7 Biggest Online Marketing Mistakes On Your Website

What you do online has become FAR more important in the last few months. If you’re making these common mistakes, it can seriously impact your ability to attract clients.

Is your website and online presence up to snuff? 

These tips are specifically designed for you if:

1. You have a landing page (a page with an offer for a freebie or lead magnet).
2. You are offering something free on your website, whether on the homepage or all pages.

Take a look and see if you’re making any of these mistakes!

Mistake 1: Thinking that because your offer is free, you don’t have to ‘sell.’

It may be tempting to think that a ‘free offer’ doesn’t involve much selling, but nothing could be farther from the truth. There is so much content out there, and people are bombarded with information 24/7.

It’s important that your free offer provides REAL value and be something your ideal client actually wants. It must also be positioned well with results and benefits front and center.

Basically, you’re ‘selling’ someone on spending their time and attention to consume your content.

Mistake 2: Requiring too much information to opt-in. 

If you ask your prospect to fill out too much information, there’s a chance your readers may drop off and not opt-in to get your free offer.

Try to keep your form fields limited to first name or name, and email address. The possible exception is if you’re having someone optin for a call with you. Then it makes sense to ask for a number to text or call.

Mistake 3: Educating on the landing page.

Be careful about trying to teach new concepts or modalities on your landing pages. (The same goes for jargon or ‘tribal language.’) People don’t need to understand HOW you accomplish a result, although you may want to tell them. You may have spent many years devoted to your craft and are probably excited about what you do, and want to share!

However, no one cares about your ‘HOW’ until they are very clear on ‘WHAT’ they’ll get from it. That means that you want the wording on your page to reflect the pain points or struggles, and the desired outcomes or results for your ideal client.

Mistake 4: Selling to need and not want. 

There’s a phrase in sales and marketing that goes, “Sell them what they want, and give them what they need.” As an expert, you may know what someone needs, meaning the steps required for them to get from where they are now, to where they want to be.

However, most people are only focused on what they want – the result, the outcome, and not the process or what they need.  Make sure your landing page copy is focused on desired results and the benefits of downloading your free offer.

Mistake 5: Your button is below the fold. 

We are bombarded with information 24/7, which makes attention spans shorter than ever. The phrase ‘above the fold’ comes from newspaper days, when the headlines that could be seen when a newspaper was folded in half on a street corner were ‘above the fold.’ They were the most important articles and headlines.

On your website or landing page, make sure that your button for someone to click to opt-in is ‘above the fold,’ meaning it requires no scrolling down to opt into your freebie. 

Pro-Tip: For longer landing pages, make sure to include a few buttons so little-to-no scrolling is required to take advantage of your free offer. On your website homepage, you can put the offer at the top in a column, or the header, and then repeat it at the bottom.

Mistake 6: No authority positioning or social proof.

You may want to keep your landing page short and sweet, and there are landing pages that succeed that way. 

However, especially on websites and home pages, it’s important to show and tell people why they should listen to you. If you have testimonials, ‘as seen on’ credits, best-selling author status, or photos of you speaking from the stage – use them!

Mistake 7: Not making an offer on the thank you page. 

Once someone opts in for your free offer, they have to be taken to a ‘thank you’ page. This page will often say ‘Congratulations!’ or some other instructions for downloading the offer. Usually those instructions will direct your reader back to their email inbox to download what you’ve offered.

However, your thank you page is also a space where you have your reader’s attention, and they’ve just said that they want to hear from you! This can be a great opportunity to invite someone to a training, a strategy session, or your Facebook group.

Are you SURE you’re not making any of these mistakes?
If you’d like one of my expert coaches to do a ‘Website Eval’ and talk to you about it, we have a few spots available over the next week or so. You can book your Website Eval HERE!