16: How to Create an Optimized Landing Page to Advertise Your Lead Magnet (featuring Magan Ward)

Your landing page is the final conversion factor for whether or not a potential subscriber actually download your lead magnet and ultimately ends up on your email list. How can you ensure you’re optimizing it for those leads? In today’s episode, Magan Ward joins us for another episode to highlight the tools you can use and best practices for your lead magnet’s landing page to ensure conversion!

Master Lead Magnet Idea List

You’re ready to grow your email list, but stuck on an idea for a lead magnet? I created a master lead magnet idea list just for you to help you over the hurdle! Grab my Master Lead Magnet Idea List!

Download Now >>

Meet Megan

An entrepreneur since she charged $0.25 for a single cracker with spreadable cheese from her lunchbox at the Kindergarten lunch table.

Magan is an educator (with a strong southern accent) who knows 150% what the struggle is when creating an email list, the opt-in, the welcome sequence, and the millions of other details that we handle while doing all the things as we run this digital biz.

She took her email list that was suffering and grew it by 78% and she helps others do the same.

Review the Show Notes:

Get to Know Megan (1:55)

Magan’s Landing Page Conversion Rate of 60% (6:23)

Optimizing Your Landing Page: Have your headline, image, and signup form above the fold. (5:04)

What to Avoid on Your Landing Page (11:38)
– Avoid Paragraph Text
– Avoid Only Working on Desktop Versions (Focus on Mobile)

Use Social Proof (14:01)

Ensure You’ve Optimized Your Page Speed (14:24)

Where to Host Your Landing Pages (15:31)

Facebook Pixel & Google Analytics  (16:50)

User Experience & Hot Jar (18:25)

Marketing Your Lead Magnets (20:27)

Magan’s Lead Magnet Mockup Pack

The imagery you include on your landing page creates a visual representation of what a user can expect from handing over their email address and subscribing to your newsletter. Magan has created a Canva mockup just for you to create beautiful images of your lead magnets in order to increase your landing page conversions!

Download Now >>

Mentioned in this Episode

Episode 15

Canva

Flodesk

Smush It

Showit

Lead Pages

Hot Jar

Connect with Magan ⬇️

Instagram: @themaganward 

Website: www.maganward.com

Landing Page Templates: Shop

Connect with Dolly ⬇️

instagram.com/dollydelongeducation

facebook.com/DollyDeLongEducation

pinterest.com/dollydelong

systemsandworkflowmagic.com/lead-magnet-master-list

Review the Transcript:

Dolly DeLong
Welcome to the systems and workflow magic podcast where I help entrepreneurs go from scattered to streamlined in their creative businesses. I’m your host, Dolly DeLong, a wife, a mom, and a photographer turned systems educator. Join me every week as we have conversations centered around creating tactical workflows, and automation in your business. Now, let’s make some strategic workflow magic. Hi, and welcome back to the systems and workflow magic podcast friends. I’m so excited you’re here. And as a reminder, to everyone who may be new to this podcast, we’re in the middle of our lead magnet series, where I’m walking you through some systems and workflows of how to get started with lead magnets because it can directly impact how you grow your email list. So if you are again joining us, please give episode 15 A listen because last week, we had Meghan Ward on the podcast, and she spoke about lead magnets to grow your email list. And while she was on that episode, she mentioned a landing page for one of her most popular lead magnets that converted at 60%. So I thought it would be a great idea to have Megan back on the show again this week, to dig into landing pages that are conversion-focused to ultimately build and grow our email list. But first, before we get to the heart of this topic since Megan was on last week’s episode, and you may or may not already be familiar with her. And Megan, do you mind sharing just a little bit about yourself? For those of you who for the audience members who may not know who you are? Yes, well,

Magan Ward
First of all, Dolly, I’m honored to be back on the podcast again this week. Thank you for having me. And as dolly already shared, my name is Megan ward. And I am an email marketing strategist and educator. And I teach fellow entrepreneurs the strategy behind their email list for building connection with your audience, the moment that they hit that subscribe

Dolly DeLong
button. Yeah, and you all I’m actually a part of, I’m doing a little plug for you, Megan, I’m a part of your email newsletter. And I actually open up all of your emails, and I read them from start to finish and you are really good at keeping your audience engaged. I’m just letting you know. Oh, thank you. So last week, last week, we dove into lead magnets, you shared so much information with the audience about lead magnets and how to use them to grow your email list. And again, if you are listening to this episode, you can either finish this episode and then go back and listen, or start last week and then listen to this episode. Either way, listen to Megan. And going back to our conversation about using lead magnets to grow your email list. I remember you Megan specifically mentioning that the one lead magnet that grew your email list by 78%. Like 787 8% People in less than one month had a landing page that converted at over 60%.

Magan Ward
Isn’t that wild? But yes, that’s exactly right. 78% is how much my email list grew. But it was that landing page that converted it over 60%

Dolly DeLong
That is just wild and crazy. Incredible. Like, I want to hear all it spilled the tea, just spill all the tea for us. Yeah,

Magan Ward
yeah. Okay, so for those that listened on last week’s episode about lead magnets, I shared that the industry standard for landing page conversion rates was 10% on a really good day. And it’s typically less than that per industry statistics. It’s actually 2.35%. And that’s, that’s not really an app. I mean, that is an average, but it’s not the lowest percentage, which obviously would be zero. And net, please know that a lot of landing pages do much better than that. 2.35%. But it just gives us a nice little baseline to go off of. And I hope that I didn’t inadvertently unlock a new concern as a business owner who’s trying to build your email list. But today, we’re going to fix that so no need to be overly concerned. We’re getting give you the tools that you need to create landing pages that convert well, much higher than that. 2.35%

Dolly DeLong
Yeah, and I am ready and I’m ready to take notes. Like you know, I’m probably going to be typing in this Google Doc which you see that we’re about sharing right now. I know many people listening also will be are thrilled to hear all the tips and advice from you Megan

Magan Ward
Yeah, well, we can just dive in, my very first piece of advice is to have your signup form above the fold. And above the fold simply means that they can see the form without scrolling. So as soon as they land on your landing page, it is right there. In their view, they should also see a headline and maybe an image at the same time they see the form, but definitely that signup form should be seen quickly with the headline to help them make their decision to sign up faster.

Dolly DeLong
Megan, I’m sure you’re going to cover this and like several other points. But do you mind? Like breaking down what above the fold means even more like, can we like get deeper about that term? Because I feel like with you and me, like, with online educators with creative business owners who do educate others online, like we all know, these terms above the fold and headlines that convert, but do you mind like breaking that term down a little bit more?

Magan Ward
Yeah, absolutely. And our dear friend, Emily Conley would be very proud of me for knowing these facts. But think about newspapers, which by the way, there’s a few people that still actually get paper newspapers. But you think about when you had that the newspaper was folded in half. And you always saw those main headlines right there, which was above the fold on the newspaper. So if you had an article above the fold, that was a really big deal. So that’s kind of the history of where that comes from above the fold. Do you want that to be the very first thing that is seen?

Dolly DeLong
Thank you. So that was a really, really good example. And yeah, I That’s so weird to think a lot of people don’t get newspapers anymore. We get a local community newspaper, where we live, but it’s just so rare to get that, but

Magan Ward
that’s really fun. A lot of community I think more community should do that socially. You know?

Dolly DeLong
It’s, I love it. Yeah. Back to my childhood. So okay, so you had mentioned, putting the form above the full, and you mentioned a headline, are there. Okay, first of all, I have two questions for you about that. When you say form, what do you mean by form? I know exactly what you mean by form. But I’m just like, I’m speaking for my audience right now. What do you mean by form? And then do you have any specific tips for the headline that you put above the fold?

Magan Ward
Absolutely. So the form is the signup form where they are going to type in their email address, and maybe their name, if you’re collecting first name and email address. So the form is just that. It’s where they type in their email, their email address, and hit the buttons, subscribe. So that’s what I mean when I say the form. So thank you for having me clarify that I sometimes get ahead of myself and forget, like, I’m so far in email marketing, that there might be somebody that’s like, wait, wait, what do I put above the fold? But yeah, so the second thing is to have a very bold, clear headline, something that is quick and to the point of what the heck this offer is this freebie this download whatever the thing is that you’re exchanging for that email address. So whatever it is that you’re providing, it should be easy for the person landing on your page to understand if you have nothing else on your landing page, have these two things, your bold, clear headline, and that signup form, because they’re without a doubt, the most important. Now, obviously, you could have other things on your page, and I recommend that. But to get started, all you need is that bold headline in that signup form. And that’s exactly what you’re going to see if you go look inside your own email marketing provider at the template landing pages that they have available, like flow desk, or ConvertKit. The templates seem very basic and simple. For that very reason. Those templates don’t have to have much more than that just the form. And the bold headline is really all that’s needed to convey what it is that you are giving to them in exchange for that email address.

Dolly DeLong
Okay, so this is this is great information. And so we’ve got our form above the fold, and a very bold, clear headline that communicates what they will get. So for those of you who are taking notes, because I know I get messages in my DMs every week on Instagram saying, I’m taking notes to your podcast. That’s great. So as you’re taking notes, start writing out what else is important for the landing page.

Magan Ward
So yes, an image of some type is always helpful. People by nature are visual and seeing something even if it’s just a very simple mock up of an iPad or an iPhone, or just a mock up of the first page of your download. It just helps the brain more quickly. what they’re getting. So you can throw one of these together super quick inside Canva. And make sure here’s a little hand picture and listen to the end of this episode, and I’ll share with you a fun little gift that I have for you that can help with this.

Dolly DeLong
Oh, that’s awesome. I can’t wait for you to share that gift, it’s going to be really helpful. And yeah, I’m gonna second your point on that, you have to help the potential subscriber actually start visualizing what they’re going to get from you. So even if it’s a lead magnet, we are talking about lead magnets. Even though this lead magnet may be in digital product form, it may be a PDF, or it may be a I don’t know, a quick checklist, it’s really important that you can help people visualize how they’re going to use it in their day to day life. So Megan is exactly right, like put some sort of mock up. And you can easily create this within Canva. And Canva is free. It’s like I’m not a designer by any means or stretch. And but Canva makes me feel like I am with all of us. Yes. So I’m definitely, definitely go and check out Canva a week Canva in the show notes, so you can check that out as well. Okay, so Megan, you you brought up the point of creating visuals to help people start just envisioning themselves using this lead magnet to help them. But what are things that we should avoid when we’re creating our landing page to communicate this lead magnet? Like what are what are some tips you have for us?

Magan Ward
Okay, so definitely avoid paragraph text, the average amount of time that somebody has on your landing page is just mere seconds, so you don’t have a lot of time to win them over and convert them to a subscriber. This means they’re not going to read your beautifully written paragraph that you spent so much time on. It’s just the simple truth, people are busy. And if they want more information, and you have more information that you want to include about that lead magnet, just put it in bullet points and put it below the fold. So it’s easy for somebody to skim over. So if they do want to keep scrolling on the page, that is where you would want those bullet points in that extra information to be. And while I’m on the topic of these important tips, I also highly recommend Dali to design your landing page for mobile first, then go design desktop, because just make the bubble of priority. Because most people that land on your page are coming from social media, they might be coming from an ad, if you’re running ads, or maybe a link in someone’s podcast show notes, meaning that they are on their phone and they’re wanting to grab your thing quickly. So making that mobile design of the landing page, very user friendly and quick to the point is going to get you a much higher conversion rate on that landing page.

Dolly DeLong
Oh, my goodness, that is such a good reminder. I’m even, I’m going to jot down notes for that. Because I tend to edit for desktop first because you know, we’re online educators, we’re on our desktop, creating content, creating those lead magnets. And so that is such a good point. Thank you so much for reminding us, including myself to do that. So you’re ready to grow that email list. But you’re a little stuck on ideas for lead magnets, am I right? I think we’ve all been there. So that’s why I created the perfect idea list with over 20 pages of lead magnet ideas. This list is perfect for entrepreneurs in the creative field, all the way to direct sales. So grab the master lead magnet idea list for free at the link in today’s show notes. Now, Meghan, is there anything else that can help listeners create more conversion focused landing pages?

Magan Ward
Absolutely. So other things to keep in mind are putting any social proof that you have, for example, if anyone has used this lead magnet before, and they sent you a note telling you what results they’ve received after implementing that, you can use that on your landing page to because social proof always helps we love it and testimonials or the same type of thing that you can also use. Oh, and this reminded me dolly PageSpeed. That’s one it’s super important. I already talked to you about how people are not on your landing page very long before they start making a decision. So how quickly your landing page loads is going to make a difference too because we are impatient. I blame tick tock it lowered our attention spans even more than they already were. But because we’re gonna bounce if something is not loading within two seconds or less now, I’m not an expert on PageSpeed but there are a lot of things you can do to help increase that such as installing a software to help optimize your images, something like smash it, or it may be called smush it or just use smaller image file sizes. Those are just a couple tips that come to mind quickly.

Dolly DeLong
I love it. So I, I personally host my own landing pages on my website I show it. But where can people besides their website? Because I know you’re going to share, like, utilize your website with landing pages. But where can What are other tools that people can use to host landing pages? Yeah,

Magan Ward
that’s a great question. So I like you, Dolly. I’m also a show it user I have all my landing pages on show it. So you can absolutely host them direct on your website, no matter what website host that you’re using, just create a new page. And that will be your landing page. But you can also utilize your email marketing provider by using the templates that they have that are already provided for you. And that will create a shareable link for you to use when you’re sharing about your lead magnet or your landing page. Now another option is that you could use a third party host such as lead pages, which some people swear by because it keeps all the traffic in additional pages over there instead of on your own website, which ultimately increases page load speed, like we just mentioned. Now, I need to pause for just a minute because if you’re concerned with having traffic, go to lead pages instead of your website, because of your Facebook pixel. Just know you can plug in your Facebook pixel into lead pages the same way that you can for your website. So you’re not going to lose out on any retargeting ad data that you might need if you run Facebook ads.

Dolly DeLong
No, that’s such such great advice, Megan. And something I also wanted to insert for that I’ve been doing that’s been very beneficial for me in the long term is by making sure I have my facebook you and mentioned this but my Facebook pixel code on my landing page within show it you can do that on all of your individual pages. If you want to take it a step further, you can even put your Google Analytics tracking code, I don’t know like the correct term. I feel like Google Analytics all the time. So I have put my tracking code there as well. And so it lets me know, just like what time of day people are landing on this landing page, no pun intended, and how many people are coming and where they’re coming from. And if you want to get even detail oriented, for those of you who are like wanting to take a dive deeper, deeper dive, dive deeper. I don’t know that into tracking your Google Analytics, you can also set up UTM parameters. But I’m not going to talk about that. But I just wanted you all to know the landing pages, you can do a lot of powerful things with landing pages and your politics. And you can see where people are looking. And what part of the page they’re converting on. Just what is resonating with audience members.

Magan Ward
Well, and that reminds me Dali of hot jar, have you ever used hot jar before for the heat maps? That is really, really helpful as well. I learned about that within the last year or two. And it can be a little addictive. What you do is there’s a code that you put on your website, y’all can probably hear my dog have kind of Yanan in the background. You had to guess on your episode this week, Dolly.

Dolly DeLong
He’s passionate about landing pages. Yeah, absolutely.

Magan Ward
So with hot jar, you have a code that you can put into the back end of your website as well just like Facebook pixel, and just like your Google Analytics, ID code that we can’t remember what it’s called. But and what that will do is it will kind of record when someone is on your website. And you can actually see where they’re clicking. If they’re scrolling the thing where they’re where they might be getting stuck. So if you have something that’s not converting, then you can really go back and take a look at that and see okay, where is it that they seem to be getting stuck? Or is it at the very beginning because maybe the headline is not clear enough? And maybe that’s where you need to go do some

Dolly DeLong
work. So yeah, everyone, these are all amazing tips that Megan has shared with us. And if you listening to this, if you feel overwhelmed and you’re like I don’t even know where to begin. I would say take baby steps and implement one thing at a time and then test it out and test it out and and is the data every 30 or 60 days, I know that seems like a long time. And we live in a very instant gratification culture, and like everything was fast paced. But if you really, truly want to optimize a landing page and optimize and see what’s working for you tweak one thing at a time, and then you will see like, hot where everything is converting. I don’t know what your thoughts are on that, Megan?

Magan Ward
Yes, absolutely. And I do that for some of my clients as well. And we really just watch you know, how good something is performing. And also, when you’re sharing your, your lead magnets don’t just share it once and not talk about it again, for a few weeks, you want to be consistent with sharing about it quite often, I have a client that we’re testing out some old episodes on their, their their true crime podcast, and we’re testing out some old episodes that had been taken off of their main feed, and they’re hosting it somewhere. And now you have to sign up for their email list to get access to those old episodes. And so what we’re doing with them is we’re taking lead magnets and other things that they haven’t used in a while and putting them back in front of people. But what we do is we let it sit in front of them for a solid month, so a good 3031 days, and then go back and see how it’s converting are people loving it or not? And what can we do to tweak that?

Dolly DeLong
Awesome? No, that’s such great advice. So always be testing. And always be optimizing and be patient. The process is what I’m hearing and I get upgraded. All right, Megan. So I know you have a freebie you want to share with your audience? Do you mind telling us more about it?

Magan Ward
You better believe it the email girl’s not gonna come with no lead magnets. So I already mentioned this earlier. So if you’ve been waiting for this, thank you for listening until now, and I hope you’ve learned a ton. So now you can go forth and create your own conversion focused lead magnet and landing page. But I have a little Canva mock up packet for you that you can use and make your own images and mock up designs for your landing pages. You can go grab those at Meghan Ward comm forward slash lead magnet mock ups and I know Dolly’s gonna win get below. But while you’re there, pay attention to my landing page. It’s very simple. It’s to the point, it should be very clear what you are going to see. And of course that signup form and headline will be above the fold.

Dolly DeLong
And I am going to give a little shout out to you Megan. I hope that’s okay. But I do know that you have several landing page templates in your shop Paret I do

Magan Ward
they are built just for show it so if you are a show it user I have four template landing pages that are specific for show it that are available to

Dolly DeLong
and do all their beautiful. So I am going to unashamedly put those in the show notes as well. I get no credit or anything from this. I just want Megan’s beautiful work to be seen. So thank you, Dolly. See, you’re amazing. Okay, so Megan, how can someone connect and work with you?

Magan Ward
Well, I’m always hanging out on Instagram at the Megan ward. And you can also find me on LinkedIn or at Meghan Ward, calm.

Dolly DeLong
Awesome. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for sharing so much wisdom and insight about landing pages, especially about in pertaining to lead magnets and how to advertise it on a landing page in an optimized way. You had so many good points. And for those of you who are listening, I would highly recommend you listen to this two times over and take lots of notes. And then also go back to the previous episode and listen to Megan’s other episode talking about building out your email list with lead magnets. So it as always, it’s so good having you here Megan and you know this like I tell you this all the time, you’re incredible. And this will not be your last time on the podcast because you have so you have so much wisdom to share.

Magan Ward
Thank you dolly and thank you so much for having me again. It was it was a pleasure to be here.

Dolly DeLong
So thank you. So everyone. As always, I hope you can continue to find the magic enjoy systems, strategic workflows and automations for your business and your life. And if you enjoyed this episode, please DM me on Instagram at dolly DeLong education and let me know what you learned specifically about landing pages and how it pertains to your lead magnet. And please don’t forget to leave a review if you enjoyed this podcast in please share it with all of your creative business owning friends because I just want to share my love of systems and workflows and just show you how magical they are. for your business and for your life, and as always have a wonderful day. Bye. Thank you so much for listening to the systems and workflow magic podcast. You can find full show notes from today’s episode at dolly DeLong photography.com Ford slash podcast. If you’re loving the podcast, I’d be so honored if you’d subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast player. Be sure to screenshot this episode, share it to your stories and tag me at dolly DeLong education over on Instagram. Until next time, go make some strategic workflow magic.