Coffee Break Blogging

A quiz is a unique type of lead magnet to grow your list.

Typically, creating an online quiz has been a real technical challenge. But, one of the more recent tools offered from Thrive Themes is the Thrive Quiz Builder.

With Quiz Builder, you can create different kinds of quizzes. And here’s the best part…

You can use them to create segmented email lists, offer them different lead magnets depending on their answers, and more.

One of the biggest challenges can simply be coming up with an idea for a quiz.

From a marketing perspective, the aim is to have a quiz which gets them to look at the problem that you solve with your business. It can help raise them on the customer awareness scale from being unaware to problem aware. Quizzes which give them a score on something they can improve can work well for this.

The fact that you can build a simple assessment or quiz using a drag-and-drop interface like this is just amazing to me. Thrive Quiz Builder really is an amazing tool for that.

Mobile traffic is a really big deal these days. So many people are browsing our sites on mobile devices so it is VERY important that your site is mobile responsive to work on smaller screens.

When I look at my own stats as of this writing, about 38% of my traffic over the last 30 days was on a mobile device. And, almost all of that was on a phone of some kind – not a tablet. We’re talking small screens.

So, the question is… do your opt-in forms adjust properly and work well on such small screens?

• A sidebar opt-in will usually be pushed way to the bottom of the screen on a mobile device, since sidebars usually just get kicked to the bottom. Your opt-in rate will be garbage.
• If you use an exit pop or some other popup, the trigger settings might not work right on mobile. Plus, there’s little that’s more annoying than having an opt-in completely takeover my iPhone screen when I’m on a site. It is interruption marketing at it’s finest.

So, you may want to change up your opt-in strategy for mobile devices. Display different forms that are more likely to work correctly on small screens.

Today, let’s talk about placement of your opt-in forms. We’ve already talked about running split tests on your opt-in forms. But, one of the things you definitely should be testing is placement of your opt-in forms.

Most blogs have a primary lead magnet placed right in their sidebar. However, the sidebar is usually one of the worst performing locations for your opt-in.​ Typical conversion rates for this location are like 1%-2%. And frankly, that sucks. Most bloggers put that thing in the sidebar simply because they see everybody else doing it. So, it becomes a case of the blind leading the blind.

Definitely experiment with opt-in form placement. Don’t just fall back on your sidebar because that’s what everybody else does. To grow your list effectively, you can’t just do the bare minimum.

Your action item for today is…

Set up a different form of opt-in placement than you are running right now and test it out.

For #ASKBMA this week, I'm answering:

- Using other people's Youtube videos in your content. Is it OK?
- Her email list isn't growing. What's she missing?
- Offering private discounts to people who ask?

Also on the agenda...

- The latest on The Daily
- An update on the Coffee Break Blogging podcast.
- What's new inside THE LAB

Quick Links:

- THE DAILY
- PODCAST
- THE LAB
- ASK BMA

That's our weekly update for 11/1/2018. See ya next week!

All of us – and yes, you – have people who come to our blog who end up leaving without opting into our list. Sometimes it is because they’re not interested. Sometimes they just never saw your lead magnet. Sometimes, they’ve got such short attention spans that they could have the most awesome, relevant free download staring them in the face and they don’t see it.

But, once they back away and leave, is that it? You’ll never see them again?

Not necessarily. Bring in retargeting (sometimes called remarketing).

You know it, even if you don’t think you do. Because we’ve all experienced going to some website to check it out. Then, we just happen to see their ads all over the place. It is like they’re FOLLOWING us! You might see an ad for them in your Facebook news feed. You might even see banner ads showing up on other websites you visit.

That’s retargeting.

And it is usually much cheaper to do this kind of paid advertising than going out to new people. Usually.

In effect, you’re capturing traffic that bounces off your site and your circling back to give them another opportunity to connect with you.

Today, I’m going to share another strategy to build your list much more effectively. In fact, it works very, VERY well. It will, however, cost you a bit of money. But, the way I see it, if you’re one that is seeking to avoid any form of spending, you’ve already cut yourself off at the knees.

My list growth trend was rather flat while I was out traveling in the RV all summer. I didn’t really have any major list building campaigns in effect. The business was just… coasting. But, as you can see, when I got back, I started things up again and you can clearly see the spike.

Now, there’s a few things I did, but most of that spike is due to a single ad campaign that I re-started on Facebook. Specifically, it is an ad for one of my more popular lead magnets: The 90 Day Online Business Startup Plan.

This episode covers how this worked, and what the specs of my campaign were.

A lead magnet squeeze page is like an island unto itself. It won’t have any top nav menu. No sidebar. No links to social media profiles. At most, it will have the typical boring links to your privacy policy and terms of service in the footer. At the top, it might have your logo. Also, most of the time, you would hide this squeeze page from your top blog navigation menu. You don’t HAVE to. You may want to try including it there. But, often these squeeze pages will just sit there and the only traffic it will get will be when you specifically link to it.

So, where might you use this thing?

Well, I could give you a bunch of ideas today. However, this whole list building challenge is about specificity. I don’t want to give you a ton to do all at once… otherwise it is more likely you won’t do it.

So, today, let’s just talk one simple strategy.

This strategy isn't so much about building your list... as it is about keeping your existing subscribers engaged.

In case you’re wondering, here’s some fairly typical opt-in rates for various types of forms:

• Typical blog sidebar opt-in form will typically not convert much better than 1%-2%.
• A contextual opt-in form inside a blog post (aka content upgrade) can convert anywhere from around 5% up to 12%. I’ve had them go as high as 30%, but usually that’s a temporary fluke. But, it happens.
• A dedicated landing page can convert anywhere from 30% up to 50%. Sometimes even higher. I’ve got one right now which seems to be converting at about 88%, but again, it might even out. I have found 50% to be a good, rough average.

So, in this case, a squeeze page is the equivalent of using the electric drill compared to a screwdriver. It is simply FAR more efficient and converts far better than you’ll almost EVER see on a blog, regardless of location.

Why is this? Well, the answer is pretty simple...

Here's our weekly update for 10/25/2018. For #ASKBMA this week, I'm answering:

• Transitioning from single products to a membership
• Daily blogging and building up to 25k subscribers BEFORE you monetize? Whuh?!
• How many blog posts do you need to launch?

Also on the agenda...

• The latest on The Daily
• An update on the Coffee Break Blogging podcast.
• What's new inside THE LAB
• Sneak peak at what's coming up with the next training course

Quick Links:

• THE DAILY
• PODCAST
• THE LAB
• ASK BMA
• MEMBERMOUSE

New Blog Post:
Pricing Strategy: The Non-Marketer’s Guide To Figuring Out What To Charge For Your Digital Products

Building your email list is always a marathon, not a race. It is a constant effort and something that you’re always doing.

And, if all you do it throw up an opt-in form with a single lead magnet and then waiting it out, you’re just not doing it right. We’ve already talked about how you can magnify your list building power by creating additional lead magnets and/or content upgrades.

But, what about the actual opt-in forms? How do you improve those and make them work better?

Split testing.

Now, decent chance you already know about split-testing. Thing is…

Do you actually do it?