Tag: How To Write Content

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A Conversation Is Always The Marketing Goal

A conversation is not often spoken about, but at the end of the day, it is crucial to the overall goal of every campaign.

Internet marketing campaign goals require thorough planning. Be specific when you decide on your marketing goals, objectives and strategies to build a winning marketing campaign.

A Conversation in a Natural Language
Quote From Joshua Keiser at Capco

A Conversation Equals An Engagement Moment

It’s not enough to reach people, you have to engage them with high-quality, informative, interesting, and most importantly, emotionally-engaging content. Many try to get views, and views are good, however, engagement is a way to tell how good your content is at answering your target audiences’ most important questions. Or it can show you how well you are distracting your target audience from their biggest headaches (by entertaining them.)

“Traditional corporate communication must give way to a process that is more dynamic and more sophisticated. Most important, that process must be conversational.” ~ Boris Groysberg & Michael Slind in Leadership Is A Conversation

Some common engagement measures:

  • Pages per visit
  • Average time spent per visit
  • Bounce rate
  • Social actions (likes, shares, comments)

A Conversation Equals A Touch-Point Conversion

I reject any notion that content marketing shouldn’t demonstrate a return on investment. As such, conversion has to be an important goal for any content marketing program. The only reason to execute a content marketing program is to drive business outcomes. And those outcomes come in the form of actions taken by the readers you are attracting. And while they may not be direct sales conversion, they should be conversions from one stage of the buying process to another.

Some common conversion metrics:

  • Newsletter Subscriptions
  • Registrations to gated content
  • Clicks to your “Buy Now” button (or “chat now” or “call now”)
  • Leads from your track-able 1-800 number
  • Visits and conversions on other landing pages

A Conversation Is The Key To Success in Online Marketing

A Conversation and Facebook LikesLastly, I wanted to point out that many confuse their online-messaging with online-postulation. In other words, many try to tell their social-media/advert/website/email reader gobs of info believing that they are passing along the important information; forgetting that a conversation should be a natural two-way engagement.

Unfortunately, you can only provide so much info before people will tune out, so, make your conversations “emotionally-meaty”, speaking to the potential benefits and not the features. You will find that your conversion (and engagement) rate will dramatically increase when you do!

So, let’s have a chat about your marketing conversations!

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The Secret To Understanding Why People Buy

The secret to “knowing why” is powerful. In fact, for the most part, sales and engagement are strongly driven by knowing the “why”.

Scientific Marketing

The Secret To Scientific Marketing

We’re creatures of habit and studies of human nature strongly suggests that some people still replace unknowns with what they “feel” sounds right to them, rather than accept that it is just unknown. The anxiety of the unknown drives our feelings-centre in our brains and this is why some people say, “I feel [whatever].” when looking to make a decision about what the choose to believe. It is well-known amongst the scientific community that in human nature, we replace info, logic and reason (a.k.a. research and facts) with the info that may not be correct.

I mention all this as this is not psychological, but biological. Our brain has regions that do certain & specific things. One region, the NeoCortex, only understands info, logic and reason; it has zero emotional capacity. Another region, the AlloCortex (a part of the brain’s limbic system) has zero capacity for info, logic and reason and only understand emotions; this is why we use the verbiage “feel” when describing why we did something. “…I felt it was right…”, “…this purchase feels right…”, “…no thanks, that does not feel right…”, etc.

And while our NeoCortex can influence our actions, 100% of all decisions are from the limbic system or predominantly, the AlloCortex region.

I have covered this before but in this post-factual world — whether you are dealing with the politics of a debate on social media or a marketing campaign — it is important to know the secret of what will influence and eventually convert a person to engage you.

The Secret Of Target-Awareness In Marketing

Funnel Timing ThumbA place to start (always) is understanding the awareness of your target audience. Awareness is key to producing the right message at the right time, as without your target knowing that they have a problem, your solution holds zero value. This holds true for every stage of the awareness funnel.

In that awareness-funnel, there are five stages, the last being that your target is ready to buy from you. Those stages are:

  1. Not Aware
  2. Problem-Aware
  3. Solution-Aware
  4. Provider Aware
  5. Fully Aware

If you want to learn more about how to create conversion-driven copy for your marketing collateral or website, sign up for my limited-time complimentary one-on-one “Start Your 2019 Marketing Off Right Master Class”. This offering is only being offered in January this year, so hurry as there is less than 30-days to go!  Reserve your time slot here!

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Email Subject Lines That Guarantee Getting Opened

23 Email Subject Lines guaranteed to get opened — from our friends at Hubspot!

“Your prospects’ and colleagues’ email inboxes are inundated with ordinary subject lines all day, every day.

“Hope you’re doing well,” “Just checking in,” and “Wanted to follow up” fill their screens faster than Gary Vee drops the F-bomb.

Thirty-five percent of email recipients report opening emails based on the subject line alone. And headline experts at CoSchedule recommend hitting on people’s curiosity to get that magic click.

So how do you pique a prospect’s interest? Humour. When using funny email subject lines, it’s important to know your audience. If you’re following up with a CEO after a conference, you probably don’t want to lead with a humorous subject line.

However, if a prospect you’ve been speaking with for a few weeks suddenly goes dark, these witty subject lines can restart the conversation.

Funny Email Subject Lines
  1. “Need a day at the beach?”
  2. “Since we can’t all win the lottery …”
  3. “3 bizarre steps to being better at your job”
  4. “Pairs nicely with spreadsheets”
  5. “Revised policy regarding jean shorts at work”
  6. “HBO GO Password?”
  7. “Don’t invite Steve to that meeting. He’ll dress like a ghost.”
  8. “Dad jokes. I’ve got ‘em.”
  9. “You can’t buy this on Amazon …”
  10. “You have this in common with Steve Jobs”
  11. “Swipe right on us.”
  12. “I like you better than my nephew right now.”
  13. “What’s your Uber rating?”
  14. “How to organize your VHS collection”
  15. “Mom’s gonna love this”
  16. “C’mon, it’s Friday and you’re killing time anyway …”
  17. “Is Twilight the best movie ever made?”
  18. “Coffee for closers”
  19. “Confession: I watched Harry Potter 1-4 this weekend”
  20. “If they made a movie about your life …”
  21. “The most important meal of the day”
  22. “I’m just a girl/boy …”
  23. “Is it too late now to say sorry?”

Want to read the whole Article? Click here!

Engaging with Email Platforms

I recommend two email platforms, Constant Contact® and MailChimp®

  • CONSTANT CONTACT – This is the Cadillac of bulk emailing platforms
    • Upload your own images or use Constant Contact’s Image Library
    • Send Unlimited Emails
    • Website Integrations
    • Contact Automation
    • Multiple Forms including pop-up, take-over, slide-in, and banner
    • Manage Multiple Users
    • High Deliverability
    • Removable Constant Contact Branding
    • 60-Day Free Trial
  • MAILCHIMP – Solid platform
    • Basic Platform is Free up to 2000 contacts
    • Send up 10k emails per month on the Free plan
    • Send Unlimited Emails on paid plans
    • Website Integrations on the Free plan
    • Contact Automation on paid plans
    • Multiple Forms including pop-up, take-over, slide-in, and banner
    • Manage Multiple Users
    • High Deliverability

Need further help? Schedule a call and lets chat!

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Claude C. Hopkins’ Quotes — Thoughts For 2018

“A salesman’s mistake may cost little. An advertiser’s mistake may cost a thousand times that much. Be more cautious, more exacting, therefore. A mediocre salesman may affect a small part of your trade. Mediocre advertising affects all of your trade.” ~ Claude C. Hopkins in Scientific Advertising

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Conversion Traffic: The Top 10 Ways To Get Better Results

So you have visitors and it is just not converting; maybe you are simply not driving the right conversion traffic!

Conversion Traffic“Getting traffic to your website is great, but if that traffic doesn’t convert, it’s almost useless.” ~ Jayson DeMers — Founder and CEO, AudienceBloom

Keeping Up-To-Date On Conversion Traffic ‘Best Practices’  Is Not Easy!

It is essentially true that technology has a six-week cycle and that new ideas are expanding at a rate that is nearly impossible to keep up with without doing continual research.

Traffic Conversion

This week in doing such research specifically on Conversion Traffic, I came upon a great 2015 blog post by Jason DeMers, the Founder | CEO of AudienceBloom, a Seattle-based SEO agency. He’s the author of the ebook, “The Definitive Guide to Marketing Your Business Online”. In his post, he has listed the top thirty-nine best practices for increasing your conversion traffic in “39 Quick Ways to Increase Your Website’s Conversion Rate“.

And while his post is now a few years old, many points on that list cannot be improved upon. So in an effort to inform you — while still maintaining some level of brevity —I will list myTop-10 from his list. So with full credit to Jason for creating this, here are my choices from his list of thirty-nine:

1. Include as few fields as possible.

When asking for information in an email opt-in form, ask for as little information as necessary. Here’s an example of how using one additional form field decreased conversions by 11 percent.

2. Add a guarantee.

Include a no-questions-asked refund policy on all purchases. This reduces risk, and increased sales will usually more than make-up for any returns.

3. Use tangible action verbs.

When testing out different calls to action, try using action language that spurs visitors to take action (for example, “grab yours,” “reserve your seat”)

4. Use testimonials.

Testimonials reduce risk and provide social proof. Use them on product landing pages as well as on your email opt-in landing page.

5. Clearly-state the benefits of your product or service.

Listing the features of your product is important, but it’s even more important to tell potential customers exactly how your product will help them or solve their problem.

6. Pay careful attention to your headline.

Your headline is perhaps the single most important element of your landing page. Brainstorm at least 10 possibilities before choosing the strongest one.

7. Keep conversion elements above the fold.

Opt-in boxes and other conversion elements should be above the fold for optimal results.

8. Use video to humanize your brand.

Include a simple video on landing pages to show there’s a real person behind your brand.

9. Create dedicated landing pages for pay-per-click ads.

If you’re using AdWords or another form of PPC ads, be sure to send these visitors to a dedicated landing page (not your home page!).

10. Incorporate strong calls to action (CTAs) into every piece of content on your site.

Let your readers know exactly what you want them to do next, whether that’s click a button, read a blog post or fill out a form.

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