Monica’s Story
At 27, Monica’s career was in full swing. She had recently finished her MBA and was managing marketing campaigns for some of the world’s leading tech companies. Then something unexpected happened: she got pregnant.
Monica embraced her pregnancy and did everything she could to prepare for motherhood. But what she couldn’t prepare for was how inadequate the maternity leave laws in the United States were.
Seven months after her daughter was born she created her blog as a way to raise awareness about the issue, cope with her (then undiagnosed) postpartum PTSD, and share her experiences as a working mother.
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A surprising invitation
Over the next three years, Monica continued posting to her blog. While her audience was small at first, as time went on she grew a loyal following.
Then in 2015, she received an email from the White House inviting her to an event for working families. Monica assumed it wasn’t real.
“I got an email from the White House that I put in spam, thinking the White House doesn’t email people.”
Luckily, she happened to mention the email to a friend who encouraged her to follow up. After getting in touch with the person who sent the message she discovered that it was in fact very real and they wanted her to fly to Washington D.C. in four days.
Before she knew it, she was sitting in the West Wing with President Barack Obama talking to him about the US’s maternity leave policies and a host of other issues. And Monica, being the outspoken person she is, didn’t hold back.
“I told him exactly how I felt about all this and at the end he’s like ‘So what are you going to do about it?’ And I was like ‘What do you mean what am I going to do about it? I’m not going into politics if that’s what you’re asking.’ And he said ‘No, but you have this website. What are you going to use it for?’”
Nine months later she quit her corporate job to become a full-time entrepreneur and help other moms improve their financial situation.
Building her business
After blogging for nearly four years Monica already had an audience—she just needed to find a way to monetize it.
She realized that most of the people who read her blog were just like her. They were working moms who wanted to monetize their skills and build their own businesses, but were worried about losing their corporate incomes.
So, Monica created her first-ever digital product: The Family Budget Spreadsheet. This spreadsheet helped women determine their expenses and come up with a budget, giving them the confidence they needed to quit their job and pursue their passion.
Once she had the spreadsheet created she just needed a way to promote it to her audience. That’s when she discovered Leadpages. Monica used the platform to create a landing page for her product and then shared it on Pinterest.
The Family Budget Spreadsheet was a massive hit and opened her eyes to the possibilities of digital product businesses.
Since then Monica has created dozens of products for her audience. Wanting to help other women find their own success, she launched her Empowered Business website and podcast where she shares her marketing secrets and shows women how to sell their own digital products with her Triple Dip® Funnel strategy.
Challenges
After working in the marketing industry for 11 years, Monica knew how to convert visitors into leads and sales. But she wasn’t a designer or a coder.
For her original blog she turned to WordPress, and while this worked well enough making changes to her site proved to be more difficult than she hoped.
“I could not use WordPress, it was bad. I would break stuff every time I tried to make changes.”
The other issue she had was page load speeds. Her WordPress site was always notoriously slow no matter what she did to try and fix it. So, Monica needed an easy-to-use code-free page builder that reduced her page load times.
She also wanted a way to collect people’s email addresses. Monica learned early on in her marketing career just how powerful email marketing was. She knew that even if she couldn’t sell to someone right away, if she could get their email and nurture that lead eventually she would get the sale.
Finally, as her business grew and her product catalog expanded, Monica needed a way to produce landing pages faster. Time is money and she didn’t want to spend days on every new page she created.
How Leadpages helped
User-friendly page builder
Leadpages simplified the page-building process with professionally-designed templates and an intuitive interface. Monica started using Leadpages back in 2016 before the Drag & Drop Builder was added to the software. Even then, she found making changes to her pages much easier than on WordPress. And the process got even simpler once the Drag & Drop Builder was introduced, with the ability to click and drag various elements into place.
Faster page load speeds
One thing Monica noticed right away was just how much faster Leadpages was than WordPress. In fact, Leadpages’ average page load speeds are 2.4 seconds faster than the industry average.
Leadpages integrates with all the most popular email marketing tools, including MailChimp, AWeber, and Drip. This makes it easy for Monica to collect leads and add them to her email list.
Publish pages quicker
Leadpages’ Drag & Drop Builder means pages can be built in minutes instead of hours or days. All Monica has to do is choose her template, swap in a few new sections, edit her text and images, and hit publish. Even better, once she has a few optimized landing pages that have proven to get results she can duplicate those designs for future projects which drastically reduces her production time.
“The duplication feature is huge. I can spin up a new page in like ten minutes”
Results
$400,000 from a single landing page
Seven years after she originally launched her Family Budget Spreadsheet that landing page is still live and generating sales. In fact, over its entire life it’s earned Monica more than $400,000, even though the product only sells for $17. It just goes to show that you don’t need a high-ticket item to make money online.
Average conversion rates of over 65%
Monica’s perfected the art of collecting email addresses, so much so that the opt-in pages she’s created with Leadpages generate average conversion rates of over 65%. At the time of this writing, one of her current pages has a conversion rate of 83%.
How Monica uses Leadpages
Landing pages
Monica is constantly using Leadpages to create landing pages for her digital products and opt-in offers. The Drag & Drop Builder means she can create new high-converting pages quickly, giving her more time to work on her business.
Websites
When she decided to launch Empowered Business she didn’t want to deal with the same headaches she experienced with her original blog. So, she used Leadpages’ Website Builder to create her new site. She was able to find a professionally-designed template that fit her brand and customized the look and feel of each page using the Drag & Drop Builder.
Alert Bars
Monica also uses alert bars across all her pages to promote her products, sales, and lead magnets.
What’s next for Monica?
Moving forward, Monica wants to continue to grow her digital product library. While she’s been releasing more courses and trainings in recent years she wants to get back to what originally made her successful: creating downloadable products like spreadsheets, PDFs, templates, and printables. She also has plans to revamp her Redefining Mom brand with new content pillars and products.
We look forward to seeing what the future holds for Monica and her businesses!
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