A major part of online marketing is about getting a new visitor to your blog, website, forum, video or social network site landing page to take action — either sign up to your list or click through to buy something from you.

Easier said that done though right?

In fact, 99%+ of landing pages or squeeze pages (a landing page designed exclusively to “squeeze” visitors into an offer) linger below 2% opt-in or click through rates when they could be pushing between 10-30% with improvement.

What I am saying here is that with some small tweaks you can improve the results of your business by a factor of 10-20 times!  

So let’s go ahead and break down what goes into making an effective, highly profitable squeeze page or opt-in landing page.

1. A Great Offer

So many people who put up their own squeeze or opt-in page are worried first about the design, then perhaps a little by what is actually on the page (written or video message) but almost give no thought to what it is that they are actually offering to their audience.

In fact, the offer is THE MOST IMPORTANT part of an effective squeeze page.  Specifically, your offer needs to be:

a) Targeted at one of the top 3 desires your marketplace has
b) Focused on a desire to be, have, do or become that they are not today…in other words, the target of your offer must be on a transformation desired by your audience to become something they are not today (healthier, happier, wealthier, calmer, better looking, more attractive, etc…)
c) Highly matched to the both the source of your traffic as well as the products and services you will eventually offer them.  I have seen great squeeze pages but when we dig into the traffic campaign we find that the keywords people are using to find the squeeze page or the affiliate used to drive traffic are not well matched to the offer
d) Offers high value to the market having the desire.  So yes, you accomplish a great deal by matching the message correctly with the offer, but you also have to explain clearly why your incentive or offer gives them something they will not yet have come across.  This is your unique hook that lets you break into busy markets despite heavy competition

2. Superb Copy

Copywriting is mainly an exercise in understanding, having empathy (understanding the underlying emotions and relating to your target audience), building up the pain and offering a pleasurable alternative supported by social proof.  That may sound like a great deal, but focus on these 4 characteristics and you will be amazed at how much more persuasive and effective your squeeze pages will be.  Keep these principles in mind when you create your headline, your sub-heads, the text on the page and/or any video scripting if you include video on your squeeze page.

3. Design

Design of your squeeze page was intentionally placed as #3, while important, having a great offer and good copy on the page is far more important than the overall design of the page.  I’ve seen many poorly design pages with great offers and copy convert 30%+ of their traffic into action while I have not seen 1 single case of a brilliantly designed squeeze page with a poor offer and poor copywriting convert.

That said, here are a few design principles to keep in mind when you create squeeze pages:

a) Content needs to be above the fold (meaning visible without scrolling down the page)
b) Highlights the main messages – could be your headline, your video and your offer
c) Clean – focused on one single purpose which is converting the visitor into taking one, simple action which means there should be no navigation away from the page (menus, nav panels, links, or ads) other than one intended action (subscribe or click through)

We have helped hundreds of people create and improve their squeeze pages inside Information Marketer’sZone, most often the challenge begins with the offer itself.  If you have failed to drill down into a compelling offer, it doesn’t matter what your squeeze page says or look like, it will never be profitable.