Surprisingly Simple Ways to Increase Conversions

A few days ago I got a sales pitch on LinkedIn.  Usually I can spot those a mile away, but this time I was caught blindsided.  I had a new friend request (or connection request to use the right terminology).  In the notes area of the request: I’d like to work with you!

I don’t know about you, but any time I get a request from an unknown name, I rack my brain trying to figure out if I have met them before.  In this case I hadn’t, but I did take the time to look at the profile.  I don’t want to advocate LinkedIn spam, but using requests wisely, with an earnest pitch can be effective.  Or at least get your prospects to open the door.

Less obvious conversion number 2: a form confirmation page, literally.   You work really hard to drive traffic to your webform.  And you are happy every time someone converts.  So what if you could follow up that conversion with a second offer.  Let’s say someone downloads your white paper.  How about following that up with a webinar invite landing page or ask about their interests.  The second form is short and sweet:  email address + 1-2 more qualification questions.  Instant progressive profiling.  And the worst thing that can happen?  They close the window and decline the offer.  But you’ll likely get a 2 for 1.

The last tip is a little harder for marketers.  We like to explain things, but being direct and getting to the point right away is a lot more effective.  I’ve been reviewing the “Which Test Won” blog, and it has a ton of useful info on A/B testing and successes.  One continuous theme is really how the most direct buttons, images and wording are more effective.  That might mean putting the button at the top, clearly spelling out terms and conditions, or listing out the rewards for a registration.

To put this in practice, here are a few ideas:

• Before “You’ll learn how to improve your business”
• After: You’ll receive a 5 step checklist of areas to improve”

• Before: “Signing up will give you a free consultation”
• After: “You’ll receive a 30 minute consultation”

• Before: ” Sign up now for a discount coupon”
• After: “Sign up now to receive 20% off your first purchase”

To recap, here are 3 easy ways to improve your conversions, and be sure to share your tips in the comments:

1. Connect with your prospects, literally or find ways to stand out in the crowd of pitches with a unique come on
2. Change your landing pages into 2 for 1 offers: change your confirmation pages to secondary landing pages
3. Be direct, really direct, with your offer copy

400% increase in landing page conversions with blogging + social networks

We tried something new to promote our latest webinar.  More social media.  Less email.  The results so far are pretty interesting.  These additional activities added approximately 90 minutes to the typical time used to promote events.  And replaced multiple email invites so overall the time spent was probably pretty close to the typical amount.  We found out that social media efforts drove up pre-registrations for our upcoming webinar!

We had about 10 days to promote this event.  Here was the plan in a nutshell:

• Create a registration landing page to capture visitors (outside of the actual meeting tool — Go to Webinar, our marketing automation tool is Pardot’s Prospect Insight)
• Send an email to our lists: interested in news and events or that topic
• Blog about the upcoming event, with the appropriate tags
• We already tweet our blog posts, so we will continue as normal (using Hootsuite to schedule tweets and the like)
• Post a link to our posts in relevant LinkedIn groups we are members of
• Schedule a couple extra tweets right before the event

Here are the stats to date.  I’ll post some final stats after the event.  But the ones so far are really encouraging.

1. Blog post stats:  the traffic was pretty similar to a normal post, but the click-through rate was much better than usual
2. 18% of blog page views were from direct from Twitter — this is pretty typical for us
3. 40% of the blog post views were from Linkedin discussions (this was the first time we used LinkedIn this way.  One link was removed from the news section, but no big deal)
4. Typical click through rate on posts is about 20%
5. The conversion rate for blog readers to registrations?  22%
6. The conversion rate of blog visitors > landing page visitors?  30%
7. Typical landing page conversion rate for us?  15%
8. The conversion rate for people who didn’t visit the blog, but went to the landing page was 17%
9. The overall conversion rate for the landing page was 31% (better)
10. People who clicked on the landing page from the blog registered 75% of the time
    
11. 59% of attendees came directly from reading our blog post

And if you ask me, that’s proof that social media leads to leads. 

Take a look, 75% of the people who read the blog and visited the registration page registered for the event.

And 20% of the post readers registered for the event.  I wish I could convert 20% of my website visitors. 

Only time will tell how much revenue is created, but for b2b marketers getting qualified prospects is half the battle.

I really shouldn’t have posted these stats and tips, because now LinkedIn might get clobbered with webinar invites. Hopefully people will try to stay relevant.  Unlike this discussion I saw earlier this week:  a design company posted a link to their latest project.

Huh?  What does this actually have to do with the topic at hand? Wouldn’t it have been more targeted to post the pitch for design services on the Technology Marketers group?  My 2 cents.

OK back to social media.  I think this is proof it works.  What’s your take?  Do you have any social event marketing and lead generation strategies?

Tradeshow Organizers: 5 ways to help us improve Tradeshow ROI

Last week I attended SC08 with our partner, SMC Networks.  Our DNF Security group headed to Vegas, with a portable server in tow at the Global Gaming Expo.  Last week was one of the prime tradeshow weeks, with a million other relevant tech shows happening at the same time (like Storage Decisions).  With the economic uncertainty, travel and marketing budgets are decreasing, and attendance is down so we are all looking for ways to get out there and dig up some new business.  Unfortunately it is getting more and more difficult to justify these large events, when we are all looking for more revenue now.

Here are a few ways to reduce your tradeshow expenditures, and still increase your awareness.

1.  Share exhibit space with your partners. You can exchange co-marketing funds leads or future space at another event.

2.  Use your local channel partners to help you staff your booth. Do you have resellers that are local, or a short drive from the show location?  Send fewer of your employees and offer your best partners the opportunity to work in the booth with you.  They’ll appreciate it, and you can bond in the booth.

3.  Get in on the partner pavillions for your strategic partners. These partner pavilions typically offer a lower cost of entry than standard space, and also help you get into a really high traffic area.  You’ll look well-aligned, and meet more people.

4.  Buy smaller spaces. And find more ways to present yourselves in other booths.  Exhibit with all of your partners, sending representatives in each booth, and your prospects will find you in multiple places!

Tradeshow Organizers, read here:

Dear large tradeshow organizer,

We are looking for ways to exhibit more shows, without killing our budgets.  Please help us out. Here are my requests, to reduce costs and help us with ROI.

1. Create standard discounted packages with carpet, electrical, lead scanners, vacuuming, etc so we can save money, and make our preparations easier.
2. Create more ways for us to interact with the attendees pre-show.  Do a mailing to your pre-registered ist on our behalf.  You will be sending out 10 or more mailing before the show.  How about section off your exhibitors into groups of 20 (or whatever depending on the size of the show) and list us in one of your emails.
3. Give us access to the pre-registered list, as part of our exhibitors fees and not a separate cost.
4. Create more smaller, lower cost space.  Quick and easy kiosks would be ideal.  You can pack in more exhibitors, and more exhibitors can afford your show.  Create multiple focus areas, on the main floor, near highly trafficked areas with these kiosks, for 10-15 lucky exhibitors.
5. Make your tradeshow maps (the online ones) easier to use.  I haven’t found one I like yet.  It takes way too many clicks to find a vendor.  And half of the time, when you zoom in enough to read the map and the actual exhibitor, it is really blurry.  I love Mondo Maps for my city.  I wish tradeshows had the same.

Thanks for your help organizers.

And here’s another post on tradeshow behavior.

When website visitor stalking goes horribly wrong…

So as you know, I am a supporter of marketing automation tools (and getting as much insight as possible on your web visitors and suspects).  And of course, as a marketer, I am always trying to learn more about what other markters are doing and best practices.  Etc, etc.  I read white papers, of solutions I have, solutions I’d love to have and stuff I’d never want.  You never know where the good tip will come from.

A few days/weeks ago I went to a website, and downloaded a white paper.  I filled out a webform, and went on my merry way.  Typically if I don’t want a phone call, I use a fake number.  I always use a real email address, but it might be a gmail address that forwards into my primary account, a personal account if it is more general info, or use a primary email account.  Last week I received a call from that vendor.

Here is a transcript:

Hi this is Joe Smith from Acme.  I am calling because someone from your company visited several pages on our website a few days ago.  They must have been looking for information on our technology and services.  Was hoping to talk to you to see who it was in your company looking for this info.  Hopefully you can point me in the right direction towards that person or maybe it was you.  I wanted to see what you were looking for.  Please call or email me, we can help you!

And then I got an email.  To an address I didn’t use to fill in the webform.  So this sales rep actually went out of his way on jigsaw or whatever other source to get my contact info.  And he could have just emailed me at the webform address.  Here is the email:

To follow-up on the phone call, someone from your company hit our site the other day - four pages – so I thought you might like a personal contact.

We specialize in solutions for other similar B2B companies. Our services help people like you do their jobs (just paraphrasing here).

If you would like to review what’s working for other companies in B2B technology, please see our blog (below), or visit the Resource Library on our Web site.   If you would like to talk about your ’09 plans, please don’t hesitate to contact me personally.

I hear this company actually uses an automation tool.  Similar to my choice, Pardot.  So knowing that this person clear uses a tool that could sync up my web history to filling out a form and my downloads, but he didn’t actually use this information.  ANd let’s pretend this intelligence wasn’t available to him (clearly it wasn’t), he could have cold called me in a completely different way with more success.  Instead he looked like a desperate stalker.

Here are my tips to using website visitor lists more effectively:

• Don’t specifically mention that you saw someone in our organization was viewing your site
• Don’t assume because someone was viewing your site they are asking for a phone call right away
• Don’t start the call with “someone from your company visited many pages on my website”
• Assume that if the visitor didn’t leave a clear way to contact them, they aren’t really ready for a hardcore pitch
• Mention that similar organizations to mine (the prospect) use this tool for XYZ, and you (the cold caller) thought you’d would be interested in: an upcoming webinar, white paper, subcription to RSS feed or whatever.  Something low risk, low commitment.
• Offer to send me information (even if it is the same info I already checked out) and schedule a follow up call.  You already know the prospect viewed it, so you’ll either get shot down because of lack of interest or the prospect will be interested and ready to move to the next step

What happened after this call and email, I just started laughing and decided to blog about it.  I probably won’t look into or investigate their services if I am in the market.  Clueless sales reps.

Tradeshows, tradeshows, tradeshows

Last week I was at a tradeshow. Technology tradeshows are interesting, especially for younger women working the booth. Here are a couple of things I have witnessed or experienced:

• Overhead at lunch: I went to ABC’s booth, great technology. Did you see brunette there? She was really cute and she really knew what she was talking about!
• Typical behavior: The challenger, the attendees sole purpose is to stump the booth worker with a difficult technical question. Typically has side bets with friends on whether or not the boothworker knows what they are talking about.
• “Thanks for your help honey, sweetie…..”
• “So what do you do at your company? Marketing, wow! You are really knowledgeable, I am impressed.”
• “I’ll wait to talk to that guy over there, thank you.”

Apparently it is hard for some people to believe that:

1. Not all women are for eye candy only
2. Some women are very technical
3. It is not acceptable to call women, in a professional environment, a term like honey (but I’ll make an exception for people with Southern accents…begrudgingly)

Hopefully, people will catch on soon enough, that this isn’t acceptable behavior. Until then I’ll try to be civil to these people with condescending attitudes.

ITToolbox: Stop Spamming Me. Now!

So I have already complained about this here and here.  Over the weekend, I got another message.  I think from one of their partners.  But I really don’t care.  I just don’t want their messages.

So I marked it as spam.  And I don’t do that to fellow B2B marketers.  We struggle just to get our messages delivered.  I always look.  Really hard.  For the unsubscribe button.

But for ITToolbox, I had done that twice.  And I didn’t give them permission to write me.  So there you have it.  They are spammers.  And I won’t be purchasing any services from them.  If they annoy me, they’ll surely annoy my prospects.

Be liked (an under-appreciated gift)

I came across this great list of 21 tips to be more likeable.

My favorites?

• Be approachable and available
• Speak clearly
• Mirror the other party in the conversation
• Provide tangible value

These are some guidelines that apply to marketing communicatiosn and content writing too. Let’s break these down one by one.

Being approachable and available. Can your website be more user-friendly? When people call your company is it easy to find the person or resource they are looking for? At a tradeshow, are all of your reps on their blackberries or engaging the passerbys? Where do you think you can make improvements? Have new employees call your company or navigate the website. Time them to see how long it takes to find what they are looking for. Now time yourself. If the difference is more the 50% you probably have roo to improve. Are there steps you can leave out. Can you add more consistent visual clues on your website? At a show, nominate someone to work the aisle and stop of many passerbys as possible. Who ever turns the most into suspects wins a prize. I notice that saying hi and asking a couple of neutral questions increases your traffic conversion by at 30%. Give it a try next time!

Speak clearly. In the tech industry, it is really easy to get caught up in industry jargon and marketing speak. I do this all the time. I am trying to cut back. So i recommend you start small. Use marketing-speak or jargon in the longer text elements, but use plain english in you bullet points, sidebars and lists. We gotta start somewhere. Hopefully with more practice, we can all cut down our content to the essence of the message.

Mirror the other person in the conversation.  This is a little less clear, but think about your target audience.  Do they prefer formal language, or informal communications.  How do they want to hear from you:  email, RSS, message boards, on the phone or something else.  Try to sync up your methods, style and language to what your targets like.

Provide Tangible Value. Our communications have to stand the test of time.  at least 5 minutes worth.  so think about your 3, or 5, or 7 key takeaways, and make them really obvious.  and these need to be pieces of info that people actually want or need.  If you  don’t have any key takeaways, you might want to reconsider creating that piece of content. 

Check out the original post, there are some great tips!

The winner in my marketing automation contest

So a few months ago (wow has it been that long!), I posted about my experiences looking for marketing automation software.

I ended up choosing Pardot for my needs.  I’ll do a series of posts on my experiences implementing Prospect Insight and using the software for the past 2-3 months.

First up, why did I choose this application instead of the others?  I eliminated quite a few choices since they didn’t offer any sort of no risk trial.  I didn’t need a completely functional trial, I wanted to feel out the interface.

I was looking for something that would handle the following:

1. Email lists and email communications
2. Integrate with my CRM application (salesforce)
3. Offer lead scoring/profiling
4. Create rules based automation (if you do this you get this)
5. Track web visits
6. Be a hosted application (SaaS)

When I uncovered Pardot, I contacted them via a webform, and they got back to me with in one business day.  (One vendor took 4 weeks to respond to my web request, too bad for them.)  My salesperson Derek Grant was great.  Really attentive and answered all of my questions.  (I ask a lot of questions!)  Even better I had a feature request, something minor, that he forwarded off to his support team.  And I wasn’t a customer.  I LOVE vendors that take inputs from all sources.

Pardot has an online demo available with dummy data.  They also have a 3 month money back guarantee.  This made the decision a no-brainer for us, they offered an extensive feature set meeting our needs, and great pricing.  Prospect Insight’s feature set was on par with Eloqua, but was easier to use and less expensive.  It was also a little more polished, cohesive, and consistent than some of the other, newer automation suites competing in this space.  A few of the applications I was considering seemed to be missing the “fit and finish” I expected for an application at the price point of $10K/year and up.

Once we started implementation, the team was great.  Our implementation manager, Adam Blitzer, has been really responsive and accessible.  We have exchanged a million IMs, and I have made a few suggestions that have even been implemented!  Great!  Anyway the team is really great and they really helped to make our implementation as easy as possible.  We are pretty complicated, we have a few different websites and identities. As a result we have spend a good deal of time figuring out how to route things back to its appropriate source and keep things simple for us.  Pardot’s team was really great at giving us advice on best practices, using the applications and some useful approaches.

These are a few of my initial thoughts, more coming soon.

Soliciting Feedback

Today’s post has a soundtrack. So I am one of those on the cusp Gen X/Gen Y people. What I hhave in common with Gen Y. I want feedback. And well expect feedback. Blogging is a great way to solicit feedback. You post, people comment.

So why is it so hard to get feedback from prospects on the sales process? I quiz my sales team all the time to find out what they are hearing in the field. Remarkably, only a handful of prospects ever explain why they went with another choice.

It might be too many dealings with old-school sales people.  You know, the people who were offended you didn’t by from them.  And they either come back with a counteroffer to address your concerns or decide to badmouth your choice and yell at you for choosing someone else.

Shoppers: I understand why you don’t necessarily want to give feedback to your salesperson, how would you feel comfortable providing feedback after the process?  Are you invested enough to respond to a web survey?  Would you really answer a phone call from customer service?

Do we need Yelp for B2B products?

Sales 2.0: Do we still need closers?

The description of a “good salesperson” used to include characteristics like terms like closer, persistent, aggressive, and money-motivated.

For complex sales, or solutions sales are closers necessary? Or is there something a little bit more subtle than a closer that can move from opportunity to revenue.

As I reflected in my other posts, sales people are no longer information gatekeepers, which really removes a whole skill set from the successful saleperson. I think today, a successful salesperson has a few of the following traits or roles in the sale:

1. gather information from the prospect on the project
2. analyze and assimilate the info into a solution
3. build rapport
4. guide the sales process
5. be persistent

Sometimes all of these skills can be present in a single person, other times a team sale is appropriate to fill all of these roles. I didn’t include a “closer” on my list. I don’t think customers will tolerate it any more.

Tolerate. I used this word on purpose. I think when the sales person was in charge of the information and the process, the prospect felt like they had to put up with a certain level of inconvenience or annoyance to get something. Now that prospect 2.0 is in charge, I think their level of tolerance has decreased.

The interesting thing is that new personality types have a higher likelihood of having successful sales careers with team selling models, and informed buyers. The trusted advisor types, the super persistent people, and the process-oriented analyticals can play a role in the sale.