The Ultimate Guide To Lead Magnets & Content Upgrades

Would you like to build compelling Lead Magnets and Content Upgrades for your business but don’t know where to begin?…

If you’re an OptimizePress customer or have heard of our product offering, then you probably already have a beautiful looking website.

You may also have a tonne of great content ideas, ready to begin providing value for your visitors...

You’ve probably also heard how valuable it is to build a list of subscribers, but are left with a problem…

How do you actually start building a Lead Magnet?

At OptimizePress, we’re very aware of just how difficult it can be to find relevant information that covers what you need and walks you through how to do it in a clear and concise manner.

In this guide, our aim is to provide you with the most in-depth and comprehensive training when it comes to creating a Lead Magnet for building a list of email subscribers.

We’re going to cover what a Lead Magnet and Content Upgrade is, how the two relate and walk you through how to best set them up.

We will also provide you with the things to think about and guide you through the various promotion methods that will allow you to get the ball rolling and start getting results immediately.

By the end of this guide, you will have a firm understanding of the practical steps required to start collecting email addresses.

So grab a cup of tea, roll up your sleeves, and let’s get started…

In the seminal book ‘Influence’ by the renowned Psychologist ‘Robert Cialdini’, one of the most powerful principles highlighted was the concept of ‘Reciprocity’.

Robert discovered that people are much more likely to return a favour when something’s given to them freely.

Whether it’s a free brochure from a store, a sheet of coupons through your letterbox or a small food sample from a bakery.

Customers are more likely to want to shop or at least find out more information about the services provided after receiving something for free, provided the information being given away is of value and high quality.

It’s a concept that encompasses every type of human-to-human interaction, whether it’s calling up a friend and asking how they are, or over delivering to your bosses in the company you’re working for.

The good news is, people generally love being given free stuff and can use this to your advantage.

Think about your business for a second...

What can you provide for your audience that’s valuable and can give away for free?

If you’re involved in a niche that you’re passionate about, then this question may be a simple one to answer. However, it’s also a point where many website owners seem to struggle with.

In order to know the answer, we must first take a step back and ask ourselves the following questions:

Who is your customer? - To understand what offers and services to provide for your audience, you must understand your market and the customer you’re providing information for.

There are various ways you can identify this:

What problems are they currently having? - Once you’ve identified your market and ideal customer, start investigating exactly what their problems and issues are using the strategies listed in the previous question.

What will they need that will allow them to take the first step? - When you know your Market, who your customer is, what their problems are and the events that lead to those problems, you will have all the information you need to construct the right marketing materials and solutions that will help solve their issues.

Finding out the answers to these questions will provide you with the knowledge that will make it easier to structure your website and have a better idea of the type of information to deliver.

Now let’s go a stage further…

What’s the one golden nugget you can deliver to your audience that’s valuable, fast to produce, easy to consume, and provides immediate results?

A great Lead Magnet will:

It will solve a customer issue and allow them to experience a ‘quick win’; building trust and authority.

The customer journey typically consists of four parts:

Visitor >> Subscriber >> Customer >> Promoter

Visitor - Your prospective customer does not know who you are. They may have found your website using Google search or perhaps saw a social-media post that got shared by a friend on Facebook.

They’re not yet sold on what you have to offer, but are intrigued by your content and want to read more by visiting your website for more information.

Subscriber - Once a visitor converts to a subscriber, you’ve successfully moved your relationship from an observer to a follower.

They’re interested enough with what you have to say and would like to know more.

Customer - The goal of any business is to make sales and build a nice flow of loyal customers. This stage is perhaps the most complex that generally has a lot of moving parts and processes.

However, if you manage to move your subscriber into a customer, they now trust who you are, feel a connection with you and are happy to buy the products and services you have to offer.

Promoter - The ultimate goal is to build awareness and exposure in your business through ‘word-of-mouth’, which is the most powerful form of marketing.

If your customers like, trust and endorse you to their friends and family, you’ve essentially built a great asset for your business that will continue to deliver other raving visitors and customers to your website without any active promotion of your own.

Your job as a business owner is to smoothly walk your audience through each step of the process, with your Lead Magnet acting as the first port of call from moving your customer from Visitor to Subscriber.

>>[Might be good to include an Illustration of the Value Journey]<<

In short, having a Lead Magnet and building a list is vital.

Here’s a nice example of a good Lead Magnet opt-in form taken from Anthony Robbins’ official website. It’s clear that looking at the offer, Tony knows exactly who his customer base is and what they’re interested in learning.

It also includes a powerful headline that describes exactly what the offers about. We will get into headlines in a bit more detail later in this guide. But for now, please focus your attention on the opt-in form and the general layout of the page and start creating a mental note of what the most common and optimal designs are.

This Lead Magnet offer is a great example if you’re running a software business. In this example, SEMRush provides customers with the opportunity to demo their software by clicking on the ‘Green’ button; taking the visitor to a sign-up form to request access.

It’s a very powerful way to develop trust with your potential customer by providing them with the ability to ‘try’ your software before deciding to purchase a subscription.

Here’s another type of Lead Magnet form in the ‘Wedding Planner’ niche presented as an ‘opt-in box’. Offering visitors a ‘Free Plan’, advice, tools and access to local vendors.

Here’s a compilation of the most popular Lead Magnet types below with examples to help give you some additional ideas of what you could potentially deliver to your visitors.

Summaries - If you have a blog post that’s beyond 2000 words, providing a summary can be very valuable to a portion of your readers who simply don’t have the time to read your article. This style of Lead Magnet fits very closely to ‘Content-Upgrades’, which we’ll be discussing shortly.

Here’s a nice example of a Lead Magnet providing summaries of existing posts by compiling them into handy guides that you can download and consume.

Checklists - Do you have a comprehensive ‘how-to’ post that needs condensing? Providing a checklist is ideal for creating an action-plan for your subscribers who’re looking for a short and simple way to take the required steps to achieving a result.

Here’s another great example of a checklist provided in the ‘Productivity’ niche using a simple opt-in box and a nice clean design.

Cheat Sheets / Handouts - Similar to a Checklist, a Cheat Sheet or Handout is great for providing additional material beyond your blog posts by taking away the key concepts and including them into a consumable document.

Here’s a Planner and Calendar Lead Magnet in the ‘Weight Loss’ niche, which is a great incentive for subscribers to opt-in and gain access to.

Toolkit / Resource List - This Lead Magnet type is great if you have a ‘how-to’ post that requires tools and resources in order to take action. Listing these tools into a digestible document that subscribers can download and view can be very valuable.

In this example, the vendor has included a useful resource with a clear description to explain what’s included and a privacy policy. This is especially important with the latest General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) consent laws.

Software Download / Free-Trial - This is great if you’re running a software business or membership site and would like a way to build trust with your audience. Most companies typically run 14-day or 30-day trials, depending on the type of service being offered.

In this example, SimilarWeb has implemented a great user interface that gives users two options to either try the software with a free account or request a demo with a specialised expert.

Discounts / Free-Shipping - If you’re running an ecommerce business, this type of Lead Magnet is very popular, by offering discount codes and free-shipping to first-time buyers or to your loyal customers.

Here’s an interesting sign-up form from a UK Healthcare website; offering exclusive deals and discounts with 400+ partnered NHS organisations.

Quizzes & Surveys - While not a typical Lead Magnet, a quiz/survey provides a nice way to interact with your audience while allowing them to directly connect and get involved with your business as well as gaining a better understanding of your customers.

This example uses a simple form against a white background with a brief description at the top; telling visitors exactly what they’ll be getting once opting in.

Assessment / Test - Do you run a sports or medical based business? This type of Lead Magnet is great for surveying and diagnosing your customers, allowing you to better target them and propose a treatment plan moving forward.

This example Lead Magnet opt-in uses a 3-colour palette with different fonts to make the headline stand out.

Webinars - If you’re selling an expensive product and would like a better way to connect with your audience, then an evergreen-webinar is ideal and is commonly used to build extensive value up-front via a live-training. Great for pre-selling your main product or service.

The design of our webinar form uses a very basic color scheme with a nice green button underneath to make the call-to-action stand out.

You can see from these examples just how varied a Lead Magnet offer can be and can be presented in a number of ways, depending on your market and what you’re aiming to achieve.

What we’ve discussed so far is what a Lead Magnet is with some notable examples to help illustrate the best practices when setting one up.

For the more experienced readers amongst you, you may well have noticed some flaws with what a generic Lead Magnet can provide. A few questions and comments are raised:

“What if a visitor isn’t interested in that particular Lead Magnet?”

“My blog contains various topics, a single Lead Magnet may not be relevant…”

“I only have one core product, I can only make multiple Lead Magnets that cover the same topic…”

All of the above questions and statements are valid points, which we’ll begin to solve using a style of Lead Magnet called a ‘Content Upgrade’.

Content Upgrades are generally easy to understand and can best be described as Lead Magnets that are specific to your blog posts and categories.

They are more targeted and are aimed at that topic in the blog post, or in other words… They are an “Upgrade” to the blog post.

While simple at its heart, don’t underestimate how powerful a Content Upgrade is.

Having researched some sources, we found some very interesting stats:

According to backlinko.com, Brian Dean experienced a 4.82% increase in his conversion rates compared to his previous 0.54%

A pretty remarkable statistic considering the ease of implementation, which can result in a huge spike in conversions and email addresses from your visitors.

Kim Roach from buzzblogger.com also noticed similar results:

“This ONE strategy is converting 7-10% of our visitors into subscribers. If you choose just ONE strategy to implement, let it be this one.”

In all of our research findings, the results were consistent across the board. Checking our own statistics. We experienced pretty similar results, which confirmed that none of these sources were wrong and wasn’t niche or market dependent.

In the seminal book ‘Influence’ by the renowned Psychologist ‘Robert Cialdini’, one of the most powerful principles highlighted was the concept of ‘Reciprocity’.

Robert discovered that people are much more likely to return a favour when something’s given to them freely.

Whether it’s a free brochure from a store, a sheet of coupons through your letterbox or a small food sample from a bakery.

Customers are more likely to want to shop or at least find out more information about the services provided after receiving something for free, provided the information being given away is of value and high quality.

It’s a concept that encompasses every type of human-to-human interaction, whether it’s calling up a friend and asking how they are, or over delivering to your bosses in the company you’re working for.

The good news is, people generally love being given free stuff and can use this to your advantage.

Think about your business for a second...

What can you provide for your audience that’s valuable and can give away for free?

If you’re involved in a niche that you’re passionate about, then this question may be a simple one to answer. However, it’s also a point where many website owners seem to struggle with.

In order to know the answer, we must first take a step back and ask ourselves the following questions:

Who is your customer? - To understand what offers and services to provide for your audience, you must understand your market and the customer you’re providing information for.

There are various ways you can identify this:

What problems are they currently having? - Once you’ve identified your market and ideal customer, start investigating exactly what their problems and issues are using the strategies listed in the previous question.

What will they need that will allow them to take the first step? - When you know your Market, who your customer is, what their problems are and the events that lead to those problems, you will have all the information you need to construct the right marketing materials and solutions that will help solve their issues.

Finding out the answers to these questions will provide you with the knowledge that will make it easier to structure your website and have a better idea of the type of information to deliver.

Now let’s go a stage further…

What’s the one golden nugget you can deliver to your audience that’s valuable, fast to produce, easy to consume, and provides immediate results?

A great Lead Magnet will:

It will solve a customer issue and allow them to experience a ‘quick win’; building trust and authority.

The customer journey typically consists of four parts:

Visitor >> Subscriber >> Customer >> Promoter

Visitor - Your prospective customer does not know who you are. They may have found your website using Google search or perhaps saw a social-media post that got shared by a friend on Facebook.

They’re not yet sold on what you have to offer, but are intrigued by your content and want to read more by visiting your website for more information.

Subscriber - Once a visitor converts to a subscriber, you’ve successfully moved your relationship from an observer to a follower.

They’re interested enough with what you have to say and would like to know more.

Customer - The goal of any business is to make sales and build a nice flow of loyal customers. This stage is perhaps the most complex that generally has a lot of moving parts and processes.

However, if you manage to move your subscriber into a customer, they now trust who you are, feel a connection with you and are happy to buy the products and services you have to offer.

Promoter - The ultimate goal is to build awareness and exposure in your business through ‘word-of-mouth’, which is the most powerful form of marketing.

If your customers like, trust and endorse you to their friends and family, you’ve essentially built a great asset for your business that will continue to deliver other raving visitors and customers to your website without any active promotion of your own.

Your job as a business owner is to smoothly walk your audience through each step of the process, with your Lead Magnet acting as the first port of call from moving your customer from Visitor to Subscriber.

>>[Might be good to include an Illustration of the Value Journey]<<

In short, having a Lead Magnet and building a list is vital.

Here’s a nice example of a good Lead Magnet opt-in form taken from Anthony Robbins’ official website. It’s clear that looking at the offer, Tony knows exactly who his customer base is and what they’re interested in learning.

It also includes a powerful headline that describes exactly what the offers about. We will get into headlines in a bit more detail later in this guide. But for now, please focus your attention on the opt-in form and the general layout of the page and start creating a mental note of what the most common and optimal designs are.

This Lead Magnet offer is a great example if you’re running a software business. In this example, SEMRush provides customers with the opportunity to demo their software by clicking on the ‘Green’ button; taking the visitor to a sign-up form to request access.

It’s a very powerful way to develop trust with your potential customer by providing them with the ability to ‘try’ your software before deciding to purchase a subscription.

Here’s another type of Lead Magnet form in the ‘Wedding Planner’ niche presented as an ‘opt-in box’. Offering visitors a ‘Free Plan’, advice, tools and access to local vendors.

Here’s a compilation of the most popular Lead Magnet types below with examples to help give you some additional ideas of what you could potentially deliver to your visitors.

Summaries - If you have a blog post that’s beyond 2000 words, providing a summary can be very valuable to a portion of your readers who simply don’t have the time to read your article. This style of Lead Magnet fits very closely to ‘Content-Upgrades’, which we’ll be discussing shortly.

Here’s a nice example of a Lead Magnet providing summaries of existing posts by compiling them into handy guides that you can download and consume.

Checklists - Do you have a comprehensive ‘how-to’ post that needs condensing? Providing a checklist is ideal for creating an action-plan for your subscribers who’re looking for a short and simple way to take the required steps to achieving a result.

Here’s another great example of a checklist provided in the ‘Productivity’ niche using a simple opt-in box and a nice clean design.

Cheat Sheets / Handouts - Similar to a Checklist, a Cheat Sheet or Handout is great for providing additional material beyond your blog posts by taking away the key concepts and including them into a consumable document.

Here’s a Planner and Calendar Lead Magnet in the ‘Weight Loss’ niche, which is a great incentive for subscribers to opt-in and gain access to.

Toolkit / Resource List - This Lead Magnet type is great if you have a ‘how-to’ post that requires tools and resources in order to take action. Listing these tools into a digestible document that subscribers can download and view can be very valuable.

In this example, the vendor has included a useful resource with a clear description to explain what’s included and a privacy policy. This is especially important with the latest General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) consent laws.

Software Download / Free-Trial - This is great if you’re running a software business or membership site and would like a way to build trust with your audience. Most companies typically run 14-day or 30-day trials, depending on the type of service being offered.

In this example, SimilarWeb has implemented a great user interface that gives users two options to either try the software with a free account or request a demo with a specialised expert.

Discounts / Free-Shipping - If you’re running an ecommerce business, this type of Lead Magnet is very popular, by offering discount codes and free-shipping to first-time buyers or to your loyal customers.

Here’s an interesting sign-up form from a UK Healthcare website; offering exclusive deals and discounts with 400+ partnered NHS organisations.

Quizzes & Surveys - While not a typical Lead Magnet, a quiz/survey provides a nice way to interact with your audience while allowing them to directly connect and get involved with your business as well as gaining a better understanding of your customers.

This example uses a simple form against a white background with a brief description at the top; telling visitors exactly what they’ll be getting once opting in.

Assessment / Test - Do you run a sports or medical based business? This type of Lead Magnet is great for surveying and diagnosing your customers, allowing you to better target them and propose a treatment plan moving forward.

This example Lead Magnet opt-in uses a 3-colour palette with different fonts to make the headline stand out.

Webinars - If you’re selling an expensive product and would like a better way to connect with your audience, then an evergreen-webinar is ideal and is commonly used to build extensive value up-front via a live-training. Great for pre-selling your main product or service.

The design of our webinar form uses a very basic color scheme with a nice green button underneath to make the call-to-action stand out.

You can see from these examples just how varied a Lead Magnet offer can be and can be presented in a number of ways, depending on your market and what you’re aiming to achieve.

What we’ve discussed so far is what a Lead Magnet is with some notable examples to help illustrate the best practices when setting one up.

For the more experienced readers amongst you, you may well have noticed some flaws with what a generic Lead Magnet can provide. A few questions and comments are raised:

“What if a visitor isn’t interested in that particular Lead Magnet?”

“My blog contains various topics, a single Lead Magnet may not be relevant…”

“I only have one core product, I can only make multiple Lead Magnets that cover the same topic…”

All of the above questions and statements are valid points, which we’ll begin to solve using a style of Lead Magnet called a ‘Content Upgrade’.

Content Upgrades are generally easy to understand and can best be described as Lead Magnets that are specific to your blog posts and categories.

They are more targeted and are aimed at that topic in the blog post, or in other words… They are an “Upgrade” to the blog post.

While simple at its heart, don’t underestimate how powerful a Content Upgrade is.

Having researched some sources, we found some very interesting stats:

According to backlinko.com, Brian Dean experienced a 4.82% increase in his conversion rates compared to his previous 0.54%

A pretty remarkable statistic considering the ease of implementation, which can result in a huge spike in conversions and email addresses from your visitors.

Kim Roach from buzzblogger.com also noticed similar results:

“This ONE strategy is converting 7-10% of our visitors into subscribers. If you choose just ONE strategy to implement, let it be this one.”

In all of our research findings, the results were consistent across the board. Checking our own statistics. We experienced pretty similar results, which confirmed that none of these sources were wrong and wasn’t niche or market dependent.

In one of our recent posts, we launched a Content Upgrade offering an SSL Tech Guide to accompany the main article.

Since it’s release, we gained 60 opt-ins in the first hour and growing with a 42% conversion rate.

We have since done this with our other articles, and have experienced identical results.

///// OPL Image /////

It’s clear that Content Upgrades are very powerful and can transform your lead-generation activities overnight with just a few small tweaks in your implementation.

Looking at the above statistics, Content Upgrades provide a range of benefits:

- Allows for better visitor and customer segmentation.

- Better personalisation.

- Able to expand your product suite by introducing more relevant products and services.

- Better targeting of traffic so you can focus on the type of audience with the most website engagement.

Now that we’ve established the importance of having a compelling Lead Magnet and the power of a Content Upgrade, we will now cover the basic steps to help you get started.

We briefly brushed on the importance of understanding your customer and your market. In fact, we would even go as far as to say that this should be your first activity before building any type of website.

For this guide, we will assume that you already have a general idea of your market and have a basic website that’s fully structured.

The setup process consists of 6-parts:

Part #1 - Identify a high traffic post/page.

Part #2 - Identify a resource to add to your post/page.

Part #3 - Create your Lead Magnet.

Part #4 - Add your Lead Magnet to a post/page.

Part #5 - Promote, Promote, Promote.

Part #6 - Measure your results.

The first part of the process is to leverage what you already have by identifying your most popular blog posts.

If you currently have a website with content, then it’s likely already been visited by visitors who have developed a preference to the type of content that you already have.

The best way to view your website statistics is to head over to your Google Analytics account.

Please Note: If you currently do not have Google Analytics installed on your website, then we strongly recommend you do so as it will help you track your website content and get a better grasp of what is and isn’t working in your business. Here’s a great Google Analytics setup guide by Moz.com.

Once inside your Google Analytics dashboard, go to Behaviour >> Site Content >> Landing Pages

Google Analytics will display a list of all of your available content based on how many times that post/page has been visited.

If we look at Pareto’s 80/20 rule, it’s typically the 20% that produces 80% of your results.

So what we’re looking to do here is to take 5 of your most popular posts and use these to begin upgrading your content with offers that your audience can further benefit and gain value from.

Please Note: If you currently don’t have any content on your blog and are just starting out. We recommend creating one blog post and a Lead Magnet to accompany it. As your blog starts to fill with more content, you can then begin identifying your popular posts and transitioning into Content Upgrades.

Once you’ve identified 3-5 of your highest traffic blog posts. It’s now time to identify what you would like to add as a Content Upgrade.

If you refer back to the Lead Magnet types that was explained earlier in this guide, this should be a very simple process.

What’s the theme of your blog post? - If you’re still stuck on which Content Upgrade to create, break it down into bite-sized chunks by firstly figuring out exactly what it is your blog posts are trying to achieve. Does it contain content that can be reduced?

Every blog post should have a general theme with a conclusion at the end of it, which your readers can take action from. If you’re still unsure, have a read of your comments and get a feel for the type of feedback you’re getting from your visitors.

Here’s an example from our own blog:

Looking at the headline, it’s clear that the main aim of the article is to help readers ‘Create & Deliver Free Digital Downloads.’

The meat of the article included step-by-step processes with videos that walked readers through how to begin creating and delivering their digital downloads. It was a big post, which required a bit of time to read.

In looking at the different types of Lead Magnets we could have delivered. It was clear that this was a great fit for ‘Checklists’, ‘Workbooks’ and a ‘PDF Version’ to allow visitors the preference to read whilst traveling.

Here was the Content Upgrade that we decided to deliver:

And here’s the results after the first hour of launch 🙂

Here’s a quick reminder of the types of Lead Magnets and Content Upgrades you can create:

Once you’ve decided on the type of Lead Magnet or Content Upgrade you wish to create, you simply have to now go ahead and build it.

Thankfully, there are many free services you can use that will allow you to build these quickly.

We recently published an in-depth guide that walks you through how to do this step-by-step and have included the article for you below:

How To Create And Deliver Free Digital Downloads - https://www.optimizepress.com/how-to-create-deliver-free-digital-downloads/

Here’s a small segment:

---

The Quickest Way To Create A Basic PDF

One of the easiest ways you can create a basic PDF file is using free software. If you're stuck at this point in your marketing journey, stop everything, and follow the next few steps:

1. Create a Google Account if you don't already have one: (https://accounts.google.com)

2. Login to Google Drive: (https://drive.google.com)

3. Create new Google Docs document:

4. Write out your ebook, report, checklist, blueprint, white paper or whatever your lead magnet is.

5. Once complete, select File >> Download As >> choose PDF Document (.pdf)

---

Naming Your Lead Magnet

With your Lead Magnet written, you will now want to give it a title. There’s generally not much to explain here besides adding a crucial point:

- Give it a title that explains what your lead magnets about (e.g. How to train your dog to sit: The Complete Guide)

For a written guide on writing compelling headlines, please refer to our in-depth article below:

How To Write Headlines That Sell And Convert - https://www.optimizepress.com/how-to-write-headlines-that-sell-and-convert/

Adding a Cover For Your Lead Magnet

By this point, you should now have your Lead Magnet or Content Upgrade fully written and ready to go. We now want to add a nice compelling cover for it that will attract your visitors and make them want to open and read it.

Designing a cover can seem daunting, but thankfully, there are many free services you can use with templates that will allow you to use as a guide and get designing quickly.

Our best recommendation is a free and paid online tool called Canva.

Canva is a great tool that will enable you to choose from a wide range of pre-built design templates to allow you to produce your own custom made covers, social-media images and a range of other resources.

We wrote an in-depth guide on how to use this fantastic tool and have included a link to it below:

How To Create Jaw Dropping Blog Graphics & eBooks With Canva - https://www.optimizepress.com/how-to-create-jaw-dropping-blog-graphics-ebooks-with-canva/

With your Lead Magnet or Content Upgrade made and ready for delivery, we now want a way to add these to our blog posts and pages so that our visitors know it exists.

There are various ways you can do this with OptimizePress and will list 3 that you’ll commonly use below:

Inserting an Opt-In Form Using The SmartTheme

In this tutorial, we’re going to walk you through adding an opt-In box to your blog using the SmartTheme.

- To begin, head over to your WordPress admin dashboard and go to Appearance >> Theme Options. You’ll be taken to the SmartTheme dashboard.

- In the SmartTheme menu, click on the ‘Optin Forms’ option to expand the menu. Click on the ‘Integration Settings’ option.

- In the ‘Integration Settings’ area, you’ll be shown a ‘Number of Integrations’ slider, which you can choose to set. Depending on your business objectives, you will set this accordingly. For this example, we’ll simply set this number to ‘1.’

- With this now selected, click on the ‘Integration #1’ box underneath to expand the options.

- You will be shown a list of options to edit:

Integration Name - Give your Integration a name.

Integration Type - Select from an integrated email service. If you currently don’t have one set, you can select the ‘Custom Form’ option and insert your html code manually.

Integration List - Here, you can select from the form you would like to use, which will be pulled from your chosen email integration type. If you’ve select the ‘Custom Form’ option, this will be replaced by a HTML box to insert your custom form code into.

Thank You Page URL - Insert the URL of the page you would like your subscribers to see upon signing up.

Already Subscribed URL - Insert the URL of the page you would like subscribers to see if they’ve already subscribed to your form.

Disable Name - You can choose to enable or disable the name field in your opt-in form.

Name, Name Field Label, Name Order - We recommend leaving these options set to default.

Email Field Label, Email Order - We recommend leaving these options set to default.

Integrate With OptimizeMember - You can either choose to enable or disable OptimizeMember integration if you’re using this as a membership solution.

- With your options set, you can now choose to insert your forms to different part of your website. You will have a list of options to choose from.

You can have different opt-in form integrations per website area. To start with, we recommend focusing on the ‘Posts’ option.

- With the ‘Posts’ option clicked, you will now be show a list of 3 options:

After Header - Your Opt-In Box will appear after the website header of your posts.

After Hero - Your Opt-In Box will appear after the Hero section of your posts.

Before Footer - Your Opt-In Box will appear before the footer of your website.

- Enabling these will expand the options showing a list of settings:

Integration - Select the Integration you created previously.

Opt-In Style - Select from ‘Light’ or ‘Dark.’

Form Headline - Give your form a compelling headline.

Form SubHeadline - Give you form a subheadline.

Form Submit Button Text - Set the text you would like to appear on your opt-in form button.

Form Submit Button Background Colour - Set the button background colour.

Form Submit Button Hover Background Colour - Set the button colour when hovered with your mouse.

Show Form In Lightbox / Popup Opt-In - Enable or disable the option to display your form as a popup or lightbox.

For the purpose of this tutorial, we’ve kept everything set to default.

Here’s what each opt-in box looks like in different areas of your page:

After Header

After Hero

Before Footer

Inserting a Sidebar Opt-In Widget

- To Insert a Sidebar Opt-In Widget, head back to the ‘Opt-In Form Options’ area and click on the ‘Widget’ selection.

- You will be shown 3 form selections, allowing you to set 3 form styles.

- Click on ‘Form #1’ to expand the options. You will be shown the same settings as listed above. Again, for this tutorial, we will keep these options set to default.

- To Display the opt-in form widget, we’ll need to ensure that the blog layout is a 2-column layout and that the widget is added to the widget section of the blog.

- To Ensure you have a 2-column layout, head over to Blog >> Blog Post Layout. Ensure that either left or right side layout is selected.

- Next, Go to Appearance >> Widgets and select the ‘OptimizePress Optin Form Widget’ dragging it to the Sidebar Widget area. Select ‘Form #1’ from the style dropdown list and click ‘Save’.

- Finally, head back to your blog and view your posts. You should now see the optin form widget beautifully displayed.

Adding a Custom Opt-In Form For Each Post.

If you’ve built a few Content Upgrades and would like a custom form displayed exclusively on a post, you can do this by going to the post ‘edit’ area and scrolling down to find the ‘Custom Theme Options’ area.

Changes made here will override the settings in the main Theme Options area, allowing you to design and place a custom form on your blog post.

Inserting an Opt-In Form Using The LiveEditor

In this tutorial, we’re going to walk you through adding a basic opt-in box using the OptimizePress LiveEditor.

- To get started, launch or add new page by going to OptimizePress >> Create New Page

- Select a template from the list of templates you’ll have available. For this tutorial, select the ‘Template Style 2 - Full-Width’ template under the Blank Page group.

- Next, give your page a name and click the green ‘Create Page’ button. This will launch the LiveEditor.

Please Note: If you already have a page fully built with the LiveEditor, please ignore this step and move onto the next one.

- Inside the LiveEditor, click the ‘Add New Row’ button to add a new row. Select the ‘1-Column’ option under ‘Simple Layouts’.

- With the new row created, click the ‘Add Element’ button. Scroll down and select the ‘Optin Box’ element.

- Once clicked, you will be shown a list of a various opt-in styles to choose from. For this tutorial, select this opt-in style:

- With the opt-in style selected, you will be taken to the third step of the opt-in settings area. You will see 3-tabs: Form HTML, Content & Submit Box.

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Form HTML

- In this tab, you will see a dropdown to select your integration type. If you have an Email Autoresponder service integrated, you should see this listed in the list of options. Select your integration or if you decide to use your own custom for, select the ‘Custom Form’ option.

- You will also see options to display the Name, Email and the Field Order for each input box. For this tutorial, please leave the these fields set to default.

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Content

- Here, we will set what the opt-in box will look like:

Header - Add a compelling headline.

Content - Provide a brief description of your Lead Magnet or Content Upgrade.

Privacy Notice - Provide a privacy notice to help with added security.

Name Default Value - Provide a label for your name field.  

Email Default Value - Provide a label for your email field.

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Submit Box

- To set a button to your opt-in form, you will be given a choice of using a default button from a list of built-in button templates, creating a custom button using the button design editor or uploading a button image.

If you would like to design your own custom button, we created a useful article that walks you through how to create a good ‘call-to-action’ button with a template you can download and use.

For more information, please see our article below:

Download These High Converting OverlayOptimizer CTA Buttons - https://www.optimizepress.com/download-these-high-converting-overlayoptimizer-cta-buttons/

- For this tutorial, select the ‘Use Default Button’ option.

- Finally, set the ‘Text’ of your button.

- Once you’re happy with your settings, click the green ‘Insert’ button.

Your optin-form should now be added and displayed on your page.

Inserting an Opt-In Form Using OptimizeLeads

In this tutorial, we're going to be building a simple opt-In overlay using a template from our Overlay category in OptimizeLeads, which we'll then edit and customise. By the end of this tutorial, you will have a general overview of how the OptimizeLeads tools work and a solid foundation to build on moving forward.

- To begin, let's start off by clicking on the 'Create New Opt-In' link on the top menu bar. Next, scroll through the list of optin designs until you see the opt-in style called 'Download'. Click the green 'Use This Design' button to make your selection.

- Once clicked, an overlay box will appear, prompting you to select the panel type of the optin box. This allows you to choose how you would like your optin box to be displayed on the page. For this tutorial, we will leave this default to 'Main Panel'. Click the blue 'Create My Optin' button to confirm the selection.

- You will be taken to the main optin box editing window to begin editing and customising. The first thing you will be prompted to do is to select your autoresponder:

PLEASE NOTE: If you have yet to integrate with an email provider, please ensure you do this first by referring to the Integrations section in OptimizeLeads.

- Once your email provider has been selected, you will be given the option to select the email list/form you will have set in your email provider service, assign tags if you have them assigned, assigned forms and whether you would like to add your subscribers to 'GotoWebinar'. This option is mainly used if you would like your visitors to be placed to a webinar service if you're promoting a scheduled webinar.

- You can edit these settings by clicking on the  selection on the main editing window.

- Once you've made your selections, click the blue 'Save' button to confirm the changes. You will be taken to the main editing window to begin editing your optin box.

- The white vertical bar on the left of the editing area represents each of the elements you can edit on your optin box. Clicking on them will expand the options for that element to begin making changes.

- Any changes made will display live in the box to get a visual idea of how it will look prior to saving and confirming the changes. Again, you can always go back and make future edits at a later date.

- You can also click on any of the elements you would like to edit by clicking on an element on the optin box itself. This will expand the editing options for that element.

The first thing we're going to begin editing is the percentage bar:

- To edit this, click on the  selection under the 'Content Styling' section. You will be given a range of editing options to change and customise to your liking.

- For this tutorial, we're going to round the corners of the progress bar. To do this, head to the section called 'Border Radius', then click on the slider and scroll to the right until the slider reaches '8px'. This will round the corners of the progress bar.

- Next, we're going to change the colour. Head to the 'Percentage Colour' section and add in the following colour code: #37a7bf

- Click on the text area under 'Percentage Text' and type in the following: 50% Complete - 50% To Go

- Change the 'Text Colour' to the following: #785f5f

The progress bar should now look like this:

- Next, We'll change the main headline of the optin box:

- Click on the  option under the 'Content Styling' options.

- Under the 'Text' area, type in the following headline: DO YOU HAVE THE CODE? DOWNLOAD THE EBOOK NOW!

With the changes made, your optin box should now look like this:

- Lastly, we're going to change the styling of the optin box submit button:

- To do this, head on over to the  section under the 'Content Styling' options.

- Set the 'Background Colour' to: #00c2ff

- Set the 'Border Colour' to: #000000

- Set the 'Border Width' to: 1px

Save the changes. You should now have an optin box that looks like this:

- For your optin box, we're going to want to set a redirection URL or a page that you would like your visitors to be sent to after they've opted into your form. To do this. Head to the  option. You will be taken to an area to enter in the page URL of the page you would like to use. Enter in your page URL and save the changes.

- Once you're happy with the changes made to your optin box, click on the  button on the top right of the editing window.

- The 'Publishing Options' overlay box will appear, prompting you to set how you would like your optin box to be displayed.

- For this example, we're going to change the 'Link Text' of the publishing setting, making sure that the 'Link' option is selected. This will create a text link, which will allow a visitor to click on and display the optin box on their page.

- Type in the following text: CLICK ME TO SEE POPUP

- Finally, we will want to grab the embed code of your optin box so we can paste this in on your page. You will have 3 embed options to select from. For this tutorial, we will select the 'HTML' option. Click on the  button to copy the embed code to the clipboard.

- Head on over to your page (Making sure you're in html view) and paste in the code.

- Save the changes. Your optin box is now live on your page and ready to begin collecting leads.

Congratulations!, you should now have your Lead Magnet or Content Upgrade done with an optin box in your blog content ready to start collecting leads. Now we can just sit back and let the leads roll in right?

Well not exactly… What we’ve done up until now is built a solid foundation for your website to be in the best position to start collecting email addresses. But what we now need is to get people to know we exist.

There are many ways to do this, which would fill an entire guide on its own. So what we’ve instead done is listed all of our most relevant resources compiled for you below to get started with.

We recommend picking two traffic sources to begin with, then moving onto a few more after you’ve mastered and measured your results.

- Free Traffic Sources

How To SEO Your OptimizePress Blog And Landing Pages - https://www.optimizepress.com/how-to-seo-your-optimizepress-blog-and-landing-pages/

7 Ways To Get More Traffic To Your Blog - https://www.optimizepress.com/get-more-traffic/

24 Essential & Unusual Ways To Get Traffic - https://www.optimizepress.com/24-essential-unusual-ways-to-get-traffic/

- Social-Media & Relationship Building

5 Popular Platforms For Building Your Community - https://www.optimizepress.com/5-popular-platforms-for-building-your-community/

Why & Where To Add Personality To Your Marketing - https://www.optimizepress.com/why-and-where-to-add-personality-to-your-marketing/

7 Top Tips For Growing Your Social-Media Following -

https://www.optimizepress.com/new-feature-7-top-tips-for-growing-your-social-media-following/

If you’ve followed along with us so far, you should now have a solid Lead Magnet or Content Upgrade in place and a nice steady stream of traffic coming to your website with some conversions.

This next part is actually the simplest to do, because you’ve already set everything up. You can now go back to step #1 and repeat the process. Checking your analytics, looking at your best performing content, adding even more content upgrades and getting more conversions.

Here’s some final takeaways:

- Building Lead Magnets, Content Upgrades and promoting your business is ongoing.

- The more of these you build, and the more you promote your content, the more email addresses you’ll receive and the more sales you’ll make.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this guide!

Where to from here:

For more information on how to build an email list, be sure to check out our list building guide.

[Link to guide]