The White House landing page is the page you see when you visit their site (for the first time). They use a so-called welcome gate to direct new visitors to the landing page.
The goal is to get people to join their emailing list.
And to be honest, the page is quite okay. But it could be better and here are some ways they could increase their conversion.
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Dov Gordon helps businesses attract a steady and predictable flow of new customers.
This is a part of the Secrets of The Marketing Experts interview series.
The chain of marketing starts with attracting customers. And that’s exactly what Dov Gordon helps businesses do.
Dov Gordon is a respected marketing consultant whom even other marketing experts go to for advice. If you don’t know him already, you will remember him after this interview.
In the interview Dov shares his approach that he uses with all his clients; three steps that are sure to help every business.
So, if you want a steady and predictable flow of new customers, check this 25 minute video interview…
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The three strategies to email marketing can all work well, if your copy is good. photo: Glen Edelson
Email marketing has the highest response rate out of any marketing method.
Does that mean spamming works? Well, someone has to buy something from spammers, otherwise they’d become extinct.
But there’s spamming, and then there’s quality direct email marketing.
The latter is one of the best strategies to market B-2-B products and services, but B-2-C businesses can learn a lot from it too.
It might not be right for you. Maybe content email marketing works better for your business, but understanding the principles behind the other two email strategies will make a huge difference to your success.
So, here are the three strategies to email marketing, how to figure out which is best for your business, and how to succeed with each.
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Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation by Sally HogsheadEver wondered how to capture people’s attention completely? Or why you sometimes lose track of time?
The answer to both is fascination.
What is it? Fascination is powerful attraction that captures your attention and focus.
Why should you care?
Fascination is the best tool you have to get your message heard.
If you want to be good at copywriting, you need to understand how to fascinate people.
If you want to write captivating headlines, you need to make them fascinating.
If you want to be fascinating in your personal life or at work, you need to understand the seven triggers.
But the one question remains: What is fascinating and how do you write/become more fascinating?
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You can’t always hit the bulls-eye, but you’ll always do fine with these three landing page principles. photo: ##Erika**
Landing pages are a cornerstone of online marketing, but sometimes even large companies forget how to build effective landing pages.
Stockmann is the best known and most prestigious department store in Finland. They’ve been around for 125 years and their special sale is an event people wait almost religiously.
Their marketing is usually really good, but the other day I stumbled onto their opt-in email list landing page. All the three basic elements of an effective landing page were wrong.
I could not believe they could go so wrong with their marketing. But so does many other major companies all around the world.
If you follow these three basic guidelines, you’re landing page will get at least an average conversion. But if you forget even one of these basics, your conversion will sink.
Almost every store has a sale going on now. And every customer knows to expect sale prices.
This is the time of the year when all the old products are dumped on people looking for bargains. Quality seems to be irrelevant to many, as is the necessity of the product they buy.
“You find what you’re looking for” is one of my favorite sayings. And it’s clearly demonstrated by millions of people during the few weeks after Christmas.
You look for “something”, so you find “something”. When you don’t have any particular need you’re trying to fill when shopping, you’re likely to buy just to have fun.
There’s nothing wrong with buying just for the fun of it. So, why should you as a sales person think so? This is the easiest time of the year to sell any consumer goods.
More than ever concentrate on the time constraint in your sales pitches. Talk about the sale price. And most importantly induce emotions.
All purchases are emotional, but some more than others. When you’re looking for a bargain, you’re looking for something that will make you feel good.
So, sell the good feeling more than anything else. How do you do that? Here are a couple of ideas.
Since everyone’s wallpapering their store’s with sale posters, you should do something else as well. You may get customers in with those posters, but many will walk by because they’re not special.
Use your imagination with store windows to make everyone stop at your store. Offer something people don’t normally get. A stand-up comedian could be a great way to attract customers in. If that’s not appropriate for your business, then do something else. Just make the sale season about something more than bargains.
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I received a call from my cell phone operator today. During the call I nearly fell from the chair I was sitting on. I genuinely had to use all my will power not to burst out laughing.
If I have spare time, I do sometimes listen to what telephone marketers are selling. I never buy anything from them, but it’s interesting to hear their attempts of selling to me. This time I had the time to listen but I was also interested to hear what they had to sell. I’m already their customer so I expected them to make a reasonable offer. In the end they cut my phone bill in half making it worth my time.
So, what made this call so funny. The guy used words like, “umm”, “wait”, “I can’t remember”, “hold on”, “ou”, etc. almost as much as all other words combined. Really. I enjoy exaggeration, but I don’t need it in this case. The guy was completely lost. Maybe I was his very first call and his manager was breathing down his neck, but still it wasn’t good.
The only reason I listened to him for more than five seconds, was that I made the decision to listen before answering the phone. I haven’t listened to telephone marketers in a long time and I was curious to hear if they had learnt something. No, they haven’t…
Selling over the phone follows the same rules as all selling. But some serious limitations apply. It’s easy for the prospect to just hang up. Obviously you can tell a sales person in a store you’re not interested, but it’s not nearly as easy as it is to end a phone call.
Most important difference is that during a phone call your voice is all you have. Face-to-face you can say “umm” without sounding like a moron, because you can compensate with everything else you do. But over the phone your voice and words are you. When you say “umm” you are “umm”.
People expect telephone marketers to be annoying. So, they get annoyed the instant they understand they’re getting a call from one. You have no more than a couple of seconds to justify your call. Or the prospect will decide not to buy, regardless of what you have to sell. You will still have a slight chance of selling to them, but it’s a stretch.
So, the opening is the key. There are a few ways you can avoid prompting a hang up.
There are six rules to how you should handle the actual conversation.
In other words: if something happens then something else happens. If it takes more than a second to understand, your offer is too complicated to be sold over the phone. Anything more than a simple “yes” is too much to ask over the phone.If you mumble or use complicated expressions during a phone call, your prospect cannot understand you. You need to articulate clearly and ask understandable questions. Otherwise understanding you becomes a chore. Nobody wants to work to understand what a telephone marketer is saying to them.
I’d like to hear what you think about telephone marketers. Do you hate them? Do you buy from them? How would you sell over the phone? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Tv advertisements are the easiest way to spend your marketing budget. Even if you need to spend $10 million it’s easy with a TV advertisement. Just call an advertising agency and tell them you have $10 million to spend for advertising. They’ll take care of it in no time. But they wouldn’t have a job unless it was effective, right? Well I’m saying TV advertising is a waste of money.
A TV advertisement works only if there’s someone watching it. During the commercial breaks people run off to the refrigerator or the toilet. And those who stay at their couch don’t want to see the commercials. So, they’re not really paying attention. Every advertiser knows this and yet they spend millions of dollars into content no one wants to see.
The idea, as all the same people would point out, is to create familiarity. People intuitively believe a familiar product is superior to a strange one. So, when you go shopping and see a line of cereals you like the one you’ve seen before. This works even if you don’t remember seeing the ad. So, TV advertising can work because of the benefits of branding. And for a select few it’s effective (see a list later in this post).
Calculating the ROI (Return On Investment) for advertising is difficult if not impossible. And in my opinion you shouldn’t even try to calculate the ROI for marketing (I’ll explain why you shouldn’t calculate the ROI of marketing in another post). But for the sake of this post I’ll use the idea of ROI to demonstrate the idea.
Lets say you spend a million dollars for an ad. 10 million people watch TV when it’s aired. You only spent $0.1 per viewer! So, 10 million people buy your product and you make $1 profit from each purchase. You just made a profit of $9 million! A 900% ROI! Unfortunately that’s not realistic and everybody knows it. Often only a few percent of the people watching are potential customers (why have I seen a thousand tampon commercials?). And only a few percent of those will actually buy your product. Here’s how it changes the calculation:
The 5% may be too pessimistic so lets make it more promising. Lets say 20% of the people who actually see your ad are potential customers. And 20% of them buy your product. Your ROI is still -60%. You lost $0.6 million. To break even the percentages should be over 30%. For some products like cereals that’s possible, but if there are 5 cereal commercials back to back they can’t all get 35% conversion.
As I said earlier there are situations where TV advertising can create a good ROI. But some of these conditions always need to be met:
As compelling as the examples may sound, they’re not thought through. It’s true the ROI could be positive (you make a profit from your investment). But you’re still wasting your money! Or at least you should think about a few more aspects.
So in short: spending your TV advertising budget in content marketing usually creates a better ROI. That’s because TV advertising can never be as focused and targeted as online marketing. But to be perfectly honest I do believe TV advertising isn’t always a waste of your money. But the odds are on my side: only a small percentage of the readers of this post can justify a TV advertising campaign worth $10 million. Or am I wrong?
I’d love to hear what you think about TV advertisements. Do you pay attention to the commercials? Would you use TV advertising with your product and why? Do you believe a TV campaign is more effective than a content marketing campaign? Share your thoughts in the comments below.