The Structure of a Winning Landing Page

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All good landing pages follow a certain structure. These aren’t laws of the universe, but it’s what typically works the best. No point in re-inventing the wheel.

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A benefit oriented headline. The headline is the most important part. If the visitors came by clicking on an ad, it must correspond to the ad text that triggered the page. If your banner or PPC ad said „Breakthrough meditation system“, then this phrase should also be included in the headline of your landing page.

Relevant and short copy. Make it clear, relevant, concise. Don’t put too much text on the page, as the visitor has to be able to read it quickly. Use bullet points to drive the main points home. Make sure the language in the ad is also present in the copy of the landing page (otherwise visitors will doubt whether they’re in the right place)

The focus is on getting visitors to take one specific action. There should be only ONE possible action for the visitor to take – be it subscribing to something, making a purchase or something else. Don’t offer options or the conversions will suffer.

There are no distracting navigational links. Remove all extra clutter – links, menus, buttons – that have nothing to do with the particular ad/campaign. The point is that the visitor cannot ignore your message by navigating away, and therefore focuses on only that page.

There is a prominent subscription form. The one action you want the visitor to take has to be big and obvious. Put a large sign-up form on the landing page, and make it stand out. If the landing page is long enough for scrolling, duplicate the form or button at the very bottom of the page.

Maintain your brand. Don’t make your landing page look different from your overall website and brand. Keep the same colors, fonts – the overall look and feel of your main site. This helps to enforce the brand awareness.

Here are some examples to look at:

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What You Need to Include:

a headline that speaks to the target audienceyour company logoa quick explanation of your offer above the fold (the fold is the portion of the screen that can be seen without theaverage user having to scroll down)a longer explanation of the offer below the fold if needed (depends on the complexity of your offer and product)an image of the product being offereda simple form, with ideally just 1 to 3 fields (usually just name and e-mail). Remember, the more fields you ask the visitor to fill in, the more friction you create and therefore the less people will fill out the form.a signup button on your pre-defined most wanted response

What You Should Leave Out:

a navigation menu – remember to focus only on your offerlinks to other parts of your sites such as “about”any pictures or images that don’t relate to the offer; these will only serve as distractionshard to read text, anything less than 12 px is bad (use 14 or even 16px for body copy)any links along the lines of “click here to read more.” If you can’t cram all your content into the upper fold of your landing page, just let the user scroll down. Scrolling is almost always better than clicking to the next page.scary forms with unnecessary fields such as “title” or “fax”“clear fields” button

There are always exceptions and you usually can’t copy best practices to use on your site, but this advice given here should be your starting point. Get the essentials in place first, and tweak from there.

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Long or short? There are 3 factors affecting the efficacy of body copy length on a landing page:

Nature of visitor motivationInitial level of Anxiety about product/companyLevel of cost/commitment associated with conversion.

So in a nutshell short copy performs better when the offer is free, very cheap or in some other way not intimidating. Also, when it’s an impulse buy or gives an emotional satisfaction (concert tickets, candy, something beautiful). Long copy is more suitable for expensive or complex product.

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Leading behavioral design researcher BJ Fogg has created a model that explains that three elements must come together at the same time for a behavior to occur: motivation, ability and trigger. When a behavior does not occur, at least one of those three elements is missing.

Bottom line is this: Behavior = motivation x ability x trigger.  Before I’ll go into how to apply it  for boosting conversions, you need to understand the model itself. (All credit goes to BJ Fogg.)

Here’s the model:

You want to aim top right (high motivation, easy to do, a trigger in place). If you have high motivation and low ability (difficult to do), what you’ll get is frustration. If it’s low motivation, but easy to do (e.g. take out the trash), you get annoyance.

How to use it:

1. Everything starts with defining the specific desired behavior - in our case it’d be getting visitors to subscribe.

2. Make sure the headlines and the copy create enough understanding and motivation before asking visitors to take action

3. Ensure that your form is not overly long or complicated – only keep the essential fields to make it easy to opt-in.

4. Your form and call to action is your trigger here. Make sure it gets noticed!

Now you can create a landing page that follows this structure with the new GetResponse Landing Page Creator.

How to Use Color Psychology in Email Newsletters

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So you’ve done the hard work, you’ve got your killer subject line. It’s short, it’s sweet, and it’s very clickable. You’re confident that people are going to open the email and see your newsletter, but now you have to make sure they read it. Yes, a lot of that’s down to having interesting content (and you’ve got that too) but you want to have that cutting edge that makes sure your readers want to examine every inch of the newsletter.

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Color theory has been around for a long time, but its application in marketing circles is pretty new. Regardless of it’s age, there’s no denying its effectiveness.

We as human beings naturally associate different colours with different emotions and ideals. Savvy businesses can harness these associations to create desire, trust, and pleasure in the mind of their customer, and in doing so make their services more attractive.

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If you look at some examples of popular newsletters, you’ll notice that most of them put a big block of color at the very top of the newsletter. This serves as a hook for the reader’s eye, and naturally draws them into reading the content itself.

After that, color is applied much more sparingly, you’re not looking to overload your reader with color, rather your objective is to use color to guide their attention and influence their impressions of the piece. For example, article headings are often coloured differently than the article text to encourage people to read them first – meaning they often take in the whole newsletter before going back to read the articles that most interest them.

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While human experience means that we all have different reactions to different colors, there are some colors, which it’s broadly agreed, have specific effects on a person’s emotions. Depending on the topic of your newsletter, it may pay dividends to pick out a few colors that match your tone (and brand). For example, if you want your newsletter to appear optimistic, bold and confident, then you should use reds, yellows, and oranges.

If you’re a creative company, or are promoting something creative, it pays to make use of some purple in your newsletter. Purple also works well when you’re trying to imply decadence and wealth.

Any newsletter that wants to appear more dependable and trustworthy should make good use of blues throughout. Green also carries positive associations, and can often be associated with wealth and growth.

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The success of color in your newsletter hinges on the perceived appropriateness of the color within the context of the newsletter. So choose your colors based on the tone of your website and the mood that you hope to portray. It’s also worth assessing similar newsletters to your own and their use of color, though not necessarily with the aim of imitating them (more on this later).

The content of your newsletter is going to have quite an impact on the kinds of colors that are available to you. For example, if you were writing a newsletter about developments in your community then lots of bright vibrant colours would be welcome in the eyes of the reader. However, If your newsletter is addressing more serious topics, then you would be better off using more subdued tones with a splash of color to grab attention. Always consider how the reader is going to react to your use of a color; what looks good in a vacuum, may send a completely wrong message in context.

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A recent A/B test showed that a red button was clicked much more frequently than its green alternative. While this follows on in some ways from the idea of red being a bold and exciting color, it’s also important to consider the other colors on a website. Green is a much more neutral color and is much more likely to be present throughout the website. Red on the other hand, doesn’t lend itself to extensive use, and therefore stands out when it appears.

Keep this in mind when laying out your newsletter – if you want a piece of your newsletter to be the focal point or for an area of the newsletter to draw attention to itself, then fill it with a vibrant color that isn’t present anywhere else on the newsletter. For example, if your newsletter is largely white, bursts of red, yellow, and orange in important text boxes or titles will draw the reader’s eye down the page and encourage click-throughs.

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Studies have shown that humans prefer brands which they have no trouble recognizing. The same should go for your newsletter. Once you’ve picked a color scheme and decided how you want to utilise different colors in your newsletter, stick with those colors. Readers are much more likely to engage with a format they recognize and follow it through to the end.

When picking your colors, be sure to choose ones that make you stand out from other newsletters. If most newsletters in your field are using reds and yellows, consider using a lot of blue instead. This is immediately notable and also has the added bonus of many competing newsletters merging together in the reader’s mind.

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With the popularity of e-newsletters on the rise, it’s important that your content is as compelling as possible. While harnessing color theory will not guarantee you a better read or click-through rate than other newsletters, it should guide your target audience to the articles they want to read; and encourage them to start thinking of you newsletter as a brand to which they return regularly.

LinkedIn: How to Promote Your Business Internationally

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Recently, we’ve discussed 5 effective ways of promoting your business through LinkedIn. Today, we’ll dig a bit deeper and learn about other methods that will help you increase your brand awareness on an international level. If you want to know how to create targeted ads and advertise your products in different languages via LinkedIn, then this article is for you.

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LinkedIn is a social media platform that puts professionals and businesses together. It allows for an easy and open discussion, sharing of knowledge, exchanging of ideas, and promoting own products and services. Unlike other social media networks, LinkedIn has a more formal tone to it, which results in the type of users that it attracts. The majority of LinkedIn users are over 25 years old and have graduated from college.

Moreover, LinkedIn is one of the most frequently visited websites on the Internet. This means that any information you may put about your business on your LinkedIn profile, has a high chance of reaching a high rank in search engine results. Through this, you get a chance to showcase your products and services, and generate valuable traffic on your own website.

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Thanks to sponsored ads and updates you can easily reach out to wider audiences with your own products and services. This feature allows you to get in touch with people who have not yet had the chance to get to know your brand, and will in turn raise your brand awareness. On top of that, it’s great for maintaining relationships with your current clients, business partners, and people who may generally be interested in what you have to say. Also, through these tools, you can attract new leads regardless of which language they use or what location they are in.

To create a sponsored ad or update you have to log in to your LinkedIn account and go to the following page:

https://www.linkedin.com/ads/

After clicking ‘Get Started’, you’ll get to choose whether you wish to create an entirely new ad (consisting of text, images, or video) or if you want to promote one of your previously posted updates.

Once you get to choose which method of promotion you prefer to use, you’re also able to adjust the following settings:

Ad formatTextVideo or imageAd orientation and designURL of your landing pageLanguage

For each of your sponsored ads you can run an A/B Test and create up to 15 different versions of your ads. Through this you can compare the different formats and content and see what works best for your target audience. With this information, you’ll be get the chance to optimize your future campaigns to achieve even better results.

Once you’ve personalized your ad or update, you can choose to whom it will be presented. Your message will be targeted specifically to the people you choose, based on the following data:

CountryIndustryCompanySchoolJob positionSkillsGroupGenderAge

In other words, you have full control over what type of message you will present and exactly who will it be presented to.

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Through creating your company profile on LinkedIn you can present your brand, post job offers, or even introduce the team of people who stands behind your business. What you have to do is to simply fill in the necessary fields with text, images, and hyperlinks.

What’s more, every LinkedIn user can select a default language for their profile and add secondary languages that will be presented to people who have it as their first language. Should a visitor of your page use a completely different language to the ones you offer they will be simply presented with the default one.

Thanks to this feature, you can adjust the name and the description of your business based on who and where gets to see it.

In order to create different language versions of your company page, log in to your account, go to page settings, and select to optimize the page for different languages.

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Let’s assume that you are a producer of different kinds of rubber seals and wish to promote your products to companies that manufacture cars and agricultural machinery in Europe.

From your research you’ve found that the target audience you’re after is in Germany, France, and Italy.

What should you do?

Step 1

You know all about how important it is to adapt your offer to your customers and and that you should treat clients individually. In order to do so, you should start off by making sure that both your website, promotional materials, and sales team are ready to take good care of international clients whose first language isn’t English.

Once that is secured, you can go on to the next step, which is to start your promotional campaign using one of the many available channels, e.g. LinkedIn.

Step 2

When starting with LinkedIn you should begin by creating a company page for your brand and preparing different language versions for the countries that you wish to do business in. This way

you’ll make sure that individual customers’ needs are taken into consideration and a language barrier is no obstacle for them or you.

Having filled in the necessary fields in English, German, French, and Italian you can proceed to the most important element of this process i.e. creating ads.

Step 3

By going to this page you can create a sponsored ad or an update. Simply select the appropriate method and fill out the text, images, possibly video ,and select the language your current ad will be running in. This will have an impact on how many people from your chosen audience will get to see your ad.

Step 4

Here you can choose the right target audience for your ad. You can select people e.g. from a particular company, industry or a specific job position. In our example we’ve selected people from Germany who work in agriculture, engineering, and automotive manufacturing, and have specific roles in their companies. Based on the selected conditions, the total number of people who we can presented the ad to is 22,493.

Step 5

The last step that you’ll need to take is to set your budget, advertising model, and how long your campaign will be running for.

The available payment models are:

CPM – for every 1000 views of your adPPC – for every click on your ad

You can also add an additional feature offered by LinkedIn, which is to place a lead bar on top of your website through which your visitors will be able to send you a request for contact.

Step 6

Once you have gone through all these steps all you’ll have to do is to fill in the billing information and observe how your ad is performing.

You’ll have to repeat Steps 3-6 for every different language that you wish to use in your campaign. Simply change the ad language, use the right copy, URLs, images, and select the right target audience.

LinkedIn sponsored ads and updates will allow you to increase your brand awareness and reach out to audiences regardless of their location or the language that they use. Of course, there are other tactics and methods that you can use aside from adjusting your profile and running sponsored ads. Some of them have already been covered in our previous post. As for others, we will be discussing them shortly on our blog so stay tuned and don’t miss any updates!

Would a Caveman Click? Avoiding Call-to-action Malfunction

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Your subscriber is drawn in by a juicy subject line and just opened your email with high hopes. The offer is perfect, precisely what he is looking for. He even scanned through the email and now.. and now … [Delete]. Hey! What just happened there? Most likely a Caveman Call-to-Action malfunction.

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Our brain consists of different parts, including the cerebral cortex where all the planning and reasoning takes place. But under that thick layer of thinking, there is a much stronger caveman brain. The caveman brain is where instincts and gut feelings originate. Primal and subconscious thoughts and involuntary processes. It evolved in years and years of the human race trying not to die and is super powerful.

We still use the caveman brain all of the time. In the seconds people spend on your email newsletter, a big part of the processing is done by the caveman brain. As you can understand, your email needs both to be very obvious what you want them to do and attractively presented. Ignoring to cater your emails to the caveman is a very easy way to ruin your email marketing campaign.

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Have a look at this example from the sports clothing brand Champion. Right under the navigation bar of the mail is the main offer “Select tees tanks and shorts 2 for $30”. So where is the CTA? Dr Caveman say: “Me want clear CTA”. This banner definitely calls out for some testing.

The Call to Action “shop” in the example isn’t a strong one because…

Take a minute and see if you can come up with some ideas to improve on the CTA. You can look at the bottom of this article for some hints.

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Let’s dig a bit deeper. You can improve upon your CTA and creative design by asking yourself these questions:

Which elements can I remove that don’t add to clarity?How can I make it more visual?What elements might be distracting?Does it seem hard to get this offer?Is the wording right?Is there enough contrast?How can I make it easier to understand?Is this offer 100% clear?

All of the above lead to the ultimate question: Would a Caveman Click? Go back to the example and see if with these questions you get some more ideas to improve upon it.

Testing your way up the mountain
For each of the ideas you have for improvement, there might be a lot of counter-ideas. Maybe you are not sure if some of your ideas will work (and you should!) I am definitely for testing your way up the mountain, through AB split testing your newsletter you can learn if your improvement ideas also result in more conversions. The starting point should always be the most obvious and clear “best practice” version you can make.

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The CTA in the Champion example: The offer is pretty darn hard to read on the left, being spread over three lines. The CTA could have been clearer by changing size and positioning it in line-of-sight. Also the banner is completely in blue and white, even blending in with the logo and navigation bar. Adding more contrast through colour and design would bring out the CTA more.

Remember: It is not that your subscribers are lazy (although some might be), but the default is for them to stay in their cave and do nothing. They don’t have a lot of time and will scan your email quickly.  It’s your job, through the CTA, to motivate them to take action.

Which changes would make the example so strong even a Caveman would click?

Gamification in a Small Business: Does it Really Work?

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"Gamification" es una palabra caliente en la industria del marketing – aunque suena marca nueva, ha sido atractivo desde los años 70, cuando esos grandes jugadores como Mc Donalds o Procter Gamble & comenzó la implementación de sus estrategias. Usted puede encontrar un montón de ejemplos y casos prácticos sobre él, pero ¿te has preguntado cómo podría funcionar para una pequeña industria?

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Como una de las definiciones, "Gamification" significa utilizando la mecánica del ordenador o juegos sociales para aumentar la motivación de los empleados y participación en situaciones que no están comúnmente asociados con juegos de azar. Puede utilizarla para por ejemplo asignaciones de estudio, trabajo en equipo o promociones.

Para simplificarlo – "Gamification" aporta elementos de juegos de azar en sus situaciones de la vida cotidiana. Suena interesante, ¿verdad?

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En el creciente tráfico de marcas competidoras, comunicaciones de marketing, la publicidad luchando por los intereses de su cliente potencial se convierte en algo muy difícil de hacer. Un anuncio simple producto o promoción que has hecho antes no sería suficiente para captar la atención del cliente. Lo que tienes que hacer es dedicarse al cliente y dejarlo interactuar directamente con su marca. Esto es cómo "Gamification" puede ayudarle a construir una buena relación con los clientes reales y potenciales.

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Una de las ideas más populares y ampliamente discutido "Gamification" se llevó a cabo por compañías de automóviles que alentaron a los usuarios para recoger puntos de eco conducción. La mayor tasa de millas por galón que alcanzado, más alto anotó – aunque no había ninguna clasificación para compararte con otros conductores, la idea de aplicar prácticas eco-amigables como un juego que han demostrado que vive su vida con el entorno natural en mente puede ser divertido y emocionante.

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Otro proyecto de la famosa "Gamification" también participa la industria automotriz: "Mini en Estocolmo". El objetivo del juego era encontrar un coche Mini virtual en las calles de Estocolmo, que necesario, usando una aplicación móvil especial. El primer usuario que encontró Mini dentro de una distancia de 50m "tomó", ganando un coche Mini Countryman real! Pero la tarea no era fácil – que evitar que otros usuarios dentro de la misma distancia cercana, como podían tomar el Mini lejos de ti. Eso es lo que se llama una búsqueda auto – redefinida.

Aparte de aplicaciones móviles, redes sociales a menudo se utilizan como el medio ambiente para activitiy "Gamification". El objetivo es principalmente la misma: animar a los usuarios a competir entre sí y crear tablas de clasificación basado en varios criterios.

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¿Te has preguntado si podría ejecutar la cocina de un hotel por ti mismo? Ahora, Marriott Hotels darte la oportunidad de probarlo en un hotel virtual – y tal vez incluso de verdad! El juego fue lanzado para reclutar a empleados para nuevos hoteles Marriott ubicados fuera de los Estados Unidos y probar sus habilidades de gestión. La aplicación está dedicada principalmente a jóvenes candidatos (18-27 años) y pruebas de actitud del solicitante, habilidades de gestión y resolución de problemas. La Corporación hotel desea reclutar a incluso 50 mil empleados usando el juego.

Hotel Marriott, imagen vía http://www.bvkmeka.com/

En 2011, antes del 2011 MTV Europe Music Awards, MTV decidió participar aficionados antes del evento y aumentar la expectativa. Lo que hicieron fue crear un juego de ventilador de múltiples capas llamado "MegaFan concurso".

Las maneras de acumular puntos eran numerosos para cada participantes – podían votar en las categorías de elección de audiencia, ver videos de rendimiento, vista flip libros y más. ¿Cómo hacer todo el proceso sea más competitiva? La respuesta es Teambuilding – cada usuario podría unirse a diferentes equipos y compiten entre ellas, que por supuesto significa ganar más puntos para el equipo ganador.

Los premios para los puntos de recogida fueron la pena luchar por – el precio superior implicó que el evento EMA y unirse a la audiencia de entusiastas de la música.

Si estás preguntando acerca de los resultados, usted se sorprenderá – relacionados con EMA páginas vistas en el sitio web de MTV Reino Unido crecieron un 530% comparado con el año anterior.

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¿Cómo personas que no leen libros para ganar interés en una autobiografía recién liberada? Jay-Z sabe la respuesta – lo gamificar. Para el lanzamiento de sus memorias Decoded, RHPG lanzó un juego social único. Se imprimen 300 páginas previas a la publicación de las memorias en diversas superficies, tales como contenedores de madera o incluso un forro de seda de una chaqueta de Gucci y escondió en 600 colocaciones dentro de 15 localidades alrededor del mundo. El objetivo era encontrar, montar y decodificar el libro juntos en línea antes de la fecha de lanzamiento real.

Campaña de descifrado de Jay-Z, imagen vía clickz.com

Los jugadores de las grandes empresas utilizan "Gamification" absolutamente con frecuencia y nombras docenas de ejemplos de diversas industrias. Pero ejecutando un juego social que requiere un presupuesto enorme es una cosa completamente diferente de la implementación de elementos de la "Gamification" en un pequeño negocio. ¿Como puedes usarlo con eficacia para tu marca?

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Describiendo la "Gamification" ideas sobre querían mostrar que prácticamente no existen límites en la aplicación mecánica de juego para la comercialización. Pueden ser utilizados igualmente bien para entornos on-line y reales.

Todo depende de tus metas. Cuando ligeramente modificado todos estos escenarios pueden utilizarse para las industrias y diversos propósitos.

Enfoque no estándar para involucrar a los participantes de la feria, conferencia, eventos de la industria, entrenamientos, talleres o incluso dentro de la empresa eventos. Esto es cómo darle una actividad típica en algo que dejará sus empleados emocionado durante semanas.Unirse a una comunidad para lograr un objetivo común. Si haces correr a 5km, está bien, pero si 15, 20 o 30 hacerlo contigo – que significa realmente algo grande. Usando el mismo patrón, puede recoger materiales para reciclar, renovar un parque demolido o participar en una contienda para hornear – todo por una buena causa. Este escenario funciona perfecto para las empresas locales y, si se organiza bien, puede aumentar significativamente su reputación.¿Tienes la impresión de que su industria es, digamos, no tan atractivas para el mercado de trabajo y es difícil para usted reclutar a nuevos empleados? Intenta bajar la pista mordida y ver tu idea zumbando alrededor de los medios de comunicación, llamando la atención de aquellos que podrían estar interesados en unirse a su compañía. A veces un acertijo bien compuesto es todo tarda – Asegúrese de que sólo especialistas en su sector son capaces de resolver adecuadamente.

¿Así, están entusiasmados por "Gamification"? O tal vez asustado que nunca lo harás con el presupuesto vigente. No te preocupes – y dejar de pensar en el dinero. Pensar fuera de la caja y se atreven a hacer algo diferente.

¿Has probado usando "Gamification" en su negocio? ¿O estás pensando en hacerlo en el futuro? Somos curiosos ver tus comentarios!

5 reglas de responder a los comentarios negativos en los medios sociales

Se ha terminado la conexión: Una conexión que se esperaba que se mantuviera activa fue cerrada por el servidor.

I’m sure you’re doing all it takes to bring a smile on your customer’s face. But each and everyone of us has to deal with negative feedback from time to time. When it happens in social media, the situation goes a little tense – all your words are scrutinised by the Internet community and you never know how fast the issue will spread. I want to give you a few useful steps to guide you through any social media communication trouble.

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Before you start reading, should remember just one thing (seen from two angles): you are just a human and your customers are just humans. They don’t expect you to be perfect as a robot and you shouldn’t expect them to be silent like robots. When you take these factors into account, the rest seems pretty logical. Also the fact that if you deal with the problem wisely, you can only earn a reputation of a business that really cares for its customers – if this sounds good enough to you, check out the tips below.

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I can imagine how tempted you feel to click Delete or Hide when you see some typical Internet hate on your brand’s Facebook timeline or Twitter profile. Answering these comments may seem a total nonsense to you and you wish it all disappeared, which is actually just a click away. But I’ve got to warn you – some tried before you and failed. Even the famous ones – do you wonder why Streisand effect carries this particular name?

Of course, it’s perfectly justifiable if you wish to delete comments including explicit lyrics or spam. This is your right as a profile admin – nobody wants trash in their own area.

Idea to try out: Draw up a short set of rules for your fanpage or profile and place them in a clearly visible place, e.g. in a separate Facebook tab/album or available in the About section. Such a document could include following provisions:

no spam,no explicit lyrics,no hate speech,compliance with the portal’s terms and conditions.

As simple as that – now everybody has a clear idea of what can or can’t be posted on your profiles.

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The key factor to success in terms of social media is response time. Believe me, you can’t afford answering your clients when you find suitable – the only suitable time is when they want answers.

Even if it’s not possible for you to deliver a direct answer to someone’s post immediately, make sure they get your attention on the spot, even if it’s just a peaceful “We’ll get back to you in an hour/15 minutes/(select the time you need to find the answer and post a reply)”. Thanks to this, your customers can be sure that you’re taking care of them. But remember to type the realistic time needed to solve the customer’s problem – you don’t want anybody to be disappointed with delays!

Idea to try out: After the problem is solved, you can follow up with the posting customer and check back if the customer is happy with the solution and the performance of your product/service. It surely works well for your reputation!

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There are two main reasons why solving a client’s issue in a private channel is better than doing it directly on your timeline: when your communication conditions are far from convenient or the negative feedback sounds very strong.

By inconvenient conditions I mean e.g. character count limits, just like on Twitter – 140 characters may not be enough to post a proper reply. Or, when a request on your wall is posted in a long, long line of comments – moving your dialogue to private messages makes it easier to follow both for you and the customer.

Seriously negative comments are a completely different thing. Dealing with an angry user disappointed with your brand is like dancing with fire – you never know when it will spread and burn everything around to ashes. What makes the dialogue so flammable is the audience watching every new post. After you eliminate this factor, the user is more likely to cooperate with you on solving the problem and appreciate your help afterwards.

Important: Make sure your customer is aware of the fact that you’re trying to contact him privately. For example: “I sent a private message to you, please check your Others folder” (for Facebook). It happens very often that users don’t look into their inboxes carefully and miss incoming messages from fanpages. When the user’s settings don’t let you send a message as a fanpage, introduce yourself as the brand representative – talking to strangers sounds exciting only to a really small bunch of people.

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You left this negative comment on your timeline – check.

You responded promptly – check.

You chose the right communication path – check.

Now, don’t spoil it all with getting defensive!

I know it may be hard to talk to an unhappy, disappointed or simply furious person, but… that’s why I started this post with a statement: your customers are just humans. They have emotions and flaws, and your sarcastic, rude or too official comments definitely won’t make anyone calm down. Imagine you are a therapist listening to a patient – stay calm and understanding. Maybe your angry patient will provide you with valuable feedback if you let him/her speak?

Above all this, apologising never hurt anyone. There’s nothing wrong with admitting that your business is also run by humans that make mistakes. The only wrong thing is not trying to fix them.

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I left this point for the end of the post, because people often don’t see the point in preparing a communication plan without knowing the other four. You can avoid so much stress, pressure and unexpected events by outlining a schedule of best communication practices in the case of customer complaints in social media.

Think of possible scenarios and sample answers to most frequently posted requests. These should work together with your customer service communication strategy, so that the customer doesn’t get confused contacting you both on social media and e.g. via email.

Also, make sure the rest of your employees know that they might be the ones to help. At GetResponse, we communicate constantly with Product Development, Customer Success, IT or Compliance teams to answer customers’ posts with accuracy and comprehension.

How do you feel about your brand’s customer service on social media? Tell us about your experiences in comments – we’re looking forward to read your stories!

Understanding Your Target Audience for Landing Pages

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AppId is over the quota

What’s more important, traffic or conversions? If you get 50,000 visitors from a random tractor repair website and 500 visitors from an industry magazine that covers the specific market you’re in, which one is going to be better for your business?

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Unless you’re in the pageview business, what you should first and foremost care about is conversions. Conversions take place when targeted traffic meets a relevant offer. It all starts with knowing who your target audience is and what they need or want. So – if you want to boost your landing page (and overall) conversions, you need to do the following.

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Conduct surveys and interviews to understand your customer’s pain points. You want them to opt-in to your email list, so what could you offer that would make them want to subscribe? Instead of making guesses, talk to people! You’ll be surprised by how much you will learn – and how useful it will be.

If you know…

who the people are, you know how to get to them (the blogs they read, the sites they visit, the stuff they search in Google etc);how they describe the type of services they offer, you can word the copy on your site to match the conversation in their heads (very important!);how they choose and compare products in your industry, you know how to structure and prioritize content on your site;what they want, your value proposition can state exactly that and the whole site can be 98% relevant to them;what they don’t care about, you can dismiss and cut it out from the site content;how their life is better thanks to your service, you know which end-benefits to communicate.

… and so on and so forth. It’s all about relevancy – if what you offer and how you present it matches their state of mind, you have gained a customer.

If your customer is “everybody”, you’re making it extremely difficult for yourself – nobody will identify with “everybody”. One of the biggest problems I see with landing pages is that the page has no understanding of who the visitor is, what they want and why.

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The best thing you can do with subscribers is to survey them. What you want is to get in the heads of your customers, learn what they need. The goal here is to learn what you should offer as a lead magnet to entice them to opt-in. Survey responses will be very insightful about this.

I recommend asking the following questions (adjust the wording as you see fit):

 What can you tell us about yourself? Get the demographical data and see if there are any trends (e.g. generational). If you’ve got a B2B business, ask about their industry and position in the company (and who makes the decision!)What’s your #1 challenge with [the problem your business helps to solve]?If you could ask just 1 question from the top [your industry] guru / researcher, what would it be?

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If you can, keep it short: the more questions, the fewer responders and poorer quality responses. Once you list your questions, then weed them out.

Make sure the information you collect is actionable – don’t ask questions just because you’re curious.  Once you have written your questions, go through them and ask yourself: “What am I going to do with this information once I have it?” Make sure each question contributes something unique and is necessary.

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If you have no paying customers yet, you’re dealing with assumptions and educated guesses based on your first-hand experience and anecdotal evidence.

Traditionally, defining a target audience involves determining their age, sex, geographic locations, and their needs. The data you need to know depends on the product and whether you have a B2B or B2C business.

This approach, however, is not very helpful. Online the location matters much less (if at all). Age is not what it used to be – fifty-year-olds get just as excited about new tech gadgets as twenty-somethings, and 30-year-olds may still be living with their parents. More than demographic data, you want to look at the lifestyle.

You want to have answers to these questions:

Who are the target customers? Describe their life (or business) situationWhich problem are they solving for themselves? What’s the pain?What are their needs that aren’t being met?

Assumptions to these questions will help you come up with a better offer – a better lead magnet.

Remember, conversions take place when targeted traffic meets a relevant offer. So your job as a marketer is to figure out how to make your landing page content relevant to your audience. Relevancy leads to sales.

Use the findings from talking to people and surveys to write the copy on your site. When your target audience arrives to your site, looks at the content and goes “Hey, this is exactly what I’m looking for”, you nailed it.

Blogging and Readability: Writing for the Web

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AppId is over the quota

Blogging, email newsletters and articles for the web all carry their own set of rules which you should know about and adhere to if you want your customers and followers to read and share your material.

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People read differently on a screen than they do print, which means that in order to get the best out of your written content, it’s necessary to learn how. The idea is to allow for a good level of engagement and for information to be presented in such a way that the reader can take it in quickly and easily.

Let’s have a look at some of the techniques that you can employ to make sure that your readers love your work and keep coming back for more.

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Starting at the top, headlines are of course the thing that will attract readers in the first instance, so they should be highly clickable.

This means you should:

Keep headlines short and snappy where possible, under six words is the general rulePresent the headline as a ‘problem solver’Make it entertainingEnsure it appeals to the reader on an emotional level. For example, laughter gains the best response as it makes people feel happy, but something that provokes anger also works well

Problem solving headlines always do well, which is why you come across many headlines that begin with ‘how to’ or ‘5 tips for’. These types of headlines give the immediate impression that you’re offering a solution to some kind of problem that the reader has.

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Many writers make the mistake of not considering readability scores when writing for the web, yet this is hugely important. You can use Flesch Kincaid scoring to determine readability; most sites should write to high school level. This isn’t a case of ‘dumbing down’ your writing or content, it’s about ensuring that it’s simple to take in when someone is skimming, which web readers all do.

When writing, remember one basic rule: if you have to stop or pause when reading the piece in order to take in a word or information then you have just lost a reader. The piece should flow naturally with the use of simple language and you should never attempt to get highbrow when it comes to the words you use.

In Word, you can enable readability scores in proofing tools, or you can use a third-party plugin such as Grammarly’s. You can also of course use the formula above to work it out yourself if you’re happy with doing the maths.

Write for your audience. If you have a highly technical product, then you may want to do some industry pieces that are targeted towards a certain audience that has an understanding of your product, but take care not to alienate readers with the use of jargon, overly technical terms and difficult to understand language.

The passive and active voices are the voices of verbs. The use of the former should be kept to a minimum wherever possible as it doesn’t engage the reader in the same manner as the active voice.

So, if you say Jack kicked the stone, then this is the active voice as the subject is carrying out the action, whilst if you say the stone was kicked, this is the passive as the action is just being carried out.

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As I mentioned earlier, online readers like to take in information quickly, skimming over the text in an F-shaped pattern and concentrating the majority of their efforts towards the top. This means that formatting is extremely important for the web, as huge blocks of text will quickly see people leaving as it comes across as hard work and intimidating.

This means that you should follow a few basic rules to ensure that the piece is easy to take in:

Short sentences and paragraphs should be usedParagraphs should be no more than 6-8 lines deep with clear white space in between eachSub headers should be used to break up text and draw the eye naturally downwardsBullet points should be used to further break up text

This allows the reader to skim much more easily and will engage them much better than a big block of text ever will. You’re aiming to present information in short, bite-sized chunks to gain the best effect.

The above heat mapping study by Jakob Nielsen showed that the same ‘F’ pattern was used when the eyes of online readers were tracked. The first shows an ‘about us’ page, the second a product page and the third search results. As you can see, the pattern is clear in the first two examples and a little more scattered in the third.

Keep in mind that most people read more ‘above the fold’ (top of the page), so try to ensure that the first couple of paragraphs are well-crafted and grab the reader instantly.

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Unless you’ve already established yourself as some kind of authority then you should avoid opinion pieces, as well as anything that’s overly promotional (for general blogs and articles, not for email). We all have an opinion and it can be very cathartic to have a good old rant online, but you first need to build trust with your audience.

Until you do, stick to facts and ensure that you back this up with referencing where possible. If you’ve taken information from an online source, then link to it, preferably ensuring first that it’s a good source from a site that many people in your niche will recognise. This will help to build your reputation as someone that gives good information, leading to you becoming a trusted source of information.

Writing for the web should follow the KISS rule – keep it simple stupid – write to your audience at all times, using buyer personas from the marketing department. Format well, include references and above all, come up with ideas that are a little out of the norm but popular. Do this and it’s likely that you’ll see a huge jump in engagement (so long as you’re also distributing the material well) and you can begin to establish thought leadership.

GetResponse CEO Statement Regarding the DDoS Attack (UPDATED)

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AppId is over the quota

UPDATE - Great news: We have managed to restore our outbound mailing capability. All emails that have been scheduled in the past days will now be sent, however it may still take up to several hours in order to provide the best possible deliverability.

Newly scheduled emails may have a bit longer delivery time as we are dealing with a quite large volume of emails that were scheduled in the past few days.

If you have any questions about your newsletters or account, please contact our Customer Service Department at http://app.getresponse.com/support.html (GetResponse 360 customers, please contact your Account Managers).

Dear GetResponse Customer,

As you may know, GetResponse has had a pretty rough weekend… We suffered a major outage caused by a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack on an unprecedented scale, which has flooded our network and our data center (Windstream) with malicious traffic.

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On Saturday, after hours of working together with our data center Windstream (including their directors and VP-level executives), we received information that they have failed to mitigate the attack and of their decision to block our network connectivity until a powerful DDoS mitigation service can be fully implemented.

When GetResponse went down, the morale of the GetResponse community didn’t. We saw an amazing display of support and we would like to thank our customers for rooting for us.

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We brought many of the services back online on Sunday (websites, web subscriptions, API, web forms, surveys, landing pages). We had another attack on Monday, but we fully mitigated it, with no downtime, thanks to our new mitigation solution.

We are still working on resolving the issues with email delivery and anticipate to have a complete resolution within the next couple of days. We are literally working on this around the clock, with involvement of VP-level executives from our data center and DDoS mitigation partners.

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Over last 15 years we have repelled many DDoS attacks using our infrastructure. More recently, we employed CloudFlare Enterprise solution that has helped us to deal with previous attacks in March and April. Unfortunately, the scale of last weekend’s attack has been so huge that it overran our current mitigation solution, and we needed to come up with a new plan.

After a conference call with our data center, within minutes we got in touch with Akamai, the world’s leading DDoS mitigation provider, with 1.8 Tbps mitigation bandwidth. We asked them to deploy an “always on” clean-pipe DDoS scrubbing service for GetResponse. This is the most advanced type of protection available on the market (also most expensive). It scrubs all inbound traffic for malicious packets of data and returns only “clean” traffic to our data center.

In total, we are spending close to half a million dollars in mitigation solutions, hardware, connectivity and other upgrades.

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This wasn’t the first attack that GetResponse has encountered recently. We endured several other attacks in March and April. And we weren’t alone…

Over the last two months this criminal has targeted many other large Internet companies, putting them offline as a consequence. These include Meetup, Shutterstock, MailChimp, Fotolia, Basecamp, oDesk, SurveyGizmo, MadMimi, OkCupid, HootSite, Typepad, Elance, Aweber and others. It is unfortunate, but these types of attacks are becoming much more frequent in today’s environment.

Why would anyone attack well-meaning companies disrupting their business?

This email explains it all:

Subject: DDoS attack, warning

I don’t have to explain myself anymore. I will stop the attack for 1.2 Bitcoin (˜ $750).

Your network will be safe from further attacks coming from several botnets, think twice before making your final decision, as even the best global DDoS mitigation won’t be able to handle easily the incoming new Amp. methods.

Let me know if you are interested in my offer.

We weren’t interested, and won’t ever be, even if they continue to attack us. The low “offer” ($750) was just bait, and we know they’d come back for more. Paying would only encourage them to attack other companies. Besides, we are confident that we can protect ourselves in the future with the mitigation plan we’ve put in place. But above all, paying criminals is simply the wrong thing to do.

I sincerely apologize for this outage. We care about you, our customers, and we know that you rely on us to get your emails out to the world. Since the attacks, we’ve been working day and night to get the mitigation in place.

I thank you for your trust, your support and your loyalty during these difficult moments.

Regards,

Simon Grabowski

CEO

GetResponse

PS.: If you have any questions about this issue, please contact our Customer Service at support.getresponse.com (GetResponse 360 customers, please contact your Account Managers).

Twitter Updates You Should Check Out

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AppId is over the quota

Not so long ago Facebook introduced updates that significantly changed the way your content was presented to the users, and Twitter is just following the Zuckerberg team’s steps. Prepare yourself for more visuals, completely different layout, and new tweet options that can become an opportunity for your business profile. Intrigued? Read on and find out all you need to know.

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If the first thing that came to your mind when you thought “Twitter” was the 140-character long bit of text, it’s time to change your way of thinking. New Twitter layouts are much more focused on visuals.

The First Lady’s profile page

Awkwardly enough, the new Twitter layout resembles Facebook with its profile picture and cover photo, but mind the different dimensions to be used for your new Twitter profile:

Profile header photo - the one that used to be displayed behind your profile picture – is now located at the top of the profile page. The optimal dimensions for a profile header image are 1500×500 pixels. In case you don’t have one at hand, you can choose one of the header photos offered by Twitter.Profile picture – this one looks much larger in the new layout, too. The required dimensions are 400×400 pixels. Instead of appearing in the middle of your profile, it will be located on the left-hand side, overlapping with the profile header picture.Takeaway: since the new layout is much more picture-oriented, you can now use images with more details than previously. This gives you new design opportunities when creating your social media visuals!

Apart from your own profile images, other parts of the service are also barely recognizable compared to their previous versions. Check out this “Following” list. Now you know why choosing a captivating profile image works!

Channing Tatum’s following list

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Twitter also launched an exciting way to post your pictures – now you can combine them in a collage (but there’s just one “but” – you need to use an iPhone to have access to mobile version of Twitter). Here’s what you do to create one:

Open Twitter, select the photo icon and choose the first picture.Once the picture appears as a thumbnail in your tweet draft, tap the photo icon again.Choose the remaining pictures – you will notice that after you select each picture, a number will apear over it. This is the order of display in a collage 2 – top right, 3 – lower left, 4 – lower right).Post the tweet! Your followers will see the collage, while all other users can access it using a link inside the tweet. Oscar winners in @theacademy tweet

This fun tool lets you create mini albums of connected pictures or even short stories. You wait for the first GetResponse Monster collage :).

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More visual layout is not all that has changed about Twitter’s new face. Now, it lets you manage your tweets by assorting them to one of these new categories:

Best tweets – your tweets that get most replies, retweets or favorites will appear a bit larger on your profile than other tweets. This distinguishes your best content and encourages your followers to interact with it.Pinned tweets – you can promote the content you wish by pinning selected tweets, which will appear at the top of your profile page – just like pinned posts on a Facebook fanpage (what a coincidence!). Just select “Pin to your Profile Page” option in the “More” menu for a particular tweet.Filtered tweets – this option proves useful when you want to browse a particular type of tweets on someone else’s profile. You can select text tweets, photo or video tweets and enjoy them as much as you wish.

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Another recently announced Twitter update was the launch of pop-up notifications for those who tweet using their desktop computers. You will be informed about new replies and retweets, new followers or direct messages in your inbox.

The fun part is that new updates will be totally interactive – you can easily follow someone back or reply to your direct message in a snap. We can’t wait to see if this feature works out!

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Your account probably hasn’t been updated yet. Don’t worry – we still look the same, too. But if you’re curious about the way new Twitter profiles look like, check out this list of new profiles available for all of us to see:

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According to Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, the social network’s aim is to become more accessible to users globally. The resemblance to Facebook might be just one of the steps to achieve this goal. On the other hand, numerous frequent users started complaining about Twitter’s loss of specific text-oriented look. But those will probably stick to TweetDeck, the Twitter’s tool for managing your profile in a more advanced way.

How do you feel about upcoming Twitter changes? Do you think its visual layout will drive more new users to the site? Share your opinion with us in a comment!

Building a Killer Email List From Scratch #infographic

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AppId is over the quota

To most beginning marketers, building a list of engaged contacts might seem like one of the most challenging marketing goals. But it doesn’t have to be a chore, as long as you stick to some simple rules. Today’s infographic will provide you with quick action ideas on where to start.

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Despite the growing impact of corporate social media profiles, email remains one of the most powerful channels of business communication. There are 3 times more email users than Facebook and Twitter users combined (currently there are 2.4 billion email users globally). Today’s standard is to have at least two email addresses. What’s more the trend isn’t on a downswing.

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More personal. Email facilitates one-to-one communication and is so much better than phone and snail mail for reaching out to people in the global market across time zones and continents. Besides, exactly how personal do you want to get on someone’s Facebook page?More serious. Grown-ups discuss business and build business relationships in emails. It is the core of business communication and actually took over the role of standard mail. Even serious business offers are handled via email.Attention grabbing. Messages sit in the inbox ready to be viewed again, with fewer distractions than social media.More targeted. With advanced segmentation and automation, email lets you customize your offer and send maximally relevant information.Cheaper. It’s the most profitable marketing channel, with ROI still around $28 per dollar spent.

As long as you have a high quality email list.

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The people on your list should be those who care about your organization and its products and services. It’s not easy to reach out to them and convince them your email will be of value to them, but there are a few things that always work.

Don’t buy email lists. Unless the vendor is highly reputable, purchasing an email list is worse than a waste of time. You could end up having your company listed as a spammer.Start with current clients, business partners and followers. You already have them in your contact directory. Many email management services have tools to let you easily move them from your contact book and email history to your email-marketing list.Leverage membership lists. Many chambers of commerce and professional organizations provide contact lists as a membership benefit. This is great for B2B market, but only when used intelligently.Ask online. Use multiple online locations to host your sign-up form: website, social media profiles, blog, online ad, infographic, whitepaper download, squeeze page, ecommerce checkout, and more.Ask offline. Use sign-in sheets at stores, events and shows; collect business cards; use QR codes or an SMS signup service.Use incentives to encourage sign-ups. Offer free stuff that is relevant and matches your brand and industry: exclusive webinars, industry reports, eBooks, how-to videos, and special offers.

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Once your list-building strategies are in place, you also need nurture your leads. Like relationships and houseplants, email lists require a little TLC:

Keep the list engaged by providing good quality content.Keep the list clean by making list hygiene tactics part of your routine.Keep your list secure by never divulging contact details to third parties.Keep opt-out easy. Paradoxically transparent unsubscribe policies can improve your stats.

To learn more about building a killer email list, please take a look at our latest infographic. Which list building strategies are effective for you?

To embed the infograhic at your blog or site, please use the following string of code:

Wakeup Call: Begin Your Emails with a Call to Action in Mind

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AppId is over the quota

Every email has a goal and 99 out of a hundred times that involves the subscriber taking an action. So the call to action is one of the most important parts of any email. But what if you can’t find them? While it could have been a Call to Action hero, you can imagine that an email that doesn’t include a CTA that spells out exactly what is it the subscriber should be doing, is doomed to fail. Fail. Fail. 

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Before you start writing and designing your email, know what you are working up to. The email should be in function of the Action, not the other way around. Or as a famous email marketing quote says:  The email is the invite, but the party is on the landing page.
Examples of Actions that you want them to take can be:

Buy a product,Register for an event,Renew your subscription,Request a quote,Do a demo, take a trial,Requesting a call back, they are all working up to a sales.

Sometimes it is very specific actions to your industry or product, like request a test drive for automotive.

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But not all actions are the same as goals or even outcomes. Your (end) goal might be to increase sales or increase customer loyalty. But there can be a couple of steps before that happens, like the action to view a video or read an article. Especially in B2B there are long sales cycles and complex products, that require some extra steps. Examples of these are:

Read an article or a blog post,Watch a video,Take part in a prize draw,Update their preferences,Download a whitepaper.

See the example by Secret escapes, they use an extra step “visit sale” instead of “Buy now”. The outcome is actually exactly the same, it takes you to the product page. But “visit sale” is a smaller ask. There is also a second CTA, “Set reminder” this sets an email alert that is sent just before the offer ends.

These intermediate CTAs are definitely allowed and can boost the end results quite a bit. So think about what the steps leading up to a sale are. Or are you having an email disconnection - asking too much, too soon? What you can’t do, however is to hide in the valley and not include a clear CTA.

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Sometimes you might be tempted to not include a (clear) call to action. Don’t give in. Or your colleagues might not see why the CTA and whole email isn’t strong. Don’t give in.

You can definitely rationalise any type of email and any misuse or leaving out a CTA in your email. The key word is “rationalise”, because we all feel it when we see it; it could be clearer, cleaner and more obvious. Every email should be caveman-proof, totally clear without any additional explanation.

I have heard many, many, many different excuses over the years. Including beauties like;

this email is purely informative,we feel it wouldn’t be appropriate,they will surely understand,the CEO wants it this way,it is meant to drive offline sales,it is perfectly clear to me,we already had an approval on this version and continuing…

They will share it by themselves, we don’t want to come over as pushy, it is lead nurturing, we want it to be extra classy, the product isn’t available yet, the offer isn’t that good, we don’t want everybody to buy, etc, etc. No kidding, people say these type of things and mean it. On top of those excuses, a new instant classic of for not adding a clear(er) CTA: it was meant to be content marketing.

An example I ran into recently was with a pre-announcement / teaser mail. Even if the product isn’t finished yet, you can still ask for an action; let them pre-register, add comments, share or save-the-date.

Reasoning like this is like staying in the cosy (and costly) valley of low conversion. Not that every email should be a hard sell, but it does need a perspective for action. So don’t stay in the valley, go find yourself some action!

If you can really find no action, you are probably best off not sending that email. So before anything else, always start with an action and outcome in mind.

Write an Ebook That Sells Itself (and Builds Your Email List) Pt. 4

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AppId is over the quota

If you are reading this post, I can safely assume that you are interested in creating an ebook as you first information product. Or perhaps you sell premium coaching or consulting and you want to introduce an entry level product that will lead people down the sales funnel as they become interested in become one-on-one coaching. Yes, we are talking ebooks.

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In the first part of this series, I talked about why you should create an ebook and why it makes a great entry level product (so people can sample your stuff and are ready to buy your higher priced offerings.) I also talked about the eight big reasons which stop people from writing an ebook – even when this is something they really want to do.

In the second part of this series, I talked about how to make sure you pick an idea that will be a sure-fire winner. I explained how to do your research and survey your audience to ascertain their interest in your idea.

In the third part of this series, I discussed the 5 steps that will take your ebook from idea to the final product.

If you haven’t read these posts, go check them out now!

In this final installment, I will tell you how to sell your ebook as well as build your email list at the same time.

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If you think that selling your ebook means writing your ebook and putting up a ‘buy now’ button on your website and that’s it – then you are in for a shock. A lot of work goes into getting your ebook sold.

Remember all the time you spent researching your ebook idea and your competitors to access market demand, then getting the approval of your list and finally the number of hours it actually took to create this product and have it ready?

Well, don’t waste all of that effort. Sure, you probably need to invest a lot of time promoting your ebook, but this is the fun part. This is the money-making part. This is the creating-a sales funnel part. Yes, it is tons of work but it is also fun work which will lead to loads of cash (hopefully) and tons of new email subscribers. Now, don’t wait to begin this process until at the end. Meaning, you don’t have to finish your ebook before you start the ‘pre-launch’ process.

You will be launching your ebook in three phases.

In the first phase, you are getting prepared to launch your ebook. I’ll call this the getting ready phase.In phase number two, you will start warming your list and getting people interested in what’s to come. You will give early access to your email subscribers or special bonus to them as a way of saying thank you. You will also aim to get guest posts published on the leading blogs in your industry.In the last phase of this process, phase three, you will open the cart and continue with your ebook promotion.

So let’s take a look at how you would go about implementing this process.

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There are certain elements of your ebook launch process that needs to be done in advance of your sale period.

#1 You need a sales page.

#2 You need reviews and testimonials.

#1 You need a killer sales page

Yes, you do. A poorly written sales page will destroy your sales. But don’t stress.

If your offer is unbeatable, what you are selling is of top quality and being offered at the right price, you don’t need to be the salesman of the century. The product will sell itself. Just be clear about your ebook and at what price (the offer), what the benefits are and who this is for.

Remember, people are used to your content. Go ahead and write the sales page that only you would write. That is not to say that don’t include all the parts that make for an effective, highly converting sales page, but try not to copy someone else’s formula. Even if you end up hiring somebody to do the job for you, tell them explicitly what you want.

You want to ‘speak’ and appeal to the right person. You don’t want to focus on their pain too much. You want to highlight the key benefits of your product. You want to make an unbeatable offer. That’s all you need to create your sales page that works.No red text, yellow highlighting required.

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So once you get over the initial resistance to writing your sales page, the rest becomes fairly simple. But before you even put a single word down on paper, you’ve got to list the answers to the following questions.

Who is your target audience?What problem are you solving?What do they struggle with?What do they want?What is your product? (ebook)How do you describe yourself (coach, consultant, therapist, speaker.)?What results would they get as a result of using your product or service?What would prevent them from buying it? (Objections such as too expensive, looks time consuming, will it work for me?)

Once you have all the answers to these questions, you can start writing a very basic, first draft of your sales page.

Let’s begin.

You need a headline for your sales page.

This headline needs to communicate the main benefit of what you are offering, and to whom. (It doesn’t have to scream, be sleazy or hypey in any way.) You can also pair it up with a sub-heading and supercharge your messaging.

The headlines differ vastly across industries so the best thing for you would be to do some research (you are probably already familiar with similar products or even competing products). Check their sales page and take notes. Your headline doesn’t have to be perfect. Often times, it the hardest element on your sales page and it is okay to get help.

In the first section, start with what they want.

Talk about the problems they are facing. Paint a picture of what it’s like to not have all the answers but don’t make it so overwhelming that it becomes hard for them to read any further. Now tell them you have a solution. Tell them what is possible.

Give them details about your ebook. What do they actually get when they buy?

Next, go into the details of your product benefits.

What will they get out it? How will their lives improve? What results will they get?

Now it is time to handle their objections.

Start by saying something like, ‘Now, you might be thinking ….’. Be straight with them and address their concerns head on.

Reinforce what you promise them with testimonials.

Show them the proof that what you say is true and your ebook have brought success and results for people just like them (testimonials). You can keep adding these elements slowly.

Back it up with a rock solid guarantee.

Reassure them that if for some reason, they are not 100% satisfied with their purchase, you will happily refund their money in 30 days, no questions asked; or state your terms clearly.

Give them one last benefit and tell them what you want them to do. Be confident.

Click here to purchase. Buy now. Download instantly – let them know what will happen after they purchase. Will they get an instant download?

Give them a deadline, if there is one.

Will your price go up? Will the bonuses go away? Let them know clearly.

That’s all!

That’s all you need to create you first sales page. It doesn’t have to be a scroller. As long as you answer all these questions, you have an effective sales page selling your ebook.

Remember, there are many nuances when it comes to creating a brilliant sales page. Copywriters charge thousands of dollars for this service. So I am not saying it is easy – but there is no need to make it complicated.

#2 You need reviews and testimonials for your ebook

Everybody wants to see great reviews and testimonials for the ebook. Here are my fail-proof tips to get killer review – and testimonials.

You would love to get your ebook reviewed by the top influencers in your industry but unless you have a relationship going on, don’t waste your breath. You need to connect with them way before this process begins.

In fact, if you are reading this post with an intent to write an ebook, or if you are writing one, start creating relationships with these people now. Be genuine and helpful. Help them first before you ask for a favor.

Instead, start by asking your peers. Sure, they don’t carry as much clout but 2-3 very good reviews can do wonders for your ebook sales.Contact people well in advance. (This is why this falls in the Getting Ready phase). Don’t send them the ebook and expect their review the next day. Ask them first than give them a minimum of two weeks. Even longer if they are super busy.Tell them who else is reviewing your book to motivate them to say yes.Offer a chapter and ask for feedback on that chapter if they are too busy to read the whole book.Give them a deadline so you don’t have to harass them in the future. Make sure you leave plenty of wiggle room in case they are late. Follow up one week before deadline to see if they need help with anything.You can also give them prompts on what type of feedback you are looking for. Create a feedback request form based on your ebook content and send it their way to make things easier for them.Delight them with a testimonial or a review for one of their own products if you can, before they give feedback. This will motivate them to finish things on time.Schedule twice as many reviews so you don’t end up disappointed with the number that actually turns up.

Now you might be thinking, how could you possibly get testimonials for your ebook before it is even out? Surely someone must implement what you are teaching, get some results and only then they’d report back.

Here is how to get testimonials and user reviews before your ebook is officially out:

Select 2-3 go-getter, action-taking type people from your email list. Select the people who have been leaving comments on your blog and generally engage with your content. Give them a particular section from your ebook and ask them to implement what you teach and report their results in exchange for a discount on the ebook (or give the whole ebook if you feel like doing so. It is totally worth it as there testimonial will lead to even more sales.You don’t need many testimonials. People are not expecting any at this moment. Having a few will pleasantly surprise them.

Got the sales page, your reviews and user reviews?

Now you can start working on phase two of your launch process.

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In the pre-launch phase, you want to get as many people excited about your upcoming book as you possibly can. You have got to work on two different set of audiences here:

One, people are you already on your list.Two, people who are not on your list yet, they may or may not have heard of you.

Let’s have a look at how you can accomplish that. Usually people would tell to expect anything from 1-5% conversions. Meaning, if you have 500 people on your list, you can expect 25 sales. What? That’s no good. But don’t start stressing just yet. There are couple of ways to make sure you get loads of sales at the time of the launch:

You grow your list, of course.You increase conversions from your list.

You should do both, but let’s look the second scenario first.

Warming your email list

So far you have been talking to your list about their problems, topics they want you to tackle, surveying them and what not, they know something is coming. Now it is time to do a whole sequence of pre-launch content.

You should never, ever announce any product without publishing some pre-launch content unless you have a super duper relationship with your list. Even then, some content is beneficial. You see, the better your relationship with your list, the better are your sales going to be. If you put in work to solidify your relationship with people on your list, you can increase your numbers dramatically.

Let’s say you have 500 people on your list. All things being equal, you can expect 25 sales. But what about connecting with more people on your list so that you double that number? Now you have 50 sales. How about if the people on your list loved you to pieces. You will convert 20%. That’s a whopping 100 sales.

You see what I am saying here? When you invest in your relationship with your subscribers, it pays off. But the higher the price point, the more you have to work at it. If you were to sell an online course or launch a brand new coaching program, you might want to warm your audience for an extended period – especially if you haven’t been in regular touch for a while.

For an entry level, low risk product, you don’t have to make a big fuss. You don’t necessarily want to want a big splash. However you do want some excitement. Here are some things you can do to start creating some buzz about your upcoming ebook:

Plan a series of super relevant content related to your ebook topic. This will get the attention of all those people who are interested in the idea and also of those who didn’t think this ebook would be relevant to them. This will also clearly let people know who it’s not for. You will see unsubscribes but that’s okay.Start publishing your content three – four weeks ahead of launch date. Any longer, and people will start getting bored.Remember all the topics that didn’t make it into your ebook? They make great pre-launch content. You can also go and repurpose some of your older content if you don’t have time to create more.Follow your usual publishing frequency. Email at least once or twice a week.Start off with your best piece of content. You have to get their attention here. If your first piece fails to get any traction, you have to work extra hard on pieces that are to follow.Try to from a logical sequence in your content pieces. It doesn’t have to form a step by step but it would be helpful to you if the second piece naturally follows the first one. This way your audience is looking forward to what is next to come. Also, if somebody comes across your final piece in social media, they would want to check out the first there blog posts.Do an internal launch where you offer a significant early bird discount or a special bonus to your list and open the cart for your subscribers only. Don’t make it any longer than 2-3 days or people will put it off and forget all about it. You are doing this to reward early action takers (and to give yourself some piece of mind that yes, your ebook is selling.)Run your sale in the middle of the week and try to get testimonials from your list that you can use for promotion. Make sure you take the sales page off or people will not trust you again.Lead them through the pre-launch content and announce your ebook to your list only and when it will be available for sale.

When you publish your pre-launch content in the form of blog posts, you get two benefits:

You deepen your relationship with your list (the intended purpose).Your content gets shared on social media bringing you new subscribers which grows your list at the same time (the second advantage).

However, you should also be doing other things to grow your email list. Since you have been creating the ebook, hopefully you have been doing all the right things to grow it. Leaving comments on other blogs, guest posting, sharing and forming relationships on social media, maybe even paid traffic via Facebook advertising.

Here is a list of things you should be specifically doing during the pre-launch and launch phases:

Try to get as many guest posts published as you can in these 3 week period (2 weeks of pre-launch and one week of actual launch with special price).If you were connecting with influencers while you were writing the ebook, perhaps you can reach out to them and see if they would share your content.Hold a webinar.Reach out to people and see if they would interview you.Have a contest on social media where you will give away a few copies of your ebook.Run ads on Facebook to get people on your list.Continue to do all of the above well into the launch mode till your cart is closed.

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Remember all the hard work that you have been putting in for the past 3 months or so? Now it is time to reap rewards. It is finally time to open your cart and see the sales start rolling in.

Here is what you need to be doing in this phase:

Announce to the world that your ebook is on sale and open cart.Make sure to edit any early bird sale details (that you offered to your list earlier) before you publish the sales page.Double check the checkout and payment process beforehand. Ask two people to test it for you.Start publishing (and sharing) your launch content.If you normally email your list every week or every other week, you have to increase the frequency to create momentum. It is totally fine to email these folks two-three times a week. This way you need at least four pieces of content.At the end of each piece, remind them to buy your ebook and give them the link.For the launch period, you want the maximum number of sales. To encourage people to buy now rather than later, sell it at the special launch price which will go up as your ebook goes into your store for example $10 off the full price of $49. This discount shouldn’t be less than what you offered your own list.You can do two sets of pricing. You can offer just the ebook for $39 and the ebook plus 45 minute coaching at $129. Let everybody know that the special price and the coaching offer will go away and the ebook goes into store at the full price – maybe $49.Send two emails on the last date of launch. One in the morning and one final ‘few hours remain’ one.Make sure you are adding all the buyers to a customer’s email list so that you can continue to follow up and upsell other services later on.Launching any product is a nerve wracking, overwhelming, exhausting process. The more you are prepared for it (reviewers ready, sales page ready, sales process checked, guest posts and social media updates scheduled), the more relaxed you will be. Still, this is going to be no park in the walk. Create time in your schedule accordingly. Don’t say to anything else during the launch week.Be ready for unexpected results and things that go wrong. Especially if this your first launch, treat it as a learning process. Cut yourself some slack.If you don’t get as many sales as expected, rejoice anyway. Look at how much you have accomplished. You have created a high quality ebook, you have developed so many new relationships, possibly some even with the influencers. You got yourself published on the leading blogs. Best of all, you grew your email list like nobody’s business.Lastly, increase the price to its full ticket price and move it to your store. You will see sales continue to trickle in.Give yourself a big pat on the back and put your feet up. You have done it.

Phew.

Writing an ebook is a daunting process, and now you can why. It is extremely rewarding at the same time. If you do everything to the best of your ability, get help when you need it and keep moving on, you are going to come out a winner.

So, will you finally start your ebook?

¿Conoces estas 3 fórmulas de escritura esenciales?

A veces puede revelar la verdad de una cosa por explicar cómo se diferencia del otro. Esta es la fórmula de comparación y contraste que aprendiste en la escuela, escribiendo ensayos como "por qué el"yogur helado es mejor que el helado.

Es especialmente útil en la escritura de negocios. Se usa para explicar cómo su negocio se diferencia de sus competidores. O para motivar a un prospecto a tomar medidas: "aquí es ¿qué sucede si usted compra nuestro producto; Aquí está el riesgo si no lo haces".

Tip: gente como para componer su propia mente, así que evite la tentación de sus puntos como techista clavar las tejas del martillo. Si tienes demasiado dura, puede desencadenar la resistencia.

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Hay algo místico acerca del número tres; es señal de que estás tratando de resumir un tema entero:

Gobierno: Legislativas, judiciales y executiveReligion: padre, hijo y SpiritValues: verdad, justicia y el estilo americano

Y este post — tres fórmulas de escritura — además cientos de chistes que comienzan con algo como, "A Ministro un sacerdote y un rabino estaban pescando en un barco...".

Tip: para captar la atención, poner tus puntos en 1-3-2 orden — abrir con su punto más interesante, cerrar con su segundo más interesante y su tercer punto en el medio del emparedado. O para cerrar con una explosión, que la orden 2-3-1.

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En la escritura del negocio, a menudo verás las listas de productos, funciones, servicios, testimonios y clientes. Una lista de más de tres envía un mensaje sutil que el tema es demasiado grande para rodearlo con sus brazos.

Los estándares de prueba son un poco menos rigurosos que en las otras fórmulas, pero eso no quiere decir que puede ser descuidado. Haz tu tarea. Proporcionar los datos exactos.

Tip: Utilice esta fórmula para ganar una posición top-of-mind. Es la psicología detrás de puestos de la lista e infografía: el lector no puede sostener todos esos elementos en mente, así que tienen que aferrarse a su pieza y se refieren a ella una y otra vez — una manera inteligente y eficaz para comercializar su marca.

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Can Opt-in Pop-ups Get You 42 Times More Leads? (And How to Do It Yourself)

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Everyone hates pop-ups, right? Ever since I’ve been connected to the Internet back in 1995, people have been cursing them and complaining about how annoying and useless they are. Yet, almost 20 years later, pop-ups are still part of our daily life. Popovers, pop under, light box pop ups etc.

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As an Internet marketer and webmaster, I’ve rarely seen online marketing practices last for this long. So I came to the only possible conclusion: they probably work very well. This is when I decided I needed to give these a shot on my own site, to see if the benefits of running them outweighed the annoyance they cause.

Since I’m mostly running authority sites, I decided to make these opt-in pop ups to try and grow my list and transform one-time readers into rabid fans. 1 year later, I’m collecting hundreds of daily leads, using a combination of Getresponse and opt-in pop-ups on my various sites.

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When I first launched opt in pop-ups on my sites, they were very simple pop ups, offering people to join my newsletter. At first I went at length about the benefits of joining my newsletter, trying to highlight every single thing I give to my subscribers hoping my conversion rate would be higher.

Pro tip: it wasn’t. After A/B testing the text heavy versions against simple headlines generally stating one main benefit, I saw a 30% uplift in conversion rate.

This made me realize one thing:

It’s not really about the offer and exactly what people get when signing up to your newsletter. It’s about what they already know about you and their experience with your brand/site.

Therefore, if you make a complicated offer with numerous points, it’s going to be more confusing and people won’t necessarily opt-in. However, if you emphasize the good experience they’ve had on your site and make one compelling offer, they’re more likely to opt-in.

I also set my pop-up to pop on every page of my site without any specific rules after 20 seconds. The results were already much better than when I was not running an opt-in pop up. I was getting around 0.6% conversion rate at the time and collecting a few dozen leads a day.

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After the first implementation, I was collecting more emails than ever, but I kept hearing about successful marketers getting above 3% conversion rates from their pop-ups and to be honest, I was far from it.

Was my traffic wrong? No, not really. The issue is, the other marketers were bribing people to subscribe to their list. “But I can’t afford to pay people to join my list!” Don’t worry, I’m not talking about that kind of bribe.

Successful email marketers tend to give something for free to people. Something that literally costs them nothing to produce an extra unit of – something like a free e-book or video course. It’s something that you produce once and it serves you forever. Thanks to the autoresponder function in Getresponse, the delivery can be completely automated as well.

So, following that idea, I worked with my copywriters to put together a free e-book with breakfast recipes to offer to our readers in exchange for joining our mailing list.

Here’s what the pop up looked like:

Instantly, my opt-in rates jumped to 1-1.2% depending on the pop-up variations I was using. That’s almost double the rates! I’ve since repeated the experiment on several sites with the same kind of results.

Bribing people and offering them a freebie works in opt in pop ups.

Pro tip: One thing I’`ve done recently was brainstorming different ideas for freebies, then followed by a/b testing these in opt-in pop-ups. When people opt-in, send them to a page explaining it’s not ready yet but will be emailed to them soon. After you’ve identified which freebie gets the most opt ins, build it and send it to everyone that opted-in.

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Over 1% of people opting-in, now that’s amazing considering most people get under 0.1%. Yet, I was still way behind the email marketing gurus and their 3%+.

One thing to note is that the site I was experimenting with has a broad spectrum and that created a hurdle to jump: the offer wasn’t always well matched to the content people were consuming.

I therefore, decided to match the content and opt-ins closer by creating a different pop-up for every category on my website.

Here’s the example of what the juicing category pop up looked like:

As you can see, nothing special. I’m no designer, but the good news is that you don’t have to be one to succeed! This pop up got me over a 3% opt-in rate, pretty much 3x more than the site wide pop-up! I finally caught up to those other marketers.

I was also able to add people to different lists, so I could email them things and offers that are more relevant to what they’re interested in via Getresponse. This increased engagement as well as revenue for us.

All of my sites use pop-ups one way or another these days. I just try to make sure the offer matches the content and that they only pop-up on strategic pages, not throughout the entire site, and the offers are very targeted. This allows us to collect a huge amount of new leads while not being too annoying to our visitors.

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Gael Breton is a co-founder of Authority Hacker, a website helping people build authority sites out of their passion and pay their bills with it. He specializes in Inbound marketing and conversion rate optimization.

Using Content Marketing Strategies in B2B Emails #Infographic

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AppId is over the quota

With 191.4 billion emails sent daily around the world, grabbing your customers’ attention with your message can be a shot in the dark. One of the most effective strategies emerging in global marketing is to use content marketing for your newsletters. Today’s infographic will tell you why it’s worth it.

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Today almost 93% of B2B marketers are using content marketing strategies to engage current customers and attract new ones. 78% of marketers are producing more content than a year ago, and only 35% of them find it hard to produce good quality content.

But producing good quality content is one thing. Making it work for your business, that is – engage and convert – is another.

To promote the content and make it reach their audience, B2B marketers use social media (87% of marketers) and their own websites (81%).

How about email marketing? Can it effectively promote your content? Read the infographic to learn more.

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Marketers use different forms of content to engage their prospects and customers:

Customer testimonials are rated #1 most effective content marketing technique. Testimonials give customers an independent outsider’s point of view on your products and services.Case studies are considered effective by 88% of marketers. They help your audience visualize how they themselves can benefit from your services.Videos can help online shoppers make buying decisions, according to 96% of consumers.Whitepapers are still considered an advanced way to communicate with your audience. But they’re a great and appreciated way to share your expertise and knowledge. They also improve your position as an industry thought leader.Infographics. People love them. And they can be a perfect way to present a lot of dull stats in an attractive, digestible format.

These are all great types of content marketing you can use. But the real key to creating successful content is to understand your customers, their needs, and routines. When you’ve got that, you can create content that really helps solve their problems.

Read the full infographic and let us know what type of content marketing you find most effective for your industry.

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