List Building: How I Get Over 40% Conversion Rates with My Lead Capture Page

What’s the most important thing to grow your online business?

To me, it’s list building.

Yes, traffic is important.

But if we’re not turning traffic into leads, we don’t own an audience.

Simply put:

Audience = asset

From the first day I launched Growth Text, list building was my primary goal.

I knew my home page was going to be one of the most frequently visited pages, so I decided to make it a page that’s optimized for lead capture.

3 months later, when I look at my Analytics, I was not far from my prediction.

According to my Analytics, my home page gets 21% of the total Growth Text page views.

At the time I’m writing this, it’s the 2nd most visited page on Growth Text.

If I were to ignore lead capture on my home page, I would miss a lot of leads.

Until I tweaked it (more on this later), the page was converting leads at 19.1%

2,178 form impressions.

416 converted (opted ins).

That’s 19.1% lead conversion.

WordStream analyzed thousands of AdWords accounts with a combined $3 billion in annual spend and discovered that:

The top 10% advertisers convert at an average of 11.45%.

Since my number looks good (19.1%), I was happy.

I didn’t look at anything I could do to improve on it.

Early this month I had some free time between my projects, so I spent an afternoon studying my page and found a few areas I could improve.

I made those changes.

Yesterday, I finally published my new home page.

I left it run for 24 hours.

The next morning.

BOOOOM!

I woke up to 40.74% conversion.

Though it’s still too early to tell with just 27 visits; the number is very encouraging.

I’ll let more traffic hit the page then I’ll update this post once I have collected more page views.

Now, let me share with you what I did…

If you have any lead capture page, follow along to tweak it using these ideas.

Tweak #1: I Trimmed My Copy

I made my copy shorter.

In the old version, I used the story of the conversation between Kyle and me as an opening.

Kyle was trying to figure out the best way to drive traffic to his website.

He was in information overload and had no direction.

That’s his pain.

Blah blah bah…

At the end of my story, I offered to set up a blog and show Kyle the steps to how I will grow the blog to 10,000 monthly visitors.

And I asked everyone reading the copy to join my list to follow along.

I had 305 words on the copy

My new version?

154 words.

I trimmed half of the words.

In my new copy, no story telling.

I skip everything.

I go straight to the offer and ask for the email.

That’s it.

To beef it up, I use testimonials wedged in between my paragraphs.

Tweak #2: Use Testimonials – this is big

I believe this is the key tweak that doubled my conversion.

I’m a fan of using testimonials on my sales pages.

I knew I needed testimonials on my lead capture page, too.

When I first launched Growth Text, it wasn’t easy to find people willing to post testimonials for me.

I had no content.

I didn’t know any influencers in my niche.

Now that I have built up some blog posts, and know a few influencers in my market, I can begin to reach out.

So I wrote to a couple of influencers, and asked them if they would help me.

I asked each one if they would write a testimonial for me.

I ask if they would put their testimonials in a tweet.

And they did, and I posted the tweets on my page.

If you want to follow actionable growth tips, read Verena's stuff. I subscribe to her newsletter @growthtext and I always enjoy it!

— Michael Pozdnev (@MPozdnev) May 4, 2016

Verena Ho just launched a live case study blog: zero to 10k visitors/month. A 'must-follow' goldmine — she's all about results. @growthtext

— Matt Thomas (@insidersecrets) May 6, 2016

I've been reading articles on @growthtext lately. Great unique insights about growth marketing.

— Raul Tiru (@raultiru) May 7, 2016

Why ask for testimonials in the form of tweets?

Simply because tweets looks real.

It’s 1000% more believable than those lame screen captured testimonials.

If you can get a big name like Sam Hurley to tweet for you, that’s a plus.

If you're wondering how to get more traffic to your new blog, start with Verena @growthtext – She's always coming up with fresh ideas 🙂 🙂

— Sam Hurley ➤➤➤➤➤ (@Sam___Hurley) May 6, 2016

If you can’t, it’s alright.

Just send an email out to your subscribers, asking them to do you a favor and write a testimonial for you.

You’ll want to do that anyway.

If you’re sharing quality content, there is always someone who’s ready to write some positive words about it.

Next, make sure you use a responsive lead capture form…

Tweak #3: Responsive Lead Capture Form (a must)

Your lead capture form has to respond well to various devices and screen sizes.

In other words, your forms must be mobile-friendly.

I use Thrive Leads to set up my lead capture form.

The form and button auto adjust their size to fit the viewing screen.

According to Google Analytics, 25% of Growth Text traffic is from mobile devices.

That number may vary depending on your niche, but one thing is certain: mobile traffic is on the rise.

If I had ignored this fact, I would have probably lost at least a quarter of my current list size.

This is not a tweak that I’ve done; I used Thriveleads to create my form from Day 1.

I’m just bringing it up so that you know this is crucial for your lead capture page.

Tweak #4: Look Inside (borrowing Amazon’s method)

I added 3 text links to my new copy.

I linked them to 3 of my posts within the blog.

Scroll down on my home page and you’ll see where those links are.

Here is the screenshot:

On most lead capture pages, it’s either opt-in or leave.

The assumption:

Less traffic leakage = more opt-ins.

But I see there is a flaw in this assumption.

Here is my theory…

When someone first lands on your site, most likely they don’t know you.

Whether they were referred by a friend …

or they stumble upon a tweet…

or they saw a Facebook share…

Whatever.

They land on your site, and it’s the first time they see what you have to offer.

Okay, your offer might sound interesting, but there is one BIG question on their mind.

“Is your content really as good as you pitched?”

To most people, if they can’t decide within a few seconds while they’re on a landing page, they’ll pass.

Now, we want to move them across the line from indecisive to a happy, favorable decision maker.

How?

Show them your past content.

Let them “test drive” some of your past content

The scenario is the same as landing in the book section on Amazon.

You read the synopsis, you read the customer reviews, but you’re still undecided.

What do you do?

Look inside the book.

Imagine how much sales Amazon would lose if they didn’t incorporate this feature on their site.

On my new home page, I set up a few links to my blog posts.

I get those pages open up on a new tab.

So people can quickly scan thru my previous blog post and then come back to join my list.

So far, this has worked well for my list building.

I’ve shown you 4 tweaks I’ve done to my page to get an over 40% lead conversion.

What happens next?

I’ll keep on monitoring my conversion rate and updating this post.

How do you plan to use what you’ve learned in this case study?

Let me know in the comments below.