Try social

In the world of Web 2.0, it has become increasingly advantageous — and important — for marketers to explore opportunities to engage their audience with social media such as blogs, online communities, and social networking.

While developing a branded online community is a considerable investment, adding social features to your landing pages is less risky, and could potentially produce a higher — and more measurable — ROI. In fact, Facebook, Google, and MySpace have all released their free connect APIs, which, with some minor development, can be harnessed in post-click marketing.

A recent Wall Street Journal advises marketers on how to best enter the world of Web 2.0. Many of these principles are easy — or even easier — to test and execute on your landing pages.

The principles are: 

1. “Don’t just talk at consumers — work with them throughout the marketing process.”

At ion, we advocate creating multi-step landing experiences (or conversion paths) instead of one-size-fits-all landing pages. They improve relevance and allow for more creativity and flexibility, and also help visitors through the conversion process. Social features can further enhance your company’s interaction with consumers or prospects. It opens up a two-way conversation about your offering, your company, and your industry. 

2. “Give consumers a reason to participate.”

We all need to give people a reason. A reason to convert. A reason to stay. And a reason to participate. It’s important not to include social features just to be hip and cool. Make it beneficial to the user to interact. Try contests or polls.  Give them the opportunity to network with each other.  Ask them for help on improving your product or service. You don’t want them to say “huh?” — you want them to say, “Oooh, sweet! I’d love to tell the brand manager at Crest why I love Pure Peppermint Fresh Toothpaste, but not the red little specks in Cinnamon Rush.”

3. “Listen to — and join — the conversation outside your site.”

Social landing pages give real time feedback to marketers. Does your conversion process suck? Your respondents will let you know immediately, with real time qualitative feedback. You can also find out what your respondents think about your offering. Even if it’s not good news, it’s good news to know. (Okay I admit it, I stole that last line from the popular Google banner ad.) 

Does your respondent have a question? Let them post it in a forum thread. We always add a forum widget to the thank you page of our webinar registration landing pages and registrants can ask questions about the content and post topics that they would like covered. These discussions with the webinar host(s) improve engagement and relevance, and also lift our attendance rates.

4. “Resist the temptation to sell, sell, sell.”

It’s no secret — people create landing pages to sell, whether you’re involved in lead generation or transactions. But your social features don’t have to be the salesmen. Nothing’s creepier than being prospected on Facebook. Social features should improve engagement and build trust in your brand, which, at the end of the day, will help you sell more.

5. “Embrace experimentation.”

Test, test, test. Social landing pages can be tested easily in LiveBall. You can test things like:

 a) The location of social networking. Is it pre- or post-conversion? Post-conversion social networking could be an incentive to convert, and pre-conversion social networking could increase initial post-click engagement  and entice visitors to explore your offering. You won’t know what will work best until you test.

b) The type of social opportunity. Blog feeds, Twitter feeds, polls and Facebook Connect. Find out what produces the highest conversion rate and ROI by running easy A/B tests. 

It’s important to remember that social landing pages, specifically those created in LiveBall, are relatively low-risk. So while you may not have the line item for a new online community, you can easily test adding Facebook Connect or an RSS widget on your landing pages. And if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. You’ll find out quickly. And if it does work — get ready, because social post-click experiences are sure to be much more potent than one-way post-click marketing.