"I'm a Post-Click Marketing Professional."

Everyone knows the the standard “meet and greet” conversation format. This can happen virtually anywhere, but the usual locations are at a bar, party, or some other form of  social gathering. The conversation generally is a variation of your given birth name, where you live now, with a quick reference of  “But I’m originally from…,” and then the age old question, “What do you do?”

This is the defining moment of the conversation, the portion that you must answer with complete confidence and a subdued brilliance. In this split second your conversation partner will size you up, and formulate an everlasting opinion.

Some people have it easy, a “no explanation needed” position, for example a doctor would answer, “I’m a doctor.” Pretty self-explanatory, and a lawyer would simply state, “Well, I am a lawyer.” Again, not much further explanation needed. Those answers may make you stand up a little straighter, but other than that, the conversation may continue with some back and forth banter for a few more minutes.

I have been searching for the perfect answer to this question, “What do you do?” I do a lot of things! How do you sum up days, months, and years of work into a one or two word response? Recently, I have been testing out “Well, I am a Post-Click Marketing Professional.” Once you have presented this as your answer, my studies show that the conversation will always continue.

Unless you are at the bar outside of the Conversion Conference, you are surely to get a response along the lines of, “Excuse me?” or “Come again?” This allows the conversation to continue, and you are automatically pinned as, “the most interesting person in the room.”

At this point of the conversation you need to decide where to start educating your partner on Post-Click Conversions. I find the best common ground is to begin with landing pages. The best thing to do is define a landing page, and explain to them upfront that it is not building a website for Jim’s Taco Shack down the street.

I recommend beginning with, “Well, a landing page is a web page that appears in response to clicking on an advertisement. The landing page will usually display directed sales copy that is a logical extension of the advertisement or link.” Then continue to explain that, “landing pages are often linked to from social media, email campaigns, or search engine marketing campaigns, in order to enhance the effectiveness of the advertisements.”

As your partner continues to listen, be sure to explain that, “the general goal of a landing page is to convert site visitors into sales leads. By analyzing activity generated by the linked URL, marketers can use click-through rates and conversion rate to determine the success of an advertisement.”

Give your partner a minute to digest this information, they will proceed to take an overextended sip of their desired beverage and continually shake their head in the “yes I understand” direction. I find that this gesture is a great segway to pronounce that, “we have the ability to increase your ROI, and in turn make you money!” 

The attention-grabber! Your partner will forever associate you as the go-to person for post-click conversions. You have now fully secured the title of “most interesting person at the event,” and everyone will soon want to know what a Post-Click Marketing Professional does.  

Selling Landing Pages to the C-Suite

Selling to the C-Suite takes more than just an exciting pitch. You have to ready to explain how a landing page program can benefit the whole company. Luckily, this is a pretty easier answer, and it’s been well documented that landing pages can help increase online marketing ROI and improve lead generation efforts. The key to selling the idea to the C-Suite however is to make it very clear how landing pages will be able to do this for your particular company. Here are a few tips on how you can make a strong case for landing pages:

1. Align With Company Goals

Step back and analyze current opportunities where your marketing efforts could benefit from landing pages. Then look at your company’s marketing plan and align your landing page strategy so that it supports goals outlined in the plan. A smart landing page optimization strategy will help you reach those goals faster.  

For instance, if an increase in lead generation by a certain percent is an important KPI for your marketing team, explain your plan for how landing pages will help. Perhaps you want to test gating content or see if segmentation paths help generates better quality leads. Whatever your goal is, make sure you outline a clear, actionable plan and the results you expect to achieve.

2. Show Metrics

When it comes to selling to the C-Suite, data is one of the most effective ways to prove your point. Take your pitch and your proposed strategy for success and reference industry data, case studies and white papers that back up your approach. Try to find case studies of companies that are similar to yours so that it’s easier for your boss to imagine your company getting the same results.  Hard data makes a case that is difficult for even the most skeptical executives to ignore.

3. Translate

Going from the last point, it’s good to provide statistics, but don’t assume that your audience will automatically understand what the metric points mean. Tell the story behind the metrics and the strategy; don’t bore your boss with mounds of data.  Landing pages bring exciting and potentially huge results.  Present your data in a manner that is exciting, interesting and inspiring. Once the C-Suite sees your side of the story, you have a much better chance to sell landing pages to your company executives.

How did you sell landing pages to your C-Suite? What are your tips for anyone trying to convince their boss?

How to Turn Display Ad Clicks into Conversions

I recently came across an article from AdAge that suggests that marketers should move away from holding banner ads accountable for conversions and instead focus on branding metrics.  The basis for this comes from a study that found clicks aren’t an important metric for measuring the success of a banner ad.   The study was run on campaigns from 18 advertisers, and found almost no correlation between a click on a banner ad and a conversion.

I, respectfully, disagree. Display ads can drive conversions and the correlation between a click on an ad and a conversion can be greatly increased with message matched, ad-specific landing pages.

The problem that hurts the conversion rate of too many display ads is that they lead to generic, message mismatched landing pages. A click means that your ad worked; it got someone’s full attention. A ‘hover’ over your ad is good, but a click is a chance for you to take the clicker’s active interest and turn it into a conversion. What happens after that inital click on an ad – the landing page experience where those interested clickers are sent — is what makes the difference between a great conversion rate and the conclusion that display ads just aren’t conversion-accountable. A successful, conversion-accountable display ad strategy requires ad-specific landing pages that are tightly aligned with the ad message and imagery.

Still skeptical? Let me share with you one of our display ad campaigns. 

A couple of months ago we launched a banner campaign on eMarketer’s website. eMarketer’s content attracts the type of marketers that are within our target audience so we were excited to test out this traffic source.  

Each display ad offers a single content piece tailored to appeal to eMarketer’s visitors, like this:

And then each ad leads to a landing page with messaging and imagery that directly aligns with the ad, while also featuring a strong, value-enforcing call-to-action. 

Since launching this campaign in December, we’ve tested 6 pieces of content, 18 different banner ad variations, and 11 landing pages. We’re testing everything from the ad call-to-actions, landing page layouts and the actual content offerings (6 total) to which ad sizes and ad locations (on the eMarketer page) perform best. 

From December 1st though April 30th, our overall campaign conversion rate is 47.2%. We’re converting nearly half of our banner ad clicks.

LiveBall’s respondent funnel reporting gauge run at the campaign level

The conversion rate is awesome, but what’s even better is that these conversions are quality leads. Leads that have created serious opportunities for our sales team, and leads that have our sales team loving display ads too.

Don’t hate on display ads! With the right strategy and message matched landing pages, they can get serious, accountable results. 

4 Ways to Increase Conversions

You only have a few seconds to convince your visitor to stay on your landing page. These seconds are critical and your landing page needs to do everything it can to make a great first impression. If you are looking to increase your lead generation efforts through conversion optimization techniques, check your pages for these must-have elements that make a great first impression.

4 Ways to Get More Conversions

1. A strong call-to-action

If you don’t ask for it, you probably won’t get it. When your landing page visitors get to your page they want to first know that they are in the right place, and then they want to know what to do next. Conversion optimization efforts start with a strong call-to-action. Don’t just tell visitors what to do, remind them of what they are going to gain by taking your conversion action. 

2. Simple is better

While you definitely want to impress your landing page visitors, you don’t want to overwhelm them with too much information. You don’t need to discuss every award you’ve ever won, nor do your landing page visitors need to know every last detail about your business. Your landing page visitors just want to learn more about the offer in the ad that initially caught their attention. Limit the content on your landing page to only that which will help a visitor decide to take the next step and convert. Being able to edit your landing page down to only the most powerful, convincing elements is one thing that separates the best landing page programs from the rest. One big caveat: simple doesn’t mean boring or plain!

When you design your landing pages, be sure to keep it simple and look at these key areas:

• Landing page design – Keep it easily accessible and interesting so that it peaks interest.
• Keep the message consistent – Keep your brand messaging on target and don’t confuse your visitors.

2. Be trustworthy 

Let’s face it: people and even businesses buy more from those they trust. Visitors are not going to fill out a form and give you their personal information if they don’t trust your brand. To quickly improve your conversion optimization efforts, try building in some trust elements into your landing pages. Some examples of this, include: 

• Testimonials – Have some of your clients write a short testimonial. Even better, make videos of customer testimonials!
• Privacy statements - Adding a clear privacy statement to your lead generation forms goes along way to ensure visitors that their information will be kept safe.
• Social signals – Incorporating social widgets can help show that your brand is real and reachable.

3. Tie your offer to your unique selling proposition 

It’s marketing 101 to know why you stand apart from your competition; make sure your landing page visitors know it too. To add more value and reasoning to why a visitor should choose you, tie your offering to your Unique Selling Proposition (USP). Instead of creating another free report or software demo that says the same thing as your competitors; make it unique and tie in what makes your product or company unique too.

4. A good strategy to increase conversions

A good conversion optimization strategy has a set focus: to convert as many visitors into leads. The first step in increasing conversions is making it easier for your visitors to convert. Each of the four tips we discussed are focused on providing visitors with the information and confidence they need to convert quickly, without distractions or hesitations. Next time you are thinking of testing ideas or designing a new landing page, try thinking first about what page elements could help your visitors convert quickly. 

To see how you can reduce the time it takes to improve your techniques, contact the conversion optimization experts about a demo of LiveBall. 

What kind of tester are you?

It may sound silly, but it’s good to know what kind of tester you are — kind of like your testing personality type. Just as investors have varying profiles and risk tolerance, so too do online marketers in testing roles. Organizations also tend to have testing profiles — predispositions or cultural norms that affect planning, documentation and reporting.

We’ve found that marketers exhibit characteristics that ultimately push them towards being rock stars, pragmatists or purists — and often combinations of all three. 

Are you a testing Rock Star, Pragmatist, Purist or a combination?