Erik Qualman's Blog, page 555
March 24, 2015
Online Video Platform Vessel Launches Paid Subscriptions
(Reuters) - Online video platform Vessel launched its paid subscription service on Tuesday, offering programming at least three days before other websites in a bid to reshape an industry dominated by free content on Google Inc’s YouTube.
Image from vessel.com
Vessel, which costs viewers $3 a month, was founded by former Hulu Chief Executive Jason Kilar and Chief Technology Officer Richard Tom. They aim to create an early window for a selection of web video, similar to the way movies are released in theaters before they arrive on cable TV or the Internet.
“Early access is very valuable,” Kilar said in an interview. “There are a lot of consumers who would love to see something early.”
More than 130 creators will provide early access to content on Vessel. After the exclusive period ends, videos can go to YouTube, Vimeo, Vevo or other free, ad-supported sites, and are free on Vessel.
YouTube stars such as Ingrid Nilsen, Rhett & Link and Shane Dawson are among creators whose videos will make their debut on Vessel. Other programming comes from online networks such as food-oriented Tastemade and celebrities such as Alec Baldwin.
Video creators on Vessel keep 70 percent of ad revenue, compared with 55 percent that is typical on YouTube, plus 60 percent of Vessel subscription revenue.
With those incentives, the new service will be an easier sell to creators than offering viewers who are used to watching videos for free, said Brett Sappington, director of research at Parks Associates.
“Vessel must rely on content creators’ popularity and self-marketing to entice their loyal viewers into paying a monthly fee,” he said.
The service is free for one year for viewers who sign up within the first three days.
It is unlikely YouTube will lose significant revenue from a migration to Vessel, Sappington said. YouTube made its debut a decade ago and has more than 1 billion users.
A YouTube spokeswoman said the platform’s creators are pulling in higher revenue, boosted last year by a program called Google Preferred for advertising on the most popular channels. Year-over-year revenue rose 70 percent for the top 100 channels after Google Preferred launched, she said.
Vessel, which raised $77 million in venture capital funds, also includes free videos with ads. KFC, Chevy and McDonald’s are among the initial sponsors. One option is five-second ads, shorter than the 30-second spots that usually run before online videos.
Article by Lisa Richwine from Reuters.com
Thumbnail from Shutterstock.com
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Use Social Media to Drive Local Traffic for Lawyers
Traditional local marketing for law firms includes sponsoring local events, advertisements at movie theaters, and handing out items at parades. Though each of these techniques is still very useful for driving local conversions, successful marketing today takes a different route: social media. There are several social media platforms marketers can use for law firms to boost local traffic.
Local Business Review Sites
There are several social media platforms you can use to make your presence known online. These include local listing websites and forums that solicit reviews from their users. These review sites are integral for your business, since, according to eMarketer, 30 percent of consumers rely on reviews to aid in their purchasing decisions.
Begin developing your local presence online by creating a Google My Business page, and then claim your business on websites like Yelp, Foursquare, Yellow Pages, and Hubspot. As the marketer of a law firm, you can continually update your listing pages with relevant content to gain more reviews and attract more local clients. Be sure to answer reviews, both positive and negative, to let your clients know you care about their experience.
Facebook is by far the most popular of social media websites, and thousands rely on Facebook alone to find information about a certain brand. According to this blog post from Search Engine Land, 74 percent of consumers use a Facebook brand page as the desired format for following a brand. Essentially, this means the majority of your clients will be searching Facebook when they’re in need of a good lawyer. Update your Facebook page with your operating hours, contact info, quality content from your blog, local events and activities you’re sponsoring, local prize giveaways, and much more to draw locals to your site.
The ultimate place to gain followers, Twitter is an excellent platform you can use to gain clients and reviews. As you tweet quotes, statistics, tips and tricks, and other information that’s relevant to your specific area, people will follow you and benefit from the information you provide. To improve the local rankings and get your brand name out there, use Twitter cards. These cards provide an accurate summary of your business and services. Refresh the content on each page as your law firm develops new content and information.
Law firms are the perfect source for any legal tips or tricks consumers might want to know. For example, laws vary depending on location so you could easily create infographics, quotes, articles, or videos to meet this need for information, and share them on Pinterest. For example, this blog post from Bohn Law would be great to “pin”. It provides information on the statute of limitations for personal injury in California. Anyone who clicks on the pin will then be directed to the company’s website, which increases their traffic.
YouTube
As a law firm, legal information about certain states and cities is your best asset. Everyone will find themselves in a legal jam at some point, whether it’s a personal injury at work or a car accident. Create YouTube videos with instructions for proceeding through the legalities of common problems. For example, you could post a video on your YouTube channel about the proper steps for handling a rental car accident in San Jose, California. Clients love videos that inform them about the laws in their specific area.
LinkedIn is an especially good place for law firms to add a company page. LinkedIn is revered in the business world as a sophisticated platform with content, reviews, and local information users can trust. An updated LinkedIn company page is one of the best things you can do to make your brand appealing to local clientele.
Social media is integral for informing clients about your brand, so they’re willing to do business with you. According to this post, written by Inc.com contributor Courtney Rubin, half of all consumers use social media to make decisions. This is due mostly to the fact that consumers rely heavily on reviews from others, and social media is the best place to build those reviews. Law firms can gain even better reviews by staying up to date with social media and interacting with their followers.
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Automation Becoming More Socially Accepted
Social media automation – or the process of automating your social media posts to go live at certain times of the day in advance – is becoming increasingly popular among small businesses.
Think about it – if you run a small business, you are in charge of just about everything.
You handle the accounting, the customers, the product or service you’re selling, the marketing, the website, the advertising and more.
By automating social media, a seemingly small task, you can save yourself multiple hours each week to devote to other areas of your business.
Bloggers Will Benefit
Automating social media can be particularly useful for those businesses that are regularly engaged with multiple social media platforms.
Successful blog owners, for example, are constantly pinning, posting and Tweeting old and new blog posts to their social media pages.
Since social media promotion is one of the best ways for bloggers and businesses to get their name out there, it’s not a marketing strategy that can be skipped.
Instead of having to spend time throughout the day posting to social media, you can now automate it quickly and efficiently to increase your brand exposure and save you time.
Getting Started with the Automation Process
So you want to automate your social media, but you’re not quite sure where to start.
The article “3 Great tools to automate your social media” discusses three tools you can use to automate your social media posts, engage with your customers and grow your business. They are Hootsuite, Post Planner and Social Oomph.
Hootsuite allows you to easily manage all of your social media pages from one single dashboard. With the click of a button, you can post to Twitter, Facebook and Google+ effortlessly.
Post Planner, on the other hand, automates posts on Facebook only. Since it’s geared towards just Facebook, it’s more detail-oriented than a program geared to multiple platforms.
And finally, Social Oomph is a social media automation system very similar to Hootsuite.
It has a few additional features, though, such as being able to tweak your posts and send them out again.
Tips for Automating Social Media
Once you decide to automate your social media, choose an automation system (such as one of the three mentioned above) and play around with it in order to figure it out. Most systems have an analytics tool so you can see which platforms are generating the most leads.
It’s recommended to do as much of your strategizing in advance in order to see the most success with social media automation.
For example, you don’t want to just automate a few things here and there, you want to have a long-term strategy in place that will work hand-in-hand with your automation.
Also, plan your posts in advance when on vacation or if you know you’re going to be busy with other tasks.
Keep the posts personal, though, instead of only focusing on the business aspect. People like to do business with others that they feel they can relate to and learn from.
When you own a business, you’re in business for both selling your product or service and selling yourself.
Get others to like you by adding in personal touches to your social media automation plan.
Photo credit: Image courtesy of Shutterstock
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March 23, 2015
4 Tips for Designing Great Social Landing Pages
If you’re a web designer, people probably expect you to extend yourself and try new things on a regular basis. Clients will ask you whether you can do “X, Y, and Z” and you don’t want to say no … even if you’re not sure what you’re doing.
If you’ve been around a while, perhaps you’ve been asked to develop splash or landing pages to help funnel visitors from social networking sites such as Facebook to your clients’ homepage. That may seem easy enough, but there some subtle nuances you’d be smart to pay attention to in order to create compelling pages that inspire high conversion.
The “why” of landing pages
The question you have to ask before setting out to design a landing page is “Why?” What’s the purpose of the page and how can you design with that goal in mind?
By definition, a landing page is intended to provide a focused marketing experience for visitors by eliminating distractions and homing in on relevant, highly specific content. In most cases, a landing page has an explicit conversion goal.
This typically entails the purchase of a product on an e-commerce site, signing up for the notification of a beta launch, registering for an email list, webinar, podcast, or newsletter, or taking a survey in exchange for some type of bonus, such as an e-book.
Although a social landing page has many of the same characteristics of a standard landing page, it tends to focus to a heavy extent on being easily shareable and will likely include on-page social elements — such as a comment box.
Four social landing page design tips
To get you started, here are four of the most effective design tips for social landing page design:
Get logistics squared away. While the landing page itself is important, you need to perform due diligence and get other logistics squared away prior to the launch of a campaign. If you’re aiming to funnel traffic to a website, can it handle a sudden influx of visitors? According to Chris Whitling, Director of Marketing for HostGator, a leading web hosting service, “You should talk with clients and make sure both the front end and back end of their website are ready. The last thing you want to do is to have spent hours designing a page that serves no real purpose.”
Avoid clutter. Landing pages should be aesthetically pleasing. Too many visuals can fatally distract readers from the main point or call to action. Use visuals for support, not as distractions.
Incorporate social proof. When you’re driving traffic from social networking sites, it can be a powerful move to furnish social proof on the landing page. This increases the user’s sense of comfort and raises your client’s credibility.
Short and sweet. Landing pages are all about getting to the point. The user should be able to divine exactly what he or she is being asked to do — and why! — in 10 seconds or less. This means you need to get right to the point, starting at the top and avoid using large chunks of text. If the person wants to learn more, he or she can proceed through the website.
Become an expert social landing page designer
One of the best ways to set yourself apart as a designer is to identify a niche and stick to it. People love working with a specialist and are often willing to pay more for experienced professionals.
Apply the foregoing tips and you could pursue a specialty in social landing page design.
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5 Career-Killing Social Media Mistakes to Avoid
At CareerGlider, we’re going to assume you got the no-drunk-profile-pics-on-Facebook memo, and your Facebook presence is career-appropriate (or at least career-acceptable). Nowadays, that message has reached most people—a 2013 survey found that 63% of users have modified their Facebook privacy settings, although 25% of people have never touched them.
Social media is still a potential minefield. At one end, there is the risk of being indistinguishable from one of Twitter’s 23 million bots. At the other end is the risk of causing real offence and distress with an ill-considered remark, and facing real world consequences.
It’s a difficult balance—and there are surprising ways of being tripped up. Here are some tips to help you navigate the grey zone between the professional and personal on social media.
#1 Poor quality posts
It’s obvious—or should be obvious—that prospective employers don’t like to see drug references in your social media posts. But employers make other judgments that may surprise you. For example, 66% of recruiters reevaluate candidates negatively for poor spelling and grammar. That’s a larger proportion than disapprove of profanity (63%), references to alcohol (44%), or guns (51%)—and a strong argument for proofreading posts.
#2 Constant ranting
Social media lets us say the things we can’t say to people’s faces. Funny, intelligent, and biting rants that express common frustrations are always popular. But even if you’re not ranting about an employer or a client—which can have serious consequences—there are reasons to take care, especially on political rants. 1 in 6 recruiters will reconsider a candidate negatively for an extremely strong political association on social media.
Beyond that, serial ranting can alienate people in the way that constant negativity does in real life. Or as Buzzfeed put it, ranting can become a soul-crushing habit that needs to be banned.
#3 Being on-brand all the time
Yes, it’s a good thing to promote your brand, and not to be unprofessional online. Unfortunately, it’s not a good social media strategy to be nothing but professional either. People engage with social media in order to interact, and it’s hard to interact with someone who’s all work and no play. “If your entire Twitter feed becomes a stream of on-brand blather all the time, you will become a deeply boring and uninteresting human being to the world at large,” counsels Ed Zitron at Inc. That doesn’t get you anywhere.
Recruiter John Feldmann also warns against being one of the “number grubbers”: trying to run up 10,000 friends/followers/connections because you can. Again, social media runs on interaction, and people can spot fake or non-existent interaction a long way off.
#4 Not checking the hashtag
On Twitter, check hashtags before you use them, no matter how innocuous they seem.
This might not be worth mentioning, if it hadn’t tripped up more than one social media manager. In two of the worst examples, DiGiorno’s Pizza failed to check #whyistayed before making light of domestic violence, and British boutique Celeb Boutique failed to realize #Aurora was trending because of a terrible massacre in a Colorado movie theater.
#5 Don’t post about your job search while employed
Show your employer some respect, and some instinct for self-preservation, and don’t publicize on social media that you’re looking for a new job. In particular, don’t get tripped up on LinkedIn. If you’re doing some work on your LinkedIn profile, do it quietly—turn off the setting that notifies your network of any changes to your profile.
The best advice is still to be yourself, but not your unedited self—think before you post!
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March 21, 2015
Five Can’t-Miss Spring Events for Modern Marketers
At BLASTmedia, we work with a lot of clients whose target audience is high-level marketers. On top of being marketers ourselves, we’re always on the hunt for learning opportunities that help us better connect with customers and share new ways to tell brand stories.
Now that winter is (hopefully!) on its way out, many marketers are looking for events to help them shake off the snow and brush up on industry best practices. The good news is, spring is packed with conferences, webinars and summits designed to arm marketers with new strategies and industry trend analysis.
If this sounds like you, consider adding one (or more) of these five must-attend marketing events to your spring calendar:
The eMetrics Summit
March 29-April 1, 2015
San Francisco, Calif.
In PR, we’re always on the lookout for new ways to measure success. If you’re responsible for quantifying the results of your company’s website, social media, ecommerce, web intelligence, data strategy or audience research, consider booking a trip to the Bay area to attend the eMetrics Summit.
This conference series consistently delivers thought-provoking speakers, sharable content and hands-on workshops that teach tactics attendees can immediately apply to their current projects.
And, if the San Francisco location or spring dates don’t work for your schedule, similar events are planned for Chicago and Boston later in 2015.
Formstack Form Conversion Report Webinar
April 2, 2015
Your Computer
On the whole, marketers are sort of known for being schedule-challenged – we always have a lot of balls in the air. Thankfully, technology has our collective back. If you can’t carve out time to attend an event in person this spring, a webinar is a great alternative.
Here’s one to add to your calendar: Formstack has tapped Jay Baer, marketing consultant, speaker and author of the New York Times bestselling book, Youtility, to host a webinar highlighting key findings from its 2015 Form Conversion Report.
This is the second benchmark form-conversion study from Formstack, built on data from 650,000 form users to provide an industry-by-industry snapshot of what really moves the conversion needle. If you want to optimize your marketing efforts, and arm your sales reps with information to nurture better leads, this is a great place to start.
Marketing United
April 29-May 1, 2015
Nashville, Tenn.
Let’s be honest – sometimes an event’s location is as appealing as the conference itself.
Marketing United, the first industry event hosted by email marketing company, Emma, not only offers a stellar lineup of industry thought leaders from Warby Parker, Big Machine Label Group, Life is good, Moz and Eventbrite – it’s hosted at one of Nashville’s hottest venues, the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Sessions promise attendees pointers on how to create ridiculously-good content; share ways to optimize for all environments in the mobile world; provide a roadmap to nurture devoted brand fans; and highlight ways to best leverage partnership marketing.
This new three-day marketing conference will be held April 29 through May 1 in the Music City.
Experiential Marketing Summit 2015
May 11-13, 2015
San Francisco, Calif.
Today, experiential marketing is a common term in industry conversations – finding ways to connect with customers and brand advocates on the grassroots level. If you want to get on the leading edge of this movement, check out the Experiential Marketing Summit in San Francisco.
More than 1,200 marketers are expected to attend this executive training conference, which offers 70 classes on trends and best practices taught by instructors from Google, Zappos, Microsoft, Anheuser-Busch, HP, Pepsi, Under Armour, American Express and Intel, and keynotes from senior executives at Bacardi, Target and YouTube.
Corporate Social Media Summit New York 2015
June 15-16, 2015
New York, N.Y.
Do you need a conference geared toward corporate marketers – without gurus, evangelists and blue-sky thinking? If so, Corporate Social Media Summit New York is the event for you.
The conference promises two days of actionable insight and networking 100 percent focused on corporate priorities. The speaker line-up includes c-suite executives from Molson Coors, Southwest Airlines, White and Case, Yahoo, Bank of America, Intel, Dell and Wells Fargo, with sessions designed to help corporate marketers embed social media company-wide; create content that cuts through the noise; cultivate long-term customer relationships; and to leverage data to shape your strategy, and tell your brand story.
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March 20, 2015
Twitter Data Now Being Added to IBM’s Big Data
Business Insider - The tool IBM developed with Twitter is officially open for business today, and IBM announced it’s already being used by 100 companies who have been testing it.
IBM and Twitter announced their big partnership in October. They are writing enterprise apps that helps companies use tweets to help them better understand their customers, predict business trends, and uncover other useful insights.
While there are countless Twitter analytics and sentiment tools already out there (including one that IBM has sold for years), this partnership is a bit different.
Twitter data is now being added directly into IBM’s big data analytics cloud like Watson Analytics. Plus, tweets have been added as a service to IBM’s cloud that hosts apps (called BlueMix) so developers can write apps that use tweets or rely on an analysis of tweets.
IBM is also developing such apps itself and is hoping companies will hire it to write custom apps. In October, it promised to train 10,000 consultants to write tweet-related business apps, and as of Tuesday, had 4,000 of them ready to go, it says.
This new partnership with Twitter is crucial one for the company, along with its big partnership with Apple. Such deals are how IBM CEO Ginni Rometty is trying to turn IBM around and get back to growth.
Last months, she vowed to invest $4 billion into growth areas like cloud, social, mobile and analytics, and to grow these businesses from $25 billion in revenue last year (27% of of the company’s revenue) to $40 billion in by 2018, or about promised 40% of revenue.
Article by Julie Bort for Business Insider
Thumbnail from Shutterstock.com
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Are You Driven to the Benefits of Social Media?
Whether you’re looking to buy a car, sell your old car or simply get your oil changed, you can use social media to help find the best deals, the best services and the best car dealerships in your area.
When most people think of social media, they think of sharing photos of their kids with friends and distant relatives.
While social media is hugely used for personal uses, it’s also used for business purposes.
Social media can help you get a good deal on a car, it can help you find the best services for your car and it can even help you out when choosing a car.
Get Social on a Loan
You can even use social media to find car loans.
As the following article looks at, with more Americans taking out car loans than ever before, this is an area where people should be looking to save money and get the best deal possible.
Sites like GOBankingRates.com and BankRate.com allow you to search for rates in your area so you can get the best deal without having to visit bank after bank. You can look at rates at national banks, your own local banks and credit unions, and online.
Put the Pedal to the Metal
If you’re looking to buy or sell a car, you should turn to Facebook.
Facebook is used by more than 500 million people, but more so than that, it’s most likely used by friends and family in your area.
If you’re looking to buy a car, ask friends and family on Facebook if they know of a good dealership or car that they would recommend buying.
If you’re selling a car, post the ad to your Facebook page. You never know who’s in the market for a car and your old car might be exactly what a friend of yours has been looking for.
You can also use Facebook to look for dealerships and auto services on your own.
Find a few local companies and start following their Facebook page. If they have a special going on, they will most likely post the deal to their page, allowing you to save money on oil changes and other basic car maintenance.
Dealerships also promote when they have specials and promotions going on – as they want to drive in more customers on weekends where sales are taking place.
Connect with Other Social Networks
Other sites you’ll want to be connected to include Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter.
All three sites are used heavily by car dealerships and auto mechanics. Car dealerships want to get their cars scene by as many people as possible.
Instagram and Pinterest are photo-sharing platforms. What better way to get exposure than to post a photo of a brand new car onto social media?
Hopefully, the photo will be shared and get the dealership exposure to a variety of readers, which will ultimately bring in more customers.
These days, social media is used for everything.
Whether you’re looking to find a new recipe to make for dinner tonight, looking for the perfect gift to bring to your friend’s baby shower or in need of a new car, social media is here to help.
Photo credit: Image courtesy of graur razvan ionut at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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How to Successfully Integrate Direct and Digital Marketing
The integration of direct and digital marketing is a recent challenge that has many people choosing sides instead of embracing the merge. The primary reason for this negligent behavior is not arrogance but rather misunderstanding. Here are 4 tips that we came up with to show how the integration of direct and digital marketing can help boost sales, conversion rates, and overall success.
1.) Drop Personalized URLS into Your Direct Mail
By adding a personalized URL or “PURL” into your direct mail piece, you’re creating a way to capture your leads and come up with a detailed report. A PURL is a unique and personalized landing page, specific to each account or campaign you’re handling. When you create a PURL, you are creating a user-friendly experience while allowing your company to collect valuable data. Printing PURLS on direct mail pieces is called “Variable Data Printing”. Most printers have the capability to print PURLS and all you need to do is send the printer a spreadsheet.
2.) Integrate “Push” and “Pull” Marketing
In order to do this, it’s important to identify what exactly “push” and “pull” marketing is. Push marketing delivers a message directly and finds your customers while pull marketing helps the customers find you. Pull marketing is often referred to as “organic” marketing or “inbound” marketing. The internet has revolutionized the way your customers are going to search for you, and pull marketing is crucial in this day and age to a successful marketing plan, but not without the more traditional practices of push marketing.
Push marketing will mostly yield a higher cost per acquisition, yet better targeting and ROI measurement. Push Marketing is fueled by budget and the cost tends to be static.
Pull marketing is built upon creativity and effort. It has a snowball effect, slowly generating momentum, and eventually leading to a smoother future. You can get the attention of your customers organically without interrupting them, and it tends to be cheaper.
Push Marketing involves the following: paid search ads, direct mail, email marketing, TV, Radio, and print ads, billboards & outdoor ads, contextual ads, sales calls, interstitials, trade shows, social media advertising, video ads.
While Pull Marketing involves the following: Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click (PPC), thought leadership, event sponsorship, public relations, community building, influencer outreach (blogger outreach), blogging, public speaking, word of mouth, content creation, video content
Now with this, we can get really creative. Let’s brainstorm the best ways to integrate “push” and “pull” marketing for a perfect working plan that jives with your business.
3.) Drop a QR Code on your Direct Mail Piece
What is a QR or “Quick Response” code? You’ve seen them everywhere, but if you don’t have a smartphone, you may not’ve have the chance to utilize the app. They’re showing up in magazines, on labels, and now on many direct mail pieces. These funny looking squares allow the consumer to scan the product using an interactive app on their smartphones, leading them to more information on the product or a specific landing page. They are computer generated images that lead people directly to your website.
If your company is doing both print and digital this is the perfect way to make your audience aware of that. So many times we’re left wondering how to promote our facebook, twitter, google +, etc pages.
Some of our clients prefer direct mail – some prefer digital. This pleases both parties. If they’d rather not read your printed piece, then your efforts don’t go unawarded. Adding QR codes to your print ads, direct mail pieces, and other printed media is a wonderful way to kill two birds with one stone.
The best part about QR codes? They’re FREE! You just need an online generator and a website.
4.) Mix and Match Your Techniques
So, we’ve detailed our “push” and “pull” marketing – now it’s time to mix and match. This is where the fun comes in. Take your push and pull marketing techniques and line them up next to each other. What mediums make sense to fuse together? While it wouldn’t make sense to promote your paid search ad at your latest public speaking or public relations event, you might want to mention to your audience that your company has been experimenting with QR codes on their direct mail, advertisements and newsletters and other print materials. You can pick up bloggers to reach out to at the trade shows your company is involved in and create content that coincides with your print, billboard, tv, radio and other traditional forms of advertisement. Event leadership and community building can most certainly be mentioned in your social media marketing and if there’s any public speaking going on at these events, the same is true vice versa.
The digital age calls for the integration of direct and digital marketing. When done correctly it can greatly enhance your company’s productivity and drive traffic to your website as well as satisfy those who are more comfortable with traditional forms of media. It can assist you in tracking leads and conversions – a struggle that has existed with direct mail since its inception. Using the tips outlined in this post you’ll be well on your way to creating a harmonious and successful marketing plan.
About Us
Since 1966, Ballantine has been creating and implementing innovative and cost-effective print and digital direct marketing campaigns that leave lasting impressions, generate greater responses and help their clients better connect with their customers. To learn more, please visit http://www.ballantine.com.
Thumbnail from Shutterstock.com
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5 Small Changes That Can Lead To A Big Increase In Conversion Rate Optimization
We received this article from Chris Lucas, Vice President of Marketing at Formstack. Formstack is a provider of online traffic conversion solutions. Through their 2015 Form Conversion Report, they have provided Socialnomics with 5 tips on how to increase conversions on different platforms.
As marketers, we’re on a constant mission to motivate action. Whether it’s convincing consumers to buy a product, sign up for a subscription, donate to a cause or commit to volunteer their time, marketing is the driving force.
There’s a lot of measurement behind solid marketing plans – both on the front end to establish a benchmark, and the back-end to evaluate results. One of the most measurable ways marketers can move the needle – and show the results of their efforts – is through conversion rate optimization.
In marketing, small changes can make a big difference, and this is especially true when it comes to CRO. A few minor modifications to design, messaging or timing can lead to major gains in conversions.
Here are five small campaign tweaks that can payoff in big results:
Change #1: Make it social.
One of the best ways to boost conversions is to extend the reach of your form. Contest forms, for example, pair perfectly with a social strategy. When possible, embed contest forms in your Facebook page and other key social media channels. Conversion rates more than double (from 9% to 20%) when users integrate their forms with their Facebook pages.
You can also leverage social media to save entrants time. Offer to pull information from their social media profiles. Our data shows conversion rates can increase up to 189% when form users take advantage of our Social Autofill feature.
Change #2: Make your call to action button bigger and bolder.
What’s the final step you want visitors to take when they visit your landing page? Usually, it’s to click the call to action button. With that in mind, pay a little extra attention to this element. Change the color to an attention-grabbing hue or add some subtle animation when the user hovers over the button.
Also, consider tweaking your button copy to better communicate your value proposition. Create motivating text that drives people to take action – and be specific. Adding just one word after the word “submit” can boost conversion rates by as much as 320%. But even a simple “next” or “continue” can help guide users through to completion of multi-page forms.
Don’t forget, though: It’s still important to keep it short. The top 10 converting buttons in our Form Conversion Report all contained two words or less.
Change #3: Swap out your contact form for a proven performer.
Most of us are suckers for a chance to win or a free gift. So are most of our target subscribers. Switch things up and remove your standard contact form with one that promises some kind of added value.
The numbers speak for themselves: according to the 2015 Form Conversion Report, a simple contact form only has a 1% conversion rate. But if your form is attached to a contest or survey, you can expect conversion rates of around 35% and 14%, respectively. And don’t forget about event registrations! These forms convert at approximately 11%, and participants are likely to be highly qualified leads.
Change #4: Brand your form.
Your forms are part of your suite of marketing materials – they should have a look and feel consistent with your brand guidelines. Include your logo, feature familiar key messaging and create your form in your brand’s color palette. A generic form isn’t only uninteresting – it can appear less trustworthy. Don’t risk form abandonment by taking an aesthetic shortcut. Make sure your customers know they’re submitting their information to you and only you.
Change #5: Adjust your schedule.
Sometimes your form doesn’t require optimization – your approach does.
Like most things in life, timing is everything when it comes to conversion rate optimization. Certain forms attract more submissions at different times, and on different days of the week. Planning promotion activities around those peak times can make a big impact on conversions.
The 2015 Form Conversion Report revealed contest submissions peak around 8 p.m. on Thursdays. If you want to promote an order or payment form, Tuesdays at 11 a.m. is the ideal window. On Wednesdays, plan to push event registrations at 11 a.m., and promote donation forms at 2 p.m.. Save your end-of-day promotion push for lead generation forms: Those get the most submissions at 4 p.m. on Thursdays.
To get the most bang from your buck, coordinate social media and email campaigns with the best time of day for form submissions. When marketing materials are delivered at the time of day recipients are most likely to click submit, you achieve better reach without expending any additional effort.
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