5 Steps to Building Your Personal Brand Successfully

The notion of branding has been getting a lot of play over the past few years. There are great reasons to brand: Scotch tape does not refer to all clear tape, although often all clear tape is called Scotch tape. Kleenex is a brand of tissues, not all tissues are Kleenex. Band-Aid is a brand, not all bandages are Band-Aids, but often, no matter who made them, all bandages are called Band-Aids. What does this have to do to building an individual brand? If you’re an attorney, a plumber, or an architect, you want to be the “brand” people think of for those professions. To be that “go to” person or company, you must build your brand.

How can you build Your Personal Brand?

#1 Decide What Makes You Special:

• What makes you the architect people remember? What makes you the plumber people want to call when they’re building a new hotel or apartment? Why should a business call you when they need an air-tight contract drawn up? These are questions that are important not only as an outside contractor. Branding is not simply for outside contractors or businesses wanting to get noticed in a competitive industry, branding can be a way for a cog in a big machine to be noticed in a positive way, so that cog can keep moving up and can become more important to an organization. And yes, if necessary, letting other people know what makes you special can help you get a better job.
• An important part of letting others know that you’re special and what makes you special is actually do something worth noticing. If there is a special kind of architecture that you’re an expert at, something that makes you stand out, then let people know that. But don’t just sell yourself with empty words. People know if you’re a fraud.
• Have a vision to show how that thing that you do special can help. If you are an expert in design let people know that; show them on your own website or blog.

#2 Get the Word Out

• Imagine there is a contract to install plumbing in a new apartment building. The bids that are turned in are similar, so the general contractor decides to do a web search to ensure all bidders are capable. What will search results reveal? A blog about how to do plumbing or how to choose the right bathroom fixtures to match the architecture of a building? Pictures of big jobs you have already completed with quotes from general contractors and business owners? Or will the general contractor find negative, hateful—and honest, posts about you?
• Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook are also social media options that are inexpensive and often free. They need to be full of positive and business related ideas and projects. Is your Twitter feed full of dirty jokes and double entendres? Are Instagram and Facebook full of pictures of you drinking? If so, make yourself comfortable working in the mail room, because you aren’t leaving there. Almost all prospective employers will do a web search. Pictures of you passed out in your front lawn will kill your chance of being hired or promoted, even if every other part of your reputation is pristine and perfect.

#3 Make Personal Contact and Get Noticed

• If you want to advance your career, either within a large organization, or by moving to a different company, you need to be noticed. Go places where you can meet contacts and introduce yourself and make a good impression. If there is a professional organization that meets in your city or state, go. If there is not an organization, go to alumni meetings for your university. You want to meet people and make a good professional impression. Perhaps the next time that person you meet needs an attorney with solid contract writing skills, he or she will call you.
• Another way to get noticed is to get published in a trade journal. If you have a trade journal, read it and see what kind of writing style they like and then find something interesting to write about and get published. People like to hire someone they can view as an expert.

#4 Get a Mentor

• A mentor is someone who wants to help a younger person as they begin their career. The secret about being a mentor is that most people want to help. We want to feel smart and valued, and helping someone else is a way to do that. A mentor can be a boss, or it can be a social contact who works elsewhere. The two biggest things a person can gain from a mentor are lessons about what to do and what not to do; and a mentor might recommend you for a job or promotion.

#5 Keep Information Updated

• What would you think if your neighbor’s grass was two feet tall and he or she was 25 years old? You would probably think your neighbor is lazy. When you use social media, you have an obligation (to yourself and your career) to update it if you want to continue to build your brand. There are actually two reasons to do this; 1. You don’t want to appear lazy; even if you’re so busy you don’t know how to find the time. This is your obligation and potential clients, or that potential new boss doesn’t care how busy you are. 2. The more new content you post, the higher you will be on web searches. You don’t want to be the 10th John Smith attorney in Ft. Lauderdale. You want to be the first, and that happens in part by updating social media. Rebrandly blog has some suggestions about how to improve your brand’s presence online.

Building a brand isn’t just something that businesses do anymore. It is something that almost everyone who is successful does in some way. To be successful at building your brand, you should have a plan, and then follow through. You will increase your chances for success by doing these five things to build your own brand.

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Are You Fascinating Enough to Be a Content Marketer?

If you work closely with someone with bright pink hair, you might begin to question whether you are interesting enough to contribute your thoughts to the topic at hand.

Followings on the internet are built on memorability, right?

I mean, if you don’t give high-energy talks like Gary Vaynerchuk, dress on-brand like Mari Smith, or sport a high-voltage cranium like Michael Port, how will people know you exist?
Not that I’ve ever had any of those thoughts.

Is having an indelible personal brand a requirement for content marketing success? If you don’t have that, should you throw in the towel before you start?

Building a platform around your personality

There’s a conversation I’ve had multiple times with some of the most well-known people online.
People who — if you met them — might make you a little nervous. You might feel like you were in the presence of a celebrity!

Here’s how the conversation goes:

“I know I’m well-known within this group. But my family still doesn’t understand what I do. I talk to my neighbors and they say, ‘So, you make money on the internet? How does that work?’ And if all my ‘fans’ could see me in my day-to-day life they wouldn’t get so nervous talking to me.”

The internet gives us a place to build our own mini “kingdoms” of celebrity that we reign over. This process was much more difficult to do just 10-15 years ago. But now, we can gather our tribes, build our audiences, and develop our fan bases using strategic content marketing.

It’s a valid approach to an online business. But it’s not the only one.

Building a platform around your business idea

Traditionally, brands were developed to depict a product, service, or a movement — not a person.

In this more traditional approach to brand building, you identified a group you wanted to serve and you developed a brand they could connect to emotionally. The brand represented a series of experiences that would be delivered by interacting with the business.

This approach to brand building has some distinct advantages and some challenges.

The advantages:

You can craft a brand name that markets your business

When you carefully develop your brand name from scratch, you can easily associate it with the benefits you’ll deliver.

It’s less expensive to market the business

Proper names don’t say anything about your business offering, so you’ll need to spend more time and money establishing what the business is about when you base it on a proper name.

Brands built on a business idea (rather than a name) are easier to sell

If your long-term plan is to build a business you sell, it’s easier to sell a business that’s not associated with a proper name.

There are some challenges to think about with each approach:

It’s more difficult to put a human face on a set of words

When your business is built around your proper name, all you have to do is show up and the human face of your business shines through. Not so with a more traditional brand.

You have to be relentlessly present in your business when it revolves around your name

So you built a brand based on your own name. Need a vacation? Want to take a break? The show cannot go on without you. No pressure, but … it’s all riding on you.

Can you build a brand that’s the best of both worlds?

Yes, you can. And this is where content marketing comes in.

If you decide to avoid the sticky challenges that come with building a brand around your name, you can go the traditional route and build a brand around what you’ll deliver to your customers.

Examples:

Wellness Mama: Simple answers for healthier families
The Creative Penn: Resources to help you write, publish, and market your book
No Meat Athlete: Runs on plants
Copy Hackers: Convert like a mofo

These brands state exactly what they deliver in their names. And they back that up with consistent, high-quality content marketing that delivers on the promises made by the brand names and taglines.

That’s the way to have the best of both worlds: create a brand name based on a promised experience, then use content to deliver your promise today, tomorrow, and next year.

How to 10x your fascination quotient in one easy step!

You may not have vibrant pink hair on the top of your head. And you may not be beautifully bald, either.

Those qualities help your audience pick you out in a crowded room. But online, you know what really stands out?

Content that’s in tune with what an audience needs. Content that consistently serves the people who read it. Content that delivers time after time.

Feeling like you’re not quite fascinating enough to make it as a content marketer?

Find a way to be of service. Create useful, engaging, high-quality content. Go above and beyond to stand out from the crowd with your in-depth, helpful information.

That’s the brand of fascinating we need more of online.

PS: I just finished writing a book called Master Content Marketing: A Simple Strategy to Cure the Blank Page Blues and Attract a Profitable Audience. It will be released next month. Until then, I’m going to share excerpts and ideas from the book so you can start benefiting from it now. Watch this space.


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7 Reasons Why No One Clicks Your Affiliate Banners

Placing affiliate banners on your blog is one of the most common blog monetization techniques.

Not the most or the least effective. In-between.

Since the case when (almost) no one clicked a certain banner is not very uncommon, let’s analyze together why such an unpleasant situation usually happens and see what you can do to avoid it.

Speaking about solutions, the easiest one is to remove all banners. Remove all so called distractions and you won’t need to read further. There’s a huge disadvantage though…

Putting all your eggs in one basket (for example focusing only on building your list) and copying a good method without having the right skills frequently lead to a big fat failure.

It’s your risk and your decision.

If you’re still here, let’s start today’s journey…

1. Banner Ad Blindness

It’s true that some people trained themselves not to see the banner ads.

The same as I trained myself not to see the opt-in boxes and all the “great” random incentives I never planned to read or watch.

Easy Fix: Move on. Focus on the problems you have better chances to fix.

And don’t even think about listening to the bloggers who claim that banner advertising is dead. If 90%+ of your visitors don’t take action on your marketing goodies (banners, opt-in boxes, etc), it doesn’t mean that banner advertising or list building are dead.

The only sure thing is that the people claiming that banner advertising (list building, etc.) is dead simply don’t understand marketing.

Have you ever gone fishing? Have you ever caught all the fish? Period.

2. The Mobile Traffic and the Sidebar Banners Are a Bad Match

Does your blog have a lot of mobile traffic? Well, then there’s no wonder that no one clicked the sidebar banners.

If you use a responsive theme, the layout of your blog is different for the mobile visitors. The sidebar isn’t a sidebar anymore. It goes to the bottom of the page…

The article comes first, then maybe the related posts and/or the sharing buttons, then the comments, and finally the sidebar.

Who do you think will scroll down to the sidebar, and why? Almost no one. I guarantee you.

Solution: If most of your traffic comes from mobiles, you should consider the total removal of your sidebars. The blog will load faster. As for the blog monetization, focus on the areas that are seen by your readers.

3. Bad Banners, Designed for Branding Purposes Only

See the banner on the left side? There’s a brand name and then some text that doesn’t reveal any information – it may be related to almost any product or service.

If your readers have no clue what SBI! stands for, why should they click that banner? Is it because they click banners for no reason? :P

If some readers are kind of familiar with that brand name, why should they click the banner? Is it because they’ve seen it again and again and now decided that it’s time to find out more about it? Well, if they click the banner you should consider yourself very lucky. But this is gambling, not affiliate marketing.

Solution: Before choosing a banner, forget who you are and what your goal is, and put yourself in your reader’s shoes. The reader needs a reason to click. Not understanding what you advertise isn’t a good reason.

4. Stupid Banners. Plain Stupid

I discovered this masterpiece on someone’s blog…

Free domain starts at $3.95/month

Is this text designed to make people laugh at both the company and the affiliate?

The designer and the Affiliate Manager didn’t notice the problem. The blogger didn’t notice it either.

So many people… I wonder if it’s not something wrong with me. Maybe I don’t understand very well the meaning of the word “free.”

Solution: What can I say? Open your eyes.

5. Ad Blockers

Did a blog or a business bother you? In the past, the elegant solution was to boycott that business by not buying anything and never returning back.

These days people are more pragmatic… Why not getting the stuff they’d like (the tips, the content) under the conditions they decide and without having the owner’s agreement?

So the ad blocking technology was developed. An ad blocker hides totally or partially the ads from your website. Without your agreement. Millions of users and supporters.

I wonder how far is the moment when a piece of software will also decide that some of your opinions suck and they should be hidden. Or replaced by other ones that will please the visitor. Unfortunately it seems that we aren’t that far.

How to Fight Against Ad Blockers

– host the banners on the server that hosts your site;
– don’t put your banners on folders titled “banners” or other names that may relate to advertising;
– cloak your affiliate links;
– don’t use in your site code classes or ids that may be related to advertising. Example: id=”ad_45″
– don’t use ad management plugins that use classes or ids that may be related to advertising. Examples: “Ads by datafeedr.com” or “Datafeedr Random Ads V2”
– use anti ad blockers plugins.

6. Promoting Products That Don’t Match Readers’ Interests

If you promote products or services that don’t match readers’ interests, it’s obvious that they won’t click your banners.

The question is, how to know in advance the interests of the future readers?

The easiest solution is to look at your own blog post. There’s the answer. Ask yourself, “Who is my blog post addressed to?”

For example, I don’t know who you are, but long time before you decided to visit this page, I knew some things about you.

I didn’t know whether you have a cat or not. I didn’t know whether you use Twitter or not. But I was 99% sure that you’re a blogger. And you’re interested in monetizing your blog. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have had too many reasons to read this article.

Based on these two interests of yours, I planned what to promote on this page.

Does this monetization strategy always work? Of course it doesn’t, have you ever seen a perfect strategy? But it maximizes the chances to get the click.

7. Promoting Very Popular Products or Services

You may be surprised. Promoting very popular products or services via banners usually doesn’t work so well. Here’s why…

Case Study: I decided to promote GetResponse, one of the most popular email marketing services.

Based on their relationship with GetResponse, I divided the readers of my blog in five categories:

a) GetResponse users
b) GetResponse former users
c) People who heard of GetResponse but decided to use another service
d) People who never heard of GetResponse and use another service
e) People who don’t use any email marketing service.

Now let’s see what the chances for getting the click are:

a) GR users will never click the banner.
b) GR former users were disappointed or discovered a service they thought that fits better their needs. Hard to make them come back just by showing them a regular banner.
c) and d) Usually people don’t switch from one service to another just because you show them a banner.
e) If they think that they don’t need such a service, it’s hard to make them change their mind by showing a banner.

No big chances to get the click, don’t you agree?

Solutions

Of course that the best solution is to write a review or a comparison between that popular service that you promote and a competitor. Like I did it here: AWeber vs GetResponse. But we’re talking about banners here, aren’t we?

The banners provided in the affiliate area usually aren’t that good. They won’t make people from categories b), c) and d) change their mind.

In GetResponse’s particular case I was lucky. If you’re not on mobile, you’ll see on the sidebar a floating banner that actually doesn’t promote GetResponse email marketing service but a free training program. That banner addresses all categories of readers.

What to do if you’re not that lucky?

The possible solutions are:

– design your own banner
– use a regular banner, but add additional text around it.

Irrespective of the solution you choose, the additional text added around a regular banner or included in a new banner should have the goal of changing people’s mind. It’s not easy. Spend more time on it. Otherwise you’ll get another regular but useless banner that won’t change anyone’s mind.

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A Step-By-Step Guide To Gaining Quality Leads From Social Media

Attaining popularity on social media platforms is an absolute must for businesses these days.

More and more marketers have started seeing social media as an indispensable tool for marketing, as well as lead generation.

How do we know that? Well, the Google trends graph tell us for one.

Social media is essential for brand building and connecting with your target audience. So, if you are just using it for likes, shares and comments, then you are late to the party.

By now, your competitors probably already have a social media marketing strategy.

As Jacquelyn Smith explains in Forbes, “You can really get to know the customers needs through social listening. It’s a great way to research a market and initiate a conversation leading to a sale.”

According to Business 2 community, the share of marketing budgets spent on social media is expected to be more than double over the next five years, from 11% today to 24% by 2020.

Therefore, it’s high time you make proper use of its potential.

In this article, we’ll discuss ways in which you can use channels such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram to gain quality leads from social media for your business.

First, let’s talk about what lead generation means in today’s world

The definition of lead generation, according to Google, is “the action or process of identifying and cultivating potential customers for a business’s products or services.”

Therefore it is not simply about selling your product but also gathering information about your customers including their interests, their pain points, their likes or dislikes, and what will make them spend on your product.

Before the internet, marketers used to send direct mail-outs or give away forms in newspapers or magazines to collect information from potential buyers.

Today, social media has made it much easier for marketers to reach their target audience. With almost all of their information already online, all marketers need to focus on is how to maintain the attention of the target audience and convert them into leads.

Enter Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. All four allow you to reach quality leads through video marketing, email opt-ins, or paid ad campaigns.

Here is a step-by-step guide to help you maximize your use of social media marketing.

Facebook

With over 86 billion monthly active users, Facebook is one of the best platforms for marketing as well as sales. Businesses can share links, videos, images and posts on their Facebook pages to reflect their personality and style as well as reach new customers.

Have a look at these example Facebook ads.

Simple, but effective. Plus, there is a lot more you can do to capture the attention of people on Facebook.

For instance, people love contests. They’re fun! They demand engagement!

You have probably come across companies giving away prizes such as a new iPad or a $500 gift voucher. Perhaps you don’t need to be told that the company easily earns the money back through clicks, likes and conversions.

But here’s another angle to consider: people willingly provide their personal details to participate in such contests, which means you have an opportunity to obtain whatever information you are seeking from your target audience and improve your business.

Better yet, contests are a great way of increasing your email database.

Another great way to add value to your Facebook page is to create customised Facebook tabs. The ‘tabs’ feature allows companies to promote something distinctive and unique.

Take, for example, Coca-Cola’s House Rules tab on its Facebook page. Here, the company asks its fans to commend, post or share whatever they feel about the brand.

Also, don’t forget to keep your company’s logo as a big part of your profile or header image so that Facebook users know and remember it.

Always treat your Facebook page like a website and continually add new content. Create a schedule and make sure there is a good mix of photos, videos and compelling posts to generate more traffic.

Twitter

A while back, nobody knew how to track leads through Twitter. However, today most marketers use Twitter for widening their reach and turning their followers into customers.

According to this article in Business 2 community, around 79% of users recommend brands that they follow. A further 85% of users feel more connected to businesses after following them. Tweak your tweets a little and see what effect it has on your profits!

There are a few more quick ways to gain leads on Twitter, including Twitter Cards.

Twitter Cards are a lead generation tool which help in capturing attention as well engaging your audience. They work directly within your promoted tweet to collect users’ contact information in exchange for your offer, and increase your odds of conversion.

Furthermore, they are concise, don’t require much work and are definitely worthwhile. You can post many different types of cards including summary cards, photo cards, gallery cards and more.

Here is an example of an amazing gallery card on Twitter.

Recommended for You

Webcast, May 25th: How to Consistently Create High Quality Marketing Content

Also, never miss out on your brand mentions. An article in eMarketer reveals that 83% of consumers say online reviews influence their perceptions about companies, and 80% report that negative online comments affect their purchasing decisions.

Therefore, it is crucial that you monitor what people are saying about your business online.

You should respond immediately, or as soon as possible, if someone has mentioned the name of your brand on Twitter.

See how one of the most influential brands on Twitter – JetBlue – respond to some tweets by their customers.

You can also host virtual events or start a campaign on Twitter to further engage your followers and generate leads. It could be anything from having a live discussion on a particular day, to answering questions in a company Q and A.

The trick is not to initiate a conversation directly about your company, but rather the industry that surrounds it.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn has almost limitless power when it comes to generating leads. In my view, LinkedIn is the social media platform to rule them all and the main one that you should focus your energy on.

LinkedIn has more than 400 million members worldwide. You can expand your network by signing up to LinkedIn Premium, which offers a one-month free trial.

Premium gives brands, individuals and companies on LinkedIn a unique opportunity to expand their reach by providing the user with facilities such as sending 15 InMail messages a day to potential leads/clients, seeing who’s viewed your profile in the past 90 days, and finding connections faster with the option of Advanced Search.

Choose a Premium account if you haven’t already to increase your presence on this powerful social media platform, then familiarise yourself with LinkedIn Publishing.

LinkedIn’s publishing platform is a great tool for marketers to share their thoughts as industry experts.

They can also use this platform to post important information or insights that might help job seekers.

Over time, publishing timely and relevant content is a surefire way to generate more leads.

According to Hootsuite’s blog, countless professionals are now using LinkedIn as a blogging tool, and gaining an opportunity to engage a new audience for their business. See an example of how you can post on it below.

Instagram

The last of the social media titans, but not the least!

Instagram is relatively new, yet one of the fastest growing social media channels in today’s digital landscape. In its short life span of just six years, it has amassed over 500 million users.

Can you afford not to reach them? Nope, of course not!

Until recently, people primarily used Instagram for sharing photos, getting likes, and adding followers. However, in 2015, things got a shake-up after Instagram introduced paid advertising.

Using this advertising platform, businesses can now generate leads by holding quizzes, training or just sharing a photo of their brand. Plus, it’s super easy to connect your Instagram account up with your Facebook and Twitter accounts to cross-promote content.

Certain companies such as Mercedes Benz are brilliant at integrating their Instagram content on Facebook. Take a look at this example.

Once again, it’s simple but effective marketing. On that note, always remember to respond to comments on your Instagram posts!

While it’s cool to get thousands of likes and shares on a photo, it’s equally important to keep a tab on the comments people leave for you.

You don’t have to have long conversations… but if someone comments on your post or tags your brand, respond to them. This will help you expand your community and build relationships.

See a great example of how to keep communications short but sweet below.

One of the other major benefits to using Instagram is its video sharing feature. This provides a unique opportunity for marketers to share brief video clips about their products or services.

Videos are an engaging, interesting and informative way of communicating with your target audience as well as a neat way to showcase the benefits of your offering in under two minutes.

Lastly, be sure to use relevant #hashtags with everything you post.

Hashtags are the hallmark of Instagram. Finding leads isn’t easy in such a large community so adding popular or distinctive hashtags to your photos will help you find leads in a more organized way.

For instance, if you’re offering matrimonial services, you could post photos along with hashtags like #matchmaking or #findtheone to reach a larger audience seeking help in this regard.

You could also create a brand-specific hashtag for a contest or promotion. For instance, Dry Soda used the hashtag #fridayDRYday to distinguish their post.

Also, see the general use of a hashtag below by a coffee shop owner.

Wrapping up

The list of how to connect with your potential leads on social media platforms is endless. These are just a few pointers on how you can use social media to generate leads, and most of them can even be used across each platform!

Social media is integral to raising awareness of your brand and generating more leads for you. It is woven into almost every nook and cranny of our personal and business lives so use it to amplify your content creations as people discover and share them.

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Optimizing Landing Pages for Lead Generation

Digital marketing campaigns involve more than just blogging, posting on social media, or streaming video content on YouTube and similar platforms. Promoting products or services and creating brand awareness through various channels is fine – but at the end of the day, it’s the sum of every completed transaction that will swell your coffers and keep your business, well… in business.

“Closing the deal” is a key element in this process, and an attractive landing page geared towards generating new leads to funnel through to the next phase in completing transactions is an essential thing to have.

What’s so great about a landing page?

Besides providing a forum to introduce prospective buyers to your latest and greatest product, world-class service, or must-have publication? This type of promotional web page also includes a mechanism (usually some kind of form or opt-in field) where visitors are strongly encouraged to leave a valid piece of contact information about themselves in exchange for some kind of wonderful, free or extremely low-cost give-away.

You read that correctly. On a landing page, you’re essentially giving stuff away in exchange for your visitor’s contact details.

And lead generation?

Those contact details you collect from (hopefully all) your landing page visitors represent potential leads for your marketing campaign. After all, they’ve come from people who have taken the time to assess what you have to offer – and who have expressed an interest in what you have to say, by signing up. So it’s fair to assume that they’ll be receptive to further contact from your organization.

But how can you increase the chances that visitors to your landing page will:
Take the time to assess and digest what’s there, and
Leave their names and email addresses (or whatever), then click on that big, shiny Call to Action button of yours?

Here are some attributes and strategies for a landing page that’s optimized for lead generation.

Clear & contrasting

Landing pages should conform to good web design principles – and among these are a harmonious and strategic balance of colors.

“Harmonious”, in that light-colored backgrounds are easier on the eyes, and induce visitors to stay on site longer.

“Strategic”, because against this backdrop, dark text is easier to scan – and boldly-colored contrasting elements like your Call to Action (CTA) button stand out much better.

“Punchy”

Now, there’s a good word to live by.

Rather than having to wade through reams of text, keep your message short, sweet, and relevant – because internet behavioral studies suggest that most visitors will only skim the material, at best.

Bullet points are a great way to concentrate visitor attention on your key arguments – and they cut down on the verbiage, too.




Screenshot from landing page of Digital Marketer: Nice use of bullet points – and a clear path to their Call to Action, with the reassurance of data privacy.



They may reduce your word count, but go easy on the industry-specific jargon and buzzwords. Jargon only alienates people who aren’t in the know (and there are plenty out there, in case you didn’t), while buzzwords can simply be annoying.

Reassuring

If you can associate your product or brand with some known and trusted names within your industry or the world at large, this assures visitors that you’re “the genuine article” yourself. That’s why many of the more successful landing pages have a section devoted to logos from their well-known partner organizations and affiliates.




Screenshot from landing page of Tableau: Creating an association with some powerful names to go with their lofty mission statement. Shame about the footer with its multiple exit points…



Glowing testimonials from customers in a similar demographic to the buyer persona for which your landing page was designed (more on that later) give a reassurance that your product or service will actually work for them.

And including a note to the effect that “We care about your privacy, and won’t sell off your data”, at the point where contact or other customer information is being gathered provides an assurance of integrity on your part.

Automated & convenient

If you want landing page visitors to give out information about themselves, then making it quick and easy for them to do so is a safe bet. Auto-Completion or pre-populated form fields can help.

Social media account profiles typically contain the kinds of data that’s being sought via landing page forms – so enabling visitors to fill out their information automatically by linking to their Facebook, Google, or other accounts can automate the process.

Capturing your audience

You’ll probably have several distinct buyer personas, representing the core demographics of your customer base – and you should create a separate landing page for each one.

Having attracted visitors to these pages, make sure you have a captive audience by ensuring that they can’t leave without either supplying their contact details and following your Call to Action (great), or declining your offer entirely (not so good).




Screenshot from landing page of WalkMe: Clear and concise statements of why the visitor should stick around.



That means no clickable links to your main website, or exits to other resources like social media.




Screenshot from landing page of WalkMe: Plenty of laurels and big-name backing. And not a visible exit point in sight.

Your words have power

One of those powers is to detract from your message. So make sure that your headlines, main sub-heading, and any section headers you use are attention-grabbing, consistent, and actually assist your narrative.

Set up a value proposition (“What’s my visitor going to gain from downloading this white-paper, installing my software demo, etc.?”), and let those words of yours support it – including the text on your CTA button.




Screenshot from landing page of The Hoth: Strong headline, nice emphasis on “Free”, and good use of contrasting colors. Shame about the outdated copyright notice…

Use valid statistics to back up your argument, when applicable.

Letting your picture tell the story

A similar argument holds for any images that you use. Make them relevant to your cause – and as much a part of your pitch as any other element on the page.

If that means hiring a photographer or video editor to get your visual content just right, then do it.

You’ll also want to include a “hero shot”, featuring your development team, project guru, or the subject matter expert who’s effectively narrating the material on your landing page.

Keeping it up to date

It may seem like a minor detail, but that line at the foot of the page where you declare your intellectual property rights and issue a copyright notice should be dated for this year. Not 2016 – or 1995.

If you don’t keep details like this updated, visitors will assume that you’ve just set your landing page trap and left it unattended, and don’t really care about keeping things fresh.

Use a template?

Your web design skills may be minimal, and you may not have the budget to hire a professional. Thankfully, there are online resources specifically devoted to landing page design – including pre-made templates – that you may consider using.

Test, and test some more

As well as separate designs for each of your buyer personas, you may find it helpful to test the response to slight variations in individual landing page designs (alternate headlines, different colors or imagery, etc.), in a series of A/B or split tests. Coupled with website analytics, this sort of fine-tuning can assist in optimizing the visitor experience and maximizing the number of visits and/or conversions.

With the above recommendations in mind, you’ll be well on your way to creating the kind of welcoming landing page presence that attracts a wealth of new leads to pursue in your marketing endeavors.
Over to you

Do you have any tricks to get your landing page optimized for lead generation? Share your experiences in the comments below.

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The 5 Step Checklist for Great Email Branding: Part 2

In our last post, The 5 Step Checklist for Great Email Branding: Part 1, we took a look at the first 2 steps that you can take to brand up your email so that it aligns with your brand.

More specifically, we took a look at timing of your emails, as well as your subject lines.

In this post, we shall continue where we left off, and take a look at 3 more ways that you can use right now to enhance your email branding.

Let’s begin!
Step 3. Content: Visuals and Copy

What is the most important element of all email branding? The content in the email, of course!

Content in your email is the only reason why people will convert on your emails.

Concurrently, the content, and the way you write can go a huge way in terms of branding your emails, and your company in general.
Include Powerful Visuals (if you need them)

It’s true that a picture speaks a thousand words, and that goes the same for emails.

In my personal experience, you should always make it a point to include one or more impactful images in your newsletter if you are dealing with products, especially.

However, most service providers that use online marketing that I know of (including myself) tend not to use images. A good rule of thumb is to use images if you are selling products or digital downloads.

If you decide to use images, make sure that you keep it to 60 to 100 kb, so that your email loads fast on your reader’s email client.

Otherwise, keep it simple with just text.
Choose the right fonts

It’s almost so basic, that I find myself cringing when I write this, but it’s important to make your content easily readable.

Whenever you write content, be it a blog post, or email, you should always aim to make your content as easily accessible as possible.

In additional, you’d want to leave a good impression on your readers, and the first step is to make it easy to digest. That means also that your readers shouldn’t have to zoom in to view your content.

According to the best email guidelines and some of my personal experiences in content writing, these are the following font settings best for your email content:

Font type: Georgia

Georgia is not just easy on the eyes, but also effective cross browser. This means that you can rest assured that your content will appear consistent across different devices.

Header Font size – 22 to 25

To separate your email content, and make it much easier to read, you’d want to use headers, very much like a blog post.

The rules on email are simpler. Keep your header font size around 22 to 25, and it’d be more than adequate.

Body font size – 14 to 16

The body is the gist of your content.

It’s what makes up the chunk of your entire email, and thus it’s important to get it right.

In my personal experience, I always recommend my clients to go for font size 15 because it’s the most optimal size for reading, in my opinion.

Font color: Black (it depends)
Although black (#000) is the industry average in email, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t spice things up at all.

In fact, if you’re in the field of entertainment, fashion, or food, it does make a lot of sense to use font colors that fit the design of your email template.

I tend to find that for service businesses, black works just fine, but you can always consider lighter black colors like #43464b or #262626.

Choosing a lighter, black color is easier on the eyes, and helps your readers to get through your email and hear what you have to say.

For reference, you can use this color checker to find out the best tinge of black that suits your email.


Use the right words

Words are at the heart of your content, and this is where applying best copywriting practices come into play.

Any good email marketing campaign should contain the following:
Attention: How can you best attract the attention of the reader?
Interest: How can you focus on the benefits of the product or service, and align them to the self-interests of the reader?
Desire: How can you frame your offer in a way that creates demand, and make your readers need the product or service right now?
Action: What call to action can you provide the reader, that makes them want to click through on your offer, and solve that problem now?


Keep your words short, and to the point

The words that you choose should be short, succinct, and to the point.

At first glance, your readers should be able to digest the key points of the email, and make sense of your message.
Step 4. Personalisation

We are in the phase of transition right now, where marketing is slowly moving from traditional blast-to-everyone campaigns, to small, niche messages, one at a time.
Personalization is the key to success in this crowded world.
Everyone wants to feel like someone cares for them.

This is where tools like Sendlane can again come into play. Using Sendlane’s prefixes, you can easily send personalized messages to your email list.
Address your reader by first name

If you’ve obtained your readers from your website or opt in form, then you should have their first name at the very least.

Use this to your advantage, and customise the message to them.

You can do this easily by using one of Sendlane’s Personalization Tags.

Personalization tags are basically prefixes that you can use to adapt an email to the specific subscriber.

For example, you can use personalization tags to integrating your subscriber’s name in an e-mail, or by presenting various written content to different target groups or various graphics influenced by interests.

By inserting these tags into the content of your email it will customize the email experience for each recipient, and chances are, increase your conversion rates while doing it.

You might also want to considering personalizing the Subject Title of your email campaign as well, to catch the attention of the reader.

To get started in adding a first name personalization tag to your Subject Line, the first thing to do is to head over to your Campaign Setup page.



There, you’ll find an option to Personalize your email’s Subject Title.

Clilck on the Personalization button, and a popup will appear.



If you wish to personalize the first name of your email campaign, then click on the first option, and your option will be recorded.

What Sendlane basically does is to capture the First Name data from the list of subscribers that you’ve uploaded, and insert them into the Subject Title where you command it to be.



Then, click on next.

Choose the list that you would like to send your personalized emails to, then click on Next.



On the email campaign editor, you can basically draft the email that you want to send out to your list, and add the right personalization tag here.



For example, suppose you want the email to start with Hello John (assuming the person receiving the email is called John),

You can simply click on the last letter of “Hello”:



Then, on the left hand corner of the dashboard, you’ll find a section that is called Personalization tags.



Once you click on the Select button, you will see a list of options popping up.

Assuming you want to add the First Name of the reader to the email, you’ll click on the option “Subscriber first name,” and it’ll be applied accordingly.

For your reference, here are some other personalization tags that you can use in Sendlane:

VAR_SITE_NAME =Site name
VAR_SITE_URL = Site URL
VAR_MAILING_ADDRESS = User mailing address
VAR_PHONE = user phone number
VAR_SITE_UNSUBSCRIBE = unsubscribe
VAR_FIRST_NAME = subscriber first name
VAR_LAST_NAME = subscriber last name
VAR_FULL_NAME = subscriber full name
VAR_EMAIL = subscriber email
VAR_COUNTRY = subscriber country
VAR_STATE = subscriber state
VAR_CITY = subscriber city
VAR_SUBSCRIBE_DATE = subscriber opt in date
VAR_SIGNUP_IP = subscriber IP address
Give them what they signed up for

If you’ve set up your content marketing campaign well, then there’s a good chance that you know exactly who opted in for what.
Use this to your advantage, and send them offers that are relevant to them.

Remember, you can’t sell meat to vegetarians. Sending the wrong offer doesn’t just hurt your email personalisation, it affects your reputation.
Step 5. Optimization for all devices

Mobile is fast becoming more and more relevant, with all of us being so connected and intimately to our devices.

According to comScore, mobile already exceeded the number of desktops in 2014, increasing more dramatically as compared to the latter.



In addition, eMarketer also found that the amount of time that people spent in 2015 consuming media on their mobile devices was 51% of the total, with desktop at a mere 42%.



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In addition, a study conducted by IBM Marketing Cloud in 2016 found that nearly half (49%) of all emails are read and opened on mobile devices.



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In short, this means that you’d better optimise your emails to load properly on mobile devices.

In addition, BlueHornet found out that a staggering 71.2% of readers will simply delete an email if it doesn’t display correctly.


What this means for you

With the continual and proven rise of the mobile phone, it’s hard to call yourself a smart marketer if you don’t adapt to the changes.

Just as marketers and business owners must optimise their sites to make it mobile responsive, you have to make sure that your email is well optimized to handle mobile responsiveness too.

In fact, in only 52% of marketers created a mobile responsive email template in 2015, a study by eConsultancy found out in the “Email Marketing Industry Census”
How you can overcome it

In order to find the best way to make your email mobile compatible, I like to use the tool EmailonAcid, which is a great tool that allows you to analyse your email, and see how it shows up on different devices and platforms – 54 different platforms, in fact.

To get started, you can simply head to EmailonAcid, and sign up for a free account.



Synchronise EmailonAcid with your email provider, and start testing your emails on various different browsers.

Use email marketing tools like Sendlane

The good thing about email marketing tools is that all the hard work already gets done for you upfront.

This means to say that you can send every email without worrying about different browser issues, load times and what not.

Sendlane, for example, sends emails that are targeted to work across different browsers, and can shortcut a lot of the unnecessary testing times that you would have to go through otherwise.
Conclusion

While we all know that email is the most important element in marketing, sadly most of us don’t pay attention to the finer details in our emails.

I hope that this post has given you some insights and actionable steps that you can take to immediately improve your conversion rates.

Email marketing will remain as one of the most important tools for reaching out to your audience, and if you’re not taking care of the finer details, then something’s going to give.

What are some other ways that you can improve your email branding? Share your comments down below! I read every single comment.

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