How To Build Higher Converting Landing Pages

landing pages

It’s one thing to create a landing page; it’s another thing to build a landing page that converts!

We are all familiar with the landing page. You know, that page that is intended to entice us to sign up for something or to purchase a product or service. Well, we also know that there are as many designs of landing pages as there are products and services to sell.

There has been a lot of research and trial and error done in the name of developing landing pages. And, weirdly enough, some of those landing pages that seem to go on endlessly actually have a good conversion rate. Now, I say weirdly enough because, quite frankly, I don’t enjoy scrolling down the page forever to try to find the features and benefits of a product or service that I’m interested in. Yet, it has been shown that many of these types of pages are actually very successful.

Design and content are critical when developing your landing page. It must be attractive enough to draw in users, and phrased simply enough that prospects can easily understand what is being offered. If your landing pages cluttered or does not have clear CTAs (call to action), the likelihood of obtaining conversions is pretty slim.

From a functional perspective, it’s imperative that you ensure that the backend is properly structured as well. Test to make sure that your contact form is functioning properly, linking to the appropriate thank you pages and or leading to any upsells that you may have.

In order to build landing pages that are more likely to convert, consider the following six points:
  •  Is your offering presented in a way that your target user can easily understand? As mentioned above, ensuring that your offering is clear and that the details are simply presented will greatly improve the likelihood that the user will convert.
  • Does the landing page meet your prospects’ expectations? There is nothing worse than a landing page that does not clearly define the product or service that is being presented. Can your prospects find the information at their looking for? Are there questions appropriately anticipated and answered? Don’t frustrate your users by giving them incomplete information.
  • Can your prospects easily sign up for your offering using the forms you’ve provided? Again, as mentioned above, be sure to test your landing page forms. Make sure that they are directing your users to the appropriate pages.
  • Can your users be distracted by anything on the page? The key here is to provide information in an easy to read, yet entertaining fashion, without diverting the user’s attention from your key goal of getting them to buy in.
  • Will it your users think that your offer has enough value that they are willing to pay money and enter their contact information for it? There are literally millions of online offers these days. To ensure that you are going to get people to opt in or purchase your product, make sure that it is presented in a way that assures them that they will be getting good value for their money.
  • Have you provided enough information to your users prior to the CTA? Let’s face it; no one is going to click on your CTA if their questions or concerns have not been addressed. Be sure to review your landing page through the eyes of your prospects, anticipating any concerns or questions that they may have before they click on that call-to-action button.

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

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Snapchat for Business?

snapchat

What?  Snapchat can be used for business?

Yep, believe it or not, you can leverage this platform for your business.

This social media platform allows you to take and share videos.  But the videos disappear after a short period of time.  It was initially very popular with teens, but has now expanded its reach and proven itself to have applications that can help your business.

If it’s appropriate for your business, don’t hesitate to think outside of the box.  There’s nothing wrong with making your advertising fun.

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

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5 Questions For Optimizing Email Marketing

email marketing

Hard to believe, but email as a means of communication has been around for well over 20 years now.

Since the mid-1990s, people have been communicating with each other via cyberspace. In fact, a whole generation has grown up accustomed to this method of communication, as opposed to sending letters and messages in a physical format.

Oh yeah, there were growing pains!

Internet service providers came and went, various email providers came and went, but eventually electronic communications became the norm, overtaking the “old” traditional way of interacting.

And as marketing online became more and more accepted, email became a preferred way to reach out to prospects and clients.

In the early days of email marketing, it was kind of like the old West. Anyone with an email address was open to receiving unsolicited emails from any number of businesses. But as this method of advertising services and products became more and more common, boundaries and rules had to be established. Anti-spam legislation is now in place in most countries, and a new kind of business has evolved – the email service provider.

As businesses have turned more and more to email marketing, inboxes have become repositories of unwanted and unsolicited emails, not unlike “junk mail” of past times. Most of us in business are used to receiving dozens, if not hundreds, of emails each day.  The big question is, how do you ensure that your email is not lost among these emails, and how do you improve your open rates?

So, to optimize your email marketing, ask yourself the following five questions:
  • Why are users opening some of your emails more than others?   Do you find that some of your emails are being opened more than others? Most email service providers provide the opportunity to do A/B split testing for your email campaigns. What subject lines in treat more people to open? Is there a day of the week, or a time of the day that your recipients are more likely to open emails? Reviewing these types of questions can dramatically improve your open rate.
  • Will your target market understand and engage with your next email campaign?  When planning your email campaigns, make sure that you are providing something that is relevant to your target audience. Sometimes we can get caught up in what we want to tell our prospects and clients, rather than responding to their needs and desires. Make sure that when you are planning out your next email campaign that you are delivering something of value to the recipients. If necessary, split out your email list, based on specific messages relevant to subsets of your target market. The closer you get to solving a prospect or client’s problem, the more likely your email is to be opened and engaged with by your target audience.
  • What would users change about your emails if they could?  Are your prospects and clients satisfied with the emails that you are sending? Consider asking your email recipients to respond to a quick poll. Ask them if they like the content they are receiving, the format in which it is delivered, or the frequency with which they are receiving it. The key here is to give your recipients what they want.
  • Do your users receive emails from other companies in your industry?   It is highly likely that your clients and prospects are also being targeted by your competitors. Do your research. See what your competitors are sending and make sure that your emails are more engaging.
  • What do the users like and dislike about those emails?  Just like question 3, find out what your email recipients like and dislike about the emails that they are receiving from your competitors. If your competitors are successful at sending emails that are engaging a larger percentage of your list, you need to find out what they are doing. Discover their strategies for email marketing and see what you can implement to improve your own open and engagement rate.

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

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Using Facebook Live

facebook live

As you are probably aware, Facebook is now offering live-streaming.

This addition to Facebook is not a surprise. Tons of social platforms offer livestreaming.

We all know that video has become a very popular way of sharing information. It has become a preferred way of communicating with people online as it tends to be more engaging – and, one hopes, more entertaining as well.

However, it is important to make sure that you are not just chasing the latest shiny bauble when utilizing video for your marketing needs. You must always keep to the fundamentals of marketing; Who is your audience? What is your message? What is the best social platform to engage and reach your audience?… You get the idea.

Livestreaming provides an opportunity to engage your audience in real time.  Whatever platform you choose, be wise when planning your livestream.

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

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Brexit –Mistaken Marketing?

brexit

UK Votes to leave the EU.

You’d have to be living in a cave to not know this news!

Now, the purpose of this article is not to argue the merits on either side of the debate. It is not only not my place to discuss what citizens of  another country should do, but the decision has been rendered, making any argument moot in any event.

Rather, I wanted to make the point about the importance of marketing your product appropriately.

When most people think of marketing, they envision advertising. As I have repeatedly commented, the true essence of marketing is the development of a strategic approach to entice a specific, targeted audience to “purchase” what you have to sell. Advertising is merely one method undertaken to get this strategy in front of your audience.

And when I talk about what you have to sell, I don’t limit it to a product or a service. As you might know, I spent some time in federal politics several years ago. During this time, I acted as campaign manager for a period of about 18 months, leading into a federal election. I approached this role as I do any marketing campaign; in this case, my “product” was the candidate. As I said to her, we needed to approach our target audience (the constituents) and demonstrate to them why they should “purchase” her politics, rather than the politics of her opponents.

Brexit is no different.

Most pundits observing the lead-up to the referendum agree that both sides ran campaigns based on negativity. The Stay side argued that to leave the Union would result in extreme financial hardship, perhaps even a deep recession. Those in the Leave camp argued that to stay in the Union would continue to erode their wealth and their culture.

The politics of fear, in my view, created the outcome that they received; a close vote, with 52% opting to leave the Union. And now of course, there are many exclamations of regret. But democracy is what it is.  And, without any prior determination of what would constitute a win, anything more than 50% rules the day.

So let’s bring this back to the role marketing.

Perhaps both sides of this referendum misread the public. What if, instead of resorting to the politics of fear and hoping to frighten people into voting their way, the argument focused on positives.

What if those who argued to Stay spoke of the benefits of staying in the Union, rather than the doom and gloom that they predicted would happen if they left. What if they spoke of the benefits of free and open travel throughout the European Union, and the benefits of mobility rather than the negative position of financial ruin.

What if those who argued to Leave spoke to the ability to act more independently and negotiate their own trade deals, rather than focusing on the perils of open borders.

We all know that when it comes to making a decision, people like to do business with people who they like, know and trust. We also know that people make decisions primarily based on emotions. It is unfortunate that those people who are in positions of power – those we should be able to trust – have benefited over the past several years from creating a culture of fear, and have controlled decisions through what I call “the Chicken Little approach”.

Current global affairs, whether we agree with the various positions are not, are demonstrating that the pendulum is swinging the other way, and that people are fed up with the way things have been done over the past several decades. They are looking for change.  And savvy marketers would be wise to heed this call and understand the importance of reading your target audience and responding with strategies that make sense to them.

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

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Do This To Ensure You Fail!

fail

No one sets out to fail – or do they?

Recently, I had a conversation with a colleague of mine. We are both in the marketing field, and so we typically discuss various issues that come up with our clients. This type of sharing has the benefit of bringing in a fresh set of eyes on the situation, often helping to determine a new approach to a given issue.

Now, in the interests of respecting and maintaining privacy for both my colleague and his client, certain circumstances in the following story will be altered.

But the essence and the lesson remain the same.

This client approached my colleague with a relatively simple project about two or three months ago. There was a fairly tight budget involved for a specific scope of work to be undertaken to complete his part of the project.  Over time, this project has ballooned in size and scope, but the budget has failed to increase at the same pace.

The changes to the project are not unusual or unreasonable, and in all likelihood could develop into an even better final product. The problem with the changes is that they are just being thrown out there, apparently on a whim.

When this project was first brought to my colleague’s attention, it seemed to have a clearly defined purpose and budget. However, now it seems as though whatever the project lead dreams about suddenly becomes part of the project.

This approach to marketing is doomed!

I’ve written in the past about what I term “ad hoc” marketing; its problems and its pitfalls. And what is happening with this project is a prime example of ad hoc marketing.

Too often, business owners are quick to say that marketing doesn’t work, or it doesn’t give them a proper return on investment. And while there are certainly some unscrupulous marketers, just as there are unscrupulous people in every line of work, it’s important that these business owners take responsibility when the failures rest on their shoulders.

No marketing campaign will ever work without first developing a proper marketing strategy. What is your budget? Who is your audience? What is your timeline? What is your message?

Sometimes, of course, things can change as a project gets underway. There is absolutely nothing wrong with changing your strategy if you find that circumstances have changed. But again, you don’t throw out your original marketing strategy and run with whatever idea crosses your mind at the moment. Stop and look at what remains beneficial in your original strategy and plan appropriately to incorporate the changes.

Whether you run a large corporation or are a one-man show, you will never obtain the results you want if you do not take a strategic approach to your marketing.

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

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Fear Of Failure – Or Success – Podcast

fear of failure

Fear of the unknown is normal – and healthy!

But don’t let it paralyze you…

Many people have great business ideas, but allow their fears to stop them from acting.  And, strangely enough, fear of success can be as detrimental as fear of failure.

Today we are offering our final installment in Entrepreneur Series as a podcast.

Don’t have time to watch the webcast?  No problem – download the podcast and take it with you.

Listen here or download our podcast:


Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

If you like the information you are receiving, please consider forwarding this post.

Building Your Business Plan Part 1 – Podcast

building your business plan

Recently, we posted Episode 3 of our Entrepreneur Series.

This episode was all about your business plan and why you need it. This foundational document is so important to your business that we broke the webcast into 2 episodes.

Understanding that you may not always have time to sit and watch our webcasts, we created a podcast of the episode as well….

Listen in now, or take it with you!

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

If you like the information you are receiving, please consider forwarding this post.

Fear Of Failure – And Success!

fear of failure

What’s holding you back?

Do you have fear of failure – or a fear of success?

Did you know that those issues are actually one and the same?

Today, we’re posting the final installment of our Entrepreneur Series. In this webcast, we discuss how fear of failure/success can hold you back from achieving your goals.

Join our webinar to see how to overcome these issues and help your business flourish.

Watch our video here, or watch on YouTube.


Until next time…

 

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

If you like the information you are receiving, please consider forwarding this post.

How To Make Your Hobby A Business

How To Make Your Hobby A Business

If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.

Now, I know that you have heard that quote before.  It’s attributed to Marc Anthony, and it is so true!

Today, we’re posting the fifth installment of our Entrepreneur Series entitled “Turn Your Hobby Into A Business”.

Join our webinar and see how you can make your hobby your business.

Watch our video here, or watch on YouTube.

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

If you like the information you are receiving, please consider forwarding this post.

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