How would you like it if the person with whom you were conversing kept talking incessantly leaving you no room for even a peep? You talk on your website, your blog, via tweets and Facebook posts and even email marketing messages, but…are you also taking the time to listen?

On this blog, we talk a lot about knowing your audience and becoming intimately acquainted with their needs. If you can provide your potential customers/clients solutions, your profits will increase. But how can you get to know your audience? By listening to their conversations.

With so many valuable products and services on the web, you will find thousands of tools to help you listen to your audience. I listed four tools below but would love your feedback if you find any others equally valuable.

Here are my top picks for helping marketers listen to their audience:

Hootsuite

Twitter is a great place to monitor conversations, but it can be time-consuming to search and view the communication. Hootsuite is a social media management tool that organizes all of your campaigns in one easy-to-use interface.

On your Twitter tab, you can add separate streams for different keywords or organize your Twitter lists. For example, I added a stream with the keyword “web content”. This is what it looks like. It is updated in real time.

You can organize your Twitter lists and add each to a stream as well. Twitter lists are groups of people you designate who fit into a specific category. For example, I have a “copywriting” Twitter list and whenever I see a Twitter profile I deem worthy of the list, I add it. On Hootsuite I can view all of the tweets from the people in my “copywriting” list as well as keyword searches all in the same location.

Tip: Use keywords related to your audience, not you. For example, if you are a plastic surgeon, you would not search for scientific keywords only doctors would understand. You would search for customer related keywords like “facelift”, “getting old”, or “looking younger”. Use your brand name as a keyword as well to circumvent any possible customer service issues and thank customers for any kind words.

Netvibes

Netvibes is one of my favorite aggregation tools. I use it myself to gather industry-related articles to boost my content marketing. Gather RSS feeds, bookmarks, Twitter searches and more all from one interface.

Add RSS feeds from any website related to your industry. When you find related blog articles, view the comments to listen to the conversation. Customize your dashboards with any one of thousands of widgets. I use Netvibes for research and I have more than 6 dashboards set up to research industry information for several different clients.

Google Alerts

I like Google Alerts because you do not have to “fish” for the content; you can get it delivered directly to your inbox. Set up alerts for any keyword and Google will send you emails with related content either daily, weekly or any time period you specify. Use the same keywords you set up in Hootsuite for your Google alerts account.

Facebook Search

If you type a keyword into Facebook’s search bar, it will regurgitate related pages. Look on the left hand side of the screen where you will see categories for search. Choose “Public Posts” and Facebook will return all of the Facebook posts mentioning your keyword. This is not only a great way to network, but also a strategy to find potential customers to learn their frustrations and needs.

Do you know any other ways to listen to your audience? Please share in the comments below.

The Original Post is Located Here: Are You Listening to Your Audience? Your Profits May Depend on it.

1.Emails that Connect them with your Social Media Marketing
A great way to help get your leads invested in your company is to get them to connect with your social profiles. This will simultaneously drive further integration and keep them abreast of new deals, promotions and products in your arsenal (without flooding their inbox).

How-To: You likely already have a social media marketing strategy in place, which makes this email blast particularly easy. When sending this type of email, ensure that you entice them to follow your social accounts by letting them know they can get special offers and deals that are available only to your social media followers.

For tips on how to turn social media followers into leads, click here.

2. Emails with New Promotions and Offers
This seems fairly standard but be sure to send promotional emails to your users, specifically ones based on products they have shown prior interest in. Keep in mind that not all your leads are following your social accounts or checking your websites regularly, so they likely aren’t abreast of new offers.

How To: Another simple one: send them an email with your current promotions. If you are running more than one send them all your current promotions because they may be interested in one product over another. For additional opportunities, integrate a short social media enticement, letting them know you have upcoming offers available that will be posted on your social accounts.

3. Educational Emails
Most of your leads have read just a few pages regarding your product, making the reason they haven’t become a conversion is simply lack of information about your services and products.

How-To: To send targeted educational emails to your current lead database you need to send them information directly related to the product(s)/service(s) they already showed interest in. Look at which CTA they clicked through or what type of information they looked at/downloaded last time. Were they interested in a specific whitepaper? If so send them a similar tool in your arsenal that matches.

Nurturing your leads does not have to be a difficult process, but you must use all the opportunities and tools available. By leveraging your email list of leads you can turn them into invested followers, then customers, simply by educating them further on your services/products. Keep in mind that the more targeted follow-up emails you send the further along in the sales cycle your lead will become. Getting your email list of leads to follow your social media marketing strategy will also ensure that stay up-to-date with your latest promotions and become better educated overall about your company/products/services.

For more tips on successful email marketing strategies, click here.

The Original Post is Located Here: 3 Lead-Nurturing Emails That Every Email Marketer Should Use

For some, Google Plus is still too new, but influential enough to consider.

Have you ever looked at a highly-approved item on a restaurant menu and wasn’t sure if you wanted it, but you were compelled to try it because you didn’t want to miss out?

The argument may not be the finest, but some people join Google Plus simply because they know Google is a superpower and they do not want to miss out when Google Plus explodes even more.

We just saw how Google started using Google Plus profiles in its algorithm with the Search Plus Your World update, so one can only imagine what is next. I don’t particularly like how Google is taking over the web, but where it goes, I am sure to follow.

If you already joined Google Plus and you aren’t sure how to use it to its full potential, these tips are sure to help.

Hovercard

When people see your image they make a decision whether or not to add you to their circles. When they hover over your image, a small bio pops up. Make this bio as compelling as possible. You can write something close to your Twitter bio or expound a little on your interests. Mari Smith, Facebook expert, has a unique hovercard bio that speaks to her “bubbly” personality.

Edit your hovercard bio in your profile under the “Occupation” tab.

Vanity URL

Google Plus does not allow vanity urls just yet but if you want to create a personalized url, at gplus.to, you can create a url that looks like this: http://www.gplus.to/ladycontent instead of this: https://plus.google.com/102488425455581465772/about?hl=en

Photos

Your Google Plus business page includes 5 featured spots for photos. Use them creatively to compel users to add you to their circles. Take a look at some of these examples:

 Jamie Turner

Toyota USA

Guy Kawasaki

Profile

Fill out your profile completely. Do not leave any field empty. Consider your Google Plus profile as a first impression. Some leads may see your Google Plus first without viewing your other social profiles.

In your profile, link to your websites, social profiles, blog and also to any articles you wrote or websites to which you contribute (In the “Contributor to” section). Use your profile to display your expertise and reach on the web.

With Google Plus so closely integrated with Google search, it’s important to input keywords into your profile for SEO purposes. Discover how to properly SEO your Google Plus profile here: The Impact of Google Plus on Search.

Know Your Audience

Your Google Plus audience may not necessarily be the same as Facebook and Twitter. This platform is new and the tactics that work for you on Facebook may not work on Google Plus. With polls, questions and interaction, over time you will discover exactly what your Google Plus audience wants to hear.

Marketing on Google Plus is different than other social media platforms. With the ability to organize circles and features like hangouts, marketing strategies may differ in their approach. If you are just starting out, observe some successful pages first and notice what they are doing to generate buzz. You can also take a look at this helpful article for tips: 6 Tips for Creating an Effective Google Plus Business Page

Are you on Google Plus? Share the link to your page in the comments below.

The Original Post is Located Here: Tips to Maximizing Your Google Plus Marketing Campaign

Here are the 5 common mistakes that your company might be making with its blog content, along with 5 quick fixes:

1. Failing to Integrate your Blog with your Website
The reason why most companies create blogs is to attract potential customers to their website. But if you haven’t fulled integrated your blog with your company website then you are missing valuable conversion opportunities. The disconnect here is that most company websites are created and hosted on small-business platforms, while most blogs are primarily hosted on WordPress, Blogger and to a lesser extent, TypePad. Since the website and blogs are hosted on two separate networks they are not naturally connected to each other in any meaningful way.

Quick Fix: Host both your website and blog in the same place. The most recommended way to do this is to host your blog within your website by using a sub-domain like www.blog.yourwebsitename.com or by hosting it within a folder/page of your site like www.yourwebsitename.com/blog. Doing this will create more indexable content for your website, which will draw significantly more traffic.

2. Too Much Product-Oriented Content
While the point of your blog is to promote your business, your customers and potential customers want relevant information that is important from your vertical—they don’t want to only hear about your products/services/accolades/etc. Too much product-centered content will dissuade your users from reading your new blog posts and it will also fail to trigger new keywords and trending topics in your SEO efforts, since you are only writing about the same thing(s) all the time.

Quick Fix: Before creating a new post, put yourself in your readers’ shoes: would they be interested in this content? Discuss new events, news and products that have value for your readers/customers. Focus on creating fresh, informative and educational content that is related to your products but not directly focused on them.

3. Failing to Publish Consistently
The most successful blogs on the internet post content on a regular basis over an extended period of time. The more posts, and the more consistent those posts are, the better you will be indexed by Google. It takes a greater commitment to publish frequently and consistently, but without this there isn’t much point of keeping your blog alive. Also, the longer your blog has been regularly creating new content the higher your value becomes—so don’t start, stop, start, stop.

Quick Fix: Create a blogging schedule and strictly adhere to it. The more-often and more-consistently you post the better the results will be. Creating 4 to 5 posts a month should be the bare minimum—but keep an eye on your competitors because if they are posting 10 blogs a month, you should be posting 15. If the commitment to content is too much for you then consider hiring a freelance blogger to keep the blog up to date for you.

4. Forgetting to SEO your Content
Did you know that the difference between a 15-page website and a 300-page website is only one blog? Blogging gives your website a huge boost in both the number of pages and the indexable content from Google. Google likes complex sites. So, failure to Search Engine Optimize blog content is a sure-fire way to fail with your blog, and your website. Just as your website content is optimized for search, your blog content should be too. So when optimizing your content don’t just optimize new posts moving forward, go back and retroactively optimize older content, a strategy that will also refresh your old content and give you a big boost.

Quick Fix: Install an SEO plugin for your blog. This will give you a reminder to add SEO triggers to all new content. It will also allow you to go back and SEO older content. The tools will vary depending on the blogging platform you are using, so just do a quick Google search on the top SEO plugins for your (WordPress/Blogger/TypePad/etc.) blogging platform.

5. Forgetting CTAs for Lead Generation
You could have the best content in the history of blogging, but without Call-to-Actions, that content will do nothing for you. By using CTAs you can very easily optimize your content for lead generation.

Quick Fix: Use multiple bright-colored CTAs within each blog post (both in new posts and retroactively). One near the top, another near the bottom or as a side bar, and a final one embedded within the content. This three-pronged approach will ensure that you cast a wide net, to capture all your readers.

For examples on stellar CTAs, click here.

The great news about these common blogging problems, and solutions, is that they are easily fixable. Don’t stress if you made these common mistakes in the past because you have already built a solid foundation of blog content, that when optimized moving forward and retroactively, as per the above, will skyrocket your leads and conversions.

The Original Post is Located Here: 5 Common Blog Mistakes (and their 5 Quick Fixes)

Writing blog post after blog post can make you feel like you are suffering from a writing hangover. Have you ever felt like your mind turned into jelly and  every ounce of creative juice has vanished from your existence?

OK, so that is a little dramatic, but you get the point. Every blogger goes through a dry spell now and then. And who wouldn’t want a few ideas to jumpstart the creative process?

How about 30 great ideas?

Ok, here goes…

Disclaimer: Ultimately, you need to decide which idea makes sense for your industry and your type of business.

1. Reviews

Write about anything…a product, business, website, book, music artist, travel destination, restaurant. Personal reviews come across as authentic and unbiased. Post pictures to authenticate your experience, like the menu from your favorite restaurant or a personal photo with the product in your hand. Also, occasionally the review can be unrelated to your industry. It is perfectly fine to show your audience a personal side so review away!

2. Events

Planning a business meeting? Going out of town to meet some clients? Taking a marketing class? Advertising a webinar?

Use your business life as impetus for your next blog post. If you are attending a networking event, blog about it. Is your company starting a new website? Changing its branding message? Blog about it. Are you introducing new seasonal products to your inventory? Blog about it. I think you get the point.

3. Valued Content

Link to your favorite online blogs or resources. Show your audience you are secure enough to share with them the myriad of valuable resources on the web.

4. Lists

Virtually any content can be organized into lists—from top 10s to the worst 100s and everything in between. Convert your next idea into a list blog post to change up the content a little and make it exciting. Add a number and keep on going.

5. News

Anything interesting going on in the world? That question is an understatement. Post about a recent news story related to your industry. It can even be unrelated as long as you don’t post unrelated content continually. I would stay away from religious and political topics unless your blog revolves around these controversial subjects.

6. Contests

Contest create buzz around your products and services.

7. How To

Your audience is engaging with your blog because they feel you have the authority to speak. Continue this thread and create some “how to” posts offering valuable information and answering your readers’ questions.

8. Polls

Poll your readers and ask them what type of content they want you to post. Make a post about it!

9. Tutorials and Guides

Product tutorials can come in many forms: how to, problem solving, assembly, cleaning, benefits, protection, etc.

10. Interviews

Conduct video, written or audio interviews with industry experts or staff members. You can also interview people who have used your products and services.

11. The year’s best posts

(i.e. The Best Posts of 2011)

12. Yearly predictions

(i.e. Social Media Predictions for 2012)

13. Highlight industry awards and recipients

Link to recognized experts.

14. Fun quizzes

Capture your readers’ attention with some bizarre topics that will stir up some conversation.

15. Special offers and discounts

Whenever you are offering a special, blog about it so your readers are aware.

16. Promotion post

Give readers a chance to promote their business in the comments.

17. Industry trends

Discuss what is happening in your industry

18. DIY

Creative uses for your product

19. Myths

Post your thoughts on myths that have precipitated from your industry

20. Photos

Share images from a recent event or from a customer’s experience with your products and services.

21. Tips

Tips and tricks

22. Secrets

Share some of your “special sauce” or “inside information” on your personal industry-related tactics.

23. Personal aspirations

People love to get inside the head of blog owners. Share a little of your aspirations in life.

24. Personal experience

Did your daughter just get married? Did you just give birth to a child? Did your sister graduate from college? Blog about a personal event and provide another way for your blog readers to connect with you.

25. Videos

Video please the reader who prefers visual stimulation. When posting videos, it’s helpful to post a written transcript below it for those readers who prefer copy (I am one of those people!).

26. Guest posts

Allow people to guest post on your blog as long as they provide valuable, related content. In return, they can post a link to their website. Specify on your blog that it is a guest post.

27. Local events

This type of posting works well for brick-and-mortar establishments.

28. QR codes

Hide some of your blog post behind a QR code and give instructions on how to scan one to discover what is on it. You can find some information about QR codes here: Use QR Codes for Your Business

29. Feedback

Psychology suggests that people love to be heard and valued. They want to offer their opinions. Write a post asking your readers for recommendations on anything. You may be surprised by the response.

30. Inspirational results

Share your past successes and how you achieved your goals. Every person can use some inspiration from time to time.

One last tip: Vary your post types. Too much of the same is not a good strategy.

Do you have any more creative blog post ideas?

The Original Post is Located Here: 30 Blog Topic Ideas to Get the Creative Juices Flowing

Aside from the quantity of blog content—which you probably have a handle on by now—the real purpose of blogging analytics is to rate the content and effectiveness of your overall strategy. The data you can get from analytics tools is a a veritable cornucopia of insights. While there are many insights that can be gleaned from analytics tools, there are 4 key analytics to look at when it comes to blog marketing:

1. Views/Traffic
Looking past the obvious fact that views/traffic tells you how popular your blog is, if you drill down further it can give you valuable insight about your content and format. Looking at individual page views tells you which blog posts are most popular, and if you compare blog post traffic over time it can tell you which topics are the most popular and which type(s) of formatting is favored. If posts in one genre are doing significantly better than others, focus on that genre moving forward. If how-tos and top 10 lists perform better than anecdotal and informational blog posts, then you know which format(s) to focus on.

2. Referral Sources
Your sources of referrals are quite possibly the best tool you have in marketing your blog. Unless your blog has somehow warranted front-page real estate on Google searches then you need to carefully examine your referral sources.

Analytical tools can tell you what your best sources of traffic are, and the worst. This can let you know where you need to focus your attention. If your organic search traffic isn’t referring well then you likely need more SEO work, if you had a spike in social networking traffic last month then you need to examine (and repeat) whatever caused that spike.

3. Lead Generation
This is the money metric. Traffic is good but unless you are an affiliate marketer (if you are, click here for more advice), traffic doesn’t pay the bills. Most businesses running blogs are looking to generate leads; if that is you then look at how much traffic is turning into tangible leads.

Lead generation stats provide a helpful how-to on sales growth. Drilling down to which pages/posts on your blog generate the most leads can give you a lead-to-customer roadmap for the future. If your top lead-gen pages have more call-to-actions than other pages then you need to replicate a similar CTA strategy across all your posts/pages. If the CTAs are the same then specific content must be driving leads—so create similar content.

4. CTA Click-Through Rates
Your CTA click-through rates give you the raw data that you need to run A/B tests and eventually the info you need to boost sales. You likely have different types of CTAs on your blog, but if you don’t then play around with which type of CTA is most effective by running CTA click-through rates in your analytical tool. While testing which CTAs work best with your audience, vary the size, placement and wording, to find out what works best.

If you can regularly monitor, test and analyze the above 4 blogging insights, your blog traffic will continue to grow—as will your leads. For more tips on driving traffic to, and sales from, your blog, click here.

The Original Post is Located Here: 4 Money-Generating Insights you Can Gain from your Blogging Analytics Tool

So, let’s look at 5 of the biggest internet marketing misconceptions, and remove them from your internet marketing strategy.

Internet Marketing Myth 1: Social Media is a Platform, not a Podium
Many internet and social media marketers believe that Facebook and the like are places to converse with your audience; a place to talk with them, not at them. While social media is a place to talk and engage with your customers and prospects, there are significantly more people listening to what you say than there are people engaging with you. For every 1 person engaging with your posts there are 10 reading it quietly in the background.

The truth, is that social platforms are indeed more like podiums than platforms. So, when marketing on social sites phrase your posts as informational, in addition to conversational; this way you don’t alienate 10 listeners for the sake of engaging 1 active participant.

Internet Marketing Myth 2: “Please Retweet/Share” doesn’t work
Too many marketers out there underestimate the efficacy of asking your users to repost/share/retweet your content. While some may think this sounds imposing or desperate, it is not, and your followers aren’t not surprised or put-off by you asking. In fact they are 4 times more like to share your content if you ask, or remind, them to.
When you kindly ask your users “please share/retweet/repost” don’t forget to include a Call to Action, so that the people reading your retweeted information, they know who it is coming from and how to act on it.

Internet Marketing Myth 3: Don’t Market on Weekends
While the marketing rule of thumb is to post social media content primarily Monday to Friday, content posted on the weekend gets far more visibility and shares. Studies have shown the same thing with email marketing, that Click-Through Rates (CTRs) are significantly higher on weekends. The likely cause is that people have more free time to browse when they are not at work (or recently home from work and preparing dinner and watching The Big Bang Theory).

Instead of sticking to the traditional marketing time, marketers would do well to embrace contra-competitive social posting and email sending times.

Internet Marketing Myth 4: Don’t Call yourself a Guru—despite the Ego Boost
The marketing industry as a whole is sick of people self-labeling themselves as ‘gurus’. But after analyzing over 5 million social media accounts its been discovered that marketers with ‘guru’ in their title had an average of 100 more followers than non ‘gurus. Their followers were more engaged with them, and the ‘gurus’ had more social influence than non-identified internet marketing gurus.

Internet Marketing Myth 5: Klout Scores aren’t worth the Virtual Paper they are Written on
Klout scores have been dubbed as generally useless by the marketing community as a whole, but don’t discount them yet. Despite the tendency to over-value and overlook the scores, they do provide helpful guidance. They are also still the only real industry benchmark statistics that there is. A high Klout score still looks good on any internet marketers resume.

Klout scores should be taken with a grain of salt in terms of specifics, but the overall depiction of a Klout score is accurate. When compared with other forms of measuring internet marketing success (inbound links, website traffic, etc.) there is a direct correlation between marketers with high Klout scores and overall marketing success.

Now that we have debunked a few of the biggest internet marketing myths, use the information above to build a more-accurate–and effective–internet marketing strategy.

For more internet marketing tips click here.

The Original Post is Located Here: 5 Internet Marketing Myths Exposed

In the last 10 years, communication has exploded in monumental proportions. Virtually anyone can get a hold of you whether on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, via text, voice message, blog comments, Google Talk, Skype, Gmail chat…can you see the trend?

It’s noisy out there and the world isn’t shutting up anytime soon. This cataclysmic noise can distract, disorganize and push us away from our business goals if we let them.

How can we get a handle on the excess noise and avoid distractions?

Turn off Notifications

My cell phone beeps every time I get a new email. I can tell myself a million times that the “ding” does not distract me, but every time I hear it, I am compelled to take one quick look. One minute won’t hurt, right?

That one minute multiplied times 100 is over 100 minutes you will never get back. In 100 minutes you can write a fantastic blog post, craft an email message, devise a new marketing strategy, converse with a lead, etc.

What about those Twitter notifications? My phone vibrates when I receive a reply. Have you ever been tempted to check those notifications?

If you don’t gain control of your notifications, you will succumb to their guise. I know the thought of hundreds of emails can overwhelm you, but if you designate a time to go through them, it will get done much faster.

Tip: Take a few hours of “off time” and unsubscribe from the email lists you do not need. Excess information can distract you from your goals. You will not miss out on any valuable information. Subscribe to 3-4 lists, top. You will feel much lighter and prevent the dreaded email inbox onslaught.

You can also try a service like AwayFind. AwayFind will notify you of important emails so you do not have to worry about checking your email all day and stifling your productivity.

Schedule Your Time

I know scheduling may sound elementary but anyone who runs an online business will recognize how difficult it is to avoid distractions. One way to stay focused is to schedule your daily tasks.

The night before, organize the daily tasks you want to complete on an hour by hour basis. Schedule time for breaks and lunch. Also, schedule what I call “miscellaneous time.” For me this time is devoted to checking emails, social media, following up on leads, or any other task I feel is necessary. I like this time slot because it gives me the freedom to do what I want without sticking to a definite task. For me, I need this space; for you, it may not be a necessity.

Just remember to create a schedule that works for you. You may need a time slot for just social media business activities. You may need to organize your breaks into fewer minutes, more times a day. The only way you will stick with your schedule is if you make it work within your personality and environment.

Tip: If you are the type of person who becomes bored after working on a project for more than 30 minutes, schedule your tasks in 30 minute increments so you can accomplish them.

When you can properly schedule your communication and avoid distractions, you will be using communication for its numerous benefits. Learn how to master your time before it masters you. Only then will you find success in reaching your goals.

What else can distract you from your business goals?

The Original Post is Located Here: The Communication Explosion Could be Stealing Your Business Productivity

The most successful way to build a successful call-to-action strategy is to look at what the top internet marketing companies are doing. For the purpose of learning effective CTAs, let’s look at the 4 most successful CTA campaigns, from Jetsetter, Intuit, Yapta and GoDaddy.

Jetsetter 
Jetsetter, an invitation-only, exclusive travel-deal site, is at the top of their CTA game.

Their Claim the Fame: bad-ass, actionable phrasing. Their eloquently put CTA, “Plan a trip like this”, stimulates their web surfers’ creativity, despite leaving nothing to the imagination in terms of what happens when you click the button. With this phrasing they leverage the emotions stirred in their users from their graphic traveling content to turn surfers into customers. Unsurprisingly, they use this CTA on every page. Jetsetter’s phrasing inspires the user to take action, but in a non-committal and exciting form. The less-subtle, “buy this trip” wouldn’t be nearly as effective.

How Can I Do It?
Create a site-wide CTA that stimulates the creativity and desire of your users, in a non-committal way. Then gently glide them through the sales cycle, taking them gently through one step at a time (but getting their contact info first, so even if they don’t complete the action you can add them to your email list and nurture the lead).

Intuit
This B2B and B2C financial software company is another CTA hall of famer.

Their Claim to Fame: Effective language, a stand-out button color and a free-trial offer. The Inuit CTA combines three strong elements to earn its effectiveness. Its CTA is bright orange, a color that has long proven effective at getting attention (orange provides high contrast and mentally signifies a cheap or good deal—hence why many generic no-name food labels and grocery stores use orange as their primary color). It also expands on the language used throughout the site (headlines, footers and text body) to promote their free trial, so there is a solid sense of transition. Finally, they offer something non-committal and free—a free product trial.

How Can I Do It?
Simple: use a stand-out button color that signifies your offer: orange for low-cost, purple for quality, red for…uhh…traffic violations?. Also use a non-commital CTA; think “try now”, instead of “buy now”.

Yapta
This flight and hotel price-tracking website assists their users in getting refunds—a strategy almost as brilliant as how they get their users to click-through their CTAs.

Their Claim to Fame: Threading their copy and CTA buttons seamlessly. Yapta’s ability to move the user from page to page, then CTA to conversion is nothing short of marketing genius. By using CTAs directly related to specific page content they make the transition from reading to action seamless—so seamless in fact that if it weren’t for their clear headlines and images users wouldn’t even notice their progression.

How Can I Do It?
If you want to leverage their strategy you need to make sure that your CTA buttons, copy, headlines and images are all in-line with each other in terms of language and content. You also need to create unique CTAs for different types of content and pages.

GoDaddy
GoDaddy is a web- and email-hosting company that also sells domain names and other online services—not that I need to tell you, because just about everyone in North America knows who GoDaddy is.

Their Claim to Fame: GoDaddy has reached the top of their game by using highly-effective CTAs. Their CTAs are highly-visible due to their high-contrast, easy-to-spot buttons that follow the reader down the page. They use an attention-grabbing and actionable title “Continue to Registration” for their buttons. That phrasing alone would be effective—but let’s face it, people click the button because it follows them around the page. People are much likelier to click a button if it is always front and center.

Another bring-it-home point wit GoDaddy is that there is zero confusion with their CTAs; they tell you exactly what will happen if you click the CTA button. Another brilliant marketing ploy is that if you continue through their registration they expose you to several up-selling and cross-selling opportunities as well.

How Can I Do It?
Design a CTA that follows them around the page. Failing that put CTAs at the top, bottom and sidebar of your pages. Make sure that your CTA button text tells the user exactly what happens if they click it.

These 4 CTAs are all proven highly effective, but all very different from each other, meaning that you have to pick one. Figure out which strategy is best-suited to your business and give it a try. Use your analytic tools to determine if it is indeed right for your business. If it isn’t, try another.

The Original Post is Located Here: 4 Proven-Effective Call-to-Action Strategies (and How To Mimic their Strategy)

This mindset is also evident when marketers spend most of their capital on getting traffic to their website with SEO, but none of their time and effort on converting the traffic when it gets there.

It’s a numbers game for some people, and the man who has the best numbers wins…or does he? Do an increased number of leads contribute to your bottom line?

Some would argue, yes. This notion may be correct, but a middle ground exists between the two.

If I threw you a bunch of leads who were looking for content writing services, yet you sell social media management and you are terrible at writing, would you gain any profit from those leads? Most likely, not. If I threw even more leads your way and you never gave them what they wanted with proper communication and nurturing, would you gain any profit from those leads? Not a chance.

So, now that we dispelled the equation, Leads=Profit, we can now come up with a new equation that explains this dynamic in more detail.

Leads +Proper Nurturing= Profit

The missing link is nurturing.

Nurturing occurs further down the sales process. Once you acquire leads, you will need to start building a relationship with them.

What constitutes a lead?

Regardless of your internet business, you will acquire leads. They can come in many forms…

• New email subscriber
• New customer – Nurturing aids in repeat sales
• New potential client – Every client that contacts me about my services is a potential sale
• Fans/followers – Though fans/followers on social media are not identified as leads in the technical sense, any person who could potentially become a sale can be nurtured. This nurturing will be much less invasive, though.

Here are some tips to nurturing leads all the way to a sale:

A Match Made in Heaven

Know your leads! When you met your spouse, did you nurture the relationship by giving what they DIDN’T want. Heck no!

For email content, you must know from where you leads arrived. This is best achieved by segmenting email lists by topics. If you run several websites with different topics, you must separate the campaigns so the messages are directly targeted to the person seeking that information.

If you are an affiliate marketer who is using email lists to slowly introduce a merchant’s product, your emails will target the potential buyer at each phase of the sales process. For example, your first email may court the lead and subsequent meals will deliver content that prompts a sale.

If you are selling a product or piece of software, the nurturing may take longer, especially if the sale requires a larger money investment. You need to start the relationship by sending them tips and information related to your product. Once you see a response or a rise in engagement, you can introduce more product-related emails, demos, offers, etc.

Become familiar with the type of lead. If someone simply requests more information on the product, the lead can be identified as a cold lead. The more inclined the prospect is to purchase, the hotter the lead, which will necessitate a more aggressive campaign that targets leads further in the buying process.

Be Normal

I know this sounds trite, but all too often marketers take on a persona they think their prospects want. They become mutant beings with canned phrases and inauthentic verbiage. Have you heard the mantra, “People do not buy from companies; they buy from people”?

Be human; be transparent; be normal. You can instill a human side to your campaign while still remaining professional. The more transparent you are, the more a lead will trust you and what you are offering.

Are you nurturing your leads?

The Original Post is Located Here: Beyond Lead Generation: Turning a Lead into a Sale