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Jul 16 2012
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Follow the Logical Path to Marketing Success

As I’ve stated countless times marketing is a process of getting people with a need to know, like and trust you. It’s a bit like the traditional Russian Matryoshka nested dolls – you open up one and that leads you the next step and the next step and the next.

The key is creating a series of logical steps so that people take small steps along the path rather than asking them to make giant leaps.

I’ve used a metaphor I call The Marketing Hourglass to lay out the step in the path – know, like, trust, try, buy, repeat and refer. These seven steps when outlined for small business owners, seem to bring the entire concept of a marketing system into much greater focus.

Today I would like to outline what these steps might actually look like from a tactical standpoint for a typical B2B service business.

Know

This is the act of creating awareness so while it sometimes starts with a referral received, it’s often the act of putting something out there that gets the attention of your prospect.

Know tactics – AdWords ad promoting free eBook that is related to your service offering but doesn’t sell anything directly, blog posts answering common client challenges amplified in social media, Facebook promoted posts for free eBook, LinkedIn Answers geared towards blog posts and free eBook content.

Like

In this step you must move towards gaining permission to continue a conversation. The key here is your email capture activities.

Like tactics – Create landing pages for specific networks, create eBook landing page with autoresponder that delivers even more information related to eBook or other eBooks, offer weekly newsletter to all who download eBook.

Trust

Trust is perhaps the most important step and yet it’s not one you can simply manufacture through one or two tactics – it’s comes together through a collection of things.

Trust tactics – consistently deliver your newsletter, educate – don’t promote, get backlinks from reputable websites, participate on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter by sharing great information and helping others find what they want, consistently write educational blog content, stimulate reviews on sites like Google+, LinkedIn and Yelp, submit press releases to online distribution sites such as PRWeb and find industry or local publications that accept contributed content.

Try

The try step is omitted by many in the desire to leap rather than lead.

Try tactics – create and deliver an online or in person seminar related to your eBook, create a free or low cost experience of your knowledge or expertise through an audit or evaluation, create an unheard of guarantee, create a try before your buy option, create a low cost version, write a book.

Buy

Obviously, this is the step we all want, but for me it’s just another stepping stone to the ultimate goal – a thoroughly thrilled customer.

Buy tactics – give more than promised, add a bonus, create a new customer kit, look for ways to get increase education for more than the buyer, make it easy to for buyer to sell the solution internally.

Repeat

For most businesses, long-term momentum only occurs when the customers acquired in year one buy more as new customers are acquired in year two. This step must be intentional and designed in the beginning as opposed to left to accidental whim.

Repeat tactics – create a results review process with every client, start an autorespoder series that provides education on additional solutions, write hand written notes for no reason, check in on LinkedIn with clients occasionally just to say hi, systematically send press clippings, create custom RSS feeds, create a client only newsletter, create mastermind and peer-2-peer client only groups.

Refer

100% referral from your client base is the goal of this system and while it won’t ever happen, if you begin with this result in mind, it’s more likely that a higher percentage of clients will refer.

Refer tactics – create a partner team and introduce them to your clients, sponsor a not for profit event and include your clients, create eBooks or gift certificates that your clients and cobrand and distribute, feature your client stories in your marketing materials, hold client appreciation events, create a hot 100 prospect list and share it with clients for introductions.

Obviously there are many things that come before the tactical implementation of your path, such as defining your ideal client you want to walk the path and communicating why your path is the perfect one to walk, but having an integrated set of tactics each with the goal of moving prospects and clients to the next stop along the way just makes marketing much easier.

Filed Under: Duct Tape Marketing, Referral Marketing, Vision, Web Marketing Tagged With:
Jul 2 2012
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The 3 Essential Elements of Successful Content Marketing

I’m taking some vacation time this week and I’m actually going to stand waist deep in the Columbia River in Oregon and cast for Trout. (Don’t worry I won’t hurt any I’m strictly a catch and release kind of guy.)  While I am away, I have a great lineup of guest bloggers filling my shoes.  This post is brought to you from Sonia Simone.

Sonia Simone is co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer of Copyblogger Media. Come find her on the Copyblogger blog, where she writes extensively about content marketing for small business.

I don’t care how big or how small your business is.

If you’ve been thinking about content marketing, one issue probably keeps cropping up.

Let’s face it … this would all be a whole lot easier if it wasn’t for that pesky content.

What makes content “good”? What’s the difference between content marketing and just writing an entertaining blog? And can content really be the backbone of a serious marketing plan?

Let’s get very clear … not all content serves a marketing purpose. If you want to build a strong business around content, you need three key elements.

Here are my choices for the three key components of effective content marketing:

#1: Make it entertaining

The biggest mistake businesses make with content is the assumption that the audience actually finds their business interesting.

No one owes you their attention. You have to earn it.

That means your content (and all the rest of your marketing) needs to become relentlessly focused on the desires and needs of your customers.

That means you write content that’s entertaining and interesting. Content that benefits the reader — often by solving a problem she might have, or possibly by giving her a good laugh.

You make sure your formatting is audience-friendly. No one wants to read long, unbroken paragraphs, even if the writing is top-notch. Use plenty of subheads, white space, and a clear, legible font that’s large enough to be read by someone over the age of 12.

And if headlines aren’t your strong suit … fix that. You don’t have to be clever — clarity is much more effective. Be sure the headline communicates how the reader will benefit from reading that piece of content.

#2: Make it strategic

Not all entertaining, readable content will move a prospect closer to becoming a customer.

It doesn’t matter how many Facebook “Likes” you have, if you’re not communicating the benefits of doing business with you.

This is where your copywriting skills will pay off. You don’t actually have to be able to put the words together yourself — but you need to understand the underlying strategic elements of copywriting.

That means you know the difference between benefits and features — and your content focuses on the benefits of your product or service.

It means you know how to overcome your most common objections.

It means you understand social proof, calls to action, your unique selling proposition … and you use these elements in your content.

You don’t need to cram every copywriting element into a single piece of content, and you probably shouldn’t. Content should look like content, not advertising.

But it still serves a strategic purpose.

To borrow a phrase from classic sales training, your content exists to get prospects to know, like, and trust you. (Duct Tape readers know this is the top half of the marketing hourglass.)

That high-quality experience is what paves the path to a sale.

#3: Make it shareable

Did you get sucked into the “social media marketing” buzzfest over the last few years?

Well, social media marketing (when it’s effective) is content marketing. Banner ads and promoted tweets can’t hold a candle to strong content. And social media is typically the most cost-effective way to carry content right to the prospects you’re looking for.

Take a look at what Oreo did last weekend by posting a single piece of visual content to Facebook. It’s generated publicity (overwhelmingly positive, despite some rumblings for a boycott) that even Kraft/Nabisco couldn’t buy.

Social media is a terrific venue for getting your entertaining, strategic content shared. The specifics change somewhat year to year — this year’s hot spots are Facebook and Twitter, next year we may be looking at different platforms.

But the essential strategy remains the same. Look at how your prospects and customers share the type of content you’re creating … then make it easy and enjoyable for them to actually share it.

How about you?

Is content marketing an important part of your business? What elements do you consider essential to a successful program?

Let us know in the comments …

Image credit: npmeijer

Filed Under: Content marketing, Social Media, Web Marketing Tagged With: , ,
Jun 20 2012
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What If We Actually Had a Conversation

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Marketing podcast with Doc Searls (Click to play or right click and “Save As” to download – Subscribe now via iTunes or subscribe via other RSS device (Google Listen)

Doc Searls

There’s so much talk over the last few years about conversations in marketing when I think a great deal of what still goes on are monologues infused with good listening data. Sure, we’ve embraced the listening side, but are we really letting our customers talk, really letting them suggest how they want to be served, or what they want to buy?

For this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast I had a chance to visit for a bit with Doc Searls. Doc is senior editor for Linux Journal, alumnus fellow with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and co-author of the seminal work – The Cluetrain Manifesto with Rick Levine, Christopher Locke and David Weinberger.

In 2000, Searls and company painted the road map for what was coming only to have it high jacked to some degree by marketers that misinterpreted the manifesto as a foreshadowing of social media. When Cluetrain told the world that markets are conversations, they meant, I fear, that we as marketers should have an actual conversation and not simply listen and react in ways that tailored our marketing conversations to the research we are now able to obtain via social sharing. (Click on this search for “markets are conversations” and you’ll get an even grimmer sense of this.)

In Searls’ latest work, The Intention Economy, he returns to the notion of conversations but puts the onus and control firmly in the hands of the consumer and not the organization. A great deal of the work that Searls was engaged in at Berkman surrounding the notion of something that’s become known as Vendor Relationship Management or VRM.

VRM tools provide customers with both independence from vendors and better ways of engaging with vendors. The same tools can also support individuals’ relations with schools, churches, government entities and other kinds of organizations.Think of VRM as the customer-side counterpart of CRM.

This is where real conversations will happen because there is no other option. But more importantly this is where firms that embrace this way of thinking will get better at what they do, provide choices and options that customer actually want and service that is tailored to the individual needs of those engaged in the conversations.

Filed Under: Social Media, Web Marketing Tagged With: , ,
Jun 14 2012
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How to Create a Total Online Presence When You Really Don’t Have the Time

As marketing your business online continues to evolve it’s become essential to look at how you view your online presence in a global, integrated and strategic manner.

Online juggling

Ernst Vikne via Flickr

From this view, I believe you can gain the greatest coverage with the least amount of chasing your tail. I believe there’s a bit of a hierarchy to what must be done first and by adhering to this loose order you’ll always know what comes next.

Do you add Pinterest to the mix? Well, the answer depends greatly on what else you’ve accomplished, as there may be higher priorities for you right now.

By following the plan of action below you can also maximize your precious time and resources by focusing on the highest payoff activities online rather than chasing the idea of the week.

I’m not going to dive into great detail about how to do everything you need to do. In keeping with the theme of time, I’m going provide a quick list of action steps that you can treat a bit like a checklist or to do list.

Each section contains one time actions and actions that you need to return to as part of your daily, weekly or monthly marketing routine.

Listen before you speak – I like to set this aspect up first because I think it provides immediate payoff and lasting benefit for decision making

  • Create a Google Alert for key brand, industry, client and competitive terms.
  • Create Twitter lists for clients, competitors and key media contacts.
  • Create Google Reader account and find twenty five industry related blogs to follow (If customers or competitors blog, add them to a folder)
  • Investigate social settings in your CRM and add Rapportive to your email.
  • Investigate social tools such as TweetDeck, HootSuite or SproutSocial to help monitor mentions
  • Bonus: Add paid options like Radian6 or Trackur for deeper listening metrics

Optimize online content – One of the most important ways to be found online is through search. This only happens if you write content and create pages that match what your ideal clients are looking for online. This includes local search!

  • Ask at least ten customers to tell you what search terms they would use looking for a business like yours.
  • Employ a keyword tool like Google’s Keyword Tool or the free or paid version of WordTracker to dig up lots of potential keyword phrases related to your business.
  • Create a list of either to ten major themes that will be the basis of your content
  • Start or restart a blog and commit to addressing your themes and actual customer questions three to five times a week. (Of course, I recommend WordPress)
  • Share every blog post on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and StumbleUpon
  • Bonus: Make two to three minute video overview of your post and submit to YouTube.

Claim real estate – One of the biggest ways to help in the game of being found is to be lots of places. Even if you’re not sure you’re business is ready to spend significant time engaging in a specific social network, you should make the time to claim and build strong profiles and place and optimize content and brand assets in these outposts.

  • Create and build out profiles in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+
  • Create and build out profiles in Picasa, Flickr, YouTube and Slideshare
  • Add plugins to your blog and web pages that makes all of your content sharable in social networks
  • Start sharing your blog posts on social networks
  • Start uploading and describing images, slide presentations and videos
  • Share five blog posts from your Google Reader on Twitter each day
  • Join five active groups on LinkedIn and connect with people in each group
  • Find twenty five Facebook pages related to your business and Like them.
  • Put all of your customers you can find in a Google+ Circle
  • Claim your Google Places Page on Google+ Local
  • Claim your business location on Foursquare, Twitter, Yelp and Facebook
  • Bonus: Check out KnowEm and get hundreds of social profiles built automatically

Capture and segment visits – One of the primary goals of your content, link building and social networking activity is to attract interest in a long-term trust building relationship. Once someone decides they want to click over and read your blog post, you want to capture some information in an effort to build an email list for more education and eventual promotion.

  • Find and signup for an email service provider (ESP) – I can recommend Infusionsoft, MailChimp, Constant Contact, AWeber and Vertical Response as I’ve used each.
  • Create a reason someone would want to give you’re their email – eBooks drawn perhaps from a collection of your best blog posts are a great place to start.
  • Use the chosen ESPs form creation tools to put a signup form on every page.
  • Consider a plugin such as Pippity to highlight your email offer through a pop up function (people will tell you they hate popups, but smart popups increase signup by two and three hundred percent.)
  • Create a weekly or monthly email newsletter with best information you’ve collected through your own reading each month.
  • Create an autoreponsder series through your ESP’s tool for each product or service
  • Bonus: Look into tools that allow you to create content funnels such as Survey Funnel, Spring Metrics or Get Smart Content

Integrate landing pages – Once you have your social profile set up and you’re producing new content and starting to make offers online in advertising and through social networks it’s time to look into creating landing pages that drive people to specific information and personalized calls to action.

  • Create a landing page for your eBook or newsletter that sells the signup
  • Create landing pages for each product or service that offers your autoresponder more information series (I use the WordPress plugin Premise on my site)
  • Consider creating welcome landing pages for your LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook profiles
  • Look into tools such as Unbounce or Optimizely to create and track versions of pages for testing.

Play ratings and reviews – Love them or hate them, search engines and surfers alike put a great deal of importance on the presence of and quality of reviews.

  • Signup for and claim profiles on Yelp, CitySearch, Google+ Local, Bing Local and Yahoo Local
  • Subscribe to the RSS feeds of your profiles on Google Reader so you can get notice with a new review appears
  • Bonus: Pick one or two local review sites and start actively promoting reviews. (This is done one to one when you get a testimonial or compliment, not via mass email)

Go online to drive offline – Now that you have traffic, content, and social working for you, it’s time to add some features that make it easier for people to interact or even go offline to meet or buy.

  • Create an offline call to action such as a free visit, coupon, or even evaluation
  • Consider adding click to call/chat/schedule to make it easier for people to engage, get help and take action.
  • Create a Google AdWords account and start driving traffic to your call to action
  • Bonus: Create a local LinkedIn or Facebook group around a topic related to your industry and start building interest with a goal of taking the group offline as well through a tool like MeetUp

Analyze and test – Actually, while this step comes last it’s really the beginning. After you set everything in motion you must create the ability to see what’s working and what’s not so you can make adjustments.

  • Subscribe to Occam’s Razor blog by Avinash Kaushik
  • Create a Google Analytics account and install the tracking code on your site
  • Create a list of core actions to track – things like newsletter signups, information requests, video views or social shares
  • If you are running Google AdWords make sure you add conversion code so you can track what ads are getting the desired results
  • Consider using goals in Analytics to track conversion funnels and paths
  • Create an A/B test of your Newsletter sign-up page in Google Analytics Content Experiments function to start to learn how to optimize pages based on results.
  • Bonus: Consider adding more robust tracking tools such as Spring Metrics, Omniture or KissMetrics

So, how many things on this list can your check off? How much do you still need to understand and do?

Filed Under: Duct Tape Marketing, Social Media, Web Marketing
Jun 7 2012
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Ideal Visitor Optimization Is the New Website Design

I am going through the process of reconfiguring my website. Note that I did not say redesign. While there will be an incredible design element provided by the fine folks at Studio Press and Copyblogger Media, my real focus is on configuration around something I’m going to call “Ideal Visitor Optimized Goals.”

Before I explain what it is I think I mean by that, let me talk about the past.

qf8 via Flickr CC

Like many marketers over the last decade or so, a great deal of my web strategy has revolved around producing content that draws links and eventually eyeballs. While that strategy has been effective by many measures, such as traffic, page rank and authority, it falls short in today’s information overloaded landscape.

The website of today and moving forward must begin with conversion in mind. But, first you must expand your view of conversion. Conversion doesn’t have to mean a sale or lead capture, conversion is simply the act of intentionally leading a visitor through your content in a way that allows them to get exactly what they need.

A conversion mindset makes it obvious at every turn what you want me the visitor to do next.

To be the most effective, web content must start with that goal rather than measure and track from an existing predefined framework.

The most important design and configuration focus must be on key visitor actions – What is it you want a visitor to do from every vantage point? What must they get from their visit in order to move to the next step? What constitutes a successful visit? How can you site build trust? How can your site collaborate with a visitor to perform the initial functions of a sales funnel?

These are the new fundamental design and configuration questions that have to be addressed at a strategic mapping kind of level in order to create the most useful visitor experience.

The framework isn’t a revolutionary idea; it simply needs to be used in a way that informs every element.

  • Who is the ideal visitor you’re configuring for?
  • What are their needs, wants and problems?
  • What is the core message of difference that attracts?
  • What keywords, topics and chapters of content need to be included?
  • What are the 2-3 ideal visitor actions that are desired?
  • What is the conversion path that must be walked and measured?

From this framework you can begin to set goals for meaningful interactions and from there you start the real work of building your Ideal Visitor Optimized Goals.

Ideal Visitor Optimized Goals are a set of goals for specific actions that can be measured using the expanded goals function in Google Analytics and optimized using the new Content Experiments function of Google Analytics that recently replaced Google Website Optimizer.

There can be side trips and branches to every path, but everything must serve the purpose of personalizing and optimizing the visitor experience and everything must be measured in order to do that.

Starting from your 2-3 ideal visitor actions you can create a set of measurable events, such as newsletter subscriptions, video views or social shares and peg these goals to next steps and even assign values to every action. When you add the A/B testing element of Content Experiments, you can also start the continual process of improving goal performance with almost real-time data.

In this framework a conversion is many, many things that are simply milestones leading a visitor to getting exactly what they came for.

Filed Under: Duct Tape Marketing, Social Media, Web Marketing
Jun 4 2012
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Google Moves Local Businesses to Google Plus With Brute Force

In a move that I predicted from the very beginning, Google has finally scrapped the Google Places offering and rolled all Places profiles into what they are calling Google+ Local.

Google+ Local offering

Now, you could argue, and some will, that forcing local business owners on to Google+ is yet another sign that Google is putting way too much emphasis on their desire to become relevant in social media, but the fact is, it’s still very much Google’s world that we playing in.

The most frustrating aspect of this in my opinion is that it took so long. I’m guessing a lot of local business owners jumped in and built brand pages, so now what?

If you’ve created a Google Place page, as I’ve been advising as part of any local search plan, then you may already be aware that Google has moved your page onto Google+.

If you’ve got a Google+ account you can find your page through either local search or through the Local button that now appears on the left sidebar when logged into Google+.

If you don’t have a Google+ account, well, I guess you’ll get one now if you still want to play with Google.

Google has already flipped the switch and is showing these new Google+ Local pages when you conduct local searches in Google and on Google Maps. While you can still gain access to and edit your Places profile pages through the Places login, my guess is that will give way to Google+ profile editing at some point.

Here are some things to note:

Clean up your profile.

Now is the time to clean up your profile

When Google moved the pages to Google+ it made a mess. A bit like moving anything does, I suppose. Go jump in and choose and edit your profile image and banner image. Right now Google is either picking from photos you uploaded or simply using a map.

You might want to add some things to your profile as some of the customization you may have done previously could be lost. Add links to your page.

Check out the reviews

Google purchased the restaurant rating service Zagat a while back and it appears they intend to inject the Zagat ratings system into the entire review process.

Visitors now have the opportunity to rate your business using a point scale. Not sure how this will translate over into the services of a plumber or insurance agency, but it’s certainly worth noting.

Reviews that came over from your previous page are very messy now. You, as the page owners, have a period of time to clean this up. When you first sign into Google+ and find your page you’ll be able to tell Google+ if you want all your photos and reviews from your Places page to be moved and be attributed to you or remain private.

So, now any reviews that you had previously will simply show up as anonymous Google user. Seems like if you really didn’t have much going in the way of reviews, this is a bit of a do over.

It will be interesting to see how much more emphasis Google puts on reviews.

Here’s the bottom line in my view. No mater how you feel about this rather forceful move, Google looks poised to make it a significant part of the Local Search landscape and you can’t ignore that. My guess is there will be plenty of tinkering, adding and tweaking in the weeks and months to come. You can bet advertising and offers will move into this somehow.

Now is the time to get in there and claim, prune, decorate and otherwise take control of your Google+ Local offering.

Filed Under: Social Media, Web Marketing Tagged With: , ,
May 30 2012
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5 Practices That Will Make Your Email List Your Most Valuable and Responsive Asset

No matter how important social media use has become in the marketing mix, email is still the most cost effective and responsive form of direct marketing – particularly if you build and manage your list with care.

Using a tool to qualify subscribers

For some, email list building is simply a numbers game. Get as many people as possible to subscribe and market to them all like numbers. The problems with this approach are many.

First off, people that take this approach and brag about their list of 100,000 records are lucky to get 5% of that number to even open their emails, let alone act. While people that intentionally build and maintain their lists with care may have much smaller lists, but they can achieve 50% open and act rates.

Having bigger numbers, with no connection, actually makes it harder for your chosen email service provider (ESP) to get any of your email delivered because mail services such as Gmail and Yahoo look down upon mail that never gets opened by the recipient.

Below are five practices that will make your email lists one of your most valuable and responsive assets.

Funnel for personalization

People show up at your website and content landing pages for different reasons. When you offer one kind of lead capture you may lose people and you certainly must treat all who subscribe as equals – even though you may have many different target segments.

By employing a routine that allows people to pick the kind of information they are looking for you personalize the information and make it more relevant. In addition, you learn a little about the subscriber based on their choices.

You can use tools that many email service providers offer or purchase a tool like Survey Funnel that plugs into WordPress and walks prospective subscribers down the path to choose a certain type of action.

Make the first 30 count

The first 30 days of subscription is your test period. This is where you wow people or turn them off. Make sure you create a specific campaign during this period that allows you to balance great information sharing with education.

Go easy on the offers during this period. In fact, you may want to use your ESPs tools to suppress anyone in the 30-day window from receiving any solo mailings or additional offers.

Refine your frequency

How often you mail is a tricky one. I believe you earn the right to mail more frequently by proving you are a great source of valuable information or entertainment.

You definitely want to establish a routine of expectation – say a weekly newsletter or roundup, but you want to be careful not to abuse your list with every good offer you can pound away at.

Watch your unsubscribes religiously as any uptick is probably a sign you are over mailing.

One of the questions you might pose early on to subscribers is to ask how often they want to hear from you. This is also a tricky one because they don’t really know how great your info is and they will generally lean towards less email.

I’ve seen some people effectively test an unsubscribe option that allows people to sign up to get your once a month digest kind of info if they feel you’re mailing too much.

Choose wisely

By using proper segmentation you should be able to target certain offers to certain individuals. You may also have even more segmentation based on actions such as purchases.

When doing follow up emails lean towards mailing fewer and fewer people based on a series of criteria. For example, if you mail a special offer to your list, mail the follow-up reminder only to those that opened the first email and your response will soar without pestering those that saw the subject line of your first email and didn’t bother to read it.

Simple decisions like this will allow you to talk to your most responsive subscribers without wearing your entire list down.

Perform routine hygiene

No matter how great your information is, your list needs routine work. If a subscriber has been on your list for more than a year, chances are you need to look into whether or not their address should remain on your list.

Don’t get me wrong, I have people on my list that are loyal, active and responsive and have been on my list for eight years, but I also find people that subscribe and never open an email from me. You want those people off your list.

Marketers get caught up in numbers, but unresponsive subscribers will cost you in the long run.

At least twice a year you should perform list hygiene and clean things up. You can use a selection like “anyone that is not a buyer and has not opened an email in the last 6 months” as a select for who to opt-out of your list.

The first time I did this I was a bit nervous. I had been building my list for years and never done any cleaning up. My response rates were dropping and spam complaints were rising.

I ran a select that effectively cut my list in half. While it was hard to push the button on that one I found that after I did my open rate as a percentage soared of course, but more importantly, the number of opens and clickthroughs to content actually went up. More of my email was getting delivered and spam complaints disappeared. (Note: I’ve never mailed anyone that didn’t subscribe but some ISPs make it easier for people to complain than unsubscribe.)

So, there you have it. Practice good list building and care and watch your email list engagement soar.

Filed Under: Duct Tape Marketing, Referral Marketing, Web Marketing Tagged With: ,
May 16 2012
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5 Reasons Why Landing Pages Are a Must

Online marketers have used the term “landing page” for many years to describe a sales tactic focused on getting people to take one, specific action. Today, landing pages have simply become a required element in the marketing toolbox for every imaginable business, including local brick and mortar types.

Landing page

Example of a personalized lead capture landing page

A landing page is just the page people land on because an ad or email directed them to that specific page as opposed to your site’s homepage.

Effective landing pages make it very clear what a visitor is going to get from a page and how to get it. That’s it plain and simple. There are many great articles on how to create better landing pages (including this one from Unbounce) but today I want to focus on why you need to create and use landing pages as a core online tool

Local content

One of the best ways to get your site to rank higher when people search locally and on mobile devices is to have lots of local content. Creating landing pages that feature very localized, down to the neighborhood perhaps, content is a great way to start building the local content and link necessary to have your pages move up in the search index for local search.

Social content

Sending your LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook connections to landing pages that are personalized to each network is a great way to deepen the connection. By running Twitter and Facebook feeds on these pages and acknowledging the connection with those that come from those networks you will also find a much higher degree of engagement in those networks.

Smart content

By creating landing pages that address the specific market segments, product segments or key content segments for your business you can begin to better funnel people to the specific types of content they desire. Using a tool like Survey Funnel in conjunction with your landing pages could allow a visitor to tell you what they are looking for and be directed to specific content based on their choices.

Lead capture

Landing pages are your lead capture workhorse. If you have a great eBook or free workshop to promote you may want to create signup forms for most of your web pages, but your signups will soar when you create a page that details, sells and demonstrates the benefits of acquiring your free report. A landing page with video, audio, images, descriptions and very intuitive call to action is a must for lead capture campaigns.

Advertising conversion

Any form of advertising will be much more effective if it is targeted to a page that contains nothing but content that supports the message in your ads. The more relevant the page to the ad, the more effective. Smart marketers constantly experiment with ad and landing page combinations, including creating keyword optimized pages for specific groups of PPC ads.

Get Premise

There are many resources geared towards helping you create landing pages, but my favorite at the moment is Copyblogger’s Premise. I run my entire website on WordPress and Premise is a WordPress landing page plugin that gives me total flexibility in the creation of landing pages. The tool includes predesigned configurations for sales pages and opt-in pages and is very easy to configure and style. A tool like Premise is a must if you plan to take today’s advice to heart.

Filed Under: Duct Tape Marketing, Social Media, Web Marketing Tagged With: