WordPress
064: Short and To the Point Landing Pages: Where’s the Dang Buy Button? A Confused Mind Never Buys, So Sell What You Sell!
Internet marketer of the week: Ray Edwards. Creator of the Rapid Writing Method. He absorbs what Brendon Burchard, Michael Hyatt, Dave Ramsey all do very well -- branding and unification.
A huge breakthrough I got out of his "Writing Riches" book was that just taught straightforward copywriting. Not a lot of silly stories or parables mixed in like others teach you "should" have in a book. What a concept!
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Common Cop Outs (That We Just Solved in Today's Show)
- My niche is people with money! Who wouldn't want it?
- My niche is young people because they're smart, or old people because they have all the money
- Split test it!
- I'm going to provide value and give everything away for free
- I'm still learning
- I have an idea but it's already been done before
- I have an idea but I'm waiting on someone else to do the work
- I'm "waiting" for the right time
A Confused Mind Never Buys!
- Delayed buy button and I can't buy, or I can't buy on an iPad
- I optin and I can't buy right away, I have to wait for your sequence
- I have to buy 3 upsells just to get the thing I actually wanted (Lance says: sell what you sell)
- Blogging or posting without purpose (Add Signature plugin and URL dropping)
- Too many choices: 2 or 3 at the most. More choices = "experimental" pages (yearly and trial)
- Optin page: headline, 3 bullet points, call to action, optin form (no video, no testimonials)
- Sales letter: have you noticed they're way shorter? very few words, even. Software is all about the screenshots and features.
Short & To the Point Landing Pages: Keep it Shippable
- Make the buy button first, before anything else
- Then headline and subheadline
- Then the offer stack (what's in it)
- Then flesh out the bullet points (dream product), story and transitions
- Then create the product after all that!
- (PLR placeholder is optional)
Quick Questions Answered in Today's Program
- To replay or not to replay?
- Non fast forward video?
- Squeeze page? What's the exact structure?
- What niche? Healthy, wealthy, or wise
- What product? Solve an actual problem that's easy for you, tough for others, that people are willing to pay money for, that's repeatable in checklist form, but there's still enough wiggle room for people to be creative. It gets them there and delivers a FAST result
- Testimonials? Don't let that hold you back from launching. No review copies, but have an email sequence asking how they like it. When people use it and respond, piece together a testi from their response.
- Upsell? This is another "goodie" you don't need right away. It shouldn't "just" be something "bigger" or something lazy like resale rights. It should be "the bigger picture."
Five Dimensions of Knowledge from Jonathan Wells of AdvancedLifeSkills.com
- What we actually know
- What we think we know
- What we would like to know
- What we don't need to know
- What we used to know
- Let's add two more (the hardest ones to sell to you have to "sneak them" inside other ones: what we don't know we don't know, and what we need to know
Internet Marketing
- World's largest taxi service owns no taxis (Uber)
- Largest accommodation provider owns no real estate (Airbnb)
- Largest retailer has no inventory (Alibaba)
- Most popular media company creates no content (Facebook)
- Largest movie house owns no theaters (Netflix)
- Largest software vendors don't write the apps (Apple & Google)
Today's Quotes from Henry Ford
- You can't build a reputation on what you're going to do.
- Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.
- Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.
Attributes That Should Be Running in Your Head all the Time, Consistently
- New Things Coming Down The Pipeline: There is no such thing as luck. (Scientific studies have disproved luck.) You just have to keep putting offers out there and promoting them.
- Follow-Through: Finish what you start (focus, minimum viable product, iteration, debugging, refactoring)
- Self-Actualization: Know the difference between a lost cause, an offer that's "close" but needs tweaking, and a "home-run" that you should keep rolling.
- Creativity: New ways of solving the problem bigger and faster while working under limitations (and making old tired concerts new and exciting to prospects)
Easy & Repeatable Solutions to Your Current Problems
- Make a Product: Publish your book on Amazon
- Webinar Crusher: Run pitch webinars to make high ticket sales
- Backup Creator: Backup & clone your WordPress sites
- Website Remote: Manage all your WordPress sites in one place
- Paper Template: Create landing pages (opt-in pages & sales letters) in WordPress
- Income Machine: Create your entire system (including membership site) using Backup Creator, Paper Template, Member Genius
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056: Seven Web Pages You Need to Create for a Successful Product Launch, and Re-Launch, and Consistent Residual Passive Income (Plus 7 Additional Bonus Pages At No Extra Charge)
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Setup Your Site the "Right Way"
- Namecheap: Get your domain name at DoubleAgentDomains.com.
- HostGator: This is for web hosting. After you buy your domain name, your site has to "live" somewhere. This is web hosting and fou can get this at DoubleAgentHosting.com.
- AWeber: This is an autoresponder, your essential tool for building a list and keeping in contact with your customers. Get this at DoubleAgentAutoresponder.com.
- WordPress: This is a free tool that you "place" at the front door of your site. It lets you edit your site and pages without having to know how to write or edit HTML code. You can just click around and create any extra webpages that you like using plugin's and tools that WordPress uses.
Once you get webhosting via DoubleAgentHosting.com, there's a special button where you can install WordPress on the front door of your site. Its' going to make creating all the pages we talk about today super simple.
Robert has a WordPress plugin called Paper Template that makes everything look like a plain piece of paper that you can customize. You can also buy Robert's course, Income Machine (www.incomemachine.com), which includes Paper Template as well as Member Genius, which is a plugin that allows you to take payments on your site and is integrated with PayPal.
Must-Have Web Pages
"Front Door" of your site (www.example.com): This is where your sales letter lives. You want to have a place for someone to buy something from you. This page, the sales letter, also has your buy button. Additional tip: when purchasing a domain, also buy a .com, not a .org or a .net.
Membership area of your site (www.example.com/members): When people have purchased your product, they go to a page where they create an account and then get access to the members' area.
This is a protected area where they can download the product and intake any additional content that goes with the product, such as videos, etc. Also, if they ask for a refund or stop paying installments, their access to this section can be shut off.
Training Page (www.example.com/training): This is where you put your 1-hour pitch webinar replay for your product/service. It makes everything simple and easy because you can use your webinar training as anything thing later on (i.e. a 'bonus') and just call it 'live training'.
Record your webinar using Camtasia, put it on YouTube, place that video code on this demo page, and then below that have a link that takes them back to your sales letter page/front page.
Demo Page of your site (www.example.com/demo): Here is where you can put a 5-minute demo of something you have in your product/course. This is where you'd put something exciting, such as 'before and after' pictures, evidence of your 3x income generation after flipping a house, or a trick that your software can do.
Just like for the training page above, record your demo using Camtasia, put it on YouTube, place that video code on this demo page, and then below that have a link that takes them back to your sales letter page/front page.
Nice-To-Have's
Opt-In Page (www.example.com/free): This is where you have just some simple free gift so that people will opt-in to get it, thereby joining your list.
Download Page (www.example.com/gift-download): This is where they're redirected to download the free gift. You have a link below that download for them to hop back to your sales letter.
Contact Page (www.example.com/contact): An easy form for people to fill out to contact you so that you don't have to share your email address. This is where they can ask questions, ask for interviews, etc. They could send tech problems here but it's better if you have a Help Desk page, which we'll mention in just a few minutes.
7 Extra Pages For No Extra Charge!
Blog Page (www.example.com/blog): This is where you put any articles and/or videos you find interesting to your niche. There are places on this page for them to go to your Opt-in page (and get on your list) or go directly to your 'front door'/sales letter site and buy your product.
Affiliate Center (www.example.com/affiliates): A page that tells others how they can recommend your course and make a profit from selling it themselves. This is also where you'd have banner ads and swipe copy for your affiliates to use so that they can more easily promote you.
To see an example of how this looks, go to the Action PopUp affiliate page. The easiest way to have an affiliate program when you start out is through ClickBank.
Robert's Member Genius plugin functions with ClickBank. You can get Member Genius by itself or by joining Income Machine to get the complete system including the sales letter plugin, blog, autoresponder, and traffic training, and more.
Support Page (www.example.com/support): This is your Help Desk page. We use ZenDesk for this.
Secret Door area (www.example.com/secretdoor): When Robert and Lance do a launch the best way to fire people up is to announce that they will be closing the offer soon. But sometimes you want to experiment with cold traffic like FB ads, etc.
That means, you take your sales letter and use a WP plugin called Post Duplicator to make an exact copy of the sales letter where you've now opened the button back up to buy but you don't advertise that it's open to your list.
Essentially, you're trying to see if your ads work and the only way to tell that is if you have the sales closed to the public and so any sales you get that are from this Secret Door page you know are from ad driven traffic.
Welcome Page (www.example.com/welcome): This is your upsell page. If someone buys Paper Template, they would be redirected to this page that says something along the lines of "Welcome to Paper Template, but do you want to buy Income Machine too?"
The cost would be the price difference between your large package (the upsell) and the product they just purchased.
Coaching Page (www.example.com/coaching): Offer coaching that is specific to the product that you are selling. For example, if you were selling a course on playing guitar, here is where you would offer say, 4 one-on-one sessions for customers that are still having problems or want to advance even more in guitar playing.
Your copy would say something similar to "Are you stuck? You came to the right place! In just 4 sessions with me, we'll get your roadblocks taken care of."
Your coaching should have a large dollar amount attached to it. Even if you have no clients or just a few taking part, it's fine. It is just an opportunity. Provide a link for them to go straight back to your .com front door site if they don't' want coaching.
Application Page (www.example.com/application): This is where a customer submits an app for your coaching program. You ask them specifics such as:
- "What is the URL where you need help?"
- "What is your monthly budget?"
- "What are you looking to get out of the coaching? Is there anything else you need? "
You can use Google Forms to set this up. Once they hit submit, it notifies you. It will pile in the responses into a google spreadsheet.
Use a scheduler called TimeTrade to schedule a Skype call with them to discuss this further. The ones that you want to talk to, you then send them to your coaching page to join up.
Join Income Machine 2.0 to Claim Your
All-in-One Money Making System Now
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WordPress Post Snippets: Easily Templatize Any Part of Your WordPress Blogs, Membership Sites, and Sales Letters
When people talk about their favorite WordPress plugins, you usually hear things about SEO plugins, security plugins, or backup plugins. By the way, the best backup plugin for WordPress is Backup Creator and the plugin you should use to manage, bulk load, and mass update your WP plugins is Plugin Dashboard...
But anyway, imagine having "chunks" of text for your WordPress site that you could re-use where-ever you want. You use shortcodes for this. For example, I have a podcasting plugin on my blog that I use to post audio episodes of my iTunes radio show. (Podcast Crusher shows you how to use the PowerPress plugin in WordPress to create an unlimited number of podcasts)...
If I ever want to display the current podcast episode more than once in a post, for example, one player at the top in addition to the one at the bottom, I just have to add this code to my post:
[ podcast ] (Without the spaces around those hard brackets.)
That's a WordPress shortcode. You post the "code" anywhere in your posts and pages and when it's "rendered" for public viewing, people see the podcast audio player as opposed to that "short" code.
WordPress Post Snippets allow you to do this: create any number of shortcodes such as: [ webinarcrusher ]. I can set that snippet to display a huge headline advertising my Webinar Crusher product, a link to it, maybe open that link in a new window, even toss in some bullet points and a banner.
Now anytime I want to link to Webinar Crusher, I just add the [ webinarcrusher ] shortcode (the video below shows how it's point and click simple) into my posts anywhere I want to mention it:
I used to use the WP Post Signature plugin (also free) to display the same link and ads under EVERY blog post, but I now prefer using WordPress Post Snippets because I have more control over what posts link to what offers.
The first 9 minutes of that video show how I use it on my blogs and sales letters. But after the 9 minute mark, it gets REALLY crazy... because you can pass VARIABLES into Post Snippets!
What does that mean? Well, you can create a post snippet called "offsite" that takes in variables called "url" and "title"...
Then set your "offsite" post snippet to this in your Post Snippet settings:
<a target="_blank" onclick="return confirm('Are you sure you want to leave this site?');" href="{url}">{title}</a>
This looks a bit geeky, but it's some HTML code that displays a link on a web page, and when someone clicks that link, a pop-up appears asking people if they REALLY want to leave the site.
Whenever you want to link offsite but you want to display that warning that they might not want to leave, just add this "snippet" or shortcode into your posts:
[ offsite url="http://www.incomemachine.com" title="Income Machine" ](again, without the spaces)
Adding this shortcode will "plug-in" the "url" we passed (which is "http://www.incomemachine.com") and the "title" (which is "Income Machine") right into that code I showed you a minute ago, into the {url} and {title} sections of that code.
As I said, this might be a "little" advanced for you personally, but I've found it very helpful for re-using that "repeat" code in my membership sites if I have to display a lot of graphics, video and audio players, and download links.
Enjoy using WordPress Post Snippets in your WordPress sales letters, blogs, and membership sites!
Click Your Way into Online Profits Using WordPress, Paper Template and Plugin Dashboard
I honestly believe that this year (NOT next year) and this month (NOT next month) is the month and year that you'll create that website that makes money, update or re-do an already money making site or whip out that brand new stream of income...
For a few reasons:
- This thing called "WordPress" that allows you QUICKLY to point and click your way to type in whatever content you want (without a lot of technical skills)
- WordPress plugins that then take what you've written and change the look and feel (for the most part, remove the sidebar) so you have a FOCUSED (single call to action) landing page
- Everyone says people have a "lower attention span" these days... which means you can get away with a shorter sales letter, shorter sales video, AND if you just run a few ads (like Facebook retargeting) then you can leapfrog ahead of your competition
I know it's easy to get "confused" about which web host to use, what theme to have, which plugins, what color and font to have on your web pages... heck, I've even seen people try to "code" their own HTML web pages as if it was 1998 (and remember how those pages looked?)
Component #1:
WordPress (Posts and Pages)
Look, we both know that you're probably not in the web design business, the computer programming business, the shopping cart business. If you're doing any of this right, then you have a PASSION for a niche like guitar, learning a language, losing weight, etc.
Even as a nerdy computer programmer, I don't want to have to re-invent the wheel from scratch every time! I want to type out what I want, click a button, and it's done. Ready to collect email optins or take payments. I don't want the "solution" (a really complicated page building system with 100's of choices) to be more confusing than the problem (not having a web page to begin with).
That's why when it comes to any web page including a blog, sales letter, optin page, webinar registration page (so I can drop a retargeting pixel), or webinar replay page...
I No Longer Upload and Edit
HTML Files on a New Site!
Instead, I point and click WordPress pages...
The next thing I need you to know about blogs and WordPress: posts and pages. POSTS are really only relevant when you're talking about a straight up blog, online journal. New post on July 1st, here's my diary entry. New post on August 1st, diary entry.
A PAGE is navigation. On a blog you're talking about "Contact Me" pages, "About Me" pages, "Best of This Blog" pages. The Contact Me page doesn't have a date on it, it's just there.
I like to think of posts as journal entries going top to bottom, pages as going left to right.
Component #2:
Paper Template
(Frontend Sales Page, Download Page, Optin Page)
That's where Paper Template comes in. Using WordPress, you can install our "Paper Template" plugin which will allow you to create a "piece of paper" looking landing page in addition to your blog.
For example, I have my blog at RobertPlank.com, and I can create an additional PAGE at RobertPlank.com/free that's a landing page, a forced optin page, and I don't have to "link" it from anywhere else on my blog if I don't want to.
This landing page is called an OPTIN PAGE which is that white piece of paper with a headline explaining some freebie I'm giving away (like a short report), three bullet points (explaining the short report), a sentence telling someone to fill in the form below, and an optin form to enter in their name and email address.
They fill it in, they get that bribe in exchange for their name and email address and they can UNSUBSCRIBE at any time.
If I really want to make money I can install WordPress at the "root" of a domain, the .com, like WebinarCrusher.com, and then install Paper Template onto that WordPress site, create a "paper" page and then set it as the front page of the site.
So someone goes to the "root" of WebinarCrusher.com, they aren't looking at an HTML web page where I had to edit CSS code and upload images, they're looking at a WordPress PAGE that I edited (it just happens to be the front page).
Not sure what to place on that sales letter? Glad you asked... Paper Template has a 1-click pre-written sales letter. It drops in all the basic components you need on a sales letter...
3-part who-else headline, 3-part anticipation subheadline, establish the problem and alternatives, huge breakthrough, vague solution, solid solution, detailed explanation, who's it for, how it's delivered, breakdown of each module, offer stack table, price reveal, guarantee certificate, priority order form, all that good stuff.
Don't be overwhelmed. Just delete what you don't need and edit the headlines and text of what's remaining... by the way, Paper Template also comes with pre-written headlines and bullet points so you can drop in what you need anywhere and just fill in the blanks.
Instead of confusing ourselves with 10, 20, 30 different types of landing pages (Under construction page??? Coming Soon page? Sold Out page?) let me make it simple for you, Paper Template has these "types" of web pages (almost identical but with different placeholder text written in):
- Optin Page (ask for an email address)
- Sales Page (present an offer and ask for the sale)
Webinar Signup Page (let's skip this, it's just a fancier 1-click optin page but for a webinar)Webinar Replay Page (also skip this, it's a "wider" version of our piece of paper with nothing on the page but a headline, video and link to go to the sales page after they're done watching)- Download Page (piece of paper web page with no links to it that offers a PAID product for download)
- Gift Page (same as above but it's a FREE product for download after someone registers on an optin page)
Let's get to it...
I'm going to explain a few steps that I take when setting up these funnels so bear with me if I'm brain-dumping a few things at you:
- Register a .com domain name (cost is $10) that contains your niche keyword and a filler keyword, for example, WebinarCrusher.com contains the word "webinar" but I can't register Webinar.com so I go with WebinarCrusher.com
- Install WordPress and Paper Template and set a "sales letter" (one single piece of paper template that explains an offer with nothing else to do at the bottom other than buy) with a payment button on the bottom (we prefer PayPal). You can check a box in your Paper Template settings to make this the front page, as in WebinarCrusher.com
- Set the "download link" someone goes to after paying (this is a setting in your PayPal button) to WebinarCrusher.com/download123xyz -- this will be another of our WordPress PAGES -- we can always rename or move to a membership site later but it's keep it simple. The front page is the sales letter, this "download123xyz" will be a page with videos or links to PDF files where they download our course
- After creating that button, go back to your WordPress site and create a new page with the "Download Page" template (which contains verbage like what they can expect to see on their credit card statement, delivers the download, links to an upsell, etc.
Only four steps to have a web page that promises something for sale and delivers that download.
I know people geek out about things like a "video sales letter" -- guess what happens with those these days? They find no one's going to sit through a 90 minute video like they did a couple years ago, so they add a couple bullet points under it... more headlines... an offer stack. Next thing you know, it's a long form sales letter, should have used Paper Template.
OR you might see "web 2.0" web pages. They're very wide, taking up most of the computer screen (good luck making that look good on a tiny phone screen, Paper Template is responsive).
These web 2.0 pages will usually have lots of columns (not too great for readability and the "bucket brigade" trying to pull them to the end of your sales letter).
Usually they'll have one color background for the first chunk of the page (like blue) and then a different background color dividing the rest of the page (such as a white background)... so it's more or less a long form sales letter, only wider, and with two different background colors...
Either way, I believe that the TEXT on a web page is more important than your design or even fancy video -- ugly pages sell. I wish for my own ego's sake that wasn't true but that's what I've observed since making these "paper template" web pages.
If you want to get really fancy then here's how I build out my funnel for a FRONTEND site:
- Install WordPress on the .com level like WebinarCrusher.com: this one WordPress site will hold all my PAGES like the sales page, optin page, download page, etc.
- I create a "sales page" Paper Template page and set it to the front page of the site: WebinarCrusher.com
- Add download page at WebinarCrusher.com/download123xyz: so WebinarCrusher.com -> WebinarCrusher.com/download123xyz
- When you're ready to setup an optin page (which I like to do for cold traffic), then you'll create a "gift download" page. I prefer to either paste three EzineArticles into a Google Drive and save as a PDF, or grab a YouTube video (even one of my own) as a free gift. This just delivers something for free (hidden from navigation) and links to the sales letter at the bottom: WebinarCrusher.com/gift-download -> WebinarCrusher.com -> WebinarCrusher.com/download123xyz
- Now we need to create a page that asks for the optin at WebinarCrusher.com/free. Don't worry, it's just a click away. Explain the free gift on a SHORT web page (with three bullet points) and use an autoresponder service such as Aweber to collect their email address: WebinarCrusher.com/free -> WebinarCrusher.com/gift-download -> WebinarCrusher.com -> WebinarCrusher.com/download123xyz
If I want to get fancy and create something like an upsell page, I just create another "sales page" template in there at WebinarCrusher.com/offer and I could change the funnel sequence to:
WebinarCrusher.com/free -> WebinarCrusher.com/gift-download ->
WebinarCrusher.com -> WebinarCrusher.com/offer ->
WebinarCrusher.com/download123xyz
An upsell page is nothing more than a web page with a button to buy and an additional link under that button saying "No thanks, take me to my download page."
If I wanted to create a membership site in the future, I would use something like Member Genius and setup a SECOND WordPress site at WebinarCrusher.com/members (and have all my protected content in there) and setup the payment button to go to the registration page for that membership site instead of just "WebinarCrusher.com/download123xyz" but let's not get TOO technical...
Once you have that funnel setup you can do lots of interesting things like add countdown timers to those optin pages and sales letters (sparingly) which is built into Paper Template...
You can make use of re-usable "snippets" of code, for example if you want to place tracking codes on different pages or different payment buttons (we like to offer a 1-pay and a 5-pay payment plan on most sales letters) -- also built into Paper Template.
Paper Template will also manage your on-site and off-site redirects. You could for example, cloak your affiliate link, redirect an old deleted page to something new, or even shorten some of your own affiliate's links, and track the clicks over time -- built in.
Click Here to Download "Paper Template" Right Now
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But for now, let's just keep it simple!
Component #3:
Plugin Dashboard
(Install & Update Plugins)
Real quick, the final piece that ties it all together. When creating one of these new sites from scratch I like to use Plugin Dashboard to drop in all the plugins I need in one go.
I'm talking about your security plugins, SEO plugins, backup plugins. I'm talking about all the "little things" you always forget to do in WordPress like setup the link structure, set the sitewide title and contact email, and yes, even install plugins like Paper Template.
There is a "Paper Template" checkbox inside of Plugin Dashboard. The only information you need to give it is your license key and license email address (it automatically fills it in if you have that open in another browser tab) and it pulls it down from the cloud, activates it and you're ready to click your way into sales funnels and profits using WordPress.
Tools You'll Use
- WordPress (free and installs easily using "SimpleScripts" in most web host control panels)
- Paper Template (just $47 for the Ultimate version and allows you to create & manage WordPress landing pages)
- Plugin Dashboard (just $17 and installs & updates your plugins)
Click Here to Download "Paper Template" Right Now
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