This should be the big year where we all take a turn for the better. The ideas below are all scalable — each one could take as little as a day, or could be a long-term project. Take a moment to review your company's marketing strategy for 2010. With a little effort, you could make a big impact.

Re-assess Your Brand

Is your brand still on target? Does it resonate with prospects and your community like it did when you first created your logo, website, sales materials? Send an informal survey to colleagues, friends, family, customers, etc. Get feedback. User experience is key to good graphic design. PS. A recent analysis by Fred Reichheld, a Bain & Co. consultant and author of Loyalty Rules , found that even a 5% increase in customer retention rates results in a 25% to 95% increase in profits (depending on the business). It definitely pays off to keep customers happy enough to return.

SEO

You've heard it for years. Search Engine Optimization is the most tried and true way for constituents to find you online. It is well-known to some and downright mysterious to others. It starts with a keyword discovery process. You then apply those keywords to your website both in the copy and in code.

Metropolis Creative has successfully improved our SEO over the past year. Keywords were optimized on website, images and blog. Targeted search phrases were used in our outbound messaging (blog, twitter, and facebook) to link back to our site. With the help of good graphic design of keyword search and discover programs like Wordstream and Google Analytics, Metropolis was found at the top of most searches for our target niche.
PS Meta keywords, paid links and keyword stuffing are the practices that worked in 90's and early 2000's. Search engine algorithms are changing and if you stick to the outdated strategies, then one day your site may no longer rank in the previous postition and greatly decrease your rankings.

Landing Pages

Getting traffic to your site isn't very helpful unless you can convert those visitors into customers. Traffic is driven to your site via channels. It could be a google search term, or it could be an email that you send out. It could be a keyword linked from a blog post that was picked up by another website, or mentioned in a social media post. The point is, you control the link to your web site, so link them to a page that makes sense. Minimize distractions here. Make a simple and obvious point, and give them the tool to contact you or make that purchase. The simpler, the better. A testimonial doesn't hurt. And BTW — plug some keywords on this page too (for Google).

Test, Test, Test!

There's no excuse not to use different versions of landing pages, email campaigns, and banner ads (among other things.) Its as easy as trying two or more versions and looking at the results. Learn from your successes and start over — every time. You don't have to create two entirely different pieces, just tweak the headlines, reverse the order of the content, change the subject line. You have a golden opportunity to learn what works best every time to send a message out. Use it.

Get Social

Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé…In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen. What are you using for social media? Use it for communicating, relationship building, reach, and even SEO. Build relationships with people who share interests with you. Then those people will tell others. It's relatively easy to maintain existing relationships with occasional messages, useful resource links, and reciprocal comments. The culture of social media fosters information sharing. If you post something useful or interesting, it will be shared and re-shared. If you include keywords in your post that link back to your website, it will help your SEO standings.

Somethings don't change — they just get better. With a little work, you can take a huge step forward in improving your brand, visibility, and conversions. Post a comment or question and I'd be happy to help you get started.

Labels: boston web design, brand identity, brand process, call to action, conversion optimization, landing page design, search engine optimization, SEO

In developing a landing page for an online marketing campaign, there are five key questions that you need to ask (and answer) in order to design conversion friendly landing pages:

1. Where did the traffic come from?

This one is key. You’ll definitely want to craft two different landing pages for two different channels. Think about the difference in intent between these two visitors:

Clicked a Display Ad — This visitor responded to an advertisement on a website they were visiting. While you have some idea about their interests based on where you placed your ad, you have limited visibility as to who they are or what they want. Additionally, by clicking on your ad they’re showing a degree of interest in your ad’s creative, but your offering may or may not be something they have a pressing and active need for. The lesson here is to be sure to qualify with your display creative (explain who you are and what you’re offering as best you can) and to be sure that your landing page copy speaks specifically to that offer.
Clicked on a Highly Specific PPC Ad — This visitor has a specific need or intent; you want to be sure to speak to the pain point or question revealed by their search query in creating your landing page copy.

2. What did the last place look like?

In the event that you're launching an Email, display, TV, or print campaign, be sure to maintain consistency between the creative and the landing page. If your display ad used your company logo and colors, your landing page should too. If the colors in your magazine ad are subtle and understated, make sure you do the same on the page you send those readers to. This gives people an instant sense that they're in the right place, and makes them more likely to follow through with the action they intended to take in clicking your ad or typing in the URL you gave them.

3. What was the visitor promised?

What did your campaign say the visitor would get? Was it a white paper? If so, be sure to deliver that offer front and center. This seems intuitive but often landing page designs get cluttered with stock offers, too much emphasis on company logos or the navigation from the rest of your site: your goal here is to get the visitor to the offer he or she expressed interest in as soon as possible.

4. What do they expect?

This is a sort of amalgamation of the last two questions. One of the most important things you can do in designing a landing page is to get into the visitor's head. What are the visitor's expectations? What is the environment that they came from? What expectations did your ad create? What is their typical expectation with this type of offer?

5. How can you get them to take action?

This, of course, is the most important question. Sometimes designing the most aesthetically appealing landing page isn't the most conversion-oriented option, and you may have to sacrifice form for function. Using tools like ClickTale, Crazy Egg, and others you can test, monitor and find out which landing page layouts are working (and which ones aren't).

By listening to and trying to think like your visitors and potential customers, you'll start to ask and answer the right questions, which lead to better converting landing page design.

Tom Demers is the Director of Marketing for WordStream, a software manufacturer offering Keyword Management solutions for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO). Tom is a frequent contributor to the WordStream blog where he discusses subjects like creating landing pages that work for both PPC and SEO.

Labels: display ad conversion, landing page design, online marketing campaign

Sound too good to be true? Search Engine marketing genius Sandra Niehaus of Closed Loop Marketing used a great illustration in her Conversion Optimization presentation. Basically, instead of pouring more money to create more hits on your web site, why not just widen the net in which you use to capture your leads? By focusing on how you capture and convert leads, you can make your marketing engine a lot more efficient. (You should also be carefully analyzing your keywords to determine which ones are working the best for you, but that is a topic for another post.)

Let's talk about Landing Page Design. They are commonly used for e-blasts and online advertising, but they can also be useful for natural searches as well. Here are 5 things often overlooked on a landing page design:

1) You need a good product or service. Identify your USP (Unique selling proposition) and exploit it. If you don't have anything unique or compelling, then you're going to have a hard time selling.

2) Say it quickly and concisely. Pretend for a second that your target market is skeptical and doesn't care about you or your service. (Hard to comprehend, I know.) State your business - maybe in a set of bullets? You can always link to "more info." Copyblogger has some great writing tips here.

3) Prove it. You've got an amazing product or service? Prove it with testimonials (with a photo?), statistics from leaders like Forrester Research, or even a mini case study.

4) Call to action. Provide multiple, easy ways to contact you. Phone numbers, emails, and a mini form. Capture their info! How about an incentive or offer with that form (Free trial or a free whitepaper download? Maybe a limited time discount code?)

5) Test. Try using a couple of landing page designs. In just a few days, you'll see one working better than the other. Figure out why, adjust the design, and test again. You are your own best research firm.

Remember: use your landing page real estate wisely. You've got a lot to say? Tough. Your viewer doesn't want a lot to read. I think a viewer should be able to comprehend your offer in less than 4 seconds, or they're lost. Some up-front investment in a good landing page design can go a long way. Here are a few more tips posted on Articlesbase.

Are your landing pages too wordy? How interactive are they? What have you found to work really well? I'd love to hear some of your ideas.

Labels: adwords, conversion optimization, landing page design, landing pages, online marketing, search engine marketing