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Start-Up Principle Number Six: Opt in Page
As you were reading the previous section, you may have felt that to give up on people in the research process is missing an opportunity. And to some degree, you are correct. The question is what will you do when interested individuals come to your website and they are not ready to purchase a product?
One of the first things that you'll need to do is to create an opt-in page. An opt-in page allows you to collect names and e-mail addresses of interested individuals before they leave your website. As was discussed earlier this is a key feature in your list building process.
This is how you will make use of those visitors that you attract that are in the research phase. Of course, they aren’t ready to buy from you, but you do not want to waste the opportunity gained by having attracted them to your site. Therefore, you will offer them something of value, that they would be happy to exchange their contact details and information for.
Typically, the opt-in website code is given to you by the e-mail database company that you choose to work with. It is a simple cut and paste operation. When you're using a WordPress site, simply gather the code given to you by your autoresponder company and place it someplace that your visitors will clearly be able to see.
One of the best things to offer on your opt-in page is an audio interview with an expert in your market. As you get more experienced in working in this particular niche, you will be able to develop relationships with people that would be happy to have you interview them. You would be giving them more exposure, and access to people that they would not have met otherwise.
This also comes back to one of the reasons why you want to work in a niche where you already have some knowledge, experience and even relationships. This will put you at a head start in terms of being able to attract new visitors to your site and prospective buyers into your marketing funnel.
Start-up Principle Number Seven: Video Content
Whether you attract people through research keywords or buying keywords, you want them to come to your site as interested visitors. In today's fast paced world, with iPads, Tablet PCs and smart phones, it's difficult to attract visitors to your site and your web presence through within content. While people still do lots of reading, many are not interested in long articles or long explanations.
They’re interested in getting the understanding quickly and easily to be able to move on to use the knowledge they've gained to better their life in some way. Text requires people to have to imagine what a process or product looks like and how it would fit into their lives. Therefore, when they see lots of text to read they may not necessarily use it to make a determination to come to your website.
However, people are interested in video content now more than ever. Video allows site visitors to see and understand what something would look like in their own lives. They are easily able to make the determination as to whether or not something is worth their time by seeing it being demonstrated.
The other thing that video content does is give site visitors a sense for who is talking to them. It allows them to connect with individuals creating the content. Video is probably one of the most potent weapons that you will have in developing a following of people who like your products and services.
In order to develop a sustainable competitive advantage, you will need people who are fans of yours, and not just customers. Video gives you that opportunity, in the same way that movies do for actors, actresses and celebrities. In effect, video allows you to be the star of a show that you create.
Therefore, you should use video content liberally. And you should use it on the keywords that you find helpful to attract the kind of people interested in your products or services. When you combine the keyword research that you do with video content, you will begin to attract the kind of buyer who is ready to make purchases and in some sense already presold.
Video creators typically use the website YouTube.com to display their videos. This is an ideal website to use because it stores the actual video and allows you to share it on social media websites.
YouTube is versatile in what it allows you the video creator to do and is also a place online that certain individuals go to seek information. In fact YouTube is considered to be the second most used search engine in the world. That means that you should have your content on YouTube to attract site visitors to your web presence.
What typically stops new e-business owners from creating video, is that they feel as if they don't know what they are going to say. Actually figuring out what to say in your video is the easy part. If you think about what attracts a visitor to your site when you create video, it will be easy for you to come up with topics. You will be able to spell out in your video what viewers should do.
The best course of action to determine what you should be doing in your video is actually the key to creating any content. When you're looking to attract people to your website you want to solve their problems. What kind of problems do you want to solve? You want to try to find the problems that people have indicated that they need to solve based on the phrases that they’re typing in to the search engines. This of course, comes back to your keyword research.
Once you have found the problems that people have type into the search engines, you should add to this list by finding knowledgeable professionals in the market or niche. The question that you want to ask these individuals is, “what are the most frequently asked questions in your profession?”
And then follow up with another question. Ask the question, "What should be the most frequently asked questions in your market?" When a knowledgeable professional answers these questions you will then know what to create your videos about.
