Internet Marketing Tips, Tools and Strategies

Landing pages are a very powerful and diverse tool that not only affect conversions, but also allow for traffic measurement via website analytics. So, what are some of the things you could be utilizing landing pages for, that you might not currently be taken advantage of?

Pay-per-Click (PPC) Campaigns. Landing pages can be highly customized and geared towards targeted traffic. Use a landing page for your PPC ads to test different messaging and conversion tactics.

Banner Ads. Just like using a landing page for PPC, test out different messaging and content to increase conversions. A banner ad landing page shouldn’t be that different than the ad itself, obviously. Also, your landing page analytics offer (often unbiased) statistics on the ad server traffic numbers.
 
Email Marketing Campaigns. Use a landing page to measure the effect of an email marketing campaign. As always, if your landing page is well designed it can encourage users to convert and take additional action after receiving your email.

Social Media Campaigns. Was that new comment a result of your highly focused Social Media campaign, or is it a user who already regularly visited your site? Most commonly used social platforms do not allow you to see why a user is following/liking you. By using a landing page for focused social media campaigns, you are able to have a better understanding of your social conversion rates.

Increase conversions, test messaging, or have better insight into conversions – whatever the benefit you are looking for, using a landing page could be the answer! WSI can not only help you identify when and where you should be using a landing page, but we can also help you develop a landing page that converts!

 

I am sure most of you have already started gearing up for the holiday season, right? Well if not then now is your chance. Holiday promotions are a great way to boost traffic and sales before the end of the year. Holiday promotions are a pretty popular tactic in the B2C market, so why not take advantage?

What are some simple things you can do to promote your company online during the holidays?

Holiday E-cards. Send an e-card (email based card) to your current customer base wishing them a happy holiday. This not only reminds customers of who you are and that you care about them, but it also lets them know that you are a great resource when it comes time for their gift shopping.

Discounts. Have a product that would make a great holiday gift? Do you sell gift certificates for your services? These are things you can always offer an exclusive holiday discount on (think of the Black Friday rush). If you already offer promotions on your site, just change some of your messaging to make it more holiday specific.  

Giveaways. Invite users to signup for your newsletter, email promotions and any other call to action you are currently promoting with the draw of being entered to win an item. This simple promotion can boost your traffic and signups, plus offers users the chance at a gift before the holiday gift giving commences.

Gift Idea Landing Pages. Can’t decide which of your products would do best during the holidays? Promote them all! Create a landing page that shows users all the products they could purchase for their holiday gift list. Don’t forget to use your key SEO messaging and keywords on the landing page. Also, promote, promote, promote - landing pages are great to use in email blasts and social media (don‘t use social media? You should! Get started with our free Social Media Strategy Kit).

There you go, just a few ideas to get you started with Holiday Promotions. Don’t forget, it is never too early to start thinking about the holidays. 

 Pay Per Click advertising is one of the strongest forms of advertising today. You pay to have your PPC ad appear when someone conducts a search using your keywords. Your ad is shown in the paid search results and you only pay if your ad is clicked on.

PPC becomes even stronger when you also optimize your website (SEO) to appear among the top results for organic searches (unpaid). But what happens after the lead clicks on your ad? Where are they delivered? Your home page or contact us page of your site?

Sometimes leads are lost after clicking through. This means that the landing page you are directing them to isn't doing its job to turn this lead into a customer. Here are 5 steps to make sure your landing page is working to turn website traffic into revenue.

1. Attention Grabbing Headline - Your headline is the first thing the visitor will see when landing on your page. This makes it the perfect place to tell them what your business has to offer them. Consider what key words they were searching and hook them.

2. Give Them A Deal - This is your bait. Give the visitor an incentive to give you a try. Free shipping, a discount on their purchase, a free consultation or any other offer is effective for capturing your customer.

3. Photos That Sell - Use valuable photos on your landing page. Ideally they should really speak to your customer and show them what it is that makes your product special. Another important fact: photo captions are read almost as much as headlines.

4. Intro Copy - Getting a visitor to your copy is a great success. Now don't bore them. Get them enticed enough to read further. Give them your best most interesting and compelling information right up front. Landing page copy should be short and to the point.

5. Present The Complete Package - The best way to lose a customer is to send them to an unprofessional, malfunctioning landing page. You need to put your page together in a way that instills confidence in the visitor. Professional logos and clean copy and layout are a must.

Follow these steps are you are on your way to PPC success. The ROI for a PPC campaign is very measurable. Watching the number of clicks you are getting combined with the number of converted customers will clearly tell you if your landing page is working.

People don't do a lot of reading on the internet. They do a lot of surfing, skimming and the reading they do is typically targeted at headlines and bullet points. This makes copywriting for your landing page even more challenging. It is a huge success to get visitors to your landing page and the last thing you want to do is lose them at this point. Here are a few tips for preparing copy for your landing page:

1. Less is more

Don't overdo the copy. In fact, use approximately 1/2 the amount of copy that you would if this were a printed piece.

2. Consistency

If someone clicks through to your landing page to learn more about an upcoming concert then your landing page should not lead with or focus on discounted appetizer prices. The headline that got them to the landing page needs to match the headline on the landing page.

3. Stay focused

After you make the headline consistent follow that through all of the body copy. Stay on topic.

4. No more, no less

Because there is such a short period of time to capture this visitor you need to make sure your landing page content is well balanced. Don't include anything superfluous but at the same make sure you get all the pertinent information on the page.

5. Cut the fluff

There is no room on your page for drawn out welcome messages. Cut to the chase and give them what they came for.

1. Set Goals

What are your expectations for your landing page. Do you want to generate leads or increase newsletter sign ups? Are you selling a single product? Whatever you want the user to do after arriving on the landing page is your goal.

2. Speak to Your Audience

This landing page is a reflection of your business and brand but it is not a page about you. In fact it's a page for your visitor. You need to speak directly to them and target their interests. Define exactly who you are talking to and craft your message to appeal to them.

3. Choose a Domain

There may be times when you use your home page as a landing page. This is sometimes fine but if you are building a landing page to promote a specific product or service then you need to choose a domain name for that page that will be visible and easy to remember. This is especially important if you are using a PPC (pay-per-click) campaign to promote your page.

4. Design the Framework

Before beginning the design of your landing page map out all the components that you wish to include. How much space will each item take up? Do this before writing the copy so that you are aware of how much copy space is realistic. You will also want to determine the most pertinent information because that needs to go above the "fold" which is the area of your page that many visitors won't bother to scroll down and see.

5. Write Your Copy

Copywriting for a landing page is different because only 20% of your visitors will even read the body copy. They are more likely to scan and read headlines, graphics, and bullet points. The copy still needs to be well written but you need to be strategic about where you put what information. Your call to action is very important and should probably match up with the headline because it is likely that the headline will be read.

6. Test & Evaluate

This is not a step to skip or only do if you have extra time. It is an important step and should be done regularly. How is your landing page performing? After a landing page has been out for a few days consider moving the call to action or sign up field. Does this increase conversion rates? When making changes make sure that you don't change lots of things at once. You won't be able to determine which change had the best affect on your results.

Landing pages are tricky and extremely important tools. Many people believe that success has been reached when someone clicks through to your landing page, however that is only half the battle. You got their attention enough to push them further but it's the landing page that needs to seal the deal and drive your consumer to take action.

Tafadzwa Marapa recently shared 6 rules of creating powerful landing pages:

1. Determine your customer goal - It's up to you to decide what you want your visitor to do upon reaching your landing page. If you don't make it obvious what they should do upon arriving to your landing page then there's a good chance they will leave without taking any further action.

2. Make your landing page consistent with your ad - Using a consistent message from your ad to your landing page will help the visitor to understand the action you are encouraging them to take. It also let's the visitor know they've landed in the right place. This increases the likelihood that the visitor will follow and complete the path you've set out.

3. Present a professional design - Your landing page should meet or exceed the design standard set by your website. The page needs to look professional and be well designed with quality graphics.

4. Don't offer extra links - Keep your landing page to one message goal. Don't throw all kinds of links in there and hope the viewer finds something they like.

5. Call for action - If a consumer has clicked through to your landing page they are interested in your product. Make sure they know what to do upon arriving to the landing page to complete the process.

6. Track your results - Is your PPC campaign cost effective? Make sure you can measure your results. Track your conversion rate & the marketing cost per sale.

Click here to read Marapa's blog post entitled The rules of creating powerful landing pages.

Pay Per Click Marketing Tips:

Here are some quick Pay Per Click Marketing tips for you to consider when managing your own campaigns.

•  Set Goals - Determine the goal of your campaign (sales, leads, brand awareness)

•  Know your audience – allows you to narrow in on keywords, ad text, landing pages to avoid potential “roadblocks” in the conversion process.

•  Less is more! – don’t try to do too much with 1 campaign. Creating multiple, highly targeted campaigns with focused ad groups and keywords that align well with ad copy and landing pages, will improve your quality score, relevancy, conversion, and squeeze more out of your PPC budgets.

•  Geo Targeting – if your business is local, have your pay per click ads only display in a 10, 15, 25 mile radius of your office or primary market. If you are on a limited budget, the smaller the radius the better.

•  Content Networks – avoid content networks until you have a good feel for your campaigns. Test content networks in small increments to see what works and what doesn’t.

•  Keywords – find niche, long tail keywords that convert and you will get more from your budget. Spending time on keyword research is vital to your success. Review your keywords on a regular basis and search for more. What might work today, might not work tomorrow. Optimize, Optimize, Optimize!

•  Landing Pages – make sure the page you are sending your traffic aligns well with the keywords and ad copy. Investing in a good landing page with a well crafted PPC campaign can produce excellent results.

•  Analytics – study your analytics data and conversion goals. You need to know what is working and what is not producing results.

•  #1 Position Isn’t Always Better– businesses are obsessed with obtaining the #1 paid ad position in the search engines. Why? They believe that being #1 will produce the best results, but this is not necessarily true. It depends on the keywords, bidding strategy, landing page, and conversion results from various placements. A #3-5 position can generate better results with a well thought out campaign with a good landing page vs. a #1 position with poor keyword to ad alignment and a below average landing page. And it will cost you a lot less! That doesn’t mean we don’t see the value in a #1 position, if we can get there by achieving a good Quality Score, and good results for a reasonable investment.

Obviously, there is a lot more to PPC than what I can provide in a blog post, and to do it well is going to take a lot of time. If you are going to manage your own campaigns, you need to stay educated and up to speed with the industry changes. There are lots of great resources online and Google even offers some good educational tools to help learn more about PPC and how to manage a campaign.

Step 1: Define the Success of Your Campaign
In order to define the success of your campaign, you need to know what your goals are. Is your site solely for informational purposes & branding? A lead generation site? Are you selling products and focused on transactions? Start at the bottom of your sales funnel and work your way up to the top where a visitor/prospect first enters the funnel.

Step 2: Pinpoint Your Ideal Customer
One of the biggest mistakes most companies make is they craft their marketing campaigns and websites according to what they want to see versus finding out what your customer wants. This isn't about you. Most businesses feel compelled to tell their story to their presumed audience, which more times than not, is off the mark. It's too easy for an online visitor to leave your site and find another site that speaks to them and what they want (whats your bounce rate?).

Create an artificial persona complete with name, age, marital status, etc of an imaginary prospect that you feel fits the mold of the typical person you have sold to in the past. Create multiple profiles and prioritize them in order of importance. Remember, you can't be everything to everyone. Pick a niche in your industry, stick to it, and become an expert in that niche. If you pick to many ideal customer profiles, you will end up appealing to no one. Once you know who you are selling to, you can craft your message so that it appeals to them.

Step 3: Select the Right Domain
Most companies consider their home page their landing page. Sometimes this works, but most of the time it does not. Your landing page may be part of a targeted micro-site or a single page hosted separately with its own domain name. When selecting domain names, pick those that have your targeted keywords in the domain name itself (ex: chiropractorchicago.com) to improve overall Google Quality Score and conversion. Consider one or more "vanity names" targeting a specific product or service.

If your landing page is hosted on your domain (this is the best strategy for sites that have good PR scores already and have been around for awhile), build your landing page URL with your targeted keywords (ex: www.ableelectropolishing.com/electropolishing-lp.htm is a sample custom landing page we just created, "electropolishing" is their top keyword).

Step 4: Wireframing
Create a "sketch" of the page layout and start by listing all of the key components that should go on the page. Do this before you create the web copy because the space available in your layout will dictate the amount of copy that you will have to work with. Place the most important elements above the fold (the area in a browser that a visitor can see without scrolling).

Step 5: Write for the Web
People do not read the same way online that they would offline. They scan for key elements - headlines, bullet points, graphics. Within seconds, the brain will determine if this is the right page that matches what they are looking for. A page could match exactly what a person is looking for, but visually it sends the wrong signals. Make sure to pick the right graphics and design elements for your pages that go well with your web copy.

Only about 20% of your visitors will actually read the body copy, make it compelling and short (less is more). Create a strong call to action! Try matching up the call to action with the 1st headline since this is most certainly the one element on your page that most people will read.

Step 6: Test & Tweak
Schedule a regular time each week to examine how your site is performing & converting. Use Google Analytics (fee analytics software) or hire an analytics consultant to measure the success of your campaigns and landing pages. Even after you successfully complete Steps 1-5, your work is not done. A good campaign needs revising (most campaigns). Maybe your call to action is not working, your bounce rate is too high, or the keywords you focused your campaign around are not generating any leads. Your testing and measurements should match your original goals (Lead Generation, Online Sales, Branding, Relationship Building, etc).

Sound like a lot of work? It is! But doing this the right way will squeeze more out of your marketing budgets than you can imagine.