Creating Opt-ins For Your Fitness Site…

Recently I was grilling famous copywriter Michel Fortin about creating fitness site opt-ins. Michel is one of the most knowledgeable people on the planet when it comes to internet marketing and direct response marketing.

I was talking to Michel about marketing a personal training business and telling him that since I have sites that rank well in the SERPS and don't want to mess with sticking an opt-in on the home page for fear of confusing people, I would ad other squeeze pages to collect peoples name and emails so I could put them on a drip campaign.

Here's what Michel told me:

"I think that, if you’re not going to use a forced opt-in process (before the salesletter), then you need several landing pages, with different marketing strategies catering to each one of those pages.

A good way is to offer something for free. A bribe. Perhaps a free report or a compilation of articles.

I think a “shocking” report, like the one we talked about on the call, could be really cool, because it has virulence to it—people will talk about it, pass it around, etc.

In fact, you might want to offer just a few tips in the report, but make a call-to-action at the end offering “the rest of it”. But they have to go to a website to get it, which is an opt-in page. (Tell them they must “register” to get it.)

Say you have a report with 12 tips. The report only has 5. For the other 7, including (hot tip title/benefit), then visit blah dot com.

Heck, you can even have (very cheaply) a software created (web-based is best, using simple php or whatever) that can help them—a tracker or survey, for example, to determine what TYPE of personal training is best for them.

The best way of course is to first separate organic vs. paid traffic. That way, you can optimize each of them separately. These are the two biggies.

Your current (main) page can be for organic traffic. But your “other” pages can be used to test, track, and tweak for paid traffic.

Once those two are separated, then you can individualize sub-pages for each, say, campaign, keyword, ad, etc. Each of those pages can be optimized for different keywords, and be for different opt-in offers, etc.

The key is to test congruency and consistency. That is, to make sure your squeeze pages follow the flow of the ad. The more congruent they are with what brought them to that page, the higher the response."

When Michel speaks, I listen.

Work Less and Make More,

Chris McCombs is mixed martial arts marketing and health club marketing specialist