Landing Page Questions

Let me first preface this by saying that there's obviously more than one way to skin a cat, as they say. That being said, this is my personal philosophy and the way I go about building my business.

Q: Is it better to go for the sale or to get the lead?

A: Almost always go for the opt-in. If you capture your prospect's details you'll have more than one opportunity to sell to them. It's a common understanding that it takes the average person between 5-7 times of seeing an offer (depending on who you talk to) before they will actually buy. By catching their details, you have the opportunity to continue presenting the offer to them for several days/weeks after they initially see it. Even if they are still not receptive after your sales efforts for that particular product, you always have the unique and powerful opportunity to sell different products & services to them (whether they're your own, or based on affiliate promotions) throughout their entire lifetime of that prospect as a member of your list.

Note: The prospects that you lose in the immediacy (during the opt-in stage), will be far outweighed by the ones you gain/retain in the long run. This doesn't, however, mean that you should be satisfied with mediocre opt-in conversions. On the contrary, you should see the optin as a sale within itself, because each one of the people on your list will have an estimated customer value of about $1 per month (using Filsaime's list-building theory).

Q: If you go for the sale do you use the landing page as an abbreviated sales page or do you redirect them to your main sales page.

A: Go for the sale after the optin. Unless I'm doing a launch, I don't like to send them to a confirmation page immediately afterward. If you're doing a double opt-in campaign, then save the confirmation directions for the email itself. I wouldn't waste an opportunity to sell your products on a chance to remind the prospect to check their email. This is part of the reason I prefer single optin campaigns for these kinds of business setups (although there are many highly intelligent marketers who swear by the double-opt-in method... to each his own I suppose).

Q: Is it better to have the order form attached to the bottom of the landing page or on a separate page.

A: I personally have a secure checkout page setup for each of my websites. The clients actually feel more "safe" if it's an official checkout page vs. some graphically intense, "hard sell" page. My approach is to sell them "hard" on the offer, but once they say "yes", make them feel as comfortable and relaxed as possible, knowing that they're in a completely safe and professional environment. I don't see many marketers these days who still put the order form on the sale page... although I've still seen a few of Tellman's offers setup this way.

Q: What are the advantages/disadvantages of placing landing pages on subdomains? On totally different urls?

A: I think the major disadvantage is making the prospect feel as though they've been "passed off" in some respect. It works for campaigns where you are providing a "testimonial-like" landing page which recommends a particular site and there is a link that directs the prospect to it (often times affiliate promotions are setup this way). But it's an altogether different feeling when you send someone from one website, which they've begun to grow accustomed to, to another where the same offer is being presented by the same marketer. It's just a blatant and unnecessary disruption of the continuity of the sale, and I think that the prospect would probably "feel" that and quite possibly be turned off by it.

Anyway my friend, I hope this was helpful. Cheers.