Yvonne’s story
During the early and mid-2000s, Yvonne and her husband were riding high. She made great money working as an accountant and he had a high-paying job as well, allowing them to live a very comfortable life with a nice house, expensive vehicles, and regular vacations.
But what their family and friends didn’t know is they had a secret: they had over half a million dollars in debt.
Despite their large income, they were one emergency away from a financial disaster. Unfortunately, that emergency came in 2008 when her husband arrived to work to find the doors chained shut. Without any notice, he was out of a job and their income was cut in half.
To get by, the two of them blew through their savings and maxed out their credit cards—but that only made the situation worse. Eventually, their cars were repossessed and they were forced to move in with Yvonne’s parents.
They were on the brink of bankruptcy at that point, but by adjusting their spending habits and practicing good money management they overcame all of this and rebuilt the life they once had.
Changing directions
Yvonne enjoyed her work as an accountant. However, her job required her to work long hours and travel often, meaning she didn’t get to spend as much time with her family as she wanted to.
She wasn’t aware of the toll this was taking on her daughter until one day when she was preparing to leave on yet another work trip. Her daughter walked in on Yvonne packing up her bag and said “so you’re leaving again?”
“The way in which she said it and the disappointment on her face hit differently. So I knew at that point it wasn’t feasible for me to keep going at the pace that I did. I needed to find something different.”
It was at that point Yvonne decided it was time to go into business for herself.
Finding her niche
Yvonne knew she wanted to build her own business, but she wasn’t sure what type of business it would be. So, she started brainstorming to come up with all the possible products and services she could offer.
“I took an inventory of the skills I have and started thinking about how I could turn those skills into something that works for our family and brings in an income.”
In addition to spending over twenty years in the accounting industry, Yvonne also knew firsthand how hard it is to overcome large amounts of debt. She noticed a lot of the young people she knew were living paycheck to paycheck, even though they had very healthy incomes.
She decided to combine her accounting skills with her experience with getting out of debt to create a business that would help professionals and entrepreneurs do a better job of balancing their finances and saving for the future.
Building her business
Yvonne had both the professional and life experiences necessary to establish her business. However, she was new to both the marketing and technical aspects.
Her first hurdle was identifying her audience. She started marketing to a very broad subset of people, which didn’t produce the results she was looking for.
“You know what they say, if you’re talking to everybody you’re not talking to anybody. It took a while for me to really grasp the concept of talking to that one specific person, because that’s when you get them nodding at everything you say.”
Eventually, she found her audience and began to tailor her content towards that segment. From there, she created her first lead magnet.
Under the recommendation of her mentor, Ruth Soukup, she began using Leadpages to create landing pages for her lead magnets. The software was simple and straightforward, so even though she didn’t have any coding or web design experience she was quickly able to establish a strong online presence.
With her lead magnets and landing pages in place, Yvonne started collecting large amounts of leads. Then she gradually added in tripwire offers and higher-priced products, and it didn’t take long for her business to start earning a sizable income.
“When someone actually pays for something you created from your mind it’s an amazing feeling.”
Today, Yvonne offers both one-on-one counseling and online programs that help people manage their debt and finances. She was recently featured on Good Morning America, along with Ruth Soukup, and is continuing to grow her business so she can help even more people overcome their debt.
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Challenges
As we talked about earlier, in the beginning, one of Yvonne’s biggest challenges was finding landing page software that was user-friendly, even for someone with little technical experience.
Her main lead generation strategy was lead magnets, which meant she also needed a tool that could do two things:
- Drive conversions and convince visitors to download her lead magnets.
- Integrate with her email marketing platform so she had a way to deliver her lead magnets to her audience.
How Leadpages helped
Professionally Designed Templates
Yvonne didn’t know how to design a landing page—but with Leadpages she didn’t have to. The beautifully designed templates already gave her a solid base to work with. She simply had to browse the library and choose a template that suited her needs.
Drag & Drop Landing Page Builder
Once she had her template, making changes and customizing it was easy. The Drag & Drop Builder allowed her to change colors, add text and photos, add and remove sections, and everything else she needed to make the page her own.
“Leadpages is so intuitive, it’s simple. It’s as close as you’re going to get to literally drag, drop, hit publish, and you’re ready to go."
Conversion-optimized templates and Leadmeter
All of Leadpages’ templates are built with conversions in mind, meaning that even before Yvonne started building she was already off to a great start. Once she started customizing her pages the Leadmeter gave her real-time feedback and offered suggestions to improve her conversion rate.
Email Integrations
Leadpages integrates seamlessly with all the leading email marketing platforms, including Mailchimp, AWeber, Campaign Monitor, and Drip. The software also includes a lead magnet delivery system that doesn’t require you to connect your page with an ESP. This gave Yvonne plenty of options for delivering her lead magnets.
Yvonne’s results
Going from 15% to 61% conversion rates
Before using Leadpages, Yvonne built her landing pages with WordPress. The pages looked fine but they only converted at a 15% rate. However, when she switched to Leadpages her conversion rate improved to a very impressive 61%.
Reducing one client’s debt by $47,000 in just 6 weeks
What Yvonne is most proud of is delivering exceptional outcomes for her clients. One example of this is an entrepreneur she was working with who was making very good money but was roughly $80,000 in debt. After working with Yvonne for just six weeks this client reduced their debt to $33,000, and at the time of this writing, they’re almost debt free.
How Yvonne uses Leadpages
Landing pages
Yvonne offers a wide range of lead magnets and offers, all of which she promotes with landing pages she created with Leadpages. The user-friendly Drag & Drop Builder means she can create pages quickly whenever she has a new idea.
To maximize her conversions, Yvonne uses exit intent popups that appear as visitors are about to leave. She uses these popups to promote her lead magnets and ensure no one leaves empty-handed.
What’s next for Yvonne?
Yvonne’s next goal for her business is to start her own event. This money conference would help professionals and entrepreneurs answer the question “what do I do once I’ve paid off my debt and established my emergency fund?” It would walk them through more advanced money strategies in a live and interactive environment.
She’s also looking forward to expanding her business from a one-woman operation to a team to help accelerate her business’ growth.
Try Leadpages free for 14 days
Easily create your website and landing pages with the only platform engineered by marketing nerds.
