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An article in the Gardian says, “Brands need to think like publishers to build effective content marketing work flows and outcomes including applying the science of accepted newsroom practices.” For an overworked, understaffed marketing department, this is a daunting thought.

This audio program will show you how to turn up the frequency and quality of your content output, with a minimum of time and resources. In this presentation, we’ll introduce you to the content cascade.
The Conversion Scientist Podcast


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How often are people publishing content?

Almost 70% of 100 online marketers surveyed are releasing content at least weekly. Blogs are important, too. Almost 56% are updating their blogs at least weekly.

There’s only one reliable indicator across industries for increasing the traffic to your site and that is the frequency of your blog posts. The more frequently you publish, the more your traffic will grow and the faster it will grow.

What is a content cascade?

A webinar represents a point in time in which a subject matter expert has organized a topic relevant to your business. The main points, graphs, and data have been assembled and organized. This is the hard work of content marketing.

The content cascade uses inexpensive and free tools to turn the graphics and the audio into sharable content of different types. The subject matter expert has done all the work. They’ve prepared the material, you now can create eBooks,  infographs, white papers, blog posts, and reports.

That is what we call the content cascade. Listen to my webinar in its entirety to find out how you can turn those webinars sitting in your resource tabs collecting dust, into kick-ass content that converts.

Links to Resources Mentioned

Hublished for Webinar Management
Camtasia Studio for recording audio and slides
Transcribe Me and SpeechPad for transcriptions
PowerPoint for graphic design
BoxShot and BoxShot3D for Product images
Infogr.am for Infographics
Audacity for editing audio
BluBrry Podcast Hosting
Hootsuite Pro social media
Twitterfeed social feed
ClicktoTweet social sharing
Slideshare for presentations
Embed Code Generator for WordPress
Unbounce, Lander and LeadPages for landing pages.

This number — The Basic Unit of Upside, or BUU — offers simple insight into the effect of website optimization on your business.

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My new Marketing land article answers some burning questions for your business. If these questions aren’t burning in your mind, then why not?

Click for a Conversion Rate Upside Report that does the math for you.

  • Do I have enough traffic and conversions to do testing
  • What is a good conversion rate?
  • How do I calculate BUU for a long sales-cycle business?
  • How do I factor in profit?
  • How much should I spend to get more revenue from my existing traffic?

The ultimate question is this: How will small changes in conversion rate affect my yearly revenue? This is the promise of understanding your BUU.


21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks to Skyrocket Conversions

21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks

Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.

  • 43 Pages with Examples
  • Assumptive Phrasing
  • "We" vs. "You"
  • Pattern Interrupts
  • The Power of Three

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Marketers need a common vocabulary and notation for the things we’re doing online. We need to understand the elements that we can introduce and the ways they react with each other.

At Conversion Sciences, we stole the notation of chemists. They have a clear notation, like the notation for how vinegar reacts with baking soda.

Marketing reactions are like baking soda and vinegar.

Marketing reactions are like baking soda and vinegar.

Here’s our periodic table of the online marketing elements:

The periodic table of marketing elements.

The periodic table of marketing elements.

The bottom line is this: We want to get a reaction from our visitors.

When we aren’t generating reactions on our site, we can see the results clearly:

  • High bounce rates and exit percentages.
  • Low conversion rates.
  • Low revenue per visit.
  • High acquisition costs.

So, what do we do about it?

Eliminating Inert Gases

In our periodic chart, there is a section called the “Inert Gases.”

The inert gases-Bordom, Hot Air, Melium, Abondon

The inert gases-Bordom, Hot Air, Melium, Abondon

The Inert Gases – Bordom, Melium, Hot Air, and Abandon – contaminate the pages on your website and can be detected through your analytics.

Find out how to eliminate the Inert Gases from your web site with this month’s Marketing Land column, 4 Elemental Problems with Low converting Web Pages.

Listen to the Column

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  • How do I calculate BUU for a long sales-cycle business?
  • How do I factor in profit?
  • How much should I spend to get more revenue from my existing traffic?

The ultimate question is this: How will small changes in conversion rate affect my yearly revenue? This is the promise of understanding your BUU.


21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks to Skyrocket Conversions

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

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.


Use content to connect your social batteries to social landing pages and get customered. Improve your social media conversion rate. Read on

They friend you. They fan you. They pin you. They follow you.

BUT how often to they customer you? How often do they buy, subscribe, or register? How often can you get your fans and followers to convert?

When you get customered, your business grows, you gain another social influencer, and you get proof that your social media strategy is delivering what your social network wants.

They Like Me

They “liked” Me

BUT

Customer Me

They didn’t “customer” me.

Getting customered is an important part of the social media life cycle, and it’s also one of the trickiest. First, you need to recognize the potential within your social networks.

The possibilities Within Your Social Networks: Improving Your Social Media Conversion Rate

Social Media Battery Drawing
Your social networks store potential, like a battery stores voltage. What you need to do to charge your social battery:

  • Get Noticed
  • Get Liked
  • Get Followed
  • Get Connected

Sounds great, right? But, how do you hook up to the juice that turns that potential into leads and revenue? Tapping this potential requires that you connect your social battery to something of interest to both you and your social aficionados.

Use Content for Wires

As you know, there is a plethora of content out there and it comes in many forms. Content might be blog post links on Twitter, contests on Facebook, and product pictures on Pinterest. Without the content, no one is going to find their way back.

Many of us already have content strategies for our social networks, but what gets people to customer us when they visit? How can we get engage our customers?
Content. Content drives engagement.

Connect Them to Your Landing Pages

Unfortunately, once read, content is quickly dismissed. No matter how great your content is.

Keep in mind that most visitors spend only a few seconds on a new site deciding whether to engage further with the content or to click the “Back” button. So if your landing page is forming the bridge that introduces your new visitors to the rest of your site’s content, it’s vital that this page be as compelling as possible in getting new visitors to investigate further.

What is the next step for me as a visitor and potential customerer of your business?

The secret is to treat your content pages as social landing pages.

Landing Pages and social Landing pagesA landing page is a single minded page designed to do two things:

  1. Keep the promise made by the link that was clicked.
  2. Get the reader to do something that benefits them and your business.

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

  1. Deliver the content promised.
  2. Get the reader to customer you.

Both pages have content that delivers on a promise and a call to action that entices readers to do something wonderful.

Where do Social Landing Pages Live?

Social media landing pages live anywhere you are drawing social visitors.

  • Your blog content pages have the content, but do they have the call to action? Is the call to action where it can be seen? – Add calls to action in or near the content.
  • Your email signup pages have the call to action, but do they have the content that makes signing up appealing? – Give subscribers a better reason to sign up than “Get on another mailing list.”
  • Your lead generation pages, offering gated content have the call to action, but do you talk about the content you are offering, or do you talk about our company and your products instead? – Any page to which your friends, fans and followers might come in search of education or entertainment qualified as a social media landing page.
  • Product pages on eCommerce sites, are another frequent social media landing page. The call to action is invariably there: Add to Cart.

Ask yourself the following questions about your social landing pages:

  • What content topics generate the most engaged visitors?
  • Will more visitors comment if you simply ask them to?
  • Where should your conversion beacons be: in the sidebar column, before or after the post or in the copy?
  • What offers draw more clicks on your conversion beacons?

The Anatomy Of A Great Social Landing Page

Unlike its counterpart, the social landing page isn’t focused getting on one action from a visitor; it has to manage four different kinds of conversion. Do your social landing pages manage all four?

Social media strategies have become a boon to search marketers. Social media builds backlinks from authoritative sites, creates a stream of keyword-rich content and drives direct traffic to key pages.

While the “media” part of social media is almost completely free; the “social” part is quite expensive.

The “social” part of social media requires generating a steady menu of content and participating in the conversations generated around that content.

“Social” media isn’t cheap, but the things we do to generate great search engine results—creating content, encouraging conversations—are exactly the things that boost conversion rates and drive sales. This is what readers of this column are interested in.

Increasing conversion rates around social media requires that we change our tactics. I’m going to introduce you to the “social media landing page” and show you why you need to use this proven tool.

A different kind of conversion

For most of us, there is one kind of conversion. It happens when a visitor to our site fills out a form or completes a purchase. It is when a stranger becomes a prospect and a prospect becomes a customer.

In the realm of social media, a conversion can be quite different.

Dave Evans, in his book Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day defines three stages that a social influencer must go through to create word-of-mouth messages for our businesses.

He starts with a small number of individuals who have purchased our products or services. Ironically, we have to “convert” these customers into users of our products, so that they have the authority to speak about our offering. We then help them form an opinion of us—preferably a favorable one—with the ultimate goal of getting them to talk about their experience.

We will also want to give those that hear these messages a way to interact with us.

Needless to say, a traditional landing page isn’t going to get us there. These pages are designed to entice action long after the post-purchase process has run its course.

Unlike its counterpart, the social media landing page isn’t focused getting on one action from a visitor; it has to do more.

Don’t worry: you probably see social landing pages every day. See if you can guess where I’m going with this.

Conversion to user

The social media landing page must educate a customer on how to use your product or offering in their situation. Therefore, the page must have an educational component.

Articles, videos and reviews with a “how to” or “10 ways to” orientation are classic examples, and you’re probably already generating such content for your search strategies.

Conversion to opinion-holder

It stands to reason that, if someone uses your product or service, they are going to form an opinion of it. However, studies tell us that “social proof” can often override personal experience in our perceptions. Therefore, a social landing page should expose the opinions of others.

Testimonials are the time-honored tactic for communicating social proof, but savvy social networkers want more specific, transparent and relevant commentary from people in their social graph. The social landing page must expose social gestures—comments, retweets, subscriptions and “likes”—to influencers seeking to make a statement with their opinion.

Conversion to talker

Once someone in authority has formed an opinion of our brand and offering, our landing page must provide them with a way to spread their message. Fortunately, there are myriad ways for visitors to our landing page to share their opinion, from comments to TweetMeme buttons.

Have you identified a page design that provides all of the moving parts outlined here? If you said a blog, a forum or a Facebook page, you are right on target. Each of these provides opportunities to educate visitors and allows influencers to spread the message through comments and posts.

Conversion beacons bring new visitors full circle

All of this will do little more than grow our social graph. How do we get new visitors—those influenced by our customers to consider our offering?

Conversion beacons tell visitors how to start interacting with us. These are classic offers, ads or forms that will often lead to traditional landing pages. These form the link back to the traditional sales funnel.

It is the conversion beacons that offer us a measurable way to calculate ROI, as these drive new leads and purchases.

Optimize your social landing pages and boost your social media conversion rate

Now that you know how important these pages are, give your blog or Facebook page another look.

Every good conversion scientist knows that testing is the quickest way to get better at online marketing, and the same is true for social landing pages. However, social landing pages aren’t as easy to test as traditional landing pages.

In my next column, I’ll show you the tools and tactics I use to measure the effectiveness of my social media marketing campaigns.

Original article on social media landing pages was published on Search Engine Land

Remember that these are Social Visitors

Given that your visitors are coming from a social network, they will be more likely to want to see social content with the product information. You should oblige them.

  • Consider star ratings and reviews for your products.
  • Use social proof. How many others have customered (bought) this product? How many friends, fans and followers do you have?
  • Don’t invite them to become a friend, fan or follower. They already are. The only choice they should have is to customer you.

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

Images by Brian Massey
The Conversion Scientist Podcast


“Getting Customered: Improving Your Social Media Conversion Rate” was recorded at Engage Mexico 2013 in Puerta Vallarta.
Can’t get enough? Download our Get Customered: Social Media Conversion Rate PowerPoint Presentation.


21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks to Skyrocket Conversions

21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks

Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.

  • 43 Pages with Examples
  • Assumptive Phrasing
  • "We" vs. "You"
  • Pattern Interrupts
  • The Power of Three

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This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.


The original Conversion Scientist sat down with host of the Big Value Big Business podcast, James Lynch, to discuss everything from how he makes a terrible employee, to finding your own gimmick, to the inter-workings of a conversion scientist.
Some highlights from the interview include:

        

  • Brian spends a great deal of his time, helping businesses transform their websites through a “steady diet of visitor profiling, purposeful content, analytics and testing..”
  •     

  • Brian indulges his passion by speaking and writing about the art and science of conversion optimization. It is almost a sickness really.
  •     

  • What makes Brian tick? He thrives in the challenge of creating value, creating something new and helping businesses make more money on the traffic flowing through their website. “I mean who doesn’t want to get more money from the traffic that they’re getting on their website.”
  •     

  • Gain insight from his experiences in building a business in such a niche market, including why it is essential to create a “hook”, and of course, a “gimmick”. Sorry, the lab coat idea is taken.
  •     

  • Learn how converting more visitors into customer on your website is INDEED a science.

Brian Massety - The Conversion Scientist
Grab your pen and paper, learn something new, and enjoy the latest edition of Big Value Big Business Podscast with James Lynch.

“It takes a combination of experience, skill and neurosis to end up being a Conversion Scientist.” – Brian Massey
“It takes a combination of experience, skill and neurosis to end up being a Conversion Scientist.” – Brian Massey

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Tim Ash and Joel Harvey talk testing screw-ups and “with and without” tests. Find out if there is a lab at Conversion Sciences called the “QA-tion Station” and how many Igloos Joel has built in the latest installment of Landing Page Optimization on Webmaster Radio.

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I did a little experiment using images and copy in my Marketing Land column Take Control of Your Visitors’ Eyes. Instead of using my superior powers of page design to highlight an important piece of information, I used them to hide that information.

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I purposefully did some things you may be doing accidentally, to the detriment of your site and your visitors.

When looking at web and landing page copy, I often find the important information buried, or designed in such a way as to look unimportant.

Value propositions, phone numbers, guarantees, and special offers are some of the things that are important to visitors, but don’t look important.

Images, captions and more

Read the column or listen to the podcast to find out how I obscured an important fact, and how I highlighted another, less relevant fact using:

  • Images
  • Captions
  • Copy
  • Headlines
  • Bulleted Lists
  • Links
  • Pull Quotes

It’s a show and tell column, .


21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks to Skyrocket Conversions

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

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.


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


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Tweetables: Click to Tweet

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

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

Typical vs. Indispensable Marketers

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

Power Processes: Visible, Measurable, Repeatable

A power process has the following characteristics:

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

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

2. It is repeatable with consistent results.

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

3. It is measureable.

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

4. It provides a self-regulating learning curve.

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

Power Process #1: Make the phone ring

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


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