Sunday, January 31, 2016
'Teleadictas' at Risk for Worse Menopausal Symptoms
Long-Term Plavix Tx Linked to ACS Risk
Adding Carfilzomib to Myeloma Salvage Boosts Response Rate (CME/CE)
RheumNow: Risk of MS With TNF Inhibitor Therapy
In 'No Más Bebés,' A 'Perfect Storm' Led To Unwanted Sterilizations For Many Latinas
About 40 years ago, Consuelo Hermosillo went to the hospital for an emergency cesarean section. Against her will, she left unable to have more children.
Feds Hopeful Hispanics Will Respond As Open Enrollment Comes To A Close
Sunday January 31st is the deadline in most states to buy health insurance through the Affordable Care Act. Federal officials are reaching out to those previously uninsured, with a focus on Hispanics.
Weight Loss Improves Function and Knee OA Pain (CME/CE)
Friday, January 29, 2016
MarketingZoom Launches Site For Buying And Selling Marketing
Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.
The Doctor's Computer Will Email You Now
Though it may sound like an oxymoron, "automating empathy" is becoming a catchphrase in health care. The goal is to help doctors engage with patients cheaply and with minimal effort. Does it work?
Marketing Day: New Snapchat Feature, Google’s AMP Gets Analytics & Microsoft’s Earnings Report
Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.
#SocialSkim: Twitter's Darkest Days, Facebook's New Like Buttons, Plus More Stories in This Week's Roundup
Online Marketing News: Facebook Optimizes Audiences, Bots Cost Billions, Gentrified Google Guidelines
10 Types of Visual Content Your Brand Should Be Creating Right Now [Infographic] – Over the past few years, we've seen content become more visual. Marketers have experimented with infographics, videos, and more — and they've made plans to keep it up this year. To help narrow your focus, check on this infographic from Canva below. From quote cards to infographics, this helpful list is designed to inspire your next visual project. Canva
Facebook Now Tracks Call-to-Action Clicks via ‘Actions on Page’ Insights Tab – Facebook is giving page owners a deeper understanding into how active those call-to-action buttons are. SocialTimes
Parents Spend 1.3 Times More Time on Facebook Than Non-Parents (Study) – Mobile devices have become vital tools for parents, according to a new study by Facebook IQ. The social network’s research arm interviewed parents aged 25 through 65 of infants, toddlers, adolescents and teens in eight markets–Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Mexico, Spain, U.K. and U.S.—analyzing Facebook and Instagram data with help from Ipsos MediaCT and Sound Research. Facebook
Study: Sophisticated Bots Outwitting Marketers, Will Cost $7.2 Billion In 2016 – Ad fraud is a major problem in digital advertising that results in billions of dollars in annual losses to marketers. While marketers are winning the battle against “basic bots,” they’re losing against more sophisticated bots, according to a new study and report from White Ops and the Association of National Advertisers (ANA). Marketing Land
Report: 60% of Users Unwilling to Vacation Without Mobile Device – Expedia and Egencia, Expedia’s business travel brand, have revealed the results of the Expedia / Egencia Mobile Index, which measured the behaviors and preferences of mobile users while traveling. The study was conducted by Northstar, and gathered data from 9,642 travelers from 19 countries. SocialTimes
Survey: Under 40 Percent Start A “Local Search” With A Search Engine – What we widely call “local search” is only partly about search engines. Finding local content and making offline purchase decisions is a multifaceted process that involves several categories of information and devices. That’s according a new survey and report from IDC and YP. Search Engine Land
The 2016 Facebook Awards is Now Accepting Entries – It’s award season and The Facebook Awards is now welcoming submissions. Formerly the Facebook Studio Awards, the newly-dubbed Facebook Awards launched in 2012 to honor the most creative work on Facebook and, starting in 2015, on Instagram too. Facebook
Report: 61% of Fortune 500 CEOs Have No Social Media Presence – Social media adoption is sluggish among Fortune 500 CEOs; 61 percent are not active on any of the major social networks. Domo found that 195 of the CEOs on the list are active on at least one of the six major networks — Facebook, Twitter, G+, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube — but none are active across all six. SocialTimes
Facebook Introduces Audience Optimization for Publishers – This week, we’re launching Audience Optimization, an organic targeting tool to help publishers reach and engage their audiences on Facebook and better understand the interests of people clicking on their posts. This tool lets you improve the relevancy of your post by indicating who is most likely to engage with it, which can increase engagement at both the post and Page level. Facebook
Study: Quality Backlinks & Comprehensive Content Are Still Biggest Factors In Google Rankings – A new study broke down 1 million Google results. The results show that links & content had the highest correlation with a low Google position. Search Engine Land
Google Updates The General Guidelines Section Of Their Webmaster Guidelines – Google has quietly updated their Webmaster Guidelines document, which is one of the first places webmasters should go when learning about SEO best practices and dos and don’ts. Google
Facebook Audience Network Adds Support for Mobile Web – Facebook announced that its Facebook Audience Network mobile ad network added support for the mobile Web. The social network officially introduced Facebook Audience Network at F8 in April 2014, and it revealed earlier this month that the ad network reached a $1 billion annual run rate during the fourth quarter of 2015. SocialTimes
From our Online Marketing Community:
In response to 8 Digital Marketing Events Where You Can Learn, Connect and Grow in 2016, Thomas Flannagan said, "Nice events! I'll for sure visit stated webinars, thanx for the info!"
On How to Write for People: 5 Ways to Create Connections & Personality in Your Content Marketing Efforts, annhandley shared, "LOL to being your "spirit animal." 
IQ Loss Cut With Proton Therapy for Brain Tumors (CME/CE)
What Lies Ahead for Social Media in 2016
If it's Friday it must be Friday Five time, our weekly roundup of five stories from one specific topic. This week it's Social Media.
Examining the Current State of Social Marketing (Infographic)
Social media may be an integrated and essential part of most marketing strategies, but measuring the return on the investment and taking action based on social media insights still presents a challenge to many marketing teams. An infographic from Morrison Foerster examines the current landscape of social marketing, and the challenges marketers still face.
Read the full story on Adweek.
How Social Media Marketing Is Set to Change in 2016
Hard to believe the first month of 2016 is nearly over (didn’t it just begin?) and even as I type this, tactics, strategies and options in the world of social media are changing. I know as a small business owner you’re not only on the lookout for the most effective use of your digital marketing dollars, you’re also looking to easily digest the latest offerings to see how they may benefit you. Here is a breakdown on what to expect in 2016.
Read the full story on Business 2 Community.
10 ways brands are using social media marketing for good
Using social platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook to promote philanthropic content is an effective way to engage consumers and humanize your brand.
Asking questions, running contests, sharing pictures, promoting products and services; there are many ways for brands to attract attention on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and the like. Included among this list of ways to get people to sit up and take notice on social media is to show the softer side of your brand and declare your support of a worthy charitable organization.
Read the full story on ClickZ.
The Impact of Big Data on Social Media Marketing Strategies
The amount of information now available to crunch and parse in the service of analyzing absolutely anything is massive—and growing every second. In the face of this sheer overwhelm of data, an individual business owner or social media marketer can feel powerless to make any sense of it, let alone productive use of it. But as with any shift in the tide or evolutionary leap, a smart adjusting of strategy can help even the smallest of small fries to compete with the big guns and harness this unwieldy data deluge to work for them.
Read the full story on Tech.co.
The 5-Minute Social Media Competitive Analysis
We’ve talked about why you should monitor your competitor’s marketing, and how to set up a monitoring dashboard to do so. But really, all that data you’re collecting on competitors is worthless if you don’t know what to do with it. Smart data needs to lead to smart decisions.
And that means doing more than just hoarding competitor mentions in your dashboard. You need to sit down, dig in, and get analytical. Monitoring your competitors isn’t enough—you need to sit down and analyze the data.
Read the full story on Search Engine Journal.
Social media has of course become a ubiquitous part of every marketer's arsenal. To understand how to fully leverage the power of social media download the Modern Marketing Essentials Guide to Social Marketing.
How Can We Prepare For A Graceful Death?
At the end of our lives, what do we most wish for? BJ Miller is a palliative care physician who thinks about how to create a dignified, graceful end of life for his patients.
'The Breast Gets Lost After Delivery': What We Heard This Week
Get More From Landing Pages: 6 Ways to Use Them More Effectively
It’s the aim of most marketing and sales efforts:
Conversion.
All your work is designed to get visitors, leads, and even customers to take the next step.
Getting them more involved with your brand and products is necessary to drive sales.
There are obviously many ways of doing this. Blog posts, emails, e-books, and more.
But there’s one option that is almost always better at converting traffic to the next step:
Landing pages.
A landing page has a single goal, which you define. It might be to sign up to an email list, buy a product, or create an account for your site.
Everything on the page is focused on achieving that goal, which is why they are more effective than other types of content.
But the term landing page is still pretty broad.
There are actually many different types of landing pages—each is ideal for a different situation in a different business.
If you understand what each type of landing page consists of, why it’s effective in specific situations, and how to make them, you’ll be able to use the right landing page for the right job.
And that’s exactly what I’m going to show you.
By the end of this post, you’ll know what the 6 highest converting landing pages are, when to use them, and how to make them.
1. Product not quite ready? Use a “Coming soon” landing page
One big mistake that you can make is to not promote a product ahead of time.
Just because a product isn’t fully developed doesn’t mean that people wouldn’t want to hear about it and get notified when it's ready.
If your product presents a unique solution, your target audience is going to do whatever they can to get their hands on it, whether it’s now or in the near future.
Now, if you promote a product before it’s ready, you can’t send people to a sales page that doesn’t exist.
Instead, you should send them to a “coming soon” landing page.
These are becoming increasingly popular as companies recognize how effective they can be.
Essentially, you want to create a simple landing page that makes it clear that the product is coming soon and that allows the visitor to opt in to get updates on the product.
This way, the marketing team isn’t just twiddling their thumbs while the product guys are at work.
Additionally, this type of landing page gives you really good validation.
If you’re getting terrible conversion rates from targeted traffic, then no one is interested in the product. You can save yourself a lot of time and money by either scrapping the product or taking it in a different direction.
The other benefit is a bit more obvious: you have a list of qualified leads.
When you do launch your product, it won’t be to an empty room. You can get your first wave of orders almost immediately, which will give you the feedback you need to refine the product.
Keys to an effective "coming soon" page: This type of landing page isn’t terribly difficult to create, but you still need to make sure you include all the most important elements.
I’m about to go over all the elements with you. They should all be included when possible, although not in any specific order.
First is the product itself. Visitors need to know what the page is about. In the example above, the product is mentioned “briefly” in the second largest line. It doesn’t need to be huge, but visitors should understand that you’re developing an actual product.
Next, make it clear that the product isn’t ready. This should be one of the largest parts of the page.
On top of that, you need to specify when the product will be ready.
If you’re not sure, you can be a bit vague and say something like “coming Winter 2016.” However, it’s better to get specific when possible. If you can, add a countdown to the page:
Finally, it’s absolutely crucial that you clearly sum up what your product has to offer.
In one or two sentences, describe what your product is and how it can help your target audience. This should be one of the main focal points on the page.
For example, on the coming soon page you see below, it’s clear that “shopidex” is a community specifically created for small business owners looking for growth.
Visitors know whether they are in that target market and can easily decide whether they’re interested in that type of product.
You can expand past those few sentences if you like, but you don’t have to unless you have a rather complex product.
Finally, you need an opt-in, and you should also make it clear what your visitors are opting in for, e.g., “enter your email to be notified when the product is ready.”
Tools to help you make a "coming soon" page easily: While "coming soon" pages are simple enough that they could be built from scratch, you really don’t need to.
There are many tools that have these types of templates. You simply click on the "coming soon" template, then click on each piece of text, and edit it however you like.
One option is Kickoff Labs, which has 20 different themes for "coming soon" pages. It isn’t free, however:
Perhaps the most popular landing page creator is Unbounce, and they have a decent selection of attractive "coming soon" page templates:
Again, it’s not a free tool, but it’s easily worth the money if you regularly create landing pages.
Another solid option is Lander, which has a good collection of "coming soon" templates.
The tool you use doesn’t really matter as long as you understand the principles we went over in this section.
2. How to incorporate video into an effective landing page
If you have a unique and potentially complex product, it can be hard to convey everything within a short page.
One great option is to include a video on the landing page and make it the primary element. You can still have text explaining the product and its benefits, but that’s included afterwards.
Here’s an example of this type of landing page on Crazy Egg:
The video is the sole focus of the page. You could have text beside it as well, and even a button, but the video should stand out so that visitors understand that they should watch it.
Components of an effective explainer video: Videos can be a great tool on landing pages because very few people will scroll down a long page of text. However, a large percentage of them will watch a 1-2 minute video.
It also makes it difficult for them to skip past an important point by accident as you usually have their full attention as they watch.
But putting up just any video obviously isn’t enough.
A bad video will result in a bad conversion rate, just as a great video will result in a great conversion rate.
There are two main aspects of an effective video that you need to try to achieve.
The first is quality.
Videos have come a long way in recent years, and viewers expect professionally made videos.
This means:
- no blurriness
- good lighting
- no background noises or echoes
- no stuttering or unclear speech
on top of other things.
Unless you happen to have the knowledge and experience to produce a video like that, you’re going to need professional help (more on that in a minute).
The second main aspect is a compelling story.
People associate videos with entertainment. You have 1 or 2 minutes to tell a short, compelling story about why your product is important and why it’s awesome.
It doesn’t need to be complex, but you want to introduce your product, highlight the most important features, and show all the ways the viewer could benefit from them.
If you feel like you struggle with this aspect of videos, read these articles I’ve written in the past:
- How to Leverage Storytelling to Increase Your Conversions
- How to Engage and Persuade People Through Storytelling
- Tell Your Brand’s Story
4 steps to create an explainer video: If you’re still with me, you probably have a good idea in mind for using a video on a landing page.
All that remains is to know exactly what to do to actually make one.
Step 1 is to decide on a budget. Quality videos often cost more than $1,000 per minute of video.
Remember that quality always comes first, so if you have a limited budget, make your video shorter instead of cutting corners on the creation.
Step 2 then, of course, is to hire a freelance explainer video creator. You can find these on any major freelance site (like Upwork or Freelancer) just by searching for keywords such as “explainer video” or “product video”:
Again, you typically get what you pay for. Don’t cheap out unless you have no other options.
Alternatively, you can use a specialized marketplace for video creators like Video Brewery.
Step 3 is to work with your freelancer to develop a video outline and script. You could do this yourself to save a bit of money if needed.
Step 4 is to simply wait for your freelancer to create the video, give them feedback for edits, and then publish the video.
If you’ve never created a video, this might seem overwhelming. Just break it down into small steps, and you’ll see that it’s fairly easy.
3. Selling a complex product? Highlight its features
If you have a complex product, creating a video is one way to convey all its features.
However, there are drawbacks of videos. For one, they are much harder to edit than text and images.
Second, not everyone likes video. Those people would rather read, so it almost always makes sense to have text on the page anyway.
Finally, Google can’t index videos well, so if you want your landing page to rank for any terms in the search engine, you'd better have a decent amount of text.
If you have a product with complex features, you’re not just solving one problem—you are solving many with your product.
There’s no way to concisely explain all those benefits in a few sentences.
If you try to, you might end up confusing visitors who are looking for one specific solution that your product provides, but not the others.
So, what’s the solution?
It’s to create sections on your landing page, one for each main feature.
The order is important. You want to order them from most commonly sought after to least sought after.
Here’s what I’m talking about: Aweber landing page has clear sections (with differently colored backgrounds) for different purposes.
The top section focuses on the 3 main components of Aweber's software (they jump out in blue bolded text):
The next section has a testimonial.
The page continues on, and you go through a few more sections that highlight different features and benefits of the product.
For example, further down is a section that highlights how easy it is to integrate the product with other popular applications:
You don’t necessarily have to have differently colored backgrounds, but there should be clear divides for each section.
Explain each feature in plain language: One important aspect of creating a section for all the features of your product that is often ignored is the language you use.
It’s not enough to simply list the feature; you need to describe it in simple terms—those that your customers would use themselves.
Despite having a huge customer base and complex products, Hubspot still does a fantastic job of this.
Look at this example from one of their landing pages for their Sidekick tool:
In particular, notice how clear each section is.
From the text color and size to the images and center dots, it’s clear where each section begins and ends.
Then, look at the language they use.
For example:
Sidekick shows you relevant details about your contacts…email opens, links to social profiles, and more.
Many companies would have written something like this instead:
Sidekick shows you insights into your customers' web presence. Improve your demographic information collection and message targeting easily.
I would bet quite a bit of money that you’ve read something like that on a landing page before.
It leaves you scratching your head, saying “huh?”
While making your product sound complicated might seem like a good way to justify its cost, using vague, high-level language actually has the opposite effect.
Use simple and concise language, similar to your audience's.
4. Stop selling to cold traffic, and use a lead generating landing page instead
Remember that landing pages can be used in almost every step of your sales funnel.
They are optimized for conversions…of any kind.
But in order for them to work effectively, your landing page visitors need to be in the right place in the buying process.
Even the best landing page is going to struggle to sell a product if the visitor has never heard of it or your brand.
However, that very same landing page could have an amazing conversion rate when the visitors already know and like your brand. It could be even better if they’re really struggling with the problem your product solves.
Those people who've never heard of you, your product, or your website are called “cold traffic.”
The others, with whom you’ve touched base before are considered “warm traffic” and are much more likely to convert.
Is this really a landing page problem?
While at first it might seem like a traffic problem, it is a problem that can be solved with landing pages.
Instead of sending cold traffic directly to one of your landing pages that sells a product, you send them to an earlier in your sales funnel landing page.
Forget about asking them to do something big like pull out their wallets to buy something. Let’s get them on an email list first.
Once you get them to subscribe, you can start sending them emails and building a relationship. And eventually, you send them to that product landing page.
Starting your sales funnel with a landing page: A large percentage of highly successful businesses use this strategy. I urge you to consider it.
For example, Unbounce is arguably the biggest provider of landing page creation tools there is. They’ve done extensive testing to ensure that their landing pages have the lowest bounce rate possible (and highest conversion rate).
That applies to their templates for sale as well as to their own landing pages. Here’s an example of one:
Notice how they focus you on the page to get you to give them your email address in exchange for their email course.
They make it difficult to even find the pricing page on this landing page because they don’t want their cold traffic to do anything else but to join an email list.
Unlike on a blog, where the value you provide through free content might be enough to get someone to sign up for an email list, cold traffic to a landing page needs an incentive.
As you might know, the incentive is called a lead magnet.
The more enticing the lead magnet is, the higher your opt-in rate will be.
If you have a great offer and send the right type of traffic to a landing page with a lead magnet, it’s possible to achieve conversion rates of over 50%.
The 3 keys to an effective lead magnet: Creating an appealing lead magnet isn’t easy, but it’s not difficult either.
It requires understanding of the three key factors that affect your conversion rate.
The first factor is relevance.
There are two components of relevance. The obvious one is that your offer has to be relevant to your traffic's interests.
So, if your target audience consists of dog lovers, your lead magnet should be something like a book about dogs, not cats.
But your lead magnet should also be relevant to your audience's problems.
If many of your visitors are struggling to find good ways to play with their dogs, you might offer an e-book like “5 Ways to Play With Your Dog More Efficiently.”
Compare that to an e-book along the lines of “25 Awesome Dog Names.” While it’s about dogs, which is relevant, it’s not relevant to any of that audience's problems.
The second factor is related to relevance, and it's value.
It’s very simple:
The more someone values your lead magnet, the more likely they are to opt in to your email list.
A 10% off coupon is more appealing than a 5% off coupon.
An e-book with 10 ways to play more efficiently with your dog is more valuable than one with only 5 ways.
Additionally, if your lead magnet solves a pressing problem of a visitor, they will put a lot more value on it, which is why relevance is also important.
Finally, the third factor is feasibility.
Remember that we can’t directly ask cold traffic to buy something because it’s asking too much too soon.
For the same reason, you don’t want to overwhelm those visitors with a huge lead magnet.
Imagine you offered this email course: “A 52-Week Course to Dog Training Master”.
While that would have more value than a 10-week course, it also doesn’t seem feasible to most visitors—it’s too much.
So, while you want to provide as much value as you can, there’s a certain point where the extra value becomes too much work for your visitors.
Find the balance between too much and too little value.
If you understand those three factors, you’re ready for my step-by-step guide to creating amazing lead magnets.
5. Focus on the problem you solve before introducing the product
I know you love your product, but sometimes, your customers don’t.
So far, we’ve looked at landing pages that focused on communicating the features and benefits of products.
Sometimes, however, they aren’t the most important thing.
For simple problems, customers already know exactly what they’re trying to find.
If you sell a product to such customers, you need to take a different approach.
On your landing page, you should have very clear, simple text as the focal point:
That main text should describe the product the visitor is looking for.
Let’s say that a visitor knows they need an affordable shag carpet.
Instead of focusing immediately on the quality of your carpets such as the perfect softness, size, and all other sorts of things, you state the obvious:
Affordable shag carpets for any home.
Below that, you can add another sentence of your product's best feature(s). Maybe the carpets are made with a special material that your customers might appreciate, etc.
The key here is that they care about finding the exact product they have in their mind first, before even considering the features.
The 2 most important parts of this type of landing page: If you have a simple product that is suitable for this type of landing page, there are two keys to maximizing your conversion rate.
The first is your main statement, which is typically made as a headline across the middle.
The worst thing you can do is get clever.
State what your product does and offers in one concise sentence so that visitors know that they’re in the right place. Just like we did above.
The second key is having a good call to action.
The call to action is usually placed in some sort of button that you want the visitor to click. It then takes them to a sales page or some other landing page to learn more about your product.
Your button can potentially say a lot of different things:
You can improve the effectiveness of your calls to action by using language that describes an action.
Instead of the common calls to action, like:
- Learn more
- Download
- Buy this
create more specific calls to action for your product. If your product is a dog training manual, you could try:
- I want my dog to listen!
- I’m sick of disobedience
- Download my dog training solution
To make it even more effective, apply urgency by adding a word like “today” or “now.”
Here is my complete guide to making your button calls to action more effective.
6. Let your visitor choose their own adventure
There’s one type of product that you might be selling that we haven’t talked about yet.
If you have a complex product, the other options we’ve looked at so far might not suit it.
Certain products have many different features, all of which could be their own products. Different customers might be interested in a specific feature and not care about the others.
If you use the other options we’ve looked at so far, you’ll be emphasizing certain features near the top of your landing page.
This is good for your potential customers who want that specific feature, but it will cause potential customers interested in other main features to lose interest and not convert well.
The solution is to give them a choice.
Instead of jumping right into a feature, you let your visitors choose what they’re interested in. Then, depending on the button or link they choose, you take them to a certain section of the page (or even to a different landing page).
Hubspot is a great example of this. They have a complex product that serves both marketers and salespeople. Each group is interested in different things.
On a Hubspot landing page, there’s a link to get more information on their marketing platform as well as their sales software:
On top of that, they also offer a lead magnet, just in case any cold traffic finds their page.
When to use a “choose your own adventure” landing page: The main factor that will determine whether you should use this type of landing page is whether your traffic is comprised of different types of people.
Some products appeal to many different audiences, and those audiences need to be approached differently because they care about using your product in different ways.
Ideally, you’d send them to a landing page designed just for them, but that’s not always possible. That is when a "choose your own adventure" page is the next best option.
How to make your own adventure landing page: The great thing about this type of page is that it’s fairly easy to make. All you need are links to different landing pages or to content further down on your landing page.
If you need to implement the second option, it’s pretty simple.
There are two parts. The first is your anchor point, where the page will jump to when you click the link.
Put the anchor point on the heading of the section that you want someone to jump down to.
For example:
Hubspot for marketers
Then, go back up to where you’d like to place the link, but instead of putting an entire address in the link tag, type the “id” name that you specified after a hashtag when you created the anchor point.
Like this:
Learn how Hubspot helps marketers
Put that link in a button or panel near the top of the page, and the segment of visitors interested in those features can go right to them without getting confused.
Conclusion
Landing pages are an important tool that should be in every marketer's arsenal.
But if you want to take full advantage of landing pages in your work, you need to use the right type for the situation.
I’ve shown you 6 of the highest converting types of landing pages, and you should now understand when to use them and why they work.
If you’re not sure whether a certain type of landing page is right for a situation you have, leave me a comment below describing the situation and your thoughts. I’ll try to steer you in the right direction.
Senate Chronic Care Report Elicits Strong Reactions
Planned Plaque Sanding Aids PCI in Calcified Arteries (CME/CE)
Bedbugs Biting Back Against Insecticide
Category: Health News
Created: 1/28/2016 12:00:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 1/28/2016 12:00:00 AM
Friday Feedback: Preparing for a Zika Virus Pandemic?
Five Strategies to Enhance Teamwork and Reduce Burnout
Tweet of the Week: Patient's Health vs. Doctor's Pride
MRI Reveals Early Synovial Changes With RA Treatment (CME/CE)
Young ICD Recipients Often Face Complicated Course (CME/CE)
John Grisham Turns Promoter for Focused Ultrasound
Skin Less Affected in Late-Onset Lupus (CME/CE)
Zika: The Unexpected Pandemic
Planned Parenthood Medical Chief: 'Silver Linings' in Controversy
Angiography Flags Very Late Stent Thrombosis
PA Home Visits Save $$ After Cardiac Surgery
CardioBrief: Entresto Off to Slow Start
Morning Break: Vote on Drug Prices; Concussion Fallout; Fatal 'Dewshine'
Could Coffee Cut the Risk of Gout? (CME/CE)
Thursday, January 28, 2016
Benzaldehyde Common in E-Cig Vapors
Top 5 Ways Consumer-Generated Content Is Amazing for SEO
Texas Tries To Repair Damage Wreaked Upon Family Planning Clinics
When Texas passed laws designed to shut down Planned Parenthood clinics, it slashed the state's family planning budget. Of the 82 clinics that closed, only a third were Planned Parenthood.
Hundreds Of Local Movie Theaters Will Soon Become Beacon Hot Spots
Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.
Discover the Power of the “Only-Factor” to Drive Conversion
According to the CMO Council, digital ads will lead the way for global media growth in the next two years, accounting for 33% of total advertising revenue and growing from $133 billion to $194.5 billion. This month’s MarketingExperiments Web clinic examined how to make the most of this increasing digital investment by focusing on the “Only-Factor” — the point of your value proposition where your product’s exclusivity and appeal meet.
Check it out here.
The two experiments below illustrate the power of the “Only-Factor.”
In the first experiment, a credit card company wanted to see which PPC ad would produce the most applications.
Version A promoted its affiliation with a popular organization.
Version B noted that it offered the only credit card that supported this particular organization.
The result: Exclusivity matters. 2.34% clicked to apply for their credit card from Version A while 4.07% clicked to apply from Version B. This is a 74% lift that was validated at a 95% level of confidence.
In the second experiment, a software company wanted to drive more visitors to its landing page.
Version A specifically outlined how its product stands apart (number of clients served, worldwide market leader, award-winning).
Version B mentioned awards, but was far less specific.
The results indicated that specificity converts. Version A reported 1.08% clickthrough while Version B had only .89% clickthrough — a relative difference of 22% that was validated at a 95% level of confidence.
Want an instant test to measure how strong your “Only-Factor” is in your online advertising? Replace your brand’s name with a competitor’s in your online advertising. If the ad still works, you have work to do. You also have work to do if you’re offering exclusive benefits that your market place is ho-hum about.
Exploit your “Only-Factor” by creating and communicating a powerful value proposition: why customers should buy from you rather than anyone else. The heuristic below illustrates the concept.
When you subtract the cost force (Cf — the perceived cost of taking an action, like buying your product), from the Value Force (Vf — the perceived value of what you’re offering), you will get the net force (Nf). The higher the net force, the higher your conversions. Value force is made up of appeal (Ap) and exclusivity (Ex). Therefore, the higher your exclusive appeal, the higher your value force. So, to achieve the most conversions, you want the highest appeal and exclusivity possible. That’s the “Only-Factor. ”
To identify and communicate your strongest value force and the “Only-Factor” that comes with it, you’ll want to download and fill out the free value proposition worksheet here. This isn’t a solo activity; involve as many of your colleagues in as many departments as possible. You may even want to talk to your customers as well to attain the most accurate perceptions. It will be well worth the time invested as you’ll have the knowledge you need to pinpoint your "Only-Factor" and use it to drive more conversions.
You might also like
How to Avoid Losing the Value of Your Value Proposition
Value Proposition: How do you create an effective value prop?
Value Proposition: A simple spreadsheet to help you categorize your products’ value
Discovering Your Value Proposition: 6 ways to stand out in a crowded marketplace [MarketingExperiments Web clinic replay]
Sign up for the MECLABS Value Proposition online course [MECLABS is MarketingExperiments' parent research company]
8 Steps to Guarantee Marketing Automation Success
EmailMonday gathered an impressive list of statistics about marketing automation usage and its relevance for businesses in 2016 and beyond. Some key statistics from various sources include:
• 91% of the most successful users agree that marketing automation is very important to marketing success across all channels (Ascend2).
• Approximately 11 times more B2B organizations are now using marketing automation compared to those in 2011 (SiriusDecisions).
• Best-in-Class companies are 67% more likely to use marketing automation (Aberdeen Group).
• 79% of top-performing companies have been using marketing automation for more than two years (Gleanster Research).
• 42% of CRM users will increase marketing automation spending in the near future (Software Advice).
• 54% of CMOs have started or finished marketing automation software implementation (MarketingSherpa).
• The most commonly used marketing automation applications include email marketing software, CRM, and marketing automation suites (Software Advice and Research Now).
• In the B2B environment, 69% have used marketing automation for customer acquisition while 50% have used it for customer retention (ACT-ON and Gleanster Research).
As noted by other research, leveraging available automated processes for marketing can add efficiencies, fill in talent gaps, maximize limited budgets, and more effectively target those platforms and channels were customers and prospects are now located. In determining the process for adding marketing automation to your SMB, there are some best practices that you will want to consider before you dive in:
1. Review what you are using now before changing anything.
Like most companies, you are most likely using a wide range of offline and online tools, having added certain marketing tools as they have been introduced while still keeping old traditional software. You need to know what you have in order to determine what type of marketing automation you can employ that brings it all together and removes any duplication of effort and helps you have more time for other aspects of your business.
2. Research available marketing automation solutions.
In order to know what you want to automate and what this solution will do for you, it’s important to study the existing solutions. Whether you implement the marketing automation solution or you hire someone to do it, you need to understand why it works for your business. This can help with future strategic decisions related to your marketing effort and other technology investments.
3. Organize existing data to prepare for automation.
Automating with a mass of unorganized data definitely defeats the purpose, so you need to spring clean your data. This means getting rid of duplicate and inaccurate information before transitioning from multiple systems to just one.
4. Map out your transition to an automated marketing process.
You may even want to consult with a marketing professional who can suggest a specific way to approach the transition as well as the best automated marketing solutions for your business niche and specific strategy. Typically, you will want to have a centralized marketing database, an engagement engine, and an analytics engine as part of your new automated marketing solution.
5. Align the automated marketing processes with the sales processes.
It's critical to get your sales team included in the marketing automation process. They will most likely have insights about the type of automated system that would work best for what they are trying to achieve. This alignment can further your ability to qualify leads and turn them into customers.
6. Create a timeline for the marketing automation transition.
A best practice is to take a stepwise approach to automating your marketing processes. The last thing you want to do is change everything at once. If anything goes wrong along the way, you could end up losing customers and traction. By automating specific aspects of your marketing at one time over the course of six months to a year, you are ensuring everything integrates and is seamless to the customer and prospect.
7. Train your staff to use the new marketing automation solution.
Ensure that they know how and why this marketing automation solution works for your organization. Even though it is automated, your staff still needs to know what it is doing and what the results mean. After all, overusing the automation can backfire so they need to know the frequency and quality of the messages they are adding to the solution. There are still decisions to be made about marketing content used for the automated processes like email marketing and campaigns plus analytics to analyze and changes to make based on the results from these metrics.
8. Continually review results from the marketing automation effort.
Your marketing automation processes do not operate in a vacuum. It’s critical that you continue to monitor them and assess the results you get from the investment. The analytics you get from the effort will guide you toward any changes that need to be made and will serve as the benchmark for the type of technology or tools you add in the future.
This is the year for your business to transition to marketing automation to ensure the greatest efficiency and return on your marketing investment. By following these best practices, you can increase the results gained by automating your marketing processes.
This comprehensive guide to Marketing Automation will start your journey down the road of marketing automation success.
Author Bio: John Rampton is an entrepreneur, investor, online marketing guru and startup enthusiast. He is founder of the online invoicing company Due. He was recently named #3 on Top 50 Online Influencers in the World by Entrepreneur Magazine and has been one of the Top 10 Most Influential PPC Experts in the World for the past three years.
3 Examples of Brands Using Podcasts to Increase Sales, Offer Value & Build Audiences
[Note From Ashley: TopRank Marketing team members Debbie Friez and Joel Carlson recently attended a Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA) event in Minneapolis and collaborated to bring you the insights below from the event.]
Long gone are the leisurely evenings and weekends where people disconnected from the outside world and made time to relax. Today’s consumers are ALWAYS connected and constantly consuming information from a variety of sources.
The question for marketers is: how can you capture the attention of your audience while they’re on the go and multi-tasking constantly? One of the solutions that has surfaced in recent years is incorporating podcasts into your digital marketing mix.
Below we’ll dive in to three case studies MIMA social broadcasting event that uncover how different brands are working podcasts into their marketing strategy.
First, Why a Podcast?
- Mobility is key. You can listen on the go in your car or the train.
- It’s personal. The information can be directed at the consumer.
- Drives Engagement. Podcast subscribers can be the core of a community who move to other key assets and channels.
Insights for Busy Salespeople
Busy salespeople don’t have time to read a newsletter or possibly an email. This was the dilemma for the Medicare and Retirement division of United Health Group. They wanted to share tools and ideas with their sales agents during enrollment period.
Within the healthcare industry, communication is heavily regulated which means there are lots of things that they can’t do or say. Kendra Klemme, Associate Director of Communications, United Health Group, says everything has to be cleared through lawyers. So the question comes up, “How do we work within this system?” and still accomplish what we need to get done.
Once cleared by the lawyers, the communications team decided a podcast was the right route to take for communicating with sales, and production happened quite quickly. The focus of the podcast was on providing the sales team with information to help them improve their approach and results. The key was providing a method for getting the sellers excited to start fast out of the gate during enrollment period.
Early podcasts were produced to be anywhere between 10-15 minutes in length, making them easy to listen to for sales people in between their customer visits. From the initial podcasts that were done in 2015, UHG received positive feedback from sales leaders and agents, having reached 7K+ listens overall.
Moving forward for 2016, the plan is to produce two podcasts per month – one on highlights from the monthly eNewletter, lasting anywhere from 3-5 minutes and another longer one on areas of interest to their audience.
What UHG learned from producing podcasts:
- Continue to refine the topics
- Work to promote the podcasts in multiple ways
- Leverage the leadership
- Bring the sales agents into the mix and harness some of that information. Provide best practices.
- Look to create additional touchpoints.
- Move forward with a heavier focus on LinkedIn
Information for the Modern Farmer
If you grew up on a farm, you know that harvest season is CRAZY BUSY! Despite that fact, the Mosaic company wanted to talk to farmers during harvest about raising yields.
On today’s modern farms, you will find farmers checking social media and listening to all kinds of media while they bring in the crops. In order to capture that audience, they wanted to create a podcast around “A Prairie Home Companion” meets “Twin Peaks” meets “Serial”.
The result was “The Great Yield Mystery”, a 10 episode audio drama, which included a website, gamification, prizes and a trailer poster. And the result gave their existing audience something they could use.
The podcast had a longer tail than they expected and exceeded interaction goals by 379%.
A Taste of General Mills
Kevin Hunt, Social Media Manager, General Mills, and an experienced podcaster provided insights into “A Taste of General Mills”, a brand website for consumers. He shared that General Mills wanted to provide a deeper look into their brand through an interview style podcast hosted on the website and modeled after “This American Life”. (Clearly NPR is winning in the podcast idea segment!)
The first podcast produced featured the creator of Cheerios. Recorded during a commercial shoot, it provided a behind the scenes perspective. This was followed by podcasts covering their monster cereals, celebrating 50 years of the Pillsbury Dough Boy, focusing on a cookbook editor and interviewing people with cooking fails, and then celebrating the 150th anniversary of General Mills. In February of 2016, the podcast will be quite topical by focusing on Super Bowl appetizers.
Kevin emphasized the need to make a plan for setting-up interviews, recording, scripting, and promotion. Their posting strategy includes iTunes and SoundCloud for searchability. General Mills doesn’t make a separate show page for the podcasts, but instead includes it as a part of the blog.
Audience growth takes time, so promotion is key. General Mills creates special graphics for promoting on their social channels. They also email subscribers of the blog.
Does Podcasting Have a Place in Your Marketing Strategy?
Podcasting in both video and purely audio forms has become an increasingly popular digital marketing tactic. Before venturing out on a podcasting endeavor, consider the following:
- Would a podcast from your brand create value for your busy audience?
- How would it fit into your content mix?
- What format and length would be the best fit for your audience?
We’d love to hear your thoughts.
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