frustrated if you have not made the sale at this point.

Remember when your prospect entered your funnel at the top?

Well when they entered the funnel at the top, they would have gone into a bucket by providing you with some piece of contact information that you can follow up with them later on.

They say that the fortune is in the follow up so be sure to have a good email marketing sequence on the back end to remind your prospect about your product or service and push them towards making the sale.

Related Articles:

• How To Write A Welcome Email That Gets Opened Every Time
• How To Build A Profitable Email List Step By Step
• The Ultimate Email Marketing Strategy For Bloggers, Marketers and Beginners

Why Should You Use a Sales Funnel?

In the beginning I mentioned that your business must use a sales funnel.

It may not be a suitable model for every business and some businesses may want to ditch the entire process altogether.

But here’s what happens when a sales funnel is not used.

Let’s say you expose your business website to a group of people and one person immediately purchases a product.

That’s great.

What happened however is that the other nine people were potentially interested but you did not know that because you did not capture their details. Now you do not have their information to properly educate and follow up with them to close the sale.

They then see your competitor who is using a sales funnel and when they are ready to purchase maybe a month or two months later, your competitor gets the sale.

However, had you used a sales funnel and retained their contact information, you would have been the go-to business for the purchase because you remained fresh in their minds through your follow up methods and the value and education you provided.

By skipping the stages of a sales funnel you are losing business and it will cost you money in the longer run.

Every business who has a proper marketing strategy has the following in mind:

• They have a good system for following up with leads
• Their product or service is of a high value with a high price tag and understand that it is necessary to build a relationship with their leads before asking them to commit to a large purchase.
• They ensure that they educate their prospects about their product or service so the prospect knows how it can solve their problems.

Tools That You Will Need For A Sales Funnel

For your sales funnel you will need the following tools:

• A sales funnel builder like Clickfunnels or LeadPages. You can read my review here of LeadPages to see whether this product is ideal for you.
• Video recorder. If you are using video to educate your prospect about your product or service you can use Screencast-o-matic or Camtasia.
• Video input to upload your recorded video. You can upload a video using YouTube or Wistia
• Email autoresponder. Some great email autoresponders are Aweber or GetResponse.
• Product or service on a website

How to Design a Sales Funnel?

In practice this is a blueprint of what a sales funnel looks like.

I will show you how to build one using the LeadPages software. You can of course build this with any website builder but the process may take longer if they do not have a facility where they can connect pages through button links.

To start you can sign up for LeadPages. They offer a free 14 day free trial then it’s $37/month for their basic plan.

Once you have logged into your account click on Templates at the top. You will have access to over 100 landing page templates.

In this example I am going to create a simple opt in sales funnel.

Select Filter By and then scroll down to Opt in. You are free to browse through the existing templates to see which one catches your eye.

For this example I will choose the Health and Fitness Opt in Page. So I will hover over it and select Use This Template.

Once you have selected it, you will be asked to name your page. Give it a simple name to help identify it. This is purely for your own reference.

Next you will be taken to the page editor where you can begin to edit and customise the funnel to your liking.

In the page editor you will see the following:

A the widgets which you can drag and drop anywhere on your funnel drawing board. So if you’d like to add more headlines, text or images, simply select the widget you’d like to add and drag it to the area on the drawing board and release.

B the image area. This is the image of your funnel that will appear to your target audience. If you’d like to change the image here, click on the gear icon.

Then edit section styles.

You will then be taken to the Background image menu where you can change the image, remove the image and alter the settings for your background image.

C the Subtitle text area. These are areas that are free to be edited. You can replace the text here with your own by clicking in the area and typing new text.

D the Title text area. The same as the subtitle text area which is free to be edited with your own text.

E the call to action button. This button is what you are telling your target audience to do. Your call to action should be short and to the point and the action that you want your audience to take. For example some great call to actions are:

• Learn more
• Submit
• Subscribe
• Yes! Send me the video
• Send me the video
• I’m in!

To connect the top of your funnel to the middle part of your funnel you first of all need to create a page for the middle part. To do so, simply exit out of this editor by clicking on the LeadPages icon in the top left hand corner.

You will return to the main dashboard and you can create a new page by following the above steps.

Make sure and give your new page a name that you can remember as you will need to select it later on.

Once you have created the middle page, return to your top page and now we will edit the call to action button.

By editing the call to action button we are telling LeadPages what action we want them to perform and where we want to take the visitor after they have provided their details.

So let’s click anywhere on the call to action button and a small menu will appear.

Here you can edit the color and font of the button but for now we are going to link this call to action button. So select the link icon.

When you select the link icon a menu box will appear. Click on view/edit and your opt in box will appear.

To customise this opt in box hover over it and the gear icon will appear. Click on the gear icon.

Your menu will appear where you can select Edit Section styles. Go ahead and play around with the settings to customise the box the way you want it.

To link this call to action box click anywhere on the call to action button again and an Edit Your Form menu will appear on the left hand side.

You will need to add an integration which is the email marketing software. This will ensure that when your audience enters their contact details, it is stored in your email marketing software so you can continue to follow up with them and market to them later on.

To add an integration, click Add Integration.

Click on More Services.

Then select your integration from the integrations screen.

You will be required to provide an API key so follow the instructions on how to find your API key.

You can add an account name. This is purely for your reference.

Once you have completed both tabs click Connect.

You will then return to the editor dashboard where you can select your integrated email marketing service.

Select the email list you would like to add your contacts to.

The email list is a list of contacts that you can send emails to at once. You can send tailored messages to your email list with the intention of following up and continuing to sell your product.

Related Articles:

• The Ultimate Email Marketing Strategy For Bloggers, Marketers and Beginners
• How To Get Email Subscribers As A Newbie

To create a list in the Aweber email marketing software you can read this blog post here.

Otherwise go to your email marketing software and read their guidelines on how to create an email list then return and refresh the screen.

Once you have selected your list click on Next Fields.

Here you will be able to customise your lead box by asking the lead to provide their name, email address, phone number or any other contact information you need to follow up with them.

I recommend that you ask for the least bit of information to drive high conversion rates. I usually ask for the name and email address only.

Click Next Actions. On this page you will tell LeadPages where you want the visitor to go after they have provided their contact details and clicked on the call to action button.

It will be here that you can connect the previous middle page that you created.

Select LeadPage and select it from the list.

Click Save & Close.

Remember if you wish to direct your visitors to a sales page after the middle page, be sure to add the appropriate call to action button on the middle page and link it to the sales page URL.

For those who prefer a visual I prepared a video for you.

Examples of sales funnels

Here’s a few examples of sales funnels in action.

Kat Walters is promoting an Instagram course.

On the opt in page notice her title and call to action which then goes to a webinar registration opt in box and finally onto her thank you page which is a video and confirmation of the webinar information.

This is a two step funnel.

Here’s one of my funnels. I am promoting an affiliate product.

My opt in page leads to an opt in box and then onto the bridge page. Notice the video where I am talking to my leads as they come through the funnel. This starts to build the relationship so they know who I am.

Also notice the button that goes over to the sales page where the webinar product is sold.

This is a three step funnel.

Build Your Own Sales Funnel Challenge 

If you’re not using sales funnels for your business are you getting inspiration to start using one?

Do you see how you can filter out those people who may not be interested in what you have to offer and only speak to those who are likely to be interested in what you have to sell?

I challenge you to create your own sales funnel today.

It will change the dynamic of your business and most importantly it will help to automate the sales process.

Go on! Start creating your sales funnel with LeadPages today.

It took me a good few hours to create this awesome piece of content for you. Go on and show me some love in the comments.

Tell me what do you use for your sales funnel and if you haven’t started will you start now?

The post A Complete Guide To Automated Sales Funnel For Any Business appeared first on I Am Dawn-Marie.

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

The post How I Use LeadPages And Why You Don’t Need A Real Website appeared first on I Am Dawn-Marie.

A lead capture page in my view is a paramount piece of equipment and if you are not building an email list yet, then you need to check out my article, Why List Building Is Important In Your Business .

Lead capture pages have other aliases such as squeeze page, capture page, lead page, lead magnet.

When I was introduced to this marketing tool, it completely changed the course of my business.

I got introduced to automation and that was when I started getting more prospects and sales into my business without putting a lot of effort into it.

I previously spoke about the uses of capture pages and have trialled a few builders in the past year which influenced me to create this post to help you decide which of these builders is best for you.

When considering lead capture page builders you should consider the ones that will create the best conversions for you.

Most of these builders are very popular across the internet so you may have had a run in or two with them already.

My list is based on my own personal use having tried ALL of these builders throughout my online journey.

If you are just getting started then perhaps my post can help you, so let us get right to it.

In No Particular Order, The Top 4 Best Lead Capture Page Builders With Free Trial Offers That You Can Start Using Today 

1. GetResponse

GetResponse was the first lead capture page builder that I used in my business.

I actually found GetResponse for email marketing, then realised that they also had lead capture page builders so I thought – “Great! Kill two birds with one stone.”

Design

What I liked about GetResponse was its drag and drop feature and how easy it was to create the lead capture pages in a matter of minutes.

For example, you could select any template and merely customise the text to your liking or you could create a capture page from scratch with the easy-to-use drag and drop elements.

This is the most important thing that I seek out when using any piece of equipment.

Anything that causes too much overwhelm, goes out the door, in my opinion.

GetResponse had many beautiful; and I mean MANY beautiful templates that I could choose from. In fact they have over 1000 iStock free images that you can use on your own pages.

Email Marketing

I also liked the fact that I did not have to use another email marketing software to begin my autoresponder sequence. So I was able to save a few bucks here.

Mobile Responsiveness

With so many people now using their phones to access the internet, GetResponse has mobile responsive landing pages. It also allowed me to go between the desktop and mobile previews to see how my capture pages looked in real time.

Split-testing

There is a split-testing feature for lead capture pages, but I hardly used it because I remember not being able to understand how to integrate it into my marketing campaigns.

But looking at it again, you can easily set the lead capture pages you would like to test and measure the results by using the split test tool that GetResponse provides.

Sales Funnel

GetResponse loses in that it is not a sales funnel builder but then again this post is not about that. But for those marketers who wanted something for sales funnel, GetResponse is not it.

Pricing

It is a reasonably priced option starting at $15/month for a list size of 1000 contacts. They do also have a generous 30 day free trial.

Now I must say that I gave up GetResponse in my second month because the downfall of this tool was its inability to deliver emails to my leads’ inbox.

I tested emails to different email providers (Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail) and all my emails went into the spam folder.

At the time I had a list size of over 300 and not one of my emails were opened.

GetResponse’s response to my complaint was that maybe the emails were being opened but the HTML was not being loaded properly.

According to GetResponse, their software only tracks opened emails where the HTML was loaded. I was not very confident with this because it hindered my ability to properly track how well my subject lines were and how engaged my list was.

2. Clickfunnels

Clickfunnels took a little bit of time for me to get used to.

The interface was almost like “building blocks”.

So if I decided to build a capture page from scratch, I first of all had to “lay down my foundation” so to speak.

I had to place my sections first, then add my rows or columns then my elements.

This is not a drag and drop software and to be honest, was the hardest part of figuring out how to use Clickfunnels.

Once I built my capture page, connecting it to my autoresponder (I switched to Aweber) was another battle.

I had to figure out whether I should be using a submit the form, URL action or go to next page as my settings for my call to action button so that my contact could be added to my autoresponder.

Why make it so difficult for the average user hey?!

I would say, I took use of Clickfunnels Help Guide most of the time to figure things out.

If you do not like overwhelm, then Clickfunnels may not be for you.

Design

As to the design of their capture page, they are very basic and not as beautiful, or should I say, sexy as GetResponse.

Whilst there are many templates that you can use, imagery was not one of their best points.

But at the end of the day, all that matters is the conversions (number of opt-ins) that you get into your business.

Email Marketing

At their basic package level you must use another email marketing software such as GetResponse, Aweber or MailChimp, etc but at their Etison Suite premium level there is an integrated autoresponder.

So I have not opened my review of Clickfunnels with the best comments.

So why do I mark them as an awesome capture page builder?

Mobile Responsiveness

Clickfunnels is mobile responsive which is always a plus.

Split-testing 

They also have a super great split testing feature that was very easy to use. What I loved about this was that they selected the best variable to test and made it easy for you to implement. Also it was very easy to determine my winning lead capture page.

Sales Funnel

I also loved the fact that I could build out a complete website page and sales funnel with it.

Sometimes you may want to create a longer lead capture page with a bit more info.

You may also want to sell your own product and capture payment details easily.

Clickfunnels does a pretty good job at creating smooth and professional funnels and sales pages.

For your capture pages they also have features that help to create better conversions such as timer countdowns, pop ups and video input.

Pricing

Clickfunnels is on the pricier side starting at $97/month for just the basic package. With this you get 20 landing pages and 20k visits to your website. After that you will need to upgrade to the Etison Suite premium level which is $297/month.  There is however a free 14 day trial.

3. Power Lead System

I realise that the Power Lead System is not as popular as the ones I mentioned before but I found this gem by accident.

I was actually looking for an affiliate program that I could invest in, to promote.

It was only until I started looking into its full capabilities that I understood the huge potential of this system.

There are a few things that I think could be improved but for what it does, it is a pretty neat tool.

Design

The Power Lead System is like GetResponse in that you can easily create capture pages from their many templates and simply change the text. However they do not have as many templates as GetResponse. I would say about 80+ templates which is a decent number to ensure that you have variety.

The downside is that there is no drag and drop feature. If you want to keep things simple then the best way to build your capture pages will be to copy them from the existing templates.

Any editing of the capture pages, for example the images, will require editing of the HTML code. For someone who is not familiar with HTML and is not willing to learn, then this may not be for you.

Editing of the text to different fonts can be a challenge with some capture page templates. Sometimes I have had to abandon editing the capture pages and use different templates.

Email Marketing

One of the best things about the Power Lead System is that it offers you 100k contacts with an inbuilt Gmail autoresponder so you do not have to use a private email address if you do not want to. I must admit that there are issues with deliverability especially since you will not be using a private email address.

If you do not want to use their Gmail autoresponder, you can integrate GetResponse and Aweber into its platform.

Mobile Responsiveness

The Power Lead System is a mobile responsive software. Sadly it does not give you the ability to preview the mobile option from within their system.

Split-testing

There is a tracking element and you are able to use this to split test different versions of capture pages. There is no true split testing feature that allows you to easily implement this strategy.

To actually split test you will have to create two lead capture pages and then use some type of link rotator to activate this feature.

This will be at an additional cost if you use Clickmagick’s link rotator or you may use a free link rotator.

Sales Funnel

The Power Lead System allows you to build unlimited sales funnels for a smooth sales process.

You can also promote any business that you want with the Power Lead System as the backbone.

Even though there are minor hiccups, it is still a simple to use machine that gets the job done with a lot of functionality.

Pricing

The Power Lead System has a 7 day trial. Very short in my opinion and has a price tag of $53.97/month.

For all the valuable features that you get I consider that $53.97 is a great price point.

4. Leadpages

When I started using Leadpages, I did not get very far with it because I was testing out different builders and Clickfunnels caught my eye.

Design

But for the time that I used Leadpages, I can say that it offers great capture page designs but truthfully not as good as GetResponse.

They do have drag and drop features so these capture pages are quite easy to build.

And anything with drag and drop is pretty much my best friend now.

I was able to build my lead capture pages in just five minutes once I got over the hurdle of understanding what each feature stood for.

If you do not want to build a lead capture page from scratch then there are tons of templates available that you can customise to your liking.

One of my favourite things about this awesome piece of software was the “lead box” feature.

This allowed me to place a lead capture form anywhere on my website as a pop open feature so I did not have to use the lead capture page builder.

The only thing about the lead capture box is that you cannot embed it onto your website! I do not know why they do not have this since it’s really beautiful and would work well for content upgrades.

I really like the design of the lead box though. It effortlessly fit into my blog posts and having the Leadpages plugin, made it super easier to install.

If you do not want to use the plugin then you can always insert the Javascript code onto any website but remember it does not embed but pops open (actually I am still trying to find a way to embed it so if anyone knows drop me a comment below).

Email Marketing

Leadpages is not an email marketing tool, so you must integrate additional software to have regular emails going out to your list. UPDATE: They just released their Drip email marketing software which integrates with LeadPages. 

The only thing that Leadpages does however is send one automatic email to your lead once they have subscribed through the lead capture page.

A bonus is that you get unlimited traffic to your page and leads contacts.

Mobile Responsiveness

Everything about Leadpages is mobile responsive which is great.

Split-testing

At the time that I used Leadpages, there was not a split test feature so I cannot comment on the effectiveness and usability of it.

But I can see now that they have implemented this so that makes Leadpages a winner.

Sales Funnel

You can create a sales funnel builder with LeadPages. You can also create some awesome sales pages with it.

Pricing

There is a 14 day free trial and your price to use Leadpages starts at $25/month when paid annually.

Final Thoughts On All Four Builders

So let us see how all four stack up against each other.

Had GetResponse been a sales funnel builder it would have been my number one choice only because of their sexy design.

Between Clickfunnels and LeadPages, I would choose Clickfunnels because of the ease of building your sales funnel once you get the hang of how to use it.

If your sole purpose is to create lead capture pages and have an email marketing software then GetResponse may be an option for you.

Remember the downside with deliverability of their emails. I am not the only one who has had this problem. Some of my marketing friends did complain that they had issues as well.

Are there any other builders that you are using which you think should be included in this post? Drop me a comment down below and let me know your thoughts. 

Cheers,

P.S Still stuck on internet marketing? Then check out my free ebook, Mastering Your Home Based Business, which condenses everything you need to know and join the THOUSANDS who are already talking about it.

P.P.S Wait a minute! Have you subscribed to my You Tube Channel, where I give more free internet marketing training? I am growing so be part of the community.

The post 4 Best Lead Capture Page Builders With Free Trial Offers appeared first on I Am Dawn-Marie.