Giving Good Information to Your Web Site Traffic
Here’s an example, from one of my web sites, of the 3/10/30 Rule in action…
RealEstateInvestingForBeginners.com, is a real estate education and mentoring site. People are online all the time looking for ways to put their free time and money to work and real estate is a great place to do it.
But if you look around at what is online right now, what do all the real estate investing web sites actually do?
What most web sites do
They promise things.
That’s all they do. They promise to show you how to make money. They promise that they’ll teach you how to live the easy life. They talk about nice cars and vacation homes and they promise to show you how to get them.
I’d give you some examples, but I’m not here to rip on anyone in particular. These sites are all over the place–they have pictures of Ferraris and smiling people lounging around on the beach, and they say “Give us your phone number and email address, and we’ll show you how to make lots of money!!”
Sometimes they make their visitors read a mile-and-a-half long sales letter that also only contains promises and hype and then, by the time you get to the bottom of the page, you find they’re trying to sell something to you and you still haven’t learned anything.
How to be different (in a good way)
What if, instead of promising to teach people something, you actually taught people something? Teach them something useful, something they didn’t know before, without demanding their contact information or their credit card first?
What about your business?
When you were first exploring your own business, what kind of things did you not know that really caught your interest? What did you learn about your business that got you interested in what you do? What things stood out and made you take interest in the industry you’re now in? What insights do you now have into your industry that would be useful for your customers to know?
There are so many things that are common knowledge to you that would blow your site visitor’s mind. You would be teaching them something valuable, even though it’s very simple to you now, and your site visitors will look at your site as a valuable resource (instead of a sales page).
Going back to the RealEstateInvestingForBeginners.com site, for example, you’ll notice that the whole focus of the web site is to get people to sign up for more information but, before they do, I teach them a couple of simple things. I talk a little bit about mindset. I talk a little about different real estate strategies. All of this stuff is kindergarten-level information, but to beginners it’s great!
Results: double the subscribers
I use to have a page that promised my site visitors information only if they left their name and email. It was a single page called a “squeeze page” (a page that’s sole purpose is to squeeze the contact information out of site visitors), but once I switched to the page you’re seeing now the opt-in rate went from 10% to 20%. That’s double the leads, just for teaching my visitors something first instead of holding the information hostage and only trading it for my visitor’s contact info.
Suddenly twice as many people wanted to talk with me because I had taught them something before expecting anything from them.
Not only that, but I don’t get fake emails or phone numbers either. None. About 1 out of 8 don’t leave their phone number (it’s optional) but those that do leave their number actually give me their real phone number. And they want me to call them! (once again, see how I set up the web site to create this situation).
That’s what happens when people see you and your web site as a resource instead of a sales page. This is also the first step towards establishing a professional guide/mentor relationship with your prospects. If you can do that, you’ll receive a lot more of your prospect’s cooperation and melt away much of the suspicion that most people have when talking with strangers they met online.