by seller_bot | Nov 13, 2016 | Our Blog
It happens all too often: You stumble upon a product to promote, or someone’s personal website and it looks like it was created in 1999. You cringe and move on, and you know what sucks for that person?
Their potential buyers and leads do as well. Everyone may think that their site is the special snowflake exception, and that it has a sort of old fashioned charm, but then everyone would be mistaken.
Landing pages change in effectiveness with consumer trends and buying habits, so it’s important to make changes to your own pages to reflect these. Here are a couple of major changes that have happened in the last 5-10 years, which affect how people buy online:
1. People are more sensitive to BS. Every landing page used to begin with a giant claim:
“WHO ELSE WANTS TO BE ABLE TO DO X IN ONLY Y HOURS WITHOUT LEAVING YOUR BED!”
In short, headlines were sensational. They sounded exciting, but people have been let down enough to times to want to avoid them. In general, as customers got more comfortable online, they realized that anyone could say anything they wanted about themselves, and that they often did. While this increased aversion to sensationalism may or may not have affected your target market to a large degree yet, it’s coming, so make changes accordingly: Honesty beats sensationalism in many markets now.
2. People expect more of design.
Websites now generally look a lot better than they did even just a few years ago. Design software that’s suable by just about anyone has meant that it’s become increasingly easy to not have a sucky page, and people have come to expect this.
If someone lands on a page with the standard sales letter formatting with non-flat elements and giant, multicolored text everywhere, they’re going to bounce and never come back. Often times, seeing one of these pages makes people think that it has been abandoned or is no longer relevant, why else would the owner have left it looking so poorly?
3. Text isn’t your only option.
Remember when everyone started using video landing pages? The buzz of their effectiveness would soon spread like wildfire. The reality is that using different types of media on your site helps to engage different kinds of users, and accommodating all of them can help you achieve higher conversions. While you want one intended path through a page to be clear, it’s a good idea to still give users who want to learn about your product or offering in a different way the option to go somewhere and do so.
Finally, let’s stress something that hasn’t changed: Benefits vs features. Yes, the old adage holds true, people are much more likely to respond to specifics about how their life will be changed by making a purchase decision than they are to hearing about all of the bells and whistles your product has.
Of course, it’s a good idea to avoid that sensationalist trap here as well. Honesty and value win in 2016.
by seller_bot | Oct 10, 2016 | Our Blog
When it comes to marketing in the online world, it’s easy to get caught up in the sale. After all, we run our businesses to make money, right?
But that’s just the thing: Too many of us don’t really run businesses at all. Instead, we run sales machines, with the sole purpose of optimized conversion rates, email open rates, click-through rates, and the list goes on. While that’s all part of the process, it’s not everything. And what it certainly is not is sustainable in the long-term.
The markets we exist in will always change, so it’s important to be preparing yourself and your company as a brand that can shift with the market and continue to be sustainable even if the exact products or services you sell need to change. Here are a few ways to work on making sure that happens.
1) Be the one giving more, always
People establish brand loyalty through a number of interactions and factors, but many of them (if not all) can be aggregated into one overall measure: how much value you gave them. In general, you can always be the one giving more and still end up making more money in the end. This will help to endear people to your brand.
For example, a few years ago, everyone and their mother was attacking the affiliate marketing with techniques that might not have been sustainable. The ones who didn’t always shout me me me were probably able to make a fairly smooth transition to a new product. Those who failed to build real trust and value, however, probably started over at ground zero.
2) Have a brand!
Okay, admittedly, this should have been number one, but too many people focused on a web of microsites, etc. don’t have an actual central brand that they can move with over time – they have a number of independent sales machines, and that’s it.
If you find yourself in this position, start making a plan to ensure you actually are able to transition into having a brand that you can grow with throughout your career. If you don’t have a separate site for yourself or your company, don’t have a logo, etc., it might be time to think about these things.
3) Built more than a list.
Not long ago, just the fact that you were building an email list meant that you were ahead of the general online marketing crowd. Now, however, you’ve got to go even further to standout. Email open rates have been steadily declining, and while the platform is far from useless, it makes sense to be building a larger, more interactive community. Social media is certainly a place to pull this off, especially if you’re confident in your ability to pull off consistent, engaging content (or at least curate it).
It may be that some of these are more applicable than others when it comes to your own business, but it’s also probably likely that all 3 can be applied for just about anyone. Keep this in mind when you evaluate how you’re going to take your personal brand forward!
by seller_bot | Jun 5, 2016 | Our Blog
It happens all too often: You stumble upon a product to promote, or someone’s personal website and it looks like it was created in 1999. You cringe and move on, and you know what sucks for that person? Their potential buyers and leads do as well. Everyone may think that their site is the special snowflake exception, and that it has a sort of old fashioned charm, but then everyone would be mistaken.
Landing pages change in effectiveness with consumer trends and buying habits, so it’s important to make changes to your own pages to reflect these. Here are a couple of major changes that have happened in the last 5-10 years, which affect how people buy online:
1. People are more sensitive to BS. Every landing page used to begin with a giant claim:
“WHO ELSE WANTS TO BE ABLE TO DO X IN ONLY Y HOURS… WITHOUT LEAVING YOUR BED!”
In short, headlines were sensational. They sounded exciting, but people have been let down enough to times to want to avoid them. In general, as customers got more comfortable online, they realized that anyone could say anything they wanted about themselves, and that they often did. While this increased aversion to sensationalism may or may not have affected your target market to a large degree yet, it’s coming, so make changes accordingly: Honesty beats sensationalism in many markets now.
2. People expect more of design.
Websites now generally look a lot better than they did even just a few years ago. Design software that’s suable by just about anyone has meant that it’s become increasingly easy to not have a sucky page, and people have come to expect this.
If someone lands on a page with the standard sales letter formatting with non-flat elements and giant, multicolored text everywhere, they’re going to bounce and never come back. Often times, seeing on of these pages makes people think that it has been abandoned or is no longer relevant – why else would the owner have left it looking so poorly?
3. Text isn’t your only option.
Remember when everyone started using video landing pages? The buzz of their effectiveness would soon spread like wildfire. The reality is that using different types of media on your site helps to engage different kinds of users, and accommodating all of them can help you achieve higher conversions. While you want one intended path through a page to be clear, it’s a good idea to still give users who want to learn about your product or offering in a different way the option to go somewhere and do so.
Finally, let’s stress something that hasn’t changed: Benefits vs features. Yes, the old adage holds true, people are much more likely to respond to specifics about how their life will be changed by making a purchase decision than they are to hearing about all of the bells and whistles your product has.
Of course, it’s a good idea to avoid that sensationalist trap here as well. Honesty and value win in 2016.
Think your site is a bit outdated? – then get in touch as we can help!
by seller_bot | Mar 30, 2016 | Our Blog
Content marketing is nothing new, and while it's going to evolve into new formats and platforms throughout 2016, as it always does, but it's definitely not going anywhere. If anything, more and more people will jump on board, especially as more traditional ad formats continue to fall short or become exorbitantly expensive.
People don't like to be sold to, and the techniques, which used to be secrets within advertising circles are now common knowledge, meaning that most people are savvy to ad techniques and ignore them all but completely. That said, just 'doing' content marketing is not going to get you very far. In fact, the number of blogs out there with tens or even hundreds of posts but which still have zero engagement is astonishing. The reason for this is that people love to jump on the bandwagon of content marketing, but very few take the time to learn how to do it well. If you want to know how people get hundreds of shares on their blog posts and drive real traffic, well, look no further:
1) Do it better than anyone else has
There's a technique in content marketing coined by Brian Dean called the Skyscraper Technique. The idea is to find a topic someone else has written a good article on and which has been shared around a lot, and then write something even better. Like, really dig into it. If they wrote 7 tips on how to market on Instagram, you article has 52. The main reason people don't take this approach is that they are lazy, or they don't feel they have the time, but here's a secret: Creating 14 daily blog posts will lose out to one blog post that took 14 days to create, every time. It's simply a matter of being honest about what is good enough to be shared. If it doesn't blow you away, it's not going to do it to anyone else, either.
2) Promote even more than you write
Once you got an epic piece of content, your job is far from over. In fact, many people recommend spending as much as two times as much time on the sharing and promoting of your blog post than you do on actually writing it. All of a sudden, you're only writing one blog post per month, but it's performing better and getting you more traffic than if you'd written several fire-and-forget pieces. People don't just find great content, especially when you're starting out, so you have to do everything you can to put it in front of their face.
3) Reach out to those who care (and who matter)
Once you've got your blog post out in the world, get a hold of experts and those who have a following and who might be interested, and ask if they might be willing to share with their social channels. Now, here's the kicker: Make sure there's something in it for them. Working with influencers in your market is about leverage, so if that means you have to offer some free services or skillsets in exchange for a tweet, so be it.
All of this is to say that if you want to have content that performs better than average, you've got to be willing to put in better than average time and effort and that's just true of anything, isn't it?
by seller_bot | Mar 15, 2016 | Our Blog
Ever heard of popular PR and journalism tool “Help A Reporter Out”? If you’re not acquainted but you have a brand or expertise to market, this quickstart guide will give you the basics.
At its core, Help A Reporter Out, or HARO, is a platform to help connect journalists with sources. Users can register as either sources or media outlets – or both. For the purposes of this guide, we’ll be talking about using it as a source.
As a source, you’ll be able to sign up to HARO’s emails, which are sent out multiple times per day and include upwards of 100 stories that media outlets, from international news sites down to niche blogs, are working on.
The descriptions will call for specific experts or those with certain experiences to weigh in and share their advice, stories, and/or experiences. Clicking the reply link within HARO’s email will open up a new message window that, upon completion, will be sent off to the media outlet.
Responding to a call for sources is basically a pitch in which you can sell your brand’s story to someone who will publish a story about it. For example, you might find someone looking for B2B marketing experts for an interview. If you know about B2B products and write a great pitch to an outlet, they may publish your advice in their final piece. If this happens on a larger outlet, you can score some major exposure and credibility by being featured.
The great thing is that calls to action come in a number of categories, so even if you’re outside of the business and tech circles, there will be relevant lifestyle, fitness, travel, etc. prompts that you can respond to. You might not find anything in every email blast, but it’s easy to respond to a few relevant prompts per week.
A couple of tips:
1. Always be sure to deliver value in your pitch, and explain why the outlet’s readers are going to learn something from you. Never mention wanting your own exposure, instead focus on giving the journalist or outlet the best story and more useful information possible.
2. If a publication is listed as anonymous, try and feel out some details about the project in your first email to them to assess the value of being featured. That said, don’t be afraid of being featured in smaller projects, because these outlets are probably going to hustle to promote and squeeze every readership they can out of anything they publish.
The results of having your brand featured in a larger piece can be a huge boon for a small boon, and also help build credibility in your niche, as your input on a topic has now been published. Consistency is key with HARO; respond to every prompt that seems like a good fit, and eventually you’ll match up with someone who needs exactly what you have to offer.
Now get to pitching, good luck!
