by Marcus Ledbetter | Feb 25, 2015 | Case Study, Inbound Marketing, The Gravity Strategy, Web Marketing
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If you read our recent post Updating A Website: 23 Detailed Ideas, you noticed one great way to increase conversions on your site is to add “Calls To Action” (#19).
A Call-To-Action (CTA) is a link in the form of a prominent visual with action words. They usually come in the form of a button.
It is a good idea to go through your website periodically and add CTAs. You want to make it very obvious to the viewer what it is that you want her to do.
OK, that sounds like it might work, but does it really get more “conversions”? Do more people actually click on CTAs than regular hypertext links?
YES.
Measuring The Impact Of Calls To Action
We recently made some changes to one of our most popular blog posts outlining HubSpot alternatives.
We measured the clicks on the links to Hatchbuck and combined that with the actual traffic the page got over a month and a half to get the Click-Thru-Rate for each type of link.
The first three weeks we just used a regular old hyperlink — “Hatcbuck”– in the body text of the blog post. The second three weeks we removed the regular link and added two hyperlinks with action text — “Check Out Hatchbuck Now”. The last three weeks we changed the two hyperlinks to CTAs.
Here is the final version of the CTA . . .
And the results.
by Marcus Ledbetter | Jan 20, 2015 | Inbound Marketing, The Gravity Strategy, Web Marketing
This post is about growing your subscriber base and making the world a better place at the same time. I promise. But I’m going to start off in a weird place and bring you around to it.
Bare (spelling intentional) with me.
Did you know that Winston Churchill slept naked? If you have an active imagination, I suggest keeping the covers on him.
Did you know that he started off his day by reading newspapers for two hours in his bed? Don’t worry. By now, he’s had a bath and is wearing a blue velvet dressing gown. Feel free to remove the covers.
You can pull both of those tidbits out at the next office party, but only one is relevant to this post. Five gold stars if you guess which is which.
I think the world would be a better place if there were more Churchills in it. I’m referring to his active, prioritized content consumption, not his sleeping habits. Hope you’re reading this, Dad.
As content creators, we want people to be able to consume our content efficiently and regularly. I’ve noticed a lot of big brands and inbound marketing firms are pushing email subscriptions hard. But is that the best thing for the subscriber? Most inboxes are out of control and we’re just adding to that craziness when we presume that our content needs to be there right next to the urgent email from the boss.
Did you know that Churchill handled correspondence AFTER he poured through the newspapers? Yep. After his two hours with the papers, he started replying to mail.
He had separation between content consumption and correspondence. He put content consumption first and that’s not a bad idea. We’re not doing our readers any favors by mixing the two. They’ll eventually get tired of it.
On Inefficiency & Inbox Pit Bulls
“But social media is volatile and tricky, so email is the best option, right?”
This is how it usually goes for me: I tend to get excited about a site and I subscribe by email. I read the first few emails, then lose interest or they misfire with something that doesn’t interest me. I bail.
I guard my inbox like a pit bull. I am a ruthless unsubscriber, an accomplished opt-out-er.
Facebook jerks companies around and Twitter may be the most inefficient tool ever hatched from the bespeckled shell of the human mind. See what I did with Twitter’s bird and the shell analogy? Didn’t want that to fly by without you noticing. Winston would be so proud he’d have goose bumps all over his (thankfully) velvet-robed body.
So, we’re stuck, aren’t we? Not quite.
I happen to know these regrettably unforgettable facts about Churchill because of Feedly, an elegant RSS reader. When Google Reader went down a couple of years ago, I switched to Feedly to subscribe to marketing blogs, Johnson City news, lifestyle & worldview sites, Georgia Bulldogs news, and more. The Churchill trivia was included in a post on The Art Of Manliness which is in my lifestyle section on Feedly. Check out The Churchill School Of Adulthood – Lesson 2: Establish A Daily Routine.
I add to my Feedly feed and edit it regularly. It is now my favorite place on the web. It’s a thing of beauty. It really is a pleasing presentation with useful controls. My morning routine includes a few minutes with Feedly as soon as I get to the office.
Giving RSS CPR
So how do you go about promoting RSS subscriptions through a site like Feedly?
You provide it as an option right beside email and social media subscriptions. Create a Landing Page which explains a little about Feedly with a link to the site, add a Call To Action to your sidebar with a link to the landing page, and you’re in business.
And you can go a step further. We recently posted an infographic featuring writing style stats from some great marketing bloggers. In the post, we created a downloadable OPML file that included subscriptions to those bloggers and our blog, and suggested that readers upload it to Feedly.
People won’t use Feedly if they don’t get a good base of subscriptions to look through, right from the start. By creating a subscription file which includes ours and lots of other blogs, we get folks off on the right foot.
Let’s be honest. Email is intrusive and social media is inefficient. Feedly is a better option for long-term content consumption. Let’s get folks who already use Feedly to subscribe to us, and get new folks hooked on it. Your fans will love you for the content you create and for getting them hooked on a great tool. The world will be a better place.
If Churchill were still alive (and clothed, you’re welcome), he would add one more word to his famous quote.
“Never, never, never give up Feedly.”
by Marcus Ledbetter | Jul 29, 2013 | Inbound Marketing, SEO, SEO Checklist, SEO for Small Business, SEOMoz, The Gravity Strategy
You have probably heard from friends, advisors, colleagues and many others – that the name of the game for succeeding online is having great search engine visibility. They are correct! But how do you make sure your website shows up in search engines for certain keywords? The solution you will hear from most is Search Engine Optimization, or SEO as it is commonly called. Many firms have built their entire business around providing SEO for small business, charging hundreds, or sometimes thousands of dollars a month to deliver their clients top search results. But what it is, exactly, these SEO firms do to your site? Is it some kind of top-secret magic? We will give you a glimpse into what these firms do, and also what YOU can do for even better search engine performance. (more…)
by Marcus Ledbetter | May 7, 2013 | Google, Marketing Managers, Marketing ROI, SEO for Small Business, The Gravity Strategy, Web Marketing, yellow pages
So what does Bernie Madoff have in common with the yellow pages? They both represent VERY bad investments. That may sound harsh, but follow me here and I will show you why. The yellow pages sales tactics have adapted to include some fairly modern buzzwords like SEO, landing pages, etc. Do not be fooled. Yellow pages exist for one reason – to make money selling real estate in a big fat book that nobody looks at anymore. (more…)
by Marcus Ledbetter | Apr 22, 2013 | Marketing Managers, Marketing ROI, The Gravity Strategy, Web Marketing
I read a study a few months ago about how hard it is to sell the CEO of a company on the business value of marketing. As someone who has been in the marketing industry for over 15 years now, my initial reaction was “absolutely – I can understand that!”. Those of us in the industry are always passionate about branding, awareness, market position, etc. But at the end of the day – it’s always hard to put a hard value on those things. When the CEO or CFO of a company is reviewing the budget for the upcoming year – they can easily look at production departments and compare what they spend to how much is produced. This is ROI – and these three little letters will get the attention of a company leader faster than just about anything! Marketing ROI is the missing piece of the puzzle to get your leaders excited about marketing and willing to divert more budget to the marketing department. (more…)
by Marcus Ledbetter | Apr 19, 2013 | Inbound Marketing, Marketing Managers, Marketing ROI, The Gravity Strategy
As marketing professionals, we groan every time we have to tell management how much this tv spot or that display ad costs. They are expensive and we know that a) we can’t really measure the success of the ad and show marketing ROI, and b) once the ad is gone, it is gone! This is not the case with content. Unlike various forms of advertisement that either disappear into the airwaves or get thrown out in the recycling bin, online sticks around. Not only does it stick around, it actively works to get your message in front of anyone that happens to be searching for it. (more…)
