Here are 6 very smart ecommerce strategies that will help you minimize the impact of COVID-19 on your business revenues. Take notes.
We like to make business decisions with data. We’ve looked at the data that is available about the coronavirus, COVID-19. Based on our analysis, we believe there is going to be a change in character of the web traffic for many of our ecommerce customers.
These challenging times have already impacted supply chain and will continue to have a serious economic impact on businesses in the future. But there’s always winners, even during recessions.
The closing of physical stores may drive more online business. We want you to be ready for this.
The closing of offices, factories, and warehouses may disrupt supply chains. We want you to be ready for this, too.
As always, we want to help you minimize the negative impact of COVID-19 pandemic on your ecommerce store and embrace the positive.
Don’t Go Down Without a Fight: Six COVID-19 Ecommerce Strategies from Smart Businesses
According to behavioral economics, our memories are enhanced during periods of high emotion. The uncertainty created by the coronavirus and its financial impact is putting all of us into an emotional state.
What you do now will be remembered by your customers and prospects more than at any other time in your relationship.
Adding some certainty back into the equation is a great way to position your online shop for a big big recovery.
We work with a variety of businesses all of which are grappling with the same question:
How are we going to survive this (and maybe even thrive)?
We thought we would share some of the ecommerce strategies they’re putting in place to cope and recover.
Pull back. Save money. Cut expenses. Slash programs. Wait and see. Your competitors are pulling back. Make the most of this. These are strategies every business in America is facing, even if you are unaffected by the virus. These are strategies in times of uncertainty.
These are defensive strategies.
There are offensive strategies you can implement as well. Your approach will determine if you take market share during this time or not.
If you are getting slammed by new online shoppers, you need to cut acquisition costs and support your existing customers. If demand for your products has cratered, you need to eek as much value from this traffic that isn’t buying right now. They will buy again. We promise.
Here’s what the smartest ecommerce businesses are doing right now in the face of the coronavirus.
1. Best Ecommerce Strategy to Minimize CoronaVirus Impact on Revenues: Reposition Your Products for New Visitors
More than eight in 10 (85.6%) respondents ages 60 and older said they were likely to avoid shopping centers and malls. That’s not surprising given that COVID-19 has hit older people the hardest, but it may have an unintended consequence on their shopping habits. emarketer
When your customers change, your messaging should change.
Flexispot was quick on their feet. The world shifted and now the world needed to setup their home workspaces. Flexispot shifted with them.
Flexidesk before and after image.
Be careful with this. You don’t want to make tone-def mistakes like many companies. This can come across as profiteering.
Pure Herbal may appear to be profiting from a bad situation. Source Bobby Hewitt
2. Traffic Dropping? Focus on Existing Customers to Minimize Impact of COVID-19 on Revenue
Why spend money on acquiring new customers if they just aren’t buying. Spread some love on your existing customers.
Free products. Free advice.
What could you do during this time to make your existing customer feel loved.
Most businesses are simply telling their customers whether or not things are business as usual. Others are using this to let their customers know that they’re with them.
IKEA’s ecommerce marketers sent an email to their IKEA Family members offering advice on how to setup an office space in their home.
IKEA emailed existing customers offering tips on setting up a home office. Source Dennis van der Heijden
3. Smart Ecommerce Strategies when Conversions are Down: Grow the List
People aren’t spending money like they were a few weeks ago. This doesn’t mean you can’t get value from them.
Use this time to build your list. The most successful ecommerce companies are very good at email.
Here are some options for building your list when visitors aren’t buying.
Offer Content Instead
Offer something of value directly related to your customers. Of course, the virus itself is fair game. How will people who normally buy your products go on without them?
It will be quite easy to create a small report “Six alternatives to ___________ during the COVID-19 outbreak”. Insert your product.
Why would you tell your visitors how to live without your product? If they need your product, but aren’t able to buy right now, you’re doing them a real favor.
You don’t have to go to this extreme. But you must offer relevant content, something that will entice qualified visitors to share their name and email address.
When things begin to recover, the people on your list will be well-qualified future customers. And you will have their name and email address.
Offer Free Products: Think of them as Free Trials
Here’s another smart ecommerce strategy to minimize the pandemic’s impact on your revenues. If you can’t sell it, give it away. At least you’ll be building a list of future buyers and taking market share from your more timid competitors.
One of those sectors that will boom as more employees work from home is online video conferencing. One company sells online video conferencing, virtual meeting rooms and secure instant messaging.
Even though business is booming, they are offering their service for free to non-profits and healthcare professionals. Why? To help the cause and to gain customers who may buy after the crisis recedes.
RingCentral home page with an excerpt from their coronavirus offer page.
Popups and Sticky Bars
When you enter an ecommerce site, you are likely to get a popup offering you a discount code in exchange for your email address. If people have stopped buying, however, discounts won’t work.
Replace them with your content or free product offers.
Sticky bars are another way to inform your visitors that you are offering things for which they may want to give you their email address.
The beauty of these solutions is that they can be implemented easily without changing your entire website. Services such as Optimonk, OptinMonster, Hello Bar make it easy to implement these on your site with minimal IT intervention.
We recommend trying these approaches:
“Welcome mat.” Opens when the visitor arrives.
“Jilted lover.” Also called an exit-intent overlay, it displays when a visitor is leaving the site.
“Wheelie popper.” Popup that appears when the visitor scrolls a certain distance down the page.
“Poptart.” These ads pop up after a certain amount of time passes. Like a toaster pastry.
4. Media Strategy 101: Do you need to advertise products that are going to sell out anyway?
We did an analysis for one client who was getting rushed by new online buyers. We found that most of the purchases were coming through paid search ads. The acquisition cost of this traffic ate up much of their profit compared to organic search, email and other channels.
So, they responded by decreasing their ad spend and letting the other channels buy.
5. Getting Slammed? Focus on profitable traffic.
Several of our clients are getting slammed right now. Some for obvious reasons. Some for reasons we can’t fathom.
This creates a problem, however. In a worst-case scenario, the virus will shut down the factories and warehouses that are needed to replenish depleted inventories.
The solution: maximize profits on the inventory you have.
We don’t consider it ethical to jack prices up in order to decrease demand. The demand is going to be there regardless of the price.
But you may want to reduce spending on high-acquisition-cost channels in favor of lower cost channels.
6. Unexpected Ecommerce Strategy to Minimize COVID-19’s Impact on Revenue: Digital end-caps
End-caps are the displays you see at the end of the aisle in grocery stores. They are used to increase product sales, like putting gum and candy at the checkout stand. You can use this technique in your digital store.
For example, promote in-stock products on the pages of out-of-stock products.
One of our clients sells industrial safety gear online for manufacturing and construction. They stock respirators, gloves, and other products in high demand due to the virus. They also sell products that aren’t getting depleted, such as spill containment kits and work gloves.
The in-demand products are bringing a whole new segment of visitors to their online store. Just because there is a virus doesn’t mean that these new visitors don’t need those other products.
By strategically placing messaging over products that are depleted, the company can position in-stock products for purchase. They are also communicating their offering to a whole new group of visitors that may not have been familiar with their brand.
Who’s going to do all of this?
If you don’t have the resources to implement these marketing strategies, let us help.
For several of our clients, dropping traffic volume means we can’t run as many tests as usual.
We have excess capacity.
Our COVID-19 response package is inexpensive and can be implemented very quickly.
Review your analytics to determine where you should stop spending and where you should double down.
Identify the strategies from this list that apply to your business.
Setup the necessary tools to support the strategy.
Design several versions of the creative and copy.
Launch, monitor and measure.
Adjust based on the data.
We can offer all of this for a lot less than the money you’re losing right now. Why? Because we hope that, when things return to normal, you’ll want some more of our data-driven strategies on your site.
Jump on a call with us today to see if you qualify for this amazing offer.
What is the key to creating a persuasive website? Calum Coburn takes a page from the negotiator’s handbook. Learn the key to being persuasive both in person and on the Web.
This well-worn phrase has come to mean many things. Forgive easily. Don’t over-react. Be strong in the face of adversity.
All of the focus is on the person doing the cheek turning. But the truth is, there is no righteous turning of cheeks without a slap. The full quote from the Bible is this:
“If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.”
— Matthew 5:39
This is the classic hero’s journey in one sentence. The hero is presented with an event that changes his world. People will hit you. He faces a choice, to strike back or to elevate himself and turn the other cheek. If he passes this test, he will be transformed.
But none of this happens without the slap. This is traditionally the role of the villain in our stories and myths.
The hero’s journey also shows up in our marketing. We call them customer journeys. If we want to make our customers heroes, it begs the question:
Who plays the villain?
One choice for persuasive website
When we are writing persuasively, we have a fundamental choice: Do we emphasize the positive aspects of our offering, or do we emphasize the potential loss that comes from inaction.
In the first case, we are selling our visitors. In the second we are playing the villain, presenting a negative consequence and agitating our heroes into action.
Would you like to know which works better according to science?
Calum Coburn has the data, and he comes with a very interesting perspective: the world of negotiation. Calum is a trainer, coach and consultant to businesses who want to be better at negotiating.
What does he know about persuasion and how can we use it in our digital marketing.
We talk about the concept of “prospect theory,” and today’s guest is an expert. Literally.
Calum Coburn is the Director and Vice President of The Negotiation Experts, a training and consulting firm that enables sales teams to drive measurable profit improvements.
On today’s show, Calum and Brian discuss the finer points of “prospect theory,” along with how to start building the foundations of trust as soon as your prospects see your web copy.
What stands in the way of converting marketing leads to sales and revenue? Sammy James has the data and a solution for marketing leads that seem to evaporate when sent to sales.
Do you remember how we got movie times before the internet? For a large part of my audience, the answer might be “what do you mean ‘BEFORE’ the internet??”.
It was a service called Moviefone 800-777-FILM. Call and it would read the local movie listings to you.
That’s right. People would actually take the phone from the kitchen wall and dial a number to have movie times read to them. This service didn’t shut down until February of 2014.
The men who created this service weren’t making movies or selling tickets. They were making it easier for people to choose movies, eventually leading to them buying tickets. They still did well. Moviefone was sold to AOL in 1999 for $388 million dollars.
The service answered two questions: “Is there a movie I would like to see?” And, “Is there a showtime that works for me?”
The Truth about Marketing Leads
There’s an assumption that sales is going to just [call], that it’s like throwing a piece of steak across the fence to a junkyard dog. You don’t have to worry. They’re gonna grab it. It’s not going to sit there. That’s the assumption of how sales works.
I’m always fascinated by the kind of people that can apply technology to problems even when it seems unintuitive. Why would someone call when they can just look the movie times up in the news paper? Because someone created a service that made it easy enough, that was focused on exactly what was needed, and got the word out about it.
My guest is one of these people.
Sammy James is one of those people who focuses on a problem and single-mindedly work to solve it completely. He sees filling out an online form as the equivalent of sitting down at a restaurant with no waiters. No matter how hungry you are, you’re not going to wait for too long.
Sammy is the founder of Speak2Leads.com a service that connects salespeople to prospects when they fill out a form. It’s a Moviefone-like problem with a Moviefone solution.
What the Data Says: Email, Podcasts, & Lead Conversion
What does the data tell us about effective email, podcasts and converting leads to sales? It's in here.
* Biggest misunderstandings
* Important metrics
* Applying the data
39 page PDF
Fits on your phone
Marketing Leads and Your Website
Your website is the Moviefone of your business. Unless you sell an online service, your website’s only job is making it easier for your prospects to make a choice. It answers two questions: “Is this something that will solve my problem?” and “Should I spend more time investigating this solution?”
All of the content you generate to persuade a visitor to buy your product may be wasted time. Your website doesn’t sell your business, it sells the next step. The quote. The demo. The trial. The sales meeting.
When you get back to the office, navigate your website and identify how much of your content is persuading your visitors to buy, and how much of it is persuading them to take one more step.
How much smaller would your site be if it was focused on selling the next step instead of closing the whole deal?
Looking for simple and effective ways to increase lead generation? Then, check out these 6 lead gen tips. Generating leads has never been so easy.
What do you do to bring in a continuous flow of qualified leads to your business on a daily basis?
Mapping out a lead generation strategy, learning how to nurture those leads and improve your conversion funnel over time, will help your business grow.
But if you’re ready to accelerate and grow your lead gen strategy, here are six fast and easy ways to increase your lead generation.
1. Choose the Right Social Media Platforms for Lead Generation
Social media is a powerful top-of-the-funnel approach to generating leads. Don’t invest time and money into every social media platform there is until you know what works for your business.
The key to social media for lead gen is not just your brand’s presence, but conversion rate. Basically, how prospects turn into leads.
If you’ve already established a presence on all platforms, see how much traffic each one drives to your landing pages via Google Analytics or a comprehensive social media management platform that allows for conversion tracking. What social media channels are consuming your content or bringing you the most traffic and leads?
Choosing the right social platforms for your lead gen efforts will directly impact your conversion rates and reduce your ad spend.
A Social Media Lead Generation Campaign Example
For those connections that are further along in their decision-making process, our conversion tracking efforts focus on those who join our email list, download a report, join our blog course, or complete a contact form.
We run a campaign that offers a free report for specific industries. Our large Twitter audience brought in the most clicks and leads. However, our data showed that LinkedIn leads convert at a higher rate than Twitter leads. As a result, we began focusing more on LinkedIn.
2. From TOFU to MOFU: Educate Your Buyer with Reports and Whitepapers
Offering free white papers, reports and ebooks are a great way to generate leads while making your prospects experts at buying your products. They are also a great way to create email marketing lists for those who are higher in the funnel (TOFU).
Many digital marketing agencies say, “if you provide something of value to prospects, they will give you their respect, time, loyalty, and ultimately their business.”
If it only were that easy.
At Conversion Sciences, oftentimes we use blog posts to test topics of interest to our clients’ audiences. We will prepare a live presentation or webinar on hot topics. These presentations get cast into case studies, blog posts, reports and social media posts.
But writing a report simply isn’t enough. Targeting your whitepapers to the right audience is key. You can earn a second chance to convert visitors (MOFU or Middle of the Funnel) with re-marketing ad campaigns. highly targeted and personalized email marketing campaigns.
Also, consider LinkedIn groups and to test content offers to improve lead generation.
21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks
Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.
43 Pages with Examples
Assumptive Phrasing
"We" vs. "You"
Pattern Interrupts
The Power of Three
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3. Fast and Easy Ways to Increase Lead Generation with Social Video
On social networks, likes and shares have proven to be poor predictors of lead quality. And pretty bad at generating leads as well. Video views, on the other hand offer two benefits to B2B lead generation.
First if a visitor watches one or more of your videos posted to Facebook, Linkedin or Instagram – or embedded on your site – , they begin to build trust and affinity for your brand.
Second, when a visitor watches your video, they can be retargeted by ads and driven to your landing pages. These visitors tend to be more likely to click and to convert into qualified leads.
So in the lead generation game, optimizing for video views could be a better approach than strictly focusing clicks and conversions.
Two examples of Lead Generation and Lead Nurturing when Optimizing for Video Views
Prager U offers mini-courses up to 30-minutes in length to highlight their content. These videos aren’t posted to Youtube. They are run as long-form ads. Their ultimate goal is to generate donations. Meanwhile, they focus on brand exposure (video views).
I watched a 28 minute presentation from New York Times best selling author Jeremy Gutsche on creativity and culture. I notoriously skip ads on Youtube. Ultimately, Jeremy is hoping to get more speaking engagements and book sales.
Jeremy Gutsche ad.
4. How Facebook Ad Targeting and Retargeting Builds A Lead Magnetic Field
Did you know the Earth produces its own magnetic field which is important in navigation? It also shields the Earth’s atmosphere from solar winds that are capable of destroying humanity as we know it!
When it comes to ways to increase lead generation, you should think of your business as the Earth, Facebook Ads at the magnetic field, and your competition as the solar wind.
Facebook Ads will help discover and navigate your prospects to your lead-generating content, and bring them back to “Earth,” aka your business.
Let’s say you are a software business looking to build a sales lead pipeline for a new service for apparel companies. Placing a Facebook pixel on your website will help display your ads to people who visited your site, measure the effectiveness of your ads and gather data on the actions taken by these visitors on your site. You could craft an ad campaign to retarget those visitors that did not convert, or build a “lookalike” audience to reach people on Facebook with similar characteristics to those who did convert.
Facebook Retargeting Campaign Example: Google Fiber
Take Google Fiber for example. I was recently referred to its site by a friend who mentioned it will soon be available in the Austin area. I snooped around the site but lost interest, since it isn’t making itself available in my part of town. In the days following my visit, this is what I saw in my Facebook News Feed.
I saw a retargeting ad about Google Fiber when I logged into Facebook
Their ads were smart enough to deliver geographically targeted content.
When I click on the “Sign Up” button. I’m directed to a landing page to enter my address to see whether Google Fiber will be in my neighborhood.
Total bummer though: it looks like they won’t be available for a little while, so I decided to sign up for their email list.
Guess what? I’m a lead now. They have my contact information and they can add me to their email remarketing campaign. Not exactly a bummer for Google Fiber.
I’m now a lead because I’ve signed up for alerts.
5. More Lead Gen Tips for Twitter Ads with Hashtag Targeting
Hashtags are a great way to generate awareness to an interested audience for your brand or business. Create a Twitter Ads campaign and target people who are interested in relevant hashtags to drive qualified traffic to your site. Though Twitter ads are not for the faint of budget, they work!
6. Juicing Your Lead Generation Efforts With Content for Lead Nurturing
Creating relevant content, such as reports or whitepapers, and promoting them via organic and paid advertising campaigns, is just the tip of the iceberg in online lead generation. And bombarding them with offers or retargeting ads can only take you so far. You have to nurture those newly acquired leads.
By implementing an enriched content strategy in your marketing funnel, you will intrigue and engage your audience, as well as drive them further down the sales funnel. Infographics, videos, images, and podcasting are just a few content ideas that you may use. Think of your entire content marketing strategy as the great magnetic force that pulls in and nurtures new leads.
According to a Content Marketing Institute study, only 48% of businesses have a documented Content Strategy.
A study from the Content Marketing Institute and Marketing Profs states that over 80% of B2B respondents use Content Marketing in their business practices, yet only 38% of these businesses say their strategies are effective.
However, the study also indicates that 48% of these businesses were not documenting their strategies effectively.
In the end, there’s no way of telling what practices are showing results, or hurting business. You need to test yours and discover what works with your potential market.
Here are a few creative examples on how we incorporate content marketing elements in our online lead generation strategy to ensure maximum results.
Webinars for Lead Generation Efforts
Webinars offer exclusive information and help grow your email list and lead base. Keep in mind, you will need to promote your webinars to get people to attend. We promote ours on LinkedIn groups.
On LinkedIn, you can target groups based on field of expertise, interests, or topics. Being in alignment with your audience avoids spammy sales letters and overbearing ads. WebinarNL says, “webinars generate a lower cost per lead and high level of engagement with prospective clients.” They also detail several benefits to hosting webinars including:
Direct contact with your target audience
Reaching your prospects both live and afterwards
Interaction with your target group
A Webinar Lead Gen Example: How webinars save time and money
So, we decided to put this to the test and hosted our very first webinar “UX vs. CRO: The Digital Fight of the Century” As a special incentive for attendees, we had them ask several questions on UX or CRO. The people with the most creative questions won a free website evaluation from Brian Massey himself.
We got 212 conversions in just 20 days of deploying our social media promotion campaign. That’s more leads in such a short period of time than any other way to improve lead generation we’ve executed.
To see how our first webinar panned out, watch the webinar replay.
Data from our webinar “UX vs CRO”
Conversion data from our webinar “UX vs CRO”
Easy Ways to Increase Lead Generation: Podcasting
Perhaps the most underrated form of generating new warm business leads comes from podcasting. It’s free and accessible, and makes radio quality audio shows available for download through an RSS feed to a computer, MP3 player or mobile phone. Listeners only have to subscribe to a podcast once.
Rob Walch of Libsyn says that podcasts are “the opposite of Twitter.” Podcasts give you extended quality time with those members of your audience that listen.
First, you’ll need to conduct a topic search that will get your content noticed in the podcast world. Then, be sure to create blog posts to capture the reader’s attention, launch your podcast, and have them listen.
Interviewing an industry expert or hosting a panel debate can help maximize reach and listeners. Be sure to keep discussions focused on topics you can actively talk about with your prospective leads. This is the perfect way to begin establishing yourself as an industry thought leader.
“The goal of the business podcast is to create a conversational thread that you can pick up with your lead on the next call,” says Benchmark.
Think of this as the firsts experiences with future customers. You are building trust and proving them with valid information to nurture a business relationship.
Again, podcasts are easy to share via LinkedIn groups, Twitter hashtags, and Facebook Ads. Also, you can upload podcasts to your Facebook page, just check the option “Upload as video to Timeline”, so followers can listen in.
More Lead Generation Ideas: Guest Blogging
What does your business specialize in? Moving, fitness, prepping? Is it a rehab center, a college, or a consulting firm?
Writing a guest post for a related industry blog, you will show your subject knowledge and add credibility to your brand, while reaching an entirely new audience. This is also an opportunity to grow your follower base by crafting the perfect bio and byline.
Start by building a list of publications in your niche market that accept guest posts and understand what type of content would be a good fit for them, their audience and, consequently, for you. If their audience engages with your content, they may visit your website, interact with you and maybe even give you their email address. A smooth way to earn more leads.
Again, you want your prospects to know you are an expert or the best in your field, and drive them towards the top of your sales funnel.
Video Marketing
Did you know that 75% of executives told Forbes that they watch work-related videos on business websites at least once a week? The breakdown? 50% of these executives watch business-related videos on YouTube, and 65% stated they visit the marketer’s website after viewing a video.
Adding a compelling call to action will help you drive your viewers to your website of landing page. Tell them what to do and why. Something Free, if enticing enough, may do the trick. Make sure it’s something aligned with your business that the potential leads want.
Or you can promote your offer with YouTube Ads. Let’s take this Heineken YouTube Ad for example. Apparently, YouTube knows that people like me – people who are my age, have my interests, and share a similar browsing and search history to mine, for instance – love beer. Again, this is the whole idea of remarketing.
As I’m watching this ad, what do I see in the bottom of the video? It’s an annotation that says “Visit Advertiser’s Site”. Since I’m curious, I click on the link and low and behold, I’m on their site and enter for a chance to win in their sweepstakes.
Heineken lead generation YouTube ad.
The sad thing is, the campaign was over before I landed on the page, and Heineken missed its chance to get me on its email list. Will I see a remarketing ad in the future? Possibly!
Landing page for Heineken promotion lead gen campaign.
Are You Ready To Try Some of these Fast and Easy Ways to Increase your Lead Generation Efforts?
Don’t just throw content out into the world and expect a beanstalk to grow in your backyard overnight. The business world is not a fairytale.
Incorporate just a few of these ideas into your overall lead generation plan today. Not only will you be able to grow your business, but you will start a snowball effect that brings in new prospects to your sales funnel.
Meanwhile, check out our lead generation solutions that deliver or contact us to generate more and better leads fast.
A website has some limitations when it comes to growing your brand. A website has to wait until someone comes to visit. It’s like that kid always hoping someone will sleep over.
You can’t send it out on a tour, like a book author. It won’t fill stadiums with screaming fans. It doesn’t count as a passenger so you can use the HOV lane.
When you think about it, a website is more like the brick and mortar store of the digital world. Actually, if you’ve seen the way websites are designed, they are really more like a booth at a generic convention. In Topeka.
If you saw your website at a party, how long would you want to hang out with it, if at all? Isn’t your website more teller machine and less Teller.
Fear not, for the digital world offers a way to lend your digital brand the humanity your website struggles with.
What the Data Says: Email, Podcasts, & Lead Conversion
What does the data tell us about effective email, podcasts and converting leads to sales? It's in here.
* Biggest misunderstandings
* Important metrics
* Applying the data
39 page PDF
Fits on your phone
Podcasting is a Shortcut to our Hearts
We’ve been talking about the Cluetrain Manifesto lately, and thesis number three says that conversations between brands and people “sound human” and are “conducted in a human voice.”
Even today, this sentiment flies in the face of our tightly controlled, highly produced, and frequently foiled image-building campaigns. But we know it’s true.
Because, there is a shortcut to your customers’ hearts, and it’s not through their stomachs. Nor is it through open heart surgery. It’s through the holes we use to drain our airpods sitting on either side of our heads.
So how does podcasting work in a digital marketing context. How do you measure it? And what can you expect from this semi-digital medium.
I went to the source. Rob Walch is VP of Podcaster Relations for LibSyn, the leading podcast host. The guy who said, “If you want to be on the radio, just call in a lot!”
“It’s an opportunity to go long form with potential clients or with your target audience. You don’t have to be in pitch mode all the time. You can be yourself. You can talk about real benefits. That’s it. It’s it’s the opposite of Twitter”
I vented some of my frustrations with Podcasting — hint: it’s not a direct response medium — and got an unexpected answer. He also shared with me the data behind the top shows that Libsyn hosts.
When you get back to the office…
What would the voice of your brand be? Or who? Would it be you? Could it be you?
Have you ever practiced your radio voice. I’m using mine now.
Since you’re probably in your car now, you should give it a try. Drop your voice into the back of your throat and push air out with your diaphragm. Then let your voice drop and rise on random words.
Now, try describing your favorite movie. “In a world before running water…”
If you’re stopped at a light, don’t worry. People in other cars will just think you’re singing along to your favorite Bon Jovi tune. Unless they’re listening to this podcast too.
So, how did that feel, giving yourself a voice, a voice designed to communicate? How would it feel to give your brand a voice like that?
It’s a big question. “When should I invest in conversion optimization for my website?” Even though I’ve been preaching the benefits of CRO since 2006, I don’t consider it an obvious decision. Instead of telling you what I think, I asked a competitor to tell you, just to keep me honest.
If I’m going to truly help you improve your online business, I have to help you answer this question. The problem is that I have a conflict. It’s easy for me to say, “Hire my company, Conversion Sciences.”
It’s my fiduciary duty as the Managing Partner. Getting new clients is one of the goals of this podcast and why we spend so much time and money on it.
I am eminently qualified to answer this question because of my years of experience, BUT I’m NOT going to be the best source of information on this because I am biased.
So I did something crazy, something that arguably violates my fiduciary duty to my company.
Don’t tell my partner.
Getting a second opinion on Conversion Rate Optimization
To help make you better at investing in conversion optimization services, I did something I may regret.
I invited a direct competitor onto this podcast. Why would I, after all of my investment in producing and marketing this podcast, offer a platform to a competitor?
Because you need a second opinion. Rather than make you go out and find it, I’m going to provide it to you right here on the podcast.
I believe that if I help you answer this question, you will make a better decision. I also believe that our reputation, our brand value and our track record make our brand strong. Strong brands can take risks, especially those that can benefit their customers and prospects.
There are a LOT of websites that need conversion optimization. There is plenty of business to go around.
To help you make the decision about buying conversion optimization services, I didn’t choose some slouch conversion optimization agency spewing best practices. Jon MacDonald is the founder and President of conversion optimization agency called The Good. He has been doing this almost as long as I have. I have to tell you, I was surprised at how similar our two approaches are.
And Jon’s path is very similar to mine.
“If you’re not getting the traffic and engagement to even prove your product is sustainable, then you really shouldn’t be investing in optimizing.”
When you get back to the office…
I recommend that you get an understanding of how small increases in your conversion rate can affect your income.
Search for “Conversion Sciences Calculator” using your favorite search engine.
There you can enter your average monthly traffic, the number of conversions you get, and the value of a conversion — either the transaction order value or the value you’ve placed on a lead or subscriber.
If you aren’t sure, don’t worry. You can play “what if” with the numbers after entering your name and email.
It’s the first step toward understanding if your business is ready for conversion optimization. If you like what you see there, you can schedule a free conversion consultation on our website.
Who better than a scientist to come up with the best definition of conversion rate optimization ever? Read on. Be the Judge.
What exactly is conversion rate optimization? You’ve read about it over and over, but you may not have a proper understanding of how to apply it to your ecommerce store or to your online lead generation efforts.
Today we will cover not only the best definition of conversion rate optimization ever written, but its benefits and impact on profit. Plus, best practices and how and where to learn CRO. We’ll also answer some of the most frequently asked questions on the topic.
What is Conversion Rate Optimization or CRO?
Conversion rate optimization, or CRO, is the process of maximizing the value you get from every visitor you bring to your website.
The value you get from every visitor is expressed as a rate – the famous “conversion rate“.
And the reason it’s called conversion “rate” optimization is that, in general, we are trying to increase the rate at which site visitors become buyers, subscribers, leads or callers.
Now, most people believe their website only has one conversion rate. The truth is, it has several. Therefore, conversion rate optimization, or CRO, attempts to improve each of these conversion rates – either by increasing value or reducing the associated costs (e.g. ad spend).
How does this process work? CRO is the process of making changes to a website, and measuring how those changes increase or decrease the conversion rate.
Drawing of a digital laboratory by Conversion Sciences.
To accomplish this, we use data to understand how changes to your website affect the behavior of visitors and measure conversions.
Let’s dive in a little deeper.
The Applied Definition of Conversion Rate Optimization
The number of potential customers, visitors or traffic we get to our site will grow, decrease or fluctuate over time. It is generally believed that the rate at which these visitors convert will be more consistent over time than changes in traffic.
This is only partially true.
For example, you may decide that your home page will be better if you put images of your products near the top of the page. You can make this change and see if you get more sales.
But what if traffic decreases on the day that you make the change? You would get fewer sales due to the lower traffic, and it may look like your change was to blame. The percentage of buyers – the conversion rate – may have gone up. But lower traffic caused the total number of conversions or transactions drop.
Let’s assume you make a change to your site the night before Black Friday – the biggest shopping day of the year in the US. And you get a massive increase in sales. You might think that your conversion optimization change was the reason for it. But it was the market that changed.
“Hidden variables” – changes in traffic, in your competitors’ offers, changes in your advertising – can lead you to make bad choices. Fortunately, we have a complete set of methods and disciplines to ensure we don’t make bad decisions as we find out what our customers really want from our website.
Why is Conversion Rate Optimization Important?
As the digital world grows, it becomes harder and more expensive to attract visitors to your website. Organic traffic requires an investment in infrastructure and content. Advertising prices are rising on each new platform: Google, then Facebook, then Instagram, then…
Getting value from this hard-won traffic is the key to sustained online growth. Extracting value means converting visitors to email subscribers, leads or shoppers who add something to their carts or to return customers.
Finally, we want to eliminate those visitors who would not use your solution or buy from you because they cost resources.
In every case, the relationship changes. It converts to something new, and this is a conversion. Our goal with conversion rate optimization is to maximize the percentage of visitors that we convert into customers, and therefore grow our online business.
Benefits of Conversion Rate Optimization
The first benefit of conversion rate optimization is generating more revenue from your website’s current traffic. The second benefit is increased conversions, maximizing ROI, ROAS, cost reduction, and cost streamlining. But this is only the beginning.
A good conversion rate optimization program will also:
Get more visitors to return
Get more customers to buy again
Tell you what your best visitors want – and don’t want
Help you understand the different kinds of visitors to your site
Get your customers to advocate for your business
The data you gather about the people coming to your website is a massive competitive advantage. One that you can leverage for on-going growth and higher customer satisfaction.
What scientific knowledge is fundamental to conversion rate optimization and where can i learn CRO?
Conversion Rate Optimization Best Practices
Every successful conversion rate optimization program starts by collecting data and generating hypotheses to evaluate and test. Of course, at Conversion Sciences we have been coaching, writing how-to guides and defining CRO best practices for decades. Here are a few to get you started:
Is Conversion Rate Optimization for eCommerce the same as it is for Lead Generation?
The CRO process for ecommerce sites is exactly the same as it is for lead generation websites. It is based on a scientific method and it is designed to keep us from making bad decisions based on a small amount of data that may seem sensible.
Whether you are optimizing for an ecommerce store or for a lead generation site, your questions are the same:
“How much revenue am I generating from the visitors to my website?”
The way you measure success is different for lead generation and ecommerce sites. So, this requires a change in the way you calculate value.
For an ecommerce site, calculating value is easier than for a lead generation site because the transaction happens on the actual website. So, it’s very easy to attribute a visit to an ecommerce transaction. Besides, a visitor can complete a transaction in one visit. You measure value instantly based on the amount each person purchases.
For a lead generation website, the sale happens at some point after the visitor has left the website. You only know the true value of a new customer later, and often the sale happens over the phone or in person.
When we make changes to an ecommerce website, we can see the results almost instantly. However, changes made to a lead generation website may drive more leads, but are these leads as good? Are they turning into customers at the same rate? To answer these questions, a bit more work is required to value leads than buyers.
What Scientific Knowledge is Fundamental to Conversion Rate Optimization?
Analytics. Scientific method. Statistics. This is the fundamental knowledge you should have. Or learn. Or hire.
Sometimes, analytics isn’t enough. In this case, we need to figure out how to generate the data we need. This can be done by conducting experiments. We devise a hypothesis, figure out how to test it, and then run the test until we have some statistical confidence in the data.
The biggest obstacle to a high converting website is sitting between your ears. Our brains are festering lumps of bias.
We tend to make decisions in our daily communication projects based on what we think is effective. Not on what our audience actually wants. We tend to call “effective” those things that match our preconceived notions. What we’ve seen most recently. What matches our most emotional events – big wins and big losses.
Confirmation bias and availability bias blind us to what our audience is really telling us. The conversion rate optimization process is designed to prevent these biases from influencing our decisions.
To do this, we rely on data and experimentation.
The other important thing you need, besides scientific knowledge, is curiosity. If you aren’t curious, you probably won’t care enough to take time to experiment, to feed your curiosity.
Some prefer to learn by reading and studying. We’ve tried to make sure that our website is a reference that answers the questions that will come up as you explore conversion optimization.
If you’re like me, you prefer to learn from specific examples and then generalize the learning. This is the mark of a highly intelligent learner. I espouse this process in my online courses, which are geared toward self-teachers. I use video and examples to illustrate larger concepts.
Ultimately, your web visitors are unique. They are unlike any other audience, even your direct competitors. The best lessons you will learn will be found in trying new things, measuring precisely and improving your conversion rates.
Positioning your product or service requires understanding the root desire of your website visitors. This changes from visitor to visitor. Positioning your offering generically to appeal to them all doesn’t work. Find out what does.
Is it to be seen as tech-savvy to your friends? Hmmm.
Is it to see how your cat will react? That’s interesting.
These are the kinds of questions that the “Jobs to be Done” framework seeks to tease out. Your website and your marketing should address one or more of these positioning statements — at least the valid ones.
“So, Jobs to be Done is a framework that is used to understand the crux of what your customer or potential customer is looking for, to understand what is driving them in the moment where they are ready to make a purchase.”
How do businesses like Casper and Warby Parker carve out space in competitive markets? By positioning the product to a market desire that isn’t obvious to the market leaders.
“Casper was brilliant in convincing people with perfectly fine mattresses that they needed to receive a mattress by mail.”
This is what me and Tara Hunt, my guest on this episode of Intended Consequences discuss. We also talk about the Flywheel approach.
Positioning your product or service accurately is one step. The next is to get into the minds of your audience. Casper used podcasts as one salient way to reach their audience.
“Casper was on podcasts and people that listen to podcasts tend to think companies that advertise on podcasts are cool.”
How to Manage Positioning Your Product or Service
If you’re like me, the positioning ideas are crowding around in your head right now. Old ideas that you thought were just too risky to try are vying for attention against new ideas from my conversation with Tara.
It’s time to give your intuition a little help.
When you get back to the office, immediately open up a clean spreadsheet. Label the first column “Idea”. Label the second column “Data”.
Start jotting the thoughts in your head in the first column. Just describe them enough so that you can recall them in detail later. If you need to draw something, reference the page in your journal in the Idea column.
The “Data” column is where you will list ways to test the idea. List any and all of these that apply:
Similar campaigns that have succeeded
A report in analytics that you should run to get evidence
A strategy for trying the idea in the marketplace safely
Surveys, focus groups, or user testing that could vet the idea
Any allies that may have supporting evidence for the idea
This is the beginning of your hypothesis list, a list that should guide your curiosity as you write, design, plan and create communications.
Get in the habit of opening it when you start a new design, document or project.
“Markets are Conversations.” This the opening salvo in the Cluetrain Manifesto. It’s 95 theses were written at the dawn of the commercial internet to help businesses understand how things had changed. Twenty years later, did we heed their advice? Is the Cluetrain Manifesto still relevant?
Contrarians. They’re trouble. At least they’re trouble in structured organizations.
Contrarians seem to always take the stance in opposition to the status quo.
They are more likely to have an authority complex, not because they don’t like to be told what to do, but because authority figures are more likely to do things the way things have always been done.
They are the “But maybe…” in your “Of course we…”.
They are the exceptions to your rule.
They point out the interesting sites along your commute that you’ve never noticed.
It’s hard for contrarians. They believe that you don’t “get it” every bit as much as you believe they don’t get it. They tend to see things as they are and have an unhealthy disregard for tradition.
It’s hard for businesses to find a place for contrarians. But, when they do find their place, the results can be incredible. Think Steve Jobs. He was kicked out of the company he founded before returning to it at a desperate hour.
And maybe this is when we should listen to contrarians, in those desperate hours.
The Desperate Hour of the Cluetrain Manifesto
Back in 1999 a group of contrarians saw a desperate hour approaching. A new tool had begun to change the fundamentals of communication, commerce and expression. The internet was shifting marketing so fundamentally, these contrarians believed, that it would change the way buyers buy and businesses sell.
“The Clue train was all about that. It was all about disrupting the marketing conversation.”
Confused businesses saw the internet as just another broadcasting channel, a place for their crafted ads and manipulative marketing. The contrarians felt businesses really needed to get a clue, to climb aboard the train that had already left the station, headed for the future.
In the spirit of Martin Luther, who launched the protestant revolution by nailing 95 theses on the door of a Catholic church, they nailed their 95 theses on the door of the church of ideas: the world wide web.
The Cluetrain Manifesto was immensely influential to me when it came out in 1999. Yes. Left to my own devices, I am a contrarian. My contrarian bent cost me more than one job and even a few friendships.
But I found my place during a desperate hour. Be mindful of contrarians in positions of power.
It was during a conversation with a new friend, Tara Hunt, that I found a fellow Cluetrain contrarian. Tara is the CEO of marketing strategy agency Truly and is launching Phlywheel, a resource for DIY marketers.
Honestly, I hadn’t thought about the Cluetrain Manifesto in years. When I read it now, it seems obvious, so ingrained is it in my psyche.
I was so glad to rediscover it, that I recorded it for you on this podcast.
Tara and I reminisced about this amazing document and looked back at its impact. Did we businesses learn the lessons of the Cluetrain Manifesto? This conversation took so many turns that we split it into two parts.
In part one, we start off talking about what the Cluetrain Manifesto was about.
In part two, we look at social media, which was nothing like it is today when the Cluetrain Manifesto was created.
The Cluetrain Manifesto was written in 1999 by Rick Levine, Chris Locke, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger.
It struck me that the new generations of business owners, marketers and executives may have missed this amazing document. It’s been twenty years, after all.
So, as a bonus to our Intended Consequences podcast listeners, I recorded it. I hope you enjoy hearing it as much as I enjoyed reading it in 1999.
You are free to share and adapt the Cluetrain Manifesto audio file under the following terms:
Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.
No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
6 Smart Ecommerce Strategies to Minimize COVID-19’s Impact on Revenue
Conversion Marketing Strategy, Ecommerce CROWe like to make business decisions with data. We’ve looked at the data that is available about the coronavirus, COVID-19. Based on our analysis, we believe there is going to be a change in character of the web traffic for many of our ecommerce customers.
These challenging times have already impacted supply chain and will continue to have a serious economic impact on businesses in the future. But there’s always winners, even during recessions.
As always, we want to help you minimize the negative impact of COVID-19 pandemic on your ecommerce store and embrace the positive.
Don’t Go Down Without a Fight: Six COVID-19 Ecommerce Strategies from Smart Businesses
According to behavioral economics, our memories are enhanced during periods of high emotion. The uncertainty created by the coronavirus and its financial impact is putting all of us into an emotional state.
What you do now will be remembered by your customers and prospects more than at any other time in your relationship.
Adding some certainty back into the equation is a great way to position your online shop for a big big recovery.
We work with a variety of businesses all of which are grappling with the same question:
We thought we would share some of the ecommerce strategies they’re putting in place to cope and recover.
Pull back. Save money. Cut expenses. Slash programs. Wait and see. Your competitors are pulling back. Make the most of this. These are strategies every business in America is facing, even if you are unaffected by the virus. These are strategies in times of uncertainty.
These are defensive strategies.
There are offensive strategies you can implement as well. Your approach will determine if you take market share during this time or not.
If you are getting slammed by new online shoppers, you need to cut acquisition costs and support your existing customers. If demand for your products has cratered, you need to eek as much value from this traffic that isn’t buying right now. They will buy again. We promise.
Here’s what the smartest ecommerce businesses are doing right now in the face of the coronavirus.
1. Best Ecommerce Strategy to Minimize CoronaVirus Impact on Revenues: Reposition Your Products for New Visitors
When your customers change, your messaging should change.
Flexispot was quick on their feet. The world shifted and now the world needed to setup their home workspaces. Flexispot shifted with them.
Flexidesk before and after image.
Be careful with this. You don’t want to make tone-def mistakes like many companies. This can come across as profiteering.
Pure Herbal may appear to be profiting from a bad situation. Source Bobby Hewitt
2. Traffic Dropping? Focus on Existing Customers to Minimize Impact of COVID-19 on Revenue
Why spend money on acquiring new customers if they just aren’t buying. Spread some love on your existing customers.
Free products. Free advice.
What could you do during this time to make your existing customer feel loved.
Most businesses are simply telling their customers whether or not things are business as usual. Others are using this to let their customers know that they’re with them.
IKEA’s ecommerce marketers sent an email to their IKEA Family members offering advice on how to setup an office space in their home.
IKEA emailed existing customers offering tips on setting up a home office. Source Dennis van der Heijden
3. Smart Ecommerce Strategies when Conversions are Down: Grow the List
People aren’t spending money like they were a few weeks ago. This doesn’t mean you can’t get value from them.
Use this time to build your list. The most successful ecommerce companies are very good at email.
Here are some options for building your list when visitors aren’t buying.
Offer Content Instead
Offer something of value directly related to your customers. Of course, the virus itself is fair game. How will people who normally buy your products go on without them?
It will be quite easy to create a small report “Six alternatives to ___________ during the COVID-19 outbreak”. Insert your product.
Why would you tell your visitors how to live without your product? If they need your product, but aren’t able to buy right now, you’re doing them a real favor.
You don’t have to go to this extreme. But you must offer relevant content, something that will entice qualified visitors to share their name and email address.
When things begin to recover, the people on your list will be well-qualified future customers. And you will have their name and email address.
Offer Free Products: Think of them as Free Trials
Here’s another smart ecommerce strategy to minimize the pandemic’s impact on your revenues. If you can’t sell it, give it away. At least you’ll be building a list of future buyers and taking market share from your more timid competitors.
One of those sectors that will boom as more employees work from home is online video conferencing. One company sells online video conferencing, virtual meeting rooms and secure instant messaging.
Even though business is booming, they are offering their service for free to non-profits and healthcare professionals. Why? To help the cause and to gain customers who may buy after the crisis recedes.
RingCentral home page with an excerpt from their coronavirus offer page.
Popups and Sticky Bars
When you enter an ecommerce site, you are likely to get a popup offering you a discount code in exchange for your email address. If people have stopped buying, however, discounts won’t work.
Replace them with your content or free product offers.
Sticky bars are another way to inform your visitors that you are offering things for which they may want to give you their email address.
The beauty of these solutions is that they can be implemented easily without changing your entire website. Services such as Optimonk, OptinMonster, Hello Bar make it easy to implement these on your site with minimal IT intervention.
We recommend trying these approaches:
4. Media Strategy 101: Do you need to advertise products that are going to sell out anyway?
We did an analysis for one client who was getting rushed by new online buyers. We found that most of the purchases were coming through paid search ads. The acquisition cost of this traffic ate up much of their profit compared to organic search, email and other channels.
So, they responded by decreasing their ad spend and letting the other channels buy.
5. Getting Slammed? Focus on profitable traffic.
Several of our clients are getting slammed right now. Some for obvious reasons. Some for reasons we can’t fathom.
This creates a problem, however. In a worst-case scenario, the virus will shut down the factories and warehouses that are needed to replenish depleted inventories.
We don’t consider it ethical to jack prices up in order to decrease demand. The demand is going to be there regardless of the price.
But you may want to reduce spending on high-acquisition-cost channels in favor of lower cost channels.
6. Unexpected Ecommerce Strategy to Minimize COVID-19’s Impact on Revenue: Digital end-caps
For example, promote in-stock products on the pages of out-of-stock products.
One of our clients sells industrial safety gear online for manufacturing and construction. They stock respirators, gloves, and other products in high demand due to the virus. They also sell products that aren’t getting depleted, such as spill containment kits and work gloves.
The in-demand products are bringing a whole new segment of visitors to their online store. Just because there is a virus doesn’t mean that these new visitors don’t need those other products.
By strategically placing messaging over products that are depleted, the company can position in-stock products for purchase. They are also communicating their offering to a whole new group of visitors that may not have been familiar with their brand.
Who’s going to do all of this?
If you don’t have the resources to implement these marketing strategies, let us help.
For several of our clients, dropping traffic volume means we can’t run as many tests as usual.
We have excess capacity.
Our COVID-19 response package is inexpensive and can be implemented very quickly.
We can offer all of this for a lot less than the money you’re losing right now. Why? Because we hope that, when things return to normal, you’ll want some more of our data-driven strategies on your site.
Jump on a call with us today to see if you qualify for this amazing offer.
This is the Key to a Persuasive Website
Persuasion ScienceSubscribe to the Podcast
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“Turn the other cheek.”
This well-worn phrase has come to mean many things. Forgive easily. Don’t over-react. Be strong in the face of adversity.
All of the focus is on the person doing the cheek turning. But the truth is, there is no righteous turning of cheeks without a slap. The full quote from the Bible is this:
“If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.”
— Matthew 5:39
This is the classic hero’s journey in one sentence. The hero is presented with an event that changes his world. People will hit you. He faces a choice, to strike back or to elevate himself and turn the other cheek. If he passes this test, he will be transformed.
But none of this happens without the slap. This is traditionally the role of the villain in our stories and myths.
The hero’s journey also shows up in our marketing. We call them customer journeys. If we want to make our customers heroes, it begs the question:
Who plays the villain?
One choice for persuasive website
When we are writing persuasively, we have a fundamental choice: Do we emphasize the positive aspects of our offering, or do we emphasize the potential loss that comes from inaction.
In the first case, we are selling our visitors. In the second we are playing the villain, presenting a negative consequence and agitating our heroes into action.
Would you like to know which works better according to science?
Calum Coburn has the data, and he comes with a very interesting perspective: the world of negotiation. Calum is a trainer, coach and consultant to businesses who want to be better at negotiating.
What does he know about persuasion and how can we use it in our digital marketing.
We talk about the concept of “prospect theory,” and today’s guest is an expert. Literally.
Calum Coburn is the Director and Vice President of The Negotiation Experts, a training and consulting firm that enables sales teams to drive measurable profit improvements.
On today’s show, Calum and Brian discuss the finer points of “prospect theory,” along with how to start building the foundations of trust as soon as your prospects see your web copy.
Resources Discussed
Quick Links
Why Marketing Leads Don’t Turn into Sales and What to do About It
Conversion Marketing StrategySubscribe to the Podcast
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Do you remember how we got movie times before the internet? For a large part of my audience, the answer might be “what do you mean ‘BEFORE’ the internet??”.
It was a service called Moviefone 800-777-FILM. Call and it would read the local movie listings to you.
That’s right. People would actually take the phone from the kitchen wall and dial a number to have movie times read to them. This service didn’t shut down until February of 2014.
The men who created this service weren’t making movies or selling tickets. They were making it easier for people to choose movies, eventually leading to them buying tickets. They still did well. Moviefone was sold to AOL in 1999 for $388 million dollars.
The service answered two questions: “Is there a movie I would like to see?” And, “Is there a showtime that works for me?”
The Truth about Marketing Leads
I’m always fascinated by the kind of people that can apply technology to problems even when it seems unintuitive. Why would someone call when they can just look the movie times up in the news paper? Because someone created a service that made it easy enough, that was focused on exactly what was needed, and got the word out about it.
My guest is one of these people.
Sammy James is one of those people who focuses on a problem and single-mindedly work to solve it completely. He sees filling out an online form as the equivalent of sitting down at a restaurant with no waiters. No matter how hungry you are, you’re not going to wait for too long.
Sammy is the founder of Speak2Leads.com a service that connects salespeople to prospects when they fill out a form. It’s a Moviefone-like problem with a Moviefone solution.
What the Data Says: Email, Podcasts, & Lead Conversion
What does the data tell us about effective email, podcasts and converting leads to sales? It's in here.
- * Biggest misunderstandings
- * Important metrics
- * Applying the data
39 page PDF Fits on your phoneMarketing Leads and Your Website
Your website is the Moviefone of your business. Unless you sell an online service, your website’s only job is making it easier for your prospects to make a choice. It answers two questions: “Is this something that will solve my problem?” and “Should I spend more time investigating this solution?”
All of the content you generate to persuade a visitor to buy your product may be wasted time. Your website doesn’t sell your business, it sells the next step. The quote. The demo. The trial. The sales meeting.
When you get back to the office, navigate your website and identify how much of your content is persuading your visitors to buy, and how much of it is persuading them to take one more step.
How much smaller would your site be if it was focused on selling the next step instead of closing the whole deal?
Now go science something.
Links and Resources
Read and Listen
Click anywhere in the transcript to listen.
6 Fast and Easy Ways to Increase Lead Generation
Lead GenerationWhat do you do to bring in a continuous flow of qualified leads to your business on a daily basis?
Mapping out a lead generation strategy, learning how to nurture those leads and improve your conversion funnel over time, will help your business grow.
But if you’re ready to accelerate and grow your lead gen strategy, here are six fast and easy ways to increase your lead generation.
And don’t miss out on these 7 Risk Reversal Tactics For B2B Lead Generation
1. Choose the Right Social Media Platforms for Lead Generation
Social media is a powerful top-of-the-funnel approach to generating leads. Don’t invest time and money into every social media platform there is until you know what works for your business.
The key to social media for lead gen is not just your brand’s presence, but conversion rate. Basically, how prospects turn into leads.
If you’ve already established a presence on all platforms, see how much traffic each one drives to your landing pages via Google Analytics or a comprehensive social media management platform that allows for conversion tracking. What social media channels are consuming your content or bringing you the most traffic and leads?
Choosing the right social platforms for your lead gen efforts will directly impact your conversion rates and reduce your ad spend.
A Social Media Lead Generation Campaign Example
For those connections that are further along in their decision-making process, our conversion tracking efforts focus on those who join our email list, download a report, join our blog course, or complete a contact form.
We run a campaign that offers a free report for specific industries. Our large Twitter audience brought in the most clicks and leads. However, our data showed that LinkedIn leads convert at a higher rate than Twitter leads. As a result, we began focusing more on LinkedIn.
2. From TOFU to MOFU: Educate Your Buyer with Reports and Whitepapers
Offering free white papers, reports and ebooks are a great way to generate leads while making your prospects experts at buying your products. They are also a great way to create email marketing lists for those who are higher in the funnel (TOFU).
Many digital marketing agencies say, “if you provide something of value to prospects, they will give you their respect, time, loyalty, and ultimately their business.”
If it only were that easy.
At Conversion Sciences, oftentimes we use blog posts to test topics of interest to our clients’ audiences. We will prepare a live presentation or webinar on hot topics. These presentations get cast into case studies, blog posts, reports and social media posts.
But writing a report simply isn’t enough. Targeting your whitepapers to the right audience is key. You can earn a second chance to convert visitors (MOFU or Middle of the Funnel) with re-marketing ad campaigns. highly targeted and personalized email marketing campaigns.
Also, consider LinkedIn groups and to test content offers to improve lead generation.
21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks
Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.
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3. Fast and Easy Ways to Increase Lead Generation with Social Video
On social networks, likes and shares have proven to be poor predictors of lead quality. And pretty bad at generating leads as well. Video views, on the other hand offer two benefits to B2B lead generation.
First if a visitor watches one or more of your videos posted to Facebook, Linkedin or Instagram – or embedded on your site – , they begin to build trust and affinity for your brand.
Second, when a visitor watches your video, they can be retargeted by ads and driven to your landing pages. These visitors tend to be more likely to click and to convert into qualified leads.
So in the lead generation game, optimizing for video views could be a better approach than strictly focusing clicks and conversions.
Two examples of Lead Generation and Lead Nurturing when Optimizing for Video Views
Prager U offers mini-courses up to 30-minutes in length to highlight their content. These videos aren’t posted to Youtube. They are run as long-form ads. Their ultimate goal is to generate donations. Meanwhile, they focus on brand exposure (video views).
I watched a 28 minute presentation from New York Times best selling author Jeremy Gutsche on creativity and culture. I notoriously skip ads on Youtube. Ultimately, Jeremy is hoping to get more speaking engagements and book sales.
Jeremy Gutsche ad.
4. How Facebook Ad Targeting and Retargeting Builds A Lead Magnetic Field
Did you know the Earth produces its own magnetic field which is important in navigation? It also shields the Earth’s atmosphere from solar winds that are capable of destroying humanity as we know it!
When it comes to ways to increase lead generation, you should think of your business as the Earth, Facebook Ads at the magnetic field, and your competition as the solar wind.
Facebook Ads will help discover and navigate your prospects to your lead-generating content, and bring them back to “Earth,” aka your business.
Let’s say you are a software business looking to build a sales lead pipeline for a new service for apparel companies. Placing a Facebook pixel on your website will help display your ads to people who visited your site, measure the effectiveness of your ads and gather data on the actions taken by these visitors on your site. You could craft an ad campaign to retarget those visitors that did not convert, or build a “lookalike” audience to reach people on Facebook with similar characteristics to those who did convert.
Facebook Retargeting Campaign Example: Google Fiber
Take Google Fiber for example. I was recently referred to its site by a friend who mentioned it will soon be available in the Austin area. I snooped around the site but lost interest, since it isn’t making itself available in my part of town. In the days following my visit, this is what I saw in my Facebook News Feed.
I saw a retargeting ad about Google Fiber when I logged into Facebook
Their ads were smart enough to deliver geographically targeted content.
When I click on the “Sign Up” button. I’m directed to a landing page to enter my address to see whether Google Fiber will be in my neighborhood.
Total bummer though: it looks like they won’t be available for a little while, so I decided to sign up for their email list.
Guess what? I’m a lead now. They have my contact information and they can add me to their email remarketing campaign. Not exactly a bummer for Google Fiber.
I’m now a lead because I’ve signed up for alerts.
5. More Lead Gen Tips for Twitter Ads with Hashtag Targeting
Hashtags are a great way to generate awareness to an interested audience for your brand or business. Create a Twitter Ads campaign and target people who are interested in relevant hashtags to drive qualified traffic to your site. Though Twitter ads are not for the faint of budget, they work!
6. Juicing Your Lead Generation Efforts With Content for Lead Nurturing
Creating relevant content, such as reports or whitepapers, and promoting them via organic and paid advertising campaigns, is just the tip of the iceberg in online lead generation. And bombarding them with offers or retargeting ads can only take you so far. You have to nurture those newly acquired leads.
By implementing an enriched content strategy in your marketing funnel, you will intrigue and engage your audience, as well as drive them further down the sales funnel. Infographics, videos, images, and podcasting are just a few content ideas that you may use. Think of your entire content marketing strategy as the great magnetic force that pulls in and nurtures new leads.
According to a Content Marketing Institute study, only 48% of businesses have a documented Content Strategy.
A study from the Content Marketing Institute and Marketing Profs states that over 80% of B2B respondents use Content Marketing in their business practices, yet only 38% of these businesses say their strategies are effective.
However, the study also indicates that 48% of these businesses were not documenting their strategies effectively.
In the end, there’s no way of telling what practices are showing results, or hurting business. You need to test yours and discover what works with your potential market.
Here are a few creative examples on how we incorporate content marketing elements in our online lead generation strategy to ensure maximum results.
Webinars for Lead Generation Efforts
Webinars offer exclusive information and help grow your email list and lead base. Keep in mind, you will need to promote your webinars to get people to attend. We promote ours on LinkedIn groups.
On LinkedIn, you can target groups based on field of expertise, interests, or topics. Being in alignment with your audience avoids spammy sales letters and overbearing ads. WebinarNL says, “webinars generate a lower cost per lead and high level of engagement with prospective clients.” They also detail several benefits to hosting webinars including:
A Webinar Lead Gen Example: How webinars save time and money
So, we decided to put this to the test and hosted our very first webinar “UX vs. CRO: The Digital Fight of the Century” As a special incentive for attendees, we had them ask several questions on UX or CRO. The people with the most creative questions won a free website evaluation from Brian Massey himself.
We got 212 conversions in just 20 days of deploying our social media promotion campaign. That’s more leads in such a short period of time than any other way to improve lead generation we’ve executed.
To see how our first webinar panned out, watch the webinar replay.
Data from our webinar “UX vs CRO”
Conversion data from our webinar “UX vs CRO”
Easy Ways to Increase Lead Generation: Podcasting
Perhaps the most underrated form of generating new warm business leads comes from podcasting. It’s free and accessible, and makes radio quality audio shows available for download through an RSS feed to a computer, MP3 player or mobile phone. Listeners only have to subscribe to a podcast once.
Rob Walch of Libsyn says that podcasts are “the opposite of Twitter.” Podcasts give you extended quality time with those members of your audience that listen.
First, you’ll need to conduct a topic search that will get your content noticed in the podcast world. Then, be sure to create blog posts to capture the reader’s attention, launch your podcast, and have them listen.
Interviewing an industry expert or hosting a panel debate can help maximize reach and listeners. Be sure to keep discussions focused on topics you can actively talk about with your prospective leads. This is the perfect way to begin establishing yourself as an industry thought leader.
“The goal of the business podcast is to create a conversational thread that you can pick up with your lead on the next call,” says Benchmark.
Think of this as the firsts experiences with future customers. You are building trust and proving them with valid information to nurture a business relationship.
Again, podcasts are easy to share via LinkedIn groups, Twitter hashtags, and Facebook Ads. Also, you can upload podcasts to your Facebook page, just check the option “Upload as video to Timeline”, so followers can listen in.
More Lead Generation Ideas: Guest Blogging
What does your business specialize in? Moving, fitness, prepping? Is it a rehab center, a college, or a consulting firm?
Writing a guest post for a related industry blog, you will show your subject knowledge and add credibility to your brand, while reaching an entirely new audience. This is also an opportunity to grow your follower base by crafting the perfect bio and byline.
Start by building a list of publications in your niche market that accept guest posts and understand what type of content would be a good fit for them, their audience and, consequently, for you. If their audience engages with your content, they may visit your website, interact with you and maybe even give you their email address. A smooth way to earn more leads.
Again, you want your prospects to know you are an expert or the best in your field, and drive them towards the top of your sales funnel.
Video Marketing
Did you know that 75% of executives told Forbes that they watch work-related videos on business websites at least once a week? The breakdown? 50% of these executives watch business-related videos on YouTube, and 65% stated they visit the marketer’s website after viewing a video.
Adding a compelling call to action will help you drive your viewers to your website of landing page. Tell them what to do and why. Something Free, if enticing enough, may do the trick. Make sure it’s something aligned with your business that the potential leads want.
Or you can promote your offer with YouTube Ads. Let’s take this Heineken YouTube Ad for example. Apparently, YouTube knows that people like me – people who are my age, have my interests, and share a similar browsing and search history to mine, for instance – love beer. Again, this is the whole idea of remarketing.
As I’m watching this ad, what do I see in the bottom of the video? It’s an annotation that says “Visit Advertiser’s Site”. Since I’m curious, I click on the link and low and behold, I’m on their site and enter for a chance to win in their sweepstakes.
Heineken lead generation YouTube ad.
The sad thing is, the campaign was over before I landed on the page, and Heineken missed its chance to get me on its email list. Will I see a remarketing ad in the future? Possibly!
Landing page for Heineken promotion lead gen campaign.
Are You Ready To Try Some of these Fast and Easy Ways to Increase your Lead Generation Efforts?
Don’t just throw content out into the world and expect a beanstalk to grow in your backyard overnight. The business world is not a fairytale.
Incorporate just a few of these ideas into your overall lead generation plan today. Not only will you be able to grow your business, but you will start a snowball effect that brings in new prospects to your sales funnel.
How a Marketing Podcast Gives Brands a Human Voice
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A website has some limitations when it comes to growing your brand. A website has to wait until someone comes to visit. It’s like that kid always hoping someone will sleep over.
You can’t send it out on a tour, like a book author. It won’t fill stadiums with screaming fans. It doesn’t count as a passenger so you can use the HOV lane.
When you think about it, a website is more like the brick and mortar store of the digital world. Actually, if you’ve seen the way websites are designed, they are really more like a booth at a generic convention. In Topeka.
If you saw your website at a party, how long would you want to hang out with it, if at all? Isn’t your website more teller machine and less Teller.
Fear not, for the digital world offers a way to lend your digital brand the humanity your website struggles with.
What the Data Says: Email, Podcasts, & Lead Conversion
What does the data tell us about effective email, podcasts and converting leads to sales? It's in here.
- * Biggest misunderstandings
- * Important metrics
- * Applying the data
39 page PDF Fits on your phonePodcasting is a Shortcut to our Hearts
We’ve been talking about the Cluetrain Manifesto lately, and thesis number three says that conversations between brands and people “sound human” and are “conducted in a human voice.”
Even today, this sentiment flies in the face of our tightly controlled, highly produced, and frequently foiled image-building campaigns. But we know it’s true.
Because, there is a shortcut to your customers’ hearts, and it’s not through their stomachs. Nor is it through open heart surgery. It’s through the holes we use to drain our airpods sitting on either side of our heads.
It’s podcasting.
So how does podcasting work in a digital marketing context. How do you measure it? And what can you expect from this semi-digital medium.
I went to the source. Rob Walch is VP of Podcaster Relations for LibSyn, the leading podcast host. The guy who said, “If you want to be on the radio, just call in a lot!”
I vented some of my frustrations with Podcasting — hint: it’s not a direct response medium — and got an unexpected answer. He also shared with me the data behind the top shows that Libsyn hosts.
When you get back to the office…
What would the voice of your brand be? Or who? Would it be you? Could it be you?
Have you ever practiced your radio voice. I’m using mine now.
Since you’re probably in your car now, you should give it a try. Drop your voice into the back of your throat and push air out with your diaphragm. Then let your voice drop and rise on random words.
Now, try describing your favorite movie. “In a world before running water…”
If you’re stopped at a light, don’t worry. People in other cars will just think you’re singing along to your favorite Bon Jovi tune. Unless they’re listening to this podcast too.
So, how did that feel, giving yourself a voice, a voice designed to communicate? How would it feel to give your brand a voice like that?
Again, could that voice be yours?
Now go scare someone with your radio voice.
Links and Resources
When should you invest in Conversion Rate Optimization? I asked a Competitor
Conversion OptimizationSubscribe to the Podcast
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We have answered the question, “How do I pick a conversion optimization consultant,” before. We’ve also told you where to go and get your CRO budget. Now we answer the question of “when” is the right time for conversion rate optimization.
If I’m going to truly help you improve your online business, I have to help you answer this question. The problem is that I have a conflict. It’s easy for me to say, “Hire my company, Conversion Sciences.”
It’s my fiduciary duty as the Managing Partner. Getting new clients is one of the goals of this podcast and why we spend so much time and money on it.
I am eminently qualified to answer this question because of my years of experience, BUT I’m NOT going to be the best source of information on this because I am biased.
So I did something crazy, something that arguably violates my fiduciary duty to my company.
Don’t tell my partner.
Getting a second opinion on Conversion Rate Optimization
To help make you better at investing in conversion optimization services, I did something I may regret.
I invited a direct competitor onto this podcast. Why would I, after all of my investment in producing and marketing this podcast, offer a platform to a competitor?
Because you need a second opinion. Rather than make you go out and find it, I’m going to provide it to you right here on the podcast.
I believe that if I help you answer this question, you will make a better decision. I also believe that our reputation, our brand value and our track record make our brand strong. Strong brands can take risks, especially those that can benefit their customers and prospects.
There are a LOT of websites that need conversion optimization. There is plenty of business to go around.
To help you make the decision about buying conversion optimization services, I didn’t choose some slouch conversion optimization agency spewing best practices. Jon MacDonald is the founder and President of conversion optimization agency called The Good. He has been doing this almost as long as I have. I have to tell you, I was surprised at how similar our two approaches are.
And Jon’s path is very similar to mine.
When you get back to the office…
I recommend that you get an understanding of how small increases in your conversion rate can affect your income.
Search for “Conversion Sciences Calculator” using your favorite search engine.
There you can enter your average monthly traffic, the number of conversions you get, and the value of a conversion — either the transaction order value or the value you’ve placed on a lead or subscriber.
If you aren’t sure, don’t worry. You can play “what if” with the numbers after entering your name and email.
It’s the first step toward understanding if your business is ready for conversion optimization. If you like what you see there, you can schedule a free conversion consultation on our website.
Now go science something.
The Best Definition of Conversion Rate Optimization Ever Written
Conversion OptimizationWhat exactly is conversion rate optimization? You’ve read about it over and over, but you may not have a proper understanding of how to apply it to your ecommerce store or to your online lead generation efforts.
Today we will cover not only the best definition of conversion rate optimization ever written, but its benefits and impact on profit. Plus, best practices and how and where to learn CRO. We’ll also answer some of the most frequently asked questions on the topic.
What is Conversion Rate Optimization or CRO?
Conversion rate optimization, or CRO, is the process of maximizing the value you get from every visitor you bring to your website.
The value you get from every visitor is expressed as a rate – the famous “conversion rate“.
And the reason it’s called conversion “rate” optimization is that, in general, we are trying to increase the rate at which site visitors become buyers, subscribers, leads or callers.
Now, most people believe their website only has one conversion rate. The truth is, it has several. Therefore, conversion rate optimization, or CRO, attempts to improve each of these conversion rates – either by increasing value or reducing the associated costs (e.g. ad spend).
How does this process work? CRO is the process of making changes to a website, and measuring how those changes increase or decrease the conversion rate.
Drawing of a digital laboratory by Conversion Sciences.
To accomplish this, we use data to understand how changes to your website affect the behavior of visitors and measure conversions.
Let’s dive in a little deeper.
The Applied Definition of Conversion Rate Optimization
The number of potential customers, visitors or traffic we get to our site will grow, decrease or fluctuate over time. It is generally believed that the rate at which these visitors convert will be more consistent over time than changes in traffic.
This is only partially true.
For example, you may decide that your home page will be better if you put images of your products near the top of the page. You can make this change and see if you get more sales.
But what if traffic decreases on the day that you make the change? You would get fewer sales due to the lower traffic, and it may look like your change was to blame. The percentage of buyers – the conversion rate – may have gone up. But lower traffic caused the total number of conversions or transactions drop.
Let’s assume you make a change to your site the night before Black Friday – the biggest shopping day of the year in the US. And you get a massive increase in sales. You might think that your conversion optimization change was the reason for it. But it was the market that changed.
“Hidden variables” – changes in traffic, in your competitors’ offers, changes in your advertising – can lead you to make bad choices. Fortunately, we have a complete set of methods and disciplines to ensure we don’t make bad decisions as we find out what our customers really want from our website.
Why is Conversion Rate Optimization Important?
As the digital world grows, it becomes harder and more expensive to attract visitors to your website. Organic traffic requires an investment in infrastructure and content. Advertising prices are rising on each new platform: Google, then Facebook, then Instagram, then…
Getting value from this hard-won traffic is the key to sustained online growth. Extracting value means converting visitors to email subscribers, leads or shoppers who add something to their carts or to return customers.
Finally, we want to eliminate those visitors who would not use your solution or buy from you because they cost resources.
In every case, the relationship changes. It converts to something new, and this is a conversion. Our goal with conversion rate optimization is to maximize the percentage of visitors that we convert into customers, and therefore grow our online business.
Benefits of Conversion Rate Optimization
The first benefit of conversion rate optimization is generating more revenue from your website’s current traffic. The second benefit is increased conversions, maximizing ROI, ROAS, cost reduction, and cost streamlining. But this is only the beginning.
A good conversion rate optimization program will also:
The data you gather about the people coming to your website is a massive competitive advantage. One that you can leverage for on-going growth and higher customer satisfaction.
What scientific knowledge is fundamental to conversion rate optimization and where can i learn CRO?
Conversion Rate Optimization Best Practices
Every successful conversion rate optimization program starts by collecting data and generating hypotheses to evaluate and test. Of course, at Conversion Sciences we have been coaching, writing how-to guides and defining CRO best practices for decades. Here are a few to get you started:
Feel free to visit our CRO Articles & Guides blog section for more articles. Or if you’d rather have our scientists help you, you may want to check out our CRO Services.
Is Conversion Rate Optimization for eCommerce the same as it is for Lead Generation?
The CRO process for ecommerce sites is exactly the same as it is for lead generation websites. It is based on a scientific method and it is designed to keep us from making bad decisions based on a small amount of data that may seem sensible.
Whether you are optimizing for an ecommerce store or for a lead generation site, your questions are the same:
The way you measure success is different for lead generation and ecommerce sites. So, this requires a change in the way you calculate value.
For an ecommerce site, calculating value is easier than for a lead generation site because the transaction happens on the actual website. So, it’s very easy to attribute a visit to an ecommerce transaction. Besides, a visitor can complete a transaction in one visit. You measure value instantly based on the amount each person purchases.
For a lead generation website, the sale happens at some point after the visitor has left the website. You only know the true value of a new customer later, and often the sale happens over the phone or in person.
When we make changes to an ecommerce website, we can see the results almost instantly. However, changes made to a lead generation website may drive more leads, but are these leads as good? Are they turning into customers at the same rate? To answer these questions, a bit more work is required to value leads than buyers.
What Scientific Knowledge is Fundamental to Conversion Rate Optimization?
Sometimes, analytics isn’t enough. In this case, we need to figure out how to generate the data we need. This can be done by conducting experiments. We devise a hypothesis, figure out how to test it, and then run the test until we have some statistical confidence in the data.
The biggest obstacle to a high converting website is sitting between your ears. Our brains are festering lumps of bias.
We tend to make decisions in our daily communication projects based on what we think is effective. Not on what our audience actually wants. We tend to call “effective” those things that match our preconceived notions. What we’ve seen most recently. What matches our most emotional events – big wins and big losses.
Confirmation bias and availability bias blind us to what our audience is really telling us. The conversion rate optimization process is designed to prevent these biases from influencing our decisions.
To do this, we rely on data and experimentation.
The other important thing you need, besides scientific knowledge, is curiosity. If you aren’t curious, you probably won’t care enough to take time to experiment, to feed your curiosity.
Where can I learn Conversion Rate Optimization?
Everyone learns differently.
Some prefer to learn by reading and studying. We’ve tried to make sure that our website is a reference that answers the questions that will come up as you explore conversion optimization.
If you’re like me, you prefer to learn from specific examples and then generalize the learning. This is the mark of a highly intelligent learner. I espouse this process in my online courses, which are geared toward self-teachers. I use video and examples to illustrate larger concepts.
Positioning Your Product or Service
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Why do people buy robot vacuums?
Is it to clean the floor? Maybe.
Is it to have more leisure time? Maybe.
Is it to be seen as tech-savvy to your friends? Hmmm.
Is it to see how your cat will react? That’s interesting.
These are the kinds of questions that the “Jobs to be Done” framework seeks to tease out. Your website and your marketing should address one or more of these positioning statements — at least the valid ones.
How do businesses like Casper and Warby Parker carve out space in competitive markets? By positioning the product to a market desire that isn’t obvious to the market leaders.
This is what me and Tara Hunt, my guest on this episode of Intended Consequences discuss. We also talk about the Flywheel approach.
Positioning your product or service accurately is one step. The next is to get into the minds of your audience. Casper used podcasts as one salient way to reach their audience.
How to Manage Positioning Your Product or Service
If you’re like me, the positioning ideas are crowding around in your head right now. Old ideas that you thought were just too risky to try are vying for attention against new ideas from my conversation with Tara.
It’s time to give your intuition a little help.
When you get back to the office, immediately open up a clean spreadsheet. Label the first column “Idea”. Label the second column “Data”.
Start jotting the thoughts in your head in the first column. Just describe them enough so that you can recall them in detail later. If you need to draw something, reference the page in your journal in the Idea column.
The “Data” column is where you will list ways to test the idea. List any and all of these that apply:
This is the beginning of your hypothesis list, a list that should guide your curiosity as you write, design, plan and create communications.
Get in the habit of opening it when you start a new design, document or project.
Now go science something.
Links and Resources
Connect with Tara on Linkedin
Learn more about Truly.
Cluetrain Manifesto
Donna Pappacosta “Earbud Intimate”
Jim Collins Flywheel
Know Your Customers’ “Jobs to Be Done”
Imagineering Story Trailer
Follow Brian on LinkedIn
The Cluetrain Manifesto Twenty Years Later: Still relevant
Conversion-Centered DesignPodcast: Play in new window | Download
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Contrarians. They’re trouble. At least they’re trouble in structured organizations.
Contrarians seem to always take the stance in opposition to the status quo.
They are more likely to have an authority complex, not because they don’t like to be told what to do, but because authority figures are more likely to do things the way things have always been done.
They are the “But maybe…” in your “Of course we…”.
They are the exceptions to your rule.
They point out the interesting sites along your commute that you’ve never noticed.
It’s hard for contrarians. They believe that you don’t “get it” every bit as much as you believe they don’t get it. They tend to see things as they are and have an unhealthy disregard for tradition.
It’s hard for businesses to find a place for contrarians. But, when they do find their place, the results can be incredible. Think Steve Jobs. He was kicked out of the company he founded before returning to it at a desperate hour.
And maybe this is when we should listen to contrarians, in those desperate hours.
The Desperate Hour of the Cluetrain Manifesto
Back in 1999 a group of contrarians saw a desperate hour approaching. A new tool had begun to change the fundamentals of communication, commerce and expression. The internet was shifting marketing so fundamentally, these contrarians believed, that it would change the way buyers buy and businesses sell.
Confused businesses saw the internet as just another broadcasting channel, a place for their crafted ads and manipulative marketing. The contrarians felt businesses really needed to get a clue, to climb aboard the train that had already left the station, headed for the future.
In the spirit of Martin Luther, who launched the protestant revolution by nailing 95 theses on the door of a Catholic church, they nailed their 95 theses on the door of the church of ideas: the world wide web.
The Cluetrain Manifesto was immensely influential to me when it came out in 1999. Yes. Left to my own devices, I am a contrarian. My contrarian bent cost me more than one job and even a few friendships.
But I found my place during a desperate hour. Be mindful of contrarians in positions of power.
It was during a conversation with a new friend, Tara Hunt, that I found a fellow Cluetrain contrarian. Tara is the CEO of marketing strategy agency Truly and is launching Phlywheel, a resource for DIY marketers.
Honestly, I hadn’t thought about the Cluetrain Manifesto in years. When I read it now, it seems obvious, so ingrained is it in my psyche.
I was so glad to rediscover it, that I recorded it for you on this podcast.
Tara and I reminisced about this amazing document and looked back at its impact. Did we businesses learn the lessons of the Cluetrain Manifesto? This conversation took so many turns that we split it into two parts.
In part one, we start off talking about what the Cluetrain Manifesto was about.
In part two, we look at social media, which was nothing like it is today when the Cluetrain Manifesto was created.
Resources and links
Connect with Tara on Linkedin
Learn more about Truly.
Cluetrain Manifesto
Donna Pappacosta “Earbud Intimate”
Jim Collins Flywheel
Know Your Customers’ “Jobs to Be Done”
Follow Brian on LinkedIn
The 95 Theses of the Cluetrain Manifesto Audio read by Brian Massey
Conversion Marketing StrategyThe Cluetrain Manifesto was written in 1999 by Rick Levine, Chris Locke, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger.
It struck me that the new generations of business owners, marketers and executives may have missed this amazing document. It’s been twenty years, after all.
So, as a bonus to our Intended Consequences podcast listeners, I recorded it. I hope you enjoy hearing it as much as I enjoyed reading it in 1999.
The 95 Theses of The Cluetrain Manifesto
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For more Cluetrain Manifesto audio, listen to my conversation with Tara Hunt.
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