Landing Pages That Convert

Hey- if you’re interested in learning about how to get your online business off the ground and convert visitors to your site into customers, then you need to check out a video interview I did with Andrew Warner over at Mixergy on How To Ensure Success Before You Launch.

Now, I also want to share some things I didn’t share on the call- one of which is an easy Landing Page Formula. With the theory and insights and tips I gave about Positioning your business, finding your market online and “framing” your product to a hungry crowd… when it comes to actually sitting down and deciding what’s on your landing page, it can be a challenge knowing where to start.

Before I show you where to start, you should remember what I said in the interview-

Creating a great landing page (given time) is not all about being a great copywriter or designer. It’s also a function of being a great tester. (Although talent and experience are the ultimate time savers and leverage – considering time and expense)

So… with that, here’s a quick formula to follow as you’re developing your landing page and the elements to include and test within:

Element #1: Lead With “Finished Story” Benefits

Every page needs a place where the visitors eyes are initially drawn that focuses their attention. Traditionally this is a headline, image or tag line. Make sure that you have this initial element be an attention grabber that let’s your visitor know what they’re going to get out of staying and engaging with you. Remember, you only have a few seconds for a user to decide if your page (and your site/service/product) is or isn’t for them.

The way to make sure that this initial attention element has the result of making your visitor stay and then convert is to talk about what I call “Finished Story” Benefits. These are benefits about what the finished story will be for the visitor after they engage and/or take the action you’re suggesting with your product.

Making your visitor visualize and imagine what they will get and how they will feel after using your product is your goal.

Again, on our call I talked about the company I helped with their business plan template marketing. The “finished story” here wasn’t the obvious – a finished business plan. It was farther removed than that. It was having raised money successfully with the polished and professional business plan.

Long story short, make sure you’re not talking about all the work that might go into your visitor getting the result they’re after. Make sure you’re getting them to connect then ultimate end goal – the finished result and REWARD.

Do this well, and you end up tying the purchase of your product directly to their desire for that end result. Once this happens, most resistance and objections from your visitor will have been removed.

Element #2: Social Proof

I’ll run through these quickly. There are LOTS of examples out on the web of each of these you can find if you just do some Google searched and click on the Paid Adwords ads and see the landing pages there.

Bottom line- new visitors to your site don’t know who you are. Make it easier for them to take the risky move of sharing something with you and inviting you into their world.

Element #4: Offer/Value

You can write great copy on your landing page, and design a great layout… but if what you’re asking for and offering on your landing page doesn’t boil down to a great offer then you’re wasting your time.

A lot of people these days are trying to build their list, or build their social friendships or “followers.” If you’re asking for anything like this, let alone asking for a sale, on your landing page, you better make you’re visitor feel like they’re getting the better end of the deal.

So what do I mean by a great offer, and what does one look like?

A bad offer, if you’re looking to drive email signups from your page, is essentially offering nothing but the chance to “sign up” in exchange for the visitor giving up their precious email and expose their inbox to you.

Arguably, that’s not an “offer” at all. But the crazy thing is, most people’s email sign up forms on their landing pages are framed in this manner.

Instead, what can you create and provide in exchange for a user putting in their email? And how can you tie this directly into their “finished story.”

This question is exactly what I love the “free report” give away or white paper type free line content. It creates an instant “offer” that makes a visitor feel like simply sharing their email address in exchange for this information is giving them the better end of the deal.

Element #5: Call To Action

This is what inexperienced copywriters and marketers have the most problems with. They either don’t even use a call to action, or they make it so weak and passive that they might as well not have one.

A great call to action does the following:

Gives specific instructions on exactly what action you want the visitor to take
Tells the visitor exactly how to do this
Uses the already “anchored” benefits you’ve put in your visitors mind and reminds the visitor of what they’ll get by taking this action

Here’s a bad call to action if you’re trying to drive email subscribers-

“Sign Up Here And Get Our Emails.”

Just what we all want, more email. No thanks!

Ok, now go out and get on the web and look at 30 or more landing pages by doing all kinds of searches and clicking on paid ads. This will start to bring some of these 5 elements into your awareness and give you ideas on how to go about writing and designing your landing page.

And don’t forget to test, test, test.

Let me know how it goes.

And here’s some Recommended Reading:

To better understand how and where to “frame” and place your business in your market, read Position by Al Reis and Jack Trout.

For a great overview of the psychological principles and operators to be aware of and use in your landing page copy and offer read Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Cialdini

For design guidance and insights, go get Universal Principles of Design (design insights with the psychology behind them) by Lidwell, Holden & Butler.

For your copywriting bootcamp, get all 3 of these books and study them regularly as you’re writing copy: Ogilvy On Advertising, Tested Advertising Methods and The Ultimate Sales Letter.

Free Online Marketing Tips: Convert Traffic Into Customers

Hey- just wanted to let you know that I’ll be interviewed by Andrew Warner at Mixergy and sharing over an hour of my best stuff on marketing and developing content that attracts and converts.

Andrew asked me to do this interview and I decided to make it my goal to share with viewers how to move from a site that “chases traffic” to a thriving business that consistently drives engagement (email, social, subscriptions) and repeat sales.

The secrets I share are all about honing your ability to understand your visitors/prospects, deliver real value that engages them in the form of on page written and designed content, and create a system that allows your results to happen repeatedly and to be improved and optimized over time.

Do you have a system and a way to automate some portion of your business/work? Then how to do plan on getting out of the “trading your time for money” conundrum?

In this video interview I’m going to share some of my best tips for marketing online and creating automated systems that will allow you to scale your success and results.

I’ll share why most successful entrepreneurs fail at attracting and converting paying customers… and what your business or idea needs for people to both find you, engage with you, and buy from you.

If you’re not 100% sure how to start with your online business or idea, and you don’t have tested and proven experience writing and designing marketing that works… then watch my video interview Mixergy.

The interview is here:

Free Online Marketing Tips to Convert Traffic Into Customers

Why Attention Is The New Traffic

Let me put it to you bluntly, in case you didn’t already know…

The days of the destination site are over.

The days of thinking about indiscriminately scaling traffic, and then working to “monetize” are over. (were a long time ago)

And the days of finding a model “after the fact” are over too.

And for you and I that’s all a good thing… if we’re able to adapt.

Will you adapt?

There’s been a shift over the last year or more driven by fundamentals of the internet environment, the sheer mass of content out there, the collective evolution of competition in niches, and the realities of the economics of marketing and advertising online.

It used to be that online companies could find traffic sources, buy it, and hope that it converted.

For every company that didn’t have a clear strategy on Where traffic would come from, What the traffic cost, and How Much they’d make back over X amount of days… there was still a funny way of hanging in there for a while and fumbling their way through to enough customers and revenue (unprofitable) that an exit or additional financing could materialize.

But it certainly wasn’t sustainable. Just hustling and hype. Short term faux-sustainability.

The real numbers of these traffic and destination businesses told a grim story that the founders tried to reframe with misleading charts and press releases. They didn’t want you to see and understand the numbers, because the fundamentals were flawed.

This was what was going on during The Age Of Traffic.

That age is over.

Next came a wave of smarter businesses marketers that understood the value of targeted Quality Traffic over traffic for traffics sake.

These people knew how to spot and identify market niches online, they knew how to read the tea leaves of keyword research, and they knew how to create compelling content or products to meet the desires or needs of real individuals that made up a niche of targeted traffic.

Hundreds and thousands of businesses have prospered and jumped to the ranks of a 2, 3, 20 or 30 million dollar a year businesses in this way, and they did it through a relatively simple formula-

• Create a service or product of real value that solves a real and existing need
• Find your real target market through testing
• Invest the time and effort it takes to create real value in content and products for this real target market
• Find a way to convert your real target market in some way (subscribe, buy, use)
• Follow up, often, and don’t be afraid to market and ask people to come back, try and buy

This formula was some of the focus of The Age of Conversion.

That age is largely over too, but the fundamentals of the Conversion formula are still as important now as they were then.

By the way, I talked about some of those old conversion fundamentals for internet marketing as they relate to the very first impression people have of you and your site/service on this quick ditty about Landing Pages. (*Hint- note the more “social” elements I’m testing and thinking about)

So, what’s happening now? Where are we going?

I see that we’re moving into a time I think of as The Age of Attention.

For most companies starting today online, the Conversion Age is over because of the rising cost of marketing and advertising online, and the added challenges of standing out in the crowd of existing products and businesses in most markets and niches makes competing very hard.

Building a large email list isn’t as straightforward as it used to be.

Driving traffic and getting it to convert at or above the minimum you need it to isn’t as easy as it used to be.

And prices are still generally rising in online ads, even with the downturn in the economy. (although Google Adwords hasn’t grown the same 5-8% this year in average CPC that it has steadily risen other years, from what I can tell across lots of different areas)

We’re now moving into a different time where existing companies who already have significant brands and audiences have a real advantage over companies that don’t and are starting out.

The barrier to entry for real online success has grown significantly over the last 5 years- both because of the Price of trying to compete, and because of the challenge in trying to grow your audience and the amount of Attention you can get.

Attention here meaning Qualified Traffic or Views of your message that were either referred, posted or bought.

Here’s a quick example of a barrier to entry for new companies, and the challenges in gaining Attention…

Google’s algorithm looks to favor bigger existing brands in a variety of search categories and keywords, where they didn’t before. The simple existence of Site Age in obtaining ranking in search results shows this… although age and audience awareness/attention/links can often go hand in hand.

Sites that alread have more Attention will be getting more Attention. And Attention seems to lead to more Attention.

Here’s an interesting article related to the value of links that older sites and businesses build up online. I found this quote particularly insightful:

“[There is...] the law of “preferential attachment” as it is also known, wherein new links on the web are more likely to go to sites that already have many links, proves that the scheme is inherently biased against new and unknown pages.”

Now, considering this, and consider the fact that even some of the more well-funded, experienced, web savvy people who used to be of the Conversion crowd are now changing or augmenting their methods of communicating, promoting, and growing their businesses.

Traffic and Conversion aren’t the game anymore. Everyone, even the Internet Marketing crowd, now wants a Brand, a Community, and an SEO strategy.

I found this article about the Two Tribes by Sonia Simone on Copyblogger a great insight into those still Traffic Age-minded, and those still Conversion Age-minded.

Here are some things I’m seeing as important and true in the new Age of Attention:

• Brands used to be a bad word to Internet Marketers. Now they’re essential.
• Great content alone, now matter how great, won’t win you enough Natural Search traffic to make it
• People online are starting to want and trust “in network” information, not interruptive ads and marketing
• Google is changing, can make or break you in a day, and can’t be depended on
• There are starting to be some cool ways to build attention directly in social media. Especially Twitter

What changes are you seeing?

What’s stopped working that used to work for you and your business?

How has social media, and thinking about Brand and Attention become more important to you, and changed your approach?

Concerts And The Venue Marketing Dilemma in Ticketing

Quick note…

Techchrunch posted this tonight about how some of the other Ticketing companies out there have responded (in fear) to the Ticketmaster/LiveNation merger talks.

Ticketing Startups Launch Multi-Million Dollar Funds To Combat Ticketmaster Merger

I couldn’t help but Comment.

There I go again on one of my marketing rants. Like this one on Marketing In Music.

Seriously… it’s time people stopped whining about the power of companies that venues have willfully chosen to give up control to for some benefits in return.

Here’s the real concern I see coming which is really a symptom of another problem-

Too many people want to leave core business activities to companies that will leverage and exploit being the vendor of choice in the middle of each transaction. (Ticketmaster provides ticketing and some ease and comfort in marketing, and venues trade part control of their business and marketing)

In short, it’s harder to do it right in business when it comes to systems, marketing and how you handle your data. A trade-off is made when you choose a ticketing company. Venues need to stop worrying and start recognizing and considering these trade-offs if they’re serious about long term success regardless of the ticketing woes.

I appreciate that these other ticketing companies don’t want this potential mega-corp wrapping everything up. But if these ticketing companies were truly and “altruistically” concerned for venues… they’d be out there helping and coaching venues just because.

And they’d be providing ticketing for lesser margins and instead finding more innovative and value added ways to monetize the ticket service they provide.

Proven Marketing Methods NOT Being Used In Music

Who’s doing great permission marketing and direct marketing in music, and having real success? What are they doing?

And what are the big things that most people in music marketing are NOT doing that could quickly create better results for them in building fan bases, community, and selling music and tickets?

Well… glad you asked.

There’s a collection of tested methods marketers have found over the years that remove what I’ll call “Risk” in the customer experience. These can help anyone who has a goal of getting more people subscribing, downloading, “Adding”, and buying.

But what’s fascinating to me is that while most of the products and services sold online have incorporated most of these tested advertising and marketing methods… some of the biggies still aren’t being tested or used by people involved in marketing music.

It seems like a lot of the music set are late to the game. (I won’t get into Why this is here. But it’s fascinating topic of it’s own.)

Given all this… I’ve been thinking a lot about Risk in the music-related customer experience lately, and seeing that some of the people I meet who are involved in marketing around music haven’t really thought through Risk from the user/customer perspective, and applied some of the tested principles of removing/reducing Risk from the experience.

Let me tell you why Risk is so important, and why it’s so useful to know about in marketing music, or anything for that matter.

I’ll start by showing you what I mean when I say “Risk”…

Whether you’ve thought about it or not, it’s a Risky behavior when a user simply clicks on a link to go somewhere. Seriously.

Why? Because in the few seconds or split seconds a user spends deciding to click on a link or not, a lot of thoughts come up in their head.

Some of these thoughts are…

Where will this link really lead me?

Is clicking a good investment of my time?

Can I trust the source that linked to this?

Will I get what I had hoped or imagined from following this link?

All these and more questions are wrapped unconsciously into the short split-second decision to click, or not click. (*Hint- great marketers and copywriters and designers know how to help the readers mind turn off some of this unconscious Risk-processing machinery and allow the less rational mind to take over and push a user into a specific action)

Now… knowing that a site visitors can experience a level of anxiety and resistance simply from the process of deciding whether or not to click on a link even before they arrive at your site, then imagine this…

Imagine how much more Risky (and anxiety-provoking) it becomes when a visitor to a site is presented with much more significant personal requests from a site such as…

1. Enter Your Email Here
2. Add Sarah Palin As A Friend (no thanks!)
3. Or the granddaddy of them all- Buy Now

So you know, “Buy Now” actually translates in Risk terms to…

“Pull out your credit card, enter your card number into the computer in front of you… and allow me, a website and someone you don’t know, to get access to your money.”

Ever thought of it that way?

Seeing how important and significant Risk is with your visitors, users or customers… how much time have you spent thinking about what “Buy Now” or “Download” really means to your audience? And what you can do about it?

I’m am constantly amazed at how little amount of time many people who are involved in any kind of online business actually consider what the user experiences at the moment they are presented with entering their personal info, and in buying something.

I’ve been in online marketing doing Permission and direct marketing for a while and have tried and testing lots of things to see what helps lower this Risk and anxiety.

I’m just now starting to see some of the tried and true marketing methods to remove Risk be applied to music.

Some of these tried and true marketing methods are:

Free Trial
Try it now free for [x] days simply by entering your credit card info. If you don’t like it or want to keep it, let us know and we won’t charge you. (Yes, some potential sticking points around DRM here)

Payment Installments
Pay in [x] installments monthly

100% Return Policy
Try it now and we’ll bill you. If you’re ever unhappy, let us know and we’ll refund you. Or… you have 30 days to return.

Free Line Giveaway
Take this part of my product free. Buy this other part if you want it. Being done more the last few years in music.

Relative Pricing Options
Pricing 2 or more offers so that they position each other in specific ways and direct users to a single more desired choice (Often a high price option used to position middle or low price offering as more of a “deal”)

Bonuses and Bundling
Adding more value on top of what user is already framed to pay for, for free.

And of course, last but not least, the old workhorse of marketing-

Great Copywriting that really connects with the reader, and calls them to action.

Yes, some of these things are being done in music. Some, not so much.

The point is… I see lots of points of leverage and optimization all over the web in the way marketers are trying to help artists sell music and tickets. And sure, it all needs to be done in a way that works for the Artists, Labels, and most importantly with the Fans.

I’m working to build these kinds of methods and tools into our system in my startup at GiG.FM. (Beta coming soon) We’re focusing on the live music side of things, and the live music experience, with all it’s underserved touchpoints. We’ll be helping Bands and Venues, and I’m excited for what’s ahead.

Last night I had a short talk with Shamal Ranasinghe from Topspin and he mentioned that MusicMatch was doing some interesting marketing and offers/testing way back in the day, but he didn’t elaborate. Crowds and cocktails cut the conversation short. But it certaintly looks like Topspin and Ian Rogers seem to get a lot of this stuff.

Trent Reznor has certainly been a first mover that I know of with some of this stuff, and did things years back.

Candidly, I’m not the guy who knows everyone in the biz yet, so I could be a bit out of touch with who’s doing great marketing in music with Permission and Direct Marketing principles.

But I do see a clear opportunity for improvement, and for great systems to compound the benefits.

Who else do you know of who’s doing good stuff and really creating great offers, executing on list building and follow up, and providing ongoing value outside the narrow window of the “Download Now” Paradigm?

Let me know.

Lessons In Email Marketing

Dear Rand (and SEOMoz team),

You asked me to reply and tell you WHY I wasn’t interested in your offer you emailed me.

I’m going to answer you, and hopefully provide something valuable back about why I didn’t take you up on your offer (and perhaps why others won’t as well)

Here’s what your offer said…

.

***SEOMoz Offer Email***

To: Chance Barnett
From: Rand from SEOMoz
Subject: Try SEOMoz PRO For Just A Dollar!

Hi Chance,

Thanks for hanging out on the SEOmoz blog this year; I’m thrilled you’re a fan of our work. As a special thank you for your support, here’s a gift that will (in my humble opinion) have an enormous, positive impact on your SEO performance in 2009: a full month of SEOmoz’s PRO membership for only $1.

There’s only one itsy bitsy teeny catch: because we offer one-on-one Q+A with the SEOmoz staff, we’ve had to limit the number of places available at the discounted rate. So while we’re sending this offer out to 122,451 SEOmoz members, it’s only valid for the first 5,000 people who respond. Don’t delay – we’ll be promoting our once-in-a-lifetime $1 offer on the blog on Monday, February 9th. So act now, before the riotous, can’t-be-tamed masses hear of this.

To claim your first month of PRO membership for just $1, visit www.seomoz.org/trypro and enter SUCCESS09 as your promo code. The code expires February 13th (that’s next Friday), but remember, space is limited.

IF YOU DECIDE YOU DON’T WANT TO CLAIM THIS SPECIAL $1 OFFER … then please send a reply to this email with a brief explanation of why you aren’t interested (and don’t worry about hurting my feelings; my wife says it “builds character”).

I hope you have a prosperous 2009!

Thanks,
Rand

P.S. Here’s the link again, just in case you missed it To claim your full month of PRO member services for just $1, visit www.seomoz.org/trypro (using SUCCESS09 in the promo code!)

***End Of Offer Email***

.

Rand- here’s why I’m not taking you up on your offer, from my perspective as a prospect of yours…

.

REASON #1

You assumed that I would click through on the link in your email to get to the real specific value of the offer you get at in your landing page.

But I don’t like clicking through.

Not unless I can’t help myself and you’ve caught my attention so much so that I’ll literally distract myself and become “your prospect” for a few precious moments.

You didn’t catch my attention enough to cause me to interrupt my time in email and at my computer and click through.

.

REASON #2

I’m busy and I don’t care about you and your email.

Inside your email you did not give me a clear simple easy way to understand some of the SPECIFICS I will get as a result of signing up. You made me guess what I might get, without spelling it out for me.

Big mistake.

I wish you would have included 3-5 bullets that would have painted a clear picture of specific things I would have learned or had access to learn in my first $1 month, or specific RESULTS I would have gotten as a result of my learnings and applying them.

You needed to let me know what I would get AFTER I signed up, and the BENEFIT to me… rather than focusing so much on the offer you’re pitching. It’s about me, your customer, not you.

Focus on me in your copy, not you and your company.

.

REASON #3

You added an exclamation point at the end of your email subject line.

I’m kind of embarrassed when I see smart people do this.

It’s like you were thinking…

“Hey, let’s do something salesy. Oh, add an exclamation point on it and people will get really excited and respond. Yeah!”

This is the single most obvious junior copywriters mistake out there. I’ve seen many a test result showing that headlines without exclamations perform better. Seriously!

You don’t need to get my attention in these cheap ways. Think of real value, and let your words provide the impact.

You’ve got enough great stuff in your teaching, and your know your clients needs. Stick to that.

.

REASON #4

You don’t give enough specific examples of things that actually work and show them working.

If you did, I would have been shooting myself in the foot and denying myself value and opportunity by passing your offer up.

But you didn’t make me feel this way.

You tried to make me feel like this offer was scarce and time sensitive. (Which likely will work with some people too, but not many others)

You’re better than this. In your site and blog, you share a lot on “How to”, techniques, mistakes to pay attention to, etc…. but I haven’t seen a whole lot of “here’s how this really works in action”.

Gimme screen shots, stats. Take me out of the abstract and apply what you’re talking about to specific domains, keywords, etc. more often please.

.

As your prospect I have to admit something to you…

I AM DUMB.

I need you to make the value of your offer and why I must click through and take you up so obvious that I already have an idea when I click of what clicking and taking you up on your offer is going to do FOR ME.

As someone who doesn’t know you, and doesn’t know exactly what your membership is and will give me, I’d like you to make this CRYSTAL CLEAR for me and show me what I’m going to get.

What is the specific benefit I’m going to get? Simplify my life and let me know, I’m listening.

Ok, Rand and SEOMoz…

With all that said, I hope this pulls great for you guys, and it’s nice to see you doing some direct copy kind of stuff.

Keep it up!

Landing Page Tests and Search Marketing

My friend Susan Bratton has an amazing Dishymix Podcast and interviews the brightest and most interesting people you’d want to meet in business and technology. Susan and her husband Tim Bratton are Personal Life Media

Susan emailed and asked me to come up with a few questions for her upcoming guest Tim Ash of SiteTuners.com. Tim has written a book called Landing Page Optimizations: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions.

Knowing that Susan is a great interviewer, and having a particular fascination on the subject and a lot of current and future testing focused on landing page optimzation going on in my businesses, I came up with the following questions for Tim:

1) Page Focus: SEO or PPC? (The new answer: Both)

Are you seeing many online marketers developing landing pages that are both SEO and PPC optimized?

Meaning this- in the past, most direct and online marketers created targeted landing pages for keywords “in a vacuum”  with the sole goal of optimizing subscribe or sale conversion.

Now, with the growing and continued importance of quality score, page rank, domain authority, and the like from Google, things like your Minimum CPC (cost per click) can be lowered dramatically not just from boosting your CTR (click thru rate) on ads, but from on-page and site-wide factors.

Tim – have you been addressing the need for SEO “friendly” PPC landing pages? What are your favorite tips and techniques for this?

2) “Social Proof” Elements

The more I test elements of Social Proof, the more I find these as critical to include in any good marketing, including landing pages.

Examples of social proof elements are:

• Written testimonials
• Video testimonials
• “As seen on” and similar endorsements lending credibility
• Social/user generated content – communicating and demonstrating the value/experience of your site or service

An important reality in search marketing today is that consumers online have grown savvier, and thus it seems you can’t just throw up plain text copy and hope for high conversion based on people believing or trusting you.

People want PROOF, and they want it from other people than you- the site owner.

Tim- what are your favorite examples of success stories of using Social Proof elements on landing pages?

3) The Importance of Keyword Targeting

Some keywords perform. Other don’t. You’ll never really know which are which until you test and measure. But getting down to the single keyword level (both broad and exact match) is not easy, especially if you’re running thousands or tens of thousands of keywords.

I believe keyword targeting is where one of the top level leverage points in PPC marketing- and am reminded of it all the times when I see and hear people rebuilding campaigns and finding new profitable keywords.

Tim – how do you deal with the challenge of trying to drive your focus down the the keyword level, and customize landing pages for each given keyword?

What are your favorite tools and time savers?

Do you use any thing like a CMS (content management system) to help shorten the process of testing and iterating new pages.

Ok.

I’ll post answers to these questions if Tim addresses any of these on the show with Susan, and link to the show.

If they don’t get to the questions, then I’ll answer these in my own experience for you.

By the way- what questions do you have?

Designs That Influence Behavior

Hey folks who like improving conversions-

Thought this article at 37Signals was quick and valuable.

http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1496-design-decisions-the-new-highrise-signup-chart

I’ve always had a tough time wrapping my mind around design as it relates to offer pages. I’ve been focused squarely on conversion through copywriting, offer creation, and price testing for the last 5+ years. I haven’t made a focus of Design as I should have to become a better marketer.

The last few months have been trial by fire in a few areas and new tests.

This 37Signals article has some quick usable chunks around design optimization in offer testing. Most of all, I like how they share their reasoning and thinking behind WHY. There are a few top level design considerations that have led my thinking.

Top Level Theories/Approaches That Guide My Marketing Design

• Remember “Readability”
• Less is More (Paradox of Choice, simplicity in one-decision marketing)
• Use only a few Dominant Visual Elements
• Customers respond more when design emphasizes BENEFITS and OUTCOMES
• Great converters can be created with little or NO GRAPHICS- with great copy
• Use Social Proof elements as Secondary focus (testimonials, “as seen on”, user stories)

If you read the 37Signals post, you caught a few of the theories they used to guide their iterations.

I think 37Signals should also be thinking hard about the dramatic impact relative pricing, upsells, and downsells have on conversion. I haven’t tested a ton of design iterations to say this with 100% confidence, but I’ve seen tens and hundreds of cases where no design changes and big changed to these other areas I mentioned created 2, 3, sometimes 15 to 20X conversion rates in one fell swoop.

That’s not to say that design isn’t a major piece of building the overall CONTEXT of your offer.

Besides, I don’t think the 37Signals guys are looking ro radically change their pricing and test (at least openly). Obviously they have a great community, lots of attention, and seem to value transparency for themselves and others. Price testing is rarely a crowd favorite.

Good times ahead, as I’ll get to test some new design iterations over the next few months across a pretty large scale of 6-7 figure impression numbers.

I’ll keep you posted on learnings.

Bad Marketing: Build It, And They Won’t Come

A common mistake I hear experienced business people and newbies alike is building what seems like the “killer app”… and expecting users to show up in droves.

Spend tens or hundreds of thousands on a site that’s the perfect solution and the greatest thing since sliced bread, then sit around checking your web stats wondering why no one is subscribing.

The opposite end of the spectrum? The Iterative Approach.

The Iterative Approach to business building when looking at the marketing online (in Search) goes something like this.

1. Identify a market.
2. Do your keyword research. (If you see that Search Marketing would be an important part of your Marketing strategy)
3. Get a sense for what the top keywords are in your market, how much traffic those terms get, how much bidding for Paid Search visitors in those categories will cost you… and then estimate how much it will cost you to get a single visitor to your site, and a single subscriber.

Here are some relative associations for you-

(Cost Per Visitor = Average Cost Per Click)

(Cost Per Subscriber = Average Cost Per Click/ Visitor to Subscriber $)

Now… over a given period of time, here’s the real question. In fact, the one question you need to focus obsessively and endlessly over at ever moment you can steal away for-

Can you make MORE MONEY BACK from a visitor or subscriber than you paid to get them there?

I know this sounds like an oversimplification, but you’d be surprised how many smart complex businesses and projects find creative and imaginative ways to believe they don’t have to obey this simple rule. And that rule is that, in the medium to long term….

Customers should cost less to get than they do to acquire.

So do yourself a favor and find the answers to these few simple questions-

• What is your average cost to bring a single visitor to your site?
• What is your average cost to bring a new subscriber to your site?
• What is the average revenue you get back from a visitor or a subscriber over a given time period.

Focus on these, and you’ll be forced how to identify and create and REAL BUSINESS MODEL.

Oh, and don’t think that any significant percentage of your first-time visitors, or relatively new subscribers are going to buy a single thing from you unless you’re REALLY good at writing sales copy.

And even when you’re good… writing good copy is still a function of “test and measure.”

So what are your numbers?

Would love your feedback on your favorite metrics and important numbers in your business.

What are they?

Confessions of a Long Tail Prosthelytizer

How many times have you used the term “Long Tail”?

Some new data has come out around whether the Long Tail Theory proposed by Chris Anderson of Wired Magazine holds water.

Or if it’s just been another buzz phrase consultants, strategists, advisors, and those paid for activities not too closely tied with revenue generation have enjoyed espousing and collecting fees for.

Doing some thinking recently, and looking back, I’m realizing that I’ve used the phrase “Long Tail” in reference to something that isn’t exactly what the theory was really about.

In short, having been so squarely focused on direct response and internet marketing (display, search, email) over the last 6 years… I realize that I’m not a believer in the Long Tail Theory as it applies to Business Models.

I’m a user of the phrase “long tail” to communicate something else important about marketing, and especially Search Marketing.

What I recognize is that the long tail, from the perspective of marketing and advertising, simply contains a great set of exact words and phrases through which to attract potential customers, and to use in crafting personal and relevant communications in order to get a desired outcome.

So, when set against a business model,  the long tail IS valuable, in the sense that there are real humans the tail is representing… and the cost of reaching these versus others in the Head is not only equal, but often LESS EXPENSIVE.

The beauty of the Tail as a marketer is that we can use it AND the Head and test to find how and where we can compete in ALL TERMS that relate to our market as well. Head or Tail. It doesn’t matter – although search volume and competition are 2 of the first considerations Search Marketers look for.

As Seth Godin said and named a book after, “All Marketers Are Liars”

I find this to be most true when anyone in marketing or advertising tells you that they know exactly what will work best for your business.

If they were honest, and good at what they do, then they would tell you that they have ideas of what could work… but they’ll never know until they test a few different things, and do a few iterations to improve and learn.

The same goes for whether the Tail of search marketing terms, or the Head, is the area that’s the best to target and go after- you never know until you test.

Therefore, I see the “long tail” as simple a source of information and data for us through which to target and acquire a broader set of users. Not to solely depend on.

Traditionally, the Head terms (highly popular that have the purchasing of millions behind them) are intensely competitive from the standpoint of Search Marketing, and therefore expensive to try and compete in on a keyword level.

By competing across the smaller tail of keywords, and having some targeting and success/revenue from these at a lower cost… companies can get their act together (know the value of an average visitor or subscriber or customer) and then gradually afford to compete in the more highly competitive (expensive to compete) areas and place bids on the higher minimum bid keywords.

The long tail of search marketing is alive and well. As a snarky bit of proof, I know many marketers who’s success in long tail terms have bought them cars fancy enough to make them feel confident approaching women they otherwise wouldn’t.