Marketing Fluke #1: Nobody likes a bragger

December 29, 2007 — jellymeli

In the internet marketing world, we use the dating analogy to help new marketers understand that importance of avoiding bragging in their website copy.

Picture this: You are sitting at the dinner table with your date, and all she does is talk about herself. Every conversation you try to bring up turns into it being about her and what she thinks about it. After a while, you will feel un-important and hope one of your boys calls your cell to get you out of this rut. Flat tire anyone?

Bottom line, nobody likes a bragger. Nobody likes someone that goes on and on about how much they rock, what kind of turbo their car has, and how green their grass is.

These same rules apply when it comes to writing website copy. Your website should not be an giant “about me” page. Sure, you should have a company profile with your qualifications, but telling the visitor on a constant basis why they should pick you is a bit over done.

Rule #1: Your content should point out your visitor’s problems
Rule #2: Your content should provide your visitors with a solution to that problem
Rule #3: Your content should highlight how you can help solve this problem.

Your visitor > Your visitor > Your solution for your visitor.

If your visitor feels you care about them, they are more than likely to contact you. So give a little love and help a brotha out. You will benefit from it.

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Down the rabbit hole and into my pocket

December 10, 2007 — jellymeli

Website optimization is one thing, but landing page optimization takes on a whole different level of skill. To put it bluntly, getting rankings and traffic to your website is cheesy easy. Getting people to stick around and convert into sales/leads is something else. Rankings/Traffic = Science. Leads/Sales = Psychology. Always has and always will be my favorite thing about my job is understanding the users and what they want.

Attending PubCon this year has taught me that many SEO experts still shy away from this discovery and instead wrap their focus around traffic numbers. I, on the other hand, am amazed at the users who enter the site and what they came for. Conversions are the frosting on the cake. Who wants cake without frosting anyways? This is where the money lyes.

There were a few tips given by Rand Fishkin. The gist of it goes like this:

  • There is no formula on how to make a great lead generating page.
  • There is no one solution.  Every audience converts in different ways.
  • You can try split pages, long long long pages, short pages.
  • But all in all, having testimonials on your landing page helps.

Testing your landing page optimization is vital. By taking your best preforming landing page, and teaming it with your best preforming conversion page, you have a chance to not only increase sales, but create a relationship between your company and the web user.

And finally some wise last words, never take on the ‘this is good enough’ mentality: There is always room for improvement.

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