Tag: conversion

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My #1 Question Asked: Do You Make Websites?

I decided to write this “My #1 Question Asked: Do You Make Websites?” post because at least once a week (50+ times per year), I get asked this question. This post is about the deeper answer, beyond “yes”.

We Make Websites

Today’s Marketing Professional

I am not boasting or making any claim that the average marketer of today has the same education as a physician, however, I have discovered that using the analogy of a family physician is an easy way to understand the term “marketing professional”.

Your family doctor would be able to administer a shot or take blood pressure, as well as specialize in some aspect of medicine. Today’s marketer can build a website with at least a WYSIWYG editor, and will often focus on a specialty.

That said, today’s typical marketer also specializes in something specific, such as what I do here at Cortex, conversion optimization and engagement engineering.

We make website to fit the Conversion Optimization Wheel

Yes, Cortex Marketing Does Make Websites

Although the skillset to make websites is needed in being a good marketer, today’s full-service marketing is bigger than that. An example is that Jason, and his business Ad-Sol.com, specializes in advertising, whereas Behrooz, and his business MasterPix.com, specializes in custom websites and graphic design. So, does Cortex marketing make Websites? Yes, but so does Ad-Sol and MasterPix. Clear as mud?

The bottom line is, marketing is a multi-spoked wheel and the many components of that wheel, support and works off of each other.

The General Top-10 Components Are:

      1. Big Picture Names (e.g. what you call your business, domain url’s, content titles, etc.)
      2. Big Picture Strategies and Plans
      3. Branding & Colour Schemes
      4. Target Defining
      5. Copy-Boarding
      6. Copywriting
      7. Online Development (websites, social media, etc)
      8. Publicity
      9. Testing
      10. Analyzing successes and failures

We Make Websites with Digital MarketingA Different Kind Of Marketing Company

If you are looking for an effective way to not just drive more traffic to your site, but to drive more qualified leads to your sales funnel, lets set up a time to chat… or you can call me now at 1-888-502-3523. I look forward to speaking with you about your ideas!!

 

 

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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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The Power Of Why Marketing Methodology

“People Don’t Buy What You Do, They Buy Why You Do It” ~ Simon Sinek — that’s the power of why!

The Power Of Why

My Inspiration For The Power Of Why

To understanding the Power Of Why, let’s talk about biology… yes “biology”. We are all inspired — at the top level — by our experiences. From there our feelings take over; and while we are always gathering information, that ‘information’ influences our feelings… which in turn influences our decision, and ultimately, we buy based on what we feel, not what we know.

The Power Of Why“When we are confronted with a decision, emotions from previous, related experiences affix values to the options we are considering. These emotions create preferences which lead to our decision.” ~ Peter Noel Murray Ph.D.

Read His Entire Article Here

So how does this tie into biology you ask?

When you look at the information and “decision-making regions” of the brain — top down, like the image above — the”Neo-Cortex” is the ‘WHAT’ ring, and the “Limbic Brain” (or “Allocortex” region) are the center two, ‘HOW’ & ‘WHY’ regions respectively. When we buy, our final decisions are most often attributed to the ‘why’. In other words,  does it make us feel good, or special, or sexy, or smart, or [whatever].

So more often than not, your marketing message must seek to tap into that Allocortex response region, eliciting an emotion, putting the buyer on a path to make a decision in your favor.

This is only century-old knowledge, and the ‘message delivering methodology’ within this knowledge is at the core of why DRM (Direct Response Marketing) works so well. In fact, one of the most successful companies in the world uses this methodology all the time. That company? Apple.

So, Gimme Some Examples Of DRM and The Power Of Why

Okay, we are just scratching the surface here, here are a few ‘slogans’… see if you can name the brand:

  • “Think Different” (we all want to be unique)
  • “Melts in your mouth but not in your hands!” (still true)
  • “Fly the friendly skies!” (well not so much anymore)
  • “Snickers really satisfies!” (okay that one is a give away)
Apple Think Different Logo
Copyright © Apple Inc.

Well, how’d you do? My guess is, most will — while maybe more in a sub-conscience way — easily relate to the emotional experience we have had with each brand. The first one, by the way, was Apple. “Think different.” was an advertising slogan for Apple, Inc. (then Apple Computer, Inc.) in 1997 created by the Los Angeles office of advertising agency TBWA\Chiat\Day. The slogan has been widely taken as a response to IBM’s slogan “Think”.

The Golden Circle — Explaining The Power Of Why

Simon Sinek codified this whole concept in the creation of “The Golden Circle”, and with 32.6+ million total views, you can be guaranteed that more than a few have been inspired. Here is that video:

I hope you left inspired today about “The Power Of Why”!

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