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.
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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.
Why your Website may not be helping visitors choose you
As a Conversion Scientist, my job is to cast a critical eye on the sites of my clients. In my recent ClickZ columns, I’ve turned that critical eye toward behavioral marketing vendors. “The Language of Behavioral Marketing” parts one and two are designed to help readers understand what behavioral vendor Web site mean and to underscore some of the mistakes they make.
I think any B2B marketing team could learn a bit from these columns.
In Part One, I highlight why these sites weren’t helpful to me in my quest to better understand the industry. Are you making these mistakes?
Is your Web site confusing your readers or clarifying things for them?
Everyone’s the “Leader”
There’s something we’re trying to say when we say we’re the “leader,” but rarely do we say what it is. Are we the highest volume provider? Are we the low-cost leader? Do we have the most market share? Or are we just trying to look bigger than we really are? If it’s the latter, pick something that defines your leadership and say that.
Let your participation in industry events help you define your leadership. Be the thought leader with helpful, smart content.
Shooting at the competition
The sites that I reviewed took great pains to define who they are not. This is understandable as there are hundreds of competing ad networks joining the industry, many of which don’t hold themselves to a standard that big brand advertisers want. Nonetheless, it is far more powerful to tell the story of who you are than to throw stones at your competitors. It just takes more work to define and tell that story.
Everyone does everything
Pick your place in the market and be willing to walk away from the rest. The companies whose sites I reviewed are capable of applying behavioral targeting to a wide range of industries, and don’t want to limit themselves. However, I think they would be well served to select some turf to dominate, and be willing to concede some part of the market in the short term.
Pick the bucket you want your visitors to put you in, or they’ll put you in their own buckets, which may be the “not sure what they do best” bucket.
Valueless value propositions
The power of picking your bucket is that you can create a value proposition that differentiates you and establishes you as a desirable partner.
The businesses I reviewed clearly wanted to work with major brands, but don’t want to walk away from small and medium-sized businesses. Picking one might reduce their appeal to the other, but it doesn’t have to. “We’re Big Brand Behavioral Marketers” appeals to big brands, but offering a white paper on the site entitled “Why the Big Brands Win in Behavioral” would appeal to smaller brands without undercutting the basic value proposition.
In short, use powerful positioning statements to establish your ground, but use innovative content to finesse your offering.
Playing it Safe with Content
Once you’ve stepped out onto the skinny branches of defining who you are as a business, you’re content has to reinforce that. It should do it emotionally, passionately and without compromise.
There is little copy less emotional, passionate and compromising than “corporate communication,” and this is where most Web copy is drawn. Corporate communication is for proposals, the prospectus and the quarterly report. It is not appropriate for marketing communication.
Add a little attitude to the video. Title your reports and white papers in unexpected ways. Have some fun with your executive bios. Remember business people are humans.
There is a great deal of information, but you have to decipher the code.
There appears to be some amazing solutions in the behavioral marketing industry. In this article, I parse the language of the behavioral marketing world and find out once and for all what it all really means.
I use the websites of a number of behavioral advertising vendors in an attempt to clear the fog that surrounds this marketplace.
I can already hear the groans.
Yes, the behavioral marketers’ children have no shoes, to borrow from a famous euphemism. The websites of the behavioral marketing world aren’t necessarily the best examples of advanced marketing techniques. But I am not interested in casting stones at individual sites. I’m on a search for meaning and truth.
Here are some general observations about why it is so difficult for marketers to narrow the list of behavioral marketing vendors based on their websites.
In the Behavioral Marketing Vendors’ World Everyone’s a Leader
As ClickZ author Tessa Wegert points out in her survey of ad networks, there are a lot of “leaders” in the market. In fact, most of them call themselves the “leading provider” of something. We’ll see if we can find clues to what each vendor is a leader in.
Shooting at the “Other Guys”
Behavioral marketing vendors spend a lot of time describing what they are not. They’re dealing with an industry that has exploded over the past several years, a market with few barriers to entry. As a result, aggressive vendors have entered the market creating privacy issues and abusing their customers’ brands in an effort to get “reach” at any price.
More reputable vendors go out of their way to differentiate themselves from these “pray and spray” approaches, writing about “premium ad networks” and “comprehensive technologies.” For those of us who don’t know the history, this language sounds like bravado and manipulation.
Everyone Does Everything
From their websites, it’s very difficult to tell what these vendors do and don’t do. In general, the claims to fall into these categories:
We have a network of online publishers — websites — that let us place ads on their sites.
We collect data from the people who have been to the sites of our ad network.
We collect data from publishers that help us target ads at visitors across an ad network.
We have a special technology that makes us better at targeting ads at visitors across an ad network.
We develop the strategies and/or creative that will make you better at behavioral marketing.
All of the vendors provide some combination of these services, but they all do them differently. Most are also courting publishers, which I am ignoring for this series. Their websites have a complex message to deliver, making it difficult for any vendor to differentiate themselves. They should try harder.
21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks
Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.
43 Pages with Examples
Assumptive Phrasing
"We" vs. "You"
Pattern Interrupts
The Power of Three
"*" indicates required fields
Valueless Value Propositions
Anyone who subscribes to the “eight-second rule,” a rule that says you have only eight seconds to engage a Web visitor, is in for a communication challenge. Behavioral marketing vendors adhere to this rule, trying to fit everything they do into a sentence or short paragraph. The result is that their value propositions sound remarkably similar.
“patent pending, dynamic ad optimization technology”
“comprehensive suite of targeting technologies to reach target audiences across a Premium Network
“The technologies we use to deliver, target, and optimize your campaigns go far beyond established norms and standards for performance”
“the leading targeting platform and advertising marketplace that connect people to engaging advertising.”
“increases the productivity of each customer interaction through our industry-leading predictive marketing solutions
In contrast, the “self-serve” sites get to the meat quickly. “Hundreds of millions of impressions a day on hundreds of thousands of sites. Click here to get started.” Now, that’s works in eight seconds.
Playing It Safe
The majority of the sites I’m reviewing would be called “brochure sites.” The main goal of a brochure site is to look professional and successful. However, this encourages a vendor to be very careful with the content it places on the site. This is certainly the case for the behavioral marketing industry.
Roy H. Williams of the Wizard Academy says:
“You’re not communicating effectively if you’re not pissing someone off.”
I’d like to acknowledge those vendors who take a chance in the interest of communicating more clearly.
These coats are woven from mono-filament engagium for strength and protection. The cloth is designed to protect the wearer from all forms of marketing chemicals no matter how acidic or overblown. The material will resist most toxic marketing, including email ribonucleic flaccid, copy hydro-inflate, and Flash fires.
However, there is a danger to the appearance of unbounded intelligence intimated by such an outfit.
Be forewarned that, when wearing the coat in public, you will be expected to have intelligence far beyond normal human capacity. Nonetheless, making up answers to questions about genetics or the proper operation of an electron microscope will harm the image that we try to convey with the lab coat. It’s OK to say “I don’t know.”
Needless to say, such a garment doesn’t come cheap. Safe marketing my friends.
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
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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
Deciphering Behavioral Marketing Web Sites
Conversion Marketing StrategyAs a Conversion Scientist, my job is to cast a critical eye on the sites of my clients. In my recent ClickZ columns, I’ve turned that critical eye toward behavioral marketing vendors. “The Language of Behavioral Marketing” parts one and two are designed to help readers understand what behavioral vendor Web site mean and to underscore some of the mistakes they make.
I think any B2B marketing team could learn a bit from these columns.
In Part One, I highlight why these sites weren’t helpful to me in my quest to better understand the industry. Are you making these mistakes?
Is your Web site confusing your readers or clarifying things for them?
Everyone’s the “Leader”
There’s something we’re trying to say when we say we’re the “leader,” but rarely do we say what it is. Are we the highest volume provider? Are we the low-cost leader? Do we have the most market share? Or are we just trying to look bigger than we really are? If it’s the latter, pick something that defines your leadership and say that.
Let your participation in industry events help you define your leadership. Be the thought leader with helpful, smart content.
Shooting at the competition
The sites that I reviewed took great pains to define who they are not. This is understandable as there are hundreds of competing ad networks joining the industry, many of which don’t hold themselves to a standard that big brand advertisers want. Nonetheless, it is far more powerful to tell the story of who you are than to throw stones at your competitors. It just takes more work to define and tell that story.
Everyone does everything
Pick your place in the market and be willing to walk away from the rest. The companies whose sites I reviewed are capable of applying behavioral targeting to a wide range of industries, and don’t want to limit themselves. However, I think they would be well served to select some turf to dominate, and be willing to concede some part of the market in the short term.
Pick the bucket you want your visitors to put you in, or they’ll put you in their own buckets, which may be the “not sure what they do best” bucket.
Valueless value propositions
The power of picking your bucket is that you can create a value proposition that differentiates you and establishes you as a desirable partner.
The businesses I reviewed clearly wanted to work with major brands, but don’t want to walk away from small and medium-sized businesses. Picking one might reduce their appeal to the other, but it doesn’t have to. “We’re Big Brand Behavioral Marketers” appeals to big brands, but offering a white paper on the site entitled “Why the Big Brands Win in Behavioral” would appeal to smaller brands without undercutting the basic value proposition.
In short, use powerful positioning statements to establish your ground, but use innovative content to finesse your offering.
Playing it Safe with Content
Once you’ve stepped out onto the skinny branches of defining who you are as a business, you’re content has to reinforce that. It should do it emotionally, passionately and without compromise.
There is little copy less emotional, passionate and compromising than “corporate communication,” and this is where most Web copy is drawn. Corporate communication is for proposals, the prospectus and the quarterly report. It is not appropriate for marketing communication.
Add a little attitude to the video. Title your reports and white papers in unexpected ways. Have some fun with your executive bios. Remember business people are humans.
Image courtesy nighthawk7
What Can We Learn From the Websites of Behavioral Marketing Vendors?
Lead GenerationThere appears to be some amazing solutions in the behavioral marketing industry. In this article, I parse the language of the behavioral marketing world and find out once and for all what it all really means.
I use the websites of a number of behavioral advertising vendors in an attempt to clear the fog that surrounds this marketplace.
I can already hear the groans.
Yes, the behavioral marketers’ children have no shoes, to borrow from a famous euphemism. The websites of the behavioral marketing world aren’t necessarily the best examples of advanced marketing techniques. But I am not interested in casting stones at individual sites. I’m on a search for meaning and truth.
Here are some general observations about why it is so difficult for marketers to narrow the list of behavioral marketing vendors based on their websites.
In the Behavioral Marketing Vendors’ World Everyone’s a Leader
As ClickZ author Tessa Wegert points out in her survey of ad networks, there are a lot of “leaders” in the market. In fact, most of them call themselves the “leading provider” of something. We’ll see if we can find clues to what each vendor is a leader in.
Shooting at the “Other Guys”
Behavioral marketing vendors spend a lot of time describing what they are not. They’re dealing with an industry that has exploded over the past several years, a market with few barriers to entry. As a result, aggressive vendors have entered the market creating privacy issues and abusing their customers’ brands in an effort to get “reach” at any price.
More reputable vendors go out of their way to differentiate themselves from these “pray and spray” approaches, writing about “premium ad networks” and “comprehensive technologies.” For those of us who don’t know the history, this language sounds like bravado and manipulation.
Everyone Does Everything
From their websites, it’s very difficult to tell what these vendors do and don’t do. In general, the claims to fall into these categories:
All of the vendors provide some combination of these services, but they all do them differently. Most are also courting publishers, which I am ignoring for this series. Their websites have a complex message to deliver, making it difficult for any vendor to differentiate themselves. They should try harder.
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Valueless Value Propositions
Anyone who subscribes to the “eight-second rule,” a rule that says you have only eight seconds to engage a Web visitor, is in for a communication challenge. Behavioral marketing vendors adhere to this rule, trying to fit everything they do into a sentence or short paragraph. The result is that their value propositions sound remarkably similar.
In contrast, the “self-serve” sites get to the meat quickly. “Hundreds of millions of impressions a day on hundreds of thousands of sites. Click here to get started.” Now, that’s works in eight seconds.
Playing It Safe
The majority of the sites I’m reviewing would be called “brochure sites.” The main goal of a brochure site is to look professional and successful. However, this encourages a vendor to be very careful with the content it places on the site. This is certainly the case for the behavioral marketing industry.
Roy H. Williams of the Wizard Academy says:
I’d like to acknowledge those vendors who take a chance in the interest of communicating more clearly.
This article The Language of Behavioral Marketing, Part 1 by Brian Massey originally appeared on ClickZ.
The Lab Coat: Conversion Scientist Chic
News & EventsTom Bennett sporting his new Lab Coat
During my presentation at Innotech Portland on Social Conversion Twitter was alive with chatter about my attractive Lab Coat. In generous Conversion Scientist fashion, I provided @tom_bennett of The New Group with a coat of his own, as well as @bryanrhoads and @kellyrfeller of Intel.
Clearly, a I’m not the only one that looks good in a lab coat.
But, lest you believe that the coat is only a fashion statement, be assured that it is an important protective garment for any Conversion Scientist.
In my letter to Tom, Bryan and Kelly, I tell them that the new addition to their wardrobe is functional as well as stylish.
Brian Massey, Kent Lewis and Dylan Boyd at Innotech Portland
However, there is a danger to the appearance of unbounded intelligence intimated by such an outfit.
Needless to say, such a garment doesn’t come cheap. Safe marketing my friends.
Brian