Website Redesign
Content
INTELLIGENT WEBSITE REDESIGN
WHAT EVERY B2B MARKETER NEEDS TO KNOW
INTRODUCTION
Let’s get real about your website. If you’re a B2B company, your website is an essential tool to drive leads and generate demand. Your website is the first place a prospect will go to learn more about your product or services and it is the last place a prospect will go before completing a transaction. Unfortunately, the sad fact is that too many B2B companies fail at building a website that attracts visitors and ultimately lead generation. Many of these websites lack the functionality needed to convert a prospect to a lead, provide intelligence that gets to the quality of that lead, and nurture a lead over time until they are ready to buy. With this eBook, B2B marketers can now come to grips with whether your website could benefit from a redesign and if so the functionality that will need to be added to your website to make it more intelligent and better support your lead generation efforts.
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
2
“
What is an ‘Intelligent Website’ A website that is built from the ground up to support: • Lead Generation • Mobile Optimization • Blogging • Social Networks • Email Marketing • Landing Pages • Calls-To-Action • A/B Testing • Customer Insight • Lead Handling • Metrics
How to decide if you need a website redesign? Here’s a simple checklist you can use to get focused on the issues of importance.
”
?
3
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
CHECKLIST:
Lead Generation Are you generating enough leads?
Do you know the quality of your leads? Do you have mechanisms in place to nurture leads over time?
Mobile Optimization Does your website work on smartphones and tablets? Blogging Do you have a blog?
Is it hosted on your domain or somewhere else?
Social Networks Does your website drive traffic to social networks and vice versa? Email Marketing Do you have a email marketing service that support simple and complex
lead nurturing campaigns? Has your email been optimized for viewing on smart phones and tablets?
Landing Pages Can you author branded, best practice landing pages with ease? Calls-To-Action Can you develop and place calls-to-action with ease? A/B Testing Can you create and execute A/B testing on the fly?
Can you test not just email subject lines but other elements of your emailing? Can you apply A/B testing to your landing pages?
Customer Insight Do you know who is visiting your site and what content they are viewing?
Can you make this information available to sales so they can use it when talking with customers?
Lead Handling
As you generate leads from your website, can you route them to sales reps in an automated fashion?
Metrics
Do you have the metrics you need to prove ROI? 4
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
1 LEAD GENERATION
LEAD GENERATION
To get started redesigning your website to better support lead generation, take a good hard look at the content.
Is the content compelling and relevant?
Is the navigation simple and does it work well on smartphones and tablets? Have you built in content-rich offers and merchandised them throughout the site?
The most compelling and relevant content aligns with the buyer’s journey, the steps that most buyers will go through as they make a purchase decision:
EPIPHANY
EXPLORATION & AWARENESS
INTEREST & CONSIDERATION
CONFIDENCE
LOYALTY
r winne
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
6
Simplify your navigation to make it easy for your prospect to understand what portions of your website are meant for them. This will also give you more intelligence about visitors to your website whom – for one reason or another – choose to remain anonymous. Make sure that you are making content-rich offers that showcase the fact that your company has the expertise to solve a prospect’s problem in a unique way. Most of the time, it makes sense to put these offers behind a form, to encourage prospects to tell you a little about themselves and their company. Ideally, look for a website solution that adds intelligence to the data the prospect provides, to give you more insight into their needs, wants, and desires:
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
7
2 MOBILE OPTIMIZATION
MOBILE OPTIMIZATION
If your website is more than 3 years old, it is likely that it does not provide an optimal experience when viewed from a smartphone or tablet.
Modern websites rely on a technique called “responsive design” that did not even exist 3 years ago. Regardless, many believe – including Mashable – 2013 is becoming the year of responsive web design. One big benefit of responsive design is that there is only one set of content and code base you need to create and maintain.
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
9
If you think optimizing your website experience for mobile is not important, think again. According to Google (September, 2012):
• 67% of users are more likely to buy from a mobile-friendly site • 61% of people said that they’d quickly move onto another site if they didn’t find what they were looking for right away on a mobile site • 52% of users said that a bad mobile experience made them less likely to engage with a company
In all likelihood the analytics you have understate the number of visitors to your website from smartphones and tablets. 80% of traffic from iOS devices like iPad and iPhone show up in your Google Analytics data as “referrer not provided.”
“
– Optify
“(not provided)” now accounts for almost 40% of referring traffic data from organic search, an increase of 171% since originally introduced a year ago.
”
10
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
3 BLOGGING
BLOGGING
Do you have a blog?
Companies that blog see
• 55% more visitors
• 97% more inbound links • 434% more indexed pages
The way this works is two fold. Since the Panda update, Google and the other seach engines have focused on putting only current content on page 1 of the SERP (search-engine results page). So to be more visible in search, you need to blog and blog regularly. How often is enough? 3x per month is the minimum; 2-3x per week is ideal. Note that to accrue the benefits of blogging, you must have a blog that ‘looks like’ it resides on the same domain as the rest of your website. A blog hosted at another domain does not provide these benefits.
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
12
4 SOCIAL NETWORKS
SOCIAL NETWORKS
Does your website drive traffic to your social media channels and vice versa?
Many B2B marketers still discount the importance of social media because they believe it is self-serving only to B2C marketers. What many B2B marketers don’t realize is that social media accounts are not only key in engaging with customers but will also help your company’s website get found in search (!) Recent findings from MarketingProfs say that companies that are active on social media gain a 185% lift in web traffic after achieving 1,000 Facebook likes, and businesses with 51 to 100 Twitter followers generate 106% more traffic than those with 25 or fewer followers. Now the question is how can B2B marketers convert social media followers into leads.
1. Measure How Much Traffic Your Website Receives From Social Media
This all depends on how sophisticated the analytics on your website is, but with many softwares out there, B2B marketers can now examine where visitors are coming from whether it is via LinkedIn or Pinterest. By figuring out where most of your visitors are coming, you can re-organize your social media efforts on networks that matter instead of trying to stretch yourself too thin.
it is not about quantity, it is about quality and B2B marketers can achieve this by listening.
3. Think Before You Call – Tweet Instead
We are shocked at how many companies throw their sales people (from the salesperson) when they see a follower on Twitter say how much they love their product to a Community Manager (from the Marketing department). Allow me to digress, with sales, you’re ready to go full force. With marketing, it is more important to create a loyal customer than a one-time customer, so simply recommending more resources to learn more makes more sense than telling a social media follower to contact a salesperson. Social media lead nurturing is a growing concept that if a B2B business can comprehend it, they will be able to more successful in the long-run.
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
2. Be Original
A majority of the content you share on social media will be cherry picked on your blog but social media is a great place to decide what type of content tools B2B marketers should invest in. For example, if an old eBook landing page is still being retweeted and attracting visitors from LinkedIn, consider turning this eBook into a fresh blog post. Again,
14
5 EMAIL MARKETING
EMAIL MARKETING
After your blog, email is likely to be the second most important driver of leads for your business. Email works to keep you top-of-mind with prospects until they are ready to buy.
What to look for in an email solution:
Mobile-ready templates. According to Pardot, less than 25% of B2B marketers optimize their emailings for mobile. Which means an opportunity lost. According to Strong Mail, 42% of email is now opened on a mobile device, which is expected to rise to more than 50% in 2013. Support for both newsletters and drip campaigns. While email newsletters are sent out on a regular basis, drip campaigns are typically triggered by some interaction the prospect has with your company at your website. Making integration with your website a must.
Mobile ready templates will allow your company to field promotions like these
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
16
6 LANDING PAGES
LANDING PAGES
Can you author branded, best practice landing pages with ease?
Often the first experience a prospect will have with your company will happen on one of your landing pages. So it’s critical that your landing pages be branded with the look and feel of your site. Of equal importance, set up the landing page in accordance with best practices to maximize conversion.
1
2
6 5 7 4 3
8
1 Page Headline 2 Clear Headlines 3 Impeccable Grammar 4 Trust Indicators 5 Strong Calls-To-Action 6 Minimal Links 7 Image/Video That Relates 8 Stay Above The Fold 9 Always Be Testing
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
18
Many marketing automation products include tools to create landing pages based on templates. But the templates themselves are “hard wired” and difficult to change unless you know how to code yourself or have access to someone who does. Look for a solution that allows you to create landing pages in less than 10 minutes without coding.
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
19
7 CALLS-TO-ACTION
CALLS-TO-ACTION
Thinking on calls-to-actions has changed of late, due to the rise of smartphones and tablets. Instead of crafting websites as a series of pages, more websites are being designed with fewer pages or as one very long page divided into sections. With this style of website, there is no such thing as “the fold”. Instead, the focus is on understanding how the eye travels across the page.
In short, sites use to look like this:
And now they look like this:
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
21
What this means for you is that you may already be considering redesigning your site so it adheres to this new and – increasingly popular – design pattern. As part of your redesign, you’ll need to figure out where to place your call-to-actions.
The emerging best practice is this:
• Website Home Page – Include room to merchandise at least 3 different
calls-to-action • Section Headers – These are your most trafficked pages. Put the calls-to-action at the top and bottom of the page. • Blog Entries – Place calls-to-action at the bottom of each entry.
Look for a solution that allows you to take control of your calls-to-action, to create them without a graphic artist, and place them on the top / bottom / and possibly the sidebar of your site.
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
22
8 A/B TESTING
A/B TESTING
A/B testing is the single most powerful lever available to marketers who want to generate more leads. A/B testing can be used to boost the response you see from your email marketing campaigns and also up the conversion value of your landing pages. The first step in setting up an effective A/B test is deciding what to test. To get actionable results, you need to stay focused, disciplined, and test only one thing at a time.
WHAT TO TEST
EMAIL
Calls-to-Action (Example: “Buy Now!” vs. “See Plans & Pricing”) Subject Line (Example: “Product XYZ on Sale” vs. “Discounts on Product XYZ”) Testimonials to include (or whether to include them at all) Personalization (Example: “Mr. Smith” vs. “Joe”)
LANDING PAGES
The Main Headline (which typically contains a succinct rendering of your product/offer/ service core value proposition). The Calls-To-Action (CTA) – typically the text on the button that represents your page’s conversion goal. Hero Shot. Try a variation of your main photo (if you have one) – preferably showing your product or service being used in context. Button Design. Use design principles to accentuate the appearance of your CTA (contrast, whitespace, size). Above all, try making it bigger. Button Color – green for go, blue for link color, orange or red for emotional reaction. Form Length. For lead capture and other form usage, you will want to minimize the amount of fields that visitors are required to complete. Long Copy vs. Short Copy. Often shorter is better, but for certain products detail is important in the decision making process. Test it and see.
Body Text Headline
Closing Text
Images The Specific Offer (Example: “Save 20%” vs. “Get free shipping”)
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
24
Look for a solution that allows you to do A/B testing on the fly, without a lot of hands on intervention on your part. Typically, all you need to do is author two (or more) different versions of your emailing or landing page. The system you choose should have the intelligence necessary to put the two versions in rotation, track results, and decide on the winning version.
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
25
9 CUSTOMER INSIGHT
CUSTOMER INSIGHT
Never send your sales rep into a meeting with potential customer unprepared. Give them the insight they need to frame the conversation to close the sale. This should include: • What web pages the prospect visited? • How much time they spent on your site? • Is this a first time visitor or a repeat visitor? • What offers has the prospect been exposed to – either at your site or by email? • What was their response? • What do you know about the prospect or the company they work for? Many marketers think that the only way to get answers to these questions is by having the prospect fill out one very long form or multiple forms over time. The rule of thumb is never ask the prospect something you can easily find out. Look for a system that can take the prospect’s email address and match it up to their social media profiles in real time.
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
27
10 LEAD HANDLING
LEAD HANDLING
“
When it comes to handling a lead, response time and persistence matters. Which is why it pays to automate the entire process.
Companies that automate lead management processes can increase revenue by at least 10% within 6-9 months, despite the uncertain economy.
– Gartner Group (2009)
You don’t want leads that are ready to buy sitting around and going stale. Studies show that when a prospect is ready to buy, your company needs to get in touch with the prospect within 30 minutes or risk losing the sale to another, more nimble competitor.
”
29
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
But if the prospect is not ready to buy, moving them to sales prematurely will turn them off. Instead, prospects that are not ready to buy need to be placed on a lead-nurturing track:
EXPLAIN
LEAD NURTURING TRACK
HELP
APPRECIATE ILLUMINATE INSPIRE
ENLIGHTEN
• Clarify solution • Educate & options. empathize. • Outline best • Interpret the practices & impact & spell out next steps. potential for prospects. • Discuss related trends.
• Create awareness around the opportunities you present and the problems you solve.
• Thank customers. • Reinforce your value. • Reward loyalty • Compare & • Provide personalized contrast solutions resources & support. • Celebrate customer achievements. in relation to • Ask for referrals & prospects goals. testimonials. • Offer decision aids, cost calculators, & useful tools.
In short, look for an intelligent marketing solution that allows you to create workflows with flexibility at various stages of the funnel.
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
30
11 METRICS
METRICS
Many marketers find it almost impossible to measure how their marketing is doing. Many marketers will tell you that the one yardstick that matters is ROI or return on investment. True, we like ROI a lot. But in the real world, we find that ROI can be impossible to measure in real-time. And digital marketing is all about quickly measuring what works, doing more of what works, and less of what doesn’t.
LATHER
RINSE
REPEAT
Look for systems that calculate conversion rates and make them available in a dashboard format, to support your real-time marketing needs.
Leads MQLs SALs Opps Deals
Leads: Leads come from multiple sources. They are raw, unqualified and generally uneducated about a company’s product or service. Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL): Based upon a Marketing Department’s scoring, these leads are deemed “an ideal customer” and ready to be addressed by a Lead Qualification rep. Sales Accepted Leads (SAL): A Lead Qualification rep has accepted the MQL and deemed it a qualified lead to reach out to and connect with. Opportunity: A Lead Qual rep has connected with a lead and they are willing to evaluate the product or service. The lead is then passed and accepted by an Account Executive. Deals: An Account Executive owns the responsibility of the prospect where it is then turned into a new customer.
$
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
32
ABOUT BISLR
Bislr is for marketers looking to generate better results. We make an all-in-one suite of intelligent marketing tools to support best practices in inbound marketing. It all starts by building out a website inside Bislr using our drag–and–drop tools. You can do this yourself using one of the themes we provide or by working with one of our cracker jack agencies to create a totally custom look and feel, one that leverages your brand.
In just a few days and for about one-tenth of the typical cost, you can: • Launch your websites and begin to generate qualified leads • Start A/B testing both email and landing pages • Track marketing campaign ROI • Send email marketing campaigns • Segment your customer database The websites developed on Bislr are instantly mobile, social, and highly search-engine optimized. Allowing marketers to drive leads from multiple channels and have greater sales insight from Bislr’s intelligence engine.
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
33
WHAT EVERY B2B MARKETER NEEDS TO KNOW
INTRODUCTION
Let’s get real about your website. If you’re a B2B company, your website is an essential tool to drive leads and generate demand. Your website is the first place a prospect will go to learn more about your product or services and it is the last place a prospect will go before completing a transaction. Unfortunately, the sad fact is that too many B2B companies fail at building a website that attracts visitors and ultimately lead generation. Many of these websites lack the functionality needed to convert a prospect to a lead, provide intelligence that gets to the quality of that lead, and nurture a lead over time until they are ready to buy. With this eBook, B2B marketers can now come to grips with whether your website could benefit from a redesign and if so the functionality that will need to be added to your website to make it more intelligent and better support your lead generation efforts.
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
2
“
What is an ‘Intelligent Website’ A website that is built from the ground up to support: • Lead Generation • Mobile Optimization • Blogging • Social Networks • Email Marketing • Landing Pages • Calls-To-Action • A/B Testing • Customer Insight • Lead Handling • Metrics
How to decide if you need a website redesign? Here’s a simple checklist you can use to get focused on the issues of importance.
”
?
3
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
CHECKLIST:
Lead Generation Are you generating enough leads?
Do you know the quality of your leads? Do you have mechanisms in place to nurture leads over time?
Mobile Optimization Does your website work on smartphones and tablets? Blogging Do you have a blog?
Is it hosted on your domain or somewhere else?
Social Networks Does your website drive traffic to social networks and vice versa? Email Marketing Do you have a email marketing service that support simple and complex
lead nurturing campaigns? Has your email been optimized for viewing on smart phones and tablets?
Landing Pages Can you author branded, best practice landing pages with ease? Calls-To-Action Can you develop and place calls-to-action with ease? A/B Testing Can you create and execute A/B testing on the fly?
Can you test not just email subject lines but other elements of your emailing? Can you apply A/B testing to your landing pages?
Customer Insight Do you know who is visiting your site and what content they are viewing?
Can you make this information available to sales so they can use it when talking with customers?
Lead Handling
As you generate leads from your website, can you route them to sales reps in an automated fashion?
Metrics
Do you have the metrics you need to prove ROI? 4
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
1 LEAD GENERATION
LEAD GENERATION
To get started redesigning your website to better support lead generation, take a good hard look at the content.
Is the content compelling and relevant?
Is the navigation simple and does it work well on smartphones and tablets? Have you built in content-rich offers and merchandised them throughout the site?
The most compelling and relevant content aligns with the buyer’s journey, the steps that most buyers will go through as they make a purchase decision:
EPIPHANY
EXPLORATION & AWARENESS
INTEREST & CONSIDERATION
CONFIDENCE
LOYALTY
r winne
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
6
Simplify your navigation to make it easy for your prospect to understand what portions of your website are meant for them. This will also give you more intelligence about visitors to your website whom – for one reason or another – choose to remain anonymous. Make sure that you are making content-rich offers that showcase the fact that your company has the expertise to solve a prospect’s problem in a unique way. Most of the time, it makes sense to put these offers behind a form, to encourage prospects to tell you a little about themselves and their company. Ideally, look for a website solution that adds intelligence to the data the prospect provides, to give you more insight into their needs, wants, and desires:
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
7
2 MOBILE OPTIMIZATION
MOBILE OPTIMIZATION
If your website is more than 3 years old, it is likely that it does not provide an optimal experience when viewed from a smartphone or tablet.
Modern websites rely on a technique called “responsive design” that did not even exist 3 years ago. Regardless, many believe – including Mashable – 2013 is becoming the year of responsive web design. One big benefit of responsive design is that there is only one set of content and code base you need to create and maintain.
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
9
If you think optimizing your website experience for mobile is not important, think again. According to Google (September, 2012):
• 67% of users are more likely to buy from a mobile-friendly site • 61% of people said that they’d quickly move onto another site if they didn’t find what they were looking for right away on a mobile site • 52% of users said that a bad mobile experience made them less likely to engage with a company
In all likelihood the analytics you have understate the number of visitors to your website from smartphones and tablets. 80% of traffic from iOS devices like iPad and iPhone show up in your Google Analytics data as “referrer not provided.”
“
– Optify
“(not provided)” now accounts for almost 40% of referring traffic data from organic search, an increase of 171% since originally introduced a year ago.
”
10
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
3 BLOGGING
BLOGGING
Do you have a blog?
Companies that blog see
• 55% more visitors
• 97% more inbound links • 434% more indexed pages
The way this works is two fold. Since the Panda update, Google and the other seach engines have focused on putting only current content on page 1 of the SERP (search-engine results page). So to be more visible in search, you need to blog and blog regularly. How often is enough? 3x per month is the minimum; 2-3x per week is ideal. Note that to accrue the benefits of blogging, you must have a blog that ‘looks like’ it resides on the same domain as the rest of your website. A blog hosted at another domain does not provide these benefits.
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
12
4 SOCIAL NETWORKS
SOCIAL NETWORKS
Does your website drive traffic to your social media channels and vice versa?
Many B2B marketers still discount the importance of social media because they believe it is self-serving only to B2C marketers. What many B2B marketers don’t realize is that social media accounts are not only key in engaging with customers but will also help your company’s website get found in search (!) Recent findings from MarketingProfs say that companies that are active on social media gain a 185% lift in web traffic after achieving 1,000 Facebook likes, and businesses with 51 to 100 Twitter followers generate 106% more traffic than those with 25 or fewer followers. Now the question is how can B2B marketers convert social media followers into leads.
1. Measure How Much Traffic Your Website Receives From Social Media
This all depends on how sophisticated the analytics on your website is, but with many softwares out there, B2B marketers can now examine where visitors are coming from whether it is via LinkedIn or Pinterest. By figuring out where most of your visitors are coming, you can re-organize your social media efforts on networks that matter instead of trying to stretch yourself too thin.
it is not about quantity, it is about quality and B2B marketers can achieve this by listening.
3. Think Before You Call – Tweet Instead
We are shocked at how many companies throw their sales people (from the salesperson) when they see a follower on Twitter say how much they love their product to a Community Manager (from the Marketing department). Allow me to digress, with sales, you’re ready to go full force. With marketing, it is more important to create a loyal customer than a one-time customer, so simply recommending more resources to learn more makes more sense than telling a social media follower to contact a salesperson. Social media lead nurturing is a growing concept that if a B2B business can comprehend it, they will be able to more successful in the long-run.
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
2. Be Original
A majority of the content you share on social media will be cherry picked on your blog but social media is a great place to decide what type of content tools B2B marketers should invest in. For example, if an old eBook landing page is still being retweeted and attracting visitors from LinkedIn, consider turning this eBook into a fresh blog post. Again,
14
5 EMAIL MARKETING
EMAIL MARKETING
After your blog, email is likely to be the second most important driver of leads for your business. Email works to keep you top-of-mind with prospects until they are ready to buy.
What to look for in an email solution:
Mobile-ready templates. According to Pardot, less than 25% of B2B marketers optimize their emailings for mobile. Which means an opportunity lost. According to Strong Mail, 42% of email is now opened on a mobile device, which is expected to rise to more than 50% in 2013. Support for both newsletters and drip campaigns. While email newsletters are sent out on a regular basis, drip campaigns are typically triggered by some interaction the prospect has with your company at your website. Making integration with your website a must.
Mobile ready templates will allow your company to field promotions like these
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
16
6 LANDING PAGES
LANDING PAGES
Can you author branded, best practice landing pages with ease?
Often the first experience a prospect will have with your company will happen on one of your landing pages. So it’s critical that your landing pages be branded with the look and feel of your site. Of equal importance, set up the landing page in accordance with best practices to maximize conversion.
1
2
6 5 7 4 3
8
1 Page Headline 2 Clear Headlines 3 Impeccable Grammar 4 Trust Indicators 5 Strong Calls-To-Action 6 Minimal Links 7 Image/Video That Relates 8 Stay Above The Fold 9 Always Be Testing
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
18
Many marketing automation products include tools to create landing pages based on templates. But the templates themselves are “hard wired” and difficult to change unless you know how to code yourself or have access to someone who does. Look for a solution that allows you to create landing pages in less than 10 minutes without coding.
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
19
7 CALLS-TO-ACTION
CALLS-TO-ACTION
Thinking on calls-to-actions has changed of late, due to the rise of smartphones and tablets. Instead of crafting websites as a series of pages, more websites are being designed with fewer pages or as one very long page divided into sections. With this style of website, there is no such thing as “the fold”. Instead, the focus is on understanding how the eye travels across the page.
In short, sites use to look like this:
And now they look like this:
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
21
What this means for you is that you may already be considering redesigning your site so it adheres to this new and – increasingly popular – design pattern. As part of your redesign, you’ll need to figure out where to place your call-to-actions.
The emerging best practice is this:
• Website Home Page – Include room to merchandise at least 3 different
calls-to-action • Section Headers – These are your most trafficked pages. Put the calls-to-action at the top and bottom of the page. • Blog Entries – Place calls-to-action at the bottom of each entry.
Look for a solution that allows you to take control of your calls-to-action, to create them without a graphic artist, and place them on the top / bottom / and possibly the sidebar of your site.
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
22
8 A/B TESTING
A/B TESTING
A/B testing is the single most powerful lever available to marketers who want to generate more leads. A/B testing can be used to boost the response you see from your email marketing campaigns and also up the conversion value of your landing pages. The first step in setting up an effective A/B test is deciding what to test. To get actionable results, you need to stay focused, disciplined, and test only one thing at a time.
WHAT TO TEST
Calls-to-Action (Example: “Buy Now!” vs. “See Plans & Pricing”) Subject Line (Example: “Product XYZ on Sale” vs. “Discounts on Product XYZ”) Testimonials to include (or whether to include them at all) Personalization (Example: “Mr. Smith” vs. “Joe”)
LANDING PAGES
The Main Headline (which typically contains a succinct rendering of your product/offer/ service core value proposition). The Calls-To-Action (CTA) – typically the text on the button that represents your page’s conversion goal. Hero Shot. Try a variation of your main photo (if you have one) – preferably showing your product or service being used in context. Button Design. Use design principles to accentuate the appearance of your CTA (contrast, whitespace, size). Above all, try making it bigger. Button Color – green for go, blue for link color, orange or red for emotional reaction. Form Length. For lead capture and other form usage, you will want to minimize the amount of fields that visitors are required to complete. Long Copy vs. Short Copy. Often shorter is better, but for certain products detail is important in the decision making process. Test it and see.
Body Text Headline
Closing Text
Images The Specific Offer (Example: “Save 20%” vs. “Get free shipping”)
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
24
Look for a solution that allows you to do A/B testing on the fly, without a lot of hands on intervention on your part. Typically, all you need to do is author two (or more) different versions of your emailing or landing page. The system you choose should have the intelligence necessary to put the two versions in rotation, track results, and decide on the winning version.
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
25
9 CUSTOMER INSIGHT
CUSTOMER INSIGHT
Never send your sales rep into a meeting with potential customer unprepared. Give them the insight they need to frame the conversation to close the sale. This should include: • What web pages the prospect visited? • How much time they spent on your site? • Is this a first time visitor or a repeat visitor? • What offers has the prospect been exposed to – either at your site or by email? • What was their response? • What do you know about the prospect or the company they work for? Many marketers think that the only way to get answers to these questions is by having the prospect fill out one very long form or multiple forms over time. The rule of thumb is never ask the prospect something you can easily find out. Look for a system that can take the prospect’s email address and match it up to their social media profiles in real time.
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
27
10 LEAD HANDLING
LEAD HANDLING
“
When it comes to handling a lead, response time and persistence matters. Which is why it pays to automate the entire process.
Companies that automate lead management processes can increase revenue by at least 10% within 6-9 months, despite the uncertain economy.
– Gartner Group (2009)
You don’t want leads that are ready to buy sitting around and going stale. Studies show that when a prospect is ready to buy, your company needs to get in touch with the prospect within 30 minutes or risk losing the sale to another, more nimble competitor.
”
29
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
But if the prospect is not ready to buy, moving them to sales prematurely will turn them off. Instead, prospects that are not ready to buy need to be placed on a lead-nurturing track:
EXPLAIN
LEAD NURTURING TRACK
HELP
APPRECIATE ILLUMINATE INSPIRE
ENLIGHTEN
• Clarify solution • Educate & options. empathize. • Outline best • Interpret the practices & impact & spell out next steps. potential for prospects. • Discuss related trends.
• Create awareness around the opportunities you present and the problems you solve.
• Thank customers. • Reinforce your value. • Reward loyalty • Compare & • Provide personalized contrast solutions resources & support. • Celebrate customer achievements. in relation to • Ask for referrals & prospects goals. testimonials. • Offer decision aids, cost calculators, & useful tools.
In short, look for an intelligent marketing solution that allows you to create workflows with flexibility at various stages of the funnel.
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
30
11 METRICS
METRICS
Many marketers find it almost impossible to measure how their marketing is doing. Many marketers will tell you that the one yardstick that matters is ROI or return on investment. True, we like ROI a lot. But in the real world, we find that ROI can be impossible to measure in real-time. And digital marketing is all about quickly measuring what works, doing more of what works, and less of what doesn’t.
LATHER
RINSE
REPEAT
Look for systems that calculate conversion rates and make them available in a dashboard format, to support your real-time marketing needs.
Leads MQLs SALs Opps Deals
Leads: Leads come from multiple sources. They are raw, unqualified and generally uneducated about a company’s product or service. Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL): Based upon a Marketing Department’s scoring, these leads are deemed “an ideal customer” and ready to be addressed by a Lead Qualification rep. Sales Accepted Leads (SAL): A Lead Qualification rep has accepted the MQL and deemed it a qualified lead to reach out to and connect with. Opportunity: A Lead Qual rep has connected with a lead and they are willing to evaluate the product or service. The lead is then passed and accepted by an Account Executive. Deals: An Account Executive owns the responsibility of the prospect where it is then turned into a new customer.
$
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
32
ABOUT BISLR
Bislr is for marketers looking to generate better results. We make an all-in-one suite of intelligent marketing tools to support best practices in inbound marketing. It all starts by building out a website inside Bislr using our drag–and–drop tools. You can do this yourself using one of the themes we provide or by working with one of our cracker jack agencies to create a totally custom look and feel, one that leverages your brand.
In just a few days and for about one-tenth of the typical cost, you can: • Launch your websites and begin to generate qualified leads • Start A/B testing both email and landing pages • Track marketing campaign ROI • Send email marketing campaigns • Segment your customer database The websites developed on Bislr are instantly mobile, social, and highly search-engine optimized. Allowing marketers to drive leads from multiple channels and have greater sales insight from Bislr’s intelligence engine.
Bislr – Intelligent Website Redesign
33
