Should You Write for Fans or Customers?

Mickey Spillane did not suffer from delusions of grandeur.

He didn’t expect his novels — featuring private eye Mike Hammer — to be regarded as great works of literature.

What he wanted was for them to sell.

I have no fans. You know what I got? Customers. And customers are your friends. – Mickey Spillane

His books have sold more than 225 million copies, so this approach served him well.

As we build an online presence with our content marketing, we have to answer this essential question:

Should we develop fans or customers?

The answer isn’t as straightforward as it may seem.

Why develop fans?

Your content marketing may have fans — people who love everything you write, contribute ideas in your comment section on a regular basis, and support your business by participating in any free offer you make.

Not all fans become customers, but some fans may become second customers.

Second customers are people who help you spread the word about your business. They faithfully share all the content you create.

They may not give you money, but they give you something equally valuable: referrals that bring you more customers over time.

Fans are important, and fans who become second customers are critical for your business.

Second customers help your business expand across the web. They do some of your promotional heavy lifting for you, so spend time cultivating them.

How to cultivate second customers

The most valuable second customers have large audiences — every share from them causes your traffic to spike.

To give your second customers the type of content they love to share, spend time thinking about how your content can meet their needs.

What is it about your content that they find useful? Does it:

• Appeal to their audience?
• Teach something they want their readers to learn?
• Expand on a topic they already cover, but show it in a new light or explain it in greater depth?

If you can, try to have a short conversation with a few of your most valuable second customers to find out why they enjoy sharing your content.

Their answers will help you create more of the type of content they find useful — which will result in more shares for you.

Customers start out as fans

As a Copyblogger reader, content marketing is probably the primary technique you use to promote your business.

If that’s the case, most customers will start out as fans and readers. As you continue to deliver useful, interesting information to them over time, a percentage of your fans will become customers — those people Mickey Spillane refers to as friends.

I’m 82 years old, wherever I go everybody knows me, but here’s why … I’m a merchandiser. I’m not just a writer. I stay in every avenue you can think of. – Mickey Spillane

Content marketing helps develop and maintain healthy relationships with your customers, both before and after the sale.

Before the sale, you’ll deliver:

• Information that helps them understand your business better
• Content that allows them to become smart consumers of your product or service
• Tutorials that show them how to purchase your service or product

After the sale, you’ll deliver:

• Onboarding (first-time customer) content so they can make the most of their purchase
• How-to information so they can maximize the value of the item or service they bought
• Content that helps them move toward a repeat purchase or an upsell to the next logical product or service

How can you create content to serve both fans and customers?

Can you imagine a piece of content that is a unique and entertaining take on your area of expertise combined with an upsell to the next logical product or service?

Me neither.

The content you create with the goal of getting your fans and second customers to help you spread it and the content you create for existing customers is different. There’s no need to shoehorn one into the other.

You serve no one when you wedge fan content and existing customer information into one monster-like creation — and you might even scare people away.

This is where the serial nature of content marketing shines.

Here’s the thing:

It makes the most sense to think about content marketing as a verb, not a noun.

Content marketing happens over time. No single post must meet the needs of every fan and customer you want to reach.

Appeal to fans or customers, one piece of content at a time

If you’ve been trying to make every piece of content meet the needs of every potential reader, stop.

Take a step back and refocus your individual content pieces so they appeal to specific slices of your readers: fans, second customers, customers, repeat customers.

Doing this will allow you to relax and target each piece of content toward a particular group. It takes the pressure off of any individual piece of content to do everything you need for your business.

The result?

Individual pieces of content will resonate with the particular group you want to reach. You can speak directly to them, and they’ll identify with the content. They’ll think, ‘It’s like this was written for me!’

So, should you write for fans or customers?

The answer is “yes.”

About the author

Pamela Wilson

Pamela Wilson is Executive Vice President of Educational Content at Rainmaker Digital. Follow her on Twitter, and find more from her at BigBrandSystem.com.

The post Should You Write for Fans or Customers? appeared first on Copyblogger.

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5 Marketing Processes You Should Seriously Consider Automating

Marketing technology is moving at a rapid pace that is enabling businesses to reach more potential customers and better engage existing ones. So, if you are still stuck with excel sheets and manual outreach processes, it’s time to reexamine how you can bring in the much required marketing efficiency to your business.

Automation doesn’t necessarily have to be an advanced AI capable of solving complex riddles, predicting and magically running your show. Nor does it mean that you should be able to automate the complete chain of activities in a process. Using marketing technology to reduce manual effort and intervention itself can save a ton of time and improve conversions.

WSJ published a great article recently on how companies are using automation (paywall) to boost their marketing efforts and reach their customers better. The author describes marketing automation as an ever-expanding area with a big focus currently on automating activities such as website and content management, email marketing, customer segmentation, lead filtering, digital advertising and social media marketing.

While digital has opened up a ton of opportunities for marketers, the increasing amount of noise and activity online makes it really tough to be heard and seen. For a business, this means two things:

• Every lead is precious and worth fighting for
• The marketing effort required today is several times higher than it was 10 years ago

Deploying marketing automation is just as important for SMBs as it is for large companies to have a competitive edge. You can identify activities for automation by looking for repetitive tasks that are backed by some data or specific logic. Often such activities involve simple decision-making or are rules-based.

Below are five examples of marketing processes where automation can bring immense benefits. You can automate parts of these processes by using off-the-shelf solutions or building some small tech in-house. The decision of choosing one over another should be based on cost-effort-time analysis.

1. Lead tracking and nurturing

Like I said before, the battle today is open for every lead. However, it is impossible and probably stupid to nurture leads through manual processes. Whether you are working with 50-100 leads a month or several thousands, a CRM is must in your marketing technology arsenal.

Most CRMs offer automatic lead capturing from contact forms. There are several cloud based CRM SaaS providers, and some even offer access for single user for free. And if you are a SaaS company, most likely your CRM would be heavily integrated within your product.

Salesforce is the big daddy of the CRM software world, and while a bit pricey, it offers valuable integrations with key software products you are likely to use now or in future like Pardot, Hubspot, ExactTarget and Marketo. Salesforce also allows for a lot of flexibility to configure, but its user interface is not one of the friendliest to work with.

Other popular CRM solutions include Close.io, Pipedrive, AgileCRM and Zoho – all of these are modern and easy to get started with.

Close.io has a clean interface, and is great for logging email and call interactions, bulk emailing, calendar integrations and reporting.

Zoho does most of this and is cheaper, maybe not as elegant.

Pipedrive is a good low cost basic CRM.

AgileCRM is interesting and goes beyond regular lead tracking and management. It has a bunch of marketing automation features, which SaaS companies will find useful. These include user onboarding with rule-based emailing, in-app messages and guided tours, social media monitoring, and web engagement tools.

Getting the data in order is just the beginning. Using this data to drive conversions is the big battle. This starts with mapping your sales cycle, identifying the various touch-points and opportunities for follow–ups, and then automating the follow-ups themselves or the reminders for the personal ones (depending on the kind of business you run).

In a typical SaaS scenario, you generally have 30 days or less to get a user engaged and convert. A series of well-planned emails, sent on an automated schedule during the period, based on the user activity pattern can improve conversions significantly. It also allows you to create the much needed touch points for user interaction, early problem resolutions and feedback.

While setting up the email follow up plan, be sure to customize it to the existing engagement of the user with the product, using the activity data of the account. For example, if the user account has not registered any trigger activity, following up with a demo suggestion is a great idea. But if the user is already primed and active, sending in a congratulatory note praising the activity might be more in order.

While it is always possible to set up such rule based email campaigns on your own, considering the option of using one of the many email marketing automation solutions is always worthy of exploration.

Some popular email marketing automation software:

1. Customer.io – It is a smart app for sending your customers email messages at just the ‘right’ times. You can set up simple day based email schedules or activity-based emails. Also supports A/B testing and conversion tracking.
2. Drip – It’s a simple tool for creating drip campaigns. Drip offers blueprints or pre-set drip campaigns, which can be customized to your case. The app can pull emails from your website and other sources.
3. Sendloop – This app gets closely integrated with your website, monitoring user activity, allowing you to create personalized drip email campaigns.
4. Pardot – This is the best choice if you’re using Salesforce as your CRM. They integrate together seamlessly (Salesforce owns Pardot). Set up marketing emails and drip campaigns easily. All the data is shared with your Salesforce account.

Marketing automation tools and email marketing apps:

1. Marketing automation tools – AgileCRM, Hubspot and Infusionsoft – These are more multi-purpose software, which gives them a unique edge, as they are powered with more data about your users or customers. AgileCRM lets you create visual flows of the rules to send your messages. Infusionsoft also allows you to create rules-based visual maps of interactions including emails. Hubspot is powered with a lot of web analytics, which is great assistance creating targeted email campaigns.
2. Newsletter and email marketing apps – MailChimp and Campaign Monitor – These are more traditional email marketing tools, popular for sending newsletters. Mailchimp gives you some powerful email marketing automation options by giving you access to data such as who opened emails and clicked links. Campaign monitor can be armed with personal customer data such as birthdays, anniversary to personalize email content to engage better.

2. Social media marketing

Social is a busy business – engaging thousands of fans and followers is no easy task. There are 3 critical components of social media engagement and marketing:

1. Posting content on social accounts
2. Conversations on social
3. Community building

Of these, no. 2 should never be automated. However, the other two do have a reasonable scope of automation, and between them, content more than the community.

Posting on social every couple of hours is a good idea, as the content is so fast moving that if you are not there every few hours, your account will have very poor visibility. To create this amount of content real time and posting can be extremely time and effort intensive. This is why you’ll need something like Buffer, which makes it easy to schedule posts and send them out on customized times. All social media platforms are included, as well as some analytics to tell you the engagement each post/tweet receives.

I think the real big win comes from partially automating your content generation process. As it’s expensive and very difficult to generate this volume of new content, curating thought leadership stories for your social accounts is a great alternative. Most businesses rely heavily on sharing content from sources other than their own web properties.

Community building is largely difficult to automate, and should ideally be driven by effort from real people. I’m personally strongly against automated direct messages, likes and retweets – these go against all principles of social media and are also against the policies of social platforms. However, if you use a tool to find people who’d be interested in your social accounts and follow them – that’s a perfectly okay partial-automation boost.

Social media automation has been a topic of much debate, but as long as the basic principles of social media are respected, technology can bring in the much-needed efficiency to reach out in the crowded space.

3. Content marketing

For the most part, content marketing is a tough one to automate. But time consuming activities like content research and idea generation can be technology enabled. Similar to the use of content curation tools for social media, the same apps can be used to monitor the trending content thematically, getting a personalized content feed for idea generation, research or curation.

Having been in the content industry for over 6 years now, I have seen content creators spend close to 30% of their time in these activities. Even partial content research automation can save hours of energy spent Googling for relevant stories or material. The trick to partially automating content research is to use tools to track your industry news and trends – basically let some cool technology do the content discovery and filtering for you. Below are some handy apps you can use:

1. Feedly – Feedly took off with the shuttering down of Google Reader, as a popular alternative to reading RSS feeds. Today Feedly boasts of an impressive collection of blog and publications feeds, which can be subscribed to create your own custom news and trends feed. It’s a handy app to stay abreast of the latest in industry, research by broad keywords and generate ideas for your content pieces.
2. Buzzsumo– Buzzsumo is a great tool for finding the most socially trending content in your space. It’s great for content idea generation, research and finding influencers to involve in your content marketing efforts.
3. Google Alerts – Google Alerts is a simple, basic tool to get email alerts on recent content published with some keywords mentioned. It’s different and cleaner in output from the Google search, which makes it high utility. Great for tracking content trends and idea generation.
4. Storify – Storify is a great tool to curate content for your blog posts. You can search content by keywords and use the app’s editor to draft your post. For your occasional curated posts, it is plenty useful.

You can also use some free tools to help discover what your target audience wants to read.

Similarly, a lot of energy is spent in planning and coordinating content generation and publishing. As content marketing involves multiple process stakeholders (freelance and in-house content creators, content managers, graphic designers and sometimes more), a project management platform is in order. There are project management platforms solely dedicated to managing content marketing efforts, but the popular multi-purpose project management platforms do the job as well. Not using any workflow automation can easily create a lot of process and communication redundancy, and even lead your content marketing efforts astray.

Good multi-purpose project management platforms include Asana, Trello, Basecamp and Teamwork. I particularly like Asana – it has a neat interface that makes tracking tasks and team conversations a breeze.

4. User onboarding, engagement, cross- and up-sell

Converting a user is half the battle won. Retaining the user, ensuring that she stays engaged and finding opportunities for expanding the relationship are the next big and important challenges. The good news is much of this can be managed by smart automation backed by data.

Onboarding a user is a critical part of SaaS sales. It starts when a user creates an account.

A well-crafted automated email campaign for the defined conversion cycle is required. It should start with a welcome note and then lead into emails/in-product messages about usage-prompts (based on the user activity), offering of support and resources, and a few reminders about paid plans and trial periods nearing end (if the case be). Once the user converts to a paid plan, continuing to lend a helping hand with resources, tips and gentle notification nudges to encourage activity, can go a long way in ensuring user retention. Khuram Hussain of Fileboard has written a step-by-step on how to follow up with leads.

Intercom.io also has a great blog post on several good examples of converting emails.

Smart use of data is the building block of awesome marketing. Segmenting users by activity data and classifying them in buckets will allow you to create personalized automated marketing campaigns for cross and up-sell. For example, your most engaged SaaS users can get prompts for discounted upgrades or add-ons, while relatively low activity users can get emails about tips to better use the software or cross-sell of the add-ons that can bring more value.

For e-commerce, previous e-commerce purchase history can be used for selective product cross-sell (complementary products) or up-sell (better/newer versions of what customer previously purchased).

Below is an illustrative example (simplified) of an email campaign based on customer segmentation:

5. Website/App operation and optimization

Your web and mobile interfaces are your most important marketing assets, and offer many opportunities of improving conversions and capturing users. Well-placed and timely prompts to engage users can be very valuable on these assets. Several off-the shelf solutions are available to A/B test and implement changes. Similarly, several marketing tech solutions are also offered to measure performance and recommend changes for search engine optimization or on-site or app user engagement.

Automation solutions that track visitor or user activity real-time and present timely prompts to take desired actions can significantly improve conversions. When configuring such tech for your app or site, it is important to make sure you don’t over-do the prompts and that they are thoughtful to bring about desired results. Too many disruptions in a user’s experience with your product will irk the user to moving away from it. Tools like Kissmetrics, Intercom.io, SumoMe and Hubspot can be very handy in achieving such high quality user interactions.

Kissmetrics Engage

E-commerce businesses can especially benefit a lot from marketing tech that allows them to assess real-time user behavior and allows them to give smart recommendations to convert a sale. Cart abandonments also should trigger timely reminders or feedback requests, both of which can be very valuable.

Conclusion

Marketing technology offers a lot of opportunities for bringing in new customers and doing more business with existing ones. Large companies are using it on a big scale to drive more efficiency in their marketing processes, and better engage with their customers. But marketing automation is not just the dominion of large businesses, smaller businesses need it just as much to drive down marketing costs and convert more to have a competitive edge.

Automation doesn’t necessarily mean complex systems running large processes on big data. Even smaller hits with partial process automations can bring in significant wins. What’s most important is structured thinking about marketing processes to identify areas of opportunities and implementing automated systems to run the show for you.

About the Author: Sophia Solanki is a co-founder of DrumUp, a social media and content marketing automation app and Godot Media, a content services firm. She has over a decade of experience in content and social media marketing, entrepreneurship and business consulting. Sophia is an ardent supporter of technology to improve efficiency in all aspects of life and business. You can also follower her on Twitter @sophiasolanki.

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A Glimpse into the Future of Modern Marketing

Welcome to the future. Now that it is 2016, we have arrived at the next stage of modern marketing. To make sure you are prepared for the future, we have asked global experts for their thoughts about what will have the most impact in 2016. We've included some below, both in this post and in the short slide deck. Make sure you download the full ebook at the link below for more predictions of the future.

Erik Qualman, Pulitzer Prize Nominated Author, says companies need to understand millenials because half the world’s population is under 30. And 53% of them would give up their sense of smell before they gave up their phone.

Meagen Eisenberg, CMO of MongoDB, reminds marketers that they must be driving engagement and revenue in 2016. That’s their job!

Doug Kessler, Co-founder and Creative Director of Velocity, thinks it’s time to create the Center of Content Excellence to try to tame this content beast. Why? Because 76% of marketers will produce more content next year than this year.

Kushal Sanghvi, CEO of World Wide Open, says that the launch of 4G in India will impact how consumers interact and transact with brands. Marketers will be compelled to re-think their online investments and mobile commerce strategy.

Jodie Sangster, CEO of ADMA, warns that the skills and talent gap will continue to affect our ability to get the most out of data for some years to come. 90% of managers said recruiting analysts was harder than, or as hard as, last year.

Matt Heinz, President of Heinz Marketing, reveals that sales enablement is the most important marketing function heading into 2016 to drive increased lead conversion and sales pipeline contribution.

Alp Mimaroglu, Marketing Luminary at Symantec, encourages modern marketers to build cohesive marketing technology stacks to ensure future success. This makes sense when 51% of marketing execs say their marketing technologies and data are only loosely integrated, or not at all.

Michael Brenner, Head of Strategy at NewsCred, connects two important trends shaping modern marketing. The changing digital consumer, along with the decreasing effectiveness of promotional advertising, is leading to the rise in brand storytelling techniques.

For more predictions on what the future of modern marketing looks like, as seen by global experts, download the full version of The Future of Modern Marketing: 2016.

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What Is a Content Library? Plus Answers to 9 More Questions about This Innovative Lead Gen Approach

In May 2013, a small company with fewer than 40 unusual employees made a historic lead generation move that resulted in stunning lead generation results. (I stress “unusual” in a good way.)

The company with those odd employees, of course, was Copyblogger Media (now known as Rainmaker Digital). The story of what happened follows.

The historic move:

Up until that point, Copyblogger had been offering an email newsletter to attract and capture email subscribers. Pretty standard in the online business world.

We wanted to up the ante.

So we launched My.Copyblogger.com — a free membership site, where people sign up to access (at the time) 15 free ebooks and a 20-part email course.

Think of a content library as a password-protected source of premium content that you can access once you register with your email address.

That’s essentially what a “content library” looks like. But how did it perform? Let’s look at the results to see.

The historic results:

According to the case study by Marketing Sherpa,

• Through the first seven weeks, the free subscription page averaged a 67 percent conversion rate.
• The first week’s growth was 300 percent bigger than the best week of growth for Internet Marketing for Smart People (a previous Copyblogger 20-part email course) — closer to 400 percent, if you include new paid subscribers.
• The most visited page on Copyblogger at the time was behind the paywall — with almost a third of all traffic logging in after arrival.

Those are some substantial results, particularly in such a competitive space as content marketing.

Now, I can’t promise you the exact same outcome, but I can promise you that a content library will, at the very least, increase the number of subscribers you capture.

The key, as always, is to build trust first by providing a ton of value before asking for anything in return.

If that concept is new to you, then you can review how to build the know-like-trust factor.

In the meantime, let’s dig a little deeper into the common questions surrounding lead generating content libraries.

1. What’s a “content library?”

You’ll hear sales and marketing people refer to a content library as a bank of all the content assets owned by a company that is placed in a central, internal portal so other departments within that company can access that content.

That’s not what we are talking about here.

Yes, a content library is a bank of content, but in the way we will be using the phrase, it is full of resources that your audience can access once they register with an email address.

In other words, the public can access these resources, which makes this type of content library a lead generation tool.

2. What type of content goes into a content library?

You could include:

• Ebooks
• Videos
• Webinars
• Audio seminars
• Podcast episodes
• White papers
• Infographics
• Tutorials
• Data and analysis reports

And more.

The trick is to offer enough value that prospects view signing up for your content library as a no-brainer — an insane bargain.

See Question 5 for some examples of ways you could structure your content library.

3. What makes a content library better than a conventional email newsletter?

When you offer more resources for the same price (in this case, an email address), you are naturally going to get better results.

Our case study is one such example.

With a content library, you are likely to elevate more of your visitors into an ongoing relationship — in other words, a content library will help you convert more prospects into solid leads.

But not just any type of lead.

See, the main difference between a typical email newsletter and a content library offer is that with the content library, you can now identify your site visitors, which ultimately helps you convert more leads into sales.

Let me explain.

4. What’s the difference between an email sign up and website registration?

In both cases, it’s true that the prospect gives you an email address. With a sign-up, you have permission to send that person email — namely, your email newsletter or latest published blog posts.

With a content library registration, you give your prospect access to a site — access to exclusive resources like ebooks, videos, webinars, forums, and more.

In the first situation, the content marketer is throwing stuff at the prospect. In the second, the content marketer is inviting you to his place — which is loaded with useful resources.

And like I said before, when people visit your site as signed-in members, you can customize your promotional messages, which leads to higher conversions.

5. How many resources should you put into a content library?

There isn’t a hard-and-fast rule.

However, you need to include more than one piece of content. Don’t forget: you are trying to create a sense of great value.

For example, a content library with two, five-page ebooks is not going to suggest high value. But four 50-page ebooks and seven 30-minute training videos, however, will suggest high value.

Here’s another way you could structure your content library:

• 30 exclusive podcast episodes
• 10 articles
• 3 worksheets

As you can see, the numbers of ways you can structure your content library is limitless. Which leads us to our next question.

6. Do I give access to all the content at once?

The short answer is to start by giving away a large amount of content to create a sense of high value.

The ebooks in the original My.Copyblogger content library ranged between 31 and 142 pages — and there were 15 ebooks, plus a 20-part email course.

However, you can start small and build as time goes on.

For example, make the promise of adding more content once a month (or the frequency that works for you).

That strategy has a number of benefits.

It brings all those members back to your site every time you release a new piece of exclusive content.

In other words, you don’t need all the resources in place before you launch.

If you only have four ebooks and two podcast episodes, you can launch with that offer. But as you add more resources, don’t forget to update your content library’s promotional copy and alert your members.

7. How do I get people to my content library?

If you already have an email list in place, then promote your content library to that list.

With My.Copyblogger, an announcement was sent out to our general email list, and because there were 15 ebooks, there were 15 unique email promotions sent out, each one customized to that particular topic.

We sent out one of these emails a week, usually on a Friday.

Depending on the number of resources you have, your campaign might end up lasting two or three months.

Before sending each email, suppress the email addresses of people who have already registered, so those members of your community aren’t annoyed by seeing the same pitch multiple times.

If you don’t have a list (or want to continue promoting the content library after you’ve finished the campaign to your email list), the next step is to create high-quality, tutorial-type blog content that leads to a promotion of the content library.

Once people are on your site because of this high-quality, tutorial-type blog content, give them an opportunity to register.

Here are four useful ideas:

• Include a footer at the end of each blog post that encourages visitors to register for your content library.
• Add a sidebar that appears on every page of your website.
• Create feature boxes that appear in the header of your website.
• Use pop-overs and pop-ups (yes, there is a difference).

Learn more about these strategies in Beth Hayden’s article, 4 Quick Solutions that Spawn Radical Email List Growth.

8. Won’t content that requires a registration hurt SEO efforts?

No.

True, the content behind the registration wall won’t get crawled or indexed by Google (or any search engine for that matter).

However, search “copywriting” on Google and you’ll see that Copyblogger ranks at the top of the first page of search results. The rest of the topics in our content library are also on the first page of Google for terms like “content marketing,” “landing pages,” and “SEO copywriting.”

And every single one of those pages is what we call a cornerstone content page — which drives social and search traffic to register for the content library on My.Copyblogger.

9. Do I have to call it a “content library?”

Nope.

You can call it whatever you want to call it.

Here are my ideas for different industries like health, fashion, and cooking:

• The Cross-Fit Foundation
• 8 Beautiful Wardrobe Basics
• Your Wok Recipe Essentials

It’s a good idea to mention in the description copy that this is a library of resources — and be very specific about what is in it.

You want to give your prospect the sense that there are some really juicy resources behind that registration wall.

10. Does this mean I’m starting a membership site?!?!

I added all those question marks and exclamation points because what most people say immediately after asking that question is … I’m not ready for that!

You get a real sense they are scared out of their wits.

If that’s you, relax, because registering people as members doesn’t mean you’re suddenly running a full-fledged membership site.

It just means people are joining your community.

However, if you achieve critical membership mass, a nice touch to your content library would be to offer a simple forum where your members could chat, share ideas, and ask you questions.

Our Rainmaker Platform enables someone who is dumber than a bag of bricks when it comes to coding (like me) to set up a password-protected content library — plus a forum — by simply grunting and pointing (like I do).

In the end, what really matters is that members of your community — even if what you offer them is free — benefit from content that’s tailored to their customer journeys.

About the author

Demian Farnworth

Demian Farnworth is Chief Content Writer for Rainmaker Digital. 

The post What Is a Content Library? Plus Answers to 9 More Questions about This Innovative Lead Gen Approach appeared first on Copyblogger.

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2015 Year in Review: The most popular posts in optimization, list growth, analytics and digital marketing

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Throughout 2015, MarketingExperiments.com has published extensive new research taken from discoveries made by our parent company, MECLABS Institute. We have discussed branding, personalized messaging, subject line sequencing and copy, just to touch on a few topics covered in the last 12 months.

On the blog, we covered a wide range of subjects, from optimization and email marketing to testing strategies, and provided actionable takeaways on topics as varied as designing for user experience, cryptic marketing, the psychological effects of font and cart abandonment.

As you finish building out your marketing campaigns for 2016, read on to discover the most popular posts of 2015, determined by clicks from readers like you.

 

Top Post of 2015 — Email Preheaders Tested: The surprising sensitivity of a single line of text

Back in January, Jon Powell, Senior Manager of Executive Research and Development, MECLABS, wrote about his firsthand experience in pioneering the testing of email preheaders. Jon knew from a friend at Salesforce that preheaders were a hot topic of debate amongst today’s marketers. What should be in a preheader? Should a preheader even be used at all?

When Jon was unable to find even one statistically significant experiment dealing with preheaders — either from the MECLABS research library or on the Internet at large — he decided to take matters into his own hands and oversee several tests himself.

As a reminder, the preheader is the line of preview text you find below the subject line on mobile device email apps and even in the Outlook preview pane. 

 

For Jon’s first test, he wanted to understand if having text in the preheader would make a difference compared to not having text. Using FlintsNotes.com, the personal website of Flint McGlaughlin, CEO and Managing Director, MECLABS, he ran a test.

The Control simply brings in the URL to the first image visible in the email, while the Treatment shows a specific piece of text. 

 

The result? A 104% increase in clicks, with no statistically significant different in opens.

Jon also ran a second test in order to better understand if the substance, or focus, of the text would make a difference in performance. For this test, the Control brings in some general link text from the email template, while the Treatment uses the first article headline in the newsletter as a teaser.

 

The second test resulted in a 12% relative decrease in clicks, with no statistically significant difference in opens.

Based on his testing, Jon shared several key insights that readers could leverage when implementing their own preheaders.

• Insight #1: It’s not about having preheader text — it’s about increasing clarity of value for the customer.
• Insight #2: Preheader performance patterns seem to match subject-line performance patterns.
• Insight #3: The size of preheader performance gains and losses appear to be tightly connected with the number of readers using mobile optimized apps to read emails.

For in-depth detail on each insight, check out Jon’s post.

 

Top Research Category – Copywriting

Throughout 2015, the most popular posts at MarketingExperiments, as determined by readers, focused on copy. Though relatively easy to tweak, we’ve found time and time again that even simple copy changes can often have outsized results. Here are a few actionable highlights from the year.

 

You only have seven seconds to arrest the attention of your prospect — make every one count!

In November, MarketingExperiments presented one of its most attended Web clinics of the year, focused solely on strengthening your copy. In a follow-up blog post, Andrea Johnson wrote about a test from a business server hosting company that demonstrates just how critical it is to lead any copy with what the customer will value most about your product and nothing else. In other words, we must show customers what’s in it for them immediately.

Version A led with value: “Australia’s Most Trusted & Accredited Business Hosting Company.” 

 

Version B did not. It provided an explanation, but no value: “Business Dedicated Servers Australia.”

 

The Result: Version A achieved 188% more conversions. To read more about this test, or to find answers to questions such as those below, check out Andrea’s full post.

• Does my copy immediately arrest the attention of the prospect?
• Am I sufficiently building the problem before presenting the solution?
• Does my copy clearly express the value of my offer?
• Am I using the proper amount of copy relative to the magnitude of my ask?
• Does my call-to-action align with the expectations of my prospect?

 

Don’t rely on legacy. Test your copy length.

In another post, David Kirkpatrick, former Manager of Editorial Content, MECLABS Institute, shared a test centered on copy length from 911 Restoration, a property disaster recovery business. David’s post featured one paid search test at 911 Restoration on its PPC landing pages. The test involved dramatically reducing the amount of copy on the landing page to discover how that impacted conversion, cost per acquisition and AdWords quality score.

According to Miri Offir, Chief Marketing Officer, 911 Restoration, “The long copy was legacy content we inherited from the SEO team several months ago. After sending paid search clicks to these old long-copy pages for a few months, we decided to test shorter, more-focused copy against our long-copy control sites.”

Control

Treatment 

 

With the shorter landing page copy, the team expected an increase in leads generated due to a simplified user experience.

 

But what really happened?

The Treatment outperformed the Control in conversion by more than 37% and reduced cost per acquisition by almost 33%.

From this test, the team learned the bots that determine quality score and the humans who actually generate leads are looking for two very different things from a landing page.

Where the bots saw less information and less authority from the shorter landing page, the humans reaching the abbreviated version found the information they were looking for more quickly and called 911 Restoration to take care of their property damage emergency restoration.

 

Use your headline to your advantage.

Finally, as Andrea Johnson discusses in this September blog post, creating a more powerful headline is one of the easiest ways to boost the effectiveness of any page. It sometimes doesn’t even require the use of developers or fancy graphic design.

In her post, Andrea describes five key principals to keep in mind when crafting headlines. These principals are framed around a test conducted by a survey company testing 10 headlines against each other. We’ll took a quick look at three of the principals discovered, with the other two principals, as well as supporting tests, available in her post here.

 

Principle #1: Effective headlines focus first on what the customer gets

Shift your thinking from what you want the customer to do for you and, instead, focus on what you can do for the customer. “Get” is a mindset that achieves this. Connect to what the customer wants first and foremost. Consider the winning headline above. It tells customers that they’re going to “Get Paid to Take Free Surveys.” In fact, three of the top four headlines begin with the word “get,” demonstrating the importance of focusing on what you will provide to the customer.

 

Principle #2: Effective headlines align with the customer’s current motivation

Don’t ask customers to do too much too soon. Think about what they want to do right now. In the case of the winning headline, that’s getting paid to take free surveys. They want to make money but they don’t want to join, set up an account or take a survey, as indicated in the worst-performing headlines. Headlines should never lead by asking the customer to do work.

 

Principle #3: Effective headlines make the strongest point first

You want to lead with the information that will be most compelling to the customer. The winning headline put “get paid” at the start, whereas the losing headline had “win cash & prizes” at the end. Clearly, most customers won’t read through five to eight words to find out what’s in it for them. Each word of a headline is essentially a micro-yes that must convince the customer to continue on to the next step in your sales funnel.

 

You might also like

MarketingSherpa Summit 2016 — At the Bellagio in Las Vegas, February 22-24

Strengthen Your Copy in 35 Minutes: Proven strategies to boost the effectiveness of your words [MarketingExperiments Web clinic replay]

Copywriting: 5 proven discoveries that strengthen copy

Landing Page Optimization: Conversion increased 37% by reducing copy

Copywriting: See immediate lifts by applying these 5 principles to your headlines

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Jump-start Your 2016 with the Best of Copyblogger 2015

Did you see that year that just flew by?

It seems like it was only a few weeks ago that Sonia Simone welcomed 2015 with My Challenge to You for 2015: Only Connect.

In that post, Sonia talks about how business success is about getting the “Big Thing” right.

What’s your Big Thing?

You’ll recognize it as the overarching reason behind your business. It’s your motive for wanting to connect with people online. It’s what gets you out of bed every morning.

When you’re clear about your Big Thing, the details tend to fall into place.

Get clear on your Big Thing, then dive into the details below

This past year, Copyblogger took a deep dive into the details of effective content marketing.

Choosing the “best” posts from this embarrassment of riches is impossible. I mean, really? How does one choose?

It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it. So, I loaded up on coffee and took a nice, long stroll through all the content we put together for you in 2015.

Thank you to our team and our readers

Before I share my list, I want to take a moment to thank Demian Farnworth and Stefanie Flaxman for their work on the editorial team this year.

Demian’s can-do attitude and epic content marketing skills made for some exceptional posts this year.

And Stefanie’s eagle-eyed editing instincts have polished every post below into its best possible form.

To all the guest writers whose work we published this year, thanks to you, too. You accepted our suggestions with grace, met our deadlines with style, and helped to spread the word. Great work!

I especially want to thank you, our faithful readers.

You’ve stayed with us and let us know your thoughts on social media, in emails, and even in person. We appreciate the time and attention you’ve given to our pages over the past year.

Pick a topic and jump-start your 2016

Want to brush up on a particular subject as you head into the new year?

Pour yourself a cup of your preferred beverage, pull up a chair, and start reading.

And be sure to come back for a visit on the first Monday of 2016. We’ve got some fantastic content lined up for you. And a few surprises, too! It’s going to be a great year.

By the way, have you signed up for our free Copyblogger Content Challenge yet?

Starting Monday, January 4, we’ll be teaching an enthusiastic group of several thousand people how to create solid cornerstone content for their websites. Join us!

Encouragement for your journey

Trolls, Unkind Words, and How to Know You’re on the Right Track
If you want your content to be remembered, you’ve got to be willing to take a stand, trolls be damned. Sonia Simone has some words of wisdom for you if you struggle with feeling exposed to unfriendly people online.

The Introvert’s Guide to Surviving an In-Person Conference
Fess up: are you one of the many self-proclaimed introverts who read Copyblogger? If so, this post is for you.

The Dangerous Myth of the Magical Tool
If you’ve found yourself thinking, “If only I had the right software, my business would be transformed,” please take a moment to read this post.

How Not to Be a Sleaze (or a Martyr) in Your Business
Sonia drops some wisdom with her usual combination of story and savvy in this post about finding balance in your business.

5 Things to Take Advantage of When You’re Starting Something New
Small is beautiful! Here’s why you should enjoy the early days of your business to the fullest.

Harness the power of email marketing

Beth Hayden has spent a hefty chunk of 2015 generously sharing what she knows about email marketing — and she knows a lot.

If you’re trying to understand how all the pieces of the email marketing puzzle fit together, take a look at the posts below.

• How to Choose a Solid Email Service and Build Your List on a Firm Foundation
• Your Top-to-Bottom Email Checklist: What to Include Before You Hit Send
• Email Newsletters vs. Content Notifications: A Head-to-Head Comparison
• How to Write a Heroically Effective Email Autoresponder Series
• How to Write Email Subject Lines that Make People Stop, Click, and Read
• 13 Tantalizing Incentives that Will Build Your Email List
• 4 Quick Solutions that Spawn Radical Email List Growth

Adaptive content: what it is, how to use it

You may have heard the term “adaptive content” a few times in 2015. As Demian Farnworth says, adaptive content means to “tailor content to a customer’s experience, behavior, and desires.”

Sound intriguing? Read the posts in this section to fully understand adaptive content and discover how to put it to work for you in 2016.

16 Stats that Explain Why Adaptive Content Matters Right Now
Demian leads off with a rallying cry: adaptive content matters because it offers your readers a better, more tailored experience.

13 Simple Questions to Help You Draft a Winning Content Strategy [Free Worksheet]
If Demian’s 16 stats about the importance of adaptive content got you fired up to use it on your site, this post will help you take the first step. We’ve created a free worksheet you can download and fill out to help you start using adaptive content strategies.

3 Adaptive Content Resources for Advanced Marketers
To implement adaptive content, you must fix your older content so it works well today, understand who’s on your site, and use marketing automation to serve up unique content experiences to your site visitors. Fortunately, Editor-in-Chief Stefanie Flaxman has gathered resources to help you do all three.

Need some inspiration? Read on …

Here’s How Henry Rollins Writes (Slightly NSFW)
Those of us who had the honor of seeing Henry Rollins speak at 2015’s Authority Rainmaker event in Denver won’t soon forget the energy and passion in his words. But how does he get those words onto paper?

4 Revelations that Drove Me to Quit My Job and Start a Business
Raubi Perilli shared a personal story about what it was like for her in the early days of her business (hint: it wasn’t all pretty, but it taught her many lessons).

Claiming Your Power as a Writer
Stepping into your full power as a writer means putting on your Big Person Underpants. Need details? Count on Sonia Simone to fill you in.

News we saw, news we made

Introducing Rainmaker.FM: The Digital Marketing Podcast Network
We like to comment on news that impacts content marketers. But, of course, it’s even more fun to make news. That’s what happened when we launched our Rainmaker.FM podcast network last March. That’s right: we didn’t just launch a show or two. It was (and is) a full-blown podcast network. Go big or go home, as we say around here.

Will Your Website Survive the Google Mobile Penalty?
This year, Google recognized the profound change that has happened in web surfing and began to penalize websites that didn’t display properly on mobile devices. Ahead of the change, Demian Farnworth offered some advice to help you prepare.

Why Copyblogger Is Killing Its Blog
Every once in a while (on April Fools’ Day each year, to be precise) we like to make fake news. This year was no exception.

Why the Ad Blocking Panic Shouldn’t Scare Smart Publishers
2015 was the year that ad blocking software became widely available, which sent some online publishers into a panic. But not smart content marketers like us! Demian Farnworth explains why you can breathe easy about ad blocking software.

Copyblogger Media Rebrands as Rainmaker Digital
Name change alert! Our company officially outgrew its original name in 2015 and we debuted a new (more flexible and accurate) name: Rainmaker Digital. Brian Clark explains the decision in this post.

Is Podcasting Replacing Written Content Marketing?
Sometimes when you make news, your moves create more questions than answers. I wrote this post to answer the question people had been whispering to me when they thought no one was listening.

Introducing Digital Commerce Institute: Online Training Plus a Killer Live Event
2015 was a big year for us, and we wrapped it up by launching an entirely new web property this past fall: Digital Commerce Institute. If you’re working to master online business, head over to the Digital Commerce Academy and check out our offerings, which include next year’s live event, Digital Commerce Summit.

All things podcasting

We do this thing around here (you may have noticed). We experiment with new techniques and invite you along for the ride so you can learn at the same time we do.

That’s why you saw an abundance of posts about podcasting on Copyblogger in 2015. We were learning, and we shared what we discovered with you in real time.

Conduct Better Podcast Interviews with This Simple 6-Step Preparation Process
Jerod Morris shared the process he uses to prepare for his podcast interviews in this detailed post.

How a Podcast Is Born [Infographic]
Who better to explain the technical steps behind bringing a podcast into the world than our own podcast midwife … er, Director of Multimedia Production, Kelton Reid? It’s a complex process, but this infographic makes it easy to understand.

4 Copywriting Techniques for Engaging Podcasts and Audio Presentations
We republished this classic post in 2015 because once we found ourselves creating audio content, we saw Brian Clark’s advice here in a whole new light.

Landing page pick-me-ups

The Savvy Marketer’s Checklist for Seductive Landing Pages
Henneke came around with her usual sparkly prose and offered some memorable advice on creating effective landing pages. This one includes a checklist you can use when creating your own landing pages.

9 Landing Page Goofs that Make You Lose Business [Infographic]
Is your landing page lagging? Henneke helps you steer your way around common roadblocks that keep your landing page from performing as well as it should.

Practical how-to advice

5 Insider Tips to Make More Sales During Your Webinars
Beth Hayden shares a confession: she used to be terrible at making sales during live webinars. Then she tried the techniques she outlines here and everything changed (for the better).

Bundle Like a Boss: How to Put Together Irresistible Product Packages
If you’ve created more than one digital product, you’ve got the makings of a bundle on your hands. Read Ali Luke’s post for some innovative ways to package your products together.

The Traffic Light Revision Technique for Meticulously Editing Your Own Writing
It’s not easy to really “see” your own work after you’ve written it, which is why mistakes can creep in. Employ the method Stefanie Flaxman outlines here and you’ll catch all those blunders before you hit publish.

Content Marketing Is Easier When You (Partially) Delegate These 12 Tasks
Content marketing can be a slog — to make an impact you have to show up and do the work day in and day out. Fortunately, Charlie Gilkey wrote a post that shows you how you can delegate at least some of your content marketing tasks to others. It’s an innovative approach to delegation!

4 Ways to Turn a Mature Membership Site into a Treasured Resource Your Members Will Love
It’s a good problem to have: you’ve created a membership site, and you now have so much content on it, your members are feeling overwhelmed with your offerings and aren’t sure where to start. Debbie Hodge found herself in this situation and detailed exactly how she solved it.

Valuable downloadable resources

One of the aspects I’ve most enjoyed about joining the editorial team this past year has been the opportunity to brainstorm useful resources to create for you.

10 Ways to Piss Off David Ogilvy (Free Poster)
In this post, Demian Farnworth gathered some thought-provoking quotes from legendary copywriter David Ogilvy, and we put them together into a mini poster for you (complete with digital coffee stains).

The Credit Belongs to You
Jerod Morris didn’t need to twist our arms when he pitched this idea: the poster we put together contains one of the most inspiring quotes I’ve ever read. It’s guaranteed to put the wind back in your sails when you’re having a tough day.

11 Insights on Finding a Writing Voice Readers Take Seriously [SlideShare]
“Develop a recognizable writing voice.” Easy to say, but not so easy to do. Until you read the SlideShare we created for you. It’s chock-full of inspiration direct from the mouths of well-known writers whose voices are unforgettable.

6 Simple Exercises to Help You Write Better Short Sentences [Free Worksheet]
Content marketing requires a special type of writing. The best content marketers communicate their messages with shorter sentences. In this free worksheet, Demian Farnworth provides some guidance you can apply to your own writing.

Fun infographics that will make you a better content marketer

The Perfect Anatomy of a Modern Web Writer [Infographic]
If you read Copyblogger on a regular basis, then you either already write for the web or you aspire to. Either way, the infographic here will help you double-check to see if you’ve got what it takes to make it in the wild world of content marketing.

11 Essential Ingredients Every Cornerstone Content Page Needs [Infographic]
Cornerstone content pages form the foundation of an authoritative website. They share what you want to be known for. You’ll link to them frequently and may even put them in your navigation menu. It’s important to craft them carefully and this handy infographic offers tips.

How Do You Compare to Serious Business Bloggers? [Infographic]
Andy Crestodina interviewed business bloggers to gather the data in this comprehensive survey, and Barry Feldman put together a beautiful infographic to make the data easy to understand.

Content creation tips and techniques

A Simple Content Marketing Strategy for Creative Folks
Our Lead Designer, Rafal Tomal, brought us this post with his approach to content creation — it’s a method any creative person can use.

Solve Your Blank-Page Problem with This Visual, 3-Step Content Creation System
Kelly Kingman stopped by with a solution that uses tangible objects to get you past the blinking cursor on a blank page. Break out those markers and sticky notes!

6 Easy Ways to Adapt Your Writing Style to the New World of Content Consumption
Effective online content has a look and style that makes it easy to consume. If you’re a long-time writer (and even if you’re not), becoming aware of what works best on the web will make your ideas easier to consume.

How to Survive and Thrive as a Corporate Content Marketer
Susan Daffron shared her front-line observations about life as a corporate content marketer in this witty, informative post.

The Single Best Way to Create Hit Content in Record Time
Over the past year, we’ve deliberately combed our archives and brought back evergreen content we wanted to highlight once again. In this post, Demian Farnworth outlines exactly how we go about republishing our best information.

Why Content Marketers Need Editors
Published just this week, Stefanie Flaxman’s post makes a compelling case for the role of an editor on any content marketing team. Plus, you’ll get content marketing inspiration from some bottles of nail polish. Really!

What Is Content Marketing?
And finally, the Mother of All Content Marketing Posts. Buckle up and click that link.

Tips for making the sale

How to Pre-Sell Your Product by Offering Tantalizing Samples
Sean D’Souza facilitates sales by offering samples of his information to whet his prospects’ appetites. Read on to discover how to use this technique yourself.

3 Simple Copywriting Techniques to Get Your Customer ‘Beyond’ the Buy Button
The “buy” button can seem like a huge hurdle to get your site visitors over. But with the techniques Amy Harrison outlines in this post, you’ll be armed with copywriting tips that will make it easy.

Building a memorable brand

How to Create a Visual Brand and Fight the Dark Forces
Only Rafal Tomal would watch Star Wars and think about branding! In this post, he builds an analogy that will help you keep your visual brand on track.

The Transformative Effect of a Well-Built Brand Statement
How you talk about your business changes how people perceive it — and even how you feel about it. Craft a brand message that resonates with the simple exercise outlined in this post.

How to Fully Engage Your Readers’ Brains with Images
Images are an important part of any content strategy, and this instructive post shows you how to choose and use them on your website.

Our Heroes

This year, we’ve highlighted some of our amazing customers in a series of posts called The Hero’s Journey. You’ll meet Belinda Weaver, Darren DeMatas, Michaela Clark, Chris Healy, Lindsay Barto, Amy Butcher, and Chris Hargreaves.

More to come in the year ahead!

Best resource-rich posts

Have you noticed what Stefanie Flaxman does for you every Friday?

She reaches into the Copyblogger archives to put together mini “courses” for you on a variety of content marketing topics. The posts below are especially good. Pay attention on Fridays and take some time to read Stefanie’s Copyblogger Collection posts.

• 3 Resources to Help You Draft Winning Content Ideas
• 3 Resources to Help You Become a Professional Content Marketer
• 3 Resources to Help You Get Smart about Your Social Media Content Strategy
• 3 Resources to Help You Become a (More) Productive Content Marketer
• Indispensable Writing Lessons from 3 Historic Creative Thinkers
• 3 Adaptive Content Resources for Advanced Marketers
• 3 Resources to Help You Write Thought-Provoking Content that Gets People Talking

Funniest post images

Don’t get me wrong: every one of the posts below contains valuable information. You’ll learn a lot from them. Once you stop giggling over the post images.

Conquer Content Shock with Illegitimate Ideas
Demian Farnworth explains why sometimes you’ve got to step way — way — outside the box to get noticed. Warning: once you see this image, you cannot unsee it.

The 5 Words that Are Key to Podcast Monetization
Jon Nastor weighs in on how to monetize that podcast you work so hard to put together (and keep your dog entertained).

Don’t Panic, but This Article Was Written by an Algorithm
Will machines replace writers? Demian Farnworth asks this provocative question, and based on the image, I suspect the answer is a resounding “no.”

Join our first Copyblogger Content Challenge (it’s free)

Our free Copyblogger Content Challenge begins this Monday, January 4.

We’re going to be walking folks just like you through a powerhouse strategy to make your site more authoritative, more attractive to your audience, and just plain more awesome. We’ve got tutorials, a free webinar, and even a pop-up forum to help you get it done. And it’s all free.

If you haven’t registered yet, click here to find out more and register now.

About the author

Pamela Wilson

Pamela Wilson is Executive Vice President of Educational Content at Rainmaker Digital. Follow her on Twitter, and find more from her at BigBrandSystem.com.

The post Jump-start Your 2016 with the Best of Copyblogger 2015 appeared first on Copyblogger.

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I Let Insecurity & Fear Keep Me From Promoting My Business (FS143)

“I think it was pretty stupid to put all that time and energy into something and let my own fears keep me from doing anything with, so I want to sorta ‘relaunch’ it and give it a real go this time.”

That quote comes to us from a Fizzler who had successfully made a product, earned some money from it, but then something kept him back from promoting and growing it further.

In this episode we share his story and our advice about identifying and deconstructing the feelings, fears and insecurities that keep lots of us from taking action on our businesses.

It’s a killer episode to start the new year off with. Enjoy!

It’s better to listen on the go!    Subscribe on iTunes 

Subscribe (how to)   iTunes   Overcast   Pocket Casts   Stitcher   Soundcloud   RSS  

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Show Notes

Get the Free Guide to Defining Your Audience — Fizzle

How to Create Your own Definition of Success (FS140)

How We Deal With The Cesspool of Self Doubt (FS133)

I wish I was as close with my mom as Dave Grohl is with his http://pic.twitter.com/ldNLB9OuEI

— Hutch Harris (@thethermals) December 16, 2015

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