The copy on your landing page can seal the deal or send your website’s visitors elsewhere. Since you only have a couple of seconds to capture the interest of a visitor, according to a recent Silverpop survey, the words that you use on your site are essential to holding a visitor’s interest so they feel ready to move on to the next step. Your copy should help build affinity, establish trust and be optimized for the Web. Landing page best practices dictate that the most compelling copy provides visitors with a clear path to follow so they can easily complete the desired transaction.
How to Create Compelling Copy for a Landing Page
- Incorporate psychological factors into your copy to make your product or service a logical, desirable solution. Build trust and appeal to your visitor on the emotional level by addressing their problem or concern. Then provide a solution that visitors can use today. For example, a landing page may state, "Feel energized and get in shape with our exclusive... Your all-inclusive journey to rejuvenation is only a click away. Act now."
- Use action-rich language. Integrating action verbs into your copy gives your visitors clear, definitive instructions about what they’re supposed to do on your landing page, or lets visitors know how they can benefit from your products or services.
Examples of action-oriented instructions:
- Click here
- Submit
- Download your copy
Examples of action-oriented phrases that describe benefits:
- Learn how to…
- See results…
- Increase your…
- Make your own…
- Write in the second person, using “you” and “your” language. Visitors want to know how you will benefit them, and writing in the second person helps engage the reader and personalize the experience.
- Let your site’s visitor know why your product or service is valuable. After listing a feature, explain its benefit. Most visitors intrinsically know how a service or product is beneficial, but stating it for them drives the idea home. For example, “In this e-book, you will learn how to…Manage your time (feature) so you can spend more of it with your family (benefit).”
- Make your copy scan-able. Many people don’t read text; they scan it. With this in mind, write the most important information at the beginning of paragraphs, use bullet points and integrate reader keywords.
- Use repetition to create a congruent experience. By using the same reader keywords in the call-to-action, landing page headline, within the copy and on graphics. This matters because you’ll assure visitors that they'll truly receive the offer promised and are not falling for a gimmick.
- Get rid of fluff. Whether you write the copy on your own or hire a copywriter, keep in mind that the use of industry jargon, empty adverbs and meaningless adjectives are pointless on a landing page. Keep the information benefit-driven, short and to the point. When in doubt, always choose clarity over creativity.
- Use a strong call-to-action. Landing page best practices call for a clear call-to-action that lets a visitor know what they need to do as soon as they finish reading your message.
- Edit the copy, especially if you wrote it. The most compelling copy can seem worthless to a site visitor if it has grammar errors, spelling mistakes, inaccurate information or inconsistencies. To set yourself up as a trustworthy professional, make sure your copy is error-free and cohesive.
If your copy fails to quickly capture the attention of your target customer, you risk wasting your marketing investment. By following landing page best practices and performing A/B tests, you’ll increase your conversion rates and ROI, and create a page that continually performs well.
What copywriting techniques are the most effective for your landing page?
With less than three seconds to make your visitors do what you want, your landing page can be one of your most powerful marketing tools. The main goal of a landing page is to increase your conversions. By creating a simple, focused landing page with a compelling key phrase, you can funnel a reader’s attention to the call-to-action, or CTA. The key, according to Entrepreneur, is to make sure your landing page and CTA offer align—your message must match your brand promise. By following landing page best practices, you can make sure that your visitors always have an instant connection.
Landing Page Best Practices: How to Make Sure Your Offer and Landing Page Align
- Offer a solution to a problem. In your CTA and landing page, never offer the following as a solution for your visitor: your contact information, facts or case studies. Good solutions that are also good marketing offers have a perceived value. Examples of such can include free products, templates, trial offers, coupons or product demonstrations.
- Make your CTA and landing page product- or service-specific. If your CTA offer is about the great deal you offer on personalized pens, for example, have the landing page be solely about the personalized pens offered. A landing page that includes pens, pencils and envelopes (or simply goes to the homepage) is not what the visitor seeks, creates frustration and can be confusing.
- Make sure that all the offers in your CTAs are accurate. No customer wants to click on a CTA offer just to find that a promotion has ended. Instead, create a CTA offer and landing page that you can use long-term. In addition to fulfilling the message in your CTA, an established and focused landing page can rank higher in searches. Plus, the most successful landing pages are those that match the CTA offer on the first click.
- Keep it simple. Giving a visitor too much information in a CTA offer and/or landing page can weigh them down, create hyperlink distraction and drive a visitor elsewhere. Keep the copy clear and use only the most relevant information needed to entice the reader.
- Make the CTA offer and landing page headlines benefit-driven. Visitor like to know what your product or service will do for them. For example, instead of stating, "12 issues of 'Super Cool Magazine' for only $1," try, "Get 12 issues of 'Super Cool Magazine' for only $1
and learn how to position your company for success!"
- Be smart about matching CTA offers to a visitor’s position in the sales process:
- Make a list of your current offers and divide them into the three sales cycle categories: awareness, evaluation and purchase. Awareness refers to a customer who simply knows about your company, product or service. Evaluation refers to customers who know what you offer and are still “thinking about it.” The purchase stage refers to individuals who are ready to buy. By matching your offers to the appropriate sales cycle, you can make sure that your message and CTA are in line with a visitor’s readiness to purchase.
- Match the landing pages to their respective sales cycle stage so you can have a better idea how to effectively place your CTA offers.
- Test and use analytics to pinpoint the best performing CTA offers and landing pages. A/B testing allows you to optimize your messages, conversions and click-through rates.
Aligning a CTA offer and landing page is a crucial part of a smart
integrated content marketing plan, as it focuses on meeting a prospect’s expectations. What landing page best practices do you use to align your call-to-action with your landing page?
According a recent Content Marketing Institute survey, ninety-percent of organizations use content, including blogs, articles and e-newsletters, as a vital part of their marketing efforts. Providing informative, useful or entertaining content has proven to be a highly effective way for companies such as American Express, Mint and Disney gain subscribers and increase brand awareness in a way that provides value to their customers and increases engagement.
We've heard too many times commetns like, "But those are bigger companies, and they have the resources to execute content marketing." Yes, they have resources, but content marketing is the greate equalizer. If you are interested in putting together a content marketing plan for your own brand, here are five components that are crucial to its success.
1. The audience
Who will you be writing for? What does your ideal audience look like? Where will you find them and how will you reach out to them? How do they buy? What language do they use? These details work together to create buyer personas - the first step in any effective content marketing program. More importantly, they ensure you're talking to the audience that will actually be interested in your product or service.
Without clearly-defined personas, your content marketing plan can easily fall apart. Don't shortcut understanding your audience better than anyone.
2. The content.
What kinds of content can you share? Don’t limit yourself to blog posts or website articles. Can you commission an infographic that is relevant to your brand? Shoot a video showcasing creative ways to use your product? Hold a webinar? Make transcripts of in-person events available for download?
Content should be useful, engaging, entertaining and offer value to the consumer. Low-quality content is useless at best, and can actively harm your brand at worse. Don’t be in such a rush to begin your content marketing plan that you sabotage it by pushing low-quality content. Eqaully as important - don't fall into a run of producing the same types of content. The more variety you have, the more compelling you'll become.
3. The content creators
Can you create content in-house or will you need to outsource it to freelance writers, graphic designers or videographers? If content must be outsourced, where will you find the resources to help build an editorial calendar, product content and ensure your content is optimized for search as well as distributed outside your website. Many companies turn to content marketing agencies who live and breath this stuff. It's what they do.
Regardless of who you chose for content creation, look for samples and references and be prepared to pay industry standard for top talent.
4. The goals
What actions do you want your readers to take? Sign up for your mailing list? Follow you on social media? Share content with friends? Click a link for more information about your products? Without clearly defined goals, it’s impossible to measure the effectiveness of your content marketing plan and you’ll find that efforts are soon abandoned.
A word to the wise: don't fall victim to the misperception that all content needs to focus on a sale. For sure, all content should help drive the selling process, but some of the best content is designed to acquire prospects into a sales pipeline, where you can deliver a powerful lead nurturing campaing. Focus on the goals of your content portfolio and build your calls to action accordingly.
5. The metrics
You need to have a way to measure your success in getting the audience you want to take the actions that you desire. Some examples of metrics that you’ll want to track include:
- Lanidng page conversions
- Blog subscriber growth
- Likes or follows on social media platforms
- Comments
- Social shares and bookmarks
- Retweets
- Mentions on social media platforms
- Mentions and links from other online sites
A well-designed integrated content marketing plan can provide an ideal way of getting your brand in front of your most likely prospects while providing them with something of value.
Do you utilize integrated content marketing plans for your business? What would you add to this discussion? Leave your comments below.
This is big news for companies trying to measure the results of online marketing campaigns. It turns out that the contributions of organic searches to multiple-interaction conversions are much greater than thought, says a new study from Slingshot SEO.
It’s important to assess the value of each marketing channel – paid ads, organic searches, email campaigns, direct visits, and referrals – so you can improve lead conversion. Typically, a user interacts with your website several different ways, often over several days or even weeks before taking action (conversion). That can make it hard to evaluate which marketing channel was the one that had the greatest impact and which did little to influence a decision. This is where conversion models come into play; they help you understand the buying or decision-making behavior of your website visitors. Attribution modeling is the process of understanding and assigning credit to the acquisition channel which ultimately leads to conversions.
A last-touch attribution model (the last in a series of interactions gets all the credit for a conversion) undervalues the contributions of organic search traffic and non-branded organic search traffic to multiple-interaction conversions, while overvaluing direct visits. Googles's Multi-Channel Funnels, introduced in 2011, is designed to highlight the complexity of the online sales funnel and help marketers gain deeper insight into how conversions occur. We think Hubspot marketing software does a much better job of this in its enterprise package.
About the Study Data
The study looked at 23 million multiple-interaction conversions across 30 domains throughout 2011. It compared results using a last-touch attribution model to those using a flat multi-touch attribution model (the value of each conversion is divided equally among each path’s channel). The report maintains that the last-touch model assumes that the final user activity was the only influence, ignoring all other paths the user may have employed, whereas the multi-touch model assumes that each interaction plays a role in conversions. It allows that while each interaction may not have equal influence, the multi-touch model gives a more accurate sense of each channel’s influence.
Here are key findings from the analysis:
- Users took 2.79 interactions before converting.
- Direct visits received too much credit for conversions by as much as 82 percent under a last-touch model, as they were often the last interaction before a conversion. This resulted in the undervaluation of other channels.
- Organic search traffic was undervalued by as much as 77 percent; this is because the channel drives sales and conversions from the top as users start their online research.
- Non-branded organic search traffic would have been worth as much as 81 percent more, if a multi-touch model had been used versus a last-touch model. This was especially true for retailers and general merchandise websites.
- Paid ads and referrals were also undervalued in most cases using last-touch attribution.
We’d love to hear from you about how you measure your online results. What have you found to be the contributory value of organic search traffic?
Being creative about how to get more blog traffic is key when thinking about how businesses can transform themselves into marketing companies, with much of the staff involved in marketing and branding.
One critical step is accelerating the growth of your blog subscriber list. Unfortunately, when talking about how to get more blog traffic, much of the marketing world talks only about how to do this online. Don't forget that you likely have a significant offline business present that can play a big role in growing your blog readership.
We did some research with a number of our client to understand just how powerful the offline side of their businesses are in driving blog growth. We were pleasantly surprised. For most of these companies, more than 22% of their growth came from offline sources. Better yet, in most cases, the conversion from the "ask" to a blog subscriber was more than 50%. Simply put: ask your customers, prospects and partners to subscribe, and they'll likely do it. This means more traffic, more engaged readers and likely more leads and revenue.
People Forget to Ask
The power of the "ask" always surprises me, yet people are reluctant to use it. One of the biggest mistakes salespeople make is not asking for the business. The same is true when growing blog subscribers.
Train everyone in the company to think of the blog as a huge value to your audience. Make it your "ask." Include it in conversations, make it part of each interaction, and train staff to use a statement such as:
By the way, we have a blog that publishes educational content about <TOPIC>. It's educational--not salesey, and we publish new articles <FREQUENCY> times a week. Can I sign you up for it so you can take look? It's complimentary and your can always unsubscribe.
When they says "yes," just type their email address into your blog subscribe field and you're done. Make sure to remind them they might get an email confirmation in order to receive articles, and that they should click on the link in the email.
What does it work?
Because you are proactively providing value. Not selling.
CAUTION: These strategies work best when you're blog truly educates your customers and prospects. Self-serving content may still get a subscriber, but often results in unsubscribes or the reader ignoring your posts (the worst case).
10 Tactics to Get More Blog Traffic
Here are 10 tactics to leverage your offline business to increase your blog subscribers and get more blog traffic:
- Add the ask to your hold messaging
- Ensure all staff register for your blog so they can speak about recent articles in the context of conversions
- Incorporate the ask into your paper correspondence
- Train sales reps to include the ask as a conversational element on sales calls
- Include the ask on the back of your business card
- Have all staff include the ask on their office voicemail
- Include the ask on your packaging
- For communities like gyms and senior care, incorproate the ask into your tour--it can be part of the prospect's research on your service
- Ensure customer service reps use the ask after a successful call
- Using the ask during networking events when you get a business card (note: do NOT add them to your blog without their permission)
What did we miss? Leave your comments below and let's make a bigger list.
Want to turbo-charge your blogging content? Interview.
Learn why combining blogging and interviews is the secret to unique and powerful blog blog content. Download 78 Blog Interview Questions that Kill the Competition.
>> Download the blog interview questions e-book
It seems like every month, there is an article proclaiming the white paper is dead. Meanwhile, more and more businesses utilize the persuasiveness of white paper to drive leads and influence. Don’t be too quick to discount the trusty white paper.
While white papers (also know as special reports, consumer reports, industry reports and other names) might not sound as sexy and exciting as video or bullet-pointed e-book, decision makers and influencers still show a strong preference for white papers when it comes time to consider buying.
Funny thing is, many of the biggest e-book enthusiasts simply write white papers on slides and add a pretty cover—the components are often less persuasive.
White papers remain effective because they combine the persuasiveness of an article with the product information of a brochure. They educate without selling. However, with the right tactics, white papers can be powerful salespeople.
Many decision makers prefer white papers because they can digest quite a bit of information in a relatively compact time frame. Effective white papers are written and laid out so that it’s easy for the reader to quickly scan to get the gist, while making it simple for the reader to find in-depth details that they’ll need in the decision making process.
While white papers must be clearly written and give the reader ample information, companies do have leeway in how their white papers are formatted and the tone of the writing. For example, marketing automation software company Eloqua has had success with carving information-rich white papers.
Why is Writing White Paper So Effective?
Still not convinced that white papers are for you? Let these four study results convince you.
Reason #1
Eccolo Media’s 2010 study 2010 B2B Technology Collateral Survey revealed that 76% of respondents had read a white paper to help them evaluate a technology purchase in the six months prior to the survey. In contrast, 67% had turned to case studies, 59% to video and 40% to audio. Only product brochures and data sheets were turned to more often (83%).
Reason #2
Not only are decision makers highly likely to turn to white papers for information, they rate them as being the most influential collateral type in their decision making process. Eighty-three perent (83%) of the respondents in the Eccolo Media survey said that white papers where moderately to extremely influential in their decisions. Only 1% said that white papers were not at all influential.
Reason #3
IDG’s 2011 survey of IT professionals returned similar results with 72% of the respondents stating that they found white papers useful to extremely useful in their decision making process.
Reason #4
White papers remain a useful tool for lead generation. The Lenskold Group’s Lead Generation Marketing ROI Study found that 35% of the respondents stated that “educating and engaging contacts with white papers and ebooks” was an effective tool in driving high-value leads that would eventually lead to sales. Howard J. Sewell, president of Spear Marketing says: “Dollar for dollar, white papers continue to be some of the most effective offers for most high-technology marketers.”
White papers remain a highly influential, effective tool for generating leads and helping customers make the decision to buy. Don’t underestimate the value of clearly written, concise yet rich in technological detail, white papers.
What is your experience with white papers? Leave your comments below, and let’s discuss.
Want More From Your Next White Paper?
Written correctly, the average white paper taking 40 hours to complete--valuable time away from your other goals. Consider using a professional to make sure you next white paper delivers. Learn why our team and process is trusted by some of the best names in the business.
>> Request a white paper marketing consultation
Agile methods can be intimidating to those who have only experienced traditional marketing organizations. The focus is taken away from following procedures, hierarchy and adhering to plans. It’s shifted to adaptability, collaboration and the needs of the target audience.
If you’re interested in adopting agile principles for your team, here are tips to get started based on the principles of agile development:
1. Customers are #1
Ensure that all members of your team know that the very first priority is meeting the needs of your customers and giving them early, frequent and straightforward reports on each campaign iteration. Schedule a meeting at least once every thirty days to discuss marketing plans and content for the next month.
2. Embrace change
Welcome and embrace change. Platforms, technology and consumer expectations are evolving rapidly. This is an opportunity for innovation, not a hindrance. A fifteen minute meeting once or twice a week will give your team an opportunity to review their progress and discuss how to respond to changes in the market.
3. Use short iterations (sprints)
Favor short iterations of campaigns that can easily be adapted as feedback is received. At the end of each iteration team members should meet to discuss what went well and what could be improved next time.
4. All team members should work together daily
If working in physical proximity is not possible, take advantage of video conferencing and other technologies to hold meetings. Begin each day with a short meeting involving all team members to discuss what has been done and what is planned for that day. Face time makes for a tighter team.
5. Find motivated leaders
Appoint highly-motivated individuals as project leaders. Provide them with a supportive working environment then trust them to get the job done. Do what you can to prevent them from being distracted so that they can concentrate their focus on the project at hand.
6. Face to face communication is the most effective
Smaller work groups should hold their own daily meeting in addition to the big group meetings. This will foster better communication and ensure that all team members are on the same page. It also creates trust that will result in better teamwork on all projects.
7. Measure projects by results
Progress should be measured by results instead of following a preconceived checklist. Focus on discussing what results you are achieving at your daily meetings and how to continue to move forward.
8. Identify a consistent, sustainable pace
Emphasis should be placed on a sustainable, constant pace instead of flurries of intense, unsustainable activity followed by stagnation. Frequent meetings will help keep your team on task and accountable. Good communication will help catch small problems before they become overwhelming. Short campaign iterations help keep everyone focused and motivated.
9. No ethical shortcuts
Just because you are moving quickly doesn’t mean you can cut corners. Pay attention to the best practices of ethical marketing. These are not areas where shortcuts should be taken and doing so will ultimately decrease your team’s agility instead of increasing it. It will also harm your company’s credibility.
10. Look for ways to simplify work.
Eliminate processes and hierarchies that don’t contribute to results. Before assigning tasks, have the team identify the area that will the biggest impact on achieving marketing objectives. Then prioritize and assign those tasks.
11. Allow teams to self-organize
Allow your team to self-organized based on strengths, preferences and group dynamics. Give them the autonomy to decide how to divide their tasks. Some groups will remain stable while others will choose to make frequent changes based on changing needs.
12. Look for contact improvement
Plan meetings at regular intervals for the team to look for ways to increase their effectiveness. Invite team members to share what works well and ways the process can be improved. Let the team improve itself.
If you’re already using agile for marketing, or if you are considering doing so, what other things can help you build a strong team. Leave your ideas in the comments.
Agile software development has been used for over a decade. It’s a development process that values teamwork, flexibility and working closely with customers through many iterations of the product until the goal is met.
Scott W. Ambler, IBM’s Chief Methodologist for Agile and Lean explains why he believes the agile process is so effective:
One of several reasons why agile techniques are so effective, in my opinion, is that they reduce the feedback cycle between the generation of an idea (perhaps a requirement or a design strategy) and the realization of that idea. This not only minimizes the risk of misunderstanding, it also reduces the cost of addressing any mistakes.
The agile process is characterized by breaking projects into smaller increments that are completed in short bursts of creation, call sprints. Each sprint ends with the completion of a deliverable product. During each sprint, team members participate in daily scrum meetings to discuss progress, their plans for the day and any problems they anticipate. After the sprint is completed, a retrospective meeting is held to allow team members to review what went well and where improvements can be made. This review identifies areas for improvement.
Agile development works because it is structured to place a high priority on communication and teamwork. It is by nature adaptive and allows developers to think on their feet and change plans as new information comes to light. Breaking the project into short iterations gives developers room to course-correct without too much risk.
Marketing and sales professionals are finding that the concepts of agile development are a perfect fit for their field. The agile philosophy was built to accommodate change based on new information and insights. In fact, one of the tenets of the agile manifest is “responding to change over following a plan.”
Instead of mapping out a campaign in stone—months or years in advance,marketers incorporating agile concepts can plan for quick, successive launches with each one building on insights gained from previous iterations.
Agile development allows marketers to take advantage of today’s ability to quickly gather and analyze customer response. Changes can be effected almost immediately again and again until the long-term goal is met.
Photo: wwarby
I’m sure many of you have been to sporting events where they give big prizes for making a miracle shot–a car for hole-in-one, cash for a half-court basketball shot. You get the idea.
I ran across a story this morning that seemed like such a no-brainer marketing opportunity, that I was shocked to see how it may play out. As you’ll see from the video, an 11-year old boy won a raffle for the chance to win $50,000 for making a miracle hockey shot. Since he was outside playing, his father sent his identical twin, who nailed the $50,000 shot–an 80+ foot into a 3.5-inch goal.
So what’s the no-brainer? Sure, it was the the kid’s twin brother and not the winner of the raffle. And sure, technically, the insurance company isn’t obligated to pay the $50,000. But sometimes, a PR opportunity to generate goodwill and be a good corporate citizen slaps you in the face.
Why the insurance company hasn’t already come out and captured this gift-of-a-moment is beyond me. It’s a no-brainer for sure. They should realize the gift they are given, wrap themselves in the flag of this event and celebrate the fact that this 11-year old kid made such a miracle shot.
Being a hero in this story is worth far more than $50,000. And you can be sure that fighting the negative public opinion that’s growing from this story will cost far more than $50,000 to reverse.
Sometime, your best policies are your worst liabilities. And sometimes, breaking those policies can make the best PR.
What are your thoughts? Leave them in the comments below.
The business benefits of blogging are pretty clear. According to Hubspot, companies that blog regularly realize 55% more traffic, 97% more inbound links and 126% more lead growth. Unfortunately, many organizations get caught up with the concept of blogging regularly.
Regular blogging can be a challenging commitment for executives and other company thought leaders who don’t have time to conceive, write, edit and publish blogs 2-3 times a week with any consistency. As a result, many companies leverage a content marketing agency to write their posts. Some companies utilize internal writers to write blogs on behalf of others in the company.
Regardless of the approach you take, the best way to consistently delivery high-quality blog posts is to conduct blog interviews.
Here are five benefits to conducting blog interviews as part of your blog writing process:
1. Results in better content
Interviews have long been a key component of successful white papers because they extract better content than does researching alone. The same logic applies to blog writing. The better questions you ask during the interview, the better content you’ll receive from your subject. The result? Compelling content that will product results for years.
2. Builds consensus before writing
Blog writers who don’t use interviews often present posts only to find that it wasn’t the right direction, or didn’t cover a topic in the right manner. When you interview a stakeholder, you are by default gaining approval on the direction and content of the article. This saves time, results in better posts and increases your value to your client.
3. Captures tone, attitude and character
Many executives and thought leaders are known for their tone, attitude, character or sense of humor. Without blog interviews, it’s impossible to reflect these important details accurately. If you’re writing for multiple people, blog interviews are often the only way to ensure you don’t write in the same tone for every writer on the blog.
4. Unlock additional insights
The people you’re interviewing have likely perfected their approach about many of your interview topics. As a result, your subject may leave out details they believe are well known by their readers. By asking additional questions to probe the background and logic behind their ideas, you’ll unlock insights that will broaden the appeal of the article to a broader audience. This results in an article more educational and more likely to shared with your readers’ social networks.
5. Write more efficiently
The better interviews you conduct, the less time you’ll spend thinking about the approach or direction of the article. You’ll identify the terms and phrases most relevant to the blog’s readers. And since you’ve already gained consensus about the direction of the article, you’ll benefit from less writing and fewer revisions.
What do you believe are some other benefits to conducting blog interviews? Leave your thoughts in the comments.
Photo credit: A. Germain