Where to send paid ad traffic - sales page or squeeze page?

Split test and see which one works best. It's the only effective method.

For myself, I'd be unwilling to pay for traffic and not try to build a list from it. I know "you should always test", but rightly or wrongly I'd need a bit of convincing even to be willing to test this, to be honest.

Here's the thing (I'm perhaps looking at it from an affiliate marketer's perspective, admittedly, rather than yours as a vendor, but I think all the points I'm about to make apply to your situation, also?) ...

You need to do three things ...

(i) Keep your potential customers returning to the sales page (because not so many people buy anthing much at their first visit to a sales page!);

(ii) Make sales of "other stuff" (as affiliate or vendor?) to the same "captive audience" who regularly rely on and trust your recommendations;

(iii) Establish the credibility and trust necessary to do both the above by earning's people respect as a provider of niche-related information.

Without building lists, of course, you can't do any of the three and you'd just be throwing away almost all the traffic you ever generate that doesn't buy anything immediately? To me, that would feel like trying to run the bath by opening the taps fully (and, in this case, paying for each drop of water), but without putting the plug in the hole first.

Just my perspective.

These three threads say more (again, some of it possibly from a slightly different perspective from your own?) ...

Is it a good idea to spend some time on building a mailing list ?

Without Building a List, How Consistent is Your Income from Affiliate Marketing

Does anyone even make money online without an email list?

.

Yes.

The ability to follow up with non-buying visitors will increase your bottom line.

By building your list, you not only get the chance to send people back to your sales page, but also to other affiliate offers.

Also, if you did tweak your sales page to see if the conversions improve, sending it to your own list is far more beneficial.


Best Of Luck.

Just for the sake of clarifying the options: It may be worth realizing that you can build a buyer's list as well upfront. So, going straight to a sales page doesn't necessarily remove the list building option, it simply changes the nature of the leads you will acquire into your list.

Either way, of those you mentioned above, you'd still want to be collecting them into a list.

If you're inclined to just use an analytical rule of thumb so you can move to the next step without testing, it's probably advisable to simply start with a landing page and a free offer.

If you're in a position where you want to test, it's worth making sure to test end-to-end. From the moment of sign-up (or buying) to 1 to 3 months later (or more). The pay-off of higher quality leads isn't something always immediately seen. But a larger time span will give you a better feel for overall profitability. Particularly since the higher quality leads will be more inclined to buy your higher-end services sooner (requiring less time to be warmed up).

Also, you'd likely want to test the price point of the front offer for the sweet-spot that yields better end-to-end profitably.

My results have been better sending paid traffic to opt-in squeeze page (where there is a high degree of consistency through offer, incentive and ultimate back-end product for sale - mess this up and it won't work as well as sending the traffic directly to your sales page)

What you can do is have your thank you page (on the backside of your autoresponder signup) forward the user to a tailored sales page which begins by thanking the prospect for subscribing, an "especially for my subscribers" statement at the top of the page and then your regular sales page so they are exposed and can buy as part of the same process.

So - you have your lead proceed as below:

Ad ---> Opt-in Squeeze ---> Signup ---> Custom Thank You + Sales Page

We have been seeing good results with this approach where we are getting sales in the same funnel as we are collecting the leads - best of both worlds.

Jeff

Sales page can work, but usually for best results it's best to just test it out. From my personal experience, the squeeze page usually wins.

Hi,

Your traffic from Bing Ads etc may not convert the same anyway.

WHY?

Well because this will be COLD traffic as opposed to your lists where they
already may know, like and trust you enough because you have treated
your lists well enough in the first place.

Plus you may have warmed up your lists well enough before they bought
your product.

So why not get these folks onto your email list first and then do the same
as what you did with your current lists.

You already have a set of emails that your current lists responded well to
right and bought that product.

Could you already have a set of proven emails to go out to your new potential
buyer lists from Bing, Facebook ads etc?

Some food for thought there my friend.

Gavin