Michael Wilding

Category: Conversion

Fear And Loathing In Your Home
I’m shocked.

And I’m not talking about the result of the EU referendum (if you’ve been following it), or any other specific political event.

I’m shocked at the way politicians are using headlines to create fear in order to make you vote the way they want you to.

It doesn’t matter what side of the fence you sit on. It doesn’t matter what country you’re in. They’re all doing the same thing.

As marketers we know that fear based headlines work. They work extremely well.

But we also know…

If you use them too often then they start to have the opposite effect.

And politicians are sure as hell using them too often.

Which is why when there is any form of voting, like the one we just had in the UK, it’s impossible for people to predict which way the country will vote.

Bringing it back to marketing, we know the marketers who use these fear based headlines incessantly generally…
- Don’t have a clue what they’re talking about
- Sell crap products
- Are only interested in getting our money as quickly as possible
- Will offer no support or backup
Okay, so you may not think that’s bringing it back to marketing. Anyhoo…

Let’s learn a lesson here for your business. If you constantly use fear in your headlines and fear in your marketing then it will, eventually, backfire.

So on Monday I’m going to share five alternatives that are just as effective.

See you then,

Michael

P.S. Don’t forget you can pre-register to get early notification when my book and newsletter (delivered directly to your door) is released.

www.michaelwilding.com/mw-early-bird/
June 30, 2016
Subscribe To Popular Thought and You’re Screwed

I don’t often use pictures in emails, but you’re gonna need to turn them on for this one because I want to ask you a question.

Here are two examples of opt-in forms…

Both of these opt-in forms are making a big mistake. Can you see what it is?

They’re both subscribing to something that’s popular thought. In fact it’s been said so many times that everyone just believes it’s something you should do.

But you shouldn’t.

In fact it will lower the conversion rate of these landing pages.

And I’ve tested it extensively!

I’m about to give you the answer, so if you want to keep looking then stop reading now.

Both have a message under the submit button saying how much they hate spam and they will keep your email safe.

No no no no no.

They think this is a good thing to do. Why? Because spam is bad, so I’m going to give confidence to our visitor. Why? Because I’ve seen other people doing it and all the landing page software puts this in by default.

Subscribing to a popular belief that this message will help your conversions because it gives more trust.

Wrong.

What it does is put the thought into your visitors head that you might spam them, when they almost certainly never had that thought to begin with.

And the result of doing that… lowers your conversion rates.

Never just assume something is better because loads of other people do it. Always test it for yourself.

Heck… that goes for the stuff I tell you as well. It works for me, but you should test it for yourself before deciding if it’s going to suit you.

I’m going to be giving you a whole load more things to test shortly in my new book and newsletter written on real old-school paper.

www.michaelwilding.com/mw-early-bird/

Ciao

Michael

June 28, 2016
Sweaty Palms

Holly’s just walked out the door for her driving lesson, and I know within about 15 minutes she’s going to have sweaty palms because she finds driving lessons stressful.

Before she left we were having a cup of coffee with breakfast and I said to her that although she didn’t like it, she just had to get her head down, focus and learn how to do it as quickly as possible by practising as much as possible.

Because once she’s got her driving license if she needs to drive then she can, if she doesn’t need to and doesn’t enjoy it then she can let someone else drive for her (that’ll be me!).

It’s the same thing with your business. There’s gonna be things to do you just hate. That’s just how it is. Take a big breath, suck it up, learn to do it as well and effectively as possible and then you can do it. When you can afford someone else to do it for you then you’ll have the bonus of knowing if they’re doing it well.

And that’s a big bonus believe me.

Probably the thing I hear most people complain about is writing headlines.

Which is weird, because online you’re writing headlines all the time.

They’re one of the most important parts of sales copy, they’re the subject line of every email and they’re the first part of any blog post.

So whether you like them or not, you’re gonna be writing them. Here are three steps to do them quickly and effectively.

1. Just sit down and write. Don’t think about them or try and craft the perfect one. Put your pen on paper and write the first ten things that come to your head. They might be a load of crap, but that doesn’t matter. Just write.

2. Read them out loud. This will tell you what they sound like to your prospects when they read them. Cross out any that sound horrendous and you should be down to just a few.

3. Check if the headline converts some form of urgency, shock or something that is unique. You want people to spend a moment thinking about it because then you’ve hooked them in. For example…. don’t say “Let Me Show You How To Make $500”. That’s boring as f**k, been seen a thousand times and nobody cares. However if you say… “My Mutt Made Me $500, And This Is How…” that’s interesting, it’s unique, and something doesn’t quite sit right. After all, how the heck can a dog make money like that!

And if you want to optimise your headlines, then here’s the badger.

https://michaelwilding.com/recommends/?id=thriveheadlineoptimiser

Over and out.

Michael

June 20, 2016
I’ll huff and I’ll puff until…

When I was a kid my mum and step-father used to own a children’s theatre company. One of the most popular shows was the Three Little Pigs.

If you don’t know the story, then very briefly it’s about three little pigs who leave their mum’s house and go into the forest to build their own. They need to build their houses strong enough to keep them safe from the big bad wolf.

But little pig number one and little pig number two build their houses from straw and sticks, the wolf blows them down and eats them up.

(if you were told the friendlier version they ran to their brother’s house, but I prefer to go with got gobbled up)

Little pig number three built his house from bricks and the wolf couldn’t blow it down so he climbed the roof, went down the chimney and fell straight into a cooking pot that the little pig had put on the fire.

When you look at it like that it’s a pretty gruesome children’s tale. Anyhoo…

The reason I’m telling you this is because we can learn some great lessons from it for our marketing and squeeze pages.

Lesson 1

Like the wolf, if you don’t succeed first time then keep on trying until you do. Yeah I know he fell in a pot of boiling water under a chimney, but I can guarantee that won’t happen to you. What will happen is… you’ll eventually succeed.

Lesson 2

Each of the three pigs built a house from different materials. Two failed and one worked. That’s what we call a split-test, and you want to do the exact same on all of your squeeze pages. Start with two or three versions and see which one works. Take the one that works and try another variation, repeat until you’re getting an opt-in rate for your traffic source of at least 30% and ideally 40%.

Awesome hint: Do this on one traffic source at a time. For example do it with solo-ads from one provider until you’ve got it working, then start again for the next provider. Different sources will give you different results so tailor your squeeze page to each source of traffic.

This is what I use to make awesome landing pages that convert like billy-o in just a few minutes.

https://michaelwilding.com/recommends/?id=thrvlndpg

Ciao,

Michael

June 12, 2016
Secrets Of Landing Pages That Convert

If you own a website then you have a landing page, even if you don’t realise it.

I was chatting with someone recently who said they had a website and really needed to sort out a landing page, and I was kinda like… dude you already have one.

“No I don’t, I haven’t made one yet!”

But you don’t have to make one specifically. A landing page is, by definition, a page that someone visiting your website lands on.

Now that page may suck, it may not do anything of any use, it may get you no sales and no leads, but it’s still a landing page because (hopefully) people are landing on it.

Anybody can make a landing page.

That’s simple.

But not anybody can make a landing page that converts.

That’s still simple, but most people don’t put some basic things in place which means their conversion sucks.

I’m going to give you the three secrets of making a landing page that works.

Yes you can look into this further. Yes you can talk for hours about the copywriting needed. But ultimately if you have these three things you’ll see a massive difference.

Number One is…

Focus.

Your landing page must be focused on just one thing. Never ask someone to do more than one thing at a time. Give them a choice and they won’t do anything. Decide if you want to get leads or make a sale, personally I prefer to go for leads. Decide what you going to offer your lead to register and then focus your entire landing page on telling them the benefits they’ll get from registering.

(A quick note, benefits does not mean bore them senseless with how awesome what your giving away is. They don’t give a rats ass. Tell them how it will solve their troubles and make their life better)

Number Two is…

Keep It Simple.

Just ask them for their email. Every time you ask them for an extra piece of information you’ll lose some of your registrations.

If you really need more than an email then ask for the email first, once they’ve given it to you then ask for the rest of the information. At least if they decide not to give it to you then you can still contact them via email to try and get it again.

I’ve never found a good argument for asking for more than an email on the first page of a registration form.

Number Three is…

Make it visible.

By which I mean make sure that your opt-in box, the place where people enter their email and the button they click, is above the fold on EVERY display type.

That means that they don’t have to scroll anywhere to optin. Bear in mind that a huge number of people now visit sites from their mobiles and tablets, so please, please, please check what it looks like on those devices as well.

If you don’t have a smartphone or tablet, then use a website that mimics them so you can check.

Registering should be visible (almost the first thing after the headline) and easy to do. Make sure you aren’t using text colours on the submit button that disappear into the button colour. That’s a sure fire way to lose leads.

And if you want to make landing pages quickly and easily, I use Thrive Themes to make mine in a matter of minutes.

https://michaelwilding.com/recommends/?id=thrvlndpg

Speak soon,

Michael

May 31, 2016