Content Creation

Creating Content Honeypots to Convert Referral Traffic

CopyPress

December 14, 2012 (Updated: February 3, 2023)

Driving traffic is about making money. Unless you are running a CPM model, that traffic needs to be converted into money. A conversion can be a lot of different things ranging from a sale to a simple form fill-out, but at the end of the day these actions have a value to the company looking to capitalize on web traffic.

Great content has several benefits in terms of conversion:

1)     It can sell a product on its own, converting traffic directly into cash.

2)     It can help lead to a secondary conversion (i.e. an email opt in).

Sales copy writing is a unique art form. Take everything you have ever learned about appropriate writing technique and throw it out the window. Sales copy is about eliciting an action, and because of this, all fluff and extras need to be thrown out the window. Every stroke of the keyboard needs to be done in an effort to SELL.

Not all traffic you will drive to and through your content will convert into a sale; this is a basic fact you have to accept. Even through conversion optimization some traffic will slip through your fingers. However, there are options to create what we call “secondary conversions.”

The CopyPress method for creating honeypots to grab secondary conversions consists of some very basic steps:

1. Create a unique content offering that visitors will be willing to trade their email or other contact information for.
2. Set up a well optimized opt-in form, landing page, and pup-up system that will allow you to maximize conversions.
3. Set up a system to A/B test your traffic conversions.
4. Set up sequential sales letters via email to convert the opt-in traffic.
5. Set up a system to A/B test your email traffic and conversions.

Great honeypot content is going to have a couple of key factors:

• It is going to insight an emotional trigger – For this reason it is key to base your honeypot content offering around a similar emotional trigger as the content that drove your traffic to the opt-in, this compounds the effect of the emotional trigger on the visitor.
• The content should be clearly explained, and its incentives clearly stated – This is still a conversion, and as such needs to be handled with the previously stated rules for sales copy in mind.
• The content should be extremely shareable – This may mean that you lose some conversions because of the content being distributed, but it also increases the likelihood of future downloads via new readers and traffic.  For this reason you should also include more conversion opportunities into your content.

A well-optimized conversion funnel is as important for your secondary conversion as your primary conversion.

1. Only Ask for What You Need – Simple opt-ins will lead to more conversions. In most cases nothing more than an email address is needed to grab all of the information you will need to convert traffic.
2. Optimize the Flow – By utilizing Google Analytics, KISS Metrics, and Crazy Egg you can setup a system that will provide insight into how your traffic is utilizing your opt-in system. You can also A/B test creative and copy to maximize secondary conversion rates.

Email sequencing is a spin-off of the direct marketing tactic of sequential sales letters. The idea is very basic in its principle: you create a desire to convert by slowly building the desire for a product.

Email is a great platform for this, but brings its own set of challenges:

1. High Quality Subject Lines – In direct marketing, the biggest hurdle to break through is getting someone to open your letter or package. You handle this by getting creative with your packaging. In email marketing, your subject line is your package. You need to get creative. The basic rules behind making great headlines apply here.
2. Controlling Your Sequence – For us, it was easy to solve this issue through the use of the PAR Program. This software allowed us to easily manage multiple sequences across lists. We could setup the sequencing to run from day 1 of an opt-in. It also pulls in great demographic information.
3. A System for A/B Testing – You need to be testing email language, subject lines, and conversion funnels from email. A similar setup can be used as your opt-in analytics setup.

You only have a few moments to grab someone’s attention. Whether you are driving traffic to a landing page or looking to have someone open an email, your headlines must entice an action.

Here are some awesome strategies for creating great headlines and examples of each:

Action Oriented Headline – “They Laughed When I Sat Down At the Piano…But When I Started to Play!”

Risk of Loss/Prospect of Gain – “A Little Mistake That Cost A Farmer $3,000 A Year” 

How To – “How To Win Friends and Influence People”

Interrogative – “If you were given $4,000,000 to spend — isn’t this the kind of Health Club you’d build?” 

Fonts – The general rule is black on white, serif for print, and sans serif for web.

Emphasis – Use bold, italics, strikethroughs, and underlines to let people know where important words are.

Vary Paragraph Length – Drop a one sentence paragraph every once in a while; keep things live and punchy.

Graphics – Sales copy isn’t about being pretty, it’s about selling. If you add in graphics make sure they back your copy.

People buy things to make their life easier. It is the most basic reason people become consumers. If you can identify the pain your product will fix then you will trigger an emotional reaction in your reader to learn more, and eventually buy.

This is where you build a familiarity with your reader through identification. If you just came into the sales pitch riding on cloud nine and without information of what things were like BEFORE you found this amazing product, then your reader simply cannot identify with you. You must create a heroic item that is worth purchasing, but you must also create a person attached to this item whom has seen what life without it is like.

Testimonials sell. You see them on sales letters, ecommerce pages, everywhere. Knowing what other people think about a product is essential in the purchasing process, so put that power in people’s hands immediately.

If you follow the above steps you have pulled the reader in with your headline, identified their pain, created an imperfect hero to show how that pain could be subsided, built credibility for that pain killer, now it’s time to sell. This is where you offer the Ultimate Solution to them for all of their problems. This is where you unleash your product.

Dave Snyder

CopyPress writer

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