10 Reasons Your Latest CRO Campaign Failed (And What to Do About It)

A news article pops up in your Feedly account proclaiming that conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the “be all, end all” for online business success these days.

Excited, you pop over to Google Analytics’ Content Experiments tool and launch your first A/B test, confident that the changes you’ve made are going to result in major bottom-line gains for your website. You wait…

And you wait…

And you wait some more.

Finally, the test is done, and the results are… inconclusive. You don’t have a statistically significant winner, and you don’t have any appreciable lift to show for your efforts. What gives? Should you give up on CRO altogether?

Of course not. Your failure to drive measurable results could come down to one of the following easily fixable reasons for CRO campaign failure:

Mistake #1 – You Don’t Know What You’re Testing For

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen marketers get excited about the potential CRO and testing have to improve a site’s bottom line.

So what do they do?

They go out, find an article titled “The 10 Split Tests You Have to Run (Unless You’re a Total Loser)” and put the first suggestion on the list into practice.

I suppose that’s better than doing absolutely nothing. But it’s not going to generate much in the way of worthwhile data for you.

Suppose you run a small wealth management firm. The lifeblood of your business is the referrals you generate through your website’s lead capture form. Now, what happens if that first split test you decide to try involves adding images of faces to your homepage to reduce bounce rate.

Is reducing your homepage bounce rate a bad thing? No.

But is it doing much to impact your business’s bottom line? The answer, again, is no.

That’s why it’s so important to know what you’re testing for. By taking the time to understand the different types of CRO campaigns and split tests you can run – in addition to matching these strategies to your business model – you’ll increase the likelihood of your future efforts actually moving the needle for your company.

Mistake #2 – You Don’t Have Enough Traffic for Testing

That said, even if your goals and campaign objectives are in alignment, you still might not be ready for testing. If your website traffic is low, generating statistically significant results becomes much more complicated.

To understand why, imagine that you’ve asked ten of your friends to choose between your control page and the Web Page A variation you’ve created. Would you be confident that the results of your poll would hold true in the world at large? Would you be more confident if you had polled ten thousand people to start?

The larger sample size you have, the better you’ll be able to identify trends with confidence – and that’s where more traffic comes in handy.

Of course, all is not lost if your traffic resembles a steady stream more than a raging river. As the image below, published by the VWO blog demonstrates, sites with less traffic can still get conclusive results – if they’re willing to wait longer for their results:

Source

Mistake #3 – You’re Optimizing For Traffic Before Conversions

Now, having said that, you might be thinking that I’d encourage webmasters with low traffic to run out and get more visitors before launching their CRO campaigns. But as you’ll see, there are issues there as well.

Before you start with any true CRO effort, your conversion funnel should be relatively well-established. Think about it… Would you prefer to have a website that converts 10 out of every 100 visitors, or one that converts 10 out of every 10,000 visitors?

In the second example, you’ve got more traffic, but that’s not necessarily a good thing because your conversion rate is so low that those extra visitors aren’t helping you make more money. Fixing your conversion funnel before you throw traffic at your site will ensure you get the maximum value out of the visitors you do acquire.

Mistake #4 – You Set Up Your Tests Incorrectly

In an interview with Content Verve, Craig Sullivan of Optimise or Die shared how an unexpected test results taught him the importance of making sure his tests were set up correctly.

The test – which involved significantly different A and B variations – was showing no real difference in performance between the two creatives. With changes that massive, Sullivan knew that there must be something in the code affecting the tests results. In the end, it turned out that a coding error meant that visitors were being exposed to both variations – the test never remembered which versions they’d seen previously.

In Sullivan’s words:

“When it comes to split testing, the most dangerous mistakes are the ones you don’t realise you’re making.”

Mistake #5 – You Blindly Followed CRO Best Practices

A lot of people think that they can circumvent the split testing process entirely by just applying the CRO wisdom other publishers have discovered from their campaigns.

The problem with this line of thinking is that there’s no “one size fits all” set of recommendations that’s going to apply equally well to all websites. Angus Lynch shows how damaging this failure can be in a blog post for Rooster.

Lynch profiles Compare Courses, an Australian education website, which mistakenly follows the advice to move all of their calls-to-action “above the fold.” Here’s what the original page looked like:

And here’s the variation:

Source for both images

Even with the addition of testimonials and social proof, the test page saw a 53.87% decrease in “Send Enquiry” conversions.

If that doesn’t make clear how important it is to base your tests off your own performance goals and data, I don’t know what else will!

Mistake #6 – You’re Focused on The Wrong Metrics

I hinted at this earlier with my example of the wealth management firm, but the idea of tracking the right metrics deserves special mention here.

Ideally, if you’re running split tests, you’re doing so because you want to achieve something. You aren’t just testing for the fun of it – so what kinds of results do you want to see at the end of your campaign?

Keep in mind also that “conversions” doesn’t just mean sales. Our sample wealth management firm was tracking lead generation form completions, but your campaign might be based around:

• Social shares
• Email newsletter subscriptions
• Video views
• PDF downloads
• Contact form completions
• …Or any number of other target actions

There’s no “right” type of conversion to track. What’s important is that you actually make an effort to track metrics, and that the metrics you choose to track are those that matter most to your business’s operations.

Mistake #7 – You Stop Your Tests Too Soon

Peep Laja, writing for ConversionXL, demonstrates why sample size is so important:

The results above come from a split test performed by one of Laja’s clients, just days after the test’s launch. With just over 100 visitors per variation, it would seem that the winner was clear.

But despite the temptation to call test early, Laja persisted. Here’s what happened after each variation received more than 600 visitors:

Source for both images

In this instance, calling the test after 200 visitors would have resulted in an incorrect conclusion being drawn, potentially costing the client money.

For best results, Laja recommends waiting for roughly 100 conversions per variation (if not 200-400) and for the test to proclaim a winner with at least 95% confidence.

Mistake #8 – You Don’t Account for False Positives

Now, just to make things more complicated, consider that, even if you have enough conversions to declare a winner in your split test, you could be facing false positives if you’ve included too many variations in your test.

According to Isaac Rothstein of Infinite Conversions:

“A false positive is when a test result indicates that a condition is true when it is not, usually due to an assumption that has been made from the results. False positives typically occur when a high number of variations are tested.”

Imagine that you’re testing eight different versions of a single web page (Google’s a great example of this, having once tested 41 different shades of blue to see which option customers prefer). At the end of this exercise, can you really be sure that one of them is a conclusive winner? What if none of your variations are actually the right choice?

In all cases, watch out for assumptions about the data you’ve gathered. Test for different variations, but also test to be sure the conclusions you’ve drawn are based on fact, not opinion.

Mistake #9 – You’re Testing Small Tweaks Instead of Major Changes

Search Google for “split test ideas,” and you’ll come across endless lists recommending such simple tweaks as “change your button color” or “use action words in your headlines.”

And those things are great, don’t get me wrong.

But if your site needs major changes, these kinds of small, limited tests aren’t going to get you there.

Marketer extraordinaire Neil Patel is one advocate for making big changes before minor swaps, saying:

“The biggest conversion boosts are going to come from drastic changes. So if you really want to move your conversion rates, don’t focus on small changes. Instead, focus on drastic changes as they are the ones that boost your revenue.”

On his QuickSprout blog, Patel shares an example of how he put this principle into practice on his Crazy Egg website, where changing the homepage into a long sales letter led to huge wins. Only after this major change was complete did Patel go back and test individual calls-to-action, button colors and more.

Mistake #10 – Your Tests Aren’t Timed to Your Sales Cycles

In many retail environments, both online and offline, sales cycles are short, lasting as little as a few hours or a few days between the recognition of a need and the purchase decision.

But what if your company sells bigger-ticket items that come with longer sales funnels? What if your buyers are only making purchase decisions once every few years, making them less likely to take any conversion actions (including form completions, file downloads and more) in the interim?

Ultimately, the length of time your split tests run should be a function of your traffic and your conversion rates. However, if, after you’ve completed your test, you notice that the duration of your test is less than the length of your average sales cycle, consider that the data you’ve generated may not give you a complete pictures of the way your particular buyers interact with your website.

At the end of the day, CRO is a powerful tool for improving your website’s results, but it comes with a pretty significant learning curve. If your campaign results have been lackluster so far, one of the ten reasons described above could be to blame.

Don’t give up. Instead, look for ways to improve your testing and campaign protocols. With time and continual effort, split testing and other CRO techniques can be used to increase conversions and move the needle for your company.

Have you made any other CRO mistakes that deserve a spot on this list? If so, leave a comment below describing your experiences.

About the Author: Alex Bashinsky is the co-founder of Picreel, an online marketing software program that converts bounce traffic into revenue. He’s passionate about helping businesses improve their conversion rates and, in his down time, enjoys reading and playing the guitar. Get in touch with Alex at @abashinsky or check out Picreel.com.

Interactive Content is Where the Action Is Now

Internet. Interactive. The two were destined to collide.

The term “internet” came to be because it connected networks. The prefix “Inter” means “between.” It follows that “interactive” means “action between.” Or something like that.

The point is we were destined to interact online. We live for interaction and the Internet lives to give it to us.

Content marketers are getting “inter” it

The real measure of any form of marketing is action. In older and traditional channels, the actions we measured tended to include phone calls, faxes, coupon redemptions, sales meetings, and maybe sales. Remember “tip in” cards in trade magazines?

Today, with content marketing ruling the online space, marketers often measure more actions, and certainly, less meaningful ones: shares, clicks, even views. This is not to say content marketers don’t measure the more substantial actions. The good ones do.

The good ones also realize engagement is all-important. Building brand affinity leads to building the relationship that leads to building trust that leads to building sales that leads to building business. Got all that?

Enter interactive content. On the battlefield that is content marketing, reading, watching, listening to, or downloading something may be the equivalent to firing a shot, but getting a prospect emotionally involved via interaction is a hit.

“Engaging a target audience” is an important excerpt from Content Marketing Institute’s definition of content marketing. According to nearly every marketing research study, it’s also consistently proven to be amongst our toughest challenges.

Marketers succeed when their audience not only consumes content, but also enjoys and acts upon it. Understanding this principle, more and more content marketers are stepping-up their static content to create content customers can interact with.

“By its very nature, interactive content engages participants in an activity: answering questions, making choices, exploring scenarios. It’s a great way to capture attention right from the start. Individuals have to think and respond; they can’t just snooze through it.”

~ Scott Brinker, ion interactive, author of ChiefMartec.com, in a guest post on Copyblogger.

The forces behind interactive content

Your classic content marketer is adept at publishing a blog and other forms of one-way media. Creating interactive content is more work. It tends to demand more resources.

Is it worth it?

Most content marketers that have hopped aboard the interactive train would answer yes. They may say they’ve realized greater results. They may also say it’s imperative. Here’s why:

• Noise—There’s simply too much content. And the only people that really care about content is content marketers. The customers don’t want content. They want answers. Or they want to have fun. Or both.
• The world’s gone mobile—Mobile users have come to expect interactivity. Apps are more engaging than web pages.
• Human nature—We simply want to interact. We learn best by doing. I once asked my kids, “What are your favorite lessons in school?” They said the ones where we do stuff and make things. Interactive content is the filed trip of content marketing.

A conversion study by Demand Metric indicates when examining “very effective” content, interactive blows away passive content for educating the buyer.

Fun and Games is Serious Business

Playbuzz is an Israeli-based company focused on enabling publishers to create and distribute a variety of playful interactive content types. Forbes described the company’s offering “The social content sensation of the year.”

Much like the ubiquitous BuzzFeed, the company’s magnetic force is fun, interactive activities, which clearly appeals to the connected generation. In a very short time, Playbuzz has garnered enormous attention and become a top 500 destination site in the U.S.

The company is making a business “play” by enabling marketers, for free, to create branded “storytelling formats for the digital age” and embed it anywhere.

Playbuzz is among the companies who are amending the “content is king” mantra to “interactive content is king,” touting its many engagement advantages.

Interactive content = persona optimization

Pardon my jargon. The point is interactive content provides marketers rich data they can use to learn more about their prospects and use the data to market more effectively. Scott Brinker offered the following examples:

• People rank themselves via assessments
• Quizzes indicate what participants do and don’t know
• Prospects identify specific parameters when using a calculator product configurator

In “Interactive Content & The Buyer’s Journey,” Oracle Marketing Cloud and SnapApp map interactive content’s place in three stages of the buyer’s journey.

• Awareness stage—A prospect in research mode is likely to engage in polls, self-assessments, and knowledge tests.
• Evaluation stage—When evaluating solutions a buyer will take to benchmark assessments, interactive white papers, and persona assessments.
• Decision stage—At the critical buying stage, ROI calculators, galleries, product pickers and surveys will help guide decision-making.

To illustrate these ideas, the eBook authors offered the example of a person planning a vacation.

• Awareness stage—What type of vacation do I want?
• Evaluation stage—Where should I go?
• Decision stage—Who should I book with?

What types of content are interactive?

Let’s look at some of the interactive content types, some of which are well known and blazing hot and a few others with a potentially strong upside.

Quizzes

Quizzes are amazingly popular and ultra-magnetic. While many focus on delivering a fun distraction, businesses often take them seriously aiming to use the format for educational purposes. Quiz results can be useful for recommending the most relevant subsequent content.

Unitrends, makers of a data backup appliances, drove traffic from Facebook to its website with a personality quiz to determine each participant’s backup and disaster recovery superhero persona. (See complete details on SnapApp)

Quiz: Can You Name These Southern City Skylines?

Ecommerce startup Country Outfitter has multiplied traffic to its site and engagement thanks to publishing fun quizzes with Playbuzz on their lifestyle website. Their quizzes have appeared on more than 100 different domains.

Assessments

Like quizzes, assessments also are often little pieces of brain candy such as personality tests. However, in a business context assessments can be meaningful marketing tools often used to help people identify a need, compare their company to benchmarks, or some other type of self-diagnosis.

Polls and surveys

Polls and surveys can take all different forms and fulfill a wide variety of needs for both the creator and user. The subject of the poll or survey gives users a glimpse into your areas of expertise.

Calculators

Calculators are about money, which for some reason appears to interest most people. Given the right strategy and creative execution, a calculator can say (or infer) something meaningful about your company’s mission.

Contests

Contests may be older than time, but continue to evolve online and across the social sphere. The potential to get creative with contests is infinite. Cool contests have proven to lure customers and inspire engagement. Generally, they require some form of application, so marketers can collect valuable customer data. And though it may be obvious, contests can generate authentic and engaging user-generated content.

Galleries

Visual marketing couldn’t be hotter, so some companies are using galleries to deliver stopping power and interaction. In addition to showcasing products, they can present portfolios, ideas, customer examples, event highlights, or anything you can “picture.”

Brackets

SnapApp claims “They [brackets] are a great way to settle ‘Best Of’ or ‘Worst Of’ debates, no matter what industry or field you are in.” They’re also a way to earn longer periods of engagement, drive repeat visitors and generate new content.

Heavy Construction Systems Specialists (HCSS) conducted a tournament in which customers submitted their most interesting projects. 117 projects were submitted and 292,000 votes increased website traffic by 800%.

Interactive white papers or eBooks

Interactive software company ion interactive suggests turning your white paper or eBook into an interactive user experience allowing readers to navigate as they wish.

Infographics

Infographics can be made interactive with embedded questions, flip tiles, flexible user paths, and more.

ion interactive showcases its own software for creating interactive infographics. A menu bar invites readers to navigate the content marketing stats as they wish.

What type of content marketer are you?

After researching interactive content and learning more about the magnetic power of quizzes and such, I couldn’t resist writing the subhead above. It begs to be a quiz. And as a content marketing vying for attention and engagement amongst the deafening noise, you’ll want to consider the question.

Interactive content offers an opportunity to differentiate your brand and engage your audience.

Special nod to SnapApp for “What is Interactive Content & Why It Works” and for providing examples of their customers’ interactive content.

About the Author: Barry Feldman operates Feldman Creative and provides clients content marketing strategies that rock and creative that rolls. Barry has recently been named a Top 40 Digital Strategist by Online Marketing Institute and one of 25 Social Media Marketing Experts You Need to Know by LinkedIn. Visit Feldman Creative and his blog, The Point.

How to Build an SEO Optimized Web Page

If you viewed a web page, would you know if it’s optimized for SEO? Does it have all the attributes we know Google looks for in a page?

Just look at this page. Have we optimized it for search traffic?

If you don’t know, now is the time to learn!

Neil Patel (who has created multiple high-traffic sites) of Quick Sprout has created an infographic showing us some guidelines we need to follow when creating a webpage. Many of these are surprisingly simple, and there’s no excuse for you to skip any of them. You can consider these your “baseline”. Just do this (and create an excellent user experience) and you’ll be off to a good start.

Courtesy of: Quick Sprout

SEO changes, and some factors that mattered in 2006 don’t matter anymore. Just like how some things that matter now may not matter (or at least have less importance) 5 years from now. Make sure your site has some attributes that will always matter to Google and other search engines. Things like ensuring your site is secure, that it has a good user experience (print this post and hang it on your office wall), and staying out of bad link neighborhoods are all essential.

It’s important to stay up-to-date on your SEO knowledge. If you’re new to SEO, check out this post, which contains resources to help you learn and stay up to date on the latest trends. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Moz Blog, Search Engine Land, and Google’s Webmaster Blog.

About the Author: Zach Bulygo (Twitter) is a Content Writer for Kissmetrics.

How to Stay in Line with the Law When Sending Marketing Emails

Email marketing is a good tactic for getting in touch with customers, sharing special deals with them, and notifying them of new products. However, legal issues can arise when you send out marketing emails, particularly in the areas of privacy and anti-spam law.

We will look at what the laws are and how to comply with them, and we will go over some practical tips for staying in line with the laws. We’ll also look at some of the results of this compliance, such as customer confidence and goodwill and protection from fines and penalties.

Marketing Tactics and the Value of Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the most effective marketing tactics online, with email and search being the top two internet activities. This means that by marketing via email, you are tapping into one of the largest potential target markets online.

Email marketing is measurable: all opens, click-throughs, and conversion rates can be tracked and analyzed. This can help you fine-tune your messages and focus on targeting the highest ROI targets and groups. With such high reach and flexibility, email marketing has significant advantages over other marketing tactics online.

When sending marketing emails, however, there are a number of best practice techniques that you need to comply with to ensure that you don’t irritate your customers or run afoul of regulators. For one thing, you must comply with the relevant laws, so let’s take a look at them.

The Two Legal Issues You Need to Know About

The two main legal issues involved in sending marketing emails are privacy laws and anti-spam laws. Let’s look at privacy first.

Privacy Laws

To send out a marketing email, you need to collect your customer’s information first. Whether this is online, in-store, or otherwise, you need to comply with privacy legislation when you collect this information.

Most countries around the world have some kind of privacy legislation in place that sets out how you should collect personal information, store it, and protect it. Collecting information to send a marketing email is covered by these laws.

The Laws in the United Kingdom and Europe

The laws in the UK and Europe are set out in the Data Protection Directive and the UK Data Protection Act 1998.

The Data Protection Directive establishes that data should not be collected without transparency, legitimate purpose, and proportionality. In practice, transparency and legitimate purpose mean that you should not collect data without customer consent and that you should collect or process the data only for specified explicit and legitimate purposes. For example, you must specify that you are collecting an email address to send out a marketing message.

Proportionality means that you should collect only data that is relevant and adequate for the purpose. In other words, you shouldn’t collect your customer’s phone number if you are going to contact them only by email.

The Data Protection Directive also requires that you keep collected data secure, that you allow your customers access to the data you have collected on them, and that you inform them of who is collecting their data (i.e., your contact information and details).

The Data Protection Act 1998 enshrines these principles in UK law.

The Laws in the United States

The laws in the US are a little different. There is no overarching privacy law for the whole US. The California privacy law is very similar to the European and UK laws; and if you have any US customers online at all, it is likely that some of them will be from California, so you should be sure to comply. California law requires that you disclose:

• The kinds of information gathered
• How the information may be shared with other parties
• The process the customer can follow to review and make changes to the information you have on them
• The policy’s effective date and a description of any changes since then

These laws mean that before you send out marketing emails, you need to collect customer data legally and in line with the privacy principles.

To comply with the above laws, you’ll need to create a Privacy Policy. This is a legal document that covers how customer data is collected, used, managed, and disclosed. The Privacy Policy also sets out how customer privacy and personal information will be protected.

Your Privacy Policy should cover:

• What information you are collecting
• Why you are collecting it
• What you will use the information for
• How you will keep the information secure
• When you might release the information, and to whom
• How your customers can amend or correct the information you hold on them
• The dispute resolution procedures that are in place if there is a disagreement

You also need to ensure that your Privacy Policy is displayed in such a way that your customers will be legally bound by it.

You probably have seen the Privacy Policy on many websites displayed like this:

This is called a browsewrap method. Legally, this is not a strong method of getting your users to agree to your Privacy Policy.

Instead, you should use a clickwrap method, where the user has to actually click to agree.

Here’s an example from Timberland:

Now that you have the privacy matters under control, let’s take a look at anti-spam legislation.

Anti-Spam Laws

The US FTC has an excellent guide to help you comply with anti-spam laws when sending email marketing messages.

The anti-spam law in the US is known as CAN-SPAM. The main requirements of the law are:

• Don’t use false or misleading header information
• Don’t use deceptive subject lines
• Identify the message as an ad
• Tell recipients where you’re located
• Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future email from you
• Honor opt-out requests promptly
• Monitor what others are doing on your behalf

The anti-spam law in the UK is called the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003. It requires that your email marketing messages (also known as direct marketing) be accurate descriptions of the product or service, legal, honest and truthful, and socially responsible (they should not encourage illegal, unsafe, or anti-social behavior).

The UK law also requires that you must never hide your identity when you send your marketing emails; and if you are marketing on behalf of someone else, you must not hide their identity either.

For most anti-spam law around the world, to market to someone who isn’t already a customer, you must offer them a chance to opt in explicitly. You can do this by including a tick box on your website where they can tick “I want to receive newsletters and sales information.” Here’s an example of what this tick box would look like from Fresh Look Web Design:

UK anti-spam law also includes something called a soft opt-in. This means that in some circumstances, you can treat a customer as if they have consented to receiving marketing emails from you, even though they haven’t actually consented.

However, there are rules that you need to follow to be covered by the soft opt-in exception:

1. You need to have obtained the email address “in the course of the sale or negotiations for the sale of a product or service.” This means that the person has to already be a customer.
2. You can direct market to these people only with respect to “similar products and services.” So if your customer signed up to receive information on Grand Canyon tours, you can’t send them advertisements for beer. However, if your customer is expecting to receive newsletters about aquarium supplies, they would reasonably expect you to send them newsletters on new breeds of fish available, as this is a similar product.
3. The person you are sending your email marketing to must have been given an opportunity to refuse to allow the use of their contact details at the time they were initially provided.

In all marketing emails for both the UK and the US (as well as other countries), you must include an unsubscribe link for your customers.

Here’s what the unsubscribe link should look like in your email:

By making simple changes to your marketing email templates (such as including an unsubscribe link) and ensuring that your message content is truthful and not misleading, you can easily stay compliant with anti-spam laws.

The Results

If you comply with privacy and anti-spam laws, and implement their requirements in your email marketing, you will produce big results. You will build customer trust and confidence and show that you put customer wants and needs first.

Also, if you protect customer privacy and allow customers to opt out of marketing emails, you will build goodwill. You will also ensure that your marketing will go to customers who are receptive and open to your messages. You won’t waste time sending emails or messages to customers who don’t want to receive them.

Finally, complying with these laws will protect you financially. The Data Protection Act 1998 in the UK can carry fines of up to £500,000 for serious breaches, and other privacy laws around the world include similar penalties.

Anti-spam law is no different. While the UK’s anti-spam legislation allows fines of up to only £5000, other pieces of legislation are much heftier. Those in breach of Canada’s anti-spam legislation have attracted fines of over $1 million Canadian.

Stay Lawful and Don’t Sweat

It’s easy to comply with the law. You need to do only a few small things, such as setting up a Privacy Policy and ensuring your emails are compliant with the anti-spam legislation in your country (and the countries your customers are from).

Doing these things provides you with great legal protection and builds confidence and goodwill with your customers. Marketing smarter and in line with the law will stand you in good stead for building a trusted and valued business.

About the Author: Leah Hamilton is a qualified Solicitor and writer working at TermsFeed, where businesses can create their Privacy Policies and Terms and Conditions in minutes.

6 Types of Visual Content You Need to Use in Your Marketing Campaigns

If you are about to embark on a content marketing campaign, you need to know exactly what will stimulate online growth and engagement. Text-based content is always going to be an integral part of marketing, but to really set yourself apart in the digital era, visual content must play a pivotal role in all of your efforts.

When you consider that 65% of people are visual learners, 90% of information that comes to the brain is visual, and presentations with visual aides are 43% more persuasive, it makes sense to use content types which people have an innate psychological resonance with. Here are 6 types of visual content which will take your marketing campaign to the next level.

Source

1. Images

When you split up a body of text with some compelling images, people are more inclined to finish reading what you’ve written (provided that the images are high quality and contextually relevant). Marketer Jeff Bullas cites that articles with images get 94% more views than those without. Due to the oversaturation of digital content and the increased adoption of mobile internet access, attention spans are shorter than ever, which makes content presented in the form of big blocks of text very off-putting.

It’s preferable to use original images or ones taken by you, as this adds a much-desired personal touch to your campaign. High quality, attractive images are often expensive to purchase or time consuming to create. Fortunately, with resources such as Canva, you can create unique, captivating images for free with a simplistic drag-and-drop interface. Alternatively, there are an endless amount of excellent quality photos on photo-sharing sites such as Flickr and Morguefile that can be acquired for free. Due to the vast amount of photos on these sites, it’s unlikely that other businesses within your niche will have used them already. Just be sure you have the authority to use them.

2. Videos

Videos are incredibly useful for presenting common problems and then showing the solutions that your product can offer. While there are much cheaper types of visual content available, a great video serves as extra clout for your campaign by demonstrating that you’re prepared to go the extra mile for quality. One study showed that including a video on a landing page increased conversions by 86%.

There are numerous types of videos that can enhance your business – you could consider how-to videos, animated explainer videos, demonstrations or customer testimonials. Whatever your choice, it’s important that the videos are congruent with the overall style and ethos of your brand. A recent study by Moz shows that posts with videos receive nearly 300% more inbound links, so make sure that your video is of the highest caliber, as it can become the chief representation of your brand in the digital realm.

3. Infographics

Infographics are an excellent tool for drawing upon all of your complex data and statistics and collating them into a compelling, easily intelligible visual display. Accompanied by diligent promotional endeavors (including networking with key influencers, landing page optimization and social media), infographics can become an integral part of your content marketing strategy.

To reap the true rewards of an infographic, it’s essential that the layout and design is as impactful as possible. The designer must combine the right colors, shapes and fonts to convey your important data. The information you choose to include in the infographic must be accurate (peer-reviewed sources are ideal) and contextually relevant. Sometimes even the most seemingly mundane statistics can be brought to life when conveyed as stunning visualizations. However, ensure all visual elements actually carry the narrative – it’s not worth disrupting your story just to flaunt your virtuosity with Adobe Illustrator!

Bloggers tend to love a good infographic, so if you promote yours effectively, it’s highly likely that it will be circulated throughout the blogosphere as well as on social media platforms. More shares means more publicity for your brand, especially if it achieves the highly adorned “viral” status. When you share your infographic via social media, it’s best to include a thumbnail image as well as a hyperlink to your site where the full image is hosted. This enables you to bypass any size restrictions on social media platforms and bring more traffic (and inbound links) to your site.

4. Memes

The term ‘meme’ was first coined by Richard Dawkins in 1976 to ascribe an idea the capacity to replicate itself into different meanings from person to person. Memes are now commonly known as images that are accompanied by humorous captions. Not many people envisaged that memes would play a role in content marketing when they first started to gain traction online, as they were primarily shared and made popular by college students as a form of entertainment. However, they now represent an easy-to-create, quirky form of visual content.

Creating your own meme is a great way to evoke positive emotions and set yourself apart from your competitors. Firstly, you must determine if memes are appropriate for your niche and whether or not they will gain actually engagement with your audience. If your brand resonates with a younger demographic, then you have your answer! Another unique benefit of memes is that they allow you to create in-jokes about your industry, which is a great way to make people laugh and build a community around your brand.

5. Presentations

Source

Gone are the days where presentations are restricted to just the boardroom; you can now share your presentation with the world via sites like SlideShare, dramatically expanding the outreach of your business. A great SlideShare presentation allows you to inform and communicate to your audience, no matter what device they are using.

Presentations serve a similar function to infographics, with a large focus on attractive design and color, thereby drawing the reader into the text. Although, they differ though by having a greater scope. Thus, if a topic is too lengthy to be appropriate for an infographic, a beautifully crafted presentation can be extremely effective at keeping people engaged with your content.

Rand Fishkin’s (highly viral) presentation on content marketing mistakes is an excellent example of how to present complex information in humorous, digestible slides. The presentation is not only entertaining, but it also provides the user with actionable advice for how to improve his or her content strategy.

As your presentation is likely to include a lot of information, it’s crucial to remain consistent with things like fonts, borders and colours. Just like with any form of content, proofreading for spelling and grammar mistakes is paramount. As with infographics, always keep your sources as reputable as possible (citing wikipedia.org is far from ideal). Instead, look at who Wikipedia sources, and see if they’re reputable. If they are, you can reference them instead of the Wikipedia article.

6. Screenshots

With a screenshot, you can provide your audience with a glimpse into the inner workings of your product or service. You can show what services and functions you offer from a direct perspective, and you can even combine your screenshot with some marketing copy or a testimonial to boost your credibility.

Screenshots are very useful for backing up the claims you make in your sales content. For example, if you’re marketing an app which can perform certain functions, a screenshot with a caption can be the visual verification your audience needs in order to trust your claims. It’s also possible to annotate your screenshots if you wish to draw attention to a particular part of the image (such as which button to click) or provide a more in-depth explanation of what’s going on behind the scenes.

Despite seeming like the least awe-inspiring type of visual content in this article, screenshots can be hugely beneficial as a trust-building tool. Consider using them to capture customer reviews or testimonials from industry forums or social media (88% of people read reviews to determine the quality of a business). Additionally, you may wish to incorporate screenshots into your infographics and SlideShare presentations, as they can bring forth more meaning to the stats or information you are presenting.

Skitch is a great tool for creating graphics and text on images. It’s simple to use and free.

Take Full Advantage of Visual Content

Visual content taps into the visceral psyche of your audience, encouraging them to discover more about your brand. If you can generate high quality visual content which truly resonates with people and promote it on a regular basis, the reputation and awareness of your brand is sure to skyrocket.

However, if your content is bland or badly designed, you will end up doing more harm than good – always consider the needs of your audience and don’t put out content just to stick to an upload schedule. As with any type of content, it’s the substance that counts, but excellent style is definitely appreciated.

About the Author: Lucien Joyce is the Lead Copywriter at Mammoth Infographics. His background is in creative media and digital marketing. Aside from writing, Lucien enjoys producing music and the occasional globe trot.

Beyond the Click: What’s Truly Driving Your Conversion Rate?

You could have the most sale-clinching copy in the world, the most beautiful design, and the most well-thought-out sales funnel, and your conversion rate could still remain stagnant. Have you ever looked at your analytics and thought “what can we do better?” If you’re the kind of marketer who’s always looking to improve, let’s take a look at the core human behaviors and psychological tactics that are powering your conversion rate – and how to use them to their fullest.

Value: The Spark that Ignites Interest

One of the first things you’ll learn in marketing is that you should always create or provide something of value to your customers. This usually ties in with your USP or Unique Selling Proposition – what makes someone want to do business with you?

But how do you actually create value? And even if you do offer something of value to the customer, what can you do to ensure they’ll want to continue doing business with you? On the customer’s end, you have the all-important questions like “what’s in it for me?” and “why should I do business with you [now]?

No matter what you’re selling, the customer needs to know that their most pressing issues will be solved and that they’ll be understood. They’ve gotten this far in the decision-making process and are taking a serious look at you. To keep that spark aflame, you have to go beyond telling them about the value you provide, and actually show them in the way you do business.

A recent report from eConsultancy and Sitecore asked companies and agencies alike what the most effective tactics for improving a customer’s lifetime value were:

The most effective methods for improving customer LTV

No surprise that customer service improvements are at the top, followed by personalization. People find inherent value in being treated well and getting answers to their issues. They appreciate businesses taking the time to make personalized recommendations and sharing information that’s relevant to them.

In other words, the value that customers so eagerly crave is driven just as much by what you’re selling as who you’re selling too, and how you can convert them from casual browser to brand evangelist.

Consistency: The Glue that Holds the Conversion Together

What is consistency when applied to customer loyalty and conversion rates? According to a study by The Society for New Communications Research, quality was the number one factor in how customers form an impression of a company, with pricing and customer service not far behind.

Customers’ impressions of your company are driven primarily by quality

Consistency in these cases means that a customer can depend on the same level of product, service or care from each time they order. A cheeseburger from McDonalds is the same quality whether you’re in California or Maine. Customers rely on that and it drives their expectations.

Their expectations in turn drive your conversion rate. As you might imagine, there’s a certain level of inherent trust here. I trust you’ll be able to provide me with the same caliber of goods and services I’ve come to expect from you. The more companies can do this over time, the more favorable the impression becomes, the more likely they are to recommend, rate, like and share with others because it is a reflection on them.

Even if you have demonstrated value to the customer and ensured a quality process that delivers consistency, you’re still not finished. You have to ensure that what you do present to the customer is clear enough to encourage them to act on it.

Clarity: Making Sense of What’s Presented

How clear is your marketing message? Not just to you and your team, or to your marketing department, but to everyone from the CEO to the janitor. Many companies rebrand themselves every few years to focus on something new in an attempt to appear fresh and vibrant to their consumers.

But look at things from your customer’s point of view, or even better, the perspective of someone who hasn’t visited your site before. All this change makes them question the value of what they’re getting, and consistency gets swept to the wayside. They’re not sure that this company understands or embraces their lifestyle and motivations, much less has a place in it.

This isn’t to say, of course, that you should remain stuck in something that isn’t working or that your company should be perceived as old-fashioned. But change when and where it makes sense to do so – not just because it seems to be the “in” thing to do at the moment.

Creating and living true to a mission statement, a philosophy or a manifesto that affects everything from how the company operates to how it treats its customers paints a perfectly clear picture of what “clarity” truly means when it comes to driving conversion rates. Better yet, share this philosophy with your customers. Don’t just tell them, show them how your company is taking strides to be better in tune with what they want, and make yourself open and available to the two-way communication street that is the social web.

Clarity means complete understanding and reliance on the company to deliver what they promise without a shadow of a doubt. And conversions can only happen when all the other factors come together to make your offer, and the customer’s actions to take advantage of it, crystal clear.

Alleviate Friction and “Action Paralysis”

Two of the issues that plague most conversion optimization touch-points are friction and “action paralysis”. Friction happens when one of these key drivers doesn’t align with the others. For example, you may provide clarity and value to the customer, but consistency isn’t always there. They’re not sure what they’re going to get this time and would rather not turn it into a guessing game.

Or your message is clear and consistent, but the value doesn’t drive the customer to click. They might fear they’re being cheated or duped, and no one wants to look like a fool. In other words, there’s a misalignment of persuasive factors and that can cause your conversion rate to flat-line.

Even if you have all of the key conversion drivers working in perfect harmony, there’s still the ever-looming specter of “action paralysis” which makes the customer second-guess themselves and their decision. Common questions here would include:

• How much is shipping going to cost on top of the price? How soon will my order be here?
• What happens after my order is complete? What if I don’t get an email confirmation?
• Who should I contact if something is wrong with my order when I receive it? What is the return policy? Can I exchange my item for something else?
• How does the company use the information I give them?
• What are other people saying about this product/service?

The good news is that you can eliminate a lot of these issues by way of a plain English returns/exchange policy, as well as a straightforward privacy policy, concrete details on pricing and shipping and by following up to make sure the customer is satisfied and doesn’t have any questions after the item or service has been received.

Here again, it all goes back to the cycle of what’s driving your conversions – value in your offer, consistency in your methods and quality, and clarity of purpose and message while avoiding frictions that cause the customer to step back and question their decision. Getting these things right may take time and effort, but anything worth improving your conversion rate always does.

Have you used these methods in your own conversion optimization campaigns and processes? How have they worked out for you? Tell us about it in the comments below!

About the Author: Sherice Jacob helps business owners improve website design and increase conversion rates through compelling copywriting, user-friendly design and smart analytics analysis. Learn more at iElectrify.com and download your free web copy tune-up and conversion checklist today!