Conversion optimization gives you more customers with the traffic and marketing budget you already have. Even better, once you find these conversion wins, you get to benefit from those wins day in and day out. These are permanent increases to your business. Start with our Beginners Guide to Conversion Optimization which breaks all this down in detail. To simplify everything, we put together an extremely detailed guide on How To Double Your Conversions in 30 Days. It’s a step-by-step process for making an immediate improvement to your conversion rates.
Before jumping into all the conversion tactics, we recommend getting a strong foundation with how conversion optimization works. By knowing how customer personas and conversion funnels work, you’ll know which conversion tricks to use for your business:
Website OptimizationsThe first step of any conversion optimization program is to optimize your website. There’s tons of improvements that you can ship today. There’s no need for intense A/B testing programs or complex tactics, we always start with the basics. A thorough polish of your website can easily boost conversion rates 30-50%. That’s a permanent lift from a one-time project. One of the pitfalls that I’ve fallen into the past: holding back on obvious improvements until I had an A/B testing program that could verify everything. I wish that I had launched improvements a lot earlier instead of waiting. These days, I pursue good-enough instead of perfect. To help guide you through all the best practices that are worth shipping right away, we put together these guides:
Tips and TacticsRegardless of what you’re optimizing, there’s an endless number of tips and tactics for getting an extra boost in your conversion rates. When you’re ready to start going after the smaller wins to squeeze every last bit out of your traffic, these guides will give you plenty of ideas to use:
Landing PagesThe right landing page can make or break a funnel. I’ve seen landing pages improve conversion by over 400% with the right offer and design. That’s right, I’ve quadrupled lead and signup flow by finding a stronger offer for my landing page. Think of it this way: if you were previously paying $10 for a lead, that kind of win would reduce your lead cost to $2.50. Getting 4X the lead volume with the same marketing budget would catapult your business to the next level. I’m not going to lie, there’s a bit of luck in finding these kinds of wins. But there’s always a lot of things you can do in order to stack the odds in your favor. We’ve put together all our best practices for landing pages:
A/B TestingI personally love A/B testing. There’s something about getting hard data on what truly works that I’ve always found to be addictive. A quick warning: only start A/B testing once you have a ton of data to work with. Even though I’ve built A/B testing teams for multiple businesses, I rarely A/B test these days. There’s just too many other major wins to pursue first. I’m more focused on getting the core funnel to a healthy place before running any A/B tests. Once traffic is flooding your site and you’re scaling nicely, consider an A/B testing program for that little extra boost. These guides show you how:
Traffic OptimizationWhile most of our conversion optimization work happens on our site, there are also optimization wins to help with our traffic. Whether it’s SEO or paid traffic, you’ll want to optimize your entire funnel. Use these guides to get started:
via Quick Sprout http://www.quicksprout.com/conversion-optimization/
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Before jumping into specific channels, it’s best to look at social media as a whole. While all the social media channels have their quirks and differences, there’s also a lot of overlap in how you approach them. Should you even be using social media at all? When does it make sense to make social media part of your marketing strategy? How do these channels fit into the rest of your market funnel? What are the trends sweeping across all social media channels? I recommend getting a solid grounding in how social media works, then going through the different channel options to pick the one’s that are right for you.
Facebook has definitely gone through a period of ups and downs over the years. For a long time, lots of businesses invested heavily into building their pages and audiences. Then Facebook completely changed how those posts end up in the newsfeed. The organic reach got so limited that Facebook became a “pay-to-play” social network by default. You can still lead with a content and value-based social media strategy but it’s really difficult to get traction with paying to post your Facebook posts. Every Facebook strategy needs a dedicated budget to promote posts. Even with the extra hurdle, Facebook is still the heavy-hitting social media channel. You can reach anyone on earth and Facebook’s targeting is extraordinarily detailed. You can get anyone and everyone that you want. Facebook is still the starting point for any social media push.
Instagram has become THE social media network. It’s easy to generate content for, has solid engagement, and still has a true flywheel that you can build over time. As you build your audience, you can still depend on being able to reach them with every post unlike Facebook which became “pay-to-play.” For any B2C brand, a thriving Instagram account is absolutely essential. I wouldn’t waste any more time before getting started:
YouTubeYouTube has gained a ton of momentum in the last few years. The search volume is almost as big as Google and the user engagement is off the charts. The one major downside is how much effort and money that great video content requires. There’s certainly shortcuts and corners to cut in the beginning, but it’s always going to require more effort than some of the other social networks. That said, YouTube is worth the effort. Use these guides to ramp up quickly:
Surprisingly, LinkedIn has become one of the hot social media networks lately. The engagement on LinkedIn posts are off the charts, easily outpacing Twitter profiles and Facebook pages. If you’re B2B, I strongly recommend that you make LinkedIn a core part of your social media strategy. It’s too hot to pass up right now.
Pinterest doesn’t get nearly as much attention in digital marketing circles as it should. Yes, the Pinterest audience is overwhelmingly female. You should strongly consider making Pinterest a priority if your target market skews towards females and you have a highly visual product. Check out our Pinterest guides to get started:
Twitter used to be one of the heavy-hitting social networks. If you wanted a serious social media strategy, you had to have an engaging and active Twitter account. These days, Twitter isn’t considered a required channel for a social media strategy. The half-life of tweets are exceptionally short, it’s really difficult to get them to go viral, and a lot of people have decided to avoid Twitter because it’s too difficult to use. While it can still be worth pursuing, it’s definitely no longer a requirement. If you think it could be a good fit, these guides break it all down:
Other ChannelsThere’s always a new up and coming social media channel to start looking into. If you’re looking to push into channels that most teams haven’t spent much time on, start with Reddit and Snapchat. via Quick Sprout http://www.quicksprout.com/social-media/ Our favorite channel, by far, is content marketing. We don’t have to push people to become our customers, all we have to do is release amazing content and great prospects will come to us. For many us, getting into sales or paid marketing just as appealing as being able to help people while marketing our business. We get the best of both worlds. Not only do we grow our business, we provide a ton of value and solve problems for people along the way. It’s not all roses though, content marketing does have some downsides. The main one being how long it takes. To build an audience that loves our content, we have to invest a ton of time. To help you get results sooner rather than later, we’ve put together a huge collection of guides below that detail every step of content marketing. Content CreationCreating content is no joke. The first few pieces are always fun and exciting, then it turns into a grind. One of the most intelligent decisions you can make is how you approach content creation. Setting the right frequency, not getting burned out, using reliable templates, and getting the most from every piece of content makes it much more manageable over the long term. Before jumping in and getting burned out, go through these guides and put some thought into your long term content plan. How to Write 5 or More Articles a Week and Not Burn Out How to Create a Popular Infographic Does Infographic Marketing Still Work? A Data Driven Answer 8 Tactics to Increase Sales with Video Content EngagementWe all want engaging content. That’s the difference between a successful content marketing program and one that’s dragging along without getting results. If you spend the time to get really good at making each piece of content highly engaging, your entire program will light on fire. You’ll get endless shares, tons of word-of-mouth, and more links than you know what to do with. Engaging content is the cornerstone of any great content marketing strategy. The Ultimate Guide to Creating Visually Appealing Content 9 Tips to Create Highly Engaging Content How to Engage and Persuade People Through Storytelling 4 Ways to Make Your Content Gripping to Readers 30 Tips For Creating Content that Gets Shared and Discussed Metrics in Google Analytics To Help You Make Better Content How to Cut Your Bounce Rate in Half with Interactive Content The 8 Underused Components of Compelling Content How to Get 247% More People to Read Your Content Content Creation Tactics That Will Amp Your Content’s Reach Suck Your Readers In: 4 Types of Openings for Sticky Content Formatting Tactics That Will Double Average Time on Page Ideation / Topic DevelopmentAnother major sticking point for content marketing is the blank page. What happens when you completely run out of ideas? And how do we ensure that our ideas will resonate with our audience? Over the years, we’ve learned that it’s too expensive to simply produce a ton of content and hope for the best. These days, we use a number of processes and step-by-step formulas to quickly generate a ton of ideas that our audience loves. Feel free to use all of them yourself: 10 Tips To Help You Find Interesting Topics in Minutes 7 Ways to Find Better Content Ideas The Top 15 Ways to Come up with New Content Ideas Generate Clickable Ideas For Content Marketing InfographicsInfographics got really hot around the 2012-2015 period. It seemed like every infographic went crazy viral as soon as it was released. Granted, they don’t pop quite like they used to but a great infographic can still cut through all the other marketing clutter. Especially since most folks aren’t producing them anymore. 5 Ways to Get Your Infographic to Go Viral How to Enhance Your Content by Building Infographics ProductivityAlso take the time to dial in your personal productivity. With the volume of content that needs to get produced, any small productivity win pays huge dividends over time. The Best Time to Think and Write Creatively 18 Tools for Better Content Creation To Improve Writing Produce More Content in Less Time With These 6 Tactics Templates for Quick and Easy Content Creation 6 Unconventional Tips to Create Content Faster How to Double Your Writing Speed Without Lowering Quality QualityOne strategy has never failed me: when in doubt, improve quality. If you ever find yourself stuck with a struggling content marketing program, push on quality. Find a way to make it better than anything else that your competitors are doing. If you improve quality enough and maintain it for a long enough period, you will win. Discover Whether Your Audience Is Bored with Your Content 6 Teaching Techniques You Should Know 7 Tips to Take Your Content From “Meh” to Amazing Is Your Content Good Enough? 6 Questions to Find the Answer A Method for Finding Out Whether Your Content Sucks How to Take and Edit Photos Without Hiring a Professional Examples of Truly “Epic” Content: How Does Yours Stack Up? Scaling ContentOnce you’ve gotten a content marketing program to work, the next major hurdle is scaling it. Don’t take this step lightly, lots of folks stumble here. At this point, you’ve spent countless hours honing your content skills. You’ve gotten pretty darn good. But when you start getting contractors or employees to help, they’re not nearly as good. They’re also not as motivated as you were in the early days. And the folks that are really good? They’re either working on their own business or are too expensive. When you first start scaling your content team, go slow and perfect every part of your process. These guides will get you up to speed: 6 Skills All Great Writers Have (and How to Learn Them) The 15 Best Tools for Creating Content as a Team How to Do Curated Content RIGHT: A Step-by-Step Guide How to Create Content More Efficiently with Curation 11 Advanced Techniques for Repurposing Old Content How to Run Contests That Encourage User-Generated Content How to Leverage Crowdsourced Content to Grow Your Audience How to Grow Your Business by Doing Less Work with UGC VideoWith every year, video gets bigger and bigger. The best part is that it’s not nearly as competitive as other types of content for one simple reason: it takes a lot more effort to produce. Yes, video costs have come down tremendously over the years. All you need is an iPhone for great quality video. But the editing If a Picture Says 1000 Words, Then Video Is… Priceless How Text Drives More Traffic Than Video Content Written WordBlog posts, articles, PDFs, and emails all form the core of any content marketing strategy. Get good at these and you’ll always have a way to grow your business. A Guide to Writing a Compelling Article Introduction A Guide to Producing a 3,000-Word Article on Any Topic The Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Scannable Content 12 Content-Writing Secrets of Professional Writers Learn To Write Content like a Pro Content MarketingCreating the content is one thing, spreading it is another. Yes, if your content is unbelievably good, it will spread on its own. But I wouldn’t recommend depending on this. I’d much rather plan for the worst and hope for the best. I do that by marketing my content and helping it spread. If I can kick start the content sharing process, then the quality of the content can carry it the rest of the way. Here’s all of our tips, ticks, and hacks to give content that little extra push. 8 Content Marketing Tricks Helped Dollar Shave Club Go Viral How to Use Content Marketing For a “Boring” Industry Create Content That Will Increase Your Traffic by Tomorrow 10 Tips to Make Content Marketing Work for Small Budgets A Guide on How To Create a Guide That’ll Drive 360k Visitors How to Create Content That Drives Sales 35 Content Marketing Lessons Learned 93 Content Marketing Tools You Need to Check Out in 2019 34 Content Marketing Tips Every Marketer Needs To Know Build Audience Connections with Content Marketing DistributionWhat about the nitty gritty of where to publish and feature your content? Should you repost content? Reshare it? What about sponsored promotions? We’ve broken down our recommendations on everything: Should You Repost Your Blog Content on Other Websites? Distribute Content Effectively Across Multiple Channels How to Combine Native Advertising with Content Marketing Leverage Basic Concepts of Sponsored Content to Boost Reach Amplify the Reach of Your Content Without Spending a Dime Create a Waterfall of Downloads for Your Ebook How to Repurpose Your Content Across Multiple Platforms Which Content Marketing Strategies Have the Biggest Impact StrategyThe best way to ensure results from your content marketing is by picking the right content strategy to begin with. There are quite a few strategies for content marketing, many of them work in different situations too. So take the time to research all the options and then pick the best one depending on your exact situation. How to Easily Add Gamification Techniques to Your Content 7 Ways to Ensure You Maximize Your ROI From Content Give Away Your Best Content, Your Business Will Grow by 290% How B2B Audiences Engage with Business Content Online How to Use Humor to Power up Your Content Marketing 6 Steps to Your First Content Marketing Plan The Future of Content: What It Will Look Like Create a Content Marketing System That Runs on Autopilot 7 Required Content Marketing Principles To Master 10 Quick Low Hanging Fruit of Content Marketing One Insanely Actionable Content Marketing Strategy How to Make Your Content Marketing Impossible to Copy How to Use Social Listening to Create Viral Content A Useful Framework To Produce Great Content, Every Time Should You Outsource Content Marketing? Is Your Content Marketing Profitable? Here Are 22 Metrics 3 Content Creation Strategies That Will Help You Prosper How to Influence Purchasing Decisions Get Your Boss to Invest More Money in Content Marketing This is Your Brain on Visualization 5 Simple Strategies For Monetizing Your Content How to Plan Your Content for Maximum Productivity via Quick Sprout http://www.quicksprout.com/content-marketing/ Fundamentally, you need to make money, or you don’t have a business. That’s actually the only true failure in business. No matter what happens, don’t run out of money. Every other mistake can be fixed. As simple as that sounds, there’s a reason why you can find over 90,000 business books on Amazon. Most of what we focus on here at Quick Sprout, is helping you grow your business and make money with digital marketing. This section covers more of the general business advice and expertise that we’ve compiled over the years. Everything from how to start a business to how to control your emotions. Regardless of your experience or role in business, there’s something here for you.
BUSINESS FOUNDATIONSLooking back on previous businesses and jobs that we’ve had, the biggest failures all stem from the same lesson. Get the fundamentals right and you can mess up just about everything else. Get the fundamentals wrong and it doesn’t really matter what you do. Have you heard the business saying “a rising tide floats all boats”? That saying refers to this exact lesson. Pick the right tide and everything works out. Pick the wrong one and you won’t get very far. Sounds obvious in theory but it takes a lot of experience and hard-won lessons to spot the subtle differences between a business with healthy fundamentals and a business that’s rotten to the core. Instead of learning these lessons the hard way yourself, learn from our mistakes. The following guides will show you everything you need to build a healthy foundation for your business: How to manipulate the law of supply and demand 101 Motivational Business Quotes 7 Lessons Learned From Running a Consulting Company 11 Business Philosophies to Live and Die By What I Learned from Fighting a 12-Month-Long Lawsuit 16 Tips for Naming Your Startup How a 23 year old turned $1500 into $128,000 in 1 year Why Most Business Partnerships Don’t Work Beginner’s Guide to Corporate Entities Do Business Like A Drug Dealer Why Entrepreneurs Shouldn’t Write Business Plans How to Create a Company That Can Run without You How a Ferrari Made Me a Million Bucks 7 Business Principles That You Have to Follow How to Analyze Your Competition in Less Than 60 Seconds 7 Lessons Learned From Losing $739,135 In Bad Investments Effective Marketing Strategy for Your Startup Company Exercises That Will Help You Become a Better Entrepreneur Charge More for Your Products by Enhancing Perceived Value How to Monitor Your Competitors With These 10 Helpful Tools How a 21 Year-Old Created a 38.5 Million Dollar Business 8 Core Beliefs of Extraordinary Entrepreneurs 5 Ways Metrics Can Cause Bad Decisions How Spending $138,491.42 on Meals Made Me $992,000 53 Ways to Become a Better Entrepreneur 59 Resources For First Time Entrepreneurs 10 Timeless Business Tips From 10 Millionaires Provide Better Customer Service by Implementing Live Chat How Spending $162,301.42 on Clothes Made Me $692,500 How to Increase Profits by Analyzing Your Competition How to Increase Revenue Without Acquiring New Customers 9 Ways to Get Your Startup Funded How to Identify the Target Market of Your Startup Generate More Profits by Focusing on Your Pricing Strategy How to Write a Business Plan for Your Startup Keep Your Employees Happy While Pushing Them to Their Limits How to Turn a Failed Startup Launch into a Success Story How to Write a Great Value Proposition Business Card Ideas To Help You Stand Out BrandA great brand is like having a business super power. Everything gets easier. Every step of your funnel has a higher conversion rate, you get more traffic, customers stick with you longer, and it’s easier to recruit people to your team. A brand is one of the few aspects of business that impacts everything at once. Brands don’t just happen though, they need to be built deliberately. Then once you have a brand, you need to protect it. These guides will show you exactly how to build a brand for your business: How to Get Your Customers to Recommend Your Brand to Others 6 Branding Approaches You Won’t Learn in Business School How to Increase Your Brand Exposure with Public Relations How to Connect With Your Customers How to Build Brand Awareness for Your Business The A to Z Guide on Creating a Memorable Brand Manage Customer Testimonials For Brand Credibility How to Improve Your Customer Service By Getting Feedback A Step-by-Step Guide to Using Authenticity and Transparency Personal BrandPersonal brands, like business brands, have an enormous impact on your success. But the execution is a bit different for a personal brand. Some things matter much less (like logos) while other things matter a LOT more (like your wardrobe). We break down all the unique aspects of building a personal brand here: How To Create Your Personal Brand Vision How To Connect With Mentors To Build Your Personal Brand Be Yourself Because Everyone Else Is Taken How To Build Your Brand Through Outreach How To Define Your Target Audience How To Build Up Your Online And Offline Assets How To Get Free Press Coverage For Your Personal Brand How To Monitor Your Personal Brand The Complete Guide to Building Your Personal Brand What Effect Does Swearing Have on Your Brand? How to Improve Your Online Reputation Why You Should Dress to Impress – The ROI of Fashion How to Become the World’s #1 Expert in Your Niche Personal Brand Building Hacks That Will Earn More Customers How to Launch Your Personal Brand if You Have No Credibility 7 Ways to Use Your Personal Brand to Find More Clients The Marketer’s Checklist for Establishing a Personal Brand Build a Million Dollar Business From Your Personal Brand 15 Things You Need in Place for Creating Your Personal Brand How to Become the Person Everyone Wants to Interview A Process to Become an Influencer in Your Industry Daily Activities To Double the Size of Your Personal Brand A Guide to Using Live Video to Build Your Personal Brand MindsetWe’ve worked with a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs and hired hundreds of people in our careers. Do you want to know what separates those that succeed versus those that flounder for years on end? It’s mindset. Even if there’s an unlucky setback in the beginning, the folks with the right mindset always make it eventually. Sooner or later, they achieve their goals. But no amount of luck can overcome a poor mindset. Year after year goes by and these folks are still struggling with the same problems, never growing into their true potential. Any improvement that you put into your own mindset will have an immense impact on your goals. Why Being the Loudest Makes You the Weakest Why I’ll Never Live in a Rich Neighborhood… How Much Money Do You Really Need? Why Immigrants Are More Successful than You! What Should You Do if Someone Attacks You Online? Why Successful People Are Douchebags The 10 People Who Led Me to Success A day in the life of Neil Patel How to Be a Workaholic And Not Get Burned Out Tony Soprano’s Top 11 Tips for Success Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover 15 Little Life Experiments That Will Change Your Life The Two Reasons Why You Aren’t Making Over $100K a Year 10 Efficient Ways to Save Time So You Can Follow Your Dreams The Less You Know, The More Money You’ll Make Be Fearful When Others Are Greedy and Greedy When Others Are Fearful CareerWhether we’re entrepreneurs or working for someone else, it’s up to us to take control of our careers. There are reliable steps that anyone can take in order to have an amazing career. Focusing on the right areas, building a network, and attending conferences without wasting time will push you way ahead of your peers. These guides walk you through all of it: You’re the Reason Why You Don’t Have a Job Focus on what you’re good at, and nothing else! Why Consulting Is A Job Everyone Needs To Experience Got Screwed? Think twice before burning the bridge! Conferences can be a waste of time, they can also instantly uplevel your career. If you’re going to do them, do them right: Beginner’s Guide to Attending Conferences Is It Worth Speaking at Conferences? How to Speak in Public… Even If You Hate Public Speaking Also focus on building your network, it’ll increase the quality and quantity of opportunities that come your way: How I Got to Know Over 100 Millionaires and How You Can Too The 10 Secrets That Make Networking Easy, Fun and Effective How to Build Influential Relationships The Real Secret to Successful Networking SalesThe old saying that everything depends on sales may be a cliche but it’s true. Everything we do in our business is fundamentally a sales activity. Sell your co-founder on a strategy that you want to pursue, sell your team to get behind it, sell a potential partner on co-promoting a marketing campaign, sell someone on joining your team, sell you boss on how you want to accomplish a goal, sell a teammate on helping you with your project, sell a customer. Some of the selling is a monetary sale, a lot of it isn’t. No matter what role you have, sharpening your sales skills will accelerate your business and career. 7 Common Sales Mistakes, and How to Avoid Them 10 Tips for a Killer Presentation Implement a Customer Referral Program That Drives Sales How to Upsell to Your Customers The Startup Guide to Building a Killer Sales Team 7 Ways to Gain Lifelong Customers after Making a Sale Sales 101: Change their mood, not their mind How to Leverage Your Brand’s Story to Drive Sales A Guide to Winning (Almost) Every Single Negotiation How to Generate Sales for a New Product Release 6 Effective Ways to Become a Better Sales Person Case Study: How I Used a Case Study to Grow My Sales by 185% 8 Psychological Principles That’ll Double Your Sales What Interviewing 31 Sales People Taught Me About “Sales” How to Guide People’s Emotions to Drive Sales Want to be successful? Learn how to sell! Generate Recurring Sales by Implementing Subscriptions Boost Your Revenue Through Upselling and Cross Selling Increase Sales by Implementing a Customer Loyalty Program Increase Profits by Focusing on Customer Retention Strategies How to Increase Sales by Mastering the Art of Storytelling How to Boost Sales by Accommodating the Needs of Mobile Users Increase Sales by Personalizing the Customer Experience via Quick Sprout http://www.quicksprout.com/business/ Google is still the place to find answers to questions. Search engines have changed over the years, and the barrier to entry has gotten a lot higher. When we started, all it took was a ton of content in order to get search traffic. The game has changed. Not only do you need a ton of content, it needs to be incredibly high quality, your on-site SEO and architecture needs to be polished, and you need enough backlinks to compete. You really do need all of it. But the rewards are still well-worth the effort.
Across all the sites that we’ve built and managed, no traffic source compares to SEO in quality, consistency, and volume. Once you have it, it’s a persistent flood of traffic for your business. Our playbook is below. AUDITWe always start with an audit on every site we touch. Whenever we skip this step, we always regret it later. The last thing you want is to spin up an entire SEO program, poor a ton of time and money into it, and then lose a bunch of rankings later because of core site problems. Complete your site audit first so there aren’t any problems lurking just out of sight. How to Score Your Website’s SEO in 10 Minutes or Less How To Perform an SEO Audit – FREE $5000 Template Included FOUNDATIONSNext, go through the foundational elements of SEO. You’ll find a lot of SEO “experts” claiming quick hacks or tricks to get higher rankings. Be careful with that stuff. It might work today but it seldom works for long. Whenever starting an SEO program, we spend the bulk of our time focusing on the foundations. The Proven Method to Ranking on the First Page of Google For Any Long-tail Keyword SEO vs. PPC: Which Should You Focus on First? A Step-by-Step Guide to Dominating Any Keyword You Choose Augmented Reality SEO: What to Expect in the Future The Psychology of Search Engine Optimization: 10 Things You Need to Know How to Get Search Traffic from Google’s Knowledge Graph What SEO Used to Be Versus What SEO Is Now How to Get Extra Organic Search Traffic with Google’s “Related Questions” How to Create Content That Drives Lots of Organic Traffic Quantify Your Results: The 14 Most Important SEO Metrics 10 Ways to Get More Traffic, Attention and Higher Rankings Through Social Sharing 5 Practical Steps To Improving Your Website’s Domain Authority 28 Browser Extensions That Make an SEO’s Life Easier The Best SEO Tools the Pros Really Use in 2019 How to Gain More Branded Search Volume to Your Website A Step-by-Step Guide to Conducting a Content Audit The Ultimate Guide to Using Google Search Console as a Powerful SEO Tool The Step-by-Step Guide to Fixing Any Google Penalty Don’t Get Fooled: 17 Questions to Ask Before Hiring an SEO Company How Content Marketing Affects Search Engine Rankings The Complete Guide to Keyword Research For SEO How To Structure The Perfect Search Engine Optimized Page How to Avoid a Google Penalty in 2019 What Matters To Google: Ranking Factors in 2019 A Guide For SEO’s In The Agency World How to Build An SEO Plan From Scratch Ways To Improve SEO Rankings in 2019 WordPress SEO – Everything You Need To Know LINK BUILDINGNo matter how good your content is, sooner or later, you’re going to need to build links. Links turn an “okay” SEO strategy into an “industry dominating” SEO strategy. All the most hardcore SEO teams have a very deliberate and focused effort on link building. Once you’ve mastered the basics and have a healthy site, it’s time to start link building. A Step by Step Guide to Modern Broken Link Building The Beginner’s Guide to Optimizing for Bing Search A Thirty-Day Plan for Gaining 100 Authoritative and Relevant Backlinks to Your New Website 7 Reasons Your Outreach Emails Aren’t Getting Responses and How to Fix That How to Combine PR with SEO for the Biggest Success Why Link Building Is NOT the Future of SEO 4 Ways to Boost the Conversion Rates of Your Link Building 7 Ways to Make Your Brand and Content More Likable How I Built 826 Backlinks to a Single Article in 8 Weeks How to Create a Link-Building Strategy from Scratch How to Leverage Link Blending and Stage 2 Link Building to Maximize Your Rankings Here’s the Process to Help You Consistently Build 7 Backlinks a Week 7 Link Building Mistakes You Ought to Avoid What Is a “Good Link Profile” and How Do You Get One? The Link Builder’s Guide to Email Outreach How Many Links Should You Build to Your Website? The Ultimate Guide to Content Link Building 7 Lessons Learned from Publishing 300 Guest Posts Why And How To Build an Online Brand Through Guest Blogging .Edu and .Gov Link Building Guide Advanced ScrapeBox Link Building Guide The Guide to Link Building Techniques A Guide to Turning Images Into Links The Quest For The Perfect Link Relationship-Based Link Building Guide The Ultimate Guide to Guest Posting in 2019 How to Get Backlinks: The Complete Guide Types of Content That Attract The Most Backlinks ONSITE / TECHNICALLastly, you’ll want to get your onsite and technical SEO in tip-top shape. Most of these items are smaller details but they can make the difference when pursuing those last few rankings. After you’re on top of all the other parts of SEO, work through all the technical details. That’ll keep you ahead of your competitors and give you that extra edge. You Can Use 404s to Boost Your SEO. Here’s How. Here’s How to Perfectly Optimize Your Infographic for SEO How to Create an SEO Friendly Infinite Scrolling Page Does URL Structure Even Matter? A Data Driven Answer How to Optimize Images for Better Search Engine Rankings How to Retain at Least 95% of Your Organic Traffic After a Site Redesign Demystifying SEO: How to Skyrocket Your Traffic Through Schema Markup How to Decrease Your Bounce Rate 4 Steps to Making Your Search Listings Stand Out on Google The Ultimate SEO Checklist: 25 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Your Next Post The Beginner’s Guide to Technical SEO via Quick Sprout http://www.quicksprout.com/seo/ There is possible nothing else in marketing more magical than getting a paid marketing funnel to work. Think about it. You put $1 in and you get $2 out. At that point, you’re printing money for your business, getting bigger with every cycle of your paid marketing. Now the bad news, paid marketing is really difficult to make work. There’s a lot of serious players that are all trying to convert the same prospects. So ads get bid up quickly. It’s still possible to win but you want to take paid marketing seriously. First, go through our guide on PPC. That’ll give you a really strong foundation so you can compete with the paid marketing pros. Once you’re ready to go through some of the core tactics for paid marketing, read through our post 7 Ways to Get High Quality Paid Traffic with Rock-Bottom CPCs. For B2B marketers, definite go through our post on How to Generate Leads with PPC Campaigns for Your B2B Company. I’ve run B2B and B2C paid marketing campaigns and while there is a lot of overlap, there’s also some key differences that B2B companies need to watch out for. These guides will also be helpful when learning the basics: Google AdsGoogle Ads (formally Google AdWords) should be part of every ad budget. The best part of AdWords is that as long as there’s a few keywords that people use to find your product or service, it’s really easy to get in front of your ideal prospects. Since they’re searching for those keywords, they’re already aware of the problem and have decided to take some action to solve it by looking for solutions. Those are the prospects that you want to be in front of. For a small business, hopefully your niche isn’t too competitive. That means you’ll probably be able to run ads on Google Ads that aren’t too expensive. If you’re going after a really large market, keep in mind that other businesses have most likely bid up the ad placements really high. It could take some time before you’re able to compete with them directly on Google Ads. We have a number of guides on different parts of Google Ads to help get you up to speed:
via Quick Sprout http://www.quicksprout.com/paid-marketing/ Retention is the act of getting your members to use your product in such a way that it becomes habitual. That’s why we call them users at this stage. if you retain them then they are literally using your product often. If you are a SaaS company then this means lowering your churn. If you are an ecommerce site then this means helping people become repeat buyers. If you are a content company then this means getting people to consume your content on a regular basis. You get the point. Many growth hackers actually consider retention the most important aspect of the funnel. There are a number of reasons for this:
The ability to use the product itself to get new visitors is one of the most exciting aspects of growth hacking. Pulling visitors into the top of your funnel is good, and so is pushing them in, but there is something magical about using the product itself to drive traffic. When done well, it can have a compounding effect which cannot be replicated with push and pull methods alone. For instance, if you utilize the pull method of creating an infographic then you can expect to get traffic, but the inbound visitors to that infographic will decrease each day and eventually level out at a relatively low number. Compare that with some of the product tactics listed in this chapter. It’s possible, using the product itself, that each time someone comes to your site they bring their own network of relationships into your funnel as well. This is where the idea of viral loops come into play. If you are able to use a product tactic in such a way that for every visitor that enters your product, they bring along more than one other person into your product, then you’ve created a viral coefficient of over 1 (sometimes referred to as K). You’ve achieved exponential growth. You’ve gone viral.
However, I need to caution you at this point. Most products don’t go viral. If you are trying to growth hack a B2B enterprise product then I highly doubt that you will have a viral coefficient anywhere near 1. Not because you’re doing something wrong, but because it’s just hard to use these tactics in certain markets. Even if you have a consumer facing product virality is still extremely difficult. So how should you view these tactics? If it really is that hard to get a K factor of 1+ then should you just scrap the product as a strategy for getting visitors? Absolutely not. Any K factor above 0 will positively impact all of your other marketing efforts, even if it never approaches the illustrious 1+. Let me explain. If you have a K of .5, then this essentially means that for every one new visitor to your product they bring half a person into your funnel. 10 new visitors actually becomes 15. This isn’t virality because it doesn’t keep going up and to the right exponentially, but you’re still bringing new people in that wouldn’t have seen your product. Consider the pull method of creating an infographic in this light. If you bring 500 people into your product this month because of an infographic then this actually becomes 750 people with a K of .5. You’ve amplified a pull tactic by using a product tactic. That’s how to think about product tactics. They amplify anything that comes into your funnel. A K factor of .5 also means that if you’re using the push tactic of purchasing ads then you can spend less to get a certain number of visitors because every 10 ad clicks becomes 15 visitors. Saving money is obviously a good thing, but this also allows you to pay more per click, and possibly outbid competitors. Remember what we said in the last chapter. Ads are just a business model competition and your product tactics, which amplify your product activity, strengthen the efficiency of your business model. Network InvitationsWe now live in a world where many people have already compiled their social networks in various places. We have a group of friends on Facebook. We follow people on Twitter. We are connected to business relationships on LinkedIn. We have a list of email addresses in Gmail. We have the phone numbers of friends and family in our mobile phones. The first product tactic that we’ll discuss for getting visitors hinges on our ability to use pre-existing, pre-defined, networks of relationships to our advantage. Phone ContactsIf you are building a mobile app then you are basically a few clicks away from permission to message their entire phone book about your app. We don’t usually think of a phone book as a social network, but it might be our most intimate network of relationships. Umano, a new service that provides the ability to listen to popular online articles, utilizes this tactic. They prompt you to share with friends after using their service a couple of times, or you can do so from the settings menu (below). Notice how they preselect everyone for you, and you have to either manually deselect people or “unselect all.” This is a common practice for many of the network invitation tactics. It is also worth noting that you can call or text with access to a phone number, so this gives you a few options on how to message people once you’ve gained permission. There might also be email addresses associated with a phone number that you can also access. Email ContactsAnother network which people have already developed, that we can use to our advantage, is their email contacts. This was much more popular a few years ago, but variations of it are still possible. LinkedIn allowed you to import your email addresses, which they would subsequently message, and this jump started their initial traffic. Social ContractsBesides phone books and email contacts, the third kind of network that we can leverage is social contacts. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, and more, are all networks where we’ve created a social graph. We have existing relationships which can be invited to a new product. It’s difficult to target every social network because people probably won’t give you access to all of them, but one can be enough. Focus also helps you make technical decisions about your own product. If you know that you are going to use Facebook as the primary social network for inviting new users into your product then this might cause you to use Facebook Connect as your product login. This means that it will be fewer clicks on the end user, and less friction, when you ask them to invite their Facebook friends later. Below is the example from the Facebook developer documentation of what a friend invitation screen looks like. Social SharingSocial sharing, as defined here, is not about explicitly inviting people into your product via their established connections or friends. This tactic is more about allowing anyone to talk about your product on their social network for whoever may be reading it. For instance, instead of asking someone to invite their Facebook friends to use your product, you instead allow them to easily post something to their Facebook feed about your product. If they have a public profile then this can be seen by anyone, not only their friends. The most prevalent example of this is seen in popular blogs. The Next Web prominently displays the ability to share each and every post with your social connections in various places. Most social networks have code snippets that you can copy and paste into your product to make this kind of social sharing extremely easy. There are also solutions that combine all the popular social sharing options into a single interface. Although it may not be obvious at first, another thing to keep in mind when implementing a social sharing strategy is to consider where your traffic naturally comes from. If you get most of your inbound traffic from Twitter, but you only allow people to share your product on Facebook then you are missing an easy opportunity. Make sure that people can share your product in the places that are most likely to bring you back more inbound visitors. This will have a compounding effect. API IntegrationsThe next step, beyond social sharing, is to actually integrate your product with an existing social network at the API level. Instead of just asking them to share, you can actually bake sharing into the experience and make it happen in the background without forcing the user to give you permission each time. A great example of this is Spotify. It’s no secret that Spotify heavily used Facebook to grow their product, and they did so through an API integration. Once you login to Spotify using Facebook Connect and give Spotify the needed access, then your activity on their service is automatically published to your Facebook feed, and it’s also published inside of the Spotify app to anyone that you are connected with on Facebook. Below is a screenshot of the Spotify app, notifying me of new users who are also connected to me on Facebook, and another screenshot showing notifications within Facebook itself of my friend’s listening habits. These are done completely in the background, which creates frictionless sharing that can only really happen through an API integration. Another example of this tactic is the Nike+ API integration with Path and Facebook. Everytime I go for a run and track it using the Nike+ app on my phone, then the data about my run is pushed to Path and Facebook, so that my friends can see my activity. Friends can even cheer me on from within Path or Facebook which will trigger an applause sound as I run. This is borderline genius. Below you can see my Nike+ app asking me to share on Path, and on the right you can see the results being published to my Path friends. Again, this it totally seamless. Once I set it up initially it does this automatically. API integrations, despite their incredible upside, are not 100% stable. As certain products become extremely popular, and gain momentum on existing social network, then it is not entirely uncommon for exposure to be throttled. Facebook, for instance, has the incentive to give you access to their platform. This keeps them in a dominant position if many developers use them. However, Facebook does not have incentive to give you the complete social graph of their billion users. If you start to have too much success with an API integration then you can’t count on the rules staying the same for you. On a similar note, API integrations are great as a way to growth hack your product, but the more you intertwine your product with a 3rd party service, the more at risk you are. Twitter is a great example of this. Many companies were built on the Twitter API, but then Twitter changed the number of API calls allowed. This left many Twitter clients without a backup plan. Use APIs to grow your product, but be wary that the API doesn’t become your product. Powered By LinksOne of the first examples of product growth hacking actually used the powered by link tactic. When Hotmail first came out they did something that was simple, but which would drastically change their trajectory. They included a link at the bottom of emails that were sent using their service that said “Get your free email at Hotmail.” A viral loop was born. This tactic is still being used to this day. A modern example is found in services that allow you to embed a popup on your website for various reasons. Widgets of any kind are good candidates for these powered by links. IncentivesCertain products lend themselves easily to creating incentives for users to bring new people into the product. The classic example of this is Dropbox. They have a number of incentives that they offer users for various actions that they can take. This tactic works especially well if you have something which is of low cost to you, but of high value to users. In Dropbox’s case, they use storage space like a currency because the exchange rate is in their favor. Storage is not that expensive, but getting new users is very valuable to them. The user is in the opposite situation. Storage space is valuable to them, and their contacts don’t seem that valuable. This makes for a perfect storm. It’s worth cautioning that many startups, in an attempt to imitate Dropbox, have been frustrated with their inability to pull off the incentive tactic. Their product might not have much intrinsically to offer their users as incentives. Also, notice that Dropbox goes beyond just giving away storage for friend invitations, but they also give away storage for actions that will help you understand their product. Educated users churn less. Organic Viral GrowthAs much as technology within the product can spread the product, there is something that can be even more effective, organic word of mouth. Organic word of mouth is when someone shares your product, online or offline, in ways that you didn’t orchestrate. They are compelled to tell people whether you incentivized them or not. Organic communication can’t be measured, and it can’t be controlled, but it can be a force that propels your product forward. You can’t make someone share your product organically with their coworkers or friends and family, but you can do certain things to make it more probable. These types of products all tend to spread organically:
You can’t be all these things, but you must be one of these things, or you probably don’t have a chance of spreading organically. via Quick Sprout http://www.quicksprout.com/viral-hacking/ Every world-class growth hacker relies on a series of steps in their growth process. We’ve broken down the six core steps below.
Define Actionable GoalsEverything begins by focusing on a narrow, actionable goal. This is important because a growth hacker can easily have a focus that is so broad it becomes meaningless. Yes, the overall goal is growth, but you don’t attain that kind of end-result without breaking it into smaller, achievable, tasks. Let’s say you have a product and you want your DAU (daily active users) to increase, but that’s too broad of a goal. Then you decide to focus just on the retention of existing users since this will increase the DAU, but retention is still too broad. Then you decide to focus on helping current users create content because your numbers show that when someone becomes a content creator (and not just a consumer) within your product then their activity on the site is far greater. Content creation leads to retention which leads to increased DAU. Therefore, you decide to make the goal to increase content creation by 2x. Too Broad: Increase daily active users Many people have a hard time knowing when they’ve narrowed their goal enough. Here is a rule of thumb that I use. Think about your goals as nested hierarchies, and until you reach the “nest” where things can actually be marked off as individual tasks which can be completed once and for all, then you’re not narrow enough. In this case our hierarchy might look something like this: Will there ever conceivably be a day when you can mark off “grow my startup” from a to-do list? No. The goal is too broad. Is there ever going to be a time when you can say that you’ve finished “increasing DAU.” No. Too broad. However, you can mark off that you’ve “educated members about content creation through an email.” When you find yourself at the part of the hierarchy that can be checked off as done, then you’ve narrowed your goal appropriately. Implement Analytics to Track Your GoalsNow that you’ve decided to increase content creation by 2x, the next question is, are you in a position to know if you actually attain this goal? Are the appropriate analytics in place? Here are some questions to ask yourself:
Without analytics, goals are empty. If you can’t definitively say when a goal has been reached then you have not completed the requisite requirements before moving ahead. Furthermore, analytics will give you valuable data which can change your goals. Your analytics and your goals create a reflexive equilibrium, where they actual inform, refine, and shape each other. As an example of a reflexive equilibrium, consider this. If your goal began as “increase content creation by 2x,” but then you realize that there is something more important than just content creation in general as it relates to retention, then you might restate your goal. If content over three minutes is the only kind of content which improves the retention of the creator and the consumer then your goal might need to be refined. One of the great things about implementing specific analytics to track goal progress is the effect this has over time on your overall analytics. Once you’ve spent a few years on a startup, attacking one goal after the other, you’ll realize that the amount of historical data you have to work with has become very powerful. Eventually, when you create a new goal you might already have the relevant metrics being tracked, and now you have past data to look at which predates even the goal creation. All growth hackers begin with a dull axe, but the edge gets sharper as a function of time. Just don’t give up. Leverage Your Existing StrengthsEvery startup has inherent strengths or assets that can be used as leverage. When there is something at your disposal which requires little energy, but can produce big results, then you’ve found a lever. Continuing our example from above, you may be trying to decide if you should send out the educational email first, or if you should add a “what’s new” category first. If you have 200,000 emails on file, and you have a system of email distribution that is rock solid, and you can probably create the email in question within a day, then this looks like a promising lever. If the “what’s new” category will require at least a few days of planning, a few days of design mockup revisions, a few days of programming, and your engineers are already completely stressed out about their to-do list, then this doesn’t look like a promising route. Especially, if you’re looking for low hanging fruit. The law of leverage essentially makes the decision for you at this point. Send out the email. Your startup’s unique leverage comes from the size of your email list and your email distribution system, not the amount of engineering horsepower that you can throw at problems. A different startup might choose a different option, but only if their leverage takes a different form. Plans, goals, and tasks, that are stack-ranked in a vacuum, without concern for leverage, are usually misordered. Plan your attack based on strengths. I would recommend reading chapters 3-6 of this book and then give each tactic that is mentioned a score based on your company’s specific leverage. Execute the ExperimentYou’ve already completed step 1, and you defined your goal as increasing content creation by 2x. You’ve already completed step 2, and now you are tracking the necessary data that will tell you if you’re successful in your goal. You’ve already completed step 3, and now you are going to focus on educating your members through an email blast, since this is where you possess leverage. Now it’s time to execute the experiment, which means actually sending an email in this case. Here are some things to keep in mind as you execute the experiment: 1. Write Down Your Hypothesis Before You Execute an ExperimentBefore you actually run the experiment you should write down your best guesses at to what will happen. Do you think this email will have a higher or lower click through rate than the emails you already send? Why do you think this? How much do you think the email will increase content creation over the next month? Will it single handedly give you the 2x content creation goal you’re shooting for, or do you think it will get you part of the way there? It may seem silly to write these kinds of things down when you can just send the email and find out what’s going to happen. If that’s your attitude then you’re missing the point. Hypotheses are accurate reflections of your assumption before you are given the chance to rewrite the past to make yourself look like a genius. For instance, imagine that you write down the hypothesis that the click through rate will be lower because you already send users one email a week, and you think the second email will annoy them. Then you run the experiment and it has a higher click through rate. If there wasn’t proof of your wrong hypothesis you would be tempted to rewrite history, and you would tell the team members that this is what you expected to happen because you’re such a godsend to the startup world. Hypothesis keep you honest. Now, instead of trying to prove to everyone how smart you are, the discussion is about why your assumptions were wrong. You might come to realize that you underestimate the amount your users want to be in contact with you, and this insight has benefits which stretch far beyond email. If the idea of forming a hypothesis makes this feel too much like science and less like the traditional culture of startups, that’s probably a good thing. 2.Do Not be Naive About the Resources Needed to Run the ExperimentAnytime you run experiments it is going to disrupt the normal flow of events in your startup. First, the entire team needs to be notified about upcoming experiments so that they can be ready for any mishaps that might occur. Second, know when your startup is already resource constrained, and be mindful of this when planning your experiments. If Tuesdays are when the server is already on the brink of failure, then don’t do something that will send 30% more traffic on that day if you can avoid it. Third, if you need a certain amount of time to finish the components of the experiment before it can be ran, then don’t overlook the time requirements needed. You would do well to remember Hofstadter’s Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law. 3.Do Not Get Discouraged by the Initial ResultsThere is a phenomenon which I have experienced countless times, and that is the ever-present belief that whatever experiment I’m working on right now is the one that will change everything for the better. The experiment that I’m currently devoted to seems to be the obvious answer to my company’s problems. If it’s worthy of my time then it must be the thing that will allow us to reach escape velocity. Oh, the joys of the entrepreneur’s disease. Like we mentioned in the last chapter, most things fail. It’s ok to be optimistic (hey, it keeps me going too), but then you can’t be devastated every time an experiment produces mediocre results. That’s why a defined goal should be attacked from multiple angles. Most of the attacks simply won’t work. 4. Learn from Success and Failure from Success and FailureData is like publicity. There is no such thing as bad publicity and there is no such thing as bad data. Even if an experiment fails you will have undoubtedly gathered a lot of information about your product and your users that can be used in future experiments. Thomas Edison failed more than 1,000 times when trying to create his light bulb. When asked about it, Edison allegedly said, “I have not failed 1,000 times. I have successfully discovered 1,000 ways to not make a light bulb.” You can learn from successes, and you can learn from failures. You only stop learning when you give up. Optimize the ExperimentExperiments are meant to be optimized. Experiments are fluid. They are not things you do one time and then move on. You tweak experiments. You re-run experiments. You only give up on experiments when it’s appropriate to do so, not when you’ve grown tired of them. Have a Control GroupYou should always have a control group when you are able to because this will account for environmental changes that are hard to track. If you send out the email to only 80% of your users then you can track how much content creation goes up in that group as opposed to the control group. There might be an unforeseen reason, outside of your company’s control or knowledge, that has actually led to a widespread decrease in content creation on your site. Without a control group you might be led to think that the email actually decreased content creation, which would be far from the truth. Utilize an A/B TestA/B tests are championed by growth hackers for a reason. They’re magical! You may think you know what the subject line of an email should be to ensure it’s opened, but an A/B test will tell you the truth. You may think you know what landing page the email should send them to, so that they will start creating content, but an A/B will tell you the truth. There are very few tools that create such large gains overall. Remember, if you are going to run A/B tests then you must decide this before you start running an experiment. Otherwise, in our example, you would have emailed everyone on your list and then there would be no one left to benefit from what you are learning. When to Give Up on an ExperimentI usually will not give up on an experiment until my leverage has proven to be weaker than I initially thought, or I can’t logically conceive of the experiment yielding better results without an inordinate amount of resources dedicated to it. RepeatNow it’s time to select a new experiment, or an optimized version of a previous experiment, and move through these steps all over again. If you work the system that I’ve enumerated here, then success is more a byproduct of tenacity, and less a child of luck. via Quick Sprout http://www.quicksprout.com/growth-process/ Now you have visitors to your product, but that’s the problem. They are just visitors. You’ve found a way to get them to come to your product, but if this is all you do then they will bounce at an incredibly high rate. Your goal is to activate them. Activation is the act of getting them to take an action in your product that you are guiding them toward. Activation is not just the act of them clicking around randomly and not bouncing. Activation is when they do something that you’ve decided beforehand that they should do, something which furthers your goals. Here are some possible activation goals:
Some of these activation goals may seem silly, while others seem relevant, but your particular goals will depend entirely upon your product. If your product is a blog that makes money from advertising then you may want to focus on numbers 1, 3, 4, or 5. If you have an email address then you can message them in the future about new articles. If they read what is already on your site they will see the quality of your journalism and want to read more. If they comment on an article then they will be more apt to come back, especially if others respond to them. If they share your article on Twitter then it will get you more readers. All of these goals lead to eyeballs that will make you more money with advertisers. A different product will have completely different goals.
It is also important to recognize that the fewer goals you have, the more likely you are to achieve them. If you have 5 activation goals then it’s difficult to use the tactics in this chapter to achieve any of them effectively. At a minimum, for a given section of your product you should have one primary activation goal. Landing PagesWhen someone visits your website the use of a landing page can greatly increase your chances of activating them. A landing page is different than your homepage. It might have some of the same elements, but not all. A landing page is a page you create within your product that you can direct people toward for certain campaigns. For instance, if you are always tweeting about certain kinds of things from the company Twitter account then you might make your Twitter bio URL send them to a landing page that highlights those same topics. Here are some of the distinct characteristics of a landing page and why you would use one: Limited Navigation Single Call To Action Congruous Language There is a specific kind of landing page which is becoming very popular, and it has some distinct characteristics, and that is the launch page, or coming soon page. A launch page is a landing page that you put up before your product is even public, and the goal is to collect email addresses of visitors so that you can inform them about your product when you do go live. Here are some things to understand about this kind of landing page: Use it to Get Traffic, Not Just ActivationsBefore you actually launch is one of the best times to get traffic. You can tell people that they will be let into your product first if they share your launch page with others, or you can only let them sign up on your beta list if they tweet about you first. Get creative. The Headline and Subhead is EverythingSince you haven’t launched yet you probably won’t have much detail to add to the launch page. This means that the headline and subhead become very important. If those few words don’t get someone’s attention then they will bounce. Emotional Imagery is a MustBesides the headline and subhead, you also need a very emotional image. A fullscreen background image is the common practice. Make them feel emotion, despite your lack of content. Don’t Let the List Grow ColdAs you build a list of people that are interested in the launch of your product you must not let the list get cold. If you don’t email them for months, then suddenly tell them about your launch, your click through rate will be very low. Stay in touch with them through the process of building your product to keep them warm, or don’t even take email addresses until you are within a month (or less) of launch. If you are trying to create landing pages quickly then you can use a service like unbounce.com, and if you are creating a launch page then you can use a service like Launchrock. CopywritingIf you want people to take a certain action, and not bounce, then the words you use are more important than you realize. We spend so much time obsessing over visuals that copywriting sometimes takes a back seat. As important as visuals are, if you want someone to know something, or understand something, or do something, then you probably have to use words. Here are some insights around copywriting: The Headline Should Mention Your Unique Value PropositionWhy is your product unique? What do you do that competitors don’t do, or can’t do. If you don’t tell people that you’re unique then visitors will assume you’re not. The Subhead Should Further Explain Your Unique Value PropositionThe subhead is smaller text below your headline that further illustrates your unique value. It might give reasons why the headline is true. Use this to take away doubts or clarify the headline. Long Copywriting is Good for Expensive ItemsIf you are selling something that costs $500 then you need lengthier copywriting. This will give you a chance to inform, answer objections, and just generally convince them to become activated members. Short Copywriting is Good for Less Expensive ItemsIf you are selling something for $20 then long copywriting will bring up more objections than it answers. It will confuse people more than it helps people. For low cost products, short, precise, copy is better. Different Audiences Will Respond to Different Kinds of WordsDon’t just imitate someone else’s copywriting style. Your words need to fit your audience. You should use jargon if you’re talking to doctors, but not if you’re talking to laymen. You can use slang if you’re targeting kids, but not if your audience is filled with grandmothers. Use Customer Development to Inform CopywritingBy researching your audience online (message boards, surveys, etc.) you will start to see which words they already use. If you use their own words in your copywriting then you’ll be able to activate them much easier. Social Proof is CopywritingIt would be wise to use testimonials within your product because humans behave with a herd mentality. If everyone else is doing something then so will I. Social proof is a form of copywriting that will help you activate visitors. Don’t Forget the MicrocopyMicrocopy is the short tooltips, hover boxes, or other text that helps a visitor navigate the interface. Little clues, at the right place, can help people navigate your UI. Confused visitors don’t usually do what you want. Calls to ActionsWe’ve already mentioned it a few times, but calls to action deserve their own section. The best way to get someone to do what you want is by giving them a clear call to action. Leave nothing to their imagination. Tell them where to click and make the button obvious. Tell them who to call and make the phone number prominent. Activate visitors by telling people, in the most explicit way you can, what you want them to do. Below are some examples of great call to actions. OnboardingWhen people arrive on your site it’s like they’ve been dumped in the middle of New York City without a map and no sense of direction. Your job is to give them orientation, and lead them to the places where you want them to go. One of the best ways to guide visitors is through onboarding. Onboarding can take the form of visual directions placed on top the screen, or a series of pages that lead visitors from one place to another. Think of onboarding like a digital tour guide for your product. An explanatory video could even be a part of your onboarding strategy. Twitter has one of the most talked about onboarding experiences because they carefully guide people from creating an account to using an account, and it’s all through the onboarding. They know that an account that doesn’t follow anyone is kind of useless, so they make following others a part of the signup process. Another great example of onboarding is InVision. They give you large, obvious, pop ups throughout their product that guide you and tell you what you need to know. People are not patient, and they don’t care about your product enough to find out how to use it. If you want to activate visitors, making them take certain actions, then you must carefully craft your onboarding experience. GamificationThere is something about gameplay that is hardwired into the human brain. We love progressing, getting awards, ranking on leaderboards, finishing tasks, leveling up, and having fun while we do it. Gamification is when you use game mechanics within your product, and this can be used to activate members. Gamification can cause someone to complete actions they normally wouldn’t complete. Here are some examples: ProgressIt is common within products to tell people that their profile is only a certain percentage complete. This prompts us to get to 100% because we hate not finishing something. Just by adding a progress bar with a percentage then we have gamified our product. AwardsWe are all still in little league baseball. Trophies matter, even if they are meaningless. If you can award something within your product then you will create a gamified incentive for people to take certain actions. Just think about Foursquare. It’s one big baseball game for adults with mayorships and badges instead of cheap trophies. LeaderboardsJust by showing someone their rank you can prompt them to compete. If you let someone know that they are in 3rd place for most comments on your message board there is a good chance they’ll take actions to get in 2nd place. Leaderboards can activate people to take certain actions. There are countless ways to gamify your product, but you have to think about your product as a game (even if it is a B2B app). Pricing StrategiesGetting someone to make a purchase is really just a unique kind of activation. You are getting a visitor to take a certain action, that action just happens to be making a purchase. There are a number of best practices around activating people to make a purchase. They may not all apply to your situation, but some of them probably will. Perfect Price DiscriminationPricing is an important aspect of activating people to make a purchase. There is something called perfect price discrimination which is the act of creating a pricing structure that charges based on the consumer’s purchasing power. Ecquire does this well by making their lowest tier only support basic integrations. This is everything except Salesforce. They know if you are using Salesforce then you can afford to pay for an expensive plan. Multiple TiersAnother popular strategy to activate purchases is to have three pricing tiers. Just the fact that there is a more expensive option makes you feel like you’re not wasting money, and you are getting a good deal. Having a pricing tier below you can make you feel like you’re not a cheap person. Options give people confidence to buy. Suggestive Tier NamingIf you name your pricing tiers something vague like gold, silver, and bronze, then you don’t really help people discover which tier is good for them. By naming the tiers things like “Starter,” “Professional,” or “Team,” you are giving people the confidence that they are in the correct tier. Free TrialsPeople are afraid to make an irreversible mistake with their money. If you give them a money back guarantee, or a free trial of some kind, then you are taking the risk away from them and placing it on yourself. Discount CodesOne of the most powerful forces, in terms of getting someone to make a purchase, is a discount code. But there is a trick that makes discount codes even more effective. If you include a time limit on the discount then you force people to make a decision. Udemy is a great example of this kind of activation tactic. They send out emails on a regular basis which include discount codes that are only valid for a limited time. BundlingAnother way to get people to make a purchase is through bundling your product with other products. If you can overwhelm people with value then they are more willing to make a buying decision. Hacker Bundle is a good example of a service that uses this activation tactic. via Quick Sprout http://www.quicksprout.com/user-activation/ |
Sean BrianWhile radishes deter certain insects naturally, they require similar growing conditions as carrots. Although the crops both have roots, radishes grow and germinate quicker, allowing carrots to continue growing in the soil space available when the radishes are harvested, Archives
April 2023
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