In this episode we speak with Clay Collins from LeadBrite. We discuss how to use landing pages effectively to generate more leads and sales for your business. We dissect how to create landing pages that convert and where you should be utilizing them.
Clay Collins is the co-Founder of LeadBrite. He is compelled by a vision to provide simple & beautiful software that allows entrepreneurs to attract an audience, build their list, and generate revenue.
EPISODE SUMMARY:
- Clay before LeadBrite – A look back at Clay’s background.
- The 80/20 Rule – How this applies to the pages on your site.
- Landing Pages vs. Blog Posts – The differences between the two and how to use each effectively.
- Call To Action – What to offer as opt-in bait.
THE FULL TRANSCRIPT
Jake: And welcome back to the show listeners, I’m your host Jake Hower, you’re listening to The Multimedia Marketing Show, this is episode 22.
Okay today’s guest is someone that I really admire and someone who’s software has had a huge impacted on my own businesses, that person is none other than Clay Collins from LeadBrite one third of the team behind LeadPages and LeadPlayer.
So we’re gonna discuss how you can utilize landing pages to convert traffic onto your site into leads and to also customers in your own companies so the fantastic little episode jam pack full of awesome advice and things for you to go and implement to your own businesses so let’s get stuck straight into that now.
Jake: Welcome back listeners as discussed at the top of the episode, today’s guest is Clay Collins from LeadBrite.
How are you Clay?
Clay: Jake, I’m great! It’s great to be here.
Jake: Fantastic. It’s really great to get you on the show, now I’m an avid user a couple of phases of your software LeadPages and also LeadPlayer and I absolutely loved them.
But what I’d love to do today is for all my show listeners, I’d love to focus in on landing pages and how you use landing pages to move traffic from site visitors to subscribers and in into sales. How is that sound?
Clay: Sounds great!
Jake: Fantastic! So, before we do that Clay I think it probably valuable for our listeners who don’t know about you. If you could just give us a little brief background about who you are and what you are doing and why you’re doing it.
Clay: Sure! So am, I am a co-founder of a software company called LeadBrite, we create a lead generation platform called LeadPages, it’s landing page software for creating, deploying, and publishing landing pages. We’re experiencing explosive growth right now and its first and foremost… because we’re getting results for people. It’s been a lot of fun and I do nothing but… eat, breathe, sleep and talk landing pages so it’s I’m glad we’re talking about landing pages because is that’s what I do.
Jake: Yeah, Yeah definitely! So one thing that I do in another universe Clay I own a travel agency, so day to day am I guess you could say relatively consumed with running a business and prior to lead pages, landing pages to me was so a little bit by cut. I knew they’re important but they just took too long for me to actually go out and implement so, one thing that you’ve done amazingly well, is that you’ve made it so easy that it’s almost impossible for me to now not be utilizing landing pages.
Clay: Yeah I, so I think what most people who don’t have landing pages on their business don’t realized is that generally in any business there are you know like with a 80-20 rule.
There’s like 20% of the pages on your website that are generating 80% of the revenue and in fact to know lot of phase, place it’s more like you know a it’s like 98-2 right, it’s like 2% of the pages creating a 98% of their revenue especially if you have a sales page… or a you know a lead capture page or a squeeze page or whatever that your using to build your email list and so the important thing there I think people really grasp with landing pages is that it
If it is true that is in almost every business, but if it is true that like 5% of the pages are creating 95% of the revenue or some version of that, then what would it be hooved you to spend the majority of your time and effort of those on those pages that are going to create the return for your business. And so that’s what landing pages are, they’re the pages that do the heavy lifting on your website for your business and… There’s an entire science surrounding how they’re created, how they’ve measured, and you know how they’ve produced results. The difference between a button text saying free instant access versus download now, for example just to picked with the difference between button text can often result a in a two acts, increased or in results so little things that you might not even be thinking about are creating a drastic difference in the performance of your website and a it’s, that’s why landing pages are so important.
Jake: Yeah okay! So where will be typically be using these pages or hell would you typically be using them?
Clay: Yes, so it really has to do with two things, first and foremost any page that is creating a sale in your business might be considered, well is definitely a landing page, right? So, you’re measuring what’s happening on that page.
Any page that has a conversion point where you want someone to take some sort of action that is going to further your business that is a landing page. So a sales page would be a landing page because the point of conversion will this include of conversion, the point of conversion would be that’s someone buys your product. If you have an email newsletter and a lot of companies do now because it’s one of the smartest ways to market, but if you have an email newsletter and you get a lot of customers from that newsletter then one point of conversion, another point of conversion might be when someone subscribes to that email newsletter.
If you, a lot of companies now at least companies that do B2B selling use Webinars to do B2B sales because this converts so well and so that would be another point of conversion if you know that for every hundreds of people that signed up for Webinar that you’ve gonna make 15 sales of a you know five thousand dollas B2B products then all things being equal if you can double the percentage of people that showed on your Webinar registration page who in the registering then you can double your revenue as a business if Webinars is the primary way in which you sell.
So anything where you are measuring or where you, at least you should be measuring that folks are taking a specific action that furthers your business that is.. that’s a landing page.
Jake: Okay, fantastic! So let’s look at the few different types of landing pages. So let’s look at it, I guess in some sort of chronological order, given the facts that most of our audience are looking at generating leads and in most cases they’re looking at using content marketing for that. Let’s look at the typical blog post, “How do you incorporate a landing page for lead capture with a typical blog post.
Clay: Yeah… so… you know… I think it’s really important to know what the function of every piece of your marketing is and so many people i think make the mistake of trying to get every single piece of their marketing to do everything for them.
So for example, I like to use the analogy of an email, okay… the job of an email subject line isn’t to get someone to buy your product, the job of an email subject line is to get someone to open the email. And the purpose of the email is that to sell you product either the purpose of the email is to get them to click on the link and if they click on that link and they’ll end up on a sales page. The job of that of sales page is to make the sale, so every single piece of content doesn’t need to be responsible for generating every single important outcome in your business.
What I recommend people do is if they have a blog post and their looking to add people to their emailing list it would be hoove them to get people to click on that link to end up on the page where that page does nothing else but trying to get someone to opt-in. So, you might have some sort of a free report or free videos series that you’re giving away and a lot of people have a side bar opt-in box and that’s gonna convert okay it’s gonna convert from like one to two, maybe 3%, may be 4%… if your just knocking it out on a park that’s gonna give a 5% conversion rate on your traffic.
But if you can instead get the people from that blog post to click on a link and end up on a landing page where folks opt-in for something that you give away they can get up to, you know a 40 to 50, 60 percent opt-in rate when their other page who’s entire job it is to get someone to opt-in. If you’re on a normal just sort of blog post page that post… that page that supposed to do so many things, it supposed to make the article readable, it supposed to have a navigation bar to send people to the different parts of the site, it’s gonna have like maybe links to archives and comments where it does so many things.
Landing pages have these sort of the sole focused on points of conversion, so the job of a landing page it isn’t to do with everything. A landing page doesn’t need to rank for SEO terms necessarily you might have a page that all that pages for is rankings for a specific keyword and then once the traffic arise on that page for that specific keyword it might link to a landing page whose entire job is to get people to opt-in. So, a landing page should not be all things raw people and you shouldn’t try to accomplish everything with a blog post.
Jake: Yeah fantastic! Now, let’s look at the couple things with that now for myself, looking at the total volume of subscribers to my own website. The side bar email address that accounts for the most number of subscriber that doesn’t converts to a 2 or 3 percent. Whereas I find that when I got a specific call to action drive to a landing page on a particular blog post it converts at a lot higher rates. Now, essentially I found that the people convert better on the landing pages just because the content is a lot more relevant? So with that in mind…
Let’s look at creating that particular landing page for a blog post, we don’t have to worry about the design of the landing page … because that is something that you guys are taking care of with LeadPages. Let’s look at actual content that goes on that page and the offer that you sort of need to be making, how important is it to have a relevant offer to a blog post that you’re writing.
Clay: Yeah… you know it’s really relevant so I think people opt-in to different things for different reasons. So… you know a lot of times people will have opt-in boxes on the side bar of their blog that says “want free updates? Subscribe now”. So, why it’s important to understand the psychology behind why people opt in to various things? So, people will often opt in like you’ve said a one or two percent conversion rate to the side bar in your blog.
First and foremost, because of Who you are, not because they like the particular article, not because… you know, not because you’re giving something away but because they consider you to be a relevant person who they need to sort of keep on their radar. Right, it’s almost more because of who we are or what that blog presents that we subscribe on the site bar opt-in. However, if you have like been around this site or been keeping things away, you know it’s absolutely needs to be relevant because the purpose of that page is to create desire and to get people to opt-in.
Generally because they want something that you have, at least because of who you represents and more about the value preposition. So for example the side bar of my blog, I have a banner that says “download a free landing page templates design for crowd to grow your audience ” and “we have a very high conversion on that because people want those landing page templates, right, it’s not because you know the marketing shows the most significant blog in the field of marketing or because I’m some huge fought leader, it’s because first and foremost they want us landing page templates.
So, it sort of differs in that regard. It is important that there is continuity this very very very important in any kind of conversion activity that there is continuity from the very first thing that someone sees all the way to the end. So for example, if you’re doing paper clip marketing… and you have a headline that is about dog pets, right, then you need to have like… the text of that, the text of that ad also be about dog beds and then when they arrived at the landing page they need to… like say you want them to opt-in, they need to opt-in for something related to dog beds and then what you sell needs to be a freaking dog bed, it really does.
But so often people trying to kind of like this bathe in suit, so for example, I have the clients wants who aren’t well for the term I believe it was actually dog beds and they were trying to sell products on dog grooming and the problem was that traffic didn’t convert, it just didn’t convert they have taunt of traffic to determine dog beds.
People arriving on the site that are offer on dog grooming and dog training and nobody bought it and yes probably close to you, you know half or more of the people arriving on that site… would at some point in their life be interested in dog training but that is why they were there, and the same goes for a landing pages with opt in bribes, or you know some sort of bribe to get people to get people to join the list.
If someone here say because of “x” and your trying to get them to opt in for “y” it’s generally not gonna go over well. The need to be absolute alignment between the content that you have and the reason why some understand in the first place and the value of preposition that set up to create the opt in.
Jake: Excellent! That’s such a good answer, really amazing. Now let’s look at the different talk of landing pages and this is probably my favorite page. You have opt to someone op content on on your side? There’s couple of different pages I guess so very important, the first one is the double up team confirmation where you asking someone to go on opt in with their email address so that I can be on the list that you can be in full content of.
The next one, once I’ve done that, is the Thank you page and this is probably my favorite page because it drives the second reaction, so can you explain a little bit about why this page is really important?
Clay: Sure. You know, in any business it is much easier to grow, to grow the business by getting current customers to pay more than it is to acquire new customers. In fact acquiring new customers is the most difficult thing to do in any business so if you really have people you know who can trust you, you’re gonna make far more money by creating up sells than by… you’re gonna make far more money for far less effort by adding up sells than you are by trying to acquire new customers for the same product and the principle is that if someone already taken some sort of action…that they’re much more likely to take another similar action. So if they’ve already bought something from you the like, they gonna buy something else from you is really really high compared to someone who are just arriving at your site from some band that you are running. So it’s good to focus your efforts in that way, and the same goes for, in in-call to action.
So, one of the landing pages that is available inside the new pages is a thank you page. And this is the page that people get half of they opt-in to your website and I think it is a huge tragedy, it is huge huge huge huge huge tragedy that someone will be maybe searching for something on google by like the trajectory that someone takes your side is often pretty miraculous.
The searching for something in random, they find some phrase, some of the secure phrase that they search for they… you know their the third and fourth option on the page, they click on that, they go to your website and its like lucky you that of all the billion of pages on the internet they’ve ended up on your page. Right.
Lucky you, and then… and then lucky you they’ve decide to opt-in, right? So they like your stuff enough. You know of all the times I’m internet there, they like your stuff enough, that they’ve opted in, they found you, they search on google, they went to bunch of pages, they ended up on your stuff and they opt in, and your just gonna say “Hey thanks, thanks hope you like the stuff we’ll gonna send you at some point in the future.” and that’s a huge mistake. So on the thank you page, that’s available in the LeadPages it basically encourages folks that if they opted you in their list it encourages them to perform other activities to get close to you so they can subscribe to your podcast or they can sign off for a new… a Webinar or they can check out the product that you sell.
Right you’re getting them to take a secondary action because someone is much more likely to take a second action. Maybe they’ve subscribe to your newsletter but now you’ve want them to subscribe to your podcast or subscribe to your newsletter, now you’re asking them to subscribe to your Webinar or to like you on Facebook. So much is much more like to do that right after they’ve opted in to list than in any other point, in the life cycle cause they are, they have this behavioral inertia going.
Into that sort of the principle behind the thank you page is you know, there in this behavioral patterns of compliance and doing what you asked them do and why not extend that to ticket them to do something else that furthers your business and so that’s one of the point of the thank you page.
Jake: Yeah on that particular page you installed, that was probably one of the first pages I installed and the minute I did people stop subscribing to my Facebook page,at a much how I write them was what previous price to that…. And then I was able to have them download a video training course as well which, which I able to
Clay: Nice…
Jake: … essentialy tagged them as being interested in videos so it’s a fantastic way to segment at least further quickly.
Clay: I agree! And it’s important to know which conversion points should happen before others. So for examples A lot of times people get people to their website and their trying to make a sale first and that’s a huge mistake. It’s kind of like meeting someone that you want to date and meeting them for the first time, and asking them to like marry you, where it like personally you get the phone number and you meet to go on a date, and you meet to go on more date, and you get engaged and then liked it, it evolves.
And it’s the same with marketing you don’t try in like includes close the deal and tell like maybe got their phone number like you should ask for their email first because if you turn them into the sales page and they don’t buy and they leave your website the chance of them coming back ever are almost none existence. But if you get their email address and you can follow up with them through email overtime the chances of them buying are much much higher and there’s almost nothing more importants, there’s nothing more important, I just said it there’s nothing most important when someone arrives at your websites then getting their email address. Because if you get them to like you on Facebook the chance of you reliably can’t being able to reach them are pretty low.
It’s hard to contact people of who liked you once on Facebook, I mean you could like take out and add then you can like get in in their inbox or you can get someone to try and sign up for a Webinar, that’s another thing people do. Just like immediately sign up for my Webinar, but the truth is, that it’s a much lower barrier to get from the sign of your email list and then one time they’re on your email list then you can ask them to come to your Webinar but if you ask them to come on your Webinar, first, they might be like ‘hey I’m not’, ‘I can’t be there at this time…’ or ‘I don’t wanna be on the Webinar…’, or ‘I’m not the kind of person who shows up on Webinar’ but if you ask them for something small first like opting into your email list… then you can contact them about every Webinar you ever do in the future.
But if trying to opt in to a Webinar then they decide they can’t make it then you can never really contact them again, so it’s good to put thing on those ‘Thank You’ pages that express a highly, higher level of commitment but first start out with a very low level of commitment and work your way up over time and hopefully in the end of that day their buying your stuff.
Jake: Yeah, that’s make it more sense and that’s for me it’s about creating a long term relationships with your prospective customers. So, basically eliminating… working on that relationship first and then trying to have them convert into customer easier, good way to do it.
So we’ve look at you own blog, or your own site taking that converting leads, how do you try to convert traffic from other sources around the website, for instance Facebook. What is your strategy with Facebook? How do you moved them across your site from Facebook, or to your list?
Clay: Yah… you know I think that’s a good way is to spend a good portion of your time, you know building community in an activity. But, you know once sort of you’ve done that then you wanna send them to landing pages right, you wanna drive them to landing pages.
So list your own site where the likelihood of them taking the desired action is much much higher. So you can drive them from Facebook, or from youtube or where ever that add drive them to a landing page. And that might be at some URL.com right, it’s hard for someone to remember your website.com or sites blah blah blah blah blah.
But if you send them to like, you know give them free ebook.com or something like that the likely who their gonna remember that link and go there is much greater. So, the first thing is that you know facebook and youtube, and amazon.com and you know all these places where things, where people are is a good place to find people. So your first priority is actually to moved them up on this properties unto your site where the likelihood that your persuaded on doing what you want them to do is much much greater, so… It goes on good ways to get traffic but those are bad places to hit traffic you know. So that’s kinda my approach to that. You know you can’t do things like with LeadPages you can publish a facebook landing pages.
Like facebook will let you can create a tab on your facebook page, LeadPages will allow you to publish a landing page, theres you can have a newsletter subscription page an added to your, you know to your facebook profile, whatever. But honestly, I like driving them off facebook on to my own individual site.
Jake: Yeah! That make sense, so essentially what you’re saying is rather try to have them convert on a landing page send them to your site i guess continue building the trust from then i can take better action if they do.
Clay: Yeah! or send them to a landing page on your site, but get them off a, you know Facebook on to a landing page on your site.
Jake: Yeah, definitely! Okay! Or well in let’s all catch a couple of everything which I think your fantastic at one thing that a nice just like every single piece of content that you release seems to have a purpose. And it seems to be for essentially it is every phase of content is to drive, leads and customers for your different products. Had you go about creating this content?
Clay: You know, I think the first rule is that you need to create a value so a lot of times people see you what you’re doing and am… and it does results in sales but first and foremost we’re educating when forming. We try and make sure that every piece of content that we put out provides massive value regardless of whether not someone buying our stuff, and that’s why so many people link to us and so many people subscribed to our blog.
You know, if we were just a sales blog and all we did is pitch pitch pitch pitch pitch then, we wouldn’t be very successful at all. And to the truth is that we almost never pitch but embedded in are marketing messages or embedded in the content that we produced is a persuasive evidence that our products works.
So how do we do this? it’s you know, it’s all really about alignment… the way we do our blog post and our videos you know are 90% and is giving value and giving things away and at the end it is just this casual thing about like hey, if you want this to be easier more automated you can use our software.
So it’s very soft, we’ve not have one person complaining about it. People listen to the marketing show you know without buying, you know I hope eventually they will. But even if they never do, they’ve benefit from being from the community; they will learn the whole lot about marketing in the process. And obviously benefits are business that it does generate sales.
Jake: Yeah! Okay! We’ll let’s look up about a little bit of actual products itself. One thing that from my perspective really makes it so attractive is the fact that it’s so easy to use, it is so simple or would you imagine that creating such a simple powerful product design is not easy. So how do you come up on doing that? Keeping it so simple that is so easy for anybody to use.
Clay: Ah I don’t really know! You hire amazing developers. We, I’ve never made a product specification. I mean one of the things that most people don’t realized is that I’m, this isn’t a grew business, there’s three co-founders we’re all amazing in what we do and… You know I do care very deeply about our product but I certainly don’t architect it and generally you know, whatever I’ve describe our product to my technical co-founders and he’ll go to our technical team and he’ll do something that is simple.
And I think what of the cool things about Simon my co-founder is that he has a background in graphic design, so he cares and knows quite a bit about user experience and you know he cares quite a lot about the look and the feel of the product. Which a lot of developers don’t want so how do you that, I have know idea how you do it. You hire an amazing people, I think one of the thing is that, You know I think really important concept for most business owners to think about this concept of vision bandwidth right?
So just like there’s a drum of bandwidth for stuff they goes to Pipelines like your internet whatever, there’s bandwidth around vision right? So, I know that I want us to have amazing, amazing customers support in our business, I know that. But I have no vision for customers support right, I don’t have a specific vision, other than, man I wanted to be awesome! But luckily my co-founder who does among other things, she manages our ah… our customer support team, she has a vision for how customers support should be, I don’t!
Am, I have a vision for a lot of aspect of our products, but I don’t care the bulk of the vision bandwidth at about how the features that I want are specifically implemented. So how do you do it, I don’t know. You need… you know, I recommend that people has a business that isn’t just skill in them, right, like some every employees’ jobs, it’s just the skills in them, talents, and their abilities. I am just one puzzle piece among many in my company. And so I honestly I can’t speak to user experience; I don’t know anything about it.
Jake: [Laughing] that’s really honest! it’s certainly very insightful. So to me, I guess it’s the same with you right now, after saying that. It just amazed me because you would be getting request after a quest for features. And it’s deal so far into the development of the product. But it’s just so simple, I mean it just works and it’s just, it’s amazing, I love it!
Clay: Yeah! I mean that’s one of the keys. So how do you add features without making something more complicated and I think, you know, I think that, the way you do that is kind of like, you know if you are designing a house, you would want everything that you’re able to do in that house, sort of in one room, and you know with everything clutterly into each other up, you know. A refrigerator for example, it shouldn’t be very complicated.
If you open the door, but then once you open the door, you know there’s all kinds of things available to you there and it’s nice to section things off into rooms and such so we don’t generally show people aspects of the products, that they don’t need access to, unless they wanna use that specific thing.
So the product can look very simple but also be very featury. We add you know a couple of features every single week. And most people unless we make a marketing show episode about it, most people unless they actually need that feature won’t find it because we don’t wanna clutter, their thoughts and their cognition with decisions that they don’t wanna make it.
You know, it’s kind of like, you know the MacIntosh Computer Apple products. You know, I don’t know it’s things are only available to you when you need them and I think that’s one of the philosophies that we have.
Jake: Yeah! Yeah! definitely, Well looking back i guess at your content, all your content is all a purpose of dropping sales, what I’m trying to say your content do is it doesn’t seem to be necessarily having to continually validate your product, i guess your product seems to do that itself.
Clay: Yeah! I mean, i don’t know i think it’s a self-validating product that i think people listen to a marketing show and watch it regardless of whether or not their considering buying our product, i think that you know whenever if so the marketing show generally, we giveaway a landing page and we show people what it converts and how it converts?
Through that the theory behind it, and you know test results are named to out of behind it will give that as well, and people learn about landing page creation they learn about conversion design and they learn about you know principles that can get people to take that you know can keep people complete the goals that you have for them on their website, and then at the end of the show people like a sort of how they can make it some of the easier if they have of our software and that part of the very end is like maybe a fifth or a sixth of the marketing show, you know we’re not i don’t you know in terms of validation of the product, the people and the banners sales page their gonna see case studies, their gonna see results, their gonna see demonstration of what happened, but in the purpose of that blog post is to educate and informed and offer people at the very end if they wants ah..
There’s not even a call to action, to go to our sales page so the very very soft and ah.. The number one thing we wanna do is give value but we don’t need to just fire with our product excess. It’s growing quickly without that.
Jake: Yeah! Fantastic, alright clay we’ve covered so much in this interview and their so much more could cover but ah.. Remarkably for another time, we can actually list respond that more bout if.
Clay: Folks, can go to ah.. Leadbrite.com or to leadpages.net that’s truly where meet. They can also go to marketingshow.com that’s where i publish the most recalling use of marketingshow.com.
Jake: Clay, thank you very much for coming on the show today, i really appreciate it that i know at least that will do.
Clay: Thank you so much Jake, I really appreciate it.
Jake: And welcome back listeners, hope you enjoy that interview.
It was great chatting with Clay, as you can tell from the interview we just conducted he’s so insightful and has so much knowledge on landing pages but also business in general. I really enjoyed having him on the show.
Now, if you haven’t ordered LeadPages, head across and check on the products or on the site or did a bit of review of the product as well its head across then and check that at on the site so head across multimediamarketingshow.com
Hey, now, one thing you might have noticed on my site, you may have noticed the caricatures that we get done for every show guest. Now, I have recently created a service which will let you to also get your own caricatures. So ahead across to the site, in the navigation menu you’ll find a link to the cartoon service. Thanks for tuning in for another episode. I look forward to speaking with you again very soon.