ISA Marketing & Sales Summit

Dead End courtesy of monstersweare on Flickr

I’ve performed a bunch of free inbound marketing evaluations for businesses large and small. There are two mistakes I see companies making far more than any other. I covered the first mistake by describing why companies fail at social media. But there is another mistake that is even more common.

It seems that a majority of companies have conversion aversion.

This mistake is even more pervasive and costly. If you’re creating well-optimized, remarkable content and doing a bang-up job promoting that content via social media, what’s the point if you’re just sending them down a dead-end road? Converting those hard-earned visitors into leads is the final step in inbound marketing. And, frankly, it’s the only one that truly matters at the end of the day.

con-ver-sion a-ver-sion [kuhn-vur-zhuhn uh-vur-zhuhn]

noun
1. opposition to and/or apathy toward providing website visitors with strong calls to action
2. failure to describe the problem being solved or solution being offered
3. implementation of high-friction process for obtaining goods/content

Landing Pages to the Rescue

The first step in curing conversion aversion is the creation of landing pages. These pages are  highly specialized and single-minded in their mission to achieve their goal. Each page’s goal must be clear and action-oriented (e.g. buy, download, join, etc…). What exactly is a landing page?

Ideally, a landing page contains a strong call to action, clear value proposition, and a low-friction conversion form. You’ll notice from the screen shot above that these are the only things on this page. The widgets have been removed in order to remove distractions. You don’t want to give visitors any extra shiny objects to take their attention away from the task at hand.

Crafting the Message

Create pages with compelling headlines.

It all starts with the headline. Along with the sub-heading, this is the main message that must communicate exactly what is being offered (Free Inbound Marketing Evaluation) and the problem that is solves (How well does your site compare? How can you improve it?). Focus on creating a vision for the audience that allows them to see how much better off they will be after taking the action you want them to take. Be sure to include one of the seven fascination triggers in your headline (lust, vice, alarm, power, prestige, mystique or trust).

Connect with the audience.

Build off of your headline by showing the audience that you can identify and empathize with their plight. People want to buy from people who are more like themselves.

Clearly define your offer.

Tell the customer exactly what they will get in exchange for their lead information (preferably no more than an email). Don’t get cute here – be extremely concise with your language and don’t hide anything.

Provide testimonials.

If people have made it this far, a powerful testimonial can seal the deal. Social proof is a vital aspect of the buying process.

Dispel their fears.

Try to anticipate the buyers’ reservations and address them head on. For example, tell them it won’t take as much time as they may think or won’t be as risky as they may fear. Making the offer completely risk-free (e.g. money back guarantee) is another way to accomplish this.

Low Friction

Every field of data the visitor must provide lessens the chances of conversion. Don’t ask for data just because you’d like to have it; only ask for the minimum amount of data required in order to fulfill the request. In many cases, the only field really and truly required is an email address. In the example shown above, some additional data is required because the offer is a free evaluation. As a general rule, the more valuable the offer is, the more friction users will tolerate.

Optimize

Which title should you use? What color is best for the submit button? Should you include a picture of the product or a human face?

Landing pages are incredibly fickle and tricky to optimize. Fortunately, there are some free tools available to help us to exactly that. Google Website Optimizer will allow you to create multiple versions of landing pages, then rotate them randomly and measure their respective conversion rates.

Guest Post by Doug Brock

How high do you set your customer service bar?  Think about the KPIs you use.  Do you set goals for those KPIs based on your results from the previous year, against industry averages, or do you actually use benchmarks to ensure you are providing best-in-class customer service.  Many companies set the bar too low. They want to satisfy or maybe just ‘satisfice’ (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/satisfice) customers and really don’t care enough to put extra effort into gaining their customer’s engagement.  Magic happens when you care enough to engage customers.  They become fans.  Fans are force multipliers for marketers!

Engaged customers don’t tell their coworkers and friends that your product isn’t easy to use.  Engaged customers tell you why it isn’t easy to use and specifically how to correct it.  Engaged fans are willing to tolerate beta releases because they know deep in their hearts that you will eventually give them access to Version 2.0 that specifically addresses their greatest needs.  Engaged customers tell everyone that your products solve their problems.

If you truly want customers that are fans, customers that have a sense of ownership in your company, you have to measure customer sentiments.  You need to understand how loyal your customers are, how many customers you retain, and how willing your customers are to advocate for you.  How many of your customers are willing to recommend your offerings to people they know?

These results must be used to close the loop in your customer focused activities.  The saying you can’t manage what you don’t measure applies to customer engagement as much as anything else.  But results measures like any statistic that doesn’t have a comparison is worthless.  Comparing “how you did” to “how you did last year” does not result in high levels of performance.  You have to benchmark or compare these measures to someone that you know does those things well. Comparisons compel change and build a sense of urgency especially when they show that you aren’t as good as your competitors or as good as you thought you were.

The good news is it is easier than ever to engage customers.  Not that the measures are easier to capture, but it is easier to engage with customers.  Social media tools, inbound marketing techniques, and the always-connected world we live in gives us ample opportunities to connect and engage with customers but you have to have a plan.  What’s your plan for moving customers down the continuum from satisficed to satisfied to engaged and beyond?

Doug Brock  is an accomplished marketer and salesperson in the factory automation industry holding positions at manufacturers, start-ups, and distributors. In addition to his marketing and sales experience, he is an experienced examiner for the Tennessee Center for Performance Excellence, a state-level award program modeled after the national Baldrige Performance Excellence Program. Doug is presenting “Applying Baldrige to the Marketing Function” at the ISA Marketing and Sales Summit.

Let’s say you run a day-care center and you’re tired of parents being late to pick up their kids. What do you do? How about instituting a fine? That seems like it’s logical and could be effective. If parents had to pay extra, one would assume that they would be more likely to be on time. But one would be wrong.

In January, 2000, Uri Gneezy and Aldo Rustichini published a study titled, “A Fine is a Price.” In this study, they followed six day-care centers in Israel. They found that, on average, there were seven or eight late pickups per week across the ten centers they were monitoring. At six of these centers, they instituted a fine for late pickups and the effect was immediate and striking. The incidences of lateness steadily increased over a four week period. Eventually, the average number of late pickups peaked around twenty – almost triple the original rate. What happened? And what has this to do with social media?

Mixed Norms

Gneezy and Rustichini attributed this to something they called an “incomplete contract.” The rules that were in place were sufficiently ambiguous that customers had to figure for themselves what was appropriate behavior. In those circumstances, we tend to fall back on social norms. Social norms are a set of unwritten rules that determine what is and is not acceptable behavior in social situations. However, in the case of the day-care experiment, instituting a fine shattered the ambiguity and replaced it with an economic norm. The parents no longer feared social repercussions. They determined that the convenience of showing up whenever they wanted was worth the price.

Oil and water courtesy of andredoreto on Flickr

This is an example of “mixed norms.” When we combine social behaviors with an economic situation or vice versa, we get unpredictable (and sometimes volatile) situations. Consider, for example, finishing a holiday dinner at your parents’ house. You compliment the cook(s) on a terrific meal and pull out your checkbook asking, “How much do I owe you?” Most people would be offended and might even throw a utensil in your direction. Dating also carries such risks.

Social media also carries such risks.

Social Media and Norms

Make no mistake. Social norms are in play in all social media channels. The main reason for this is that when it comes to social networks, the users are also the owners. This is not the case in most other media with which companies are used to dealing (e.g. television, radio, newspapers, even Google). And so their tendency is to dive into social media with their economic norm behaviors. The result is that people will automatically tune them out and unfollow/unfriend them. In a sense, the companies have placed a virtual fee on their social media presence. This fundamentally changes the relationship from a social one to an economic one. Game over, influence squandered.

And here’s the really bad news…

Mixing Norms is Irreversible

Back to Gneezy and Rustichini. After five months, the day-care centers rescinded the fining policy. However, the behaviors didn’t change. It turns out that once you change the relationship from social to economic, you cannot go back. It’s altered permanently and there’s nothing you can do about it.

This should give pause to companies currently or planning to be involved in social media. You had better get it right the first time, because you won’t get a second chance. So how does a company insure it’s following social norms? Well, there’s a four letter word that spells social media success; gift. Make sure the vast majority of the content you’re creating and sharing can be considered as a gift to your audience and you should be fine.

This post originally appeared on Telesian Technology’s What’s Working in Marketing Blog

I ran across this article, 9 Social Networks Your Business Should Be Using, and did a double take. Those of us who focus on the technology and manufacturing markets would be greatly misled by this list: 1. Facebook, 2. Twitter, 3. Foursquare, 4. LinkedIn, 5. YouTube, 6. Quora, 7. Flikr, 8. Tumblr, and 9. Meetup. This represents a very broad brush and is heavily biased toward the consumer markets. For those of us who sell primarily to scientists and engineers, we need our own special list. Here’s my two cents:

1. Your own company blog: Competition is stiff, especially from low cost producers around the world. Now, more than ever, it’s important for you to establish your expertise and differentiate your offerings in the market. A well done blog is the best place to start (after you have your e-newsletter program up and running, of course). There are a number of blogging tools out there, including the above mentioned Tumblr. But if you want your own domain and a professional look and feel along with ease of use, we recommend something like WordPress. For dirt cheap dollars you can set up your own domain, e.g. blog. telesian.com, and be up and running the first day.

2. YouTube: Your customers and prospects have as little available time as you. For marketing to succeed it needs to be short, sweet, and to the point to get their attention. There’s time later to present all the gorey detail that engineers need to see. But first you’ve got to get them hooked. For some time now, we’ve seen short (3-5 minute) YouTube video tutorials pull in top readership numbers…in e-newsletters, on blogs, etc. You need to figure out how to incorporate video production into your marketing process. It doesn’t have to look like it was Hollywood produced, but it does have to be decent quality. Start with a mix of talking head and pics of technology/products in action. But start now.

3. SlideShare: If you’d asked me 6 months ago, I would have put LinkedIn in the number 3 position. But things change fast on the Internet. LinkedIn is still a must-have tool for businesses in our markets (see below), but SlideShare is useful as a way to get your documents and presentations online in a friendly format. It also has become a destination in and of itself because of all the great material that’s posted there. I’ve heard a number of people tell me the search SlideShare for info BEFORE they turn to a search engine. That got my attention.

4. LinkedIn: This is THE social media site for business. While most of our customers and prospects will go to a company web site for information, they are finding it useful to get involved in LinkedIn forums to get their questions answered on specialized topics. Once you create your personal and business pages, you’ll want to look around for groups to join. I did a search for “laser” related groups and got a list of 56 options including photonics, SPIE, laser materials processing, medical lasers, and more.

5. Twitter: Think of Twitter as headline news. This is a new way to interact with like-minded people, be they network contacts, customers, prospects, industry influencers, etc. Tweet about new content on your web site, new videos, news from the industry. There are two challenges to Twitter: first, you need to find and encourage relevant people on the network to follow you; second, you need to post a couples of times a day to be most effective. Don’t overdo the quantity of posts or you’ll annoy your followers. But you need sufficient volume to rise above the noise.

Start with these five social networks. Get them integrated into your marketing program and post regularly. Once you have these down pat, we’ll talk about what’s next.