13 Simple Questions to Help You Draft a Winning Content Strategy [Free Worksheet]

 Welcome to the year of adaptive content. The choose-your-own-adventure era of content marketing. The age of the customized customer experience.

We’ve already tipped our hand by publishing two podcasts on the topic: Adaptive Content: A Trend to Pay Attention to in 2015 and Behind the Scenes: 2014 in Review and the Road Ahead.

And 16 Stats That Explain Why Adaptive Content Matters Right Now is a foundational blog post that briefs you on the subject.

At this point, it’s only natural that we jump right in to the heart of adaptive content.

But after reading two dozen articles and at least one white paper, flipping through two SlideShare presentations, listening to a few podcasts, and reading four books, I realized if I want to prepare you to implement adaptive content, we have to go back to the beginning …

And start with content strategy.

Can you really trust your content strategy?

Content strategy needs to be precise. See, before you even put pen to paper, you need to know the direction you are heading.

Most of us who work online, from freelance writers to small business owners, probably have a content strategy. But there’s just one problem: it’s up in our heads.

But if you say, “My business is not that complicated, and neither is my content strategy. I know where I want to take this business. I don’t need to commit it to paper,” then this stat should make you take pause:

Only 39 percent of B2B small business marketers have a documented content marketing strategy. The rest either have a strategy that they have only talked about (47 percent), have no strategy at all (12 percent), or are unsure (1 percent).

That’s from the 2015 benchmarks, budgets, and trends study by Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and MarketingProfs. So, let me explain the danger behind an undocumented content strategy.

First off, the difference between keeping that content strategy pinned to your mental wallpaper and taping it to the physical cinder blocks in your basement office is that your supposed strategy that you talk about may be no strategy at all.

Ouch.

The CMI study also found:

• 39 percent of companies who do have a documented strategy are “more effective in nearly all aspects of content marketing than their peers who either have a verbal-only strategy or no strategy at all.”
• 60 percent of those with a documented content marketing strategy consider their organization to be “effective” at content marketing; only 33 percent of those with just a verbal strategy say the same.
• 62 percent of those with a documented strategy say that their strategy closely guides their content marketing efforts; only 29 percent of those with just a verbal strategy say the same.
• Companies with a documented strategy are more than twice as likely to be successful at charting the ROI of their content marketing efforts than those with only a verbal strategy.

Furthermore, this lack of a documented content strategy could be a factor behind one of the most surprising results of another study, Copyblogger’s very own 2015 Cost of Online Business Report, which revealed 51 percent of online business owners are struggling to make a living online.

So, that notion you call your content strategy may be causing you to leave money on the table, publish ineffective content, and aimlessly feel your way to your destination, which might end up being the wrong destination after all.

You need a clear and focused content strategy to produce optimal results.

Answer these 13 content strategy questions

We’ve already made the case for content. But if you need a little reminder, here are some words of wisdom from Authority Rainmaker 2015 speaker, Ann Handley.

She writes in Content Rules that content will “position your company not just as a seller of stuff, but as a reliable source of information.”

But it can be tricky. Especially if you target more than one audience. And CMI’s research reveals that 54 percent of small businesses say they target at least two or three audiences.

Only seven percent said they target just one audience.

Throw in the different tactics you can use, social media platforms, paid advertising methods, as well as a limited budget and resources, and it becomes clear that a defined content strategy is necessary if you want to have any hope of remaining focused.

Certainly having a content strategy is better than not having one. But a documented one is superior.

As Kristina Halvorson and Melissa Rach write in Content Strategy for the Web:

Your content strategy defines how an organization (or project) will use content to achieve its objectives and meet its users’ needs.

Your content strategy helps you see clearly, avoid excuses, and remove distractions. It’s there to keep you accountable.

But creating a content strategy doesn’t have to be a frighteningly massive affair. You can create your first draft in less than a day, just by answering a few questions.

So, square away an afternoon, ask yourself these questions, and document the answers in a notebook, on a whiteboard, in Evernote, or in the handy PDF we’ve created for you below. Have fun!

1. Who are your users?

Identify and specifically describe the members of your audience.

For example:

• She is a working mother who would like to feed her family a healthy meal three times a day.
• He is an African American who wants to become a lawyer so he can give back to his community.
• She is retired, without any concerns for money, but simply wants to be productive and not bored.

As mentioned above, you may be speaking to more than one target audience. Define all of them. This may require you to delve pretty deeply into their heads.

2. Who are your competitors?

And I’m not just talking about your direct competitors. Who or what can take prospects away from you?

For example, a web designer is not only competing against other web designers, but also against tools that allow non-designers to design.

3. What do you bring to the table?

There is a reason I discussed your customers and competitors first. They give you an idea of the shape of the market and how you can fit into that market.

I say this all the time to people who are trying to build a business and a brand: Your mission and strategy will change over time. It will evolve as you learn about your customers and competitors.

With that research in your belt, you now can ask: How do you fit into the market? What do you bring to the table that no one else can? What makes you unique?

4. What do you hear?

Hopefully voices. But not the ones in your head.

I mean the voices from your customers and ideal target audience. What are they saying? What are the recurring themes, in regard to their dreams and challenges?

If you don’t know where to hear these voices, find the online water coolers where your prospects like to hang out. They could be on social media sites like Reddit, Facebook, Google+, or Twitter. Also consider LinkedIn discussion groups, forums like Quora, or membership sites like Authority.

5. What content do you already have?

You need to assess the content you already have on your website, blog, and social media platforms — and how far along you are into the content marketing game will determine how painful this will be. But it’s important it gets done.

Yes, this is a content audit.

Ultimately, you want to determine the type of content that would be the most beneficial to produce going forward.

6. What is the purpose of your content?

This is perhaps the most important question.

Is your content intended to drive sales? Generate leads? Build authority? Increase organic search traffic? Please your mother? All of the above? More than likely “all of the above” is the case, but each individual piece of content will accomplish a different task.

For instance, the purpose of an article you wrote on another blog may simply be to drive more traffic to your website. But not to just any page on your website — a landing page specifically designed for that guest article. A landing page designed to convert those visitors into email newsletter subscribers.

And that email newsletter is designed to strengthen your relationships with your readers and educate them on your products or services. For instance, one email you send may be crafted to drive those subscribers to another landing page designed to sell them your product or service.

It’s important to understand the purpose of your content. And the purpose of each piece of content can be determined during your content audit.

7. How often should you publish content?

Once a week? Daily? Answers to these questions boil down to your resources. How much time do you have? Who is going to create all of this content? Is the content converting?

Here’s some insightful research from Andy Crestodina to help you make that decision.

8. How will you distribute your content?

Content that isn’t shared is content that is ignored. No matter how great you think it is.

So, which social media platform(s) will you focus on? Where is your ideal audience? Who is going to share your content? Are you going to use scheduling tools?

9. Who is in charge of your content?

Is it you? Should it be you?

Like Michael Gerber said in his classic book, The E-Myth, a business owner should be in a position to work on his business — not in it. Otherwise, you may find it difficult to grow. You may need to hire someone to write new content and manage existing content.

10. Who will produce your content?

You may have a lot of wishes and desires. And no shortage of ambition. But allow human nature to teach you a lesson: We are all limited in what we can do.

If you want to create 12 infographics this year, who’s going to do the research? Write the content? Design it? Will these people always be available when you need them?

11. Who is going to maintain the content?

The content on your website is like a garden. It needs to be cultivated.

For every new blog post you publish, there are five rotting away with broken links, outdated facts, and topics that are now irrelevant.

Who is going to clean up this mess? Name that person, and create a schedule.

12. Who is responsible for the results?

If you’re the only content creator, easy enough. You are responsible for everything.

But if you have a small team, make each person responsible for some area of the content. As Patrick Lencioni explains in his book, 3 Signs of a Miserable Job, you will provide motivation to your team by measuring their performances.

Make sure these goals are measurable, achievable, and specific — and not ultimatums. In other words, don’t say, “You’re gone if you don’t meet this.” Allow room for mistakes, corrections, and growth.

In addition, you should be held responsible for an area of the content as well. Your people will respect that.

13. What’s your destination (core strategy)?

All the preceding questions build to this final one.

This is about stating what you need to accomplish, determining the type of content that will help you achieve this goal, and creating a plan to help you accomplish it.

Use these guidelines to create a core strategy:

• Aspirational: Create a goal that gives you room to stretch, fail, get back up, and grow.
• Flexible: Your core strategy should allow you to adjust as your environment changes around you, without having to make a drastic pivot.
• Meaningful: Does your core strategy align with your values, and will you be able to sustain it and endure challenges over the long haul?

Here’s an example of a core strategy from Content Strategy for the Web:

Curate an entertaining, online reference guide that helps stressed-out law students become successful practicing lawyers.

This is similar to five things every good marketing story needs: it’s clear who the hero is, what her goal is, what the moral is, what the conflict is — and, of course, you are the mentor.

Your turn …

Once your draft is complete, your next job is to download (221 KB) and print this nine-page content strategy worksheet.

Fill it out, and pin it in a spot you will see every day.

In the end, your core strategy will guide you through the distractions and difficulties that accompany building an online audience with content. But the rest of the information you collect will tell you where you are now, where you need to go, how you are going to get there, and the resources you need.

Editor’s note: Many thanks to Copyblogger’s Pamela Wilson for designing this worksheet!

Image source: Jeff Sheldon via Unsplash.

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How to Calm Your Content Anxiety in 5 Simple Steps

 It was an early morning of coffee, loud music, and blasting the internet with everything I could muster.
I had already published a few articles on my website, skipping the draft process. Then I scrambled to share them on every social media network and group chat that I could think of.
Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Slack channels, Facebook groups, email newsletter(s) — you know the drill.
It was a copy/paste nightmare, but that’s what the “experts” had told me to do. The familiar phrases of “Content is king!” and “Blog every day!” were among the many maxims running through my mind that morning.
We are often told that your frequent presence online is vitally important. More interaction, more connection, more conversion.
This is partially true, but experience has taught me that excessive presence damages both your authority and your own personal fulfillment.

More content is not always better content

I was on a content-production rampage during this particular reinvention (yes, I’ve done this “online thing” quite a few times, and from scratch). Yet, I was just as internally frustrated as when I wasn’t producing any content at all.

The problem — obvious now in hindsight — is that more does not always mean better.

It’s the most basic of truths, known by everyone you’ve ever met, yet contrary to the mainstream teachings of many online “gurus.”
Instead of wasting your time with fruitless effort, here are five steps that will help calm your content anxiety and safeguard you against our shared tendency to believe frequency trumps quality.

Step #1: Adopt the “One-day-queue” rule

Slowing down might sound easy, but it’s far from it.
If you’re like me, your typical routine is to go from inspiration to creation to production in the same morning (thanks to that gallon of coffee).
That habit makes sense when you’re passionate about your project. Unfortunately, it may stunt your capacity to produce meaningful work for your audience.
Instead, live by what I call the “one-day-queue” rule:

When you are inspired, resist the urge to create and publish on the same day.

This includes blog posts too — don’t rush to publish an idea that you haven’t fully developed.
Hold back to ensure you’re publishing the most relevant, useful content.

Step #2: Work with an editor

If you write any type of content, working with an editor should be a priority.
Your editor can shield you from your own impulsiveness and prevent you from publishing a post on your blog or sending your email newsletter in a fury.
When you get in the habit of having someone else review your content before you publish, you’re forced to slow down your process.
Editors also don’t have to be expensive. If you ask a friend, coworker, or family member, he or she might even review your work for free to support you.
An “editor” who has an eye for polished content will help you craft your best work — and any cost will be money well-spent.

Step #3: Schedule social media updates

This is quite difficult for me because I impulsively tweet a lot, but scheduling your social media updates helps you practice something I like to call “funneling your impulse.”
What do I mean by that?
Let’s say you’re scanning — you guessed it — your Twitter timeline, and you get an idea for a tweet.
Instead of satisfying the urge to post that tweet immediately, funnel your impulse through a filter by scheduling it for at least 10 minutes in the future.
In that time, you might rethink posting that tweet and therefore have time to delete or rephrase it.
That’s an option you wouldn’t have had if you just impulsively posted the tweet.

Step #4: Learn the art of observation

Simply observing may be difficult for some creatives, but it’s undeniably required.
Discovering and examining your audience’s needs will help you serve them better.
Spend more time watching and less time building.

Don’t build for the sake of production; build for the sake of creating a solution.

Solve your audience’s problems, and you won’t have to shout so loud.

Step #5: Focus on the entire process, not just the product

I once mentioned in a newsletter email on mobile-first design that web designers should focus more on the process than the product.
It’s understandable that we have a natural tendency to be preoccupied with that glorious finished product — part of the process, even.
But our motivator can often become a distraction and we neglect other important steps.
Aim to balance the time you spend on your marketing efforts and creating your products.

Better content, at a manageable pace

Following these guidelines has allowed me to craft high-quality content at a more regular pace, and with less effort.
I don’t write a blog post and publish it the same day, or blast out an email prematurely, just to find several typos in each of them the next day.
Instead, I feel confident knowing that the content I do publish (or cancel) has been carefully reviewed.
In turn, those who follow me receive better content, read articulated and refined writing, and experience an overall stronger presentation.


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4 Trust-Building Steps that Get Your Prospects to Eat Out of Your Hands

Are you scaring away your best prospects?
When you’re new to content marketing, you might inadvertently send a frightening message to your potential customers and clients.
Your heart is probably in the right place. You’re trying to provide value and put your best offers in front of people — but your approach might miss the mark.
And that wrong approach might cause terrible conversion rates for your opt-in forms and low sales of your products and services.
Want to know how to stop scaring off your prospects, build trust, and start attracting tons of subscribers and sales?
The key is learning how to get birds to eat out of your hands.

Why content marketing is like ornithology

Let’s say you have a cute little group of finches in your backyard, and your dream is to get the little fellas to eat birdseed out of your hand.
The trick to earning the trust of the birds is to move slowly and quietly, so you don’t scare them off. Stand next to the tree or bird feeder where they gather, and let them get used to you. Demonstrate your trustworthiness and let them know you’re not going to hurt them.
Then continue to take tiny steps toward your goal, all the while being careful not to scare them. Let the birds discover you’re a source of yummy food by sprinkling birdseed on the ground and hanging out nearby while they nibble.
If you are infinitely patient, take baby steps, and don’t frighten them, eventually you can train the birds to eat directly out of your hands.
Here’s what you don’t want to do:

• Scream “I HAVE BIRDSEED!” at the trees where the birds hang out
• Shove your hands in their little faces to show them what you’re offering
• Wave your arms around to get their attention
• Anything else that makes you look scary, aggressive, risky, or alarming

How this bird story affects your content marketing

If you never plan on trying to get finches to eat from your hands — who cares?
But this story has an important lesson for all content marketers: Your prospects are just like birds.
They are highly risk-averse and hypervigilant, constantly searching for a reason to take flight and leave your website.
If you offer too much too soon or shove your paid products in their faces, they’ll fly away.
And you’ll be left alone, holding a handful of birdseed, wondering what happened.

Building relationships the bird whisperer way

How can you frame your offers to avoid scaring away your prospects?

1. Start slow. Patience is essential when you’re building relationships with your audience. Be sure to establish trust before you ask for anything. When in doubt, err on the side of caution.
2. Provide value first. When your website is new, it’s critical that you establish yourself as an expert (and build trust with your audience members) by giving away free value before you present your audience with an offer for your paid products and services. Start with a free report, educational video, or content library, and gather feedback from your audience on that content before you make your next move.
3. Don’t ask for multiple actions. Whether you have an email list opt-in form or free registration page for your site, one major mistake new content marketers make is trying to do too much with a single page. If you present paid offers on the same page or form as your free content, you might confuse your prospects and they won’t take any action at all.
4. Send emails with useful content to build relationships and increase trust. Once a prospect has signed up for your email list, you still need to proceed with caution. To build relationships, send consistent content notifications or email newsletters to prove your authority in your niche and provide value to your community members.

Win your prospects’ trust with a steady, consistent approach

When you approach your prospects carefully and consistently over time (and prove you’re a safe person), they’ll eventually feel comfortable buying from you.
So take small and steady steps, and don’t overdo it with aggressive sales messages. Your prospects will learn to trust you, and they’ll be far more likely to buy your products and services.
A little birdie told me you (and your prospects) are going to be a lot happier with this approach.


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8 Essentials For An Effective Win-Back Email Campaign

For any marketer, we feel a sense of excitement when we are able to convert a visitor to a customer.
However, only the first half of the battle has been won. The other half is trying to retain those customers by probing them with email newsletters and offers over the span of a few months to a year.
This part is more difficult and usually results in them going inactive and not engaging with your brand as a whole.

The are many reasons why people would go inactive:

• They only bought your product as a gift (it was a one-time purchase)
• They had a bad experience
• You changed your product and they’re just not into the new thing
• Your emails may be getting sent to their junk mail inbox
• Circumstances have changed
• They took a great promotional deal you had on offer, but was never really into your brand

Retaining customers is an important yet challenging task. Don’t worry, many email marketers face this problem too.

Customers will naturally decrease by about 22.5% every year.

So why do we bother trying to retain customers when we can just find new customers?

1. First, it’s a lot easier to sell to existing customers than new ones – 50% easier to be exact. This is because your brand has already done the hard work of establishing a level of trust, so convincing them requires little work.
2. Second, it’s a lot cheaper. It costs between 4-10 times more to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one.

This is why win-back email campaigns are so important. But how effective are they?

Effectiveness of win-back emails

ReturnPath conducted a study where they analyzed 33 different win-back email campaigns by different ecommerce stores to see how effective they were at turning a non-active customer into an active customer.
Results showed:

• 92% of the emails made it to the customer’s inbox – this means inactive users were receiving win-back emails
• Open rate was only 12% – A respectable number as customers have not interacted with the brand in a long time

However, results showed that slow and steady wins the race:

• 45% of recipients who received a win-back campaign read a subsequent message after the first email
• 75% of re-engaged subscribers had read a subsequent message within 89 days (after the first email), with the other 25% still opening emails 300 days after receiving the first win-back email

image: http://marketingland.com/email-win-back-programs-work-81574

Overall, three quarters of inactive customers could still re-engage with your brand within 90 days

8 Tips to creating an effective win-back email campaign

1. Personalize your emails

Personalization is a must in email marketing and here’s why

• Personalized email messages improve click-through rates by an average of 14% and conversions by 10% (Campaign Monitor)
• 74% of marketers say targeted personalization increases customer engagement (eConsultancy).

Customers will appreciate you using their name instead of “hey you”. It creates more of a personal connection than a retailer-customer interaction.
Here are some ways on how we can personalize our win-back emails:

• Say their name
• Show previous purchase history
• Personalized product recommendations (upsell and cross-sell) based on past purchases

Netflix does it right with their personalization: using the first name, effective copy (note how they use pronouns, e.g. “you” and “your”) and a list of devices they can view shows on. The email also includes a strong call-to-action personalized to the customer, “I’d like to come back”.

Source: allthatiknow

2. Provide a solution

There are many reasons why your customer hasn’t purchased from you in a long time.

Understanding your customer is super important in the world of ecommerce. If we do not understand why they are going lapse, we will just repeat the same mistake over and over again, hoping to get a different result every time.

So Instead of trying to guess the answer, a better way would be to ask them directly.

Inbound adopts for a personalized message request. Maybe Inbound is sending too many emails or irrelevant ones. They provide an opportunity to let the customers decide what kind of emails they want to receive so it’s more personal and targeted. They also send a feedback request at the end to learn what they could do better.

Source: Audienceops

Dollar Shave Club anticipates that customers may not want their razors every month. That’s why they ask their customer if receiving a razor every second month would be better and shows them how this could be done.

Source: Flexmail

3. Segmentation

It’s a fact that your customers will appreciate your emails if it’s related to them.
We can segment our email list to subcategories. This could include:

• How long since their last purchase
• Low, medium and high-value customers – average order value
• Number of orders per year
• Customers that had negative experiences

By segmenting your email list, you can deliver more relevant win-back email messages to each group.

4. Highlight the benefits

Win your customer’s back by reminding them of the value and benefits of your product
Here’s a win-back email by Dropbox to users that have not added or uploaded any files to their account. They remind users to start reusing their service by highlighting the features of their product.

Source: Betaout

Warby Parker sends out an email whenever someone places an item in their shopping cart but abandons it. They know the customer has enough interest to add the product to their shopping cart, so a simple email may be enough to make them purchase the product. They use the copy, “want a better look?” to let customers know the benefits of their glasses – looking great!

Source: essenceofemail

5. Send more than one email

There’s no magic email that will engage every inactive customer. That’s why you should develop a win-back email campaign comprising of several emails. Send different win-back emails over a period of time to try engage your inactive customer. Hitting them from different angles is better than relying on sole email – also great for split testing and gathering data!

Here’s Adidas’ third email in their 3-part win-back email series. They opt for the urgency tactic, reminding them that they have a limited time before the discount offer expires.

Source: Omertia

6. Give them an offer

Why not try to engage your customers by giving them something – maybe a discount or a gift.
Study shows that win-back emails that contained a “$ off” discount performed better than emails with “% off” discount.

A great way use this tactic is to include the discount in the subject line.

Tip: Don’t send your discounted emails in the first email of your win-back email campaign series (e.g. send on the second or third email). Sometimes customers are willing to purchase from emails with no discount so maximize your revenue by saving these for a later series.

If a customer doesn’t respond to your offers, you can maybe send them an even better offer than before. However, this may be risky as customers may catch on and wait intentionally for the better offer – so use it wisely!

Here’s Crocs’ win-back email containing a $10 off discount.

Source: wisepops

Here’s another discount offer – 100% free discount that is. Pinkberry, adds a free yogurt to customer’s account when they have not bought for a while. By offering a bonus or a free gift, you can encourage a person to come back to your store and start buying from you again.

Source: Business2Community

7. Know when to give up

It’s better to have a small but reliable mailing list than a large inactive list that delivers inconsistent results. That’s why part of the aim of our win-back emails are to opt out people that won’t buy from you.

If you tried everything, but your customer won’t budge, sometimes you just have to let them go. You don’t want to keep sending them emails over and over again as it may appear spam-like and may give your brand a bad reputation.

Here’s Fab’s unsubscribe email where they opt the customer out of their mailing list, but leaves them an option in case they still want to stay on. They know the receiver will never buy so there’s no point having them on their mailing list.

Source: Hubspot

Here’s the clothing company, Free People, acknowledging that their customer has not engaged with their emails in a long time and ask if they still want to receive them or not. This may encourage them to engage again, but also make the customer unsubscribe. Either way is fine as there’s no point having a customer that’s never going to buy. 

 

Source: Hubspot

8. A/B Test

Don’t assume one headline copy is going to be better than another. Let data guide your campaign instead of using your own opinion.

The best marketers are the ones that continuously test and optimize their campaigns based on data. Tests could include but not limited to:

• Design
• Copy
• Frequency
• Timing
• Offers

The 33 ecommerce stores that participated in ReturnPath’s study split tested different subject lines like, “we miss you” and “a note from the CEO”. These had read rates of 13%.

What to do next?

Trying to get your customers to re-engage with your brand is never easy as they stopped engaging for some reason. However, with these tactics, you will increase the odds of them re-engaging and buying from you again.

What success have you had with your win-back email campaigns? We’d love to hear in the comments below or if you have any other extra tips, pop it down below too!


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3 Surprising Stages of Successful Landing Pages

 Landing pages support content marketing.
The tricky thing is … landing pages are not home pages. They’re not blog posts, cornerstone content, white papers, case studies, product description pages, or even sales pages.
And you can’t treat them like they are.

High-converting landing pages consist of three action-driving stages: before, during, and after.

Tragically, when many content marketers build landing pages, they focus on just one stage: during.
But if you don’t invest effort into what happens before and after you present your landing page, it doesn’t stand a chance of achieving the results you want.

1. The “before” of landing pages

While landing pages are not about you — your company, your product, or your service — the “before” stage is because you first have to establish your goal.
As Demian Farnworth said:

“[Landing pages] force readers to focus on one thing — and one thing only.”

Determining that one thing is the only time you get to be self-centered in this process. The best way to set your goal is to complete this sentence:

I want my visitor to …

• Like my Facebook page
• Subscribe to my email newsletter
• Watch my demo video
• Register for my content library
• Make an appointment

Naturally, there are plenty of other actions that might be the goal of your landing page. Whatever you select, your goal should be singular: the one desired action will guide everything else.
For example, let’s look at InvestorCarrot’s landing page for their SEO Keyword Bible.
The crucial thing to notice isn’t what’s on the page, but what’s left off the page.

There’s no header navigation, no footer, no social media icons, and even their logo in the top left corner isn’t clickable.

Essentially, there are two roads out from this landing page: “Get My Free Report Now” or “No thanks, I’ll pass on this opportunity.”

InvestorCarrot knows exactly what they want their visitor to do and they eliminate every other navigation option.
The result of this singularity — along with other factors I’ll address in the next two stages — is a whopping 45.89 percent conversion rate.
Take heed: when it comes to planning your landing page — the before stage — select one goal. Remove anything that doesn’t support that goal.

2. The “during” of landing pages

The “during” stage of your landing page consists of five on-page elements.

1. Headline

The headline of your landing page is arguably the most crucial on-page element. Why?
Because while 8 out of 10 people read the headline, only 2 out of 10 will read the content that follows.
So, how do you create a headline that grabs, compels, and drives action?
Easy. You don’t.
Instead of trying to create the perfect headline, steal it.
First, steal the heart of your headline by building it around your audience’s own keywords.
Whether you drive visitors to your landing page with paid advertising (PPC) or organic search, your headline must include the words your audience uses.
This is precisely what makes our previous example so compelling. Instead of including vague keywords about SEO, the headline targets a specific audience: Simple SEO ‘Hacks’ To Help Real Estate Investors Get More Traffic & Leads.
Next, steal successful headline templates.
Copyblogger’s How to Write Magnetic Headlines ebook is a great place to start.
You can also steal from my own 25 heaven-and-hell-themed headline formulas or go even more in depth by diagnosing your audience’s “state of awareness” and then systematically crafting breakthrough headlines from inside your market’s mind.
For instance, Yoobly’s webinar landing page — “The $100K Case Study: How to Generate New Rockstar Prospects & Explode Your Downline Without Selling Friends & Family” — leverages a host of proven headline ingredients:

The landing page:

• States the big benefit (“$100k Case Study”)
• Appeals to those who want to learn (“How to”)
• Offers useful information enlivened by verbs (“Generate” and “Explode”)
• Uses direct language (“Your”)
• Makes contrasting statements against common approaches (“Without Selling Friends & Family”)

2. Subheads

With all the information that bombards us on a daily basis, most of us scan content.
Enter the subhead.

The subheads on your landing page should not only structurally guide your reader through your major points, they should stand alone and relentlessly focus on the benefits of your call to action.

Remember that what the headline does for the page itself, subheads do for each section.
This means making your subheads enticing, bite-sized nuggets of “I just gotta keep reading” copy.
A fantastic strategy for building compelling subheads is to make a list of all your product or service’s features … and then transform those features into audience-centered benefits.
Henneke’s A Simple Trick to Turn Features Into Benefits (and Seduce Readers to Buy!) makes this transformation process easy by asking one question, “So what?”

“The oven preheats quickly.
So what?
It’s quickly ready to start cooking your lasagna.
So what?
Your food is on the table sooner.
So what?
Life is less stressful. There’s less hanging around the kitchen waiting for the oven to get ready. And you don’t have to worry you might forget to preheat your oven.”

3. Body copy

Just like every other on-page element of your landing page, effective body copy does not come from you … it comes from your visitor.
Your aim should be to unearth the very words your audience already uses when they talk about your product or service.
How? By digging into user-generated content from:

• Amazon reviews
• Comments on blog posts
• Customer FAQs
• Email responses
• Social media posts
• Forum sites
• Question and answer sites
• Qualitative surveys

4. Proof

I’m sure you’ve heard the old saying “People buy with their hearts, then justify it with their heads.”

So while you must speak to the heart of your visitor, you also need to provide proof for their heads.

Testimonials are the primary way you provide that proof. Unfortunately, testimonials are often too general and fail at providing proof in one of two ways:

1. They aren’t framed in a problem-then-solution format.
2. They don’t highlight measurable results.

A shining example of the problem-then-solution format is Chris Brogan’s testimonial for the Rainmaker Platform:

Brogan’s testimonial nails exactly what’s wrong with most content management systems — the problem — and then explains exactly how the Rainmaker Platform addresses those deficiencies for him — the solution.
How do you generate your own proof-producing testimonials?
Ask for details.
Instead of just soliciting bland reviews (or waiting for them to roll in), reach out to your customers and clients and ask them to tell you about:

• The problem they were facing
• How you helped them find a solution
• The results (real data) that back up that win

5. Call to action

The call to action (CTA) is copy that asks your visitor to take your desired action. CTAs will commonly appear throughout your landing pages and at the very end.
To write your CTA buttons, you can follow Joanna Wiebe’s masterful advice.
Put yourself in your visitor’s shoes, and your call to action button should state how they’d finish the following sentence:

I want to _____.

That little trick is how we design buttons that say unique phrases like “Find Out How to Ride a Bike” and “Make Sense of My Finances Fast.”

3. The “after” of landing pages

So far, we’ve covered quite a bit of ground. However, we’re not done yet.
Why?
Because even if you create a high-converting landing page with all the right on-page elements relentlessly driven by your own all-consuming and singular goal … and even if people are actually taking the action you want them to take, the job of your landing page isn’t finished.
In fact, if you stop there, all your work could be for nothing.

The most neglected element of every landing page ironically isn’t even on your landing page itself.

It’s what comes next — the “after.”
When standard “Thanks for signing up” pages and “Click here to confirm” emails are off-putting, they squander the momentum you’ve worked so hard to create.
What should your follow-up look like? Here are two examples.
Let’s look at InvestorCarrot’s landing page again. After signing up for the SEO Keyword Bible, the new lead is redirected to the page featured below, which offers immediate access to the report itself. 

Immediate access is vital to keep the landing page’s momentum rolling.
In addition to offering immediate access, the page also presents the user with two videos about the report as well as the opportunity to deepen her relationship with InvestorCarrot by signing up for a live webinar.
Your own follow-up doesn’t need to have as many options.
Whenever someone signs up for my Content Creation Checklist, I send him this conversational follow-up that includes tons of white space, one link to click, and ends with a question.

Whichever method you adopt for your own follow-up:

1. Give your visitors immediate access to whatever they’ve just asked for.
2. Write to them like one human communicating to another.

Don’t ignore these two landing-page stages

When you build landing pages with these three stages, they are hinges that transform visitors into actual leads: real people with real problems in search of real solutions.
Don’t make the mistake of just focusing on what’s on the page: the during.
Start by selecting one goal and one goal alone: the before.
Then, don’t drop the ball after all your hard work. Customize your follow-up and keep it rolling: the after.
Oh, and be sure to share in the comments if you’ve got a tip or landing page of your own you’d love for me to check out. However, be careful … I just might actually take a look.


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What Is a Content Library? Plus Answers to 9 More Questions about This Innovative Lead Gen Approach

In May 2013, a small company with fewer than 40 unusual employees made a historic lead generation move that resulted in stunning lead generation results. (I stress “unusual” in a good way.)
The company with those odd employees, of course, was Copyblogger Media (now known as Rainmaker Digital). The story of what happened follows.

The historic move:
Up until that point, Copyblogger had been offering an email newsletter to attract and capture email subscribers. Pretty standard in the online business world.

We wanted to up the ante.

So we launched My.Copyblogger.com — a free membership site, where people sign up to access (at the time) 15 free ebooks and a 20-part email course.

Think of a content library as a password-protected source of premium content that you can access once you register with your email address.

That’s essentially what a “content library” looks like. But how did it perform? Let’s look at the results to see.

The historic results:
According to the case study by Marketing Sherpa,

• Through the first seven weeks, the free subscription page averaged a 67 percent conversion rate.
• The first week’s growth was 300 percent bigger than the best week of growth for Internet Marketing for Smart People (a previous Copyblogger 20-part email course) — closer to 400 percent, if you include new paid subscribers.
• The most visited page on Copyblogger at the time was behind the paywall — with almost a third of all traffic logging in after arrival.

Those are some substantial results, particularly in such a competitive space as content marketing.

Now, I can’t promise you the exact same outcome, but I can promise you that a content library will, at the very least, increase the number of subscribers you capture.

The key, as always, is to build trust first by providing a ton of value before asking for anything in return.

If that concept is new to you, then you can review how to build the know-like-trust factor.

In the meantime, let’s dig a little deeper into the common questions surrounding lead generating content libraries.

1. What’s a “content library?”

You’ll hear sales and marketing people refer to a content library as a bank of all the content assets owned by a company that is placed in a central, internal portal so other departments within that company can access that content.

That’s not what we are talking about here.

Yes, a content library is a bank of content, but in the way we will be using the phrase, it is full of resources that your audience can access once they register with an email address.

In other words, the public can access these resources, which makes this type of content library a lead generation tool.

2. What type of content goes into a content library?

You could include:

• Ebooks
• Videos
• Webinars
• Audio seminars
• Podcast episodes
• White papers
• Infographics
• Tutorials
• Data and analysis reports

And more.

The trick is to offer enough value that prospects view signing up for your content library as a no-brainer — an insane bargain.

See Question 5 for some examples of ways you could structure your content library.

3. What makes a content library better than a conventional email newsletter?

When you offer more resources for the same price (in this case, an email address), you are naturally going to get better results.

Our case study is one such example.

With a content library, you are likely to elevate more of your visitors into an ongoing relationship — in other words, a content library will help you convert more prospects into solid leads.

But not just any type of lead.

See, the main difference between a typical email newsletter and a content library offer is that with the content library, you can now identify your site visitors, which ultimately helps you convert more leads into sales.

Let me explain.

4. What’s the difference between an email sign up and website registration?

In both cases, it’s true that the prospect gives you an email address. With a sign-up, you have permission to send that person email — namely, your email newsletter or latest published blog posts.

With a content library registration, you give your prospect access to a site — access to exclusive resources like ebooks, videos, webinars, forums, and more.

In the first situation, the content marketer is throwing stuff at the prospect. In the second, the content marketer is inviting you to his place — which is loaded with useful resources.

And like I said before, when people visit your site as signed-in members, you can customize your promotional messages, which leads to higher conversions.

5. How many resources should you put into a content library?

There isn’t a hard-and-fast rule.

However, you need to include more than one piece of content. Don’t forget: you are trying to create a sense of great value.

For example, a content library with two, five-page ebooks is not going to suggest high value. But four 50-page ebooks and seven 30-minute training videos, however, will suggest high value.

Here’s another way you could structure your content library:

• 30 exclusive podcast episodes
• 10 articles
• 3 worksheets

As you can see, the numbers of ways you can structure your content library is limitless. Which leads us to our next question.

6. Do I give access to all the content at once?

The short answer is to start by giving away a large amount of content to create a sense of high value.
The ebooks in the original My.Copyblogger content library ranged between 31 and 142 pages — and there were 15 ebooks, plus a 20-part email course.

However, you can start small and build as time goes on.

For example, make the promise of adding more content once a month (or the frequency that works for you).

That strategy has a number of benefits.

It brings all those members back to your site every time you release a new piece of exclusive content.

In other words, you don’t need all the resources in place before you launch.

If you only have four ebooks and two podcast episodes, you can launch with that offer. But as you add more resources, don’t forget to update your content library’s promotional copy and alert your members.

7. How do I get people to my content library?

If you already have an email list in place, then promote your content library to that list.

With My.Copyblogger, an announcement was sent out to our general email list, and because there were 15 ebooks, there were 15 unique email promotions sent out, each one customized to that particular topic.

We sent out one of these emails a week, usually on a Friday.

Depending on the number of resources you have, your campaign might end up lasting two or three months.

Before sending each email, suppress the email addresses of people who have already registered, so those members of your community aren’t annoyed by seeing the same pitch multiple times.

If you don’t have a list (or want to continue promoting the content library after you’ve finished the campaign to your email list), the next step is to create high-quality, tutorial-type blog content that leads to a promotion of the content library.

Once people are on your site because of this high-quality, tutorial-type blog content, give them an opportunity to register.

Here are four useful ideas:

• Include a footer at the end of each blog post that encourages visitors to register for your content library.
• Add a sidebar that appears on every page of your website.
• Create feature boxes that appear in the header of your website.
• Use pop-overs and pop-ups (yes, there is a difference).

Learn more about these strategies in Beth Hayden’s article, 4 Quick Solutions that Spawn Radical Email List Growth.

8. Won’t content that requires a registration hurt SEO efforts?

No.

True, the content behind the registration wall won’t get crawled or indexed by Google (or any search engine for that matter).

However, search “copywriting” on Google and you’ll see that Copyblogger ranks at the top of the first page of search results. The rest of the topics in our content library are also on the first page of Google for terms like “content marketing,” “landing pages,” and “SEO copywriting.”

And every single one of those pages is what we call a cornerstone content page — which drives social and search traffic to register for the content library on My.Copyblogger. 

9. Do I have to call it a “content library?”

Nope.

You can call it whatever you want to call it.

Here are my ideas for different industries like health, fashion, and cooking:

• The Cross-Fit Foundation
• 8 Beautiful Wardrobe Basics
• Your Wok Recipe Essentials

It’s a good idea to mention in the description copy that this is a library of resources — and be very specific about what is in it.

You want to give your prospect the sense that there are some really juicy resources behind that registration wall.

10. Does this mean I’m starting a membership site?!?!

I added all those question marks and exclamation points because what most people say immediately after asking that question is … I’m not ready for that!

You get a real sense they are scared out of their wits.

If that’s you, relax, because registering people as members doesn’t mean you’re suddenly running a full-fledged membership site.

It just means people are joining your community.

However, if you achieve critical membership mass, a nice touch to your content library would be to offer a simple forum where your members could chat, share ideas, and ask you questions.

Our Rainmaker Platform enables someone who is dumber than a bag of bricks when it comes to coding (like me) to set up a password-protected content library — plus a forum — by simply grunting and pointing (like I do).

In the end, what really matters is that members of your community — even if what you offer them is free — benefit from content that’s tailored to their customer journeys.


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