It’s time to stop boring people with how good your open rates and click-through rates are. Tell them what each and every person on your list is worth in dollars by measuring Revenue per Recipient (RPR). When you track the results of your emails down to the dollar, you track your own value down to the dollar.
From Marketing Land: Marketing Power Processes: Tracking Email To The Dollars by Brian Massey


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Tweetables: Click to Tweet

Power Process: Ignore Email Open Rates & Click-Through Rates
Revenue-Per-Recipient (RPR) Ties Marketing to the Money
Like trees in the winter, it’s important to prune and shape your email list.
Most email clients now show the subject line and the beginning of an email in the inbox view.

Champagne Fountain Your presentation will set off a cascade of content.

It was a few paragraphs from my book in a Chapter entitled “How Content Fuels Conversion.”

It started off pretty well, but it ended in a lie.

Amid my discussions of video and images; of draftsmen and imagemakers and storytellers appeared a few lines. They’re there on page 92.

Digital content has legs. One item of content can be cascaded into a variety of channels like a fountain of champagne glasses at a wedding.

For example, how many opportunities do your employees get to present at conferences, training sessions, seminars, and webinars? Film them and record good quality audio. This bubbly content fills the top glass of your cascade.

Have someone edit the video into a series of shorter videos, ripe for YouTube and other video services. You’ve just filled the next layer of glasses.

Share the slides used on slide-sharing services such as Slideshare and Scribd. Voila—another, wider layer glasses fills  with sparkling champagne.

For just a few dollars, the video can be transcribed. Lay this out as a report or white paper and distribute it for lead generation. Another layer of glasses fills.

I go on to describe how this transcription turns into blog posts, social media posts and more. I then go on to tell the lie.

The transformations discussed in this example are often not time-intensive.

The truth is, that they are not as time-intensive as creating the content from scratch. But these transformations do take time.

My idea has been stolen

Since the publication of the book, I’ve tried to get someone to steal my idea so that I would have a resource to turn to. I’ve had conversations with a number of agencies and freelancers about why content is like champagne. Businesses are creating the champagne every day. They just need glasses, stacked just so to turn it their content into an online party.

Dust off one of your presentations

How many people saw that webinar you recorded last quarter? Most webinars draw less than 100 viewers. There are a lot more people out there who won’t watch a webinar, but who are qualified prospects. I invite you to dust off your webinar or presentation and turn it into a Slideshare presentation, blog posts, a report, an eBook – you choose the package.

Most importantly, create the content landing pages and social media posts that generate sales and leads. After all, this content is only valuable if it grows your business.

Every so often, your CEO is asked to speak about some aspect of the market. Every now and then, your tech guru is asked to talk about how brilliant your technology is. And how many times is your sales team pitching to audiences about your fantastic offering? Each of these moments is an opportunity for a cascade of content for your marketing efforts.

Is your presentation cascadeable?

Here’s how you can tell if your content is a good match for the cascade:

  • Do you have recorded audio or video of the presentation? Slides are rarely enough to convey the understanding needed for someone to do a good job creating content. The quality of your audio need only only be good enough to generate a transcript.
  • Do you have presentation slides? Video and recorded webinars don’t provide the resolution needed for visuals.
  • Is your presentation just slides full of bullets? These kinds of presentations don’t typically make for good visual content such as infographs, eBooks and reports.

Other than that, there’s no risk in uploading your presentation for us to look at. We don’t ask for a credit card.

The Audience is Bigger Than The Room

The audience that initially heard the presentation is tiny compared to the audience for the cascade of content it will generate.

  • Cascade content is shared with a larger audience via email and social networks.
  • Cascade content increases frequency with multiple slices from the same presentation.
  • Cascade content engages more of the audience through text, audio and images.


Photo courtesy paulodonnel on Flickr under the creative commons.

Indispensable Marketer Power Processes
Let’s talk about your career as a marketer. Let’s talk about your power in an organization. Let’s talk about your ability to make things happen in a very real and salary-building way.
Marketing is seen as important by CEOs. However, the marketing department is often not seen as important.
We are too often seen as tactical teams working on strategic initiatives, but don’t own the strategy. Our skills are seen as commodities. Everyone with a word processor seems to know how to do marketing.
Marketers move in a valley between powers. They don’t have control of the products. They don’t have control over sales.
We are the soil and water (and fertilizer) that makes the grass grow, but at the end of the day, we’re not given credit for the grass.
The distinctions between a “typical” marketer and an indispensable marketer are subtle and huge.
 

Typical vs. Indispensable Marketers

The table is full of generalizations, of course. My aim is to describe a number of Power Processes that marketers can use to become indispensable.

Power Processes: Visible, Measurable, Repeatable

A power process has the following characteristics:

1. It has visible, demonstrable effects on the bottom line of a company.

Marketing success is too often relegated to graphs in the monthly marketing report. Power Processes are visible to the company, often creating problems in other areas when they work.

2. It is repeatable with consistent results.

Power processes are the things that can be relied on month after month to provide additional revenue and success.

3. It is measureable.

Marketers need to stop doing the things that don’t work. The success or failure of a Power Process should be obvious.

4. It provides a self-regulating learning curve.

A Power Process provides feedback as it is implemented. Learning happens in action. It is a more organic learning curve than can be provided by a campaign.

Power Process #1: Make the phone ring

In my MarketingLand column Marketing Power Processes: The Lord Of The Rings, I talk about making the phone ring. It fits the model of the Power Process.
1. Sales or customer support knows when the website is generating calls. You might create some problems for them!
2. It will deliver month after month.
3. It can be measured and quantified.
4. You will learn over time what calls to action make the phone ring more and more.
Read the article or listen to it here.


They friend you. They fan you. They pin you. We love our social media tribes.
But how often to they customer you? How often do they buy, subscribe, or register?
When you get customered, your business grows, you gain another social influencer, and you get proof that your social media strategy is delivering what your social network wants.
Getting customered is an important part of the social media life cycle, and it’s also one of the trickiest.
I’m going to do a deep dive on getting your business customered at Engage Mexico in beautiful Puerto Vallarta, November 14-17.
You should be there.

The potential in your social networks

Social Media Battery Drawing
Your social networks store potential, like a battery stores voltage.

If you’ve been actively building your social networks, you have stored potential, like a battery has stored voltage. How do you hook up to the juice that turns that potential into leads and revenue.
Tapping this potential requires that you connect your social battery to something of interest to both you and your social denizens.

Use Content for Wires

Ultimately, you discharge your social batteries the same way you charged them. You use relevant content presented in a ways your crowd likes to get it.
Content might be blog post links on Twitter, contests on Facebook, and product pictures on Pinterest. Without the content, no one is going to find their way back. They just stay potential.
Many of us already have content strategies for our social networks, but what gets people to customer us when they visit?

website with wires drawing
Use social media landing pages to get customered

Connect them to your Landing Pages

Here’s where you need to start thinking like your visitors. Once read, great content is quickly dismissed.
What is the next step for me as a visitor and potential customerer of your business?
(Customerer??)
The golden secret is to treat your content pages as social media landing pages.
A landing page is a single minded page designed to do two things:

        

  1. Keep the promise made by the link that was clicked.
  2.     

  3. Get the reader to do something that benefits them and your business.

A Social Media landing page, then, is a single minded page designed to:

        

  1. Deliver the content promised.
  2.     

  3. Get the reader to customer you.

Both pages have content that delivers on a promise and a call to action that entices readers to do something wonderful.
NOTE: If you are building an email list, you get customered when you get subscribered. Think about it: the visitor is paying for content with their contact information.
NOTE 2: “Subscribered” is the last time I will verbify a noun in this article.

Where do Social Media Landing Pages Live?

Social media landing pages live anywhere you are drawing social visitors.
Your blog content pages have the content, but do they have the call to action? Is the call to action where it can be seen?
Add calls to action in or near the content.
Your email signup pages have the call to action, but do they have the content that makes signing up appealing?
Give subscribers a better reason to sign up than “Get on another mailing list.”
Your lead generation pages, offering gated content have the call to action, but do you talk about the content you are offering, or do you talk about our company and your products instead?
Don’t talk about yourself like a socially awkward freak.
Any page to which your friends, fans and followers might come in search of education or entertainment qualified as a social media landing page.

Remember that these are Social Visitors

Product pages on ecommerce sites are another frequent social media landing page. The call to action is invariably there: Add to Cart.
Given that your visitors are coming from a social network, they will be more likely to want to see social content with the product information. You should oblige them.

        

  • Consider star ratings and reviews for your products.
  •     

  • Use social proof. How many others have customered (bought) this product? How many friends, fans and followers do you have?
  •     

  • Don’t invite them to become a friend, fan or follower. They already are. The only choice they should have is to customer you.

It’s one thing to get people to friend, fan, follow, and flatulate. It’s quite another to get them to customer you. Use content to connect your social batteries to social media landing pages and get customered.

Customered Credit Please customer me!

Tweetables

Tired of getting friended, then nothing? Get customered!
Your social networks store potential, like a battery stores voltage.
The golden secret is to treat your content pages as social media landing pages.
Images by Brian Massey

Webinar Image-560x423
On-screen Markup can increase engagement and keep viewers around longer.

My online landing page webinars are quite different from most you’ve seen. Why is that?

Because I do live on-screen critiques of the landing pages. You can see me in action on August 21 during my webinar The Chemistry of the B2B Landing Page with Live Critiques.

Why not mark them up ahead of time and just present my findings? Here’s why:

1. It’s boooring. I mean webinars can be pretty uneventful, unless you’ve got a really talented presenter. This adds some pizzazz to the presentation.

2. It’s more fun for me to do. I like to do interactive events like this.

3. If I didn’t, then the critiques wouldn’t really be “live”.

4. It keeps your audience engaged longer, and we have some data to support that.

Why Online Markup is an Awesome Webinar Tool

You should consider online markup if you really want to deliver a captivating presentation that keeps the audience engaged for your entire message.

The interactivity helps people stay tuned into your presentation. There is something about drawings that just captivates the viewer and keeps their attention. We found this to be true in video.

Not only did the “whiteboard-style” video keep the eye on the video, it provided a higher conversion rate on a landing page than two other kinds of business video.

The on-screen drawing gives you a unique angle in a sea of “me too” webinars. Drop-off rates in my previous webinars have been significantly lower than in webinars I’ve done without the critiques. People hang around longer.

Less “multi-thrashing” by the audience. The myth of multi-tasking is alive and well in the webinar world. You may call this multi-bashing, but at any time, most of your viewers are checking email and social media while listening to your presentation.

As a webinar attendee, you can probably remember a time when you wished you could rewind a webinar. The presenter finally said something that caught your attention as you typed out an email reply, but you had no idea of what he said before that.

Since we don’t have Webinar DVRs yet, you want to minimize multi-trashing of your message. On-screen markup works.

Implementing Online Markup in Your Webinars

Most webinar software such as GotoWebinar and WebEx give you tools to markup your screens. However, I find the mouse to be an insufficient tool for writing and drawing. It takes too much concentration.

However, if it’s all you’ve got, you should use it.

My “rig” is a bit more sophisticated. That’s OK because I like toys.

Presentation setup
This is my presentation setup. Click to enlarge.

This setup provides the following:

  1. A video headshot for live keynotes and other presentations that require a connection with the audience. Many live meeting services allow a picture-in-picture window for the presenter’s face.
  2. Presentation monitor for static presentation slides via VGA output on laptop and multi-screen drivers.
  3. Tablet screen and stylus for drawing markup.
  4. Hidden microphone. Since I’m on camera, I don’t wear a headset.
  5. Audio feedback is provided by simple ear buds.
  6. Ability to type via a bluetooth keyboard. Since my laptop is converted to a tablet, its keyboard is hidden.
  7. Ability to mouse around. Good for switching screens, driving polls and more.

My webinar setup

 

Lenovo ThinkPad X220 (429637U) 12.5″ LED Tablet PC – Core i7 i7-2620M 2.7GThe x230 is now available.
microphone
microphone
Blue Yeti Multi-Pattern USB Microphone
or
Audio-Technica ATR-3350 Lavalier Omnidirectional Condenser Microphone
logitech Logitech HD720 Autofocus Webcam
(Amazon.com)
Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard Microsoft Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard 6000 (Amazon.com)
Starbucks Dark Sumatra "Earthly & Herbal" Ground Coffee Starbucks Dark Sumatra “Earthly & Herbal” Ground Coffee (drip brewed)
Lab Coat woven from 1200 thread-count “Manhattan Project” Lab Coat woven from 1200 thread-count Engagium anti-spam nanofibers. Available at Buyschtuff.
VGA Plug-n-Play Monitor and multi-screen display drivers VGA Plug-n-Play Monitor and multi-screen display drivers.

The downside of Live Markup

There are some things you need to be aware of if you choose to do one of these.

It requires switching screens from your presentation monitor, where static slides are shown to the tablet screen where you can do the markup. Most webinar services handle this pretty well, but it is another point of failure.

It requires some coordination. If you can’t talk and draw at the same time, you may find your train of thought leaving the tracks.

All of this tech means more points of failure. You have to work hard to have alternative solutions should any of these technologies fail.

See It in Action

Reachforce has asked me to put my rig in action again and you can see the results.

Join me for The Chemistry of the B2B Landing Page, Volume 2 — with Live Critiques from The Conversion Scientist on August 21, 2103 at 1:00pm central time.

I’ll be doing a brief training on how to create effective landing pages backwards and then doing some B2B critiques.

Your page can be one that I critique. You can submit the URL when you register.

I hope to see you there.
Brian Massey

Brittney Stephenson at Powered by Search gives you content marketing traps you can easily avoid.
Content marketing can help your business capture leads and convert them into customers. In fact, after analyzing data from thousands of their software users, HubSpot found that organizations that blog just one or two times a month generate 70% more leads than businesses that don’t blog at all.
It’s therefore no surprise that so many companies have jumped on the content marketing bandwagon, and are churning out blog posts, eBooks, whitepapers, info-graphics, webinars and more, all in the name of lead generation. But there are two common traps that marketers can fall into. The first is focusing exclusively on the content itself. The second is thinking that strong CTAs and landing pages will make up for mediocre content.
If you’re not thinking about a visitor’s overall experience with your content, then you’re not getting the most out of it. A recent Marketing Profs study of B2B marketers revealed that only 36% of respondents believe their organization is using content marketing effectively. This means that there’s a lot of room for improvement, and learning how to hit the right balance between content and conversion will make you stand out as a content marketing champ!

Content Marketing Trap #1 – ‘Content is King!’

Yes, it’s been said a thousand times, content is king. But don’t misinterpret this popular phrase to mean that content is the only thing you need to achieve marketing success. Even top notch content needs a little help if you want it to prompt site visitors to complete a specific action. Otherwise your content marketing strategy will be great for driving site traffic and building industry authority, but not for directly generating leads.
Having a company blog is one of the most popular content marketing tactics, but it’s also one that can easily take up a lot of your energy with little result if you’re not careful. Forgetting to optimize your blog for conversions is a common oversight. Fortunately, there are a number of ways to remedy this.
One of the best methods to turn casual blog readers into leads is including calls to action (CTAs) directly on your blog. CTAs make it easy for site visitors to become leads by asking readers to act, and creating a clear path to do so. Marketing software provider HubSpot has done an excellent job of optimizing their blog for conversions in this way. Any given HubSpot blog post will include four CTAs, just like the images below. (Some readers may find this number of CTAs too distracting, so make sure to test what number works best with your own blog audience.)
HubSpot Blog CTAs
 

  • CTA #1 asks readers to subscribe to their blog and appears above the fold. This grabs the attention of page visitors right away, even if they don’t scroll any further down.
  • CTA #2 is located directly below the first one in the right sidebar. The offer (attending a conference on inbound marketing) is highly relevant to the readers of their inbound marketing blog, which makes this CTA even more effective.
  • CTAs #3 and #4 appear at the end of the blog post, above the comments section. CTA #3 is a new offer for a related piece of downloadable content, while #4 acts as a second reminder to subscribe to their blog.

Calls to action are just one way to optimize your blog for lead conversion. To really maximize conversions, you should also test your overall blog layout and design, use of images and colors, as well as your posting frequency.
Some of these tips may sound obvious, but the 2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report shows the grim reality is that 45% of marketers do not test their marketing efforts, and 21% don’t know whether they test or not.
Just think of all the opportunities to optimize their marketing they’re missing out on!
Does your content marketing strategy include creating high-value content, such as whitepapers or eBooks, that are only accessible after site visitors fill out a form?
If so, these forms may be holding back the conversion potential of your content. A CMO Council study asked consumers what their biggest point of frustration is when it comes to content, and 50% of respondents cited long registrations before accessing content as one of their ‘top three turnoffs.’
If you’re getting lots of clicks on your CTAs, but few conversions, try using progressive profiling on your landing pages. This works by asking consumers only a few questions the first time they fill out a form, and then subsequently asking different questions each time they download a piece of content.
Keeping these CRO tips in mind will help take your content to the next level!

Content Marketing Trap # 2 – Thinking of Your Content as a ‘Lead Generating Machine’

RobotMarketers are increasingly under pressure to demonstrate the ROI of their efforts, and content marketing is no exception. When you first get started, it may be tempting to churn out a high volume of mediocre (or even poor) content to get the ball rolling. It’s also easy to fall into the trap of producing blatantly self-promotional content, especially if you’re worried about ‘wasting time’ on content that doesn’t produce results. But despite your best intentions, if your content isn’t providing sufficient value to your audience then your efforts are doomed to fail.
Content marketing isn’t a simple mechanical process — you can’t combine a handful of attractive CTAs and optimized landing pages with low quality content and expect customers to come pouring in. Even if you are able to generate leads in this way, imagine their disappointment after they’ve filled out your form and downloaded your offer, only to find a piece of lackluster content. These leads won’t convert into customers, and will sit indefinitely at the top of your sales funnel.
Not concerned yet? You might be surprised to learn the cost of bad content. An IGD Connect survey found that if buyers perceive your content to be “low value,” your business is 27% less likely to be considered in the decision making process, and 40% less likely to ultimately make the sale!
Think about the last time you downloaded a whitepaper or checked out a company’s blog. How did the quality of the content affect your opinion of that company?
One sure fire way of producing content that people find valuable is by writing with your target audience in mind.
Tailor your content to your ideal buyer persona by brainstorming topics they’d be most interested in, or tips that they’d find beneficial. Don’t spend time and energy creating general content if your goal is to reach a specific audience.
Being more strategic about the type of content you produce will not only raise its value, but it can also help you gain more qualified leads.
Plus, leads that are satisfied with your content are more likely to come back for more. That’s why it’s also important to create different types of content for different stages of the buying process. For instance, a small business owner exploring their marketing options may come to an agency’s site and download a free guide or tip sheet. Once they feel more prepared to make a decision, this lead may return to attend a webinar or read through a case study.
There’s no way around it: if you want to have a successful content marketing strategy, you have to invest in the content itself.
The best way to ensure you end up with qualified leads is to first think about your buyer persona, then start writing. And don’t count on poorly researched articles or typo-riddled guides to convince your leads to convert into customers.
Remember to devote time to both the quality of your content, as well as improving its ability to generate leads — otherwise your work will only be half done!
Image Credit: David Goehring
Do you have any tips for producing engaging content, or optimizing content to generate leads? Share your experience in the comments below!
About the Author: Brittney Stephenson is a Marketing Assistant at Powered by Search, an SEO and inbound marketing agency based in Toronto, Canada. She has a passion for marketing strategy, content marketing, and all things digital. Feel free to connect with Brittney on Google+.

Email Is Crushing Twitter, Facebook for Selling Stuff Online | Wired Business | Wired.com

If you’re a frequent reader of our blogs, you won’t be surprised by this report from Custora stating that email is a more effective marketing channel than social networks.
In fact, I say in my book that email is the biggest social network on the planet. Business people plan their days by their inbox. They program audible notifications when new items come into their inbox. It’s not smart, but it’s true.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that you should send self-promotional crap. That won’t work in email, mail or social media. But certainly don’t eliminate email from your marketing mix.

MediaPost Publications Millennials Forge The Future (Depending on Life Stage) 07/01/2013

If you like to study the steady march of the generations, you’ll find this study of Millennials fascinating. Basically, Millennials are here to frustrate the retiring Boomer generation. They are the revenge of GenX. I think you can see from this article that Millennials will baffle Boomers (and GenX) with their attitudes.

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This is a guest post by Hagi Erez, Founder/COO Pluralis.
CMOs and CRO professionals all know the challenges and the extensive resources (both financial and human) that are involved in building the ultimate landing page — the one that doesn’t stop converting.
I said, “Why not build a community of professional optimizers, via the power of crowdsourcing, to work on these pages and optimize them? We can then gamify it by pitting the best copies in a contest-type scenario against each other and award a prize for the highest converting copy.”
Contest in testing No matter what type of business, the constant unknown is that you don’t know what will to work until you try it, test, and then retest. The pages you think will convert the highest, in reality, might convert the poorest and vice versa. If you keep hitting this conversion wall, your only option is to test another idea, and there are many creative ideas from different conversion experts to choose from. This is the core idea behind Pluralis.
It is statements like the one below that inspire me to continue building the Pluralis platform, making it as user friendly and intuitive as it can be.
US B2B ECOMMERCE SALES TO REACH $559 BILLION BY THE END OF 2013
– Forrester Research
Pluralis is crowdsourcing the art of conversion optimization through a network of global optimization experts. The platform provides these CRO aficionados with an intuitive and user friendly platform, whereby they can make changes as they see fit and the contest holders can provide feedback on the copies that have been submitted.
Pluralis is all about equal opportunities. For online businesses, it is a sure win because of the low risk and great benefits they receive by realizing higher conversion rates. It is a win for the creative optimizers in the Pluralis community who are granted a cash reward while lifting not only rates but their CRO confidence level.
By using their good eye and knowledge of what it takes to make a landing page convert, the creative optimizers in the Pluralis community can optimize the page as they see fit and be in the running to not only win large cash prizes. They can also use it as their own virtual conversion playground to hone skills and market themselves through hard work.
Small businesses might not have the resources (time or financial) to hire teams of copywriters and designers, go over revisions, approve drafts, make changes, test and then go through the entire process all over again. Sometimes, all it takes is a few small changes to boost conversion rates well above 20%. Upon conclusion of testing, the optimizer with the winning page would win a client-specified reward based on their page’ percentage level of lift over the control page (the baseline).
Testing is another area that can prove quite costly for a company and is based more on what a business thinks might work than what actually does. For companies that have many landing pages to test, this is also a huge cost to consider.
Via crowdsourcing CRO efforts, small and medium-sized businesses can now compete with the larger and richer companies to do professional LPO (Landing Page Optimization), and they can do it without paying tens of thousands of dollars. Moreover – they pay for results and not efforts. If there is no lift, businesses are not obliged to pay and can even relaunch the contest at no extra charge.

The entire crowdsourcing concept for businesses is so attractive as they now have access to the skills of global communities. It creates competition.
Successful companies such as 99designs are the perfect example of this trend. By creating a marketplace of those who need design work and those who can answer their needs, 99designs’ solution promotes competition, where anyone can join and be in the running for a prize.
The power of the crowd has the ability take your business higher whether it is for composing a jingle,  building a website or optimizing your landing pages. Welcome to the New and Improved Internet Revolution.
 
Profile Photo - Hagi Erez - Founder-Pluralis
 
 
 
 
 
 
Hagi Erez, Founder/COO Pluralis

How to Use Ebooks Strategically and Reach Your Content Marketing Goals | Copyblogger

This article on ebooks comes at an important time at Conversion Sciences as we put the final touches on a unique ebook of our own (preorder Business Video Through the Eyes of Your Prospects).
Content is the way you charge and release the power stored in your marketing batteries (customer lists, email lists, social media networks).
And don’t forget that ebooks now outsell print books.

Why Facebook is blue: The science of colors in marketing – The Buffer Blog

If color is your concern, here are some guidelines and some dazzling graphics. However, don’t overthink color. The comments offer some sobering thoughts on the effect of color on success. 

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The brilliant minds over at Blog Growth posed  an important question recently; What’s the best price for your products?
While consumers think prices are decided arbitrarily, there is a lot of work that goes into determining the price point for a product.
Check out the amazing infographic Blog Growth put together to break down the science of pricing.
TheScienceOfPricing_Infographic
 
To read the whole post, check out Blog Growth.
 

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