Landing Page Tips

Hopefully, as part of your strategy to move prospects along the selling cycle, you are using landing pages in order to deliver on what you promised. It’s also a great way to track responses. It could also be a way of losing a potential customer.

Here are some tips that might help results:

  • Keep it simple – Deliver on what you promised to get them there in the first place.
  • It’s not about you – How can you help them with a problem that got them there in the first place.
  • This is not an ad – They’re not looking for a sales pitch, but answers to specific questions.
  • Powerful content – Keep it relevant. Don’t focus on key words. Instead, make what you say useful and valuable.

Copybloggers infographic gives you some great pointers.

The ABCs of Landing Pages That Work [Infographic]

Like this infographic? Get landing page advice that works from Copyblogger.

 

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What Are You Doing to Drive Opted-in Emails?

Let’s face it, we’re all in this for the same reason. To talk with people who share the same interest and could possibly be or refer us a new client.

So in order to get them to give up their email, we better come up with some interesting and helpful stuff that will make them want to be in our book for future gems. It’s not only what you have to say, but how you say it. Beyond being potential customers, these contacts can be your best friend by sharing it with their peer group.

I recently read a blog post by Ramsay Taplin in Copyblogger, 5 Subtle Writing Strategies That Drive Email Signups that I thought had value for the B-to-B community. While all may not be applicable to your world, he raises some good tips for us to consider:

  • Use time-sensitive language – people are afraid to miss out on something. An example, for a webinar, space is limited, sign up now.
  • Standing out from the crowd – tell unusual stories to get your point across. This is especially true when talking about more technical or drier topics. Add a personal touch or a little humor. Everyone loves a laugh.
  • Include social proof – demonstrate that they won’t be the first. Put up comments from other subscribers as to what they are getting out of it.
  • Develop and test different landing pages – Yes, you will ultimately end up with the names, but how you might ask for them will bring different results.
  • Write for people and search engines – Yes, your message is ultimately for people, but search engines help spread the word to others looking for similar information.

Oh, by the way, if you want to get more gems from me, sign up here for my monthly newsletter.

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Why Do You Use Content Marketing – Do You Think it’s for Branding or for Selling?

You can’t turn around today and not hear the words “content marketing.” You would have thought that someone had discovered the holy grail! Content marketing isn’t anything new, it’s just called something else. There can be arguments for both I suppose, but I feel the primary role of content marketing is to position yourself to have an advantage and sell something!

Why do people do business with you? It probably has something to do with your having something they find useful and need. It also probably has something to do with them finding you helpful, informative and an all-around good guy. They can count on you for troubleshooting or advice on best practices. Now I haven’t mentioned the term content marketing, but don’t you think that’s what you’ve been doing all along? Now they call it something different.

Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute and known as the Godfather of Content Marketing, describes it “as a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience with the objective of driving profitable actions.”

Content Marketing should be helping you in some way to move a prospect down a sales funnel. I’m not saying they need to be hard selling but you need to able to satisfy a need of a prospect in order for them to take the next step. Always answer the question – WIIFM – What’s In It For Me? If a prospect can’t easily answer that question, there will be no next steps.

Chris Brogan, in a guest post on Copyblogger, Why content marketing is not branding, highlights why the end game in any content marketing efforts have to be helping someone make a decision of some kind. He goes on to say that marketing and sales are not evil and that content marketing, if done correctly, will give the advantage in the long run.

What do you think content marketing is and how are you using it?

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Is Content Marketing the New Branding?

Branding is no longer a company logo, tagline and brand colors. Yes, it helps people identify with your company, but it doesn’t necessarily make them want to buy from you. Branding isn’t something that happens overnight. The essence of branding lies in what does it mean. So words play an important part in establishing a brand, and what better way to do that than by creating content.

Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute and known as the Godfather of Content Marketing, describes it “as a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience with the objective of driving profitable actions.” Does that sound like something we should be doing?

Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google says every two days we create more information as we did from the dawn of civilization up to 2003. We need to create and convince customers and prospects to generate content that mentions our brand.

Frank Strong in a recent post on CopyBlogger talks about the web and its endless 24/7 cycle fed by content and social actions. Shouldn’t you be a part of that?

Here are some things to think about:

  • Content is Currency – How are we spending ours? How much do we have to spend?
  • You currency becomes more valuable every time it’s shared by someone other than ourselves.
  • Your responsibility is to create content that’s worth sharing.

So take advantage of the tools that are out there, from blogs to LinkedIn, YouTube, webinars and the multitude of other options available to you.

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Tips on Making Your Emails More Effective

I believe we all struggle with writing the kinds of emails that will make prospects take some sort of action. We’re careful not to sell too much or give away too much info, but where is the balance, that sweet spot that makes the difference?

I ran across an article by Ben Settle on Copyblogger that I thought was interesting, and I wanted to share some of his insights. He calls his writing style “infotainment.” It’s a way to present your content in a way that’s fun to consume but still delivers value at the same time.

I think those of us in the B-to-B space and especially the manufacturing sector are so focused on the features/benefits of what they are trying to sell that we don’t engage our target audience.

Here are three tips for us to consider:

  • Inject your personality into every email – show customers the real you; maybe even crack a joke!
  • Storytelling – stories are naturally entertaining and it’s easy to process info from them.
  • Culture references pop – work something in (where possible) about the latest craze, TV or current event.

What are you doing to get people engaged in your email campaigns?

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