A Refresher Course in Good Marketing Ideas
Send email from a person, not a company. Check search traffic when choosing blog titles. Include brief surveys on thank-you pages. These are just three of 20 “Low-Hanging Marketing Fruit” listed in an excellent article on Hubspot Blog last week. It’s a good refresher course for some things we may know but may not always remember to do. Let’s go through a few of them—adding some comments more specific to SIPA members.
1. “Include more links to landing pages in your social updates.” As long as you are putting in the time on social media, you might as well put in links as well. Social media may not always directly lead to more sales, but you should definitely give it the chance.
2. “Send email from a person, not a company.” HubSpot conducted a test where an email from a person on their team garnered a .96% click-through rate compared to one from HubSpot itself that got .73%. The more personal email also “generated 292 more clicks and 131 more leads.” The idea of humanizing things is an interesting one right now. Research says that two-thirds of American office space is configured in an open arrangement. Productive? Supposedly, yes. Personalized? Hardly. I guess we have to choose our personalizing carefully.
4. “Put calls-to-action everywhere.” On blog posts, web pages, webinars, within downloadable content like ebooks, social media pages, etc.
5. “Include attractive images in your marketing.” This is an especially good reminder. We made sure to have a good logo for our SIPAwards this year, and the branding seemed to pay off. It’s definitely a visual world. “Why else do you think the infographic and Pinterest crazes have blown up recently?” the author, Pamela Vaughan, asks. Even if you have a good quote, she says, put it on a slide with a piece of art instead of just writing it.
6. “Check search traffic when choosing blog titles.” Good keywords do not have to be guessed at. Use a keyword tool to see what gets the most traffic.
8. “Update and re-publish outdated content.” We talk a lot about repurposing content—which is number 9. But the suggestion here about going into an old story and bringing it up to date is another alternative. Has there been new research? A new social tool? Can you get a couple new quotes to add? It sure beats starting from scratch.
10. “Optimize your website for mobile devices.”
12. “Conduct simple A/B tests.” SIPA member Anne Holland has an informational and fun site at Whichtestwon. It’s very interesting to test elements that we often take for granted like a magnifying glass for search (instead of the word itself). I’m always amazed by the amount of comments the site gets (33 on this last test). Other tests include Which Copy Increased Trial Sign-Ups, AdSense Ad Layout Test – Which Design Got More Clicks? and Do ‘Add to Cart’ Buttons Improve Sales From Ecommerce Search Results Pages?
13. “Include brief surveys on thank-you pages.” This combines two positive elements that we often talk about: interactive content and making use of the space on thank-you pages. It’s a good way to get information from an engaged customer; probably best to keep it short. Also consider a short quiz or something else that may bring them back to another page on the site.
16. “Segment your communication.” You’ve got a lot of information about your subscribers and prospects. Use some of it to make the emails you send matter more to them. The more an email I receive can talk about my world, the further I want to read.
18. “Add tracking tokens to your URLs.”
For the entire list, check out the Hubspot Blog site.
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Wednesday, March 21, 2012, 12 p.m. EST
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Once you are on their site, simply
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