Comments on: Conversion Optimization 101: Social Media Landing Pages

By: Theresa Baiocco

Theresa Baiocco — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 03:01:32 +0000

There are already a lot of excellent points in the comments so instead of repeating them, I’m going to talk about 2 thing I learned from you in your Market Motive course, Bryan: 1) maintaining scent and 2) the Conversion Trinity (value, relevance, CTA).

1) Maintaining Scent

From tweet to landing page:
– Only 4 out of 8 of the tweets mention the name of the whitepaper, “Moneyball of Marketing”
– The 1st tweet matches the headline pretty well
– The tweet about branded vs. non-branded search traffic matches the copy at the bottom of the page, but that’s not obvious at first, so the scent trail could be lost on that one
– The tweets about the ROI pie and competitors catching up don’t relate to the page well at all
– Ok, I’m going to repeat one thing that was already said: they need a picture that demonstrates either what the whitepaper looks like, or the ownership experience (which could be hard to do in this case). The funky robots aren’t helping to convince me to download the paper. Anything that’s not helping is hurting.

From landing page to thank you page:
– I know I’m in the right place because the look and feel are consistent
– They missed the opportunity to get me excited about the whitepaper. They didn’t even take the time to repeat exactly what I’m getting. It’s a very generic thank-you page. It’s like they got what they wanted (my email address) then they stopped trying to impress me. I feel so used!

2) the Conversion Trinity: value, relevance, CTA

Value:
I actually really like the analogy of Moneyball because it’s SO relevant for online marketing. I wanted to write a blog post after seeing the movie, but it hasn’t gotten past my to-do list for months. However, not everyone has seen the movie. And even if they did, how many people made the connection between optimizing under-performing assets like baseball players, with assets like keywords? It’s a stretch to think many people did. I didn’t until richfarr pointed it out to me. So the text needs to better convey the value of what I’ll learn from the whitepaper. And it needs to be easy to read.

Relevance:
The landing page gives me no idea who they’re targeting. Big brands? Or are they saying the smaller guys can have the advantages that the big brands have? I don’t know whether this is appropriate for me. The tweets sound like they’re targeting big brands, but that’s not reinforced on the landing page. And the thank you page is all “we-we” speak. There are a lot of missed opportunities regarding relevance.

CTA:
The tweets don’t have strong calls to action. Only 3 of them have action verbs for the CTA, and they’re not all the right message: “Learn…”, “RT”, and “bake a pie”. The other tweets don’t have a CTA at all, other than implying that they want you to click on the link. I’ll give them a little leeway for their tweets, though, if they’re testing the messages.
The CTA on the landing page is obvious: a big orange button. I’d like to see the text on it a little bigger, however, and they could test making the button an unusual shape.
The primary CTA on the thank you page is to check my email. Not my favorite process as a consumer but not unusual. The phone is horrible, however, with blue text on a blue background. They shouldn’t have a blue background anyway, since they made their other links pink for contrast.

By: sparkerwebgroup

sparkerwebgroup — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 19:53:21 +0000

Landing page –
1. May be a bit old school, but I still like the headline of the landing page to match up with the tweet I clicked so I know I am in the right place. The ‘banner ad’ looking piece at the top does not do that.
2. Also old school, but imagery should show me what I am getting and assure me that the download is worthwhile/substantial. The imagery here makes it look like the download is a Powerpoint — not a white paper. 3. I also tend to decide on the landing page if the content is worthwhile, so a few bullet points about nuggets I will learn could help.
4. If using a 2-column layout, I would consider imagery on left, content and form on the right.

Thank you page –
1. Again, the headline is generic and impersonal. Mention the actual name of the white paper! How about ” Thank you for downloading Moneyball Marketing!”
2. Should probably give an instant download link on the thank you page. Use the harvested email address for a personalized thank you note that tells them (again) the link to download, upcoming Webinars of *relevant* (aka not any/all) topics, as well as ways to connect with the company — via social media or to simply send questions & feedback about the white paper.
3. Perfect opportunity to ask users to “Connect” to you via social media.

By: MarkHauler

MarkHauler — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 19:48:24 +0000

First, a caveat, I’m a frustrated marketer who was never able to land a marketing job and has been working in IT for the past 20 years. Anyway, here goes:

Landing Page. This site itself looks like an amateurish design. I don’t care for the particular colors chosen. Blues in general are good, but I don’t think they’re enhanced by the boxy design in this case. I think some sort of ‘curvy’ design and shapes rather than squares and rectangles would enhance the overall design. In addition, the white banner across the top doesn’t look good against the (intentionally) blurry photo in the background – what is that supposed to be anyway ? On the right side, the field descriptions for Email Address, Name, are too small. Need at least a point size or two larger.

Secondly, on the landing page, it just looks like bloomreach is trying to aggregate and collect names and addresses. There’s really nothing to suggest that there is anything of value to be gained once someone has entered their contact information (in spite of the ‘Download Now’ button). They need a teaser or something to entice people to take the next step and provide their contact details.

Then, when one sees the ‘Thanks’ page, we have the same design issues as before, but this time they’re worsened by the awful, garish pink text and the almost unreadable phone number by the ‘Call us now’ .

Finally, the company is inconsistent with the design of their own name. is it ‘bloomreach’ or BloomReach?

By: caseycarey

caseycarey — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 19:31:54 +0000

Bryan –

I love the approach of using real life examples as we can all continuously learn and improve.

I agree with @wittlake comments/rant, especially about the language and copy. So here are a few other things to pile on for consideration:
* Tweets – Looks like they reused many of the short URLs, so they will not be able to tell which ones performed the best
* Offer – It really isn’t clear what you are getting (in the tweets or the landing page) – it should be clear, especially in the headline what you are offering and why you should tike the time to download/read. This should be supported by both imagery and copy.
* Landing Page Imagery – The funky retro robots have nothing to do with the metaphor, offer, or anything else for that matter – WTF?
* Landing Page Layout – The image of the whitepaper should be secondary to the copy. The copy should tell the rest of the store setup by the headline – describe the offer and why you should download it.
* Messaging – As someone running an ecommerce business, I don’t care about “Big Data Marketing” or any other meaningless jargon of the day, answer the following questions, 1) Why I should do something different? and 2) How will it impact may business? I don’t wake up in the morning thinking, “I need to get some of that Big Data stuff.” Rather I’m thinking I need to increase by number of new buyers, what can I do to help make that happen?

Casey

By: Wittlake

Wittlake — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 19:07:05 +0000

Where to begin…

Let’s start with the tweets.
Only two of the eight tweets say anything about search, but this appears (I think, we will get there…) to be a paper about improving search. Sets the wrong expectation and draws the wrong audience.

Landing page.
Way too many baseball metaphors in only about 50 words. I have seen a number of marketers make this mistake lately. It is like they are so enamored with the campaign idea that they carry that they have decided to talk about the campaign. In doing so, their real value proposition has been lost.

Strong brands use big data for long-tail discovery. Completely disconnected from most of the tweets and way too big of a mouthful. It sounds like marketing, how would you explain it in a conversation over coffee? Hopefully not like that…

It’s really about search (I think, when I strip away all of the metaphors) and basically says we will help you improve your search marketing. Ok, but about 1800 other companies or pieces of content make the same claim. Nothing motivates me and makes me believe this piece of content is better than the stack of similar pitches already sitting in my inbox.

(Nevermind the metaphor issues, which muddy language and cause problems in search more often than not. Clear direct language is key in search, but I digress…)

Thank you page.
Really, don’t make me go dig out of email. I know you want to make certain you captured a legit email but your content is proof of your claims of expertise. Don’t make it so hard to get that your target audience never gets that proof.

“Thanks for your interest in BloomReach.” No, I didn’t express any interest in you, just your piece of content. Rather than assume I’m interested in you and present a bunch of links about you, offer up additional content or information I might be interested.

By giving me two or three related content options, my decision about what to look at next actually would give BloomReach additional information about me and my interests, which they could use to make any followup emails more relevant (enter marketing automation).

Ok, my rant is over. Thanks for sharing!