The other day I had coffee with a friend who was struggling with her business. Their financial year had just wrapped up and the results proved what she already understood – it had been a tough year. However, deep down we knew the direction she was heading in was right – the principles were sound. It was just the implementation that needed work.
I think of principles as the “why” parts of a business, the overarching reasons the business does what it does. They are the bits that the owner stands for – the parts that force you to take those hard decisions. The middle of the Simon Sinek bullseye for the company.
When I set up Ark Advance in 2002 I had two core principles I wanted to apply. As the years have progressed a few more have been added. There are not dozens – probably fewer than ten. However, there have been times where I would have just loved to ditch each and every one of them to make life easier.
But unfortunately principles are not like that. They are part of you and so long as you remain true to yourself then they just sit there – guiding you forward and calling you to task along the way. Visions of my mother remind me of this fact.
My Mum was a quietly spoken person who believed in the principle of fairness. (It’s something I believe in too.) One situation in particular sticks in my memory.
Our home in England had as neighbours the local Anglican Church. All was going well until a new vicar arrived and decided to put up a two-metre high black fence along our border without talking to Mum. Effectively, it blocked the view out the front of our house across the nice church grounds towards the vicarage.
I still remember to this day the vision of my five foot Mum in her mid 50s trying to push the fence over from our side – while the six foot tall Vicar was on the other side trying, quite unsuccessfully I may add, to keep it up. Principles make you do that – fight and push and generally keep going when things are against you.
So here are four of mine for Ark Advance.
#1 It’s all worth zip if nothing gets sold.
I sold offset business printing on commission for many years, probably one of the more competitive markets to make a living in. My boss used to chase us out of the office at 9am to knock on doors – cold call style – to make our budget. We were allowed back in at 4.30pm to write up our orders. If we had any. Walking down the street going door to door is probably the least efficient way ever to market a business. Unless, that is, you pay people only when they sell – then it makes perfect sense.
The directors knew this and paid you well IF you made the sale. They had the numbers dialed in. Each drove around in the latest Jaguar sports cars and the company invested in high end printing machinery from Japan.
The simplicity of their sales model was a charm.
Compare that to all the marketing and sales options available, now that most offices stop cold calling reps turning up at their door. In online alone you have social media, search with all its different facets, email marketing and even remarketing. More options than most have time to explore.
However, what hasn’t changed is that it’s all worth zip if something isn’t sold to someone. Forget the razzmatazz of this technology over that one. The end goal remains the same.
#2 It’s David against Goliath, and we provide the slingshot.
A few large US tech corporates control an ever-increasing slice of the online space you market within. And yep, the dice are loaded heavily in their favour. They can and do change the game on a frequent basis and you are left to react as quickly as the rest.
Small to medium sized companies are only allowed to interact with these brands through script-driven call centres. Fairness has nothing to do with the situation. It’s market economics on a global scale that means a few can control so much.
Nevertheless, there are ways to make things work in your favour. It’s not about doing the same thing the big brands do. Their budgets are crazy and you will never get the same access they do. For you, it’s about finding the nooks and crannies in the online marketing space where, at the right price, you can locate the right prospect, win their attention, and convince them to do the right thing. Our job is to show you where these places are and then hand you the tools to achieve your goals.
#3 Process delivers repeatable success
Ever press the “send” button on an email campaign going to a half a million people? Our team do on a regular basis. The only way I can have them do this is by supporting them with a process that works. We would have over a hundred steps an email campaign needs to follow to ensure it is launched to spec – a similar number to setting up a good paid advertising campaign. So when things go awry it’s the process that’s called to task first, not the team member.
#4 The truth is in the data.
It’s less about opinions, feelings, thoughts or hunches. These are the places where seemingly great ideas can still remain alive, sucking your budget and, more importantly, your time. The cold hard data tells the front-footed truth, the bits you don’t want to know. Such as the thousands you spend with an SEO “specialist” each month without any data to show you the extra sales it produces.
Or the 80% bounce rate from the Google advertising campaign that makes you cringe but is managed by a friend of the boss who is nice to chat with each week BUT still hasn’t asked for access to your Google Analytics account so they can see the data themselves.
Ark would be a different business without these principles. For instance, we would have dived into social media from the get-go. Instead, we held back until we could see it driving sales as opposed to “brand exposure”. Also, our focus on Google Analytics would be way less than it is now. We actively look for data to challenge our approach.
Compare this to the accounts we are asked to review where there’s lots being spent because of just one thing – trust. No data – just the business owner trusting their supplier to do the right thing for them. There’s a great Peter Drucker saying, “culture eats strategy for breakfast”, but in these situations it should be “data eats trust for breakfast”.
Struggling to get more value from your online marketing? Time to shape up or ship some tactics out?
If so, let me offer the humble funnel as a tool to steer your turnaround, help you apply the right tactics in the right order, and ensure a steady passage towards your goals.
There’s real power and magic in the funnel. Its basic premise is that more people arrive on your website than decide to convert. So it makes sense that the top is wider than the bottom :).
The segments below the top describe the different levels of engagement as people meander through your pages. There will always be those who bounce in and, before you know it, have bounced out again. Whoa – the funnel just got a bit smaller!
Now we’ve got those who have remained and are enthralled with your content. They’re hanging around to play the videos you’ve so cleverly provided, or download PDFs.
Now you’ve got a funnel that look something like this.
Like all models, it doesn’t capture every situation – and that sharp point may be a bit too sharp. But this little shape with just its four stages can really help you focus on the right things when turning around your online marketing.
Let’s consider two scenarios – one great, one not so great.
The great one first. Here I am, one of your prospects. I hop across to Google to start a search. Bang! and there you go – Google worked. Just what I wanted is staring me squarely in the face.
So I click and arrive on a website that looks just as I hoped. The content is good – it keeps me lingering longer than I planned. Then – not wanting to waste all that invested time – I’ve made contact so someone can follow up with me later.
I’m happy. And, as the website owner, so are you!
Now for the not so great scenario.
Now let’s look at how the four stage funnel can help us debug a poor performing website which delivers very few of these scenarios. First up let’s deal with the top part of our friendly funnel – Acquisition.
I’m the same prospect as before, but this time when I do my Google search, I don’t see your website anywhere. Poor SEO and ineffective AdWords advertising are the problems you need to address first. Until you do, the rest of the funnel is irrelevant. It’s empty.
So now you’ve sorted that issue and I find your site. But I don’t stay long. In that case, the content of your website now needs serious work. Very rarely do we see a website with poor engagement perform well in Interaction and Conversion.
So now you’ve sorted your content and your interaction levels have shot through the roof. But conversions suck. Usually that’s a result of not having the kind of interactive content that the customer needs to make the purchase decision. For instance, complex products or services may require videos to explain them, or PDF documents to provide more detail.
Employing the funnel theory can help you focus your efforts on fixing the right things. For instance, it can help you avoid wasting money on a five minute video of your services (an interaction event) until you’ve increased your engagement values (time on site and pages per session) sufficiently to ensure visitors are spending enough time to even find or play the video.
Or you may decide not to purchase additional advertising from Google until you’ve done something about your 70% bounce rate (again those engagement values need work!).. And yes, improving these stats can be a lot harder and possibly a lot less fun than creating a video or buying more clicks from Google. Sorry … I never said using such a simple shape could make the work simple too.
Nevertheless, when there are more tactics available online than there is time to deliver, the funnel should help you focus on fixing the right parts first. Contact us today to arrange a session with a member of our team on how your online marketing performs against best practice for each of these four stages.
Our copy of the Auckland 2016 Yellow Pages arrived this week. Don’t worry, this isn’t a beat up article decrying the cost of advertising within its pages and promoting a range of online alternatives. Think of it more as my take on why marketing in this medium is a super smart choice – for some. And how, compared to the rest of us who need to advertise online, they have such an easier run towards success.
Let me explain.
First off – there will be a market demographic that looks forward to receiving their copy of the latest Yellow Pages and flicking through those soft pages of colour. For them the publishers have done all the hard work by curating the list of best possible suppliers for them to pick from. All they have to do is sit down with a cup of coffee, work through the options and jot down a few phone numbers to call later that afternoon.
This behaviour could be typical of your ideal market demographic. If so, then advertising within the Yellow Pages would make perfect sense. In fact, it may be the only option you have to reach this group and could well justify taking up most of your annual marketing spend.
Think, for example, of the demographics your marketing would avoid. The younger audience, perhaps, or those who use their mobile phone to search for solutions – or, for that matter, anyone who strongly prefers to search online for suppliers. By advertising in the Yellow Pages, you’re not wasting your advertising spend attracting the wrong person. Instead you’ve got a laser focused on precisely your right demographic. All because of your choice of media. Go, directory advertising!
Now let’s reverse the scenario. Let’s say your ideal demographic would never use the Yellow Pages. Let’s say it’s women aged 25 to 45 who want to holiday in Fiji and use Google to search for options.
Their choice of media – online – means you now have to advertise in a space that includes not only them, but a myriad of other less-than-ideal demographics.
I noticed something the other day that highlighted this very issue. The Price family – my favourite demographic – had just finished eating dinner and was discussing a friend who was enjoying a trip to Musket Cove in Fiji. It’s a place we have never visited so, quick as a flash, my 19-year-old daughter whipped out her phone, Googled the resort, and clicked on the first paid advert that had Musket Cove in its ad copy.
All this in mere seconds.
Little did she care that the ad was for a ferry service between the mainland and the resort. She clicked, scrolled quickly through the page, noticed no images of the resort, then bounced back to Google to keep looking.
In moments she had burnt the company’s ad cost without any chance of actually becoming a customer. Another case of the wrong demographic making marketing a lot more expensive than it should be.
For this advertiser, it would be great to be able to tune out searchers like Maddy. While that option isn’t available in Google AdWords, the Google Analytics demographic reporting function goes some way to solving the problem.
Once correctly enabled, this function allows you to see the age and gender breakdown of your visitors. So in my earlier reverse scenario – also Fiji-related just by chance – you would be able to see the streams of web traffic that match your target demographic of women aged of 25-45.
Then you could compare this demographic to the one delivered through your mobile advertising during the evening. Perhaps there will be many instances of “Maddy-like” people churning clicks with little chance of a conversion? Knowing this, you could then pause your evening mobile advertising or focus the spend more on the desktop searching alternatives, which would more likely come from an older and – for you – more ideal audience.
Actively filtering out people from our clients’ online marketing is an ongoing strategy at Ark Advance. We do this by applying the full range of reporting data within your Google Analytics account to locate the people we don’t want and ensure they are not attracted through your marketing efforts (and spend).
Unfortunately, not many of us have the luxury of marketing to a demographic that is defined by the media it chooses. How lucky they those smart Yellow Pages advertisers are.
Recently Google rolled out a large change to how it presents its paid advertising. This freaked a number of people out for a bunch of reasons, not least of which were the scale of the change and the lack of warning of its implementation.
A growing number of businesses rely on Google Search as their main source of leads. So significant change, like the one just seen, can cause concern and even prompt people to consider their options other than Google.
So let’s say the proverbial really does hit the fan and Google is effectively removed as an option for your marketing. Where would you turn next?
Unfortunately, you can’t simply switch to Search Engine B and enjoy the same results as Search Engine G. But you do have a range of options that, when correctly implemented, should help lessen the loss.
This article outlines a few of them.
#1 Email Marketing. Ladies and gentlemen, I offer you the tried and tested channel of email marketing. In this scenario we know Google search is a no go, but if you have someone’s email address and their permission to use it, and as long as you keep the content fresh and relevant, there will always be a direct link between your marketing and them. Sound good?
So go and grow your email list with gusto. It’s the best insurance against change in the online marketing space. Then you can unlock the smarts of the channel by linking it to your CRM system and follow up with those who engage most with your emails. People have been predicting the death of email marketing for years but still it keeps going. Checked your email today?
#2 Google Display Advertising. This is a bit of a cheat because it is a Google product. But I am going to assume that your total relationship with Google is not destroyed – just your ability to be seen in search.
Display Advertising is where you present image banners and text ads through the Google advertising network of websites that are browsed by your target audience. Finding the sites your prospects visit and placing the right ad in the correct space to get them to click is no mean feat. Hence we always recommend solving the Google search advertising problem first before heading into Display. With that job done, Display hops to the top of the queue.
There are a few chunky benefits to Display. One is that your marketing is relatively hidden from your competitors. While everyone can see who is bidding on what search keyword, trawling the Internet to find the exact websites you advertise on is a lot harder. Get it right and you can have dozens of websites sending individual trickles of quality traffic that collectively add up to what you used to get in search.
#3 Display Remarketing. The next option I offer is a derivative of the first – display remarketing. Here you present banner and text ads on the same advertising network as the Google Display product but with the added feature of targeting them to people who have visited your website before.
This is a common strategy for those wanting to recycle low-converting Google search advertising traffic. However, many forget that it can actually be used for all traffic types. This is especially true when you can target your advertising to match the profile of your visitor groups; for instance those who have arrived from specific geographic regions, or people using specific devices (computer, iPad, mobile phone). With good remarketing, you become a super recycler of traffic compared to your competitors who hope their conversions are completed on the first visit.
#4 Social Media – I put social media last because, like Google search, it is run by corporates who could change the space at will and leave you in the lurch. Social media marketing as like advertising in a place that you rent. With email marketing, you own the building.
That caveat aside, you can do some great work in social channels that are well suited to your audience. For some that could be Instagram and Facebook; others may get more traction with LinkedIn. Pick the channels that your prospects live in, invest in the right content, and gradually build a following that has a good prospect of converting. And always remember that the first – and valuable – conversion may simply be subscribing to your email list.
That’s four alternatives to get you going – and it’s a good set. Every week I come across businesses that rely solely on Google Search to deliver leads. If those businesses adopted two or three of these strategies, their risk would be substantially less.
So here’s a challenge: invest time in one of these alternative this month. Let me know if you need any help.
Chris Price is the Founder of Ark Advance – An Online Marketing Company established in 2002 to help businesses thrive by thinking and acting smart in the online space.
Just imagine if the performance of your website is being held back simply because your visitors are not seeing your best content. Forget about them choosing not to read it – they just don’t get to see it. And this is not just any content. It’s all that “must read” information like testimonials, reviews, videos.
How would that make you feel? Just a tad bothered?
What would cause this? Most often, it’s your visitors not bothering to scroll down the page to read what’s below the first screen.
Does your website rely on visitors scrolling? Perhaps it was set up with the assumption that because you scroll, so must everyone else.
Well, let’s check that assumption against this graph from an actual Google Analytics account.
The graph shows scrolling behaviour for a website’s home page. The tall bar on the left represents everyone who arrived on the page. The next bar shows how many visitors scrolled down to see the top 25% of the page. Subsequent bars show how many visitors got 50%, 75% and 100% of the way down the page.
Let’s state the obvious here – the bars are different heights. Just because people can scroll doesn’t mean they do.
Now note the dramatic gap between the first two bars. Fewer than half of all visitors even start scrolling. One reason in this case was the layout of the page. It looked complete when you arrived. The design didn’t suggest there was more content below.
So most visitors, instead of scrolling, clicked the navigation bar to learn more. And they missed the great testimonials hidden just below the bottom of their screen.
Finally, note the relatively small gaps between bars two to five. This tells us that once people started scrolling, they continued down the page. That’s not always what happens. Sometimes there’s a dramatic drop off at about the halfway point, with few making it to the bottom.
Knowing what proportion of your visitors start to scroll, and how far they actually get, should guide you in where to place your content.
For instance, all the critical content – the “must read” stuff – should be as high as possible. It can be followed by the “good to read” stuff. Then, hovering around the bottom, put the “nice to read” content.
So far so good. Now to add a bit of spice – the scrolling behaviour of mobile visitors can be different from that of their desktop cousins.
The good news is that it’s quite easy to track the scrolling behaviour of all your visitors – desktop and mobile. Just allow us to edit your Google Analytics configuration and you’ll be set.
Once results are in you can re-order your content from top to bottom into the “ Must Read” and“ Nice to Read” groups, and possibly adjusting it for mobile visitors. In our experience, being aware of visitor scrolling behaviour, and re-ordering your content accordingly, can produce a nice upward bump in engagement.
Contact us today if you would like to learn more about this.
(As published in Marketing Online. Issue 4, March 2016)
We have all experienced our own Google Advertising “Content Shock. The scenario usually unfolds like this.
You are on the hunt for a person to help design a new brand for your business. You search Google using the phrase “brand design Auckland”. Immediately you start scanning down the results – starting at the organic results. The top two results catch you eye and open a new tab in your browser on each.
Unfortunately neither are right. Either they are too big or too small, so you start clicking away in the paid advertising space. First click done and you are taken to a page on graphic design – Content Shock – this has nothing to do with the problem you need to solve – so you bounce back to the search results page and click on another ad.
This time the ads lands you on page that shows you what you expected to see. It looks OK – not amazing – just OK – think Mild Content Shock. So you add it to the list of possible contenders. But keen for more choice you bounce back again to the search results and click on your last ad.
Now we are talking – the page you see is clearly the winner. They just “get it”. Through good use of images and text they answer nearly all the questions swirling around in your head. These are the one. So they get the phone call and the rest remain a short fleeting memory for you and say $6 each in wasted click costs for them.
Wouldn’t it be good if all your clicks translated into calls like the last example? You are not alone. Ensuring every costly click delivered its own phone call is the goal for all Google advertisers. So how do you avoid the “Content Shock“ mistakes of the first two?
Here are three strategies that I believe can help.
1. Research the real intent behind the search keyword you are bidding on.
For example, we work in the home services market. Think, cleaning, renovating, plumbing and electricians. A while back we had a company come to us wanting to launch a new service in Auckland as a trial before taking it to Australia.
They had built a website based on what they thought the market wanted to see. We were told to send all advertising to the home page. You guessed it – it failed miserably.
This was a new space for us so we were unsure of the intent of the prospect but the Content Shock our statistics revealed showed what was there was way off the mark. So we kicked off some market research to uncover the motivations and mindsets we were advertising too. A month later we had the data. it revealed the high amount of stress these buyers were facing and the core reasons they began their search journey in the first place.
Based on this information we redesigned the imagery of the landing page and rewrote the top 20% of the content. The ad copy was then tuned to match this new content and the campaign released using the exact same search keyword selection that had failed before.
All this work was well rewarded with conversion rates that were above industry standards as opposed to those well below they had experienced before. The success was so good we rolled the changes outside of Auckland and the core messages were used successfully during their Australian expansion. Research tells you what to say – next up we need to find the best way to say it.
2. Tune your content to be fast to consume and conversational in style.
Once your research is complete and you have created your first draft content you can put it through two very simple “human” tests before going live. The first involves paper and a willing helper.
Go ahead and print out the landing page (print multiple pages if itś a long one) and then take it and a colleague into a meeting room. Place the printing facedown on the table and ask the colleague to sit opposite you – approx a metre away.
Then brief them on who they are supposed to be and the problem they are searching to solve. Then pick up the first page and show it to at eye level for just 5 seconds. Place it facedown on the table and then have them tell you exactly what they saw and if on reading it they were interested in learning more.
Content that confuses or fails to capture attention in print form will struggle online. If your page passes the first test then you can test the persuasive nature of the copy. Simply read it out loud to your colleague and note the reaction you get. Slowly drooping eyelids and contained yawns are not a good sign.
Copy has been described by many as “selling in print”. So if you are struggling to come up the right words, just think back to what you said in the last conversation you had with prospect to guide you. Once all the changes have been made then you can place it into live and head to the final stage.
3. Harness the super analytical benefits of the web to tune your landing pages to success.
Hop into your Google Analytics account and you will be met with a mass of metrics and dimensions to keep even the most geeky of analytics geeks busy for weeks. Here are three to focus on that reveal the effectiveness of your work.
– Bounce rate – how many people viewed your landing page and didn’t go any further. You want this number to be as low as possible but zero is an unrealistic expectation. For your paid advertising I always shoot number that is no more than 15% above your site average bounce rate. So for a 30% site average your top level would be 45% which even so is hovering very close to one in two not looking any further.
– Page Value – bit of an advanced metric and it does require you to set up values behind your goals. BUT it lets you know place an exact value of worth for the page – think numbers like $5.89. So you change the top copy and the page value goes to $8.45 from $2.67 and you know that it really is time to celebrate.
– Content Interaction – not exactly a metric you will find in GA more an approach to track everything you can. So if your page includes a video – you need to know if it is played and if so for how long. And if the good meaty part of the sales message is a third of the way down the page then knowing that everyone scrolled this far would be of help.
So there you have it. Three strategies to apply to ensure your Google advertising doesn’t instill content shock on those who visit your site this way. Want to learn more about other areas of online marketing? Just visit our Free Stuff section at the Ark Advance website.
Recently Google reduced the number of ad slots it was allowing in its desktop search environment. Gone are all the slots on the right hand side. What remains are those at the top – with an extra slot for some queries – and some at the bottom.
That means fewer ad slots are now available for the same number of advertisers. And that means click costs are sure to head upwards. Here’s my take on how the typical Kiwi business owner can navigate through this change.
#1 Become a price setter not a price taker.
You are currently one or the other. Most people are “price takers” who take the price they are given with a gulp. They have no idea how many phone calls they get from those clicks. Nor do they track actual closed customer sales based on the click that started the sales process.
In their situation, $4.00 per click “sounds” super expensive and they grudgingly see their credit card charges from Google in their statements each month.
Compare those people to those who smile with glee when each click occurs. These people are the “price setters”.
They know exactly how many clicks they need to create a lead and how many of these go onto become customers. For every dollar they invest with Google advertising, they see ten, twenty or a hundred dollars in profit. They actively seek ways to divert funds from poor performing marketing channels into their Google advertising.
Forget about $4 per click; they could pay $8 per click and still be making lots of money. They will bid up their clicks to put financial pressure on the rest, who struggle to make their advertising work at $4. In most cases they live at the top of the search results, and the recent change has only positive effects for them. They rub their hands with glee as they see their competition being all but obliterated from view, leaving searchers to focus their attention on what is left – the price setters and their super sized ads.
#2 Focus on the “profit” – ie, conversions – of your clicks
As a business owner, think of clicks vs conversions as the equivalent of revenue vs profit. Your clicks are revenue – they drive the volume of traffic through your website. And seeing yourself at the top of the search results is nice, just as looking at a fat figure at the top of your P&L report is nice.
But we all know that’s not the real goal. Phone calls, submitted quote requests and contact forms are a lot closer to the bottom line of profit. These are the website actions that fuel the growth of a company.
Price setters always have above-industry-standard website conversion rates. Their website is a “conversion engine” that magically turns clicks into calls and form submissions. A good result for the week is not ranking well for their chosen keywords; it’s learning that the recent change to their website landing pages have increased Quote Request completion by 30%. Same traffic, same cost – and 30% extra results.
#3 Know that 1 is the most dangerous number for business owners.
Dan Kennedy talks about this a lot. Here are some examples of where the danger lurks:
– One person in your company can only do one particular kind of work.
– One customer accounts for the majority of your sales.
– One supplier manages all of your IT and telecommunications needs.
– One marketing channel – think Google AdWords! – delivers more than half your leads.
For some people the recent Google AdWords change is merely a problem – but for others it could be dire. Let’s imagine your business is built on the sole marketing tactic of paying for clicks at the lowest possible amount on the right hand side of the desktop search area.
Now these ad places are gone.
Your business growth is stalled, at best. Maybe even ended.
So don’t rely on Google paid advertising to deliver all your leads. There are many effective online marketing strategies that don’t have Google as their focus. Spread your love and minimise your risks!
And remember that Ark Advance can help you achieve this goal. Since 2002 we’ve supported all kinds of Kiwi and Australian businesses to effectively manage the marketing of their website. Contact us today to see if our services fit your situation.
Does your website make your phone ring? If it does, or if it should, then this product is for you.
This is how it works.
We set up a unique phone number just for you and link it to four places.
So what’s the benefit? Here’s one possible scenario.
Let’s say that each month you buy Google clicks for $5.00 from about 50 keywords. While engagement is good your Google Analytics reports tell you you’ve had no Contact Us page conversions. But you are getting phone calls.
That creates a problem. You know Google Adwords campaign isn’t working as well as it could, but you can’t just pause it in case you silence the phone.
With call tracking, your problem’s solved. You can identify the keywords that drive calls, allowing you to silence the wasted spend on those that don’t.
Here’s another scenario. You are not sure how well your office is dealing with the large number of phone calls it receives during the week. You think some are being missed, but you are not sure. Now you visit the reporting portal and see that a large number are being missed during lunchtime when the phone is diverted while the receptionist is at lunch. Armed with this knowledge, you can now adjust lunch periods to avoid this and track the drop in missed calls.
Scenario 3: Occasionally the office is not manned and you are not sure if people bother to leave a message when you are out. Now you will receive a notification telling you who failed to get their call answered – even if they didn’t leave a message – so your sales team can follow up.
Given its benefits, Call Tracking is remarkably affordable. Plans start at $95 a month with bundled minutes. Talk to your account manager to learn more or complete a Contact Us request.
Albert Einstein typified as a sign of madness “doing the same thing again and again while expecting a different result.”
Does that describe your online marketing plan for 2016? Complete the same tasks as 2015 but with the hope of some other result?
This article will seed some ideas to ensure this doesn’t happen to you. But as we all know it’s very easy to slip back into old ways. The “same” can be so much more comfortable than the “new”. I experienced this earlier in the new year when starting a new training plan for my running.
Late last year, for some deranged reason, I signed up for a trail running event in May that has me double my existing max distance in some remote parts of the North Island. I began the plan doing what I had always done before, but with a bit more distance to spice things up. Very early on, my knees made it known that this wasn’t going to work. More of the same wasn’t an option.
Not wanting to give up too soon I happened across a podcast from a guy who helps middle-aged souls like me achieve running goals just like this. First task he sets me is to strap on a heart rate monitor with an alarm set for 180 minus my age. It was a low number.
Within five minutes of my first run this annoying thing starts beeping away. I was still running on the flat. I kept running, thinking it was an error. But no – more beeping and I’m forced to walk until it settles down. I end up walking about 30% of my running course. I had been running much too fast.
Apparently, the path to running long is building a sizable aerobic base. This occurs at a much lower heart rate than I was training at. Ends up there was no way my body could have built the base the way I was training – no matter how hard I tried. I had to slow down to eventually go long.
This translates well to the land of online marketing. There are many tasks that with even 1000% effort will never achieve the result you want if what you’re already doing isn’t effective. Let me outline a few examples in the four areas of online marketing that we optimise – Acquisition, Engagement, Interaction and Conversion.
Acquisition – increasing the number of visitors to your website.
Let’s start with Google and, specifically, being seen by more people for what you do rather than who you are. Fortunately, how much advertising you buy from Google will have no influence on how they rank your website in non-advertised space.
Adding more images to your website has little to no effect here either. Nor does running keyword ranking reports every month to see where your site ranks for certain keywords compared to your competitors.
The only way to reliably improve your ranking is by updating your website with new content in the areas in which you want to improve your rankings, and that Google can find and index.
Simple as that.
Find the keywords you are not ranking for, write good content on them, and you are well on the way to seeing a positive change.
Engagement – reducing your bounce rate, increasing pages per session, lengthening overall vist times.
Here the issue can be a lack of focus. Engagement is not about improving the content on every page of your website. It’s about improving it on just the ones that are super important.
The first page people see sets the tone of the session. Your Google Analytics reports will show these as your “Landing Pages”. Work on reducing their bounce rate as a priority. If you cannot entice your visitors to look at one additional page then all engagement bets are off.
Let’s say, for instance, you invest hours updating the images of your product catalogue. Unless visitors make it past your home page (assuming that’s their initial landing page) then you’re wasting your time. Spend the effort instead on your home page first.
Interaction – taking visitors one step closer to conversion.
If you sell services, interactive content can be a critical. Examples include free eBook downloads, registrations for free audits, online calculators and product demonstrations.
Our own website has a Free Stuff section that IMHO shows how it’s done. Each freebie moves prospects closer to the sale. A common mistake is plastering the website with phone numbers and contact forms, hoping this will drive up the conversion rate of the site – when in fact a lack of interactive content is holding things back.
Conversion – convincing the visitor to become a lead or to purchase a product.
Last but not least is the bit that makes all your work worthwhile – the conversion. Quote requests, contact us completions, booking requests, orders – all those fantastic notification emails that we just love to see arrive.
You can waste time here by jumping straight into fixing up the Conversion parts of your site, while avoiding any work in the Engagement and Interaction areas. Yet we rarely see websites with amazing conversion rates that do poorly with engagement. Or, similarly, with no Interaction content but a steady stream of leads. Work spent in these two areas first naturally leads to growth in conversion activity later.
I’m not saying that following my advice will make your life easier. My runs – even at a much lower heart rate – are still a challenge. But at least I know the effort is in the right direction, and with time the results should come. Follow the points in this article and the same will apply to your online marketing for 2016.
If you would like a more customised approach to your situation for 2016, complete our Contact Us page and we will be in touch.
Behaviour > Site Speed
If I can stream a whole Netflix episode at home with no problems, then why does your website take so long to load?
Hopefully this is not a question your prospects are pondering. With services like Netflix and Lightbox we are consuming more bandwidth than ever and our expectations for responsiveness of the web is only increasing. So how do you know what you can do with your website to keep up with the speed crazed users?
Thankfully Google Analytics is here to help.
Just head over to the Site Speed reports found in the Behaviour area of the tool and you will see what Google thinks of your stats. It’s a simple race: the faster you can make your website, the better. Google helps with some suggestions for both your mobile and desktop site.
As buyers we all know when it is time to “tell” rather than “sell”.
This weekend I met a salesperson who knew the difference between the two. My eldest daughter, Maddy, is in the early stages of looking for a new Apple iMac computer. So we ended up at one of the hundreds of Apple retailers in Auckland. It was picked because it was near a cafe we planned to go to for lunch afterwards.
We started in front of some shiny Apple screens not knowing exactly what we were looking at. Now fortunately for us, we managed to flag down the right salesperson. She sauntered over and started to gently ask Maddy a few questions. Questions about what she wanted the machine for, the applications she would be running and how long she expected to spend using it.
The salesperson brought with her a small piece of paper showing the product specs of the range. After a short chat, she pointed out the ones would be ideal and why. I then asked the “Dad Question”: why wouldn’t she buy the cheapest of the two? The assistant did a great job of explaining the technical differences in a way that we both could understand.
And then she said nothing. No fancy close. No whipping out a handheld computer to tap in stuff to give us a special deal. Just handed us her card and told us which of the two we were in front of. Advising us to have a play and get a feel of what we were considering.
And considering it, we were. Spending over $3,500 takes a bit of time to digest. So we left knowing more than when we arrived and with a feeling that this business: (a) could help us, and (b) knew a lot about how to match the right iMac to the right Apple purchaser.
As I said before, there are probably hundreds of Auckland retailers who sell Apple products but after that simple exchange these guys would now be at the top of our list.
Effective lead nurturing helps you get to the top of the list your prospects have for what you sell.
Here’s how to get involved.
#1 Produce great content to capture your prospect’s attention – and their email address.
We all head to the Internet when researching that next chunky purchase. We will trade our email address along the way for content that will make our search so much easier. Think value, not necessarily volume.
Automatically most people think “eBooks” here, but that doesn’t have to be the case. We have a customer who created a very simple MS Excel calculator plugin that was extremely valuable for his prospects. When they registered to get it for free, which many hundreds did, it solved a very complex calculation in a jiffy. This same theme permeated their very comprehensive and expensive software product which these prospects were ideal customers for.
#2 Talk to them as long as it makes sense.
Maddy will need her new computer before March. I would guess that a three month consideration period is usual for a computer like this. Deciding on what car to buy could take a lot longer, and likewise deciding which graphic designer should design your next logo may be faster than picking a car but longer than buying an iMac.
Let’s also assume that all decisions that should be made by prospects: will be. So there’s an ideal time period to say what you need to say while people are considering. Leave it too late and the purchase would have been made and the relevance lost.
#3 Givers gain.
Capturing your prospect’s attention is the top task after they have traded their email address for your content..
Just a quick refresher: now is not the time to sell, but to tell. And the “telling” part focuses on helping the prospect through the decision-making process. Those that sell complex services have a distinct advantage here, especially when there’s a lot that can go wrong with a poor decision. Think “complex software purchases that never go live”, i.e. business rebranding exercises that actually reduce sales rather than increase them. Situations like these where the risk of a negative outcome can be quite high.
Any content you can offer here to help people avoid these steps will be well received. Drip-feeding it to people in manageable chunks of email ensures you remain at the top of people’s minds as the time of consideration continues.
This leaves you with the task of managing who gets what and when. Thankfully there’s a range of technology to make this a breeze.
#4 Dissolve the complexity with the right technology.
So you are drip-feeding snippets of highly valuable content to possibly hundreds of prospects who are “considering” what you offer. Some are more active than others at this and could be clicking the links in your messages with a frenzy; others could be a bit more passive. The rest flit between the two states while receiving the series of messages you provide.
Somehow you need to isolate those who are keen to buy, possibly for some telemarketing activities, and respectfully and gently nurture those who are still pondering their choices. Thankfully there’s a range of lead-nurturing technology that can make this mind meld act a relatively simple task.
We support a range of tools that do just this. You can start from just $10 per month and head northwards. The more you pay, the more complexity you can manage. However most starting out have quite simple needs so the low-cost technology is usually a starter.
Our experience doesn’t start and end with the tools. We have expertise in creating the content to get the system started AND the messages required to keep the momentum going to the successful end.
Follow these steps and you should end up with a pipeline packed with prospects slowly moving further along their decision-making process.
Contact us today to learn how to design a pipeline like this for your business.
Back in February Google released a note explaining that come April 21 they would take the mobile friendliness of websites as a “ranking factor”. Then in March the Sunday Star Times interviewed me on the subject. As you can imagine, I had definite opinions that I was happy to share!
So what does it all mean?
Based on emails from Google warning customers with non-mobile websites of the upcoming change, it definitely means something. But exactly what, nobody’s yet sure. We’ll be watching the keyword rank reports of our clients with keen interest to see what turns out.
For e-commerce clients in particular, buying a new mobile friendly website is a big ask. So our early advice is to take a wait-and-see approach by monitoring the amount of mobile traffic you receive and its growth curve.
If the initial percentage is low – lets say below 15% – and the growth curve is relatively flat, then your upgrade path could be a way off if – and this is the big IF – your search term rankings don’t tank in the meantime.
However, if your percentage is 35% plus, and the growth curve is steep, and your conversion rates begin to suffer for traffic hitting your non mobile website, then you might want to bite the bullet and make the upgrade.
More on this as it develops.
We’ve all read those articles on what to do to achieve unbounded success online. Well this time I thought I would go with the opposite view. What to do when it’s not going well. Maybe the order book is looking a bit light. Or you start the week with a calendar full of white space without a prospect appointment in sight.
This is the time for quick results and a solid return on any marketing investment. When prospects call us at this stage we know we have to apply proven tactics that work quickly to turn things around. All while delivering the greatest return on their money. No pressure, eh?
Here I outline five of the many tactics we apply, and why each has made the list. Note that the order in which you apply these tactics is important. If you skip one or apply a few out of sequence, our experience is that the overall result is doubtful.
So let’s get started.
Strategy #1 – Clean up your traffic
In its current form and given its current content, your website will need a certain type of traffic to make it work – that is, convert visitors into leads.
Let me explain the “current form” part a bit more. We all know that in deciding which pages to rank over others one of Google’s key criteria is page content. (If you’re not convinced, reading their guide to “Search Engine Optimisation” will remove all doubt.)
This principle also applies to your website’s ability to convert visitors into leads. Content matters. A lot. Your content will hopefully convert a certain type of visitor – perhaps not all of them, but certainly those who like what you have written.
So the task remains to find this group, show it your content, and hope they convert. And because it’s always easier to fix one thing at a time we surmise that the
content will do its job, IF we can find the right audience.
Therefore we need to “clean up” your traffic to locate this group. I define “dirty traffic” as website visitors about whom you have no idea why they came visiting. The non-paid part of the Google search engine – commonly called organic traffic – could contain these people. Google’s no help here because it doesn’t reveal the keyword search terms these visitors used to arrive at your site – so you have no idea what they were looking for. What’s more, some struggling websites struggle to rank for the terms their prospects use.
So the only reliable way forward is to buy traffic using Google AdWords for the keywords you think your prospects will use.
That’s the easy bit. Making your money deliver a really clean group of visitors is a lot harder. Fortunately, you don’t need to test hundreds of keywords at the outset – you can just start with a few.
Then, once you have tapped into some “clean” traffic, you need to decide where to send them. Which brings me to Strategy 2.
Strategy #2 – Master your first impression
So the prospect sees your ad, clicks, and is best sent where?
Anywhere but your Contact Us page. Last month we completed a website re
view for a new client and discovered that their web optimisation company had been sending all their paid advertising traffic to that page.
The client supplied a $10,000 minimum home furnishings service for the renovation market. Their website contained pages and pages of great pictures showcasing their work. But those pictures remained hidden from their paid traffic – and 85% promptly left without looking any further.
Strategy #3 – Cover all the content bases
Once you’re sending your search traffic to the right page, you need to ensure it includes the right content. Take our home furnishings client above. Their visitors clearly expect to see lovely pictures of homes that have benefitted from their service.
Don’t skimp here. Provide lots of content. Make the pictures great – poor photography hurts your brand.
Once you have included the “must have” content, add content that shows your point of difference. For instance, you may be a design agency that crafts solutions specifically for the professional services market. Or an architect who only works on build projects on Waiheke for over $5 million. Or a lawyer who works on divorce cases for professional males between 40 and 55 years old.
Our home furnishings client had a great reputation backed up by lots of testimonials. Also, their sales process was low pressure and delivered by experts. Finally, they were experts in producing custom solutions that their competitors found too hard.
Presenting this “differentiation” content can take your prospects of success to a new high. In fact, the only thing that could hold you back is not applying Strategy 4.
Strategy #4 – Ask for the “Goldilocks Commitment”
The classic sales mistake is to either ask your visitor to to commit to too much too early, or fail to ask for an
y commit at all.
Let’s go back to home furnishings. Pointing visitors at the Contact Us page was definitely asking for too much commitment too early.
But when you looked through their gallery of photos, the opposite mistake was being made. There was no reference to their smart showroom or how to book an appointment with their sales team.
Presenting the right commitment choices to your audience at the right time is an art. It’s one we’ve been practising for over 10 years now, so we know what works and what doesn’t. Sometimes, it takes two or three visits to achieve a commitment from a web visitor. Therefore, you need to…
Strategy #5 – Play the long game
Thankfully, there are are an array of smart online marketing tools to help you recycle your clean traffic enough times to ensure it converts. Remarketing and email marketing are among them.
Remarketing is an easily set up Google product that lets you “follow” your non-converted website visitors as they browse the web, presenting targeted banner ads to them. You’ll need a range of banner sizes to display and someone to help you build your target audience. You can also choose the frequency at which your banner ads are seen, allowing you to hit the sweet spot between visibility and annoyance.
Email marketing is the stalwart of online marketing. It’s been going so long that many forget the reason for its longevity – it works. The main challenge is providing content that the customer deems worthy of giving you their email address. Every year the bar is raised higher.
So there you go – my five strategies to fix a failing service marketing solution. We have seen clients use these steps to transform a system that hasn’t delivered a lead in 10 months to one that delivers every month.
Call us for more information, or if you’d like help applying these steps to your business.
It’s not a nice feeling being lost alone in the New Zealand bush. I first experienced it many years ago when hiking around Mt Tongariro. I had just arrived from the UK and was keen to experience the New Zealand outdoors. I joined the trail at 1pm midway up the ski road, hoping to walk around the mountain in two days.
No map, no compass – just a desire to follow the poles. You guessed it. In about five hours I was lost. And for the first time I experienced that deep-seated panicky feeling – what had I got myself into? Fortunately, I managed to walk out the next day after a very cold night in my tent. The sound of cars driving up the mountain guided me back to civilisation. It put me off tramping for a long time.
That was until a couple of years ago when I decided to take just me and my mountain bike out to Riverhead Forest just west of Auckland. I had a small scrap of a map and the hope that if all else failed my phone and Google Maps would be my back up.
Fail again – no road signs, no cell phone signal and back to that terrible lost feeling of panic. I was riding up and down deserted forest roads in the late evening hoping to find my way out. A one hour ride took four – I was so pleased to get back to the car.
Which would make my heading back to Riverhead a second time only last week sound totally crazy. But this time things were different. Now I had swapped a bike for some running shoes – for a slow plodding trail run – but more importantly, the scrappy map was replaced with a Garmin handheld GPS.
I had loaded the Garmin with some New Zealand maps and created my own track. The plan was that it would all guide me and my spaniel for all of the planned 14 kms. I’d designed a trek involving one big loop back to the car. All going well I hoped to experience a panic-free mix of forest road and trail.
I set out from the car park just a bit nervous. I had packed spare batteries for the Garmin. The manual said it would last for 16 hours but to be honest my confidence was not that high. Water was sloshing around by the litre in my pack and there was enough food for a small family gathering. You never know.
Well it worked.
I followed that small Garmin track pointer up and down roads, through gorse-lined paths and even down the occasional mountain bike trail, which had me questioning its thinking. But Mello and I kept going. We crossed rivers, splattered through some mud – yes even in February – and returned to the spot where we’d started. All with just one bar of the battery used and food hardly touched. Success!
Buoyed up, the following week I plotted another trail and headed off exploring again. This time into the ‘Bermuda Triangle’ space that had confused me proper a while back on a mountain bike. Now the triangle was no match for my super satellite technology, and I made it back safe and sound. Technology had tamed the beast.
For the business owner, improving your website’s performance is like navigating my ‘Riverhead maze’. Each month we help business owners who have become “lost” in their web marketing reports. It seems you receive the information but don’t know where to look and what to follow.
I hope none of you have a feeling of dread quite like mine, lost in the bush. But you do mention being frustrated, confused or simply intimidated.
Most of you do what I did after my first experience at Tongariro. You avoid the issue as much as you can. There’s not much to lose when you head out into the bush alone. However if your company is avoiding online marketing while your competitors are lapping up the openings – the strategy comes with sizable lost opportunities.
Thankfully there is a ’business Garmin’ you can use to guide you through the online marketing maze.
Your guide through the maze? Google Analytics.
Unfortunately, just like the Garmin GPS I bought, Google Analytics comes with a relatively steep learning curve. To make my Garmin do what I wanted I trawled through numerous how-to’ videos on YouTube. I sent a few support request emails to Garmin. And I created some test “tracks” around my neighbourhood to ensure it worked. All up I probably sank a good 10 hours into the thing before it became useful.
Google Analytics is not as difficult to drive as that but there is still a learning curve. Unfortunately, for some business owners this curve is too steep and they give up. That’s a shame. Persevere, because once properly configured, our Google analytics account will be your true north. It will guide you along the right path to online marketing success.
For instance, it will uncover gems like how much your Google Advertising is really worth compared to what it costs. The pages of your website that perform and those that fail. If your email marketing raises or lowers the engagement of those on your list. Whether the time you spend on social media translates into sales or is just “noise”.
For the business owner, these are bigger problems to solve than “can you get me back to my car before the light fades and my water runs out?” (That is unless you are stuck in the New Zealand bush at 8pm with the light fading, no food or water and no idea where you are!)
Call us today to learn how to make sure your business marketing doesn’t get that desperate. We help business owners like you navigate to their own online marketing success using Google Analytics.
Last month I turned 50. It’s a scary number and a time when I can see why others head into their own personal crisis. You definitely get the feeling the clock is counting down rather than counting up.
Anyway, to soften the blow I decided to feed my passion for mountain biking and head off to the Redwood Forests of Rotorua. This time for a change, and as a birthday present to myself, I thought I would invest in three hours of coaching from Annika – a local guide and expert rider.
The way things panned out illustrated how all good coaching experiences work.
First up, a bit on me and my riding style. I am not the fastest nor bravest of riders. I ride for the benefit of long term health rather than short term excitement. So if there’s a jump or a steep drop ahead I’ll scoot around the edges just to be on the safe side.
However, on saying all that, with the clock counting down I thought it was time to scoot a bit less and push the excitement levels up a little notch.
I got onto Annika from her website via a Google search (surprise, surprise!) Annika is about half my age and rides a bike worth twice as much as mine. She enters the same type of events I do. The key differences being she ends up on the podium and has had a good few hours of rest before I turn up at the finish.
We met in the carpark and I told her I wanted to learn how to ride faster around corners and dare to do the occasional drop off. (Think of a drop off as a step down between 30 cm to a scary 300cm.) She listened and then followed me as we rode to the trails from the carpark.
After 20 minutes of following me she pulled us to a stop. Apparently, learning how to corner would have to wait – there were more urgent matters to work on.
First up, there was a problem with how my bike was set up. My seat was too far back and my handlebars were too high. By riding alongside she could see how my back was the wrong shape and my knees were not above the pedals properly. So while I waited, she got out her trusty tools and in 10 minutes the adjustments were made.
We continued on. Riding felt weird, but in a nice way.
Then we came to our first hill and she chatted away while I panted and struggled to keep up. We stopped, and again she adjusted the seat to move me forward as the adjustments were still not right. However, now I was pushing down with the proper amount of force with my legs and things became a bit easier.
Nevertheless, the hill became steeper, my breathing harder and frustration was growing. When were we going to do the cornering thing? Fortunately, things flattened out and she rode behind me as the trails moved into the classic winding, well-groomed state they are in Rotorua. Annika stopped us again and explained how my legs needed to be straight and my ankles fixed with my heels down. (Apparently, I have bendy legs and even bendier ankles.)
Onwards we pedalled with Annika yelling in her lovely Swiss accent, “straight legs”, “keep those ankles fixed”, “straight legs”. After 30 minutes of this I was starting to get it right. Just.
So an hour in and no cornering. But things were OK. We were making progress and I could feel a bit more confidence growing in my riding. Another hour of the same, with lots of yelling from Annika, and progress was being made.
We finished with her explaining how to ride down drop offs so deep that they would have easily classified themselves in the “ride around at all costs” group. And no, I couldn’t have attempted them without mastering the bits we covered way back at the start of the session.
So how does this experience relate to a success experience with an online marketing coach? 
Firstly, the process your coach follows can be more important than the actual knowledge they impart. Annika had her way which started with ensuring the bike was set up properly AFTER watching me ride it on live trails. Once this was completed then she could move on. Without this, I couldn’t have attempted the things I did later on in the day.
We start out our online coaching process in a set way too. With us, it starts with a focus on Google Analytics. If we can’t get past this stage then we can’t proceed any further. It’s a methodology that has been used successfully dozens of times before.
Secondly, what you want may not be what you need. An astute coach should be confident enough to tell you this and ensure you get the most from your time with them. Customers come to us wanting to drive more traffic to their website. Frequently, we find out that’s not the problem. There can be tons of traffic but few conversions – and improving the site’s conversion rate is where we need to invest their money.
I booked Annika wanting to corner faster. I couldn’t do this without changing bike fit and my overall stance by straightening my legs and locking my ankles.
Thirdly, a good coach will see failure as signposts to more learning ahead, not reasons to hit the panic button. My first attempts at riding down some steep drop offs with Annika were quite comical. I was either too fast or too slow, or both. Luckily it wasn’t too deep so I just picked myself and my bike up from the floor and walked back to try it again. We didn’t give up – Annika just took out her iPhone, shot a video of my next attempt, and showed me what I was doing wrong so we could fix it.
Failing to get Google’s Paid Advertising to work is not uncommon. Good clean traffic being placed on exactly the right landing page, but still no conversions coming through. With my riding I stopped falling over by leaning forward more. With AdWords it could be about re-working the landing page copy to better match the desires of the visitor.
And finally it’s a lot easier if you have fun along the way. Seeing me disappear into the blackberry bushes for the umpteenth time in my failed attempts kept a smile on both Annika’s face and mine.
Here at Ark we enjoy what we do. Sometimes it’s tricky work that requires a sizable amount of left brain thinking but we still try to make progress something to smile about.
Why not contact us today and see if our coaching style suits your online marketing needs.
How much time does your website need to convert its next visitor into a sale? A minute? Two – perhaps three or even six? What are we dealing with here? Now how much time does your visitor have? And what happens if they have less time than you need to convert them?
I know – lots of questions for this early in the year. Nevertheless, I believe that most websites need to offer their visitors more time in order to make the essential visitor conversion. This is in part due to some fundamental errors made in online marketing that end up chewing through valuable visitor time.
This short article will guide you through making the best use of all the time you have. I’ll also share some ways to actually create more time – so giving your next visitor a greater chance of converting than ever before.
Sound good? OK – let’s get started.
So how much time do you actually have to make that conversion? Dig into your Google Analytics account and:
For instance if the average session is 1.5 minutes and those converting take 6.5 minutes then we have a sizable 5 minute gap to work with. Figuring out what they are doing or thinking for those extra five minutes it takes them to convert is the first job.
Are you asking them to take too big a step to become a conversion?
For instance, the website may require them to fill in a detailed quotation request form which asks for a myriad of details, some of which they may have no idea of. Perhaps a simple contact form that just asks for their phone and email may be super easy for them and just enough info for you to start the process off.
Or perhaps your e-commerce website is gobbling up too much time for first time shoppers. It may not allow for guest-only purchasing. So they HAVE to go through the new user registration phase – including perhaps coming up with a dastardly complex password that only your system requires.
Aarrgghh – all too much and too hard and taking way too long to make purchasing that nice little Art Deco lamp from your site just a distant memory.
Your website copy could be a problem too. Maybe you take an age to get to the point, describing exactly what you do and why you are so much better than the rest in your market. Technology service companies can struggle here. Distilling all that clever stuff into a headline and top of page body copy is never going to be easy. But it could pay big dividends.
Video can be a lifesaver here. A well-written and well-produced 60 second video can get very complex theories across with total clarity. We added another 30 seconds to ours to get our Pay Per Click advertising and Search Engine Optimisation services across in a “hefty” 90 seconds. It works – results show that those who play the videos are far more likely to buy.
Misconfigured advertising can chew through valuable visitor time too. For instance let’s say you are using Pay Per Click advertising and your ad places the person looking for a new set
of dress shoes on the homepage of your shoe website. Time would have been saved if they’d gone straight to the dress shoe section of the site. Hopefully, they will navigate from the home page to the right page – but as they do they will chew their through valuable session time which could be spent picking the colour and style they want, falling in love with the
shoes, and ensuring they complete the purchase.
Which leads me nicely onto the concept that the visitor time you have to work with is relatively fixed.
We only expect to spend so much time to buy or make contact with your sales team. And the more we all get used to searching and shopping online, the more I believe this time will dwindle. Super-fast and slick websites like Amazon make owning an electronic book something you can do in seconds, not minutes. And closer to home, websites like MightyApe make the whole e-commerce experience super quick and easy.
So what can you do this year to keep up with players like these and slash the time it takes for a visitor to convert?
Firstly, see how large your gap is between the average session times and those that convert. Track this gap each month as you roll out some of the strategies below.
There you go. Your time may be fixed and possibly falling during the year – nevertheless apply some of the ideas I list here and you will make the most of the time you have.
Give us a call today or complete our speedy contact form if you would like to chat through how these strategies could be tailored to work with your business.
There you go. Your time may be fixed and possibly falling during the year – nevertheless apply some of the ideas I list here and you will make the most of the time you have.
Give us a call today or complete our speedy contact form if you would like to chat through how these strategies could be tailored to work with your business.