I have consulted with hundreds of aspiring online marketers over the past couple of years, and one of the questions I am most commonly asked is this…”Why can’t I just send traffic to my website home page?”.
And it is a great question.
But before I get into the answer, it is probably useful to talk about who doesn’t necessarily need an opt in page. It will very much depend on what you are selling from your website.
By the way, you will also hear opt in pages referred to as landing pages, squeeze pages or gateway pages. They are one and the same, and their primary function is to collect your prospect’s name and email address. Nothing more.
If you are selling commodities (such as clothes, shoes, electronic equipment etc), and have a retail style of site where searchers are going to be able to make buying choices on the basis of range, price, value for money, speed of delivery, return/ refund policy and security of payment options, you very likely don’t need to worry about an opt in page.
The reason for this is that these items are very straightforward, and when well known and trusted brands are involved, people already know what they are going to get when they make a buying decision.
People feel confident to purchase products when there is strong brand awareness
And therein lies the key to why it is necessary (or not) to send your traffic to an opt in page as their first point of contact with you.
If you are selling a more obscure, complex or expensive product or service and you don’t already enjoy a high level of brand recognition, you will want to give your potential prospects and customers the opportunity to get to know more about you and your business before they commit to buy from you.
One of the most fundamental truths of business and marketing is this…
People will only ever buy from you if they know, like and trust you.
Fortunately, it is a pretty simply concept to grasp.
Your prospects want to get to know, like and trust you before they are prepared to buy from you
Your opt in page facilitates this process by creating a very clean and clear ‘conversion path’ for your prospect to follow. What this means is that when a person lands on your opt in page, there should only be two choices for them to make…opt in, or click back.
When the searcher opts in, what they are doing is submitting their name and email address into the text fields on the page in return for some free information which has a high perceived value to them. This usually takes the form of a Free E-book, Free Report, White Paper or email information series.
A Free Report is a little ethical 'bribe' for your prospects
After the searcher’s details have been entered into your opt in form, this person becomes a ‘lead’ for your business. And these leads are usually very high quality (depending on the marketing strategies you used to send them to your opt in page).
They are high quality, because these people were actively online searching for what you have to offer.
This is when you further develop a relationship with this person by following up with them via autoresponder email messages with more relevant and valuable information.
When I say relevant and valuable, I mean relevant to the subject they were searching on in the first place, and valuable because it answers (at least in part) the questions/ challenges they are experiencing in their lives.
Over time, your email marketing (which continues to deliver high quality information to your prospects) does the job of rapport and relationship building with your prospect, and eventually, they will make the decision to buy from you, or not.
Using an opt in page is particularly important when you are paying for your traffic (e.g. using Google Adwords or a similar form of PPC marketing). Because you are paying for your traffic, you definitely do not want to send searchers to a website, where they have far too many options of courses of action to take. In most instances, your efforts will be wasted, because the searcher is far more likely to surf your website, get distracted or confused, and click back. This will very quickly devastate your quality score.
Consumers are already confused by the sheer amount of buying options they have, but they don’t like to be confused.
This is where the opt in page presents them with the very clear and simple choice to find out more about your product/ service, or not.
Make today a great one.
Cheers,
Tan
