Month: September 2016

7 ways I’ve increased conversion rates (and even retention) with thank you pages

Most marketers believe that the path to a high converting funnel consists of 3 parts:

driving traffic to their landing pages,
analyzing their results, and
optimizing them.

This is where they believe the cycle ends.
Yeah, most marketers are wrong.
As a consultant, I’ve witnessed something that needs fixing: marketers are casually disregarding a crucial part of the funnel and a critical landing page in their campaigns.
They’re overlooking a part of the funnel that has a huge impact on 1) retaining your converted visitors and 2) actually increasing conversion rates.
When my clients bring me in to help optimize

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Here’s How to Find the Right Mix and Fine-Tune Your Offer

Have you ever wondered if your strange collection of skills and interests could be woven together to build a profitable business?
If you have, you’ll love today’s Hero’s Journey article.
Lauren Pawell is a rare breed: she has a background in development and marketing. That’s a combination you don’t see every day!
Some people might have encouraged Lauren to choose one field or the other. But she persisted and has built a business that artfully combines her many passions.
Lauren’s story is this month’s Hero’s Journey feature. We’re tapping the collective wisdom of our community members to bring you reports from the front lines of the content marketing world. See all the Hero’s Journey posts here.
Read on as Lauren shares what she’s learned over the years and how you can use her hard-earned wisdom in your own business.
Building a one-stop revenue-building shop
Lauren Pawell: What sets Bixa Media apart is my background in both development and marketing. This allows me to sit at the intersection of business, technology and design.
We help entrepreneurs turn their WordPress and Shopify websites into revenue-generating powerhouses. We do that through a mixture of website design and development, content marketing, search engine optimization, paid advertising, and online reputation management.
Not only can we write killer copy, but we can also evaluate your technology options, decide which is best for your needs, and build everything for you, while keeping your business objectives at the forefront of the process.
I find our clients really value having a partner

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Ask Yourself These 3 Simple Questions to Craft Better Headlines

Last week, when I wrote about how to become a writer, I forgot to mention something about why you’d want to be a writer.
Writers are communicators. If you’re proud of your ideas, you want to be able to communicate them clearly and precisely.
Headlines are your first opportunity to present your message to the audience you want to reach. The language you use should appeal to those people and make them want to find out more.
To review the next headline you write from the perspective of an editor who is focused on audience engagement, here are three simple questions you can ask yourself.
A guide to finding the right words
Once you’ve written a draft of your headline and article (or you’ve recorded a podcast episode or video), use the questions below to ensure your headline is the most effective it can be:

Who will benefit from this content?
How do I help them?
What makes this content special?

The answers to these questions most likely won’t produce the exact headline you’ll use. Rather, they’ll help mold your headline draft into a persuasive message that reaches and connects with the people you want to attract to your content.
To keep the process of infusing your headline with meaning and fascination simple, I recommend answering each question in one to two sentences.
If you need to write more, recognize your opportunity to fine-tune your goal for the content before revisiting these headline questions.
Let’s look at the important information each question will help you cultivate

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Marketing Your Book All the Way to the Bestseller Lists, with Jay Baer

In this podcast episode, Chris Ducker sits down with Jay Baer to learn exactly how to become a New York Times bestselling author! Get your notebooks ready!
Book marketing is a topic that has come up a lot for me lately. As many of you know, I’ve just wrapped a book that has been traditionally published a while back.
Earlier this year, I interviewed Farnoosh Brock about her book on juicing, and her grassroots approach to marketing it — which worked very well for her. This time you will hear a different approach — a mix of old and new techniques, with some long-term brand building as the backbone.

In this interview, I talk with Jay Baer about his well-planned book marketing campaign, and we delve deep into how to become a New York Times bestselling author.
This is some very useful stuff, so get your notepads ready!
In this 50-minute episode, Jay and I discuss:

Why using unorthodox book marketing techniques can work in your favor
How you can build awareness long before your book is released
The criteria for hitting the NYT bestseller list
How to utilize your community to make your book go viral
Why hiring a publicist is still a good idea in the new business economy
How to use re-targeting to your advantage

Listen to this Episode Now
The post Marketing Your Book All the Way to the Bestseller Lists, with Jay Baer appeared first on Copyblogger.

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SEO that Grows Your Business with John Jantsch

Of all the components of a holistic online marketing strategy, search engine optimization (“SEO”) seems to mystify many the most. And it’s true that years back, the key to ranking well in Google was a form of dark art.
That’s changed in recent years. Google’s algorithm has gotten smarter, and is more distinctly tuned in to what the audience thinks is relevant and valuable for a given search term, rather than what we as marketers would prefer to rank well.

As my friend Rae Hoffman says, “Google doesn’t want to make websites popular, they want to rank popular websites.” In other words, get traffic rich by creating content that people want and value first, and Google will make you even richer.
Another friend of mine, John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing, has just co-authored a book called SEO for Growth, and it’s a completely up-to-date examination of what it takes to do well in search engines. I was honored that John asked me to contribute the foreword, and long-time readers of Copyblogger will see the natural evolution of tactics and strategies we’ve talked about for a decade.
Tune in for valuable tips on the modern practice of SEO. More importantly, discover how to execute on an SEO strategy that grows your business, not just your search traffic.
Listen to this Episode Now
The post SEO that Grows Your Business with John Jantsch appeared first on Copyblogger.

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Is the Novel Dead? Part One

In this special edition of the show, two writers joined me to opine the death of one of the most influential forms in the history of the written word. I posed the question that many great writers have pondered stretching across the last two centuries …
Is the novel dead? And maybe a more up-to-date version of that question is, did the internet kill books?

Of course these are famous — almost cliché — theoretical discussions that writers often chew on over stiff drinks, and they raise hackles for those of us who adore them.
What you won’t find here is a highbrow literary dissertation, or even a very strict definition as to what the novel is or isn’t. But you will find a lively discussion between friends who care about the writing life and its future.
Robert Bruce is a writer, voice actor, and copywriter, as well as the Vice President of Rainmaker Digital and the guy who runs the Rainmaker FM podcast network.
Adam Skolnick is an award-winning journalist, author, and a returning guest on the show. His first book, One Breath, was published by Crown last January, and his work has appeared in publications including Playboy, The New York Times, and many others.
If you’re a fan of The Writer Files, please click subscribe to automatically see new interviews as soon as they’re published.
In Part One of the file Robert, Adam, and I discuss:

How longer works of writing have been forced to compete with disposable culture
Why Herman

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The Non-Gimme-Gimme Guide to Writing Lead Generation Pages

I want your email…
I want your NAME…
I WANT YOUR SOOOOOOOUULL!
SUBMIT TO MY AWESOME POWWWWWERRRRRR!
Yikes.
But sometimes that’s how lead-generation pages come off, right?
Sure, you’re a grown up with free will, so you can go full-on gimme gimme gimme with your lead gen page, if that’s what floats your boat. Maybe that’s your brand personality. Maybe your second corporate value is Take Take Take, right after Sell Crap People Don’t Need. I dunno.
Or maybe you just don’t know how to ask visitors for their email addy in a way that, y’know, works.
Either way, let’s

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2 Essential Elements of Irresistible Content

I once asked on social media:

What’s your biggest challenge when creating compelling content?
I didn’t treat it as a poll with various challenges. I wanted pure, unfiltered responses.
And the number one answer was:

Keeping it original and interesting.
So, let’s talk about that today.
Meaning + fascination
The two elements that lead to reader engagement, social media sharing, and the “gotta have it now” impulse are meaning and fascination. But you knew that from the subhead.
Let’s unpack each a bit.
Meaning: This is the informational aspect of your content that your regular readers, listeners, or viewers expect from you. This is also a topic that matters to the prospective audience you’re trying to reach through social media sharing.
Another way to think of this important aspect of your content is relevance. Content must be highly relevant to your existing and prospective audience, but I prefer meaning, as it implies an extra level of value that makes people treasure you.
Fascination: The fascinating element of your content is where your creativity shines. It’s the fun, shocking, or entertaining aspect of your content that makes people pay attention and share with their friends and colleagues.
Often you’re using an analogy, metaphor, or simile to make an associated connection between something cool and an important topic that might otherwise be pretty boring.
Not only does this attract and hold attention, it also aids in comprehension and retention for your audience, which in turn increases your subject-matter authority with them (because they actually learn something).
Here are two

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