MARKETING HOW-TO GUIDE

A 5-DAY ACTION PLAN FOR CONVERTING MORE WEBSITE VISITORS INTO LEADS AND SALES

Contents at a Glance
INTRODUCTION DAY 1: THE ECONOMICS OF CONVERSION DAY 2: THE CALL TO ACTION DAY 3: RETHINKING YOUR HOMEPAGE DAY 4: AN INTRODUCTION TO LANDING PAGES DAY 5: OPTIMIZATION AND TESTINGMAKING EVERY PAGE CONVERT BETTER MARKETINGPROFS RESOURCES ABOUT THE AUTHOR ABOUT MARKETINGPROFS 1 2 4 7 9 12 17 18 18

INTRODUCTION
Remember: Sustainable marketing success is achievable only when you help people get what they want.
Conversion optimization has become a big deal in the analytics- and measurement-crazed world of online marketing. At its heart is the singular concept of conversion. Whether you know how to optimize the customer-meets-business interaction, the simple truth is that conversion is the most fundamental element of online business success. To click or not to click. That is the question. Conversions purpose is to provide the maximum return on your marketing spenda concept rooted in common sense, yet shrouded in the mysteries of behavioral psychology. Conversion is the mechanism and process of pouring targeted consumers into, through, and out the other side of the marketing funnel. Persuasion is not a dirty word when spoken in the right way, at the right time, to the right person. That is the essence of success: Convince, dont coerce. Guide, dont deceive. Remember: Sustainable marketing success is achievable only when you help people get what they want. Conversion Fundamentals In this guide, well explore a five-day planthe ideas, tools, and methodology necessaryto maximize the efficacy of your customers life on the Web page. In doing so, well make your pages better, more focused, more persuasive, and ultimately more successful. Each day contains a concept coupled with a short task designed to turn you into a conversion expert.

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DAY 1: THE ECONOMICS OF CONVERSION

Most people know that its cheaper to keep a customer than it is to find a new one. Similarly, it makes sense to get the most from the traffic you already receive by improving the conversion rate. Sounds blindingly obvious, right? But many businesses are either too content or too lazy to invest in conversion improvements. There are two options driving traffic to increase business: 1. You can buy more traffic. 2. You can spend a portion of your budget on improving your site. If you are in any doubt about which of these options makes more sense, Ill make it easy for youits the second one. An Example If you have a marketing budget of $1,000 per month dedicated to driving traffic to your site, you may observe the following scenario. (These numbers are based on some average Google AdWords pay-per-click stats.)
Traffic Budget $1,000 Conversion Investment $0 Cost per Click (CPC) $1 Visitors Conversion Rate 2% New Customers 20 Cost per Acquisition (CPA) $50

1,000

Now, if we use strategy No. 1 to buy more trafficdoubling the budget:

Traffic Budget $2,000 Conversion Investment $0 Cost per Click (CPC) $1 Visitors Conversion Rate 2% New Customers 40 Cost per Acquisition (CPA) $50

2,000

Notice how the cost of acquiring a customer remains the same and your budget stretches in a predictable manner. That is why many companies just throw more money at their marketing. More cash = more customers. Its predictable, but its lazyand inefficient. For strategy No. 2, were going to take some of the budget and spend it on optimizing the destination page to increase its conversion rate. Remember that your goal should be to reduce the cost of acquiring a new customer.

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DAY 1: THE ECONOMICS OF CONVERSION

If you are just getting started with conversion optimization, youd be smart to get a free expert review by a company specializing in optimization to uncover some initial opportunities for improvement. With no impact to your traffic budget, it would be a win-win.

Month

Traffic Budget $1,000 $2,000 $2,000

Conversion Investment $100 $200 $0

Cost per Click (CPC) $1 $1 $1

Visitors

Conversion Rate 2.50% 2.75% 2.75%

New Customers 22.5 49.5 55

Cost per Acquisition (CPA) $44.44 $40.40 $36.36

1 2 3

900 1,800 2,000

What that scenario shows us is that as we increase the investment in conversion optimization, our traffic spend decreases. The result is fewer visitors, but the improved conversion rate more than makes up for the decrease by bringing in more customers and ultimately reducing the cost per acquisition (CPA). By month three, pausing the conversion investment (because youve already optimized the conversion process) produces a further drop in CPA. The beauty of conversion optimization is that once your page is converting better, it stays that way almost indefinitely. Alternatively, you may choose not to use your traffic budget and instead invest a few hours of your (or an employees) time on optimization. If you are just getting started with conversion optimization, youd be smart to get a free expert review by a company specializing in optimization to uncover some initial opportunities for improvement. With no impact to your traffic budget, it would be a win-win. See the resources below for companies that offer this service.

Day 1 Resources
The Anatomy of a Conversion Path (MarketingProfs article) High-Performance Landing Pages that Boost Your Bottom Line (MarketingProfs online seminar) Web Design for ROI (book) for an extended discussion of optimization investment vs. traffic spend

Day 1 Task
If you have a marketing budget, plug your own numbers into the tables above to see the effect that focusing on conversion could have. Then, use resulting ammunition to convince your boss (or yourself ) that conversion matters.

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DAY 2: THE CALL TO ACTION

As Mick Jagger sang, You cant always get what you want. But if you dont ask for what you want, you wont get anything. Accordingly, any page you create is a wasted opportunity if it doesnt specifically make a request of your visitor.
How do people convert? In simple terms, they interact at a designated conversion point. They do this and are triggered to do thisby a call to action. What is a call to action? A call to action (CTA) is an interactive instructional device intended to solicit an action from your visitors. A CTA has four main components: 1. The Call. This is the instructional language used to request that the user interact in your desired way. 2. The Action. On the Web, the most common action one can take is to click a button. 3. The Outcome. The outcome is what happens when the action is taken, and it should correlate strongly with the call. In other words, its the delivery on your promise. (e.g., Download free whitepaper indicates that clicking the button will begin a file download without a request for payment). 4. The Design. How your CTA is presented visually plays a big part in how people respond to it (e.g., size, color, shape, contrast to rest of page). A CTA for Every Page As Mick Jagger sang: You cant always get what you want. But if you dont ask for what you want, you wont get anything. Accordingly, any page you create is a wasted opportunity if it doesnt specifically make a request of your visitor. Every page needs both a purpose and a call to action. Consider the following scenario: Employee 1: Nobody is signing up for our newsletter! Employee 2: What newsletter? Employee 1: We have a Feedburner email update that gets sent out whenever we write a blog post. Employee 2: How do people sign up for that? Employee 1: Ummm, they have to click on the RSS icon and then select email as the delivery mechanism and such.

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DAY 2: THE CALL TO ACTION

The email subscription example (on this page) is a classic use case. Others include recommending related posts and suggesting that people bookmark or share the posts with their networks.

Can you see whats wrong with that conversation? The goal is to have customers read a blog post and then register to receive the blog newsletter. How its configured is technically possible, but there is no instruction to persuade the visitor to take the desired action. Moreover, the working solution is neither obvious nor usefulconversion faux pas on both counts. In this situation, it would be smart to place a CTA at the end of each blog post to engage the blog readers at their point of highest interest (assuming fairly that if they read to the end of the post, they most likely enjoyed it). For example:

The headline encourages users to respond by leading with a hook into their emotional reaction (if you enjoyed this post), and makes a direct request for them to subscribe. Also, note how the call succinctly describes what will happen when you click. Tip: The word Submit on a button tells you nothing about the outcome. Avoid it at all cost. CTAs for Different Page Types Here are some examples of calls to action to consider for other areas of your site: Blog posts: The email subscription example above is a classic use case. Others include recommending related posts and suggesting that people bookmark or share the post with their networks. 404 pages: Your page not found page should help people recover from being lost. Make suggestions for what they should do. Include links to your most popular content, or start them down the sales process by linking to a product tour. Placing a large banner graphic on this page can also be a good way to solicit a positive action out of a negative situation. (Just make sure its advertising your product, not someone elses.)

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DAY 2: THE CALL TO ACTION

Confirmation pages: Engage your customers while they are in a positive, buying mood by adding a CTA to your transactional confirmation pages. You can extend your reach by asking people to follow you on a social network, or set a future date for re-engagement by inviting them to a webinar.

Day 2 Resources
A great showcase of CTA examples, along with design theory, is included in aclassic post by Smashing Magazine on CTA best-practices.

Day 2 Task
A good test is to print out some of your pages (a product page, blog page, homepage, etc.), pin them to the wall, and give them the six foot test. Standing six feet away, can you see a clear and identifiable action on each page? If its not blindingly obvious what you want people to do on your page, youll be losing conversions.

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DAY 3: RETHINKING YOUR HOMEPAGE

Marketing can only really be effective when its measurable and you are accountable.
Conversion is about focusslapping blinders on your customers and shuffling them toward the bright light that is your call to action. Your every marketing campaign should have distinct conversion goals and metrics, so that you can design experiences that maintain focus. For most businesses, however, their homepage is simply not the most focused page on their website. Why? For various reasons, such as: 1. Your homepage has too many messages. Even if your website promotes a single product or service, there is the potential for message overload. Perhaps you are driving prospects from your email list, encouraging them to visit you for details on a new feature. If they arrive at your homepagewhere there might be other features, seasonal promotions, and special offersthey could get distracted and wander from your intended goal. A common train of thought is this: Well, as long as they buy something, I dont care where they go, or what they do. The problem with that approach is that the campaign you are running, measuring, and paying for isnt being given a fair opportunity to succeed (or fail). Marketing can only really be effective when its measurable and you are accountable. 2. Your homepage has too many interaction points. Similarly, there are likely way too many links on your homepage for it to be a closely guided conversion experience. 3. Changing your homepage can be difficult. As companies grow in sizeadding departments and productsgetting buy-in from different stakeholders to test your new idea can become fraught with political challenge. IT, software, or QA personnel can create roadblocks due to the risks of changing your most frequently viewed page. Corporate infrastructural rules may also mean that updates to the site are published to the production servers only on a defined weekly schedule, by which point your campaign may have lost its timeliness. 4. Changing your homepage can have knock-on effects. Imagine that you made messaging changes on your homepage to improve SEO, or to better align with an email or social media campaign. All of a sudden, your pay-per-click quality score dives (due to decreased message match with your ads) and your cost of acquiring a customer via that channel rises.

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DAY 3: RETHINKING YOUR HOMEPAGE

The solution to these problems is to use campaign- or promotionspecific landing pages that can be managed and optimized in controlled isolation.

It might well be that your SEO rank improves insteadgreat! But you can see where this is going: Change creates risk, and monitoring the impact of changes when you have multiple inbound marketing channels becomes complicated. Thats not to say you shouldnt change your homepage. On the contrary, you should be continually optimizing to increase conversions. Rather, the problem lies in how you are driving the traffic to your site. Whats the answer? The solution to these problems is to use campaign- or promotion-specific landing pages that can be managed and optimized in controlled isolation. And thatlanding pageswill be the topic of discussion on day 4.

Day 3 Task
Go to your homepage and count how many different messages, paths, links, and CTAs you have. Those numbers will be useful for comparisons when you get to day 4 of this crash course on website conversion.

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DAY 4: AN INTRODUCTION TO LANDING PAGES

Technically speaking, a landing page is any page on your website that customers arrive at or land on. However, for the purposes of this crash course, when I say landing page Im referring to a page that is created as a standalone entitya campaign or promotion specific pagedesigned to be free from the shackles of your homepage (as identified on Day 3). Standalone landing pages have a few general characteristics: No global navigation. Customers are prevented from wandering off the conversion path. Single entry paths. The pages are accessible only via a promotion- or campaign-specific marketing link (e.g., social media, PPC, email, banner ad). One conversion goal. The page has one purpose and usually a single, primary call to action.

A good example of a standalone, campaign-specific landing page is this one from Webtrends:

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DAy 4: AN INTRODuCTION TO LANDING PAGES

A focused message improves visitor conversion behavior; as a bonus, pay-per-click engines (such as Google AdWords) like it better, too.

The Benefits of Landing Pages As noted earlier, landing pages remove the restrictions and complexities of your homepage. They can also improve your conversion rate in the following ways: Improved message match. When you design a page with a single focused message, you create a simplified experience that better represents the expectation created by your upstream ad. Improved quality score. A focused message improves visitor conversion behavior; as a bonus, pay-per-click engines (such as Google AdWords) like it better, too. A higher quality score can reduce the cost of your paid advertising. Separation from primary site architecture. By removing your landing pages from the main site (setting them up on a sub-domain), you can empower marketers to manage their own operations and be more agile and responsive. Easier to test and optimize. Technical and architectural separation lets you run optimization experiments (A/B or multivariate testing) without impact on the rest of your site. Improved measurability via segmentation. An advanced strategy is to create a separate landing page to segment each of your inbound traffic sources. Doing so simplifies your metrics and allows you to see which channels perform the best for your audience. Most important, it allows you to test different ideas, messaging, and content appropriate to the channel (e.g., social media widgets for your social media traffic) without affecting the conversion rate of your other channels. A good example would be if you were changing your page to improve email conversions. Doing so, however, might affect the quality score for your PPC campaign by knocking the message out of sync with your AdWords ads. Segmented landing pages avoid that problem. Landing Pages vs. Homepages To better understand those benefits, compare the Webtrends homepage (below) with the landing page shown above.

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DAy 4: AN INTRODuCTION TO LANDING PAGES

Take a look at your current marketing initiatives (PPC, email, banners, social media), and compare what they say with the first thing you see when arriving at your homepage.

The homepage is beautifully designed, but its also (necessarily) focused on multiple things. Five concepts are presented in the main promo area (via the rotating banner), four supplementary messages below that, and a total of 25 interaction points. All that makes for a great destination for branded organic search traffic, but its not as good as the landing page for driving traffic targeted on a single topic.

Day 4 Resources
Several landing-page tools are available for creating (and testing) landing pages. unbouncelets you easily create and A/B-test landing pages without help from IT. It is designed for theSMB market. (Disclaimer: The author is a co-founder.) LiveBall is an all-in-one platform that lets you create and test landing pages. It focuses on enterprise and agency clients. The Seven Deadly Sins of Landing Page Design (MarketingProfs PRO online seminar)

Day 4 Task
Check your message match. Take a look at your current marketing initiatives (PPC, email, banners, social media), and compare what they say with the first thing you see when arriving at your homepage. Start thinking about how landing pages could allow you to have multiple, simultaneous campaigns and still keep the messages aligned from ad to page.

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DAY 5: OPTIMIZATION AND TESTINGMAKING EVERY PAGE CONVERT BETTER

The most obvious business reason to start a testing and optimization process is the economics: Do it right, and youll get a higher return on your marketing spend. Its a no-brainer.
Once you start walking down Conversion Avenue, youll probably find that its a one-way streettheres no turning around, and the traffic flows much better in a single direction. Optimizing your landing pages can become an addictive pursuit of the perfectly converting page. Like unicorns and fairies, such a page doesnt actually exist; and though there is no magical pixie dust to sprinkle over your website, there are processes and techniques you can use to make the most of your conversion opportunities. The best part? No matter what your page is for, it can always convert better. The most obvious business reason to start a testing and optimization process is the economics: Do it right, and youll get a higher return on your marketing spend. Its a no-brainer. Here are two other reasons for testing: You can solve boardroom arguments. Weve all been theresitting around the boardroom table discussing a page on the website, or if youre advanced, a landing page. Opinion goes back and forth about the main headline, what color the button should be, or, horror of all design horrors, the dreaded request tomake the logo bigger. Its time to realize that internal democracy, experience, and the HIPPOs (Highest Paid Persons Opinion) really dont matter. Having a disagreement about a concept? Then test it. The customer is still always right. If you are serious about conversion optimization, lesson No. 1 is to listen to your users. Its a beautiful thing to turn the power over to your user base for conflict resolution. Say no to archaic subjective opinion! Say yes to learning something about your customers! Its true that you still need the expertise of your team to create a new version of the page to test; instead of debating whos right ahead of time, however, run an experiment and discuss the results. Youll learn which message or design works best for the people who truly pay your salary.

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DAY 5: OPTIMIzATION AND TESTINGMAKING EVERY PAGE CONVERT BETTER

Testing can be frustrating, but it is always funand almost always surprising.

Got an Idea? Test It, Start an Experiment The foundation of conversion rate optimization is whats called an experiment: You create competing page variants and simultaneously run traffic to each page to see which has the highest conversion rate. Note that you need to run enough traffic through the experiment and leave it running long enough to obtain statistically viable data (testing tools call this the confidence level). By allowing the test to run for at least a few weeks, you can remove daily variance from the statistics (perhaps people react differently to your weekend-Vegas-vacation ad during the week, compared with a Saturday). There are two primary testing methodologies: A/B testing. As the name implies, youre comparing two pages, A and B (although you can include as many pages in the experiment as desired A/B/C/D/E, etc.). The best performer is declared the winner or champion, and becomes the sole recipient of all traffic. In the following example, the position of a signup form is being tested with page B emerging as the winner. Usually, youd use A/B testing to test a single idea, wait for results, and choose the victor. That can be a slow process, but its very effective at optimizing individual areas of your page. (Testing can be frustrating, but it is always funand almost always surprising.)

(Image source: http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/abtesting.gif )

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DAY 5: OPTIMIzATION AND TESTINGMAKING EVERY PAGE CONVERT BETTER

What you should testa common question ultimately depends on the content and purpose of your page.

Multivariate testing (MVT). Multivariate testing is a more advanced method; multiple versions of your page are generated to facilitate comparison of most every possible combination of page variant. For instance, if you want to test two variations of the page title, call-to-action position, and form length, your test would produce 8 (23) or more variations depending on the specific method of MVT model being used. The impact of this approach is that you need a long time and large traffic volume to achieve valid test results. Accordingly, its used for pages receiving thousands of visitors.

Optimization is the process of repeating test experiments to improve their effectiveness. What Should You Test? What you should testa common questionultimately depends on the content and purpose of your page. Here are some basic elements that most people can test as a starting point: Page headline or title. This is where you state the unique selling proposition (USP) of your product/service/offer. Its the page element most open to interpretation by your visitors, as its usually what they see or read first. Therefore, it has a great impact on conversion. Remember, though, that it also has a big impact on your message match. So keep it tightly aligned with your ad copy. With or without video. Video has been shown to increase conversion rates as much as 80% (source:eyeviewdigital.com, pdf ). A classic A/B test is to add video to your page showing a demo or a face-to-face personalized message. Video auto-play on or off. Usability pros will know that turning on the auto-play feature is a bad practice that often makes people back out of a page, especially if they are in an environment sensitive to sound. However, this is where CCD (conversion-centered design) differs from UCD (user-centered design). You need to weigh the cost/benefit of any increased conversions against a potential negative brand impact. Call-to-action attributes. Another classic test is to play with the size, position, shape, color, and text of your CTA buttons. Different colors have different emotional meanings and can sometimes have an impact, although a more important aspect is the contrast between the color of

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DAY 5: OPTIMIzATION AND TESTINGMAKING EVERY PAGE CONVERT BETTER

When refining your message for the short version, simplify your copy using bullets and take the advice of usability guru Steve Krug for the main bulk of the content: Cut it in half, then throw away 50% of whats left.

make the text represent the outcome (what happens when you click, as we defined on day two). Number of form fields in a lead-capture form. Increase conversions by lowering the barrier to entry with fewer form fields. Required or nonrequired fields. Experiment with making different fields not required. Length of copy. Some products or services demand a long and exhaustive descriptionbut, generally, short and succinct is better. The only way to know for your own business is to try it. When refining your message for the short version, simplify your copy using bullets and take the advice of usability guru Steve Krug for the main bulk of content: Cut it in half, then throw away 50% of whats left.

Day 5 Resources
Testing tools:Google Website Optimizer,Unbounce,Visual Website Optimizer,Performable,Optimizely. 14 Ways to Improve Conversion Rates of Online Forms (MarketingProfs article)

Day 5 Task
Getting started. When deciding on what to test in your first (or any) experiment, it helps to have a checklist of common problems to rate your page in its current state. The five-minuteconversion scorecardcan help you identify any major holes in your page. Pick a page on your site (ideally a standalone landing page, but you can try it on any page as an exercise) and see what score you get. Any items left unchecked can be used as a to-do list for your first experiment.

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DAY 5: OPTIMIZATION AND TESTINGMAKING EVERY PAGE CONVERT BETTER

Use this conversion scorecard to gauge the effectiveness of your landing pages. All you have to do is answer 20 questions with yes or no.

Click image to enlarge and print

Keep this guide handy!

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MARKETINGPROFS RESOURCES
MarketingProfs: One site, thousands of FREE resources. Not a member? Join today to learn why more than 380,000 smart marketers rely on MarketingProfs to help them build better marketing programs. BASIC MEMBER RESOURCES
High-Performance Landing Pages that Boost Your Bottom Line SmartTools: High-Performance Landing Pages The Anatomy of a Conversion Path Marketing Resources: Web Copy Marketing Resources: Websites Marketing Resources: Landing Pages

PRO MEMBER RESOURCES

Website Conversion Success Stories11 case studies Take 10: Crank Up Conversions With Your Facebook Welcome Tab Advanced SEO Strategies for Higher Rankings and Conversions The Seven Deadly Sins of Landing Page Design Sure-Fire Tips for Increasing Your Web Conversions Demolish the Roadblocks on Your Website: Clearing a Path for Customer Action, Sales and Loyalty

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Oli Gardner is co-founder of Unbounce.comThe DIY Landing Page Platform. He writes about conversion-centered design, landing pages, and marketing theory. Reach him via email at [email protected] and on Twitter at @unbounce.

MARKETINGPROFS
MarketingProfs is a trusted source of actionable know-how on marketing applications of Facebook, Twitter, and other social media tools as well as traditional marketing topics like lead generation and email marketing. Our library of online seminars, our conferences, the discussion forum, our special reports, and more than 3,000 articles deliver the tools, templates, and tactics you need to quickly turn even the toughest marketing challenge into your own marketing success story. Not a member? Join today to learn why more than 380,000 smart marketers rely on MarketingProfs to help them build better marketing programs.

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