In yesterday’s blog post we took a closer look at the type of people you’re trying to get on your list. Now t’s time to re-evaluate your opt-in offer. How long has it been since you’ve changed, or even looked at the lead magnet you are offering?

It’s easy to set it up when you first get started with list building, and then never look back. You keep sending more and more traffic to your opt-in forms and opt-in pages, doing everything you can to grow your list, but you don’t really consider how important your opt-in offer is in converting people into subscribers.

After yesterday’s exercise, you should have a pretty good idea of who your ideal subscribers are. That will make it much easier to find and create an opt-in offer that appeals to them. It may take just a little bit of tweaking to what you already have in place. Or maybe you realize that you started out with the wrong content in the wrong format. In either case, it’s time to take a look and make some important decisions.

Your lead magnet should grab your readers’ attention and make them want to sign up right away, just to receive it. Then you want to impress them with the content and give them fast results provided they use the opt-in freebie they received. Let’s talk about how we can make that happen.

Sit down and make a list of burning questions your ideal subscriber may have right now. What problems do they face, what’s their biggest challenge? Or what are they most curious and excited about?  Strong emotions are the key to a good lead magnet.

Once you have decided on a topic, take a minute to think about the best format to present it in. What makes the most sense, both for the topic you’re covering and for your readers? Decide if you should make it a downloadable pdf, an email course, an audio recording, a video recording, or a secret page on your website that contains the information in text and multimedia formats..

If you don’t already have one set up, now is a great time to do that. It doesn’t have to be complicated. A basic opt-in page consists of just a few key elements. Get them on there and you’re good to go. Of course testing each of these elements over the coming weeks is something you should work on going forward.

The Key Elements Of An Opt-in Page

• Headline: Start with a compelling headline that grabs your reader’s attention and pulls them in.
• Graphic: Having a graphic of your opt-in freebie, a picture of you, or an image that conveys at a glance what your list and your lead magnet are about is another great way to get your potential subscribers attention.Alternatively you could use a short video here.
• Benefits: Make it easy for someone to glance at the opt-in page and figure out why they should sign up. Keep the focus on what’s in it for them. What can they get out of your lead magnet and the content you’ll be sharing with your list? Keep it short and focus on 3 to 5 key benefits. Presenting them in a bulleted list can help.
• Opt-in Form: Of course you also need a way for readers to sign up. Get your opt-in form front and center on your page and make it easy to sign up.
• Call To Action: Be specific and tell your readers exactly what you want them to do. This can be before or after the opt-in form. Tell them to enter their first name and primary email address and click “Submit” (or whatever your submit button says). It’s also helpful to tell them what to do next. For example, that they should look for a confirmation email.
• Personal Closing: I find it helps with credibility to include a personal closing with my name and a picture of me towards the end. Adding a strong P.S. highlighting the main benefit of signing up can also help with opt-in conversion.

Get your opt-in page set up and then consider adding a few more. If you’re serving different segments of a market, it may be helpful to have different pages that speak directly to each sub group.  We’ll talk more about that later on.

And of course you should be testing your opt-in pages and each of the key elements continually to get better and better conversions.

Take the next few days to rework your opt-in. Even more important than the format is the quality of content. Make it your goal to over deliver and impress your new subscribers. Get it all written up or recorded and uploaded to your site. Don’t forget to edit opt-in forms and pages, welcome email, thank you page and any other download pages and places where you mention the opt-in offer.

With that in place, you’re almost ready to open the flood gates and start driving traffic to your offer. There’s one more thing we need to get in place, which we’ll talk about tomorrow……

To Your Success!

Coach Cheryl

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