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- Use Video Testimonials to Increase Conversions
This guest post is by Annika Martins of AnnikaMartins.com.
You think you want more traffic, but you don't.
You want I'm really interested in your stuff traffic that converts into social media sharing, new signups to your list and of course, sales.
But how do you make that happen? How do you ensure that when first-time visitors land on your site, they're going to take the action you want?
You have to wow them. You have to (very quickly) convince them that you're the real deal, that you have what they want and need.
Common sense, right?
But most people screw up the execution
In trying to position yourself as the go-to person in whatever you do, are you actually shooting yourself in the foot?
Are you one of the guilty ones who wrote a 1300 word bio telling us your entire employment history and why that makes you the best person to deliver X service or product? Do all of your blog posts reference your client work and how much better you are than your competitors?
Yawn.
Standing on a soap box and bragging about how awesome you are doesn't impress anyone. In fact, it encourages most people to turn around and run in the opposite direction.
Let someone else be your soap box
When it comes to determining whether you're legit or not, that first-time visitor couldn't care less what your opinion of yourself is.
The opinions of your former clients and customers are what they're really interested in.
They want to hear from someone who worked with you, who has used your products and loved them—and isn't being paid to say nice things about you. They want to know what problem you help people solve and how you do it. And they want to hear it directly from the person who had the problem.
In short, you need to immediately provide convincing, concise (and honest!) quotes about the quality of your service or product from someone other than you.
The marketing world calls this “social proof.” Most of us refer to these as “testimonials.”
And because ProBlogger has told you before about the importance of including a testimonials page, you might have already created a dedicated page for this very purpose.
And then you filled that testimonials page with glowing quotes from former clients and customers, each neatly formatted into a short paragraph. Maybe you were smart enough to include their picture and URL too. Perfect, right?
The problem with your testimonials page
Creating a centralized storeroom of digital love is a great move. But a stand-alone testimonials page is only one piece of the puzzle. By itself, it is not going to make much of a difference.
The main reason a stand-alone testimonials page isn’t much good is because, aside from the first one or two testimonials on the page (if that), most people won't read through it.
Get practical about this. Consider your own internet-perusing experience. In the course of a single hour, you probably have dozens of popups, emails, status updates, tweets, phonecalls, text messages, doorbells, maybe a screaming kid or two, and whatever else vying for your attention.
With all those distractions, is it realistic to assume that a first-time visitor is going to sit there and scroll through each and every one of those testimonials? Probably not.
But there's hope, so don't give up just yet!
Revitalize your stand-alone testimonials page
Well-written, praise-showering quotes are precisely the sort of content that motivates someone to sign up for your digital course, to join your newsletter list or start following you on Twitter.
With that much power, you can't let your testimonials die on a page no one ever sees.
In order to make the most of them and therefore convince first-time visitors to stick around, here are five ways you can repurpose those golden testimonials so they actually get seen:
1. Your homepage
Your homepage is like the front window of a store. People drive past, peering in, debating whether they're going to come inside and mosey around. Isn't that the perfect place to tell them Fancy Pants Person A thinks you're awesome?
Carve out a small (but prominent) spot on your homepage sidebar to include one or two of your most impressive testimonials.
Remember though, this is intended to whet their appetite, so edit longer quotes down to a brief sentence or even a phrase that a former client or customer has used to describe you.
To maximize this space even more, you could also install a plugin that scrolls through several short testimonials. That way, instead of reading only one or two quotes, visitors could easily see three or four quotes before clicking over to another page.
2. Twitter Favorites
If you have a strong presence on Twitter and happy customers have sent you tweets raving about your products, those are testimonials that you have to take advantage of also.
By favoriting tweets that wax poetic about how smart and wonderful you are and then installing this Twitter widget, you can add a sidebar widget that will continually refresh itself with your most recent Twitter love.
This is a great way to amplify direct testimonials by demonstrating the scope of your community, your social media savvy, and the passion others have for the service or product you provide.
3. Video testimonials
Take advantage of the fact that millions of people learn best through visual stimulation by creating a short video that highlights your best testimonials.
Ideally, you want to include footage of interviews with former clients so we can see their eyes light up when they talk about how talented you are. But if your clients are camera-shy, even just putting a picture and their quote on the screen with some energetic music can have a huge impact.
You could also splice in brief shots of you talking about why you're so passionate about what you do.
4. Product and service descriptions
So now that these mini-testimonial snippets have aroused your visitors’ curiosity and they've wandered over to your sales page, you think the testimonials can take a break, right?
Oh no. We're just getting started.
Another great place to feature testimonials is within and alongside the copy that describes your products and services. Testimonials fit in perfectly here because they bring in more social proof that you don't just write fancy sales copy, but you actually deliver a valuable service or product to real people with real problems.
Building in testimonials here also assures potential customers that you have the experience and expertise they need.
5. Email launch announcements
When you're writing to your email list to announce a new product or service, remember that some (a lot!) of those people are still not sure whether your products or services are right for them. They've joined your list to get to know you better, to get a taste for what you do and see if it they like it.
When promoting something new, incorporate a quote from someone who's previewed the product, an attendee from last year's event or one of the beta testers of your digital course.
Building social proof
Don't underestimate the value of adding new and relevant bits of social proof to everything you launch.
By using these 5 strategies, you will make sure that your glowing customer reviews don't stay hidden on some random page no one ever reads.
By distributing testimonials throughout your site and promotional materials, new visitors will be much more likely to morph from casual observers to subscribers and buyers.
Do you have any other ideas for ways to revitalize a testimonials page? Please share your ideas in the comments below.
Annika Martins writes about entrepreneurship and not taking ourselves so seriously at http://www.annikamartins.com. She likes jalapenos and counter-intuitive wisdom, like The 10 things no one tells you about being a woman entrepreneur.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
Use Video Testimonials to Increase Conversions
Переслать - Build Blog Products That Sell 2: Analyze the Market and Competitors
This guest series is by Greg McFarlane of Control Your Cash.
Copy from one, it’s plagiarism; copy from many, it’s research.
—Attributed to Wilson Mizner (1876-1933), among others…Or you can take it a step further. If you research many, and then forge something original, your readers will take notice. And then, if you market yourself in the right fashion, they'll buy what you're selling. In the meantime, though, look out later today for a post that explains how you can use video testimonials to set yourself apart from the competition in your niche.
Last week we began our examination of not just how to sell products via your blog, but how to do so when customers are watching their dollars, pounds, euros, rands, pesos and zlotych like never before. As the very concept of "disposable" income becomes less realistic, it's imperative that you provide real value for your customers instead of just a product that you slapped together out of boredom.
Last week’s post was designed to help you identify what you offer that’s unique. It also helped you to consider that unique offering in reference to your audience’s present, most pressing needs.
Competitor and market research—seeing what else the marketplace is already offering—is a good next step to take. It shows you exactly what not to sell, and forces you to work a little harder to create something truly distinctive.
Assessing the competition
Candidly assessing your competitors isn't plagiarism, but it's unquestionably research. This isn't a call to rip anybody off—quite the opposite, in fact.
Say you've got a blog that focuses on international train travel for the budget-conscious. Assume you've developed a dedicated and regular readership that considers you an authority on the subject. Would there be any market for a handy ebook that tells readers where to buy inexpensive tickets throughout the world?
Of course there would be. For the intrepid and peripatetic traveler, it'd be awfully convenient to know how to save money everywhere from the Camrail station in Yaoundé, Cameroon to the Trans-Siberian depot in Erenhot, China. The information clearly exists, albeit in diverse and unconnected places. For the hypothetical blogger in question, it'd just be a matter of taking the time and effort to compile and present it.
The idea is to create something that’s not only valuable, but unique and, ideally, impossible for anyone else to reproduce.
Again, drawing from personal experience but keeping it generic enough that you can apply it to your own situation, the primary products I sell on ControlYourCash.com are ebooks on selected personal finance topics. The ebooks are short (6000 words or so), easily digestible monographs illustrated with the occasional graphic and written in a style that hopefully serves to distinguish my blog from its myriad competitors. The ebooks are completely of my own derivation, and merge seamlessly with the content on my blog itself. They "extend the brand."
Which, of course, assumes that the brand is worth extending in the first place.
Unique products are easier to sell
Creating products worth selling is only half the battle. You still need to make the sale. The list of worthwhile consumer items that never get sufficient exposure in a saturated marketplace is a long and depressing one. Marketing is an inexact science, but there are simple rules that you can follow to publicize what you're selling. Those rules can be more self-evident that you might think.
I once worked for an advertising and marketing firm whose clients included a hot sauce manufacturer. The firm created multiple innovative, entertaining campaigns that attempted to position the company's sauce as a bold alternative to Tabasco, Nando's peri-peri and other competitors.
But the needle never budged. Countless man-hours and dollars went down a hole, sales remained static, and the hot sauce company's representatives were ready to take their business elsewhere. They demanded an emergency meeting, and the advertising firm's employees assembled for the inevitable dressing-down. Charts were presented, projections recalibrated, and (gasp) lawyers consulted. It looked as though we were certain to lose a lucrative client, one that was justifiably looking at other options.
Finally, the chief executive officer of the advertising firm—who probably wondered why he was bothering to pay the rest of us—stood up and asked, "Have you ever thought about widening the opening of the bottle by an eighth of an inch?"
Of course it worked, and the moral to the story is that it's easy to unnecessarily handicap yourself right out of the gate. Many bloggers offer worthwhile products and services, yet treat them as afterthoughts, which is astonishing. If you're attempting to sell a product, Job #1 is: make it as easy as possible for customers to buy and consume said product.
Stand out, not beside
Remember that the market for bloggers selling products is amazingly segmented and diffuse. There are hundreds of thousands of diligent bloggers. Your blog's area of interest is almost certainly well represented, if not overrepresented. Thus it's important to market yourself aggressively and boldly. That being said, it makes less sense to contrast yourself with, or even acknowledge, your competitors.
Aggressive, confrontational marketing that draws a clear distinction between your product and someone else's works fine if you happen to be major beer brewer or mobile phone service provider chasing market share. Everyone already knows the competitor exists, and pointing out the little differences counts when comparing essentially homogenous products.
Different rules apply when selling niche products of your own creation, especially in a climate in which consumers as a whole are cautious about spending money. Don't avail your customers of alternatives. It's best to pretend they don't exist. Customers are a lot more likely to spend when there's only one supplier. The power of monopoly is a formidable one, and no one else sells (or can sell) the properly conceived and executed products that make you and your blog distinctive.
Key points
- Assess your competition closely.
- Hone your product idea accordingly.
- Ensure your product’s key benefits directly reflect your brand.
- Make your product as unique and difficult to replicate as possible.
- Don’t compare your product directly with those of competitors: design and present it as the best solution available for your target audience segment.
Selling a product takes time, but not as much as creating it in the first place does. Next week, we'll learn how to develop your product and devote the appropriate time and resources to it. In the meantime, keep an eye on ProBlogger. Later today, well show you how to increase conversions on your blog—and stand out from your competitors—using video testimonials.
Greg McFarlane is an advertising copywriter who lives in Las Vegas. He recently wrote Control Your Cash: Making Money Make Sense, a financial primer for people in their 20s and 30s who know nothing about money. You can buy the book here (physical) or here (Kindle) and reach Greg at greg@ControlYourCash.com.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
Build Blog Products That Sell 2: Analyze the Market and Competitors
Переслать - How Writing Confidently, Quickly, and Effectively Saved my Blog
This guest post is by Kraig Stewardson of IT Manager HQ.
My blog was failing.
My subscribers were nonexistent.
My posts were disjointed.
My writing was awful.
My confidence was shot.
Honestly, I felt like giving up. I knew that I needed to make a change. I knew that I couldn’t continue this way.
Sound familiar? That was me a little over month ago, before I took some drastic steps to turn things around.
How bad was it?
They say that most blogs are never even read, and mine fell into that category. I still remember the day when I got my first spam comment. I was elated. A bot found my blog—no one else did—but hey, a spam bot did! Then as the months went on, even the spammers lost interest.
I noticed that no one, not even my family, read my blog. But I still wrote. When life got busy, I didn’t post as regularly as I knew I needed to. Inspiration to keep going that used come from all sorts of places faded. The “this band is a 20-year overnight success” or “blogger writes for two years straight then finds an audience” stories that can only take you so far. I knew a change need to happen, so it was time to take a class and get schooled on what I should be doing.
Starting to turn it around
So I look at my blog, and how bad it looked. I read my blog—every cringe-worthy post. Great, now even I couldn't stand reading my own blog. This was going to be a challenge, that was for sure.
I started with a few questions:
- Why did I create the blog in the first place? This blog is all of the things I wish I knew right before and within the first year of being an IT Manager. When I became an IT Manager, it was based on my abilities as an IT professional. No one taught me there is an art to managing highly skilled people.
- What makes my blog different, and why should anyone read it? In the IT Management space, there is very little information about how to lead and manage people. My competition with other IT Management blogs is mostly about new technologies and security threats.
- How am I going to market my blog? I struggled with this question. To gain an audience in a competitive field requires a plan. My plan is to write great content and to guest post where I can.
- After doing this for a little while, do I still want to? Yes. I have found there is something cathartic about writing to help people.
- Am I secretly afraid to succeed? Also, the answer here is yes. Even though I am very proud of this blog I have, I haven't told absolutely everyone, yet. If I am not telling the people who know me, how can I tell the people who don't?
Finding help
For some reason, every few months, about ten courses open up to help you fix various aspects of your website. Courses on AdSense websites, affiliate marketing, gaining traffic, YouTube videos, writing posts, finding a better job—you name it, there is a course for it.
There are so many to choose from, and so many of them seem worthwhile. I am a practical person, so I wanted one that would help me in an aspect of my life that goes beyond websites.
As for the question, “Should I pay for a class or find a free class?”, I chose to take a paid class. There is a built-in accountability for having plunked down your hard earned money, and that doesn’t exist if the product is free. I knew in needing to grow in areas that I am not always comfortable with, I’d need that accountability.
The class I chose, was a shot in the arm to continue my blog. It came in the form of a new class, a writing course from Danny Iny at Firepole Marketing. It was time to confront my arch nemesis from high school: writing. This ended up being a great choice, since effective writing can be used beyond a blog post, in all aspects of your blogging, and your life.
What did I learn?
While things are still a struggle, they are much better. I am more efficient and effective in my writing. With a full-time job, a growing blog, and a one-month old baby at home, any area where I can be even slightly more efficient is very valuable.
Structuring a blog post for me used to be a four- to five-day event, which would take about an hour a day, and even so I struggled to eke out 500 words.
Before taking the class, my approach to posting looked like this:
- Day 1: Type blindly for ten to 15 minutes, not caring about spelling, grammar, or even if I wrote actual words.
- Day 2, 3, 4: Edit and try to turn my random key strokes into something that didn’t sound like I was drunk when I wrote it.
- Day 5: Re-read and publish post.
One of the greatest things Danny helped me realize is that I needed to outline my posts before I wrote them. Write it down; don’t dream it up on the commute to work, then try to remember it when you get home and can start typing. Think of the key points you want to make, organize them, and then fill in the blanks. This was a classic forehead-smacking moment for me.
After taking the class, my writing approach looks like this:
- Step 1: Come up with a title and theme for the post. A great title is the difference between thousands of readers to an article and only a handful. Here are two headlines for basically the same article "How companies learn your secrets" and "How Target figured out a teen girl was pregnant before her father". Which would you rather read?
- Step 2: Create outline (ten minutes, tops). The outline is the key to the whole post. What issue are you trying to solve, or what are you trying to get the reader to do? Create an abbreviated version of the outline:
- Set the scene and get their attention
- Detail the problem
- What is your solution?
- How do you implement it?
- Step 3: Fill in blanks in the outline by writing the article. Since you have an outline, and you had to think about what you wanted to say, this part is as simple as write what comes naturally to you.
- Step 4: Wait at least a half-day, then re-read, fix grammar, and publish. When you come back and re-read the stuff you wrote previously, you’ll likely realize that what you wrote doesn't make as much sense as you initially thought. As a side benefit, you will catch grammar issues and typos.
The training program expanded on this and went into great detail as to how and why this is incredibly effective.
How much time did I spend on my first post using the new way? About 45 minutes total. Oh, and it was 1100 words long.
Gaining confidence
As the old cliché goes, nothing breeds success like success. As I see my posts getting better, the writing coming more easily, and my traffic increasing, my desire to post more has also returned with a vengeance. In the first week following the course, my list of post ideas has tripled and I now look forward to writing posts on my own blog.
- My writing has improved.
- My traffic has increased dramatically.
- I am starting to get some key guest posting opportunities.
- Most importantly, I feel energized to post more.
What areas of blogging have you been lacking in where some accountability and maybe a class will give you the extra boost to succeed? Share them with us in the comments.
Kraig Stewardson blogs to help new and aspiring managers in the IT field. He is a proud alumni of the Write Like Freddy class from Firepole Marketing.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
How Writing Confidently, Quickly, and Effectively Saved my Blog
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