How To Create a Landing Page With Viral Potential

June 12, 2009

If you’re going to consider yourself a PROblogger, it won’t take long for you to realize that sometimes the blog isn’t the best place to make an offer. Inevitably, you’re going to find yourself using a landing page.

A well-designed landing page that asks for an opt-in (for example) is going to have a MUCH higher conversion rate than a blog. Period. But, it is still just a page that you need to somehow send traffic to.

You can either do all the traffic generation yourself, or you can set the mini-site up such that it has  viral component built right into it. Here’s how…

Landing Page 1.0

You create a simple opt-in page. As usual, you include some copy designed to entice interest. You draw attention to the opt-in. You will usually bribe them for the opt-in by giving them something of value for free.

So, you send traffic to this page and the page converts. Then, once the person confirms their address, you give them the free bribe and you’re done with it. Case closed. That person is now on your list and that’s what you wanted.

Here is a chart of this setup:

Picture 11

This is very workable. The only problem is that all the traffic generation to this landing page is from external sources. Your blog. Perhaps PPC advertising.

Let’s look at a better way.

Landing Page 2.0

Let’s take the sale concept and build a viral traffic generation system right into it.

So, right after the opt-in, the next page will have a viral component. My favorite so far is Viral Tweets. Each new subscriber can simply enter their Twitter username/password and automatically retweet a message of your choosing to all of their followers. In exchange for doing that, they get access to a SECOND bribe – more free content.

But, what’s happening here? Well, you’re exposing your message to their followers on Twitter. And this, in turn, draws in new blood to your opt-in page.

Picture 13

If you make that tweet compelling, this setup and work wonders.

Viral Tweets is my personal favorite, but the idea is simply to engineer a viral component into your landing page so that the traffic generation takes place automatically. You can still pile on some external traffic sources, but the viral component will only magnify the effects.

Oh, BTW, Viral Tweets also has a checkbox so that everybody who retweets from the form will also auto-follow you on Twitter. So, you’ll add them to your follower list at the same time.

Check out Viral Tweets. It is free, with an upgrade option you can check out.

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like...

  1. The Use of Landing Pages
  2. Going Viral on Twitter – Cool New Tool
  3. 5 Tips For Going Viral On Twitter [Retweet]
  4. List Building Tips For Bloggers
  5. How To Use a Custom Page Template In Wordpress
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  • Hey David,

    Awesome post, and you are right. Viral Tweets takes your list building efforts to an entirely new level. I have used the program to build a huge list and get a bunch of followers.


    Shannon
  • Hi David,

    Thanks for the great information!

    I've just started setting up several blogs so your information is helpful to driving more traffic to my blogs or landing page.

    Have a good weekend!

    Robert Garcia
  • That is pretty good information on doing a landing page the right way. Thanks Greg Ellison
  • I love the idea of the viral component of an opt-in campaign - nice touch.

    Incidentally, I have a quick question for you. How did you design the graphics for this post? Do you have a special program?
  • Paul,
    I have a program on my Mac called OmniGraffle which does really slick charts. That's what I used to do those graphics.
  • Guest
    Ingenious! Time to get right on this landing page, squeeze page 2.0 viral tip. Thank you.
  • Hey.. an excellent tip there..

    One thing i'm still not convinced on is the CTR of Twitter.. but I guess if multiple people have the same message then it will spark intrigue and hopefully, click thrus!
  • Great tip Dave. I've used Viral Tweets for my Twitter Rockstar course and it worked great.
  • Good post. I hadn't heard of the tool, but it's just what I need to promote a landing page for a new product.
  • Thanks David great tip. I'm gonna try this it looks awesome.

    Thanks a lot!
  • This is probably one of the very first post where I have actually been able to see some value in Twitter. The fun part is that I have seen this feature on lots of optin forms but never really thought about what the overall benefits were.

    That is awesome (and especially if it works).

    Mikael
  • That seems like a pretty neat way to get people to do some viral work for you, and Viral Tweets looks like it could be useful. With so many Twitter tools out there at the moment it's difficult to see how you might use them all so thanks for highlighting a possible use of this one.
  • Great tip, Dave. Can you share with us any pages where you've used this technique? How about conversion stats?
  • Great info! Simple but very good method to grow subscribers list. The incentive also play an important role to the viral effect.
  • Hi David. That was a great post, so easy to understand and put into practice. I had never even thought about twitter like that.

    Thanks big-time. It'll help no end!
  • alexbeevers
    I think that any Viral component is excellent for marketing your service or product. I have picked up some pearls of wisdom from your posts and I really thank you. I just love your Blog, its layout and its content. It really is a very interesting read.
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