Teach a man to fish and you feed him for life. Teach a woman to fish and you feed a village.
Every entrepreneur should come to understand what microcredit is teaching us. This movement is teaching us about the very foundation of our free enterprise system. It is teaching us where compassion lives within our framework of self interest. It is showing us that we are right to believe that opportunity brings out the best in us in ways that charity does not.
In terms of providing “aid” to struggling countries, the US is quite generous. However, the results of our aid are often heart breaking, with much of it being wasted by the governments that are supposed to get it to their people.
Charity has its place. Opportunity, however is the jet engine that moves charity to increase a person’s standard of living. As Americans, we believe that opportunity is the seed from which freedom springs.
Microcredit is opportunity. It is the process of making small loans to individuals in countries that do not share our freedoms… yet. These loans are given to individuals who wish to build businesses in their communities. Initial loans are often no more than US$50.00. Payback rates are well above 90%, and typically approach 100%. It is women who are taking the most advantage of microlending opportunities. This is good, because they tend to invest their profits in their children and their community.
Discover Hope uses music to foster entrepreneurship for export
DiscoverHope is a “blended” microcredit organization headquartered in Austin and focusing on South America. I support DiscoverHope because they don’t just loan money, but have built education centers to teach their clients how to build and run a business.
I love the thought that my donations to DiscoverHope will create value over and over and over. This is what we want in our businesses. Why not demand it of our giving?
DiscoverHope is home-grown goodness, started right here in Austin, Texas. In classic Austin tradition, DiscoverHope is using music to express their gratitude and raise more funds for sprouting entrepreneurs in Peru. It’s Saturday, September 26.
You should buy a ticket. The $25 you pay goes right to DiscoverHope activities.
You should also plan to come. You’re going to meet people who have a positive, expansive vision for how we can give back some of the bounty we enjoy here in America.
Do you give out of guilt, or give out of gratitude? Come mingle in a room full of the grateful, and see if you don’t start the next day with a fresh attitude.
Conversion Sciences is a proud sponsor of Band Together for Hope and a donor to DiscoverHope.
Would you believe that e-mail marketing is still in its infancy?
A couple of graphs from MarketingSherpa drive an important point home about the use of e-mail for marketing. It works, it has always worked, and it will continue to work. You just have to know how to use it.
House list email continues to outperform third-party email in 2009.
In this graph, “Emailing to house lists” falls behind “Pay-per-click search ads.” However, since fewer marketers are reducing the use of house list email, it should be #1.
I’ll go so far as to state this:
If you don’t have your email marketing efforts nailed, you have no business investing in social marketing.
Social marketing has its place, and is not a fad. But, we know so much about good, permission-based email marketing, that it is criminal to ignore it. Don’t let email superstitions drive your marketing strategy.
The more sophisticated a marketer you are, the more likely you are to use house list email marketing.
MarketingSherpa has some choice interpretations of this graph:
Those that see the effectiveness of their email programs diminishing are much more likely to have short-sighted organizational attitudes toward the tactic.
Organizations with investment-oriented views of email reap the rewards. They have higher open, click and conversion rates. In addition, they are much more likely to have a metrics-based grasp of how email works for them. Those with the “email is free” view, on the other hand, are more likely to fall into the group that doesn’t track conversion.
It is so easy to measure email’s effectiveness, that I would argue that you can’t call yourself a marketer if you’re not watching your results. We call you a spammer.
You’re not marketing if your not measuring.
Essential for any Considered Purchase
If all of your customers buy spontaneously on their first visit and never buy again, then you may not need to invest in email marketing. I don’t know of any business like this.
If your customers take weeks or months to come to a purchase decision, you cannot ignore email. Email is the biggest social network on the planet. Even retirees use email.
Your House List is the list of people who have given you permission to enter their inbox. This means they want what you have, and should be given every opportunity to opt out.
Email Isn’t Promotional, It’s Social
Don’t use email purely to promote sales and discounts. Use it to educate, inform and entertain. If you have a blog, send your most interesting posts via email. Most of us aren’t using RSS. Email is your ticket to growing your blog readership.
Then simply advertise in your own emails.
It’s Time to Get Your Email On: Get Started Now
It does take time to build your house list, so start now. Email can be fun if you’re sending content that reflects your passion for your company, your industry and your brand.
Then you can start investing in the smaller, less intimate social networks out there.
Personas provide three powerful points that will help you focus your marketing and advertising dollars, and justify more spending.
This is why Personas can mean bigger online projects.
The power of fake people
Imagine your most important customer, let’s call her Melissa, walking into your meeting room and laying the law down to your manager, telling them exactly what she wants from your Web site.
Now imagine that she’s not just your most important customer, but a representative of hundreds or thousands of your customers. Would she be able to change minds and influence decisions?
This is the power of Melissa. She is your Market Segmentation Study personified. She is your analytics report in a skirt. She is legal counsel for your creative team and a force to be reckoned with.
Melissa is an example of a persona. She represents the desires and fears of a large number of your prospects and customers in the most human and compelling way.
She isn’t real, but she will seem more real than any chart you can concoct.
Personas provide three powerful points that will help you focus your marketing and advertising dollars, and justify more spending. This is why Personas can mean bigger online projects.
Why Personas Have So Much Power
Roy H. Williams puts it best.
“Your business has three or four customers living at thousands of different addresses.”
Get to know them and they will lead you in the right direction.
Personas provide three powerful points that will help you focus your marketing and advertising dollars, and justify more spending.
1. You can Relate to People More Than Data
Melissa has a name, a face and a story. She is the perfect age, has the right income, and the ideal home environment to represent large numbers of your customers. With each little decision that marketers and business people make each day, you can ask, “What would Melissa do?” Each time you’re asked to make changes to your messaging, media, or offers, you can ask, “Would Melissa want this?”
You will relate to her as a marketer, manager, owner, CEO, Vice President or agency. This means better decisions, defendable positions, and consistent execution. Melissa is good.
2. Personas Create Consensus
The process of creating personas must involve anyone who would “know” Melissa. She is the personification of data, sales experiences, product research, customer support calls and personal experience. To make her whole, you must involved these functions in her creation.
Then, when budget time comes around; when knee-jerk initiatives seek to copy a competitor; when programs are proposed that are questionable, everyone will remember Melissa when you invoke her name.
3. Personas Turn Your Focus Outward
In any organization, it is easy to turn inward; to focus on the next product or the next campaign. Too many marketing conversations begin, “How can we get our message out more?”
Melissa changes the conversation.
“What could we do to get Melissa interested faster?”
“Why isn’t Melissa visiting the site?”
“What does Melissa need to know to go ahead and buy?”
These questions are fundamentally different. They are outward looking. Everything from strategy to copy to design will open to Melissa like a flower, and she will react.
The Key Components of an Online Persona
I’ll be covering the key components of an online persona in my SXSW Panel, provided you vote for it and it gets accepted.
I’ll also show you some of the decisions personas have influenced for my clients.
Social Media is not just about creating more Awareness.
There are some very specific things you want to accomplish when you engage your prospects and customers.
You want them to use your product, service or communication.
You want to help influence their opinion of your product, service or communication.
You want to help them talk about your product, service or communication.
This is the Social Media Cycle as defined by Dave Evans. It has two distinct parts:
The pre-purchase funnel
The post-purchase funnel
The Social Funnel includes both the traditional and post-purchase funnels
It is important to define “purchase” for the sake of our conversation. Your customers may only have “purchased” a communication, paying with their time, attention and contact information if they want to continue the conversation. So, downloading a sample is modeled as a “purchase” in this scenario.
Just as it takes a series of “conversions” to move a prospect through the traditional sales funnel — to Awareness, then Consideration, then Action — you must likewise move them through the post-purchase funnel.
This is How You Prioritize Your Social Media Strategies
Yes, you have to convert a buyer into a user.
Then you have to help them form an opinion. Social media is great for this, because others’ opinions will shape their opinion. Focus on strategies that reveal what others are saying about your service or brand.
Finally, you must convert those with an opinion into talkers. Provide ways for them to share their experience. They will, in turn help you:
1. Convert more users into opinion holders
2. Direct new prospects to your funnel, often starting them in the Consideration stage
Look at any product description on any website. Peruse any brochure. You will find a list of features designed to tell you why the product will do the things you need it to do to solve your problem.
Communications Products are the first purchase
They will probably have a check mark next to them.
What you will not find on these lists are features like these:
A helpful website so you make the right decision
Informative reports and white papers offered free of charge
An active Facebook page full of the opinions of our users
A well-labeled box placed in the right part of the store so you can easily find it
How a product or service communicates is not considered an important feature. This is why marketers — who develop the communication features — struggle to keep their staff and budgets during a downturn. This is why Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) don’t have a seat at the executive table with the CEO, President, COO and CFO.
To the executives, marketing doesn’t create products or sales. Marketing is a cost center.
Prospects actually become customers when they buy your communication products
The first purchase a prospect makes from your company is a communication product. It is the flyer, brochure, website, report, article, press announcement, blog post, webinar, etc. that you provide, ostensibly to help them understand how your product will help them solve a problem or entertain them.
They only occasionally pay with money. More often, they pay with their time, their attention, or with their contact information to continue the conversation. Since they don’t pay with money, marketing never shows up on the bottom line. It’s always seen as a cost.
Now, if a customer is satisfied with their “purchase,” they become a repeat customer taking more communication products. They also buy your company’s offering — for real money. Sales will get credit for the latter.
The mistake marketers make is creating communication products that are only focused on persuading prospects to buy the money-based products. How would things change if they focused on building great communication products instead?
The New Marketing Department
Imagine a marketing department run like a product development department. How would that change the focus?
Marketing Department
Communications Products Department
Develops campaigns
Develops products that communicate (educate, inform and entertain)
Creates promotional content
Creates relevant, educational, or entertaining content
Targets product users
Targets influencers, approvers and gatekeepers as well as product users
Watches marketing metrics and buzz
Watches time spent with the “products,” customer satisfaction, repeat “buys”
Has a website
Provides online services to help prospects solve their problems
Creates a competitive matrix
Creates better communications products than competitors (who are stuck with a marketing department)
Prepares “messaging” and approved copy matrices
Discovers new ways to help their communications product customers
Stays “on brand”
Improves the brand with great communication experiences
Bases budgets on the cost of campaigns
Bases budgets on the feature set needed to win in the communications marketplace
Builds brand with frequency and relevance
Builds brand by frequently helping prospects find information they are looking for
Segments the marketplace and creates targeted messages for each segment
Creates buyer personas for their communication products, and then delivers the products that serve them
This list could go on. What would you add? Tell us in the comments.
I’ll be talking about how buyer personas drive bigger marketing budgets at ProductCamp Austin on Saturday, August 15. Come out and let’s talk about great communications products.
You don’t have to be a copywriter to know crappy copy when you see it. Use these 10 ways to find out if your copy converts visitors into customers. Know bad copy when you see it. Read on.
Does your copy convert visitors to customers? If you read this article and then go out and read your landing page or website copy, odds are very good that you will be embarrassed. Don’t be. It is not a helpful response. The proper response is to change the copy on your site. It works. You can completely revamp your website and increase conversions without changing one pixel of the design.
Please, for all of our sakes, change the copy.
Knowing bad copy when you see it will keep you from writing more of the same boring Styrofoam flavored copy. Here are 10 ways to know that your copy is going to convert visitors to buyers and one bonus tip.
Does your Copy Convert Visitors to Customers? Use these 10 ways to find out. Know bad copy when you see it
1. Does your Copy Convert Visitors to Customers? Does it Speak Specifically to Someone?
If you can’t tell who the copy was written for by simply reading it, you are in trouble. Who are your customers? What happened in their lives that made them come to your site at this particular time? Profile your visitors, understand their motivations, and write to their issues. Personas help.
2. Copy that Converts is Written Naturally
Do people talk like your copy is written? Does it convey meaning with the kinds of metaphors, euphemisms and engaging omissions that are used in speech? Or are the words straining to persuade the reader, attempting to touch on every point necessary to make the reader buy?
3. The Copy on the Page Matches the Offers in your Ads
Your visitors didn’t get to your site by magic. They got there from one of your ads, from a search engine or from a referral. Does the copy on your home pages and landing pages pick up where your ads started? Does your “Title” and “Meta Description,” which the search engines display on their results page match the copy on the page itself? If not, you are breaking what the Eisenberg brothers call the “Scent Trail.”
At each step of their journey to and through your site, there should be something familiar, something related to the previous step. Nothing provides scent better than headings and copy that draws on a common thing. Images and color are also affective, but that’s another article.
One of the most expensive mistakes is made in pay-per-click (PPC) or Google Ads advertising on search engines. If you offer a discount in your PPC ad, the page they come to or landing page should have the discount clearly visible. Too often, great offers in ads are defeated when the visitor is taken to your homepage, on which the specific discount cannot be found.
Yes, to do this effectively means that each ad should have its own landing page on your site.
4. It gives the Reader Information They Can Use
Is the copy persuading or being helpful? It’s not about who you are and what you do. How can your visitors solve their problems with your offering? Do you present a good value proposition?
When I visit your site, does your copy answer any of the following questions for me:
How does it work?
How will I use it?
Which features should I care about?
What should I be cautious about?
When does it make sense to try something different?
How do I justify the cost?
How do I sell this internally?
These are just examples, but you need to understand that they are fundamentally different from telling the reader that you will give them “unparalleled visibility, divisional support and alignment.”
5. An Experienced Copywriter Wrote It
Don’t look at copy as filler on your page. In the hands of an experienced professional, your copy will increase the effectiveness of your website and this will translate into more leads and more sales. Unlike design, though, we can all create copy. And unfortunately we do.
As I have said before, treat copywriters like designers. Get two or three “sketches” of the copy. Choose one. Correct the errors. Leave the rest alone.
6. Copy that Converts Visitors to Customers is Efficient
Long copy is OK. Rambling copy is not. Use efficient copy of any length to engage your reader.
Amy Lemen recommends using copy indexing formulas to help you measure the efficiency of your copy.
7. Your Analytics Tell You It’s Working
Google Analytics is free, easy to add, and relatively easy to learn. Use it or use something else. Then ask someone to show you how to check the following. If copy changes don’t make these better, try again. The company that knows grows.
Bounce Rates: How many people leave immediately when they come to my pages? You want this to be low, at or below 30% usually.
Site-wide Conversion Rate: How many people visit the site? How many people take action by completing a form or buying something. When you divide the latter by the former, you get your site-wide conversion rate. You want it to be higher over time.
Exit Percentage: Which pages most often cause people to leave the site? These pages are either solving their problems completely or turning them off. Take a look at them. Try to get the exit percentage down.
Page Conversion Rate: For those pages that really count, the pages where people buy, find out how many people took action and divide that by how many people visited. This is your conversion rate for this page. You want it to be higher over time.
Online sales: How much stuff are you selling online?
8. You had a Person Edit it, not a Committee
Having a whole website go through a committee is a bad idea. Just because your marketing manager developed the product messaging doesn’t mean she should write or edit the copy. The product manager should only look for errors, not rewrite. The CEO needs to know the end result.
9. There Are Links Throughout the Copy
When someone reads your text, they are engaged. In fact, they are probably less likely to see supporting information in the left or right columns of the standard webpage. Use links within paragraphs to get readers into the site. Don’t over-do it, however. Too many links or links that encompass lots of text will make the paragraph difficult to read.
This is great for SEO, too. It provides an internal linking structure that helps search engines understand what the site is about. Your copywriter should be using important keywords for these links.
10. Get Someone from Outside the Company to Participate
Internal writers are often too close to the material. Consider a copywriter from outside the company. This also requires that you go through the process of communicating what your company does.
You’ll be surprised at how difficult this will be, even with a sophisticated copywriter.
This process should help you refine your messaging, and maybe delay updates until you’ve got a coherent story that the average human will understand.
Bonus: Does your Copy Convert Visitors to Customers? Test Your Headlines
Your heading are critical to scanning readers. Try different headings, font sizes and colors. Be patient. Watch your analytics for benefits that last.
Litmus Test
Do you enjoy reviewing the copy for your website? Do you feel pride when you read it? Is it something you’d consider adding to your portfolio should you find yourself looking for work? If not, imagine what your visitors think. “Good enough” just doesn’t convert as well.
If you can’t write like these guys, please let someone else do it.
In a post on the American Marketing Association blog, I’ve presented my list of best practices for notification and clarification emails. These are golden opportunities to continue the conversation with an engaged prospect and move them closer to becoming a customer or a user of what you offer.
Notifications are sent when someone requests something from your web site. They can be triggered by a download, registration, demo, webinar, signup, contact inquiry, service request, or customer support call.
Each one should move your conversation with this person further along.
We see these as simply informational, but they should also provide additional value.
Send early, send often, and make sure each one leads back to your Website.
The Top 6 Mistakes
Mistake #1: Not sending notifications and confirmations
What are you doing to continue a conversation with your trial prospects, new buyers and new Web leads? Do not miss a chance to experience amazing open, read and response rates.
Transactional email has more priority than promotional or educational email. The confirmation, verification and follow-up messages relate to a specific transaction initiated by the receiver. They pay more attention. Plus, these emails can be sent within 24 hours of the transaction, the time that a prospect is hottest.
Mistake #2: Not sending enough notifications
Consider this scenario: A visitor to your site completes a registration form and downloads your white paper. They receive a verification email and click to verify their email address. SCORE! What additional notifications and confirmations could be sent immediately without pestering them?
Get creative. What else could you be sending that is specifically tied to this otherwise innocuous lead generating transaction?
Mistake #3: Not helping new users get started
As we’ve begun to understand the complete marketing cycle, we’ve extended the standard marketing funnel — Awareness, Consideration and Action — to include a post purchase process: Use, Opinion and Talk. The implication here is that you have to convert a purchaser to a user.
Mistake #4: Not tracking the performance of your notification and confirmation e-mails
Notification and confirmation e-mails are measured the same way a newsletter or promotional e-mail is: deliverability, open rates, and click-through rates. However, your notifications are usually not sent via an email service provider (ESP). Most notification email will be sent by the IT department.
Consider taking your notification and confirmation emails away from IT and using your ESP to give you the metrics you need.
Mistake #5: Not sending quickly
Send early and send often.
These emails should be automated. Confirmation and verification emails should arrive within minutes. Follow up e-mail should arrive within 24 hours. After that, the transaction begins to take on a “so yesterday” feeling for the recipient.
Mistake #6: Not offering that next piece of information
Each transaction is just a step in the journey of your new customer or new lead. The new user needs to know how to best use their purchase. The new lead needs the next piece of information that will help them feel comfortable buying from you.
Executives love their sites to have flash headers. It looks cool. It looks like marketing is doing something. The problem is, a flash header can hurt engagement and conversion more than it helps.
The Triple Threat of Flash Headers
Flash banners are usually no more than cool images with “poser” slogans riding on top of them. They tend to focus on what’s good about the company and very little on solving the visitors’ problems.
Flash does draw the eye, and will be looked at by visitors. But, if the meat of your message is in the body of the page, this actually draws the reader away from the important stuff.
Tall flash banners also push your body content down, obscuring much of it below the fold.
This is the triple threat: irrelevance, distraction and obfuscation.
Proper Use of Flash
Flash is a great tool for communicating your message in seconds. It will appeal to short-attention-span visitors such as your Spontaneous and Competitive visitors. Images can reinforce brands quickly.
If you’re going to use flash on a page, it basically has to do the work of the whole page. This means you need to spend considerable time making sure that it will:
Explain your value to the visitor efficiently and completely
Provide a way to take action
Support the brand image that the rest of the site presents
Flash that Works
I’ve seen few flash headers that do this well. The Tumri home page is an exception. The motion in the flash presentation draws the eye. With just a few moments of watching, you get how their offering works at a high level. To the right of the “action” is a button enticing you to “Learn More.” This is a weak call to action, but at least it’s there. The flash presentation is tasteful and probably highlights products sold by Tumri’s target customers.
Tumri Flash Header.
Yes, their flash header pushes down the content, but there’s not much there of value to visitors below, just brochure copy, self-promoting icons and news about the company. In short, if it wasn’t for the flash header, this page would be an engagement disaster.
It takes time to use Flash as the super-communicating tool it can be. Don’t use it for “effect” or “image building.” When you do, you unleash the triple threat that will make Flash work against you.
It’s 130 words long, and can build your practice or get you more interviews
Email is the biggest social network on the planet. Even 80-year-olds have been on email long before giving Facebook a try. Because of this, it is the most effective tool for building a network that will connect you with the people that can give you work — whether you are a freelancer or a The Market for Me Book Blog.
The problem is that email is a very personal medium. If we send unsolicited email, we feel we’re invading someone’s personal space. After all, we’ve all had spammers invade our space.
The Magic Email for Freelancers and Job Seekers
The Magic Email
The Magic Email gives you polite, respectful access to your email network. It contains the following components:
It is specific about it’s purpose: to get permission to contact someone by email
It states exactly what the recipient can expect from future emails
It states specifically how the recipient can help
It offers to reciprocate, making you a resource for them
It tells the recipient how to remove themselves from your list
As a bonus, it should offer something of value; a link to something of broad interest.
The Magic Email creates an email network that has given you permission to contact them. It is through these contacts that you will win more freelance opportunities, and have your resume and cover letter delivered directly to hiring managers.
The Details of the Strategy
If you want to turn email into a work-generating network, listen to my presentation at Freelance Austin. Furthermore, Austin-based CardboardResume.com™ has sponsored a free copy of my book The Market for Me: Surviving Job Loss and Building Your Lifetime Career Network.
Marketing people aren’t important, so let’s call ourselves something else
Jeffrey and Bryan Eisenberg make the point in their book Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? that the average tenure of a marketing executive is less than the gestation period of an elephant. WiderFunnel has summarized some of the findings of an Ernst & Young study confirming that CMOs and VPs of Marketing don’t have a seat at the executive table. Anecdotally, many of my friends in marketing roles found themselves to be among the first to go when layoffs became popular in 2008 and 2009.
What would the title on your business card be if it reflected reality?
Clearly, marketing people aren’t all that important.
And then there’s the family reunion blank stare. Your cousins, aunts, uncles and some-how-relateds ask, “what are you doing these days?” You say, “I’m in marketing.” Long pause. They want to respond positively, but suspect that you may have just revealed that you’re being treated for some sort of incurable skin disease.
So, they just smile and stare.
Clearly, if we’re good at communicating, we would pick a word that, well, communicated what we do.
So, let’s call ourselves something else, something that reflects the value we add.
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
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I’m not a “Web Marketing Strategist”
If you were to look at my career, you would find the word “marketing” in most of my corporate titles. However, when given the opportunity to give myself a title, I always chose something that communicated what I did. When I was responsible for marketing at my own company, Soft Reality, I put “VP of Customers” on my cards.
Today, if you analyzed what I do for a living, you might call me a “Web Marketing Strategist” or “Internet Marketer” or “Online Marketing Strategist.” I do lots of marketing-ish things. But, I want my practice to survive the gestating elephant syndrome, so I call myself a “Conversion Scientist.”
Now, no-one knows what a Conversion Scientist is, but the word “scientist” delivers the message that I’m probably smart and most likely know a good deal that the listener doesn’t. That’s the truth. The lab coat seals the deal.
And I can explain what I do in one sentence. “Conversion is the science of turning Web traffic into leads and sales.”
Can you explain what you do without using words like “messaging,” “brand,” “demand generation,” or “campaigns?”
Send Me Your Business Card
If the title on your business card has the word “Marketing” in it, I want you to scratch it out, write in a better description of what you do, and post a picture or scan of it in the comments. I’ve added the ability to upload images to your comments.
Entrepreneurship – One thing the US could export to change the world
News & EventsEvery entrepreneur should come to understand what microcredit is teaching us. This movement is teaching us about the very foundation of our free enterprise system. It is teaching us where compassion lives within our framework of self interest. It is showing us that we are right to believe that opportunity brings out the best in us in ways that charity does not.
In terms of providing “aid” to struggling countries, the US is quite generous. However, the results of our aid are often heart breaking, with much of it being wasted by the governments that are supposed to get it to their people.
Charity has its place. Opportunity, however is the jet engine that moves charity to increase a person’s standard of living. As Americans, we believe that opportunity is the seed from which freedom springs.
Microcredit is opportunity. It is the process of making small loans to individuals in countries that do not share our freedoms… yet. These loans are given to individuals who wish to build businesses in their communities. Initial loans are often no more than US$50.00. Payback rates are well above 90%, and typically approach 100%. It is women who are taking the most advantage of microlending opportunities. This is good, because they tend to invest their profits in their children and their community.
Discover Hope uses music to foster entrepreneurship for export
DiscoverHope is a “blended” microcredit organization headquartered in Austin and focusing on South America. I support DiscoverHope because they don’t just loan money, but have built education centers to teach their clients how to build and run a business.
I love the thought that my donations to DiscoverHope will create value over and over and over. This is what we want in our businesses. Why not demand it of our giving?
DiscoverHope is home-grown goodness, started right here in Austin, Texas. In classic Austin tradition, DiscoverHope is using music to express their gratitude and raise more funds for sprouting entrepreneurs in Peru. It’s Saturday, September 26.
You should buy a ticket. The $25 you pay goes right to DiscoverHope activities.
You should also plan to come. You’re going to meet people who have a positive, expansive vision for how we can give back some of the bounty we enjoy here in America.
Do you give out of guilt, or give out of gratitude? Come mingle in a room full of the grateful, and see if you don’t start the next day with a fresh attitude.
Conversion Sciences is a proud sponsor of Band Together for Hope and a donor to DiscoverHope.
It’s Time to Get Your Email On
Conversion Marketing StrategyA couple of graphs from MarketingSherpa drive an important point home about the use of e-mail for marketing. It works, it has always worked, and it will continue to work. You just have to know how to use it.
House list email continues to outperform third-party email in 2009.
In this graph, “Emailing to house lists” falls behind “Pay-per-click search ads.” However, since fewer marketers are reducing the use of house list email, it should be #1.
I’ll go so far as to state this:
Social marketing has its place, and is not a fad. But, we know so much about good, permission-based email marketing, that it is criminal to ignore it. Don’t let email superstitions drive your marketing strategy.
The more sophisticated a marketer you are, the more likely you are to use house list email marketing.
MarketingSherpa has some choice interpretations of this graph:
Those that see the effectiveness of their email programs diminishing are much more likely to have short-sighted organizational attitudes toward the tactic.
Organizations with investment-oriented views of email reap the rewards. They have higher open, click and conversion rates. In addition, they are much more likely to have a metrics-based grasp of how email works for them. Those with the “email is free” view, on the other hand, are more likely to fall into the group that doesn’t track conversion.
It is so easy to measure email’s effectiveness, that I would argue that you can’t call yourself a marketer if you’re not watching your results. We call you a spammer.
Essential for any Considered Purchase
If all of your customers buy spontaneously on their first visit and never buy again, then you may not need to invest in email marketing. I don’t know of any business like this.
If your customers take weeks or months to come to a purchase decision, you cannot ignore email. Email is the biggest social network on the planet. Even retirees use email.
Your House List is the list of people who have given you permission to enter their inbox. This means they want what you have, and should be given every opportunity to opt out.
Email Isn’t Promotional, It’s Social
Don’t use email purely to promote sales and discounts. Use it to educate, inform and entertain. If you have a blog, send your most interesting posts via email. Most of us aren’t using RSS. Email is your ticket to growing your blog readership.
Then simply advertise in your own emails.
It’s Time to Get Your Email On: Get Started Now
It does take time to build your house list, so start now. Email can be fun if you’re sending content that reflects your passion for your company, your industry and your brand.
Then you can start investing in the smaller, less intimate social networks out there.
Personas Can Mean Bigger Online Projects
Conversion Marketing StrategyThis is why Personas can mean bigger online projects.
The power of fake people
Imagine your most important customer, let’s call her Melissa, walking into your meeting room and laying the law down to your manager, telling them exactly what she wants from your Web site.
Now imagine that she’s not just your most important customer, but a representative of hundreds or thousands of your customers. Would she be able to change minds and influence decisions?
This is the power of Melissa. She is your Market Segmentation Study personified. She is your analytics report in a skirt. She is legal counsel for your creative team and a force to be reckoned with.
Melissa is an example of a persona. She represents the desires and fears of a large number of your prospects and customers in the most human and compelling way.
She isn’t real, but she will seem more real than any chart you can concoct.
Personas provide three powerful points that will help you focus your marketing and advertising dollars, and justify more spending. This is why Personas can mean bigger online projects.
Why Personas Have So Much Power
Roy H. Williams puts it best.
Get to know them and they will lead you in the right direction.
Personas provide three powerful points that will help you focus your marketing and advertising dollars, and justify more spending.
1. You can Relate to People More Than Data
Melissa has a name, a face and a story. She is the perfect age, has the right income, and the ideal home environment to represent large numbers of your customers. With each little decision that marketers and business people make each day, you can ask, “What would Melissa do?” Each time you’re asked to make changes to your messaging, media, or offers, you can ask, “Would Melissa want this?”
2. Personas Create Consensus
The process of creating personas must involve anyone who would “know” Melissa. She is the personification of data, sales experiences, product research, customer support calls and personal experience. To make her whole, you must involved these functions in her creation.
Then, when budget time comes around; when knee-jerk initiatives seek to copy a competitor; when programs are proposed that are questionable, everyone will remember Melissa when you invoke her name.
3. Personas Turn Your Focus Outward
In any organization, it is easy to turn inward; to focus on the next product or the next campaign. Too many marketing conversations begin, “How can we get our message out more?”
Melissa changes the conversation.
“What could we do to get Melissa interested faster?”
“Why isn’t Melissa visiting the site?”
“What does Melissa need to know to go ahead and buy?”
These questions are fundamentally different. They are outward looking. Everything from strategy to copy to design will open to Melissa like a flower, and she will react.
The Key Components of an Online Persona
I’ll be covering the key components of an online persona in my SXSW Panel, provided you vote for it and it gets accepted.
I’ll also show you some of the decisions personas have influenced for my clients.
Give the panel idea your vote and then attend SXSW Interactive.
Meanwhile, check out Best Buy Customer Profiles or Personas.
This is How You Prioritize Your Social Media Strategies
Conversion Marketing StrategyThere are some very specific things you want to accomplish when you engage your prospects and customers.
This is the Social Media Cycle as defined by Dave Evans. It has two distinct parts:
The Social Funnel includes both the traditional and post-purchase funnels
Just as it takes a series of “conversions” to move a prospect through the traditional sales funnel — to Awareness, then Consideration, then Action — you must likewise move them through the post-purchase funnel.
This is How You Prioritize Your Social Media Strategies
Yes, you have to convert a buyer into a user.
Then you have to help them form an opinion. Social media is great for this, because others’ opinions will shape their opinion. Focus on strategies that reveal what others are saying about your service or brand.
Finally, you must convert those with an opinion into talkers. Provide ways for them to share their experience. They will, in turn help you:
1. Convert more users into opinion holders
2. Direct new prospects to your funnel, often starting them in the Consideration stage
Would you like to know which social strategies lend themselves to each of these conversions? Would you like to know how to measure your success in the post-purchase funnel?
Vote for my SXSW Panel “What is your Social Conversion Rate?” Then attend.
Your vote will help educate business owners and marketers on a model that will make social media more helpful and interesting for all of us.
The First Thing Your Customers Buy From You Isn’t Your Product
Conversion Marketing StrategyLook at any product description on any website. Peruse any brochure. You will find a list of features designed to tell you why the product will do the things you need it to do to solve your problem.
Communications Products are the first purchase
They will probably have a check mark next to them.
What you will not find on these lists are features like these:
How a product or service communicates is not considered an important feature. This is why marketers — who develop the communication features — struggle to keep their staff and budgets during a downturn. This is why Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) don’t have a seat at the executive table with the CEO, President, COO and CFO.
To the executives, marketing doesn’t create products or sales. Marketing is a cost center.
Prospects actually become customers when they buy your communication products
The first purchase a prospect makes from your company is a communication product. It is the flyer, brochure, website, report, article, press announcement, blog post, webinar, etc. that you provide, ostensibly to help them understand how your product will help them solve a problem or entertain them.
They only occasionally pay with money. More often, they pay with their time, their attention, or with their contact information to continue the conversation. Since they don’t pay with money, marketing never shows up on the bottom line. It’s always seen as a cost.
Now, if a customer is satisfied with their “purchase,” they become a repeat customer taking more communication products. They also buy your company’s offering — for real money. Sales will get credit for the latter.
The mistake marketers make is creating communication products that are only focused on persuading prospects to buy the money-based products. How would things change if they focused on building great communication products instead?
The New Marketing Department
Imagine a marketing department run like a product development department. How would that change the focus?
This list could go on. What would you add? Tell us in the comments.
I’ll be talking about how buyer personas drive bigger marketing budgets at ProductCamp Austin on Saturday, August 15. Come out and let’s talk about great communications products.
Photo courtesy lusi
10 Ways to Know If Your Copy Converts Visitors to Customers
Conversion-Centered DesignDoes your copy convert visitors to customers? If you read this article and then go out and read your landing page or website copy, odds are very good that you will be embarrassed. Don’t be. It is not a helpful response. The proper response is to change the copy on your site. It works. You can completely revamp your website and increase conversions without changing one pixel of the design.
Please, for all of our sakes, change the copy.
Knowing bad copy when you see it will keep you from writing more of the same boring Styrofoam flavored copy. Here are 10 ways to know that your copy is going to convert visitors to buyers and one bonus tip.
Does your Copy Convert Visitors to Customers? Use these 10 ways to find out. Know bad copy when you see it
1. Does your Copy Convert Visitors to Customers? Does it Speak Specifically to Someone?
If you can’t tell who the copy was written for by simply reading it, you are in trouble. Who are your customers? What happened in their lives that made them come to your site at this particular time? Profile your visitors, understand their motivations, and write to their issues. Personas help.
2. Copy that Converts is Written Naturally
Do people talk like your copy is written? Does it convey meaning with the kinds of metaphors, euphemisms and engaging omissions that are used in speech? Or are the words straining to persuade the reader, attempting to touch on every point necessary to make the reader buy?
“Clarity trumps persuasion,” says Flint McGlaughlin of MarketingExperiments.
3. The Copy on the Page Matches the Offers in your Ads
Your visitors didn’t get to your site by magic. They got there from one of your ads, from a search engine or from a referral. Does the copy on your home pages and landing pages pick up where your ads started? Does your “Title” and “Meta Description,” which the search engines display on their results page match the copy on the page itself? If not, you are breaking what the Eisenberg brothers call the “Scent Trail.”
At each step of their journey to and through your site, there should be something familiar, something related to the previous step. Nothing provides scent better than headings and copy that draws on a common thing. Images and color are also affective, but that’s another article.
One of the most expensive mistakes is made in pay-per-click (PPC) or Google Ads advertising on search engines. If you offer a discount in your PPC ad, the page they come to or landing page should have the discount clearly visible. Too often, great offers in ads are defeated when the visitor is taken to your homepage, on which the specific discount cannot be found.
4. It gives the Reader Information They Can Use
Is the copy persuading or being helpful? It’s not about who you are and what you do. How can your visitors solve their problems with your offering? Do you present a good value proposition?
When I visit your site, does your copy answer any of the following questions for me:
These are just examples, but you need to understand that they are fundamentally different from telling the reader that you will give them “unparalleled visibility, divisional support and alignment.”
5. An Experienced Copywriter Wrote It
Don’t look at copy as filler on your page. In the hands of an experienced professional, your copy will increase the effectiveness of your website and this will translate into more leads and more sales. Unlike design, though, we can all create copy. And unfortunately we do.
As I have said before, treat copywriters like designers. Get two or three “sketches” of the copy. Choose one. Correct the errors. Leave the rest alone.
6. Copy that Converts Visitors to Customers is Efficient
Long copy is OK. Rambling copy is not. Use efficient copy of any length to engage your reader.
Amy Lemen recommends using copy indexing formulas to help you measure the efficiency of your copy.
7. Your Analytics Tell You It’s Working
Google Analytics is free, easy to add, and relatively easy to learn. Use it or use something else. Then ask someone to show you how to check the following. If copy changes don’t make these better, try again. The company that knows grows.
8. You had a Person Edit it, not a Committee
Having a whole website go through a committee is a bad idea. Just because your marketing manager developed the product messaging doesn’t mean she should write or edit the copy. The product manager should only look for errors, not rewrite. The CEO needs to know the end result.
9. There Are Links Throughout the Copy
When someone reads your text, they are engaged. In fact, they are probably less likely to see supporting information in the left or right columns of the standard webpage. Use links within paragraphs to get readers into the site. Don’t over-do it, however. Too many links or links that encompass lots of text will make the paragraph difficult to read.
This is great for SEO, too. It provides an internal linking structure that helps search engines understand what the site is about. Your copywriter should be using important keywords for these links.
10. Get Someone from Outside the Company to Participate
Internal writers are often too close to the material. Consider a copywriter from outside the company. This also requires that you go through the process of communicating what your company does.
You’ll be surprised at how difficult this will be, even with a sophisticated copywriter.
This process should help you refine your messaging, and maybe delay updates until you’ve got a coherent story that the average human will understand.
Bonus: Does your Copy Convert Visitors to Customers? Test Your Headlines
Your heading are critical to scanning readers. Try different headings, font sizes and colors. Be patient. Watch your analytics for benefits that last.
Litmus Test
Do you enjoy reviewing the copy for your website? Do you feel pride when you read it? Is it something you’d consider adding to your portfolio should you find yourself looking for work? If not, imagine what your visitors think. “Good enough” just doesn’t convert as well.
If you can’t write like these guys, please let someone else do it.
Here are some resources to grade your copy:
Using Notifications and Confirmations to Engage and Convert
Conversion Marketing StrategyIn a post on the American Marketing Association blog, I’ve presented my list of best practices for notification and clarification emails. These are golden opportunities to continue the conversation with an engaged prospect and move them closer to becoming a customer or a user of what you offer.
Notifications are sent when someone requests something from your web site. They can be triggered by a download, registration, demo, webinar, signup, contact inquiry, service request, or customer support call.
Each one should move your conversation with this person further along.
We see these as simply informational, but they should also provide additional value.
Send early, send often, and make sure each one leads back to your Website.
The Top 6 Mistakes
Mistake #1: Not sending notifications and confirmations
What are you doing to continue a conversation with your trial prospects, new buyers and new Web leads? Do not miss a chance to experience amazing open, read and response rates.
Transactional email has more priority than promotional or educational email. The confirmation, verification and follow-up messages relate to a specific transaction initiated by the receiver. They pay more attention. Plus, these emails can be sent within 24 hours of the transaction, the time that a prospect is hottest.
Mistake #2: Not sending enough notifications
Consider this scenario: A visitor to your site completes a registration form and downloads your white paper. They receive a verification email and click to verify their email address. SCORE! What additional notifications and confirmations could be sent immediately without pestering them?
Get creative. What else could you be sending that is specifically tied to this otherwise innocuous lead generating transaction?
Mistake #3: Not helping new users get started
As we’ve begun to understand the complete marketing cycle, we’ve extended the standard marketing funnel — Awareness, Consideration and Action — to include a post purchase process: Use, Opinion and Talk. The implication here is that you have to convert a purchaser to a user.
Mistake #4: Not tracking the performance of your notification and confirmation e-mails
Notification and confirmation e-mails are measured the same way a newsletter or promotional e-mail is: deliverability, open rates, and click-through rates. However, your notifications are usually not sent via an email service provider (ESP). Most notification email will be sent by the IT department.
Consider taking your notification and confirmation emails away from IT and using your ESP to give you the metrics you need.
Mistake #5: Not sending quickly
Send early and send often.
These emails should be automated. Confirmation and verification emails should arrive within minutes. Follow up e-mail should arrive within 24 hours. After that, the transaction begins to take on a “so yesterday” feeling for the recipient.
Mistake #6: Not offering that next piece of information
Each transaction is just a step in the journey of your new customer or new lead. The new user needs to know how to best use their purchase. The new lead needs the next piece of information that will help them feel comfortable buying from you.
Show them their next step.
Originally published in the AMA blog.
The Proper Use of Flash Headers
Conversion-Centered DesignExecutives love their sites to have flash headers. It looks cool. It looks like marketing is doing something. The problem is, a flash header can hurt engagement and conversion more than it helps.
The Triple Threat of Flash Headers
Flash banners are usually no more than cool images with “poser” slogans riding on top of them. They tend to focus on what’s good about the company and very little on solving the visitors’ problems.
Flash does draw the eye, and will be looked at by visitors. But, if the meat of your message is in the body of the page, this actually draws the reader away from the important stuff.
Tall flash banners also push your body content down, obscuring much of it below the fold.
This is the triple threat: irrelevance, distraction and obfuscation.
Proper Use of Flash
Flash is a great tool for communicating your message in seconds. It will appeal to short-attention-span visitors such as your Spontaneous and Competitive visitors. Images can reinforce brands quickly.
If you’re going to use flash on a page, it basically has to do the work of the whole page. This means you need to spend considerable time making sure that it will:
Flash that Works
I’ve seen few flash headers that do this well. The Tumri home page is an exception. The motion in the flash presentation draws the eye. With just a few moments of watching, you get how their offering works at a high level. To the right of the “action” is a button enticing you to “Learn More.” This is a weak call to action, but at least it’s there. The flash presentation is tasteful and probably highlights products sold by Tumri’s target customers.
Tumri Flash Header.
Yes, their flash header pushes down the content, but there’s not much there of value to visitors below, just brochure copy, self-promoting icons and news about the company. In short, if it wasn’t for the flash header, this page would be an engagement disaster.
The Magic Email for Freelancers and Job Seekers
Persuasion ScienceEmail is the biggest social network on the planet. Even 80-year-olds have been on email long before giving Facebook a try. Because of this, it is the most effective tool for building a network that will connect you with the people that can give you work — whether you are a freelancer or a The Market for Me Book Blog.
The problem is that email is a very personal medium. If we send unsolicited email, we feel we’re invading someone’s personal space. After all, we’ve all had spammers invade our space.
The Magic Email for Freelancers and Job Seekers
The Magic Email
The Magic Email gives you polite, respectful access to your email network. It contains the following components:
As a bonus, it should offer something of value; a link to something of broad interest.
The Magic Email creates an email network that has given you permission to contact them. It is through these contacts that you will win more freelance opportunities, and have your resume and cover letter delivered directly to hiring managers.
The Details of the Strategy
If you want to turn email into a work-generating network, listen to my presentation at Freelance Austin. Furthermore, Austin-based CardboardResume.com™ has sponsored a free copy of my book The Market for Me: Surviving Job Loss and Building Your Lifetime Career Network.
Download Audio
The Job Song courtesy of Industrial Jazz Group via Music Alley.
The Great Marketing Business Card Scratch-off
Conversion Marketing StrategyJeffrey and Bryan Eisenberg make the point in their book Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? that the average tenure of a marketing executive is less than the gestation period of an elephant. WiderFunnel has summarized some of the findings of an Ernst & Young study confirming that CMOs and VPs of Marketing don’t have a seat at the executive table. Anecdotally, many of my friends in marketing roles found themselves to be among the first to go when layoffs became popular in 2008 and 2009.
What would the title on your business card be if it reflected reality?
Clearly, marketing people aren’t all that important.
And then there’s the family reunion blank stare. Your cousins, aunts, uncles and some-how-relateds ask, “what are you doing these days?” You say, “I’m in marketing.” Long pause. They want to respond positively, but suspect that you may have just revealed that you’re being treated for some sort of incurable skin disease.
So, they just smile and stare.
Clearly, if we’re good at communicating, we would pick a word that, well, communicated what we do.
So, let’s call ourselves something else, something that reflects the value we add.
21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks
Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.
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I’m not a “Web Marketing Strategist”
If you were to look at my career, you would find the word “marketing” in most of my corporate titles. However, when given the opportunity to give myself a title, I always chose something that communicated what I did. When I was responsible for marketing at my own company, Soft Reality, I put “VP of Customers” on my cards.
Today, if you analyzed what I do for a living, you might call me a “Web Marketing Strategist” or “Internet Marketer” or “Online Marketing Strategist.” I do lots of marketing-ish things. But, I want my practice to survive the gestating elephant syndrome, so I call myself a “Conversion Scientist.”
Now, no-one knows what a Conversion Scientist is, but the word “scientist” delivers the message that I’m probably smart and most likely know a good deal that the listener doesn’t. That’s the truth. The lab coat seals the deal.
And I can explain what I do in one sentence. “Conversion is the science of turning Web traffic into leads and sales.”
Can you explain what you do without using words like “messaging,” “brand,” “demand generation,” or “campaigns?”
Send Me Your Business Card
If the title on your business card has the word “Marketing” in it, I want you to scratch it out, write in a better description of what you do, and post a picture or scan of it in the comments. I’ve added the ability to upload images to your comments.
Image courtesy vivekchugh