Easy Landing Page Testing Using DoubleClick Search

As advertisers, we have a lot of questions.

• What type of messaging motivates users to act? 
• Is my CTR higher this week than it was last week? Why is that? 
• Yes, we've got a good landing page, but how can it be better?

The string of questions is never-ending, but it is all part of how we evolve to become better advertisers – who can pivot quicker, work more efficiently, and provide deeper insight at a moment's notice.

This post will give you an easy fix to help you solve the age-old question (or at least the one I've been asking since 2010) – how can I improve conversion rates?

Conversion rates can be affected by a whole slew of things – seasonality, time of day, price increases, etc. However, your best bet to systematically improve conversion rates is to start testing your landing pages.

Try a shorter sign-up flow, change your call to action, update the color of your buttons, put your call to action above the fold, or send traffic to a page further down your conversion funnel – the list of small tweaks you can make is endless. Glad we solved that.

The biggest question you have now is – how do I test these changes?

There are several ways to test landing pages, but I have a favorite. For those of you using DoubleClick Search to manage your campaigns – you're in luck. There is a simple feature that will make testing easy and provide you with clear results.

How to Set Up a Landing Page Test

First, select 2 to 3 landing pages you want to test, along with a list of the keywords you'd like to use for the test. It is easiest if the keywords you chose are in the same ad group or campaign. Remember, the more volume you get, the quicker you can gain significance – assuming it's achievable.

Once you've chosen the testing parameters and where it will run, you'll want to make a spreadsheet of the destination URLs you want to test. Feel free to add any UTM, ValueTrack, or third-party parameters to these URLs.

When you're ready to launch the test, open DoubleClick Search and navigate to the Keywords tab, where you can filter for the keywords you want to test. If your keywords are grouped together, try filtering by Campaign or Ad Group name. Select the keywords you want to test and click "Start Landing Page Test."

Once you click this, a drop-down will appear, allowing you to add a Test Name, Control Name, Experiment Name, and multiple URLs. Select "Split Traffic Evenly Between Landing Pages" and insert the correct URLs from your spreadsheet.

Click "Save" to start your landing page test.

How to Review the Test

To check in on your results, navigate to the DoubleClick Search interface, and select "Landing Page Tests" on the left menu. To review your data, select which columns best suit your test, and keep in mind that if your account is linked, you can use data from Google Analytics as well.

I prefer to see the name of the test, the start date, the visits, the actions (or transactions), and the ratio of visits to actions. However, there are many other column types available, so please chose those which work best for your business.

How to Gauge Significance

Now, to test significance and chose a clear winner, I recommend grabbing your click (visits) and conversion (actions/transactions) data from the interface above and plugging these metrics into a significance calculator. There are many choices for online significance calculators that will allow you to toggle significance between 80 and 99 percent. Once a test hits 95 to 99 percent, you've achieved significance!

After a test shows significance, you will have a few choices in DoubleClick; you can opt to send all traffic to the control URL, experiment URL, or you can revert back to the original URL. This makes changing your landing pages just as easy as setting up your landing page test.

Also, once you complete a test and chose where to send your traffic, the test will be logged in the "Completed" tab, so you can reference the data at a later time. Keep in mind that whenever you reference a test, you will need to change the time period in the top right to reflect when the test began. This ensures you will have a complete data set.

Conclusion

Landing page testing should be near the top of your list for optimization techniques – it's a no-brainer and can be incredibly insightful. Through these testing insights, you can learn how users are reacting to your landing pages and tweak those pages to increase conversion rates in just a few simple steps.

7 Ways to Ensure Your Emails Get Read

http://www.inc.com/tom-searcy/7-ways-to-ensure-your-emails-get-read.html?utm_source=Outbrain

Seven great tips on how you can ensure that your emails will get noticed.

1. Subject lines: Remember that only 20 percent to 40 percent of your emails will actually get opened, though most of your subject lines will be seen. To boost your open rates, think of short, catchy, and informative subject lines. You should try to dangle compelling information ("The future of sales emails"), and you can even try adding some mystery ("Strange question"). We also recommend personalized subject lines, if possible ("Hunter Sullivan suggested I contact you").]

2. Your tone: Portray yourself as someone that other people can connect to. You'll want to show your recipients that you care about hearing back from them... so you can't simply sound like you're just sending another mass email. Never use "Dear sir or Madam," and stay away from overly formal language.

3. Email content: Make your emails short, simple, and easy to quickly digest. Your leads are busy people with jobs, too, so you need to maintain their interest. Do your research and find out what resonates for your prospects. Try to get an introduction to them or, if that's not possible, figure out in more detail what they or their company do. Tell them why you're emailing them, specifically. Talk about how you can solve a problem for them.

4. Your sign-off: End your emails with a definitive, clear call to action. Make it dead simple for your recipients to say yes-;whether it's to a meeting, phone call, or product demo. Don't ask them for permission. If you want a phone call, then say "Call me right now at X for more details."

5. Your timing: Reach out to your leads when they're not too busy. Make sure you avoid heavy traffic times like Monday mornings. Based on our tracking data, we recommend the middle of the week, mid-day, as the best time to send emails.

6. Your image: First impressions are important both in person and online. The tone and formatting of your email is all your recipients have to judge you by. Make sure you are being professional, clear, and easy to understand. Stay away from over-formatted emails that look gimmicky, but don't hesitate to call out important information in bold or bullet points.

7. Your homework: Send yourself a sales email. Put yourself in your leads' shoes. If you were them, would you open this email? Would you spend more than two seconds reading it? If so, what would you do next?

The first time you read this list, you'll probably think "I already knew all that." But, do what I did. Go look at the last 10 emails you sent to prospects or new contacts and read them with a critical eye to see if you followed all seven tips. I scored four or five on all of mine, but not a

5 Simple Digital Marketing Strategies That Can Help Your Business Grow

Digital marketing is essential in today's world. With both competitors and potential customers constantly online, digital marketing is the only way to stay ahead. When you're a small business owner the online world can seem intimidating. Here is a list of five simple digital marketing strategies that any business owner can implement to help their business grow.

1. Setting a Goal: You're looking for ways to help your small business grow. You might want more customers, more recognition or maybe you're looking to get ahead of the competition. Whatever the case may be, starting with a solid goal in mind greatly increases your chances of success. Digital marketing is a great way for small businesses to prosper, but going into the process blindly can leave you with a jumbled mess. A lot of strategy and precision goes into digital marketing and having a goal helps you know what to focus on.

2. Creating a Marketing Funnel: The most successful businesses have an effective marketing funnel in place. A marketing funnel is when you map out a customer's journey from when a customer is a complete stranger to when they become a lead, and then put certain strategies in place that will encourage them to move through this funnel. Things like lead magnets, calls to action, opt-ins and offers are all effective pieces of a funnel. You can think of a marketing funnel in four parts: Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action.

• Awareness: The potential customer is aware of your product or service. They're still a stranger, but they've come to your website for a reason. They're looking for something they need. At this stage you want to attract the customer by showing them that you have something they're looking for. Use a lead magnet or call-to-action to give the customer a valuable resource related to your product or service (i.e: what they need) in exchange for more information about them like their email address, phone number, profession and current needs. Find out who they are and why they came to your website.
• Interest: They are actively expressing interest in a certain type of your products or services. At this point you've given them some information and they're interested in what you have to say or the services you provide. You've used your lead magnet or CTA in stage one to gather more information about them. At this stage it's a good idea to supply them with further information that is more tailored to their specific needs. Showing them that you not only took the time to get to know them, but also have something that's specific to their needs will show that you're attentive to and care about your customer's wants and needs.
• Desire: They've taken an interest in a specific product or service. Now that you've supplied them with information specific to what they're looking for, they've found a product or service you provide that might be a good fit for them. Invite them to schedule a consultation using an email or a call-to-action. At this stage you want to tell them more about the product or service they're interested in. Show them why they need it and exactly how it will benefit them.
• Action: Taking the next step towards purchasing. This is when you're able to turn your potential customer into a lead. You've given them valuable information, shown them you pay attention to your customer's needs, and shown them that you have something they need that will benefit them. All that's left is discussing things like price, payment and other aspects of your product or service that are relevant to a buyer.

Having an effective marketing funnel won't just get you more leads, it can also help you turn leads into repeat buyers. If the customer has a good experience they might return to purchase from you again or even tell others they know about your business. The elements of a marketing funnel can seem like a lot to put together, but they're simple concepts when broken down. 

3. Developing a call-to-action: We talked about using a call-to-action in the second step as a part of your marketing funnel, but what is a call-to-action exactly? A call-to-action (CTA) is an image or text that prompts visitors to take action, such as subscribe to a newsletter, view a webinar or request a product demo. CTAs should direct people to landing pages, where you can collect visitors' contact information in exchange for a valuable marketing offer. In that sense, an effective CTA results in more leads and conversions for your website. This path, from a click on a CTA to a landing page, illustrates the much desired process of lead generation. In order to increase visitor-to-lead conversion opportunities, you need to create a lot of calls-to-action, distribute them across your web presence and optimize them. A good CTA should be attention grabbing and help lead a potential customer further into your marketing funnel.

4. Creating an Effective Lead Magnet: A lead magnet can be used alone or along with a CTA. This will also be used either within your marketing funnel or as a way to drive potential customers into your funnel. Supply them with something relevant to your product or service that they want. Use your offers as a way to gather more information about a potential buyer while driving them further into your funnel at the same time. This brings them closer to becoming an actual quality lead who will spend money on your product or service. The idea behind a lead magnet is to trade information. You supply something like a free download of a white paper, but in order to complete the download the individual has to fill out a form that will provide you with more information about them. You'll use the information you gather to interact with them more as they progress through your funnel.

5. Driving Traffic: In order for there to be people to drive into your marketing funnel, there first has to be traffic on your website. There a variety of ways you can drive traffic to your website.

• Quality Content: Use content such as blog posts, press releases and articles on authority websites. Insert links to various places on your website within this content to build your brand name through exposure and drive traffic to your website.
• Keyword Strategy: Inserting related keywords into content will help your content and website show up in more search results, this leads to higher volumes of web traffic.
• Website Optimization: Ensuring that your website is optimized and functioning at it's best is essential. People don't want to visit a website that doesn't work properly.
• Social Media: Use engaging social media posts to attract more traffic to your site. Using pictures, video, and other relevant media will help your posts get more engagement.