Cathy’s Story
When Cathy graduated from college she opened a retail store with her sister. In the beginning, business was booming—so much so that they decided to open up a second store. But then, things began to change.
Eventually, the tactics and strategies that worked so well in the beginning weren’t delivering the same results anymore. With slumping sales, and two businesses to run, Cathy and her sister quickly found themselves on the brink of bankruptcy.
After asking for money from family members with no success, they knew they needed to try something different if they were going to save their business.
Not willing to accept defeat, Cathy hired a coach to help guide her business back to success. The coach identified some key issues and she and her sister used these insights to turn their stores back around.
By making just a few key changes they quickly returned to profitability, so much so that they opened a third store.
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Changing careers
While Cathy was thrilled with the performance of her stores, she was disappointed that the information provided by her coach wasn’t readily available to her peers.
Shouldn’t all retail business owners have access to these teachings so they could find the same levels of success?
“I was so excited about what I had learned but you couldn’t find this information anywhere.”
When she went to trade shows and spoke with other business owners she would try to share what she had learned. Not only did most of them not know this valuable information, but they were losing their love of retail.
By talking with other retailers and helping them with their stores, Cathy discovered a new passion: teaching. So, in 1999 she sold her stores and became a full-time retail coach.
From retailer to teacher
Just like with her retail stores, Cathy’s consulting business took time to reach its full potential. She spent the next few years building her business, but the growth was slower than she liked.
That was until she discovered digital marketing. Eventually, she started promoting her products and services online using Leadpages in tandem with a WordPress website. She quickly gained a much larger audience.
Today her coaching business is thriving. In addition to her consulting services she also has a number of online courses which have provided her with another revenue stream. This has allowed her to hire additional team members, giving her the ability to help even more retail business owners.
Challenges
Early on Cathy’s primary method of finding new customers was cold calling and speaking at tradeshows. Because she was a one-person operation this made it hard to scale her business and her growth eventually hit a ceiling.
“I was doing it all on my own and it was growing so slowly. Eventually, I realized there has to be a faster way of doing this.”
In order to reach her goals, she needed a way to automate her sales funnel so she didn’t have to constantly be on the phone to find new customers.
As she delved more into digital marketing she realized she also needed a way to promote and deliver lead magnets to her audience. These are free items that are given away in exchange for an email address. This would allow Cathy to grow her email list and promote her products and services to qualified leads while providing free and easy-to-implement tips and tools to retailers everywhere.
Finally, Cathy wanted a digital solution that was user-friendly. Since she was new to the online world she needed tools that didn’t require a lot of technical knowledge or expertise.
How Leadpages helped
A complete marketing solution
Leadpages isn’t just a landing page builder. It also offers conversion tools like pop-ups, alert bars, and an analytics dashboard. This gave Cathy everything she needed to create high-converting landing pages and promote them to her audience. She was also able to analyze her results and make changes based on the data in her dashboard.
Perfect for lead magnets
Cathy was able to use Leadpages to both promote and deliver her lead magnets. Leadpages’ templates made creating a high-converting landing page easy. And when it came time to get her lead magnets to her customers the platform offered two options. She could either use Leadpages’ own lead magnet delivery system or integrate with her preferred email marketing tool and deliver them that way.
User-friendly interface
The Drag & Drop Landing Page Builder made creating websites quick and easy. After Cathy chose a template she could drag and drop elements into place, edit text, change images, and add new sections. Best of all, she never had to touch a line of code.
“Leadpages is easy to use and the Drag & Drop Builder is so fabulously handy. The widgets allow us to make the sign-up process easy for our audience. It’s been so helpful.”
Help is just a click away
Throughout the process, Cathy was never on her own. With access to Leadpages award winning customer support team (via email, chat, and phone) she could always connect with a marketing expert to resolve any issues or get feedback on her latest landing page.
Results
Doubled her email subscribers
Anyone in marketing knows that an email list is the lifeblood of an online business. So, recently Cathy committed herself to growing her email list so she’d have a larger pool of leads to draw upon. With the help of Leadpages’ high-converting templates, and some feedback from customer support, she was able to double her email subscribers over the last year.
16,000 leads over the last 12 months
When you look at how many leads Cathy has generated over the last year it’s no surprise her email list doubled. She’s amassed over 16,000 leads in just 12 months, including 9,000 from a single landing page.
How Cathy uses Leadpages
Landing pages
With so many lead magnets, products, services, and promotions, landing pages are an important part of Cathy’s business. The user-friendly Drag & Drop Builder means she can launch new pages quickly any time she has something new to promote.
Pop-ups
Cathy also uses pop-ups with her landing pages to increase conversions. She utilizes click event pop-ups to capture leads when people are ready to sign-up and exit-intent pop-ups to catch visitors before they leave her site.
What’s next for Cathy?
Moving forward, Cathy wants to continue reaching as many retailers as possible through her coaching programs and online courses. Given her amazing success thus far we have no doubt she’ll continue to grow her audience and help even more businesses find new levels of success.
And if you know any retailers (brick or click), please send them Cathy's way!
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Take a look at our platform when you start a free 14-day trial today.
