If You Want An Effective Landing Page, You Want To Read This Blogpost
Landing pages are one of the most used assets among online businesses, and this is not a result of some sort of consensus or conspiracy. They are used because they work. If you are using landing pages, then good! But you should ask yourself, are they as effective as they could have been? What if instead of a 9% conversion you could obtain 18%? We don’t offer 1 on 1 coaching, but we put up some general guidelines you can follow if you want to make sure you are getting most things right.
The Headline
While this may seem obvious, people often seem to always use crappy headlines, because their copy on the page is supposedly extremely good. If you are one of those guys, then you have to know something. It doesn’t matter how good your remaining copy is if the people that land on your page immediately bounce off your site because of the crappy headline.
If you are not a great copywriter, then a simple tip for you would be to be just a bit more precise by telling them what it is about. If it’s a video you are offering them in exchange of a signup, you can have “[VIDEO]” before the actual title. Simple, but effective tip. Use it.
It’s not a circus
You don’t want too many navigation options on your landing page. This will distract the visitors from your purpose. Remember, most people surfing online do not have their full focus on your page. Some of them are watching TV, others are chatting o Facebook – you get the point. Providing them with even more distractions isn’t going to help you in any way.
Consider having a subheadline
You should apply this technique especially if your headline is crappy. It’s like a 2nd chance to grab your visitors’ eyeballs again. Maybe you failed to communicate value in your headline? Give your best shot in your subheadline!
And the rest of the page
If you rock at copywriting, some of your subscribers will sign up after reading only your headline! However, if you are like most people, you’ll need a bit more than that.
Don’t waste space here. If you have a story, make sure it’s relevant and easy for your prospects to relate to it. If you want to communicate 10 benefits, 10 bullet points are way better than an articles of a few thousand words to describe them.
The rest of the page should also be coherent with your headline. There’s nothing worse than having a headline promising a slim waistline and having bullet points that show how to build thick muscles. Stay focused!
Be clear and bold about the benefits of them signing up. Make it a no-brainer.
Using e-covers
I would say you NEED them. Everyone is using them these days. Don’t try to be the smart guy and go “against the waves” on this one. Not using cover images doesn’t demonstrate any higher value. If you really want to set yourself apart, then hire one of the best designers to make a great e-cover for you.
If you know how to use Photoshop, I strongly recommend you to have a look at Cover Actions Pro. Google it. It helps you create high resolution e-covers of your choice.
An e-cover gives your prospects the feeling that they are actually getting something. They know they won’t receive anything physically, but they still get the “I’m getting something tangible” feeling.
Your opt-in form
You do know you need that, right? It’s the little box that asks the visitors for their name and email address (and sometimes other details).
You can set up your opt-in form with AWeber, Get Response, iContact etc.
You should be good if you follow guidelines below for the opt-in form:
• Keep it simple and neat
• Do not ask for more information than you need. If you don’t intend on calling them, you don’t need to ask them for their phone number. If you need only their email address, ask just that
You don’t need to go fancy if you don’t know how to. Simple and neat forms perform well.
Personalize the “Submit” button
Don’t leave it as “Submit”. If it’s a download, make it read “Download Now!”. If it’s a video, make it “Watch the video now!”. Or if it’s a free membership, “Take me inside NOW!”.
“Submit” is boring and overused.
Hot, HOT TIP!!
Eager about creating a landing page, but don’t know what to offer? I’ll borrow one of my favorite tricks for you.
Skim the salespages of your competitors and have a look at what they offer; especially their bullet points.
Pick 3 – 10 of their bullet points (mix and match them if you want, it doesn’t matter!) and there you go! You now have your e-book chapters.
No excuse now to create the report and the landing page!
How To Get Your Blog Readers To Dislike You And Stop Reading Your Posts (..or How To Avoid It..)
Whether your goal is to achieve inactivity on your blog or to prevent it, this post will be an interesting read for you. If you want to kill your blog, use it as a how-to. If you want to keep your blog alive, use it as a guide for what you need to avoid.
Okay, so enough blabbering, and let’s get to the meat and potatoes!
Action Step #1: Boring headline
Writing a boring, irrelevant and broad headline is a surefire way of getting potential visitors to completely avoid clicking to read any further. Don’t forget to avoid mentioning any benefit they may be getting from reading your post. “Read this post” or “Cool post” are perfect examples.
Action Step #2: Write highly promotional material
This one is for your existing readers. If you want to get rid of them, simply start making your posts solely about the various products and services you are offering. Only feed your ego by describing how wonderful and ingenious the features of your products are. Who needs valuable content that will genuinely help the readers anyway? “I would like to present to you my awesome the awesome report that I have just written”.
Action Step #3: Do not target
You don’t want your readers to feel as if you are writing for them, do you? You want them off your blog, so feel free to write broad content. If your blog is about women getting lean, don’t hesitate to write about the new “Bulking For Ectomorphs” e-book you are selling. Your readers only need to see posts like these once or more to understand that they are not welcome on your blog.
As a bonus, it will push you further down the SERPS so that your blog is even more difficult to find organically. Read the rest of this entry »
Are You Screwing Up Your Inbound Marketing Without Knowing How You’re Doing It? Discover The Top 10 Reasons Why Inbound Marketing Is Not Working For You
When it comes to inbound marketing, there are some rules that unless you adhere to them, it can be pretty hard for you to design and implement a near flawless inbound marketing strategy. Inbound marketing is a lot more complex than what some people out there make it out to be for even if you get the majority of the principles and techniques right, there are a few fundamentals that determine whether or not inbound marketing will work for your business. In this post, we will discuss the 10 things that most often cause the downfall of website owners and Internet marketers when it comes to inbound marketing so if you are currently designing your next inbound marketing campaign, make sure you’re not setting yourself up for unsatisfactory results by ignoring some of the inbound marketing musts.
The top 10 things you are doing wrong as far as inbound marketing is concerned
1. You are not aligning your inbound marketing strategy with your sales goals
Sales and marketing are two things that should always go hand in hand and not just in terms of the quantity of leads, but rather in terms of the quality of the leads as well. As a business owner, it is important for you to be able to identify your prospects to create content that addresses their needs. As such, unless your sales team manages to engage with your prospects, you won’t get very far with inbound marketing.
2. You are spending more time and money on website design than on content creation
Undoubtedly, when it comes to Internet marketing, visual cohesion is important to establish your brand but believe it or not, design is not anywhere near as important as creating unique and good content for the visitors to your website. Can you guess why that is? Quite simply, people who browse the Internet don’t care about design; these people are browsing the Internet for useful information, to find solutions to their needs and problems. As long as your design efforts don’t distract visitors from reading, sharing, or interacting with your site, your design is fine as it is. Today’s web surfers are far too savvy to be tricked into liking you because of the bright lights and fancy design of your website.
3. You are generating tons of mediocre content instead of less frequent, but remarkable, content
Creating content just for the sake of it does not cut it with the search engines anymore. In the last year, more than anything, Google’s Panda updates taught us that writing for crawlers alone won’t get marketers too far. If you don’t create content that is helpful to real people, then you’ll lose your ranking position, traffic, and leads fast because no one will link to you, share your content, or convert on your landing page. While your publishing volume should certainly remain competitive for your industry, keep the quality of your content up as well, or you’ll be penalized in the SERPs and your analytics.
4. You are not making content available on the social media networks
In this age of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, people like to interact with brands in a number of different ways. For successful inbound marketing, make your content available on the social networks not just because it’s where many people prefer to interact with you, but rather because it exposes you to your followers in a place where sharing your content can be literally one click away.
5. You are publishing a ton of content every now and then but that’s that
Inbound marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. Short spurts of productivity just won’t yield consistent gains. Crawlers will query your site less and less because they don’t expect you to publish anything new, and readers will stop visiting under the assumption that you probably haven’t posted anything new. Even for blog subscribers, your credibility as a thought leader goes down the gutter because it looks like you’ve missed out on the important happenings in your industry. Obviously, no one is asking you to publish a novel everyday but maintain a consistent flow of quality content to keep everyone’s ears perked to what you’re saying.
6. You are neglecting basic search engine optimization
I agree, SEO can be a nasty beast, but following some basic rules can mean the difference between being found by people and getting lost out there in the competitive Internet marketing world of today. If you’ve already sketched out a keyword strategy for your inbound marketing, narrowing down on the best practices takes about 5 minutes tops, so just make it part of your publishing routine. Ensure your URL makes use of important keywords, the body of the content you create includes short and long tail variations of the keywords you narrowed down on, and that your keywords are in your header tags, page title, meta data, anchor text, and image alt text.
7. Your calls-to-action suck or you don’t have them at all
For most businesses, driving traffic is not a revenue-generating activity unless the conversion rate of the website is appreciable. A flimsy call-to-action offering no clear benefits to the reader will do everything but help your conversion rate. Actually, more than anything, your calls-to-action will spell “give me your information so I can spam you!” For successful inbound marketing, make sure your calls-to-action offer something compelling and helpful to your reader, and describe the incentive using a language that reinforces over and over what the reader will get if they do choose to fill out your form.
8. You are not giving explicit instructions on your landing pages
Internet marketers are mostly smart people somehow some of us, we get dumb online. If you have fewer than 3 seconds to orient someone before they push the back button, skip the flowery language and just tell them exactly what to do on your landing page. The easiest way to do this is starting your headline with a verb, and adding an explanation.
9. You are neglecting the middle of the funnel
Just because someone filled out the form on your landing page does not mean that they are ready to talk to your sales team. Instead of contacting every person who fills out your form, consider how the lead’s behavior aligns with the behaviors of your past leads who have turned into customers. For example, if people who attend webinars are more prepared to purchase than people who download your eBooks and videos, put that prospect into a lead nurturing campaign that lets them know about webinars related to their interests. Nurturing your leads this way will move them organically from the top of the funnel through to the middle and finally to the bottom of the funnel, instead of scaring them away before they are prepared to speak with a sales rep.
10. You are not A/B testing your landing pages (and everything else)
When it comes to inbound marketing, you need to test everything: your headlines, offers, calls-to-action, form length, page layout, hell even the color of the buttons you choose to use. If you have access to an advanced landing page testing software, executing these tests normally takes just a couple of minutes. Testing the components of your landing page is an easy way to figure out what resonates with your audience, and unlocking that insight gets you one step closer to more leads. Also, don’t stop at landing pages in your A/B testing. You can test and improve a whole range of inbound marketing strategies including email marketing, calls-to-action and social media.
How To Use The Content On Your Website To Create More Content
Increasingly Internet marketers are finding it harder and harder to create original content for the purpose of internet marketing but did you know with the proper approach, you can use the content you already have on your website to create more content? Indeed, in the cutthroat world of today with everything that you need to get done either on your own or through your marketing team, it seems that unless you find a way to compartmentalize your brain and develop a few extra limbs, it is just not possible anymore to find the time that one undoubtedly needs to generate valuable and quality content.
As such, the easiest, and perhaps the smartest solution when it comes to the need for content creation on a regular basis is for you to find ways to repackage the already existing content on your website or business blog. So what exactly do I mean by that because obviously duplicating content is no more an option with all the Google Panda updates we’ve seen since the beginning of this year. In technical terms, repackaging content means taking something you’ve already produced and adding a different spin on it like changing its format, adding new content or updating the existing content to bring to it additional value.
For a brief overview of how you can use the content you’ve already created in the past to generate fresh and unique content, read on.
1. Turn any videos you have on your website into blog posts.
This might be something totally obvious but you would be surprised to learn how many Internet marketers fail to actually see that through the videos they have on their website, they can create content that will not only be unique but rather whatever post you create will go on to complement the videos adding value to them. If you do videos that you upload on your website on a regular basis, add text-based content to the videos and I can assure you that these posts will rank well in the search engines when people look for similar types of content.
2. Turn your videos into eBooks
If you have videos on your website, why not turn them into eBooks? In the world of Internet marketing of today, perhaps as a website owner, you can’t get away with not having videos on your website. Whatever you sell or whatever service you offer, you will always need to resort to multi-media marketing for your marketing campaign to work out in term of your business interests. By definition, eBook marketing is a form of Internet marketing that contains more than just traditional text. In the majority of instances, eBooks also include screenshots, which you can easily get from your original video putting up links to where people can find the actual videos online.
3. Turn your eBooks into webinars
Increasingly, Internet marketers are turning to webinars for the purpose of putting out there their business interests and offers. If you have a few eBooks on your website that you paid a ghostwriter a little fortune to create, then why not make full use of your money by turning the eBooks into webinars. Using webinars for Internet marketing is just an amazing tool that you have in your arsenal because webinars make it easy for you to lay out to your prospects relevant case studies that you could leverage to convert the visitors to your website into buyers. When a webinar gets archived, it never stops bringing new leads and customers over time.
4. Turn your blog posts into games
If you have blog posts that got a lot of attention over time, one of the things you can do to rekindle the interest without duplicating content is to turn the posts into some kind of game or poll allowing room for discussion and debate between the visitors to your website. This simple technique is not known by many people but try it and you will see what you’ve been losing out on so far. A single post can turn into a heated debate with huge participation from the community. Getting 50 comments on a blog post is not something many Internet marketers achieve but through this repackaging of content, you can bet on getting comments by the hundreds.
5. Turn comments into blog posts
If you run a popular blog and you’ve got loads of people telling you what they think about your posts then one of the ways in which you can repackage the content is to turn the comments you get into blog posts. To do this, compile the comments you get on your posts and offer them as an ongoing resource. The comments offer true value because they express diverse opinions on a very heatedly debated topic.
Smart marketers are repackaging content all the time to streamline their content creation process and squeeze more marketing juice from their efforts. Don’t lose out on the opportunity to do just that reaping the benefits of smart Internet marketing.
Do You Want To Know Why Your LinkedIn Page Sucks? Read On
If you are into social networking then perhaps you would know that up until recently, it didn’t mean much to have a LinkedIn Page but ever since LinkedIn enabled company updates for its pages, the website became monumentally more valuable for marketers although if truth were told, very few companies are actually leveraging this awesome new feature.
To be honest here, if you go through the different pages on LinkedIn, you will hardly find examples of companies using the LinkedIn Company Pages to their fullest potential. This is obviously a huge missed opportunity for businesses, because they aren’t leveraging features likes company updates given that the clutter on LinkedIn is significantly less dense than on other social networks like Facebook or Twitter at this point in time. This means that a business taking advantage of company updates and the other page features on LinkedIn can leverage a great opportunity to stand out from its competitors. To help you create a LinkedIn Page that will significantly increase the online exposure of your business, I’ve put together a small compilation of the top 10 reasons why at this point, perhaps your LinkedIn Page is not doing very much for your profitability.
The top 10 reasons why your LinkedIn Company Page sucks big time
1. You don’t have any followers
As is the case with most of the social media networks out there, building a solid base of followers is a key to your success. Before company updates became a LinkedIn feature, followers were practically useless. Now, without followers, your company updates will be useless. As such, as far as you can, spend some time generating followers for your LinkedIn Company Page by promoting your presence there. A quick way to do this is to add LinkedIn follow buttons on the pages of your website and blog or write a blog post about your presence on LinkedIn.
2. Your page is bare
If your LinkedIn Page is practically bare, good luck with attracting new followers. To get results when it comes to your online visibility on LinkedIn, at the very least, your page should include basic information about your company. Whatever you do, be sure you edit your page overview, you complete your profile, and you fine-tune your company’s description.
3. You’re not using Company Updates to share your content
As I mentioned earlier, it’s unbelievable how many company pages aren’t leveraging company updates yet considering it’s arguably the most critical marketing component of a company page. For successful LinkedIn marketing, enable company updates for your page and start sharing useful information and content by investing in interesting discussion topics. Maintaining a regularly updated and engaging page is the best way to organically attract new followers for your page.
4. You don’t have a products/services tab
If you’re a business that offers products or services then there’s no reason why you shouldn’t feature them in your ‘Products’ tab. You can even get creative with this by featuring things other than just your products and services, for instance, you can choose to include things such as webinars or eBook offers. When it comes to Internet marketing there’s nothing wrong with thinking outside the box. In fact, doing so can help you generate valuable leads from your LinkedIn company presence!
5. You are not investing in targeted product tabs
Did you know that when it comes to LinkedIn, you can create targeted content within your Products tab that targets different audiences and features different products? Smart LinkedIn Company Pages are leveraging this feature to personalize messaging on their Products tab, and you should, too. To do this, simply click on “Create New Audience” while in edit mode on your Products tab, and follow the wizard to specify and define your audience in terms of things like company size, job function, industry or even geography.
6. Your page does not feature recommendations
Displaying testimonials on your LinkedIn page is the perfect way to show third-party validation and, as a result, credibility for your products and services. On LinkedIn, testimonials translate to ‘Recommendations.’ On your Products tab, make it possible for visitors to have the opportunity to recommend your products and services. A tab rich with recommendations is definitely a good thing.
7. You’re not thinking about creativity
While a LinkedIn Company Page may not be as customizable as, say, a Facebook Page, there are a few things you can do to make your page more engaging for your followers. To do this, leverage the opportunity to highlight specific promotions, incorporate videos and create an interactive ‘product and service spotlight’ while you’re editing your Products tab.
8. You didn’t yet enable your blog’s RSS Feed
Feature the content of your business’ automatically by adding your business blog’s RSS feed to your company page. This will pull in new posts and feature them on the overview tab of your LinkedIn Company Page. To enable this feature, simply go into edit mode of your page’s ‘Overview’ tab, scroll down, and enter the URL for your blog’s RSS feed.
9. Your “Careers” tab is useless
One of most valuable uses of LinkedIn is for job search and recruiting. Leverage your ‘Careers’ tab to promote job opportunities at your company and direct people to your website to apply.
10. You’re ignoring your analytics
When it comes to LinkedIn, you want to keep on top of the game by making sure you make use of your LinkedIn Company Page’s built-in analytics tools to measure and improve the effectiveness and performance of your page. LinkedIn’s analytics, visible to page administrators as the fourth tab on your page, allow you to track page views and unique visitors on your overall page. LinkedIn also measures how many clicks your products or services have received and the number of members following your company. Additionally, LinkedIn provides percentages for your member visits making the LinkedIn analytics very helpful in understanding who your LinkedIn target audience consists of.
