Last updated on July 26th, 2024 at 03:53 am
Of all types of web pages, landing pages convert the best.
Yet it seems that bloggers rarely take full advantage of this.
In fact, bloggers often don’t use landing pages at all, which almost certainly means that they are leaving a lot of money on the table.
That’s why today we are going to discuss how to harness the power of landing pages to grow your blog!
What is a Lead Generation Funnel?
It doesn’t make much sense to talk about landing pages in isolation – they should be discussed in the context of lead generation funnels.
A lead generation funnel is a funnel designed to convert potential customers into leads by persuading them to give you their contact details.
The process is pretty straightforward:
- You create a lead magnet
- You create a landing page for that lead magnet
- You drive traffic to that landing page
You should drive traffic from your blog to your lead generation funnel(s) and convert those visitors into email subscribers.
This will allow you to grow your email list which you can then use to drive traffic back to your blog whenever you publish a new article as well as to promote your products and services.
How to Build a Lead Generation Funnel
A lead magnet is a freebie that you offer to the potential customer in exchange for their email address.
It can be anything that they can either download to their device or access online:
- A report
- An eBook
- A video course
- An email course
- A webinar
…etc.
What matters is that:
- Your lead magnet offers a solution to a problem that the potential customer is struggling with.
- That problem is either the same one or similar to the problems that your products and services address.
The lead magnet format that you choose will determine which lead generation funnel you should use and therefore how your landing page should look like.
Here are the three most popular lead generation funnels:
Squeeze Page Funnel
A squeeze page funnel looks like this:
Page 1: A squeeze page
Page 2: A thank you page
A squeeze page is a basic landing page that has these three key elements:
- A headline that conveys what your free offer is all about.
- An email opt-in form where potential customer can type in their email address. It can either be displayed immediately or shown once they click the call-to-action button.
- A call-to-action button that encourages the potential customer to get the lead magnet.
Usually, squeeze pages also feature additional elements such as a subheadline, extra copy, relevant images, etc.
Best For: The squeeze page funnel can work well for all types of lead magnets so it should be the default option.
Reverse Squeeze Page Funnel
A reverse squeeze page funnel also looks like this:
Page 1: A squeeze page
Page 2: A thank you page
So what’s the difference between the regular squeeze page funnel and the reverse squeeze page funnel, then?
- A regular squeeze page funnel keeps the free value behind the opt-in wall.
- A reverse squeeze page funnel provides some free value right there on the squeeze page itself then asks for the potential customer’s email adddress in exchange for more free value.
Typically, the squeeze page in the reverse squeeze page funnel features a free video that the potential customer can watch immediately without having to opt in.
Then you ask for their email address in exchange for a lead magnet that is related to the free video that they have just watched.
The most straightforward option is to create a video series, allow the potential customer to watch the first video without opting in, then use the rest of the videos as a lead magnet.
Best For: The reverse squeeze page funnel works best for video lead magnets so you might want to consider using it if your niche favors this medium (e.g. cooking, fitness, crafts, etc.)
Webinar Funnel
A webinar funnel is a sales funnel where you use a webinar as your lead magnet.
Here’s how it looks like:
Page 1: A webinar registration page
Page 2: A thank you page
Page 3: A webinar page
Page 4: A product order page
Best For: The webinar funnel can work well if you are selling high-ticket products and services.
Build Your Lead Generation Funnel First!
Keep in mind that your blog is just one of the ways to drive traffic to your lead generation funnel.
It allows you to take search engine traffic, direct it to your lead magnet landing page and convert it into leads.
But you can also drive traffic to that same landing page with paid ads, social media, YouTube, etc.
So don’t get hung up on the blogging aspect of it – focus on building a solid lead generation funnel first.
What Kind of Landing Pages Should You Have On Your Blog?
Okay, now that you have a lead generation funnel, how can you plug it into your blog so that you could direct traffic to it?
#1: Homepage
A classic landing page is a web page that has no links except for the call-to-action buttons – no navigation, no social media profiles, no blog posts, nothing.
But today using a hybrid between a classic landing page and a classic homepage as your homepage is becoming increasingly popular. Why?
Because it allows you to direct homepage traffic to your lead generation funnel while still providing visitors with an experience that they expect – a navigation bar, information about you, links to popular articles, etc.
The key here is to make the section above the fold look like a landing page except for the navigation bar.
And then keep all the extra stuff below the fold so that people could scroll down if they want to learn more.
Popular blogger and best-selling author James Clear uses a free chapter of his book “Atomic Habits” as his lead magnet.
He promotes it above the fold on his blog homepage.
As you can see, except for the navigation bar, it looks like a squeeze page:
However, if you scroll down, you will find:
- James’ bio
- Links to three popular blog articles
- Links to the three latest newsletter issues
And below that, there’s another lead magnet – James’ free email course on developing better habits.
Note how this area of his homepage also looks like a squeeze page:
You can use the same approach on your homepage.
The area above the fold should look like a squeeze page.
The area below the fold should provide relevant information and direct the visitor to popular content.
#2: Lead Magnet Landing Page
The next thing you should do is add a link to your lead magnet landing page to your navigation bar.
The navigation tab for your lead magnet landing page should make it clear that this is a free offer – “Free Chapter”, “Free Course”, “Free Webinar”, etc.
You can use a classic approach where the landing page has no links except for the call-to-action buttons.
If the visitor wants to go back to your website, they will simply click the “Back” button in their browser.
Or you can use a modern approach where the landing page has the website navigation bar at the top.
You might want to experiment with both approaches to see what works best for your audience.
#3: Content Upgrade Landing Pages
Finally, you should create content upgrades for your most popular blog posts, then drive traffic from those blog posts to content upgrade landing pages.
A content upgrade is a lead magnet that is designed to serve as an upgrade on a specific blog post.
For example:
Sumo team created a content upgrade for their “7 Must-Have Instagram Marketing Tools For Rapid Growth” blog post – an Instagram marketing swipe file.
When you click on the call-to-action button, you are taken to this squeeze page:
This is an innovative approach because instead of simply asking for contact details, the Sumo team asks the visitor to connect to their Shopify store.
It makes sense for a software company but as a blogger, you should probably use the classic approach where you ask for the potential customer’s email address in exchange for your lead magnet.
What’s important here is that you promote your content upgrade in the related blog post – you want to link to it at the top of the post, in the middle of the post, and at the end of the post.
But instead of having opt-in forms right there in the blog post you want to present the visitor with call-to-action buttons that they need to click to go to the content upgrade landing page.
This might seem convoluted because you are introducing an additional step to the process of getting the content upgrade.
But driving traffic to the content upgrade landing page will likely lead to a higher conversion rate.
How to Optimize Your Landing Pages for Conversions
Here are some things that you can do to increase the conversion rates of your landing pages:
Use a Proven Landing Page Template
We don’t recommend designing landing pages from scratch if you have never done that before – you should use proven landing page templates instead.
ClickFunnels includes a template library where you can find landing page templates for all kinds of lead generation funnels.
All you need to do is pick one that makes the most sense for your business and customize it according to your needs with our visual editor!
Implement Best Practices
Online marketers have been A/B testing landing pages for more than two decades – at this point, we know what works and what doesn’t.
This means that instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, you should simply learn what the best practices are and implement them on your landing pages.
Here are some of the key conversion rate optimization principles that you should be aware of:
- A landing page should have ONE conversion goal. In this article, we discussed lead generation landing pages where the goal is to convert visitors into leads by persuading them to give you their email addresses. You can use landing pages for various other purposes but every landing page needs to have one clear conversion goal.
- Remove all page elements that distract the visitor from the conversion goal. Typically this means removing all links except for call-to-action buttons. But it can also mean simplifying your landing page so that the unnecessary bells and whistles wouldn’t distract the visitor from taking the action that you want them to take.
- Use design to draw attention to call-to-action buttons. You want to make sure that the call-to-action button color contrasts with the overall color scheme of your landing page and that the buttons themselves are large.
A/B Test Everything
Once you are sure that your landing page follows the generally accepted best practices, you want to start optimizing it with A/B testing:
- Create two variants of your landing page: variant A and variant B. There should be only ONE difference between them – that’s the element that you are testing (e.g. call-to-action button color).
- Split traffic in half and send 50% of it to variant A and the other 50% to variant B.
- Run the experiment until you reach a minimum of 90% statistical significance. See which variant performed better and keep the winner.
For example, here’s a screenshot of variant A and variant B from a famous A/B test conducted by Performable.
The red button outperformed the green button by 21%!
Constantly running A/B tests like that can help you drastically increase your conversion rate over time!
Build a Lead Generation Funnel With ClickFunnels!
ClickFunnels has everything you need to build a lead generation funnel for your blog:
- Sales funnel, lead generation funnel, and landing page templates
- A visual funnel editor and a visual page editor
- An email marketing functionality
- An A/B testing functionality
What’s best is that we have a free trial which means that you can check out our software without any risk.
So why not start building your lead generation funnel today?