Cyberwalker Blog

What is Leadpages?

 9 ways you can use the landing page tool to grow your online business

I thought was cool recently when in the same week I got two calls from two of our clients with three days asking – Hey Andy, What is LeadPages? In both cases the clients were looking to grow their online businesses. They had discovered that it was hard to change and customize landing pages for their web sites when driving traffic to a particular page. One client had concluded they needed a landing page tool and let to the question – What is Leadpages used for? I came across it and I am wondering if it is what is need?

The other client had heard it mentioned by a family member and was wondering if they needed it sight unseen.

In both cases I heartily recommended it because they both were driving traffic through  ads. One client has a food business and was getting good traffic by ad placement on a niche food blogger. The other one was buying Facebook ads for its industrial products sold on a Shopify store.

The landing page tool that’s ‘waaaaay’ better

When I discovered LeadPages I had already tried a competitor and saw the value of creating landing pages for our company’s various online initiatives, but a colleague told me to dump the tool I was using in favor of LeadPages because it was “waaaaay” better. I am not ordinarily swayed by such surfer dude endorsements, but this guy is pretty successful in digital marketing so I usually follow his lead on such things. And in to use dude-ism: This Dude Abides!

And in turn this is my invitation to you to try it out and see what it can do for your business.

What is LeadPages?

Let’s start with a definition. LeadPages is an online tool used to capture email subscribers. That is the primary function of the landing page tool. It is a templated and hosted tool that you can use to give away lead magnets, register people into webinars, and design landing pages to drive people into your email list.

LeadPages also offers templates for things like squeeze pages, video landing pages, sales pages and thank you pages. We use it every day at Cyberwalker Digital in the digital marketing work we do.

LeadPages landing pages examples
Examples of some landing pages that can be created with LeadPages

What LeadPages is NOT

LeadPages isn’t an email marketing platform that you use to send emails from (although the company does offer a platform called Drip which does that and works with LeadPages).

If you use Infusionsoft, Constant Contact, Aweber or MailChimp then LeadPages can be used for – actually integrated – with these platforms to help you grow your email list on these sites so you get more subscribers.

LeadPages they offers dozens of templates to help you create high-converting landing pages and allows you to easily send lead magnets to your subscribers. What else can LeadPages do? We let’s review what the landing page tool can do and how it can help your business grow.

What is LeadPages used for?

LeadPages has a ton of great features, so lets examine it key features for online business owners, and content marketers who are considering buying a LeadPages subscription.

1. Send Lead Magnets

A lead magnet is a digital giveaway like an ebook, video, coupon or seminar access that can be emailed to a subscriber once they sign up for your email list.

Some people call this process a bribe. But I like to think of it as a trade. Something like: I’ll give you this cool free thing if you give me your email address and agree to let me email you on a fairly regular basis, with the agreement that you can unsubscribe at any time and that I won’t send you anything that is spammy or sell your address to a third party.

LeadPages makes it easy to store and send a lead magnet when someone signs up on your Leadpages subscriber box or the opt-in box on a landing page. See a lead magnet page example here. You can also use your own email platform to send a lead magnet. You don’t have to use LeadPages feature to do this.

2. Create a Sales Page

When you are selling a product online you will always want to design a lengthy sales page to provide the product benefits and answer the prospective buyer’s questions, dispel their doubts and drive them to a registration pages where you close the deal and transact the sale. LeadPages makes this easy to do with its 350+ templates that can be customized to your content, you brand, your content and drive to your shopping cart.

3. Design a Squeeze Page

Sometimes you want to drive a prospective customer toward a single act, usually to register or sign-up or possibly to buy something. For this you’ll need a squeeze page. It’s a simple page that provides content of some kind and issues a call to action.So what is Leadpages squeeze page capability?  Squeeze pages are easy to design in LeadPages, especially if you want to use video from YouTube, Vimeo or hosted on your servers.

4. Make an Upsell Thank You Page

One of my favorite tactics in digital marketing is to offer an upsell after a subscriber has opted in. You have their attention and they are in a YES frame of mind so offering them something else on a thank you page is really effective in increasing your level of engagement. LeadPages has some great templates for this purpose where you thank the usr and direct them to their next action. This is usually driving them to either another sales or squeeze page. Or to your sales cart (in another tool – LeadPages does not provide shopping cart technology)

5. Deploy a pop-up sign-up box

LeadPages offers a version of it tool to just popu open an opt inbox on an existing content page. You set up the LeadBox to trigger when a graphic or link on a page is clicked. It works like this. Click Here.

6. Run A/B tests

When a landing page is not converting it is really handy to tweak it in different ways by changing colors, text, images and increasing or decreasing content. LeadPages let’s you test pages side by side and against each other. It serves up different versions to your site visitors and collects conversion data so you can see which version of your landing pages is more effective at driving them to action.

7. Seamless email platform integration

We use Infusionsoft as our primary email marketing platform so it is important that it can integrate with any marketing tool we use. The good news is LeadPages integrates well with Infusionsoft as well as pretty much every dominant email platform available today. That includes:

  1. Infusionsoft (as mentioned)
  2. MailChimp
  3. Aweber
  4. Constant Contact
  5. GetResponse
  6. Marketo
  7. Drip (An email automation software owned by LeadPages)

8. Hosted Video Pages

We develop a  lot of courses at Cyberwalker Digital, and it’s very handy to offer some of our content for free  as we promote the course. LeadPages lets you easily create video pages with call to actions. 9. Integrate Shopify buttons to create an enhanced sales page

Using Shopify button code you can build LeadPages that drive to a Shopify product page. This is really handy if you want to design a more robust product sales page and drive drive traffic directly to Shopify’s checkout cart.

What is LeadPages 2.0?

Recently LeadPages upgraded their tools to give you more freedom to design or customize a landing page. They introduced a drag and drop tool that allows you to select page elements and drag them into position. Previous to this you were limited in drastically changing page elements. You could customize, but within a framework. So if you have been wondering what is LeadPages plan to improve their tools, well the new version of the product has just arrived. (However, the company is constantly improving the tool beyond the major revisions.)

The new system let’s you work with a page to pretty much strip it bare and start again. To change the layout. Or simply edit small details. And all without thinking about any HTML, CSS or Javascript code. It is landing page design for non-programmers.

The new version of LeadPages also let you do A/B testing not just between versions by between versions of pages that used different initial templates.

What else? I still have question about what is LeadPages used for?

You can ask us in the pop up box below. We will answer you personally via email.

Backlink authority: Why all SEO links are not created equal


Learn this little known SEO secret about backlinks, so you can get ranked well

It’s no secret that good content will ranked well in Google and Bing, and drive tons of valuable traffic to your website. But writing good content is not enough to win Google’s (or Bing’s) favor to attract traffic unless the content is unique, rare, authoritative and…linked. You see backlinks are critical in SEO. And backlink authority even more so.

Yes, backlink authority. Let me explain. The number of links – also called backlinks – from 3rd party websites to your website is perhaps the No. 1 signal that Google uses, and Bing uses (to a lesser extent), to rank a webpage and drive it to the top of search engine listings.

Learn this little known backlinking SEO secret

But there is a little-known secret that only the most expert of SEO marketers (and some content marketers know) that makes all the difference in how a web page ranks.

In fact, this one secret is so important that it can rank your webpage better than its competitors with fewer links, breaking the long held rules that more backlinks are better.

Let’s dig into that a bit more. Let’s say that a page on a website about beekeeping is very useful and has been around long enough to become linked by 20 other websites. And as a result of all these links, Google’s algorithm has rewarded the content by ranking it as the number one site for the keywords “beekeeping basics”.

But then a second site comes along and publishes a page that manages to attract backlinks from only 10 websites, and yet it grabs the number 1 spot on Google results. What happened? By any measure that seems unfair.

How did my competition outrank my site with SEO?

Now there could be any number of factors that have caused the disruption. It could be that the outranking challenger has:

  1. A faster web site.
  2. A better mobile friendly website.
  3. A secure protocol called SSL in place.
  4. Better on-page optimization for the keyword phrase “beekeeping basics”.
  5. More social likes and shares.
  6. Better, more detailed content.

All these factors play a part in webpage and website ranking, but chances are that if all these factors individually or combined haven’t caused the ranking disruption, then it can only be one core issue at play.

And that is link authority.

(And arguably backlinks and their associated authority, more often than any other measure, is the key linking factor for any well-ranked website.)

You see all backlinks are not created equal. Some have more “authority” than others. So they impart to the website that they point to much more “Google Juice” than a linking site with less authority.

You see, if the New York Times publishes an article about beekeeping, and it links to the aforementioned competitor beekeeper site, that validates the site’s value to Google. That action imparts trust and authority moreso than a link from a dinky website about poetry, that was abandoned 3 years ago.

The link source matters. And there are two factors at play.

  1. The site’s authority is determined by its traffic, it’s own back-linked pages, it’s social likes and many more SEO ranking factors.
  2. The topic of the site and/or page.

In the case of #2, a beekeeping site linking to a beekeeping site will impart more authority to a linked page than, say, an unrelated knitting page linked to a beekeeping site.

Get your site ranked using this SEO backlinks building secret

So here is how you can make this information actionable. And in doing so, drive your website up Google search results to the very sought-after top three slots.

  1. Discover which websites are linking to your webpage and what their authority is. The authority measure is an actual numeric ranking.  SEO tools like  Ahrefs.com. or Moz.com. can provide a score for any site or specific page. Both have very competent authority measurement tools.
  2. Use the authority tools to measure how many unique websites are linking to the competing web page, and what their authority is.
  3. Develop a campaign to encourage more high authority inbound links to your page that can rival the authority if you competitor.

This strategy may seem simple enough.  (And it really is.) Once you have completed your analysis in Steps #1 and #2, it is Step#3 where the real work starts. Backlink building, especially backlink building using high authority web sites is not always easy.

How to leverage backlink authority easily

But, let me make this easy for you. If you send me the link of a webpage on your web site that you would like to rank on the front page of Google. My SEO team and I will send you FOR FREE – a PDF report that tells you how you page ranks from a backlink authority perspective for the keywords you’d like it to rank for. And how it compares to the authority of the number 1 ranked page for those keywords. This will show you what link-building work you will need to do.

CLICK HERE TO ASK FOR YOUR PERSONALIZED SEO AUTHORITY REPORT

After I sent that, I will also send you our mini ebook called 10 Easy Ways to Create High Authority Backlinks. Of course, I will also tell you how we can do the backlink work for your company when you hire us as your SEO consultant. 🙂

Related SEO topics:

Revenue boosting secrets in ecommerce

ecommerce revenue secrets

We are always hunting for new ways to optimize our clients’ online web store properties, so that they generate not only more sales, but larger average transactions. So with that I thought I’d share with you the following revenue boosting secrets for your online store.

The secrets I outline below work for all ecommerce platforms, no matter what they are, however we have found easiest implementation with two selling tools: We build all our clients stores in either Shopify or using SamCart. The former is a versatile ecommerce platform that lets you build complete stores that are highly secure and scaleable. So we start all our small clients on the platform with templated stores. We also launch our large clients on Shopify too, because it is very customizable. SamCart, meanwhile, is a shopping cart to drive direct sales, and has a wicked upsell capability.

Ok, on to our revenue boosting secrets:

1) The magic red button:

IRevenue boosting secrets in ecommercen most of the world red means stop. But we will often switch our “Buy Now”, “Checkout” or “Add to Cart” buttons to the color red (or a shade of red in same cases). We saw average uptick of 18% click rate when we did this on three different websites, and across both SamCart and Shopify. Here’s the rationale: Red is a striking color and rarely is anything on a designed page the color red. Red is an attention getting color, and people apparently love to click on red buttons. It doesn’t mean stop. It means go buy. Try it yourself. It’s a killer ecommerce hack.

2) Always Be Selling:

Secrets in ecommerce“Do you want fries with that?” is the ubiquitous question asked at McDonalds, but did you ever wonder why?

Because when people are in a buying mood they will almost always say “yes” to upsells. In fact they say yes to upsells 33% of the time, if there is a good deal to be had. That is because there is a thrill when buying and the feel good-brain chemicals keep flowing the more you keep the “buying process going. (The downside is when this subsides there can be buyer remorse when the natural high runs out, but curiously it doesn’t result too often in returns.).

3) Where the profit is:

As I said in #2, McDonald’s always asks: “Do you want fries with that?” or sometimes “Do you want to upsize that?”. Here is a second reason they do that. The item they are offering as an add-on is — get this — a massively high-margin item. There’s little profit in hamburgers, but fried potatoes? The hot little tasty savory add-on is almost all profit. So just before final checkout, ask if they want something else, and make sure it is a high-margin product for you to maximize your average checkout transaction.

4) Make your guarantee awesome and outrageous:

Promise the world when you sell, and promise extremely easy and flexible returns. Why would you make your life so difficult? I mean, let’s be real, returns are hassle for a vendor. They cut into your bottom line. And you work hard for the sale, why would you want to make it easy to undo it? Simple. Because you’ll sell more. Once a product is in the hands of the buyer, unless they experience extreme buyer’s remorse, they typically will not go to the trouble of returning a product. Why? Because they don’t want to tell the seller why. (It’s embarrassing for many.) It takes their time to reach out and return the product. And it’s an overall perceived hassle. So, in your pre-sell process, be sure to make it clear that returns are easy and frictionless, and that the buyer has lots of time to change their mind. That’s because the buyer will have one less excuse to not buy. If they feel good that they can change their mind after the sale, then they will more likely complete the initial transaction. AND be sure to make good on any refunds or returns. Still, more people will buy because of the great guarantee. And few will ever make the effort to return a product. The net result? More sales.

5) Keep the gravy train rolling:

After a buyer completes the transaction, be sure to send them an email immediately that adds yet another offer. Give them free shipping or a 2 for 1 deal or something else. Work to get them to come back immediately. And limit the offer to 7 days. Expire the coupon and let them know with hours to spare. Scarcity drives sales.

6) ABT – Always Build Trust:

Your store’s checkout page should have your phone number, address and testimonials. Create trust with your design and be transparent about how they can reach you. After their first purchase, tell them how special they are. Offer them hidden unpublished deals. People like to feel special and they love to be treated well. As trust develops, they will be more inclined to buy a 2nd and 3rd time. Why? Because you have proven that you keep your promises, they feel safe in doing business with you, and that will lead to more sales from them in future.

Andy Walker is a digital marketing strategist and owns the Niagara-based agency Cyberwalker Digital. http://cyberwalkerdigital.com

Why business greeting cards should be part of your B2B marketing

Personal marketing cuts through B2B marketing noise

Being noticed in the crowded noise of B2B marketing is increasingly difficult these days.  There is the electronic noise that buyers are subject to on the Internet. There are reams of  marketing emails in their inbox begging for attention. Then there are ads on their mobile devices. Trade shows are a cacophony of distraction. And then there’s limited time to read trade magazines.  So what is a B2B marketer to do? Only one thing. Get ultra personal with business greeting cards. The customer’s experience in contacting your business, communicating with sales and service professionals and getting their concerns addressed is paramount in long-term business success.

Studies show that the declining volume of traditional 1st class mail – that some call snail mail – is a new opportunity.

First class mail sent via USPS dropped 40% in 2016 from a 90-year high in 2000 of approximately 100 trillion pieces . This mail volume has shrunk to levels not seen since 1980 when approximately 60 trillion pieces of 1st class mail (excludes parcels) was handled by the USPS. (See USPS data.)

Consider this: When was the last time you went through all your mail at home and ignored a personalized card? Never, right? We are always drawn to anything that has a personal feel in the mail flow. That’s because that way of communicating has fallen out of favor with the efficiency and convenience of electronic communication.

So at the office, a personalized card or letter is even rarer. And this is the magnificent opportunity for custom business greeting cards.

What is a custom business greeting card?

A custom corporate greeting card is not your grandma’s Hallmark card. It’s a highly crafted greeting in a traditional greeting card format, with a clever seasonally relevant message that is personalized for the recipient. And that often has subtle product, brand or company messaging concealed in its content.

The card is addressed to one or more targeted individuals (using a spreadsheet) and is signed electronically, but in a stylized handwriting font, from a person that has or wants to build a relationship with the recipient.

Here is an example of a card one our custom greeting card clients sent to its customers from its sales reps in January 2017:

Happy Lunar New Year – business greeting card

See more examples of custom business greeting cards.

Here are 10 great reasons to use custom business greeting cards

  1. Technology automates personalization, yet preserves the personal feeling communicated by the card.
  2. You can subtly communicate corporate, brand and campaign messaging in  a seasonal greeting, because the cards are created specifically for you and our company.
  3. Cards cut through the traditional marketing noise in by evoking emotions in a poignant or humorous manner. They can be careful crafted by our card writers to deliver a message that is memorable and shareable.
  4. It’s P2P marketing in a B2B world, leveraging human connection and relationships.
  5. It’s an unmarketing strategy.
  6. Diminishing traditional “snail mail” flow has created an opportunity for your message to get through.
  7. Sending a card during periods when someone is not expecting a card (outside of the December greeting season) has huge impact.
  8. Using on demand printing and targeted lists from personalized senders reduces wasted pre-printed greeting card inventory.
  9. It’s significant more effective than bulk mail campaigns.
  10. It’s more cost effective than spray and pray bulk mail campaigns and costs about the same on a per card basis than if you purchased greetings from a store that sells stationery and related supplies.

How to use a bespoke business thank you cards to build connections

Once upon a time, failing to send a card after meeting in person was considered almost rude. Today it is almost never done any more. A call-out on social media or a personal email is the replacement. But it is often missed, overlooked or met with indifference by the recipient.

However, receiving a “nice to meet you” greeting card in the mail, a few days after a meeting is always a really nice touch. The best sales people use these touchpoints that foster P2P deep relationships to stand apart from their marketplace competition.

The challenge is time. Busy executives and sales rarely have time to find an envelope, dig out a generic card – or buy one from a stationery store. The era of personal secretaries or assistant is long gone, and is an asset afforded only by the most senior executives these days.

Our solution is to provide on demand greeting cards customized explicitly for your company. To send one you simply  send an email to one of our agency reps, let them know which custom card design in your company’s inventory that you would like to use. And a screen grab or photo snap of the recipient’s business card. The card is prepared from you and printed that night and mailed via 1st class mail the next day.

How to convert website visitors into customers with excellent content positioning

infographicNever underestimate the power of website content positioning. Experts will tell you that getting your positioning right can be the difference between generating large volumes of business and generating none at all. If your website looks attractive and professional then potential customers will be impressed but if they can’t find your products and/or services or don’t know how to contact you, there is no point in having a website.

You’ve created engaging videos, image banners, an excellent logo and you know it is going to look great on your website. And it no doubt will look great but if you don’t position your content correctly, it will have all been in vain.

If you’re going to go to the trouble of developing great content, make sure that you position every item in the right place for maximum effect. So for example, you need to position your call to action in a highly prominent place. This is the key feature that will be converting your visitors to customers, so it is your number one priority.

You can use this handy infographic: 25 features every online business must have, to guide you in regards to where to position all of your website’s content. From where to add your logo and tagline, to your navigation menu and what to put in your header and footer, it has everything you need to know.

If you use this as a template, you can’t go wrong with your content positioning. It can also serve as a checklist to ensure that you’ve remembered to include all of the key features that any good website should include.

How to convert website visitors into customers with excellent content positioning

What is Leadpages?

 9 ways you can use the landing page tool to grow your online business I thought was cool recently when in the same week I got two calls from two of our clients with three days asking – Hey Andy, What is LeadPages? In both cases the clients were looking to grow their online businesses. They …

Continue reading “What is Leadpages?”

Why business greeting cards should be part of your B2B marketing

Personal marketing cuts through B2B marketing noise Being noticed in the crowded noise of B2B marketing is increasingly difficult these days.  There is the electronic noise that buyers are subject to on the Internet. There are reams of  marketing emails in their inbox begging for attention. Then there are ads on their mobile devices. Trade …

Continue reading “Why business greeting cards should be part of your B2B marketing”

How to convert website visitors into customers with excellent content positioning

Never underestimate the power of website content positioning. Experts will tell you that getting your positioning right can be the difference between generating large volumes of business and generating none at all. If your website looks attractive and professional then potential customers will be impressed but if they can’t find your products and/or services or …

Continue reading “How to convert website visitors into customers with excellent content positioning”

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