Lead Capture/Landing Page burnout!!
Read More: I'm going to be a bit contraversial with this blog post - so hold on to your pants (aka 'trousers' for any Brits out there!).
I don't about you, but when I see Landing Pages or one-site pages with heavy use of video testimonials, statistics about how much money has been made etc etc..do you know what I do now?
Well, I don't close the page (although sometimes I do for fun - just to see if I get a message pop-up box with a piece of software pretending to be a virtual assistant, offering me a discount..always worth a try!!).
What I do instead, is grab the scroll bar and zoom straight down to the bottom of the page to see how many $$$ (or£££) it's gonna cost.
What do I get from this exercise? Well, I can more logically evaluate whether or not the product fits my bank balance for starters. I very nearly purchased The Arbitrage Conspiracy* recently. Funnily enough, the high price tage ($1997) didn't put me off - mostly because of the in-depth review that Eric Holmlund did on his website & also the very comprehensive response on his own affilate link page [there! you can decide who gets the money now :) ].
The Arbitrage Conspiracy is is really a attention-grabbing name for a 12 week intensive training course, offering the complete newbie to PPC advertising with CPA's (see Eric review on his affiliate link if your eyes are glazing over!). I nearly bought it.
I've decided not to: I'm too new this whole deal (PPC/CPA's etc) to make a good go of it at the moment - I need to get experience lower down the pipeline with less risk of burning big holes in my finances.
Anyway, back on target: as I say, to start with, I speed-scrolled to the bottom of the page, and when I saw the price I thought: "better check why this costs so much".
The landing page is very compelling. We're all after financial freedom here - which is why we've joined various network & internet marketing ventures. It's a very exciting time to be living in, full of amazing opportunities & all the more so now that the very economic foundations of our modern world seem to be crumbling so fast.
I've read a few good books on the psychology of marketing over the last few months: one of the best has been Dr Robert Cialdini's book Inflience: The Psychology of Persuasion. Good landing pages, for leads, or PPC campaigns or whatever product we're marketing are all about taking advantage of the psychological triggers that unconsciously (unless you know about them!) influence us.
The problem is this, (and I don't know if research is being done on this idea or not - I'm interested to know!): what happens if you get Landing Page burnout?
Let me give you an example of what I mean, with Joanna Blogs.
Joanna is a 25 year-old single mum who has 2 children under the age of five. She just about makes ends meet every month, and then one day she comes across an amazing offer from Googling "Home Business".
She goes to the Lead Capture page of the distributor's site, looks at the (completely genuine) results, and immediately signs up for more information. Joanna is a clever lady though, so she decides to keep digging around, rather than just thinking "this is the answer to all my problems!".
By the end of the night, she's visited a dozen capture pages from various network marketing opportunities, and is completely frazzled - excited, but confused because all the offers seem so good, with such compelling content. She doesn't sleep well that night, understandably.
You can probably see where I'm leading with this story: by the end of the week, Joanna has seen 20, 30 or maybe more lead capture pages (plus endless offers for inexpensive affiliate products that she's followed up on once the autoresponders kick in).
Joanna is a lead-capture burnout victim!
She is overloaded with information from so many good offers. She's also spent a couple of hundred dollars on products that seem to promise financial deliverance. But she's so overloaded with promises, capture page graphics and autoresponder mailshots, she has no idea what to do.
Potentially worse than this however, is that she could easily conclude that the landing pages she's visited are scams (OK, some of them might be, but in my story I'm wanting to focus on genuine offers only) - and she starts bad-mouthing about the companies & products that she's been exposed to, when she gets in work lunchtime chat with some of her friends.
So, as internet/network marketers where do we go from here?
We have a choice I believe:
- we can do what everyone else does: we can develop roll-out/off-the-shelf landing pages that are like millions of others out there, along with autoresponder mail-shots that are like thousands of other out there, with lots of affiliate links so we can start earning (I have no problem about that bit by the way..I'm just trying to provoke discussion here).
OR
- we can do things a bit differently: yes, by all means provide compelling content on the capture page - but how about really coming clean and having a breakout box with some personal info about yourself and your successes AND failures, or how about, in the case of an affiliate product, a breakout box which has info. about what skill level is needed for this particular product, and what possible further financial outlay can be expected if you do the course/by the product (I got this idea from one of the comments on Eric's page above by the way).
- Be more upfront about the small print - ie the disclaimer that is normally very small at the bottom of the page.
Won't that mean less sales or less leads as a consequence?
Maybe.
But...maybe this isn't such a bad thing: it might mean that as a consequence, we get better quality leads, or in the case of an affiliate product (or one of our own products), we get less complaints/returns from people who never get anywhere with it.
Just a (long) thought...what do you think?
*this is an affiliate link, so be aware that if you click through & order the product, I'll get something for your efforts
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About the Author: Dez Futak
Member Since: 10/12/2008
I'm a Distributor For:: CarbonCopyPRO
Other Company: Magnetic Marketing Ltd
Industry: Internet
Primary Web Site: http://DezFutak.com
I hear you. It's a big
I hear you. It's a big problem. I absolutely hate filling out lead capture pages. In the past if I couldn't get any further without giving my info. many times I would look for another option. I like your ideas for being more upfront. I get very turned off by sales stuff that hints at something but you really have no idea what it is. I personally would be more apt to do business with people who are more honest. Pitches full of hype are a dime a dozen and quality leads can smell the hype. The people who are looking for a get-rich-quick scheme will be sold on hype.
Get rich slow!
Hi Susy - thanks for the comment...re "The people who are looking for a get-rich-quick scheme will be sold on hype."
....yes, very true!
I have to say though, until I reached Capture page burnout myself, I was taken in by the compelling content...after having seen >1000 such pages in the last 3 months, I'm pretty hardened to it all now. MIke Dillard's capture pages *are* good though - especially the low-key way he does his presentations: I can still be persuaded by someone who comes across as totally genuine. Am I still a sucker then? I hope not :)