They friend you. They fan you. They pin you. We love our social media tribes.
But how often to they customer you? How often do they buy, subscribe, or register?
When you get customered, your business grows, you gain another social influencer, and you get proof that your social media strategy is delivering what your social network wants.
Getting customered is an important part of the social media life cycle, and it’s also one of the trickiest.
I’m going to do a deep dive on getting your business customered at Engage Mexico in beautiful Puerto Vallarta, November 14-17.
You should be there.
The potential in your social networks
Your social networks store potential, like a battery stores voltage.
If you’ve been actively building your social networks, you have stored potential, like a battery has stored voltage. How do you hook up to the juice that turns that potential into leads and revenue.
Tapping this potential requires that you connect your social battery to something of interest to both you and your social denizens.
Use Content for Wires
Ultimately, you discharge your social batteries the same way you charged them. You use relevant content presented in a ways your crowd likes to get it.
Content might be blog post links on Twitter, contests on Facebook, and product pictures on Pinterest. Without the content, no one is going to find their way back. They just stay potential.
Many of us already have content strategies for our social networks, but what gets people to customer us when they visit?
Use social media landing pages to get customered
Connect them to your Landing Pages
Here’s where you need to start thinking like your visitors. Once read, great content is quickly dismissed.
What is the next step for me as a visitor and potential customerer of your business?
(Customerer??)
The golden secret is to treat your content pages as social media landing pages.
A landing page is a single minded page designed to do two things:
Keep the promise made by the link that was clicked.
Get the reader to do something that benefits them and your business.
A Social Media landing page, then, is a single minded page designed to:
Deliver the content promised.
Get the reader to customer you.
Both pages have content that delivers on a promise and a call to action that entices readers to do something wonderful.
NOTE: If you are building an email list, you get customered when you get subscribered. Think about it: the visitor is paying for content with their contact information.
NOTE 2: “Subscribered” is the last time I will verbify a noun in this article.
Where do Social Media Landing Pages Live?
Social media landing pages live anywhere you are drawing social visitors.
Your blog content pages have the content, but do they have the call to action? Is the call to action where it can be seen?
Add calls to action in or near the content.
Your email signup pages have the call to action, but do they have the content that makes signing up appealing?
Give subscribers a better reason to sign up than “Get on another mailing list.”
Your lead generation pages, offering gated content have the call to action, but do you talk about the content you are offering, or do you talk about our company and your products instead?
Don’t talk about yourself like a socially awkward freak.
Any page to which your friends, fans and followers might come in search of education or entertainment qualified as a social media landing page.
Remember that these are Social Visitors
Product pages on ecommerce sites are another frequent social media landing page. The call to action is invariably there: Add to Cart.
Given that your visitors are coming from a social network, they will be more likely to want to see social content with the product information. You should oblige them.
Consider star ratings and reviews for your products.
Use social proof. How many others have customered (bought) this product? How many friends, fans and followers do you have?
Don’t invite them to become a friend, fan or follower. They already are. The only choice they should have is to customer you.
It’s one thing to get people to friend, fan, follow, and flatulate. It’s quite another to get them to customer you. Use content to connect your social batteries to social media landing pages and get customered.
The picture below illustrates all too well the dangers of running a website without some kind of conversion optimization effort.
What you are seeing is the office where an un-optimized website was hosted. The site was designed by an agency that let the charismatic CEO influence the design. Unfortunately, little attention was paid to the shopping cart. It was assumed that visitors would just figure things out.
They were wrong.
The abandonment rate – a measure of the visitors that start the checkout process but don’t finish – rose to alarming levels very quickly.
The abandonment rate of a website housed in this building approached infinity causing a gravity well, or “black hole” to form.
As the abandonment rate approached infinity, a rare singularity was created that threatened the entire building. Left unchecked, the entire business could have been consumed by the black hole that developed from the singularity. The gravitational forces of this website black hole are so strong, not even money can escape.
This is a situation in which a poorly designed website not only loses money, but sucks away all future opportunity. There is nothing worse for a brand than a bad online experience.
By inserting a Conversion Catalyst into the site, the abandonment rate returned to safe levels, saving the business and several surrounding buildings.
A Conversion Scientist was able to avert catastrophe by inserting a Conversion Catalyst into the site and completing some targeted split tests. Problems were isolated and corrected. The abandonment rate returned to safe levels saving the business — and several surrounding buildings.
The moral of the story is that untested websites not only threaten current sales, but can create ripples across the time-space continuum that some businesses never recover from.
Is there a black hole in your website from which money is not escaping?
Ask us about a Conversion Catalyst for your website.
Why do we have to work so hard to get our persuasive messages heard? Why is direct response copywriting so difficult? Why don’t people read?
This presentation from ConversionSUMMIT 2013 and ConversionJAM 3 introduces you to two “bouncers” in the human brain that keep marketing messages from penetrating and tells you what to do about them.
People often wonder why their site isn’t more successful. They ask themselves all sorts of questions: Is it too wordy? Is my product/service stupid? Do I need more flair? Well…..
Good news everyone!** Brian teamed up with Crazy Egg to share five website formats that are proven to get results.
Brian breaks down the five basic types of sites and explains their winning features and structure.
Read the full post to find out which category your site fits in:
The brochure site
The publication site
The online store
The consultative site
The online service
Once you determine which site style fits your company, you can put together a foolproof plan for building the perfect site for your needs.
Click HERE to read the entire post. Thanks to our awesome partner Crazy Egg! ** I will personally high five you or send you a Conversion Sciences sticker if you can be the first to tell me what the line that is starred above is from. Either tweet @bmassey with the answer, or leave it as a comment on the Facebook page. Good luck, and may the odds be ever in your favor! – CB
While I think we look smashing in our lab coats, I can’t say that I’ve ever thought of what we do as “Sexy.” Conversion Science is exciting, challenging and perplexing, a perfect combination for the trained and curious person drawn to this kind of work.
But sexy?
Writing in The Harvard Business Review authors Thomas H. Davenport and D.J. Patil think that the Data Scientist is the “Sexiest Job of the 21st Century.” Hmmm.
Are Conversion Scientists actually Data Scientists? Yes, they are — with a few important differences.
We’re looking for more Conversion Scientists. Are you a candidate? Find out
The HBR calls them “high-ranking professionals with the training and curiosity to make discoveries in the world of big data.” I hate the phrase “big data” because it implies that mortal humans can’t get their heads around it. Trust me. We can.
The two terms are relatively new. The term “Data Scientist” has only been around since 2008 when it was coined by the analytics brainiacs at LinkedIn and Facebook. “Conversion Scientists” was coined in 2006 by yours truly.
There is no degree program for either one of these professions.
Like Data Scientists, Conversion Scientists are hard to come by and we hope you will kindly send us a note if you’ve seen one in the wild. We’re hiring.
Davenport and Patil nail it when they say:
What kind of person does all this? Think of him or her as a hybrid of data hacker, analyst, communicator, and trusted adviser. The combination is extremely powerful.
But we would say the dominant trait among data scientists is an intense curiosity—a desire to go beneath the surface of a problem, find the questions at its heart, and distill them into a very clear set of hypotheses that can be tested.
And while people without strong social skills might thrive in traditional data professions, data scientists must have such skills to be effective.
Oh yah. That is a Conversion Scientist.
The Differences
The authors of the HBR article state that “More than anything, what data scientists do is make discoveries while swimming in data.” This would not be sufficient for a Conversion Scientist. Sure we wade, snorkel and Slip ‘n’ Slide through data. But we must also create our own targeted data. This is most commonly done with testing.
We design creative tests for web pages, paid search campaigns, emails, and shopping carts.
It is important to both professions that we be able to communicate effectively. Discovering things is only helpful when those discoveries result in “new business directions.”
For the Conversion Scientist, these new business directions must head toward more leads and more revenue. We’re the capitalists of the Data Scientist community.
That’s basically how you afford your Conversion Scientists: They produce measurable upsides in business results.
Are You a Conversion Scientist?
Since there is no degree program, Conversion Scientists come from the worlds of search optimization, online advertising and performance marketing. They choose positions based on how interesting the data challenges they will be working with are and how much of an impact they will have.
Conversion Scientists are fascinated with the things we learn about human behavior through testing and analysis. So are businesses, as it turns out.
The authors also state that, “…the data scientists we’ve spoken with say they want to build things, not just give advice to a decision maker.” This is true of Conversion Scientists. They want to see the fruits of their labor, not just present reports on their discoveries.
Does this sound like you? Yes, we are looking for our next Conversion Scientist and this quiz will help both of us understand if there’s a fit.
On-screen Markup can increase engagement and keep viewers around longer.
My online landing page webinars are quite different from most you’ve seen. Why is that?
Because I do live on-screen critiques of the landing pages. You can see me in action on August 21 during my webinar The Chemistry of the B2B Landing Page with Live Critiques.
Why not mark them up ahead of time and just present my findings? Here’s why:
1. It’s boooring. I mean webinars can be pretty uneventful, unless you’ve got a really talented presenter. This adds some pizzazz to the presentation.
2. It’s more fun for me to do. I like to do interactive events like this.
3. If I didn’t, then the critiques wouldn’t really be “live”.
4. It keeps your audience engaged longer, and we have some data to support that.
Why Online Markup is an Awesome Webinar Tool
You should consider online markup if you really want to deliver a captivating presentation that keeps the audience engaged for your entire message.
The interactivity helps people stay tuned into your presentation. There is something about drawings that just captivates the viewer and keeps their attention. We found this to be true in video.
Not only did the “whiteboard-style” video keep the eye on the video, it provided a higher conversion rate on a landing page than two other kinds of business video.
The on-screen drawing gives you a unique angle in a sea of “me too” webinars. Drop-off rates in my previous webinars have been significantly lower than in webinars I’ve done without the critiques. People hang around longer.
Less “multi-thrashing” by the audience. The myth of multi-tasking is alive and well in the webinar world. You may call this multi-bashing, but at any time, most of your viewers are checking email and social media while listening to your presentation.
As a webinar attendee, you can probably remember a time when you wished you could rewind a webinar. The presenter finally said something that caught your attention as you typed out an email reply, but you had no idea of what he said before that.
Since we don’t have Webinar DVRs yet, you want to minimize multi-trashing of your message. On-screen markup works.
Implementing Online Markup in Your Webinars
Most webinar software such as GotoWebinar and WebEx give you tools to markup your screens. However, I find the mouse to be an insufficient tool for writing and drawing. It takes too much concentration.
However, if it’s all you’ve got, you should use it.
My “rig” is a bit more sophisticated. That’s OK because I like toys.
This is my presentation setup. Click to enlarge.
This setup provides the following:
A video headshot for live keynotes and other presentations that require a connection with the audience. Many live meeting services allow a picture-in-picture window for the presenter’s face.
Presentation monitor for static presentation slides via VGA output on laptop and multi-screen drivers.
Tablet screen and stylus for drawing markup.
Hidden microphone. Since I’m on camera, I don’t wear a headset.
Audio feedback is provided by simple ear buds.
Ability to type via a bluetooth keyboard. Since my laptop is converted to a tablet, its keyboard is hidden.
Ability to mouse around. Good for switching screens, driving polls and more.
My webinar setup
Lenovo ThinkPad X220 (429637U) 12.5″ LED Tablet PC – Core i7 i7-2620M 2.7GThe x230 is now available.
Microsoft Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard 6000 (Amazon.com)
Starbucks Dark Sumatra “Earthly & Herbal” Ground Coffee (drip brewed)
“Manhattan Project” Lab Coat woven from 1200 thread-count Engagium anti-spam nanofibers. Available at Buyschtuff.
VGA Plug-n-Play Monitor and multi-screen display drivers.
The downside of Live Markup
There are some things you need to be aware of if you choose to do one of these.
It requires switching screens from your presentation monitor, where static slides are shown to the tablet screen where you can do the markup. Most webinar services handle this pretty well, but it is another point of failure.
It requires some coordination. If you can’t talk and draw at the same time, you may find your train of thought leaving the tracks.
All of this tech means more points of failure. You have to work hard to have alternative solutions should any of these technologies fail.
See It in Action
Reachforce has asked me to put my rig in action again and you can see the results.
Join me for The Chemistry of the B2B Landing Page, Volume 2 — with Live Critiques from The Conversion Scientist on August 21, 2103 at 1:00pm central time.
I’ll be doing a brief training on how to create effective landing pages backwards and then doing some B2B critiques.
Your page can be one that I critique. You can submit the URL when you register.
@neilpatel collects some of the most interesting eye-tracking images available and provides seven insights that can help you design your pages and choose images. We have done our own eye-tracking study of business video and you can get the full report now. The report offers similar conclusions for the use of video in a landing page. It includes over 30 minutes of embedded video that you can watch yourself.
Neil’s conclusions include:
Be careful you you use [images of] people
That people love media (especially on search results pages)
That men and women look at images differently
That simple images can be more effective
The power of the left side of the page
The power of faces
That people love hand-written notes (my favorite)
Enjoy the images he provides.
Shopping Cart Abandonment: Why It Happens & How To Recover Baskets Of Money
@peeplaja offers a great post on shopping cart abandonment
In my book I say that abandonment is like cholesterol: There is a good kind and a bad kind. For each there is a strategy for reducing the impact of abandonment on your business.
Good abandoners leave because they aren’t done with their shopping process. The challenge is to get them to come back and buy when they are done. There are several strategies here for retargeting the visitor who abandons using email and ads.
Bad abandoners leave because you surprised them or didn’t provide the information they were looking for. This kind of abandonment can be treated by improving the checkout process and by using pricing and shipping strategies.
Abandonment is the most heartbreaking of conversion killers. it is also a fertile place to increase the performance of your website.
Perhaps you can help me. It turns out that optimizing websites has “caught on” so to speak. There’s reason to believe that applying science to the “art” of creating effective websites is going to be a big thing.
Our business is certainly growing and profitable.
Now, we are ready to grow our development team.
Do you know a Web Developer who fits this very special profile? If so, please forward this to them or have them call me.
* They make online apps and websites dance like puppets on strings. They may say things like “Javascript”, “JQuery” and “CSS” and something about a train named “Ruby” that runs on rails.
* They like puzzles. They can become a bit obsessed with understanding how things work. They are curious.
* They work with data. They use words like “analytics”. You might tune out when they talk about analytics. Most people do.
* When you ask them why they are in such a good mood, they say that they found and fixed a tough bug. You may wonder if they are moonlighting as an exterminator.
* They plan for the future. They are always working on their skills, making themselves more valuable. You suspect that they should get out more.
* They deserve to be part of a profitable young company in Austin, Texas that is loved by its clients because we do what no other agency can do: We find more revenue in their websites, and we have the data to prove it.
My search isn’t going to be easy, but you may be the person who knows this individual. If you would be so kind as to pass this on to anyone fitting this description, they will thank you and I’ll reward you for your generosity.
We have just the place for them.
Please have them read our job description. It’s boring but helpful.
We are also looking for the next Conversion Scientist to lead our optimization efforts. They are even stranger, but very very valuable to us.
My direct contact information is below. I’m waiting.
Best regards,
Brian Massey, Conversion Scientist
Conversion Sciences LLC
Austin, Texas
512-961-6604 Brian@ConversionSciences.com P. S. I’m still waiting.
Brittney Stephenson at Powered by Search gives you content marketing traps you can easily avoid.
Content marketing can help your business capture leads and convert them into customers. In fact, after analyzing data from thousands of their software users, HubSpot found that organizations that blog just one or two times a month generate 70% more leads than businesses that don’t blog at all.
It’s therefore no surprise that so many companies have jumped on the content marketing bandwagon, and are churning out blog posts, eBooks, whitepapers, info-graphics, webinars and more, all in the name of lead generation. But there are two common traps that marketers can fall into. The first is focusing exclusively on the content itself. The second is thinking that strong CTAs and landing pages will make up for mediocre content.
If you’re not thinking about a visitor’s overall experience with your content, then you’re not getting the most out of it. A recent Marketing Profs study of B2B marketers revealed that only 36% of respondents believe their organization is using content marketing effectively. This means that there’s a lot of room for improvement, and learning how to hit the right balance between content and conversion will make you stand out as a content marketing champ!
Content Marketing Trap #1 – ‘Content is King!’
Yes, it’s been said a thousand times, content is king. But don’t misinterpret this popular phrase to mean that content is the only thing you need to achieve marketing success. Even top notch content needs a little help if you want it to prompt site visitors to complete a specific action. Otherwise your content marketing strategy will be great for driving site traffic and building industry authority, but not for directly generating leads.
Having a company blog is one of the most popular content marketing tactics, but it’s also one that can easily take up a lot of your energy with little result if you’re not careful. Forgetting to optimize your blog for conversions is a common oversight. Fortunately, there are a number of ways to remedy this.
One of the best methods to turn casual blog readers into leads is including calls to action (CTAs) directly on your blog. CTAs make it easy for site visitors to become leads by asking readers to act, and creating a clear path to do so. Marketing software provider HubSpot has done an excellent job of optimizing their blog for conversions in this way. Any given HubSpot blog post will include four CTAs, just like the images below. (Some readers may find this number of CTAs too distracting, so make sure to test what number works best with your own blog audience.)
CTA #1 asks readers to subscribe to their blog and appears above the fold. This grabs the attention of page visitors right away, even if they don’t scroll any further down.
CTA #2 is located directly below the first one in the right sidebar. The offer (attending a conference on inbound marketing) is highly relevant to the readers of their inbound marketing blog, which makes this CTA even more effective.
CTAs #3 and #4 appear at the end of the blog post, above the comments section. CTA #3 is a new offer for a related piece of downloadable content, while #4 acts as a second reminder to subscribe to their blog.
Calls to action are just one way to optimize your blog for lead conversion. To really maximize conversions, you should also test your overall blog layout and design, use of images and colors, as well as your posting frequency.
Some of these tips may sound obvious, but the 2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report shows the grim reality is that 45% of marketers do not test their marketing efforts, and 21% don’t know whether they test or not.
Just think of all the opportunities to optimize their marketing they’re missing out on!
Does your content marketing strategy include creating high-value content, such as whitepapers or eBooks, that are only accessible after site visitors fill out a form?
If so, these forms may be holding back the conversion potential of your content. A CMO Council study asked consumers what their biggest point of frustration is when it comes to content, and 50% of respondents cited long registrations before accessing content as one of their ‘top three turnoffs.’
If you’re getting lots of clicks on your CTAs, but few conversions, try using progressive profiling on your landing pages. This works by asking consumers only a few questions the first time they fill out a form, and then subsequently asking different questions each time they download a piece of content.
Keeping these CRO tips in mind will help take your content to the next level!
Content Marketing Trap # 2 – Thinking of Your Content as a ‘Lead Generating Machine’
Marketers are increasingly under pressure to demonstrate the ROI of their efforts, and content marketing is no exception. When you first get started, it may be tempting to churn out a high volume of mediocre (or even poor) content to get the ball rolling. It’s also easy to fall into the trap of producing blatantly self-promotional content, especially if you’re worried about ‘wasting time’ on content that doesn’t produce results. But despite your best intentions, if your content isn’t providing sufficient value to your audience then your efforts are doomed to fail.
Content marketing isn’t a simple mechanical process — you can’t combine a handful of attractive CTAs and optimized landing pages with low quality content and expect customers to come pouring in. Even if you are able to generate leads in this way, imagine their disappointment after they’ve filled out your form and downloaded your offer, only to find a piece of lackluster content. These leads won’t convert into customers, and will sit indefinitely at the top of your sales funnel.
Not concerned yet? You might be surprised to learn the costof bad content. An IGD Connect survey found that if buyers perceive your content to be “low value,” your business is 27% less likely to be considered in the decision making process, and 40% less likely to ultimately make the sale!
Think about the last time you downloaded a whitepaper or checked out a company’s blog. How did the quality of the content affect your opinion of that company?
One sure fire way of producing content that people find valuable is by writing with your target audience in mind. Tailor your content to your ideal buyer persona by brainstorming topics they’d be most interested in, or tips that they’d find beneficial. Don’t spend time and energy creating general content if your goal is to reach a specific audience.
Being more strategic about the type of content you produce will not only raise its value, but it can also help you gain more qualified leads.
Plus, leads that are satisfied with your content are more likely to come back for more. That’s why it’s also important to create different types of content for different stages of the buying process. For instance, a small business owner exploring their marketing options may come to an agency’s site and download a free guide or tip sheet. Once they feel more prepared to make a decision, this lead may return to attend a webinar or read through a case study.
There’s no way around it: if you want to have a successful content marketing strategy, you have to invest in the content itself.
The best way to ensure you end up with qualified leads is to first think about your buyer persona, then start writing. And don’t count on poorly researched articles or typo-riddled guides to convince your leads to convert into customers.
Remember to devote time to both the quality of your content, as well as improving its ability to generate leads — otherwise your work will only be half done! Image Credit: David Goehring Do you have any tips for producing engaging content, or optimizing content to generate leads? Share your experience in the comments below! About the Author: Brittney Stephenson is a Marketing Assistant at Powered by Search, an SEO and inbound marketing agency based in Toronto, Canada. She has a passion for marketing strategy, content marketing, and all things digital. Feel free to connect with Brittney on Google+.
Email Is Crushing Twitter, Facebook for Selling Stuff Online | Wired Business | Wired.com
If you’re a frequent reader of our blogs, you won’t be surprised by this report from Custora stating that email is a more effective marketing channel than social networks.
In fact, I say in my book that email is the biggest social network on the planet. Business people plan their days by their inbox. They program audible notifications when new items come into their inbox. It’s not smart, but it’s true.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that you should send self-promotional crap. That won’t work in email, mail or social media. But certainly don’t eliminate email from your marketing mix.
MediaPost Publications Millennials Forge The Future (Depending on Life Stage) 07/01/2013
If you like to study the steady march of the generations, you’ll find this study of Millennials fascinating. Basically, Millennials are here to frustrate the retiring Boomer generation. They are the revenge of GenX. I think you can see from this article that Millennials will baffle Boomers (and GenX) with their attitudes.
Want to get Brian’s For Further Study posts delivered right to your inbox? Click HERE to sign up.
Tired of getting Friended, then nothing? Start getting Customered
Conversion Marketing StrategyThey friend you. They fan you. They pin you. We love our social media tribes.
But how often to they customer you? How often do they buy, subscribe, or register?
When you get customered, your business grows, you gain another social influencer, and you get proof that your social media strategy is delivering what your social network wants.
Getting customered is an important part of the social media life cycle, and it’s also one of the trickiest.
I’m going to do a deep dive on getting your business customered at Engage Mexico in beautiful Puerto Vallarta, November 14-17.
You should be there.
The potential in your social networks
Your social networks store potential, like a battery stores voltage.
If you’ve been actively building your social networks, you have stored potential, like a battery has stored voltage. How do you hook up to the juice that turns that potential into leads and revenue.
Tapping this potential requires that you connect your social battery to something of interest to both you and your social denizens.
Use Content for Wires
Ultimately, you discharge your social batteries the same way you charged them. You use relevant content presented in a ways your crowd likes to get it.
Content might be blog post links on Twitter, contests on Facebook, and product pictures on Pinterest. Without the content, no one is going to find their way back. They just stay potential.
Many of us already have content strategies for our social networks, but what gets people to customer us when they visit?
Use social media landing pages to get customered
Connect them to your Landing Pages
Here’s where you need to start thinking like your visitors. Once read, great content is quickly dismissed.
What is the next step for me as a visitor and potential customerer of your business?
(Customerer??)
The golden secret is to treat your content pages as social media landing pages.
A landing page is a single minded page designed to do two things:
A Social Media landing page, then, is a single minded page designed to:
Both pages have content that delivers on a promise and a call to action that entices readers to do something wonderful.
NOTE: If you are building an email list, you get customered when you get subscribered. Think about it: the visitor is paying for content with their contact information.
NOTE 2: “Subscribered” is the last time I will verbify a noun in this article.
Where do Social Media Landing Pages Live?
Social media landing pages live anywhere you are drawing social visitors.
Your blog content pages have the content, but do they have the call to action? Is the call to action where it can be seen?
Add calls to action in or near the content.
Your email signup pages have the call to action, but do they have the content that makes signing up appealing?
Give subscribers a better reason to sign up than “Get on another mailing list.”
Your lead generation pages, offering gated content have the call to action, but do you talk about the content you are offering, or do you talk about our company and your products instead?
Don’t talk about yourself like a socially awkward freak.
Any page to which your friends, fans and followers might come in search of education or entertainment qualified as a social media landing page.
Remember that these are Social Visitors
Product pages on ecommerce sites are another frequent social media landing page. The call to action is invariably there: Add to Cart.
Given that your visitors are coming from a social network, they will be more likely to want to see social content with the product information. You should oblige them.
It’s one thing to get people to friend, fan, follow, and flatulate. It’s quite another to get them to customer you. Use content to connect your social batteries to social media landing pages and get customered.
Tweetables
Tired of getting friended, then nothing? Get customered!
Your social networks store potential, like a battery stores voltage.
The golden secret is to treat your content pages as social media landing pages.
Images by Brian Massey
The Black Hole in your Website
Ecommerce CROThe picture below illustrates all too well the dangers of running a website without some kind of conversion optimization effort.
What you are seeing is the office where an un-optimized website was hosted. The site was designed by an agency that let the charismatic CEO influence the design. Unfortunately, little attention was paid to the shopping cart. It was assumed that visitors would just figure things out.
They were wrong.
The abandonment rate – a measure of the visitors that start the checkout process but don’t finish – rose to alarming levels very quickly.
The abandonment rate of a website housed in this building approached infinity causing a gravity well, or “black hole” to form.
As the abandonment rate approached infinity, a rare singularity was created that threatened the entire building. Left unchecked, the entire business could have been consumed by the black hole that developed from the singularity. The gravitational forces of this website black hole are so strong, not even money can escape.
This is a situation in which a poorly designed website not only loses money, but sucks away all future opportunity. There is nothing worse for a brand than a bad online experience.
By inserting a Conversion Catalyst into the site, the abandonment rate returned to safe levels, saving the business and several surrounding buildings.
A Conversion Scientist was able to avert catastrophe by inserting a Conversion Catalyst into the site and completing some targeted split tests. Problems were isolated and corrected. The abandonment rate returned to safe levels saving the business — and several surrounding buildings.
The moral of the story is that untested websites not only threaten current sales, but can create ripples across the time-space continuum that some businesses never recover from.
Is there a black hole in your website from which money is not escaping?
Ask us about a Conversion Catalyst for your website.
Writing Killer Conversion Copy: Getting Past the Bouncers in Your Brain
Conversion-Centered DesignWhy do we have to work so hard to get our persuasive messages heard? Why is direct response copywriting so difficult? Why don’t people read?
This presentation from ConversionSUMMIT 2013 and ConversionJAM 3 introduces you to two “bouncers” in the human brain that keep marketing messages from penetrating and tells you what to do about them.
Writing Killer Conversion Copy Live
Writing Killer Conversion Copy Slides
Invite Brian to speak and entertain at your next event.
No More Guesswork: 5 Website Formats Proven to Get Results – via Crazy Egg
Conversion-Centered DesignPeople often wonder why their site isn’t more successful. They ask themselves all sorts of questions: Is it too wordy? Is my product/service stupid? Do I need more flair? Well…..
Good news everyone!** Brian teamed up with Crazy Egg to share five website formats that are proven to get results.
Brian breaks down the five basic types of sites and explains their winning features and structure.
Read the full post to find out which category your site fits in:
Once you determine which site style fits your company, you can put together a foolproof plan for building the perfect site for your needs.
Click HERE to read the entire post. Thanks to our awesome partner Crazy Egg!
** I will personally high five you or send you a Conversion Sciences sticker if you can be the first to tell me what the line that is starred above is from. Either tweet @bmassey with the answer, or leave it as a comment on the Facebook page. Good luck, and may the odds be ever in your favor! – CB
Is Conversion Science Sexy?
News & EventsSmart is sexy. Brains? Well maybe not.
While I think we look smashing in our lab coats, I can’t say that I’ve ever thought of what we do as “Sexy.” Conversion Science is exciting, challenging and perplexing, a perfect combination for the trained and curious person drawn to this kind of work.
But sexy?
Writing in The Harvard Business Review authors Thomas H. Davenport and D.J. Patil think that the Data Scientist is the “Sexiest Job of the 21st Century.” Hmmm.
Are Conversion Scientists actually Data Scientists? Yes, they are — with a few important differences.
The HBR calls them “high-ranking professionals with the training and curiosity to make discoveries in the world of big data.” I hate the phrase “big data” because it implies that mortal humans can’t get their heads around it. Trust me. We can.
The two terms are relatively new. The term “Data Scientist” has only been around since 2008 when it was coined by the analytics brainiacs at LinkedIn and Facebook. “Conversion Scientists” was coined in 2006 by yours truly.
There is no degree program for either one of these professions.
Like Data Scientists, Conversion Scientists are hard to come by and we hope you will kindly send us a note if you’ve seen one in the wild. We’re hiring.
Davenport and Patil nail it when they say:
Oh yah. That is a Conversion Scientist.
The Differences
The authors of the HBR article state that “More than anything, what data scientists do is make discoveries while swimming in data.” This would not be sufficient for a Conversion Scientist. Sure we wade, snorkel and Slip ‘n’ Slide through data. But we must also create our own targeted data. This is most commonly done with testing.
We design creative tests for web pages, paid search campaigns, emails, and shopping carts.
It is important to both professions that we be able to communicate effectively. Discovering things is only helpful when those discoveries result in “new business directions.”
For the Conversion Scientist, these new business directions must head toward more leads and more revenue. We’re the capitalists of the Data Scientist community.
That’s basically how you afford your Conversion Scientists: They produce measurable upsides in business results.
Are You a Conversion Scientist?
Since there is no degree program, Conversion Scientists come from the worlds of search optimization, online advertising and performance marketing. They choose positions based on how interesting the data challenges they will be working with are and how much of an impact they will have.
Conversion Scientists are fascinated with the things we learn about human behavior through testing and analysis. So are businesses, as it turns out.
The authors also state that, “…the data scientists we’ve spoken with say they want to build things, not just give advice to a decision maker.” This is true of Conversion Scientists. They want to see the fruits of their labor, not just present reports on their discoveries.
Does this sound like you? Yes, we are looking for our next Conversion Scientist and this quiz will help both of us understand if there’s a fit.
Use On-screen Markup to Make Webinars More Effective
Conversion Marketing StrategyOn-screen Markup can increase engagement and keep viewers around longer.
My online landing page webinars are quite different from most you’ve seen. Why is that?
Because I do live on-screen critiques of the landing pages. You can see me in action on August 21 during my webinar The Chemistry of the B2B Landing Page with Live Critiques.
Why not mark them up ahead of time and just present my findings? Here’s why:
1. It’s boooring. I mean webinars can be pretty uneventful, unless you’ve got a really talented presenter. This adds some pizzazz to the presentation.
2. It’s more fun for me to do. I like to do interactive events like this.
3. If I didn’t, then the critiques wouldn’t really be “live”.
4. It keeps your audience engaged longer, and we have some data to support that.
Why Online Markup is an Awesome Webinar Tool
You should consider online markup if you really want to deliver a captivating presentation that keeps the audience engaged for your entire message.
The interactivity helps people stay tuned into your presentation. There is something about drawings that just captivates the viewer and keeps their attention. We found this to be true in video.
Not only did the “whiteboard-style” video keep the eye on the video, it provided a higher conversion rate on a landing page than two other kinds of business video.
The on-screen drawing gives you a unique angle in a sea of “me too” webinars. Drop-off rates in my previous webinars have been significantly lower than in webinars I’ve done without the critiques. People hang around longer.
Less “multi-thrashing” by the audience. The myth of multi-tasking is alive and well in the webinar world. You may call this multi-bashing, but at any time, most of your viewers are checking email and social media while listening to your presentation.
As a webinar attendee, you can probably remember a time when you wished you could rewind a webinar. The presenter finally said something that caught your attention as you typed out an email reply, but you had no idea of what he said before that.
Since we don’t have Webinar DVRs yet, you want to minimize multi-trashing of your message. On-screen markup works.
Implementing Online Markup in Your Webinars
Most webinar software such as GotoWebinar and WebEx give you tools to markup your screens. However, I find the mouse to be an insufficient tool for writing and drawing. It takes too much concentration.
However, if it’s all you’ve got, you should use it.
My “rig” is a bit more sophisticated. That’s OK because I like toys.
This is my presentation setup. Click to enlarge.
This setup provides the following:
My webinar setup
or
Audio-Technica ATR-3350 Lavalier Omnidirectional Condenser Microphone
(Amazon.com)
The downside of Live Markup
There are some things you need to be aware of if you choose to do one of these.
It requires switching screens from your presentation monitor, where static slides are shown to the tablet screen where you can do the markup. Most webinar services handle this pretty well, but it is another point of failure.
It requires some coordination. If you can’t talk and draw at the same time, you may find your train of thought leaving the tracks.
All of this tech means more points of failure. You have to work hard to have alternative solutions should any of these technologies fail.
See It in Action
Reachforce has asked me to put my rig in action again and you can see the results.
Join me for The Chemistry of the B2B Landing Page, Volume 2 — with Live Critiques from The Conversion Scientist on August 21, 2103 at 1:00pm central time.
I’ll be doing a brief training on how to create effective landing pages backwards and then doing some B2B critiques.
Your page can be one that I critique. You can submit the URL when you register.
I hope to see you there.
Eye Tracking Conversion Lessons and Shopping Cart Abandonment – For Further Study
Ecommerce CRO7 Conversion Lessons Learned From Eye Tracking
@neilpatel collects some of the most interesting eye-tracking images available and provides seven insights that can help you design your pages and choose images. We have done our own eye-tracking study of business video and you can get the full report now. The report offers similar conclusions for the use of video in a landing page. It includes over 30 minutes of embedded video that you can watch yourself.
Neil’s conclusions include:
Enjoy the images he provides.
Shopping Cart Abandonment: Why It Happens & How To Recover Baskets Of Money
@peeplaja offers a great post on shopping cart abandonment
In my book I say that abandonment is like cholesterol: There is a good kind and a bad kind. For each there is a strategy for reducing the impact of abandonment on your business.
Good abandoners leave because they aren’t done with their shopping process. The challenge is to get them to come back and buy when they are done. There are several strategies here for retargeting the visitor who abandons using email and ads.
Bad abandoners leave because you surprised them or didn’t provide the information they were looking for. This kind of abandonment can be treated by improving the checkout process and by using pricing and shipping strategies.
Abandonment is the most heartbreaking of conversion killers. it is also a fertile place to increase the performance of your website.
I want to talk to that developer you know
News & EventsPerhaps you can help me. It turns out that optimizing websites has “caught on” so to speak. There’s reason to believe that applying science to the “art” of creating effective websites is going to be a big thing.
Our business is certainly growing and profitable.
Now, we are ready to grow our development team.
Do you know a Web Developer who fits this very special profile? If so, please forward this to them or have them call me.
* They make online apps and websites dance like puppets on strings. They may say things like “Javascript”, “JQuery” and “CSS” and something about a train named “Ruby” that runs on rails.
* They like puzzles. They can become a bit obsessed with understanding how things work. They are curious.
* They work with data. They use words like “analytics”. You might tune out when they talk about analytics. Most people do.
* When you ask them why they are in such a good mood, they say that they found and fixed a tough bug. You may wonder if they are moonlighting as an exterminator.
* They plan for the future. They are always working on their skills, making themselves more valuable. You suspect that they should get out more.
* They deserve to be part of a profitable young company in Austin, Texas that is loved by its clients because we do what no other agency can do: We find more revenue in their websites, and we have the data to prove it.
My search isn’t going to be easy, but you may be the person who knows this individual. If you would be so kind as to pass this on to anyone fitting this description, they will thank you and I’ll reward you for your generosity.
We have just the place for them.
Please have them read our job description. It’s boring but helpful.
We are also looking for the next Conversion Scientist to lead our optimization efforts. They are even stranger, but very very valuable to us.
My direct contact information is below. I’m waiting.
Best regards,
Brian Massey, Conversion Scientist
Conversion Sciences LLC
Austin, Texas
512-961-6604
Brian@ConversionSciences.com
P. S. I’m still waiting.
Content Marketing Traps You Can Avoid
Conversion Marketing StrategyBrittney Stephenson at Powered by Search gives you content marketing traps you can easily avoid.
Content marketing can help your business capture leads and convert them into customers. In fact, after analyzing data from thousands of their software users, HubSpot found that organizations that blog just one or two times a month generate 70% more leads than businesses that don’t blog at all.
It’s therefore no surprise that so many companies have jumped on the content marketing bandwagon, and are churning out blog posts, eBooks, whitepapers, info-graphics, webinars and more, all in the name of lead generation. But there are two common traps that marketers can fall into. The first is focusing exclusively on the content itself. The second is thinking that strong CTAs and landing pages will make up for mediocre content.
If you’re not thinking about a visitor’s overall experience with your content, then you’re not getting the most out of it. A recent Marketing Profs study of B2B marketers revealed that only 36% of respondents believe their organization is using content marketing effectively. This means that there’s a lot of room for improvement, and learning how to hit the right balance between content and conversion will make you stand out as a content marketing champ!
Content Marketing Trap #1 – ‘Content is King!’
Yes, it’s been said a thousand times, content is king. But don’t misinterpret this popular phrase to mean that content is the only thing you need to achieve marketing success. Even top notch content needs a little help if you want it to prompt site visitors to complete a specific action. Otherwise your content marketing strategy will be great for driving site traffic and building industry authority, but not for directly generating leads.
Having a company blog is one of the most popular content marketing tactics, but it’s also one that can easily take up a lot of your energy with little result if you’re not careful. Forgetting to optimize your blog for conversions is a common oversight. Fortunately, there are a number of ways to remedy this.
One of the best methods to turn casual blog readers into leads is including calls to action (CTAs) directly on your blog. CTAs make it easy for site visitors to become leads by asking readers to act, and creating a clear path to do so. Marketing software provider HubSpot has done an excellent job of optimizing their blog for conversions in this way. Any given HubSpot blog post will include four CTAs, just like the images below. (Some readers may find this number of CTAs too distracting, so make sure to test what number works best with your own blog audience.)
Calls to action are just one way to optimize your blog for lead conversion. To really maximize conversions, you should also test your overall blog layout and design, use of images and colors, as well as your posting frequency.
Some of these tips may sound obvious, but the 2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report shows the grim reality is that 45% of marketers do not test their marketing efforts, and 21% don’t know whether they test or not.
Just think of all the opportunities to optimize their marketing they’re missing out on!
Does your content marketing strategy include creating high-value content, such as whitepapers or eBooks, that are only accessible after site visitors fill out a form?
If so, these forms may be holding back the conversion potential of your content. A CMO Council study asked consumers what their biggest point of frustration is when it comes to content, and 50% of respondents cited long registrations before accessing content as one of their ‘top three turnoffs.’
If you’re getting lots of clicks on your CTAs, but few conversions, try using progressive profiling on your landing pages. This works by asking consumers only a few questions the first time they fill out a form, and then subsequently asking different questions each time they download a piece of content.
Keeping these CRO tips in mind will help take your content to the next level!
Content Marketing Trap # 2 – Thinking of Your Content as a ‘Lead Generating Machine’
Content marketing isn’t a simple mechanical process — you can’t combine a handful of attractive CTAs and optimized landing pages with low quality content and expect customers to come pouring in. Even if you are able to generate leads in this way, imagine their disappointment after they’ve filled out your form and downloaded your offer, only to find a piece of lackluster content. These leads won’t convert into customers, and will sit indefinitely at the top of your sales funnel.
Not concerned yet? You might be surprised to learn the cost of bad content. An IGD Connect survey found that if buyers perceive your content to be “low value,” your business is 27% less likely to be considered in the decision making process, and 40% less likely to ultimately make the sale!
Think about the last time you downloaded a whitepaper or checked out a company’s blog. How did the quality of the content affect your opinion of that company?
One sure fire way of producing content that people find valuable is by writing with your target audience in mind.
Tailor your content to your ideal buyer persona by brainstorming topics they’d be most interested in, or tips that they’d find beneficial. Don’t spend time and energy creating general content if your goal is to reach a specific audience.
Being more strategic about the type of content you produce will not only raise its value, but it can also help you gain more qualified leads.
Plus, leads that are satisfied with your content are more likely to come back for more. That’s why it’s also important to create different types of content for different stages of the buying process. For instance, a small business owner exploring their marketing options may come to an agency’s site and download a free guide or tip sheet. Once they feel more prepared to make a decision, this lead may return to attend a webinar or read through a case study.
There’s no way around it: if you want to have a successful content marketing strategy, you have to invest in the content itself.
The best way to ensure you end up with qualified leads is to first think about your buyer persona, then start writing. And don’t count on poorly researched articles or typo-riddled guides to convince your leads to convert into customers.
Remember to devote time to both the quality of your content, as well as improving its ability to generate leads — otherwise your work will only be half done!
Image Credit: David Goehring
Do you have any tips for producing engaging content, or optimizing content to generate leads? Share your experience in the comments below!
About the Author: Brittney Stephenson is a Marketing Assistant at Powered by Search, an SEO and inbound marketing agency based in Toronto, Canada. She has a passion for marketing strategy, content marketing, and all things digital. Feel free to connect with Brittney on Google+.
Email Marketing Domination, and Millennials Forge the Future – For Further Study
Conversion Marketing StrategyEmail Is Crushing Twitter, Facebook for Selling Stuff Online | Wired Business | Wired.com
If you’re a frequent reader of our blogs, you won’t be surprised by this report from Custora stating that email is a more effective marketing channel than social networks.
In fact, I say in my book that email is the biggest social network on the planet. Business people plan their days by their inbox. They program audible notifications when new items come into their inbox. It’s not smart, but it’s true.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that you should send self-promotional crap. That won’t work in email, mail or social media. But certainly don’t eliminate email from your marketing mix.
MediaPost Publications Millennials Forge The Future (Depending on Life Stage) 07/01/2013
If you like to study the steady march of the generations, you’ll find this study of Millennials fascinating. Basically, Millennials are here to frustrate the retiring Boomer generation. They are the revenge of GenX. I think you can see from this article that Millennials will baffle Boomers (and GenX) with their attitudes.
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