PP 667: How to Build an Awesome Landing Page with Bob Sparkins

“A landing page is simply an intentional conversion point where you’re trying to address a specific audience with a specific challenge with a specific solution.” – Bob Sparkins

Bob Sparkins has been with Leadpages since its early days. He was customer number 43 when he signed on on their first day in 2012. In 2014, Bob joined Leadpages as a full-time employee, and to this day teaches customers how to succeed with the product.

Listen as Bob and Kim talk shop, discussing split testing, brand consistency, mistakes entrepreneurs make on the landing pages, pop-ups and more!

Highlights:
03:29 Bob’s background with Leadpages
06:45 Thinking about where you send people
09:01 Split testing
10:36 Consistency (from ads to landing page to thank you page)
17:00 Be willing to be more of you
22:11 What is a landing page?
25:53 Segmentation
28:00 Picking a niche
33:35 Knowing which sandbox you want to play in
36:53 Common mistakes on landing pages
41:45 Making URLs easier
45:30 Pop-ups

Resources:

Gratisography
Leadpages
Pixel Caffeine
Website in a Weekend Course
Deal for PPP Listeners

Inspirational Quotes:

“Sometimes what we think is going to work doesn’t… At all.” – Kim Sutton

“It’s not about what you think is going to work. It’s what the audience responds to.” – Bob Sparkins

“Numbers don’t lie, people do.” – Bob’s brother

“Any social post that you do is an ad, you’re just not paying for it with money to Facebook’s algorithm. You’re paying for it from the audience build-up that you’ve done over time.” – Bob Sparkins

“You’ve gotta let your guard down a little bit. Be willing to be more of you — maybe just a little more amplified in the marketing world — but don’t try to be somebody you’re not.” – Bob Sparkins

“A landing page is simply an intentional conversion point where you’re trying to address a specific audience with a specific challenge with a specific solution.” – Bob Sparkins

About Bob Sparkins:

As the Lead Evangelist at Leadpages, Bob Sparkins champions the customers of the top landing page and website building conversion platform and the audiences they serve. A former high school history teacher and academic team coach, Bob has taught business owners around the world how to leverage digital marketing to impact more people with less effort since 2006. He is the author of Take Action, Revise Later; and lives in Bloomington, Minnesota with his wife, Therese, and their amusing kids, Kira and Landon. Connect with Bob on the social channels via @BobTheTeacher.

• Website: https://www.takeactionreviselater.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BobTheTeacher/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bobtheteacher
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bobtheteacher/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobtheteacher/

EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION: BOB SPARKINS

Transcript not yet cleaned up, but thanks for checking it out!

Kim Sutton: Welcome back to another episode of positive productivity. This is your host, Kim Sutton.

If this is your first episode, I want you to go back to the very beginning. If you’re listening on Apple podcasts or whatever platform you’re listening on, there is an archive show where you can find the first 300 episodes which blows my mind considering we are now on episode 667. But the reason I want you to go back and listen to some of those early episodes is because I shared a lot during that those episodes about how I was trying to do too much on my own. How I struggled with spending money on things I shouldn’t have. I tried to do way too much with very little support. And our guest today is from a company that started making my entrepreneurial journey a lot easier.

Kim Sutton: Bob Sparkins is with Leadpages. And for any of you who have not heard of Leadpages, before, it has been in my back pocket. I don’t know if you can see Bob how long I’ve been a member for at least four years, I would say probably even five or six. I’ve been building my sales pages. They’re my, my landing pages. I have clients who have built their entire websites, but you just make it easy. Bob, thank you so much for joining me. It is such a pleasure to have you here.

Bob Sparkins: Thank you so much for having me, Kim. And I have to say first congratulations on reaching that milestone of 667 episodes and also thank you for not having me be 666 Oh, my gosh, an auspicious number. So whoever you had last week, hope you had one heck of a time!

Kim Sutton: That it hasn’t been recorded yet, but that is going to be me. Me and Me. And I think I’m going to do a compilation of a whole bunch of bloopers.

Bob Sparkins: That would be a perfect 666 episode.

Kim Sutton: Yeah, it decided I could not subject any guest to that number. How long have you been with lead pages? And I just know this already, but it’s really great for you to share it with the audience anyway. I mean, are you one of the founders?

Bob Sparkins: I feel like that some days, but I am not technically a founder. But I am customer number 43. Oh my gosh. So I started from the very first day that web pages was launched when Clay Collins started it up back in 2012 with a pre launch and then it went live in January 2013. And I use it as a customer for a couple of years and then in 2014 after doing some contract work with LeadPages to create tutorial videos. on how to connect lead pages to AWeber and Infusionsoft and all the other msps, I was brought on full time. And so to answer your question more specifically, since September of 2014, so over five years, almost six years now that I have been part of the lead pages team, but since the very beginning, I’ve been a customer, still an active customer, and use it with my wife’s executive coaching business, for her marketing and get into it every day, basically, for my job here lead pages as the lead evangelists. So I love using it I love how it does make life easier for myself and for the people that I get to work with in my role.

Well, that explains why I thought that you could possibly be one of the founders. And after you said it I was like, you don’t you know Clay Collins his name. So I

can just write it offers a temporary brain fart, please.

Sure, sure. And it’s been a while you know, and clay is no longer Part of the LeadPages family he moved on to startup nomics. And a few months back, we were acquired by a Canadian company, red brick. So I am one of five people who remain with the team that was here, since, you know, virtually the very beginning. Wow. So I knew he’s talking. I do feel sort of like the founder, even though I don’t have that, that title nor privilege of having come up with the idea.

So I became an Infusionsoft certified partner. I’m no longer one. And I don’t even know if they’re called keep certified partners, or what they call them these days, but in late 2014, and it was just about that same time that I signed up, because I realized how easy it was going to be to make lead pages. But until that point, I have to say I was relatively just not informed. And maybe that’s how it was for most people in this time period. of what’s the lead page. What is a landing page? What’s a pop up? What’s the goal here? You know, and I feel like in the work that I do now, because I build funnels for my clients, or I work with them on their marketing strategies, a lot of them are still going through that. Why do I need this? Know How? And I have to keep on explaining, well, you’re out there, you’re speaking. You’re on podcasts, you’re on social media. Where are you sending these people? And the most common answer that I receive is back to my website, like, Well, great, but we’re on your website, because they’re probably going to get lost in a sea of everything. So how about if you send them to something specific?

Yeah, that’s really critical to do that. Because if you send people to a generic website that you hope appeals to everybody, it tends to not appeal to anybody. And this is one of the reasons why we really Stress, whether you’re using us for landing pages or using us for your full website, you have to first ask yourself the question, what do I want people to do? When they get on this page? How do I want them to convert? And so you can use a lot of different tools. And I’m sure you’re going to learn advice from me and Kim, in this episode, about what you can do with a website to make it higher converting, no matter what platform you’re using, but understand that lead pages are theory and our hypothesis that gets tested out over and over again, is that when you have a website that’s designed around conversion, then your business grows, because it helps you to focus on what you want people to do, what actions you want them to take and how you can best serve them.

Absolutely. So one of the

one of the common common stories that I like to share with clients who still don’t get it is I have moved here to Ohio from outside of New York City. There was a diner that we would go to quite often. And it had nine pages for a menu. And it would take us a good half an hour, 45 minutes to figure out what we wanted every single time. And it’s the same with our kids. If we tell them seven different options for dinner, it’s going to take a year and a half to figure out what we’re eating for dinner. And I’m going to get I’m going to be starving and terribly grumpy by the time to make a decision. So, like on this episode, or on any Instagram post, if I have something specific I’m talking about, I always tell them go here. Go here, there’s this one place that you can sign up to get this freebie. And it just makes it so easy. Yeah, I want that. Not go here sift through all my stuff. That’s not the word I would have used if I was being improper today, sift through all my stuff and find it I get lost on my own website. Sometimes I don’t want my clients to I have to say that one of the my favorite in Yeah, this is a podcast. Pages considering who we’re talking to. But very early on, I remember it may have been, it may have even been you, Bob, but I was learning about split testing. And I had no idea what it was just change one element, see what works, see what works better, and then keep on improving. So there was this one offer that I had. And all I did was change the background image of the page. And I was shocked because the image that I liked, that page had a 13% conversion. Whereas the pictures that I didn’t like so much had something like a 64%. Sometimes what we think is going to work, does it at all.

It’s hilarious, my very first split test that I did before I joined LeadPages I put my photo on the page, or I didn’t have my photo on the page, and I was like, Well, I’m gonna make this human connection and it’s gonna be great. My picture was much worse as a result of the split test. So you have Take your ego out of it a little bit. And it could be a different picture of you could work better. As you mentioned, you know, having a different background image. It’s not about what you think is gonna work. It’s what the audience responds to. And like my brother used to say, numbers don’t lie people do. And we tend to lie to ourselves about what’s going to convert the most, but you do have to test it and it’s really good to be able to put a couple variations together so that your traffic sees alternating versions and see which actually turns out to be the best.

Absolutely. What have you seen as far as customers go in consistency from let’s just say an ad I don’t do a lot of ads. Bob, I like to grow things very organically. But I have run ads in the past. From ads to landing page to thank you page. As far as consistency in imagery goes.

Bob Sparkins: It’s really critical. And I would say before I give more advice on this, that any social post that you do is an ad. You’re just not paying for it with money to Facebook’s algorithm, you’re paying for it from the audience build up that you’ve done over time, right? So every social post, though you should think of as an ad, because you want people to take action on it, whether it’s an engagement comment, or you want them to click through to the next page, or the link in the first comment. Everything is still tied together. So whether you’re using a social post with an image or a video, or an ad, with an image or video, your landing page should not feel like it was made by a completely different person. And I see that all the time. People want the click through rate on their ads, so they put this supermodel or something that’s really eye catching and weird. That gets people to stop there scroll in the feed, which you want to do that you want to have something on the screen that makes people stop But if they click on that, and they go to a page, and it’s completely different and look and feel, tone, voice, etc, then people are going to have this disconnection and they’re not going to want to take action on that page. And Facebook is going to see, if you do have this as an ad, they’re going to see it as a bad delivery of value to your audience. And so they’re going to charge you more money for your ads, they’re going to stop showing your ads to the different types of people based on who they think is going to get the most value from it. So you don’t have to use like the same exact picture. But if you do a picture of yourself, for example, then have a picture of you pretty visible on the page doesn’t have to be the hero though. It would be great if it’s in that top hero section. But somewhere on the page, there should still be a picture of you can be a different position. But if you ever go and do a photoshoot and you take yourself into like seven or 10 In different kind of positions of headshots and whatnot, then having that common theme just makes people feel comfortable that they clicked on a post, or they clicked on an ad. And when they got to that landing page, they feel like they’re still in the same house, you know, they walk through the front door, they still feel like they’re, they’re in the same house, they feel like they’re talking to the same person, they’re gonna want to continue that conversation. If you do it the other way. It’s like walking into one coffee shop. And when you walk inside, it’s a toy store. And then you’re actually trying to buy a car, you know, it’s like totally different disc populations that are going to be happening, and it just doesn’t work out. So consistency, not just with images, but also the words you’re using the headline that you’re using, the attitude of your ad, and then how that reflects on the landing page. Doesn’t matter what your attitude sounds like, you know, if you’re brusque or hypee, or you’re soft and loving and generous or whatever, like, just be consistent around your ads, social posts and your landing pages.

I love this on so many levels because I have been guilty of and I’ll put a link to this one in the show notes which listeners you can find it though KIM SUTTON comm forward slash 667 my sense of humor can be a little bit off. Or let me just say more than a little bit off sometimes. And I found this site gratis holography which has great just very a typical royalty free cost free images. So I started using those like you were talking about in in ads, and I’m going to use paid ads in this example to get them to stop scrolling and pay attention. But then when they click through to the landing page, that same humor wasn’t there. And I started word, I use text in all copy that I thought I was supposed to be using, per what other people were doing. So I went from a voice that was mine, to a voice that was not mine. And those idiots converted well. And the more that I’ve become more comfortable in my own skin, and comfortable with my very sometimes off colors and see humor, always politically correct, though I must say that and shared that the better it’s been Don’t be afraid to share yourself in your ads in your social posts on your landing page on your sales page and your website when I became freer, and took off the, like the handcuffs of what all the internet gurus said I should say and started saying how I wanted to say it all got so much easier and more successful.

Bob Sparkins: Well, I think what you’re speaking to Kim is your ability to become more and more visibly authentic to who you are. It’s a lot easier to reach people with authenticity which people are starving for, especially with social media and Instagram culture, and whatever that If you are putting up your own persona all the time, it gets exhausting to keep that up if it’s really different from who you are as an actual person. So you’re absolutely right if you carry your humor through, and you don’t shy away from it. I have frequently I’ve done podcast recordings and events with Talia wolf. I don’t know if you’re familiar with her. She’s a conversion rate optimizer. And I remember the first time she and I got on camera together for a zoom conference call for the podcast recording. We weren’t even recording the video. I could see that she had some really cool stuff on her back shelf. She was wearing like a bad girl shirt she had on our she had like, pop Funko things in the background. There’s Star Wars stuff everywhere. And just that kind of stuff that personality. People are really wanting that connection, no matter what it is, no matter how quirky it may be. And you’re now almost to 700 episodes and I don’t think you’d be there. If people didn’t feel like they were making a connection with you. So for anybody else listening You’ve got to let your guard down a little bit, and be willing to be more of you, maybe just a little bit more amplified in the marketing world. But don’t try to be somebody that you’re not

by signing huge shift in my business in 2016, because that’s when

I went through major anxiety and depression,

partially because of sleep deprivation, and I’m going to put 90% of it on sleep deprivation. I was sleeping maybe two hours a night for 18 months straight. And the other side of it was looking at what I saw on social media and thinking I didn’t stack up. Why am I working this hard? And I’m not. I’m not anywhere close to all these pretty pictures that I see online. And I had a very incredible experience. I’m not going to get into that right now and completely shifted. How I do when I partially shifted. It’s been a journey for the last four years, how I do my business and the way I live in to myself, but the biggest part came with I am me, and they are them. And I don’t know what it looks like outside their camera view. But I know that if I just shift my camera a little bit, then you’re going to see piles of laundry that have yet to be sorted and put away. They’re going to see pictures on my walls that my kids drew with permanent markers when I wasn’t looking, and all this other stuff in the moment that I started getting confident that I could share that without being judged, but actually connect with people was I’ve shared my credit score on the podcast, I’ve shared my weight into my email list. And our journeys with foreclosure and in repossession. And up until 2016, I would have been ashamed to share any of it because I would have thought that people would judge me because I wasn’t perfect, but I realized that just by opening up and we can do this everywhere just by opening up. There was more than that. connection. So I so appreciate you bringing that up. We have to be authentic and

live and share our truth in the way that like I have mixed feelings in some industries that might not serve so well. But in mine, it will.

Bob Sparkins: I think it kind of depends on what you’re trying to offer to the to the world is in your business, right? If you are going through a financial hardship, it’s currently active, it’s raw. And you’re also trying to say I can get you out of debt, I can help you figure out how to deal with these financial situations, but you yourself haven’t done it yet. That’s very different. You know, but if you had it in your rearview mirror even just a few months or a year and you say, Look, I’m still recovering, I still got a ways to go. But if this is where you are, that’s where I was a year ago, I can help you take these first initial steps is very different. Right. So yeah, absolutely. I think there’s a phrase that I’m sure you’ve heard of before. Where your mess becomes your message, right? It doesn’t have to be but if it is, you know, be be truthful about it. Some audiences will resonate more with it, some of them will be like, I don’t need to know all that it’s TMI. But I think it really depends on your confidence in sharing the story and how you What is it serving? Is it serving your own ego? Or is it serving the greater purpose of your audience learning from mistakes that have been made in the past? I know I’ve had financial situations and relationship situations or whatever, where if I was in business at the time trying to teach people how to do something I was currently suffering from the anti of that I would have no credibility there, and therefore my business wouldn’t grow. So I do think it’s good to share. Listen to your audience’s response to it. And try not to pretend to know more than you actually do. And don’t be afraid to say, Hey, I’m on mile 20 if you’re on mile 10 I could help if you’re trying to get to mile 30. I can’t help you yet and be able to do that.

Yes, yes, there.

Thank you. I so appreciate that. And I just want to say, you know, this is the first example that came to my mind. And I don’t know why. I mean, if your business listener is selling water filters, then I would have to say, you know, maybe that’s not the place to be sharing your credit score and your weight and your financial hardships. It just really all has to do with industry. Hey there, my friend. I hope you’re enjoying this episode of the positive productivity podcast. I wanted to take a quick moment to invite you to join the work smarter, not harder challenge. Over the course of 30 days these free Yes, free short videos will teach you a few of the systems and strategies I set up in my business so I can get away from my computer and back to the people I love. I invite you to Sign up now at work smarter, not harder. challenge.com. Again, you can sign up at work smarter, not harder. challenge.com can we share with listeners who may not know what we’re talking about? What is a landing page?

Bob Sparkins: Sure. Um, so whenever there’s two different kind of versions of this answer. So one is, if somebody clicks on a link, whether it’s an ad, a social post, whatever the page they land on, is technically a landing page. Okay, so that can be a page on your website. But when we talk about landing pages, and I think to get to the heart of your question, we’re talking about a more carefully crafted page. That is more intentional than just whatever they clicked on to what they see. It’s designed around a particular problem and solution that you’re trying to share with an audience. So as an example, If you just went to lead pages dotnet, right now you would go to our homepage, go to our website. And you’ll notice on our social profiles, lead pages dotnet is typically what is shown. But on occasion, we love to change our profile link to lead pages dotnet slash webinar, or lead pages dotnet slash affiliates if we’re trying to attract affiliates or whatever. So the goal is, then what they’re seeing on that page is not all the different things about what LeadPages can do. It’s around the specific thing that we want you to know about. So LeadPages dotnet is a great homepage, but LeadPages dotnet slash free dash trial, you’re going there specifically for landing page that says, Here’s how to get a free trial started. And it’s not so much about giving you all the different details about what the pages can do. But it’s giving you here’s how to start a trial. Here’s why you’d want to take the next 14 days to figure it out. So as a business owner, same kind of thing. So as I mentioned, my wife is a coach. So she has a website. And her on her website, people can go and they can see all the different things she does as an executive coach. But when she’s more intentional about who’s clicking, and what she wants them to do, once they get to her site, she’s gonna send them to a landing page instead. so that it can be a downloadable checklist, for example, it can be a guide to, you know, doing leadership in a different way in your company, whatever. So a landing page is simply an intentional conversion point where you’re trying to address a specific audience with a specific challenge with a specific solution. And if you try to do too many things, like we mentioned earlier, you don’t appeal to anybody. So the more specific and focused and niche down your your individual landing pages are, the better you’re going to convert. And this also means that you can have as many different landing pages as you might want to address the different types of audiences that you have the different problems That you can solve. So even if you do have a service or you’re a coach, and let’s say you’re a business coach, and you do help people who are just starting out to get their first thousand subscribers, but you’re also a business coach who can help scale people from 50 K to 200 K, or from a million to 10 million, whatever it is, you wouldn’t use a landing page to say, hey, whether you’re just starting out or you’re ready to scale to a million dollars, here’s a checklist for you. Because it’s not appeal to both audiences and everybody in between. Right, so your landing page, would you’d have one landing page for the people just starting out, you’d have one landing page for the people who are trying to crack six figures and you’d have another landing page specifically for people who are going to scale to eight. So that’s, I guess, in a nutshell, how landing pages are should be thought of, instead of just the page that people see when they click.

I want to touch on the segmentation there a little bit more because I absolutely love segmentation And I try to work with my clients to get it into their funnel as soon as possible. Because just like you were saying, You Won’t you want to speak to all three audiences the same way. So I’ve started asking them, well, who are the three? What are the three distinguishing characteristics that may separate one person of your audience for the from the next. And one client, for example, is working with women over 40 who are not letting age be a barrier in reaching their dreams, whether it’s becoming a mother older than 40 are going for the next career. The next step in the career or I don’t know something else. So she might have a different offer for each one of them. Something on having children something unreached you know, moving off this plateau or number three and it’s just amazing to see how people can connect even greater when you’re speaking to where they are in their particular situation rather than that generalization.

I think it’s really good point that you make here because first of all, you do get to speak the language of the people that resonate the most with those segmentations. And then that example is a perfect one. And let’s say hypothetically, it’s becoming a parents. It’s a second career, or it’s becoming your own business owner, right as your three segments. They are going to have completely different needs and wants and desires and goals and dreams that you’re going to be speaking to. And yes, you as a business coach or a relationship coach or career coach, whatever. Life Coach you could speak to each one of those very well but if you try to do all of them all at the same time, you’re going to be exhausting on your individual landing pages on your website. It’s also liberating to me. You’ll I’m not know what your view on this. Kim is. But I know a lot of people who run in the in the coaching world who say you’ve got to pick a niche, right. And I think picking a niche is important. But especially for those of you that are still in the first two or three years of your business, you may not really know what that niche is yet because you haven’t had enough experience in the marketplace. To know which of your talents and gifts resonates the most will be the most lucrative for you, and the most rewarding financially and however else, you you gauge your rewards. So it’s good to be able to use different landing pages to be able to say, Hey, I can address these different audiences. I don’t have to talk to all of them at the same time about all these different things that can be specific. And then you can let your market help you determine what your niches so the individual landing pages then correspond to an individual niche but it allows you the freedom to not feel like you have to pick a niche that is going to determine the future of your company, especially if you’re in that first two or three years. Does it make sense?

Or in the case of KIM SUTTON, if you’re in your first six years? Yeah. Yeah, I didn’t figure it out for quite some time. And I was saying yes to everybody and everything. And then I, when I started really figuring out and to listeners who are looking to break, you know, 5000 a month or even 2000 a month. I’m not saying I don’t want to work with you, but the offerings that I have for you are completely different than those who are already into six figures. And there’s a sales coach out there who’s probably gonna go to statistics Kim, you’re making decisions for them. But I know that when I was trying to cross over 2000 are trying to cross over five, that you know, some spending 10,000 on a funnel was really going to break me and, and cause additional stress. And I, again, sales coaches, you could say it’s not your decision to make, it’s the client, but I don’t want that weigh on me. So it’s I have a done based upon that the answer to that question, I have a page for the done or the do it yourself that done with you or the done for you. And that way they know that I have their best interests in mind to my products should not cause stress in my opinion. I would love to hear your opinion on that.

Bob Sparkins: Yeah, I think you’re right on. And I would flip the table around and say that business owners who want to serve and you have a serving heart, like I used to be a high school teacher for 10 years. That’s why about the teachers my social handle and everything. I come into business before I joined lead pages wanting to just give and give and give and serve and serve and serve. And I would let the market kind of dictate what I would charge and what kind of offering I would do, because that’s the way I thought it would be. And if I went to the market with a program, and a bunch of people emailed me and said, Hey, I can’t afford $97 do you have the payment Plan, I would say, Sure I can whip one up. It’s technically possible. Let’s do that. And there’s nothing wrong with that, per se. But I do want to say that what I’ve learned after four or five years of being an entrepreneur, is that I needed to be more in control of what I wanted to offer the value, I could bring the value of what I brought, and the kind of clients that I wanted to work with. So I didn’t have to make my price determined by what what individual people might have said, I could say, look, here’s the program that I want to do that I get most fired up about that I can get the most results for people with. And I do think it carries this kind of price. And if that’s not for you, fine. Here’s a self service model like you’re saying, a done done with you done for you do it yourself kind of model, and I’ll take some of the pieces of the higher level stuff and still make it available. The trick is that you should be in control. And yes, you need to listen to The market as they’re telling you, that the price is too high or too low, but what they usually are really saying is, they don’t understand what the value is. And it may be a mismatch of the value to that individual person. So like you said, you know, a $10,000 funnel, for a person who’s just starting out, is probably too complex for the person who’s just starting out. And so it shouldn’t be a match for them. Right now, you know, there might be somebody who’s got a golden parachute, and they’re jumping on a corporate and they’re starting up their business and they’re like, I needed done, I needed done the best possible, and I’ve got this 20 K, you know, severance, I’m going to put half of it towards this and that’s fine. But if you are bootstrapping, and you’re you know, side hustling and you’ve got 500 a month for your business, then yeah, going into debt 10 grand is a waste of your, of your money at the point at this point. And it’s probably going to cause more stress and anxiety which is going to bleed into how you carry about your business because you’re always He’s worried about money, which means you’re going to take on clients or customers that pay some bills, or help you get out of that particular debt of the $10,000 funnel, but make you deliver really poor performance, getting crappy clients that don’t turn into great testimonials. And I’m not saying this because of the price point, I’m just saying it’s because if you’re mismatched to what you invest in, in your business, then it’s going to impact the way you do your business, and you’re not going to bring your best work forward, and therefore you’re not going to have great matches of clients. So from the flip side of that, as a business owner, and I’m, I don’t know if I’m just giving him advice, or anybody else who’s listening, I’m certainly giving myself advice whenever I think about this stuff, is that you have to think about that flip side to what kind of service or disservice are you doing when you put yourself out there? Because you need a profit at a certain price point versus really tapping into where are you really golden The value you bring and the gifts that you have, and who can you best serve for that. So there’s a lot to unravel with that and unpack. But I hope you know this, this conversation kind of liberates you to say, I don’t have to say yes to every client that comes my way or every customer that comes my way. I can be in control of who I want to work with, and paint the picture of who my ideal clients are, make all of my marketing center around that. And yeah, I can individually say yes or no. But my goal, as a business coach myself is to always have people say, who do I want in my sandbox? Who do I want to play with? Who do I geek out with? Who am I going to really enjoy working with whether it’s a coach or a bootcamp or some kind of program? Whose tickets in this in the Help Desk Am I going to enjoy reading? You know, all those things factor in, especially if you’re doing your own marketing yourself? So be confident in saying, here’s my flag. Here’s why stick Get in the sand. And if anybody doesn’t want to play, that’s okay. There’s other sandboxes for other people to play. And

that was a huge lesson for me. And it’s okay. It’s more than okay when people say no, because that means that another yes is waiting for me. Yep. And yeah, I could have used that whole conversation in 2014. I actually in 2015, before I even started to get clear, I have to say I didn’t really get clear on what I wanted to do and who I wanted to do it for until 2018, six years into my business, but there was a marketing coach who I interviewed or she interviewed me, which I think is an important distinction in something I’d like to talk about in just a second about hiring her to do my marketing funnel, even though I was already doing marketing funnels. For my clients. I just couldn’t see my own period. And so she started asking me questions about this. Who I served and how much I charged. And she just flat out said, You’re not ready to hire me yet. I can take your money. But it’s not going to serve you. And at that point, I had to say I was a little bit butthurt saying, but I’m so thankful now looking back in the same thing that I want to do for my people now. Now just bookmark this page get a little bit more clear. And I actually did have this conversation about a month ago with with a previous client. She’s trying to decide what market she wants to go after now, and I said, after you make that decision, then we’ll work together. But you have to get clear on that. First. I forgot what I said we are going to talk about in a minute, so we’re just going to keep on going. One of the points that you see people are the aspects of building a landing page and I’m not talking about the copy or the headlines. But I know some of the mistakes that I’ve made that you see LeadPages users or other people who make landing pages, forgetting to incorporate into their page Teachers when they build them up? Hmm, that’s a good question.

So I can share with you some of the mistakes I made.

Bob Sparkins: No, no, I have, I love for you to share yours as well. But I want to share like two quick technical ones that people just don’t pay attention to. And I think it has a subtle negative impact on their marketing. So one is not naming your URL correctly. So for those of you that don’t geek out on this stuff, you have your root domain and then a slash, and then a slug, right. So the KIM SUTTON calm slash 667 is the root domain and the slug is 667. And so a lot of people, whether they’re using lead pages or something else, they name their page based on what they are thinking the pages for. So it’s like checklist download FB ad, is what I often will see people name their page Well, when you are using a page builder, likely pages or any of the competitors, what tends to happen is that page name is the default slug for the page. So if you named it for yourself, Facebook ad campaign checklist download, then your end user is going to see that in the URL and see Facebook ad checklist download. And it’s, it’s not going to be speaking to what they want. Whereas if you had the same page could be named in the system as whatever you want it to be. But you change the slug and the title of the page to be something like checklist for new parents or checklists for becoming pregnant over 40 or something like that. To use your example, then that is a very different customers customer first kind of slug. And the reason this is important is because when you share a link on social or even an ad or whatever, they will often see that you know, printed out On the screen. And even if you’re using some kind of shortener, which I don’t recommend, when they land on the landing page, they still see that URL. So that’s, that’s a mistake. I think it puts people off and makes them feel like they’re part of a funnel, as opposed to feeling like they’re getting a solution. Okay, and the second thing is related, and that’s not paying attention to your Open Graph settings. So when you do share a page, or if you set things up the way that we recommend where you have a thank you page with the sharing button on it, and every new subscriber has the chance to share the landing page of what you just got them to opt into. When they share that page, what shows on social, the preview image, the title, the description, that’s controlled by you if you want to, but if you don’t make the 10 seconds to add that setting in. Then what shows up is a random image on your page which is often not appropriately sized. The title is the title of your page, which again is probably something like Facebook ad checklist download campaign be. And then the description is just random text from the page. So within lead pages, we give you a very clear spot to insert into fields, what your Open Graph settings are. So you pick your image, you pick your title, you pick your description, you don’t have to know the code that’s going on behind the scenes in the HTML, we’re doing that for you. But you just fill in those boxes, take that extra 10 seconds to do it. And now when people share your page, it becomes like an ad that you don’t have to pay for the image is attractive and related to what you want to have people click on and what they’re going to see on the landing page. The title and description are written more like an action oriented, you know, go here for this result kind of thing. And you’ll just get much better results without having to do much other effort. So those are two simple things that I see all the time when people are making landing pages that they forget to change. And it drives me nuts because it’s so easy to change and it has such a negative impacts, subtle but negative impact for for the results

have only made that mistake about a few dozen times. Yeah. And the images are so easy to make. I mean, it only pages it tells you what’s nice. So in most cases, especially if you’re doing a paid ad that’s leading to it, you can go into Canva if that’s what you’re using, and do one of their magic resizes and you barely have to make any changes at all. And pop. There it is done. I even have started. And this does require a little bit of an extra investment but I had my work smarter, not harder challenge. And for some reason it it was just impossible for me when I started in all price. Yeah, look, I’m already getting tongue tied. It will probably be a challenge for me right now. I was trying to tell people to go to Doug KIM sutton.com forward slash w s n h i don’t know why. I just couldn’t Get it. But I didn’t want them to have to type out that KIM SUTTON calm forward slash, work smarter, not harder. Because I thought that was too long. So I actually, ironically, considering I didn’t want them to type that out, I went and bought work smarter, not harder challenge calm and forwarded it to the landing page that was built in lead pages. And it’s so easy and it’s a permanent redirect and I mask the mask the domain that is being sent to so now when they see it, there it is. And yeah, it does cost an extra $11 a year, but it works for me. The other thing that I forgot to do, Bob was I forgot to put Facebook pixels in it or the Google Analytics. And I I am a nerd like that. Even if I’m not doing ads, I want the pixel in so that and this is going to be something that I’m setting up in the next month or so. Is retargeting people actually They opt in. And yes, that’s where my paid ads will come in. But hey, I saw that you just opted in for the work smarter, not harder challenge. How about following me on Instagram, and that ad only goes on Instagram, right? Or I saw that you just follow or signed up and targeting them on Facebook to follow me on Facebook. Because the more that the more engagement that I can get, and they’re already warm, so I would hope that they would be engaged. I don’t know how it’s gonna work yet. We shall see but I hope it works. Well.

What I think you, you see, when you do what you just said, you put your pixels on, you put your tracking on. Number one, you get more data so you can make better decisions. Number two, you’re going to save money when you do wind up doing ads because if you know who landed on your landing page, that’s a different remarketing audience and someone who opted in but a lot of people don’t separate those two pixels out. And so they wind up sending ads to people who’ve already gotten the thing that they’re advertising. And so every time you do that you’re spending money that you shouldn’t be spending. And then if you do it, which like what you just said, you do have it separated, you do have an event code on your thank you page, so you know who was on it, then you can also market to them differently than people who’ve never opted in. And then I’d also say about the pixeling. Even if you’re not thinking about running an ad right now, like you just said, Facebook lets you go back in time, six months, four for remarketing to that audience. So if you could conceive that sometime over the next six months, you’re going to want to remarket to people get the pixel on right now, because every day you delay means less people that you’re able to have the most cost effective audience to market to

LeadPages makes it really easy to add the pixel but for those of you who have WordPress Use a plugin called pixel caffeine by add espresso, which also makes it so easy to pixel the whole site. So I can go back and target people who have. I mean, I could go back and target people who listen to this episode and say, Hey, are you really patient member yet? We’ve got a sweet deal for you. It wouldn’t be a bad idea. You know, just go back and pick. Go back and send them a message.

What are you seeing,

as far as pop up scope? Because I know there’s been some changes in the last few years, as far as what Google likes. But I know that pop ups also work well for me.

Yeah, what’s all about relevancy? And thinking about what will be in service of the user and not just thinking I want another option opportunity. So there’s two different types of pop ups for from our perspective, lead pages. So one is a pop up that’s on a landing page or a website. That’s already built with LeadPages. And people are scrolling through the page, they find the nice shiny button, they click on it, and that pops up a forum to either buy something, or to opt in. There’s also the pop ups that can be done separately on a WordPress site that can be triggered the same kind of way. So they’re in a blog post or reading an article, you have what we like to call a content upgrade invitation at the top and bottom of your posts that says, hey, if you liked this article, download my guide to execute it or whatever. So that’s also a button that clicks in the pop up shows up. And then the other type of pop up that I think you’re really trying to get to is the times pop ups and the exit pop ups where people are on a page, and they could be on the page for one second, or 10 seconds or a minute. And then there’s a pop up that shows up on the page or they go to click out of the window and that’s called an exit pop up. So you want to use those but you want to pay attention to the effectiveness of them. So if you have a pop up that shows up one second, after somebody lands on your site, you’re going to see a really poor conversion rate for that pop up because people have not committed to being on the page yet. So one recommendation I’d have is after you put your Google Analytics everywhere on your site, like I can just mentioned, is to pay attention to your bounce rate. So your bounce rate is the time where people who are visiting your page tend to leave your page. And a lot of times, depending on the sorts of traffic you have, it might be something like 12 seconds. So in that case, you putting up a pop up at six seconds, might be a good way for you to capture some leads of people who you might not otherwise see. But if you want a higher conversion rate, then you would put up a pop up that shows up at 14 or 15 seconds because that’s the above average commitment level of people who are actually interested in your content right? They’re the kinds of people who are going to be more likely to sign up to your free gift, etc. And you might instead do an exit pop up for the people who are going to wind up leaving. Okay. So to answer your another part of your question, Kim, Google does not like when pop up show up on mobile, without people clicking. And so if you’re running ads, or even for search, you’re going to see a little bit less of a quality score on pages that have a pop up that automatically show up for mobile devices. Now, I don’t know technically how much time that they kind of look at when a pop up would show up. So it may be safe and I again, I don’t know the answer to this, it may be safe for you to have a pop up at like 15 seconds or something like that. But because we know that that Google and Facebook tend to really you know, dating sites for that are pop ups Do not open up on mobile as time directly pop ups because we know that it’s going to hurt your conversions. So we’re going to make sure that you’re using pop ups that people actually ask for. So they’re going to click on a link, a button, an image for that pop up to trigger on mobile. But on desktop, you know, obviously, you’ve got a little bit more real estate, it’s not so noxious to have a pop up, show up after a certain amount of time, but just want to be thinking about how much time is actually getting conversions and how much time is more annoying. And if you just think back for yourself, how many times do you go to a website and you click the pop up and you click the X button right away if you see it too soon, and maybe you even just close out of the page entirely because you got so annoyed that they would do that to you. But also recognize you’re not your customer. And you might want to be just a little bit more aggressive than what turns you off and test it out and see if it does work to your advantage or if it does result in more of a bounce rate.

So I don’t have any that pop up.

time wise, but I do have an exit intent pop up. I have one for any podcast related pages. And that one invites people because they’ve just been looking at a podcast, either the main podcast page or podcast show notes page. It invites them to subscribe to the podcast. And then there’s one for the rest of the site, which takes them to a lead magnet. But yeah, I’ve been encountering sites lately that have the pop up and I can’t see the X button. So I can’t close out of it. I’ve tried clicking to the side, they won’t close and I’m so frustrated. They just closed the site down. like okay, I don’t have time for this.

It needs to be clear to me.

That’s UX design purposely and some of it is just bad.

That is annoying.

Yeah. So we we don’t we don’t do that sort of thing. And then also just quickly say that You know, when it comes to working with pop ups on a blog on a WordPress site, it’s a really good idea to try to have anything that pops up or even as an exit intent be related to the content that’s on the page. So with our plugin, we give people the option to use a site wide pop up, or to do it individually per page or per post. And that’s really important because the more relevant your pop up can be, whether it’s in line, or it’s an exit or a timed pop up, the more relevant it is to the content people are seeing, the more likely they are to convert. So take the extra effort every couple of weeks make a new lead magnet that’s related to your top blog post and give it away on those specific posts instead of just trying to have one universal lead magnet that you try to give away all the time.

But you’re not helping chronic idea disorder. And you give me a huge idea. So thank you. Yeah, I’ve had to work smarter, not harder challenge popping up through my site, but I just I pared down and I’ll be really fast on this. I used to have 12 different opt ins, and some of them weren’t even going to where I want to go in the endgame of my business with any clients. So I pared back a lot to be clear and specific and, and do what I want to do. But there’s pages that relate each page can really relate to one of those three opt ins. So thank you, you just you just filled up my weekend.

You’re welcome.

Yeah. And I mean that like really truly genuinely like I had. I had not even thought about that which is embarrassing, but I have a feeling it’s not just me. listener. If you have been inspired which I know you have from this episode, please head on over to that KIM SUTTON comm forward slash p p 667. And leave your aha down below. Down below the show notes I should complete my sentence. But Bob, where can listeners find you online connects you learn more from you and all of the brilliant stuff that you have to offer?

Well, first of all, thank you for having On this has really been a treat, we’ve covered a lot of seemingly random topics in a very organized way that I think helps a lot of people to think through some key decisions of their marketing and just life in general. As an entrepreneur, I’m Bob The Teacher everywhere. So whether it’s Twitter or Facebook or Instagram, whatever you can, you can go at Bob, the teacher, any of those places, LinkedIn, etc. We have a, we’ll put this in the show notes, we have a website in a weekend course that I think would be really advantageous to your listeners, which is totally free. And it shows you how to use lead pages to create a website, whether it’s the website that you really want to make for your business, or maybe you already happy with the website you have, but you want to have a second website for a book launch or a program or a challenge you’re doing or a live event you might be hosting or something like that. So we’ll put that in the show notes. And then we do have a really great deal for you as a listener of the positive productivity podcast. If you go over to LeadPages, dotnet, slash PPP, you’re going to get that offer shown to you for starting up your your new account. All accounts start with a 14 day trial, but this will give you an even better deal than the average public sees. So again, LeadPages dotnet slash PPP will get you that special offer. And make sure you go to that show notes page that Kim just mentioned, to take a look at our free course on making your own website.

Thank you so much, Bob, and listeners, if you need any support in building, just put a comment in the show notes. I mean, I have experience. And Bob the features here so I’ll be checking in quite frequently. This has been absolutely amazing in seriously thank you again, I can’t believe I overlooked especially when I was just talking about segmentation. I looked over my own site for the various pop ups. Thank you. Do you have a parting piece of advice or a golden nugget that you can offer to the listeners?

Bob Sparkins: Yeah I think the most important kind of philosophy I can I can share with any entrepreneur is something I’ve held held true to for a long time. And that’s to take action, and revise later. So you’ve learned quite a few tips today from this conversation. I’m sure you’re learning a lot from all the different places that you pick up knowledge, blog posts, and LinkedIn things and Facebook, etc. The key though, to being successful is you take action on one of those things at a time, and then revise later. In other words, look at what is really resulting in your business, and then revise, tweak it, optimize it. But what a lot of people do is they revise before they start, they keep thinking about all the different permutations and variables that could happen. And it really renders a paralysis. You know, you’ve often heard paralysis by analysis kind of thing. But it’s really true. If you try to think of all the different things you just stall out. procrastinate, so take action on what you think is the best step to take right now. You know work with a coach or an accountability partner to help figure out what that is if you need to take action on it, pay attention to the result, revise later.