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The first contact any potential customer has with a product is the description. It’s hard to oversell how significant good product descriptions are for an eCommerce business.
Without a physical product to pick up and look at, the product will not fully exist in the mind of the potential shopper. All they have to engage with and be won over by are some words and images on a screen.
Creative product descriptions must work hard to paint an enticing picture and accurately describe the product features. When it comes to achieving conversions – getting a browser to become a buyer and clicking that vital ‘add to cart’ button – great product descriptions are like having a power dialer to communicate directly with your consumer base.
Knowing how crucial creative product descriptions are is one thing, but how does an online business ensure their product descriptions are the best they can be?
Here are nine key areas to cover to take the effort out of writing creative product descriptions.
1. Know Your Customers
Knowing your target customers is the first step in creating great product descriptions. It might sound counterintuitive to begin with customers rather than the product itself. But before you can set the tone and style, you need to get a handle on the buyer persona.
It is as important as having content to fit your audience when dealing with your website and marketing tactics. To make sure you know what your customers want, you should know who they are first.
Tracking how customers arrive at your website, what background and age group they might belong to, and what their interests and needs are likely to be; will allow you to tailor how you present the product to those potential buyers.
2. Sell the Benefits
Customers are looking for products that fulfill a need or fix a problem. If you bear this in mind, then you’ll see immediately which features will interest them. But describing every aspect of the specifications can be off-putting. Keep to the qualities your product has that will benefit your customer.
It is basically an extension of thinking about how the product fits the market. So, go back to your marketing plan and team. What are the main selling points of the item? How do these categorically match what you understand of your consumer base’s needs?
For example, if you are selling a mini refrigerator – of course, its power, materials, and design are important – but it is probably of more interest to a customer that it fits under a desk and that it holds 12 cans of cola.
Make a list of the key features that customers are most likely to care about. Describe your product in these terms.
3. Cut the Jargon
While manufacturers’ descriptions have all the specs on your product, it is not a great look to overly rely on their jargon and word choice. As with business text messaging, you want clarity and economy of communication; wordy descriptions can hide the product benefits and features.
Another reason for not including too much of the manufacturer’s information is that you may not be the only online firm selling a particular product. You want to make your company stand out. Surprisingly, although customers might see the same product on various sites, clear, well-written product descriptions can help sway customer opinion and encourage them to choose your company to supply what they need.
It’s wise to check how your competitors have described the same or similar products. Imagine you are a customer; ask yourself which technical words or phrases are jarring or hard to understand? Can you think of a better way of outlining the product’s key features and benefits?
4. Powerful but Natural Language
Getting an emotional response is a sure way to pique interest and make a product attractive. Make sure you choose powerful language; this does not mean exaggerated or overblown. Describing every product as the best or biggest, or most luxurious can be grating and tends to create disbelief in your audience. People know when they are being given a hard sell.
Be clear but subtle in your language choice. Maybe there is a better way of saying that something is value for money or user-friendly. Be wary of overused words and try to choose something more natural but no less impactful.
In short, word choice matters with product descriptions as much as product names and domains; just look at domain names Australia.
5. All the Senses
Think about the senses a customer might use in reality to choose a product. Your online customers can’t pick up your products, so it is very important to replicate these sensory experiences in your product description.
Consider the product’s texture, taste, smell, sound, and visual qualities. Choose adjectives that paint a sensory picture, and allow your customers to ‘virtually’ hold the product in their hands.
Of course, you don’t want to get carried away with flowery descriptions, which would force customers to search out the facts. But a few well-chosen adjectives can engage a customer’s senses and make them far more likely to make a purchase.
6. Tell a Story
Creative product descriptions are about telling stories, very short stories, but stories nonetheless. By ‘story’ we do not mean paragraphs of narrative, it’s just a way of adding an attractive element to the information. The story might be woven between the facts to bring them to life or be a separate, mini element. It might consist of information about where the product came from, who invented it, or was inspired to create it.
Stories can also be images or descriptions that show the customer what it might be like to own the product; how it might look in their office, home, or garden.
As with your choice of language, stories are important for grabbing the emotions and attention of your customer.
7. Scannable
In writing your beautifully crafted product description, it’s worth bearing in mind how short the human attention span is, especially when reading text. For this reason, it is even more imperative to grab your customers’ attention from the get-go.
Keep key parts of your description short and sweet, and make them stand out. If you want to direct customers to a digital catalog where more products can be viewed, make that link clear and easy to click on.
Most of us scan text to find the information we want. For this reason, it is very important to make your product description clear and easy to digest in its layout and choice of font. Bullet points and words in bold help a reader take in the text quickly. Large chunks of text, however well-written, can make them switch off.
8. Write For Humans, but Include SEO
As we’ve seen, keeping your customer in mind as you compose creative product descriptions is the key to staying on track and including the right language to steer consumers to conversions and sales. But of course, optimizing your content for search engines using keywords is also important.
The key tip here is to appeal to those search engines without turning off your human target customer.
It’s a good idea to check the keywords used by your competitors, as well—using online tools to identify those favored in searches. It’s best to have the main keyword in your product title as this boosts your product visibility.
But never be tempted to cram in the keywords at the expense of a good product description. Remember; keywords help your consumer find your product, but they do not necessarily make the product description easier to digest.
9. Quality Images
We have talked a lot about text, but alongside any successful creative product description is a quality image or images. Being able to see the product is key for most consumers. The trick, however, is to make your images as strong as your text; otherwise, you risk that they detract from rather than enhance your description.
The chances of ecommerce business success are greatly increased if your product descriptions look and sound good. Make sure your images show any key features clearly and help tell the story of your product.
Be Creative, Convincing, and Clear
Getting your prospective customer to click the purchase button is like getting a client to sign on the dotted line, physically or via docusign alternatives.
It can be a hard-won result, however great your products are. Your website and products are competing with an ocean of similar online businesses, all shouting for the attention of consumers. Getting traffic to your site is the first hurdle, you don’t want to fall at the next by having product descriptions that don’t do your products justice.
Remember, you are talking to a human being, but don’t neglect SEO. Tell a story and appeal to the senses; sell the benefits, but don’t hard sell. But most of all, to make your product descriptions shine: be creative, be clear, and you will convince your customers to choose your products.
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As a small business owner, you are probably always looking for new ways to reach potential customers and grow your business. Chances are you’re utilizing one or more of the usual channels to try and attract new customers, but there’s probably 1 channel you’ve overlooked: TikTok. With over 1 billion monthly active users and growing, TikTok is a powerful platform that can help you engage and attract new customers. In this article, we’re going to explain more about how your small business can turn TikTok into a revenue-generating machine!
What is TikTok?
TikTok is a short-form video app where users can share creative and entertaining videos. Most small business owners think that the only people making money on TikTok are influencers hawking the latest fad products. The reality is that no matter what product or service you offer, there’s real revenue to be generated on TikTok for your small business.
What makes TikTok unique is its algorithm, which tailors content to each individual user based on their interests. There are numerous virality features that give you the chance to get in front of new audiences at cost-effective rates in comparison to other digital marketing channels such as Google, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. In fact, TikTok ads can be a fraction of the cost of Facebook ads despite being as effective or even more effective.
We recently surveyed consumers about their habits when patronizing a small business and found 33% of 18-29-year-olds reported to have supported a small business due to a TikTok ad they saw.
We also surveyed small business owners to get a better sense for where they distributed content and found that 93% of them posted content to Facebook while only 60% posted to TikTok.
Given this discrepancy it’s clear there is a massive opportunity for small businesses to connect with a new generation of consumers and build a lasting brand as younger demographics enter the workforce and increase their purchasing power by interacting with them on TikTok.
How to Use TikTok
Like virtually every other social network, TikTok gives you an opportunity to engage other users organically and through paid ads. Whether you are selling products or delivering a service, properly utilizing TikTok can be an incredibly powerful channel for your small business.
DOWNLOAD: The TikTok Ad Set Up Guide. Learn how to quickly create 16 TikTok ads in the least amount of time possible. Click Here
Organic Posts
Organic posts are videos you create and post on TikTok without using any paid promotion. These posts can be on any topic within your business’ niche and it’s the best way to get started with using TikTok. You can have a content writer or copywriter script your organic posts or you can choose to do them unscripted if you have a personal brand. With organic posts, you can educate and entertain your audience in the hopes of making them aware your company exists….think of it as a wonderful introduction, where users can get a peek at your personality and interests.
@thefarmersdog Even Regina George would have to admit that this is SO. FETCH.
♬ original sound – The Farmer’s Dog
In the example above, which has been viewed over 3.5 million times, you’ll notice that the video itself isn’t promotional in any way. The Farmer’s Dog sells healthy dog food, but the video itself has nothing to do with dog food. But if you hope to eventually convince dog owners to buy your dog food, what better way to make them aware you exist than by creating a video watched and loved by millions of dog owners?
Paid Ads
Organic posts are great, but it will likely take months before you build a meaningful audience. Businesses can bypass this by using TikTok’s paid ads. Paid ads on TikTok work similarly to other social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. You create an ad and target a specific audience.
There are three types of paid ads on TikTok:
In-feed ads: In-feed ads appear in between users’ organic content. These ads can be up to 60 seconds long and are the most popular type of ad on TikTok. These ads allow you to add a CTA at the bottom of the ad and they also have a sponsored tag to let users know it’s an ad. These ads are great because they naturally blend in with the content users are already watching.
Brand Takeovers: Brand takeovers are full-screen ads that appear when someone opens up their TikTok account. It’s the first video they see and it’s usually a 3-second image with a CTA. The CTA is generally something that entices users to follow a certain account or join a TikTok live stream.
Embedded Video Explainer of Brand Takeover
Spark ads: Spark ads enable businesses to promote their existing organic videos instead of creating new videos from scratch. After posting a number of videos, businesses can see which videos are performing best and they can use spark ads to promote those videos.
Branded hashtag: A branded hashtag is a hashtag that you create and promote to get users to post videos using your hashtag. This is a great way to increase brand awareness and get user-generated content. Many of the top businesses use this and it can compound quickly to bring you thousands of views and clicks.
@charlidamelio share what you’re doing to stay positive right now by tagging @aerie and #aerierealpositivity #ad ♬ 100% Real Love – PopUpGirl
Above is a timely example of a hashtag challenge launched by Aerie showcasing users wearing their leggings while sharing something they are grateful for while in the midst of Covid lockdown. Their brand aims to empower all women to love their real selves, and what better way to inject some of that positivity into the TiKTok community than hosting what amounted to a massive gratitude exercise?
It’s worth noting, their challenge wasn’t around their product. They didn’t ask people to say what their favorite thing about their products were. They instead asked people to share in a positive experience, one their brand was able to engender. There’s a massive difference between those approaches, and one you need to understand if you want to effectively engage users on TikTok.
DOWNLOAD: The TikTok Ad Set Up Guide. Learn how to quickly create 16 TikTok ads in the least amount of time possible. Click Here
TikTok Ad Targeting
While TikTok doesn’t quite have the granularity present within Facebook Ads, it does provide you with various targeting methods to ensure you’re able to effectively reach the right audience you’ve identified in your TikTok marketing strategy.
- Location: You can target ads to users in a specific city, state, country or region. This is great if you’re a brick-and-mortar business or if you’re targeting a specific market.
- Interest: You can target ads to users based on their interests. TikTok has a number of interests you can target including music, fashion, beauty, fitness and more.
- Behavior: You can target ads to users based on their behavior. This includes content they like, accounts they follow and even other ads they’ve interacted with.
Cost of Ads
TikTok ads start at $10 per CPM (per 1,000 views). The cost of ads can vary depending on the type of audience or niche you are targeting. For example, ads for the music niche are have much cheaper CPMs in comparison to ads in the finance niche. There are some minimum spend requirements by TikTok depending on the type of campaign you are running.
For example, TikTok requires a minimum of $50 per day at the campaign level and $20 per day at the ad group level. Ad costs can also vary depending on the type of ads you run. A brand takeover ad will likely cost much more than a branded hashtag. Additionally, TikTok ads are not as simple as just buying the cheapest type of ad. You need to select the best type of ad (e.g. brand takeover, in-feed ad, etc.) for your niche. It’s best to start with one type of ad for one persona and A/B test it against other ad formats.
TikTok Business Case Study: Buccal Fat Removal Chicago
Dr. Benjamin Caughlin runs a buccal fat removal & jawline sculpting clinic in Chicago and has amassed over 270,000 followers on TikTok. When businesses think of successful TikTok brands, a buccal fat removal clinic typically isn’t what comes to mind. Dr. Caughlin has leveraged TikTok’s viral sounds and trends to bring attention to his brand and services. He posts original content, stitched content and videos with popular sounds to garner attention from his audience and to position himself as the authority in his niche.
@manyfacesofchicago Sharpness is in and I have lots of tools #beforeandafter #goodbetterbest #contourtutorial #viral ♬ original sound – Ian Asher
His TikTok audience also drives traffic to his website. In fact, during a particularly active stretch in November and December of 2021, TikTok represented his largest source of appointments and revenue!
From the several thousand visitors who visit his website, roughly 50 of them convert into appointments and paying customers for his clinic. That doesn’t include visitors that submitted their contact form nor picked up the phone and called their office!
With the appointment bookings alone, TikTok generated over $200,000 in revenue for him in December of 2021. Since all of the traffic is organic, the only costs that go into TikTok as a marketing channel is the time spent making videos.
The best part of this is that the traffic from TikTok will only continue to increase as Dr. Caughlin builds his brand on TikTok. This is just one part of his clinic’s marketing strategy to generate organic leads for the business. As you can see below, TikTok continues to remain a large part of his overall TikTok marketing strategy.
TikTok is one of his fastest-growing marketing channels and he has only been publishing content for about 18 months. This is a great example of how you can add TikTok into your marketing strategy and leverage an organic audience to drive significant revenue.
Do’s & Don’ts
There are some guidelines you should follow when posting on TikTok to maximize your organic and paid reach. These guidelines will help you avoid things that can minimize your reach and increase your costs and effort to market to your audience. Most importantly, they’ll help ensure you can be an authentic presence within the TikTok community that other people enjoy engaging with!
Do: Post creative and entertaining videos that are relevant to your business.
Creativity and originality is what sets good TikTok accounts from great ones. Make sure to keep up with the latest trends and sounds on TikTok to maximize your organic reach.
@livportio our biggest video in 2021! thank u for all your support #smallbusiness #jewelry #cheating #relationship #storytime ♬ original sound – LIV PORTIO
Don’t: Post videos that are overtly sales-y or promotional.
Don’t pitch your products and services immediately. Instead, use TikTok as a top of the funnel platform to generate awareness for your brand. The more creative and entertaining your videos are, the more reach you’ll generate.
Do: Use TikTok’s algorithm to your advantage by creating content that your target audience will enjoy.
After you post for a few months on TikTok, revisit the videos that performed well and double down on them. This is what TikTok’s algorithm rewards you for, so do more of it and get more views on your content.
Don’t: Post videos that are not relevant to your business.
You can confuse your audience if you create a ton of non-related content to your niche. Be willing to experiment, but stay within your general niche (e.g. fitness, marketing, health).
Do: Use TikTok to drive traffic to your website or landing pages.
Make sure to add your links in your profile to capture the traffic you’re generating. Add your highest ROI pages in your profile bio and drive your audience to your offer.
Don’t: Post low-quality videos.
The TikTok algorithm favors high-quality videos with good production value. If you’re just starting out, make sure to invest in a decent camera or use your smartphone to make videos. The bar for high-resolution videos on TikTok is very high. Most iPhones are good enough to capture high-quality videos, but don’t use low-quality computers, phones or cameras to do your videos.
Do: Experiment with different types of content to see what works best for your business.
The best TikTok creators are ones who constantly experiment on the platform. There are many brands who’ve generated millions of views simply by riding the latest trends. The more you experiment, the more types of successful content you will find.
Growth marketer Zach Grove has seen that testing different hooks (i.e. the first 3 seconds of your video) is the best way to improve your Tik Tok creatives.
“Testing new attention-grabbing hooks—such as “Hey [your local city], check this out…” or “Tik Tok made me buy it: [your local city] edition”—is the best way to get traction and maximize your views. Make sure you’re always testing hooks to see what works for your niche”
Don’t: Be boring.
If you have a new account, you can’t afford to be boring. This doesn’t mean that you have to have the most crazy and engaging videos in the world; it just means you need to capture the audience’s attention. You can use hooks, images and other tactics to get your viewers to watch your videos.
Do: Use hashtags, challenges, and trends to get more views on your videos.
Hashtags, challenges and trends are one of the highest leverage points in your TikTok content marketing. Make sure to leverage these and allow users to promote on your behalf.
Don’t: Be inauthentic.
TikTok has by far the most tech-savvy user base out of all social media platforms. The engagement on the app is high because most users can spot inauthenticity from a mile away. If you’re not being genuine, your videos will perform poorly and you’ll have a hard time building an audience.
These are just a few guidelines you can use as you start your TikTok creator journey. The best way to learn is by experimenting and seeing what works for your business. Get started on TikTok today by posting content in your niche and leveraging TikTok’s features to maximize your organic reach and audience growth. To learn more about how you can use TikTok to grow your business, check out this blog post.
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SMS isn’t the first channel that springs to mind when marketing. But it’s actually an incredibly effective channel to use.
SMS has fantastic open rates, a brilliant response rate, and is great for customer engagement. However, it’s limited in terms of the more creative aspects of marketing (design, for example, or video)
When combined with email marketing, however, these limitations vanish. A blend of SMS and email marketing can result in engaging, successful customer journeys that lead straight to conversion.
Here, we’ll run through the reasons you should incorporate SMS into your email strategy. Then we’ll tell you our six top tips for merging SMS and email to dominate your market.
Advantages of SMS marketing
SMS marketing has a lot of very important advantages. By combining SMS with your email marketing, you can make the most of the following benefits:
Incredible open rates
There’s an immediacy to SMS that can’t be ignored. We’re far more likely to drop everything and check a text message than we are to dive into our email inbox. Only a third of email marketing messages get opened, while nearly all texts are opened.
The response rate for SMS is also fantastic. 45% of SMS marketing messages get a reply – and that figure rises when the recipient knows and trusts the sender.
Mobile-friendly
This may sound obvious – but SMS is very mobile-friendly!
In this day and age, it’s vital for marketing to be mobile-friendly. People use their phones for everything, from taking notes to listening to audiobooks and even for creating royalty free podcast music.
However, types of mobile devices differ a lot. It’s almost impossible to optimize most types of content for every single sort of phone.
For SMS, it’s different. Every phone – from the latest smartphone model to the most basic brick – can receive SMS. This makes SMS very accessible.
It also enables you to reach new audiences. It’s estimated that 3.5 billion people worldwide have internet access. That’s an impressive figure – but it does still leave some people out. However, 6.6 billion people worldwide have a mobile phone and can receive text messages.
So, by incorporating SMS into your marketing mix, you can open your messaging up to a far wider audience.
Fast delivery
SMS is at its best when you need to get in touch with the customer quickly and reliably. SMS messages reach customers almost immediately. What’s more, with their excellent open rates, you can be sure that the customer will not just get your message quickly – they’ll also read it quickly.
This makes SMS great for sending important information, like delivery notices, news of service disruptions, and so on.
Sometimes, getting in touch with the customer quickly is vital for a good customer experience. SMS is the way to do this.
Works brilliantly with other types of marketing
SMS is very versatile. You can use it to reinforce, extend, and enhance any other marketing channel.
Here, we’re going to be talking about how you can merge SMS with your email marketing, and we’ll be looking into things like the right tech you should use, including types of sales enablement tools. A lot of our tips can be adapted for other channels. So, keep an open mind!
6 ways to blend SMS with your email marketing
Hopefully, we’ve convinced you that merging SMS with your email marketing is a good idea! Now, let’s get into how you can merge the two channels to best effect.
- Play to the strengths of SMS
The great thing about merging email and SMS is that each channel can do things that the other can’t. When used together, they make a perfect campaign.
The major strengths of SMS are its delivery speed and its exceptional open rates. As a fast and reliable channel, SMS is great for things like:
- Building buzz about events
- Notifying about changes to service
- Sending delivery messages
- Sending passwords or password reset links
- Sending discount codes
- Getting feedback
Here, for example, Adidas uses SMS to alert a customer about an impending delivery:
And here, an airline uses SMS to alert a customer of a flight delay:
What SMS is not great for is conveying a lot of information. It’s also pretty basic when it comes to things like design, creative content, and so on. This is where the combined talents of SMS and email marketing come into play.
For example, if you need your customer to absorb a lot of information quickly, you can combine SMS and email in a two-pronged approach.
Take advantage of the immediacy and high open rate of text by sending your customer an SMS asking them to check their email (or maybe even linking them to the relevant information on your website!)
Or, think of your SMS as a subject line. Use it to grab attention and draw people into your email. Then put all that creative, long-form goodness into the email, safe in the knowledge that your open rates will be high.
This way, you can keep your customers up to date with the important info and drive up your email engagement rates while you’re at it.
- Use each channel to build the other’s lists
Lead generation is a huge part of any marketer’s workload. And gaining subscribers through just one channel is a thankless task.
However, when you combine SMS and email in your lead generation efforts, that job becomes a whole lot easier.
Text your SMS list and suggest that they subscribe to your email marketing. Adding an incentive like a discount or a freebie often helps. Given the high open and response rate of SMS, you can build up your email list via SMS very quickly.
You can do the same with your email marketing. Send out a campaign encouraging customers to sign up to your SMS list.
You can even promote your SMS list in your regular emails. Put a subscription link at the bottom of each email or in a box-out (whatever works best for your format).
- Centralize your data
Every customer touchpoint is a potential source of great data. SMS is no different. By combining SMS and email marketing, you can gather plenty of data to analyze and draw insights from.
Whether you’re using an Azure data lakes system, a CRM, or a commercial DMP, your data will be at its best and most useful when it’s in one, easily-accessible place.
By centralizing your data, you make it accessible for teams across your organization. It’s easy to find, analyze, and use.
A centralized database, in which data from every channel comes into a single location, helps you to see the bigger picture. You can draw broad insights from many different points on the customer journey rather than isolated insights from single points/channels.
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A centralized database is also great for streamlining your data. Because everything is in one place, there’s no duplicate data bulking up your system.
- Use the right tech
We’ve spoken above about centralizing your data. To do this properly, it’s worth shopping around for the platform or system that suits you.
This doesn’t just apply to data, of course. Marketing is going through a tech revolution, and there’s some really exciting stuff out there. The right tech could have a huge impact on your SMS and your email marketing, allowing you to blend them in innovative ways.
For example, marketing AIs can curate and automate blended SMS and email customer journeys, releasing personalized texts and emails at the perfect time to nudge your customer to the next stage.
There are many different types of sales enablement tools that can help you to streamline, manage, and enhance your SMS strategy. From SMS automation to data-management platforms and CRMs to centralize your data, there’s plenty out there. Don’t be afraid to shop around for the right martech for you.
- Keep it brief
We’ve spoken above about the comparative strengths of text and email. Long-form messaging is not a strength of SMS.
People will open your SMS quickly, but if they’re met with a wall of text on that tiny screen, they won’t stick around to read it. So, keep your texts brief. Provide the essential information as clearly and succinctly as possible.
If you’ve got a lot to say, use the SMS as an alert to get the customer’s attention and direct them elsewhere for more details, as Macy’s has done here:
- Be consistent with your messaging
Brand consistency is important across the board. If your brand’s voice or values differ from channel to channel, your customer will be confused. In order to build a relationship with your customer, you need to present a consistent persona at every point.
This can be tough with SMS. It’s hard to convey your brand’s personality in a few brief words. Having TOV (Tone of Voice) guidelines to hand can help.
TOV guidelines are useful when coaching sales team. Moving forward, a TOV document will give salespeople and marketers a quick go-to guide when they’re not sure what wording to use.
Rule your market with a blend of SMS and email
Few things can grab a customer’s attention like SMS. By combining SMS and email marketing, you can build high-converting customer journeys and dominate your market.
Play to the strengths of each channel, and you’ll quickly find the leads flooding in and your conversion rate rising rapidly.
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As advertisers, we focus a lot of our energy on ensuring our ad campaigns are performing and converting as best as they possibly can.
But that’s only one part of the equation.
What happens after the click is just as important (if not more important!)
You can have the most incredible ad campaign set-up, but if the funnel you’re sending traffic to doesn’t convert, it doesn’t matter how great your campaign is – you simply won’t see the results you desire.
And so, in this article, I’m going to share 7 ways you can improve the conversion rate of your funnel, leading to better overall performance and results.
1. Include the 3 Argument Types on Each Page
Whenever someone makes a buying decision, they use two different parts of their brain.
There’s the emotional part (the limbic brain) and the logical part (the frontal lobe). It’s important to understand this because it plays a big role in how we structure the pages in our funnel.
When humans make a purchasing decision, it’s mainly an emotional reaction. A study by a Harvard School of Business Professor, Gerald Zaltman, concluded that 95% of purchase decisions are made by the limbic system (the emotional part).
We see something, like it and decide we want it. Once we’ve decided we want something, the frontal lobe then helps sway us on whether we actually buy the thing by processing it logically.
Think about someone buying their dream house.
They go to view the house and fall in love with it instantly and decide they want to buy it – that’s the limbic brain. It’s only when they get home and start looking at things like the area, electricity bills, neighbourhood and all the other bits that they start thinking about the purchase logically.
And so, when it comes to our marketing (and our funnel specifically), we need to understand this as it impacts how we should structure the pages.
Regardless of the type of page you’re sending people to (whether it’s a lead gen funnel or e-commerce) you need to be making three types of arguments:
Emotional arguments
Logical arguments
Urgency
And we want to make them in this order too – since that’s the order in which someone makes a purchasing decision.
Have your emotional arguments at the top of the page, above the fold. What are the emotional reasons someone would purchase your product? It can often be as simple as saving time, stress or money.
As you move down the page, you can start talking about the logical arguments. These are often features and benefits. What would someone need to know/understand in order to purchase the product or service?
And lastly, for good measure – always include urgency in your messaging to further push those people to take action. There are people out there that simply won’t take action unless you give them a reason to take it now. Some good ways to do this are: Give them a certain timeframe, warn them about limited stock or simply talk about why it’s so important they take action now.
By doing this you’re structuring the pages in a way that flows with how we make purchasing decisions as human beings – setting you up for the best chance of success.
2. Benefits > Features
There’s a common saying in the copywriting world: “features tell, benefits sell.”
However, when most come to write copy for their product/service, they write about all the features without explaining the benefits.
Features focus on the product/service itself. Such as what you receive, what it does or how it works.
Some examples of features are:
- Storage up to 1TB
- Access to a free Facebook group
- Latest waterproof technology
Those things are great, but they don’t tell the end consumer the benefit to them, which makes it less compelling.
Benefits focus on the outcome of the product/service, telling the customer exactly what the feature will mean for them. Bringing it back to the first point – this is how we start to build emotion into our copy.
By telling people what a feature means to them, they start to visualise themselves using it – which creates the emotional reaction we need.
Luckily for you, I’ve got a super simple way to turn your features into benefits.
The “So That” Statement
This is a tactic I use every single time I write copy.
If you’re like most people and tend to write about the features, simply add the words “so that” to the end of your sentence. This forces you to explain the benefit that’s tied to the feature, making your copy much more hard-hitting.
The formula you can use is:
If ___ so that you can ___.
Let’s take our examples from above.
- Storage up to 1TB so that you can save all your files without ever worrying about running out of space.
- Get access to our free Facebook group so that you can network with like-minded individuals.
- The latest waterproof technology so that you can hike out in the rain for longer without getting wet feet.
Review all your copy and ensure every feature is combined with the real benefit. This will make your copy much more emotionally driven and compelling to anyone that’s reading it.
3. Split Test All Pages
The key to success in any advertising campaign is comprehensive testing. Testing images, copy, creative types and audiences. But the importance of testing doesn’t stop at the advertising campaign – it’s just as important to continuously test the pages in your sales funnel.
You should test at least 2 variants of every page in your sales funnel. Tests can be big or small, from having completely different designs to changing the colours of a button. It doesn’t matter what you test so much. The most important thing is just that you are testing… because that allows you to learn what works and what doesn’t.
And like all great marketers do: do more of what works and do less of what doesn’t.
Things You Can Test at Each Stage of the Sales Funnel
- Headline/Subtitle – this is arguably the most important thing to test because it’s the first thing people see and read when they land on a page. Little changes in a headline can have a huge impact on conversion rates. The headline is where you want your biggest emotional argument on the page.
- Main Image/Video – most funnel pages will have imagery or videos on them. This is another key thing to test out. Try different styles of images and videos to see which ones perform better, such as professionally designed images vs iPhone shot photos.
- Sales Copy – try testing different features and benefits. Even testing the order in which you share the features can make a difference. If you’re listing benefits in bullet point format, the first and last bullets are the most important.
- Call to Action – the copy you use on the button can make a huge impact on performance. Try ditching the boring “Learn more” and try something more unique such as “Get Started – See How 97% Lose Weight In Just 30 Days”
Upsells/Cross-sells – test different offers throughout your funnel to see which products/offerings people find more compelling.
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4. Improve Average Order Value with Offers
The success of a campaign isn’t always just based on the conversion rate of the campaigns and funnels. Sometimes it can come down to how much money people are spending on your funnel.
You can have a funnel that converts, but if the money being made isn’t providing good levels of profit on top of ad spend, you have a problem.
We recently worked with an e-commerce store that sold home gifts. We managed to optimise the campaigns so successfully that we were able to get our cost per sale down to less than £5. However, because the average order value of the site was only £15, the ROAS wasn’t sustainable.
In order for us to make the campaigns successful overall, we had to improve the conversion rate of the site – specifically focussing on increasing the Average Order Value (how much someone spends per transaction, on averageGavin Bel).
To do this, we added in what is called order bumps and one-time offers.
An order bump is an offer made at the checkout, right before someone hits the pay button. A common order bump might be to “supersize” the order for a reduced rate or to get another product at a low price. These convert extremely well.
A one-time offer is what it says on the tin.
Once someone has made a purchase, another offer appears on the screen inviting them to purchase a related product at a discounted price.
Adding both of these increased the AOV of our client’s site by 20%, vastly improving the campaign’s overall effectiveness. Even if AOV isn’t a problem for you, look at adding these two tactics to improve it.
By not doing it, you’re essentially leaving money on the table!
5. Improve the Quality of Traffic on the Page
If your funnel isn’t converting, it might simply be because you’re attracting the wrong people in the first place.
You can have the best funnel and offer in the world, but if the people visiting it aren’t relevant, it’ll never convert. This is why it’s so important to ensure you’re performing lots of campaign tests – testing which audiences work and which ones don’t.
With all of the advertising platforms, it’s very easy to see which audiences are bringing in the best returns. And like I mentioned earlier, simply do more of what’s working and turn off what’s not.
There is one fool-proof way of ensuring you’re only getting the highest quality people to your sales funnel: content creation.
Creating content is one of the most effective ways to attract an audience of people who definitely have an interest in what you offer and it’s something we advise every single client to do – either in written or video format.
The biggest objection we face is “but I don’t know what to write about?!”
And so if that’s you, I’ve got you covered.
The simplest way to start creating effective content is to simply answer the questions, objections and queries your customers have.
Here’s how to approach it:
- Create a list of all the questions you’re asked as a business (get your team involved in this)
- Turn those questions into eye-catching headlines
- Sit down in front of a camera and record the answers (or write them up)
This is so effective for two reasons:
- Only people who are genuinely interested in what you do will consume the content
- When you promote the content through advertising, it’s super cheap because you’re not selling anything, you’re providing value.
Pretty quickly, you start to build a large audience of people who have an interest in your offering.
Let’s say you’re a physiotherapist. You could film a 60s video titled “5 reasons you have back pain”. You could then set up a basic ad campaign targeting people in your local area (that fit your basic customer avatar).
Who’s going to watch that video?
People in the local area who have back pain!
Which, for a physiotherapist, is the perfect audience. What’s better is, these people are qualified AND educated. They know who the physiotherapist is already (building trust) and making them much more likely to take action and convert.
And to supercharge this strategy, you could run retargeting ads to the people who watched the video, pushing them to your sales funnel.
6. Increase or Decrease form Friction
When it comes to lead generation funnels, there’s a fine line between lead quantity and lead quality.
It’s not hard to generate lots of leads at a low cost, but it is difficult to generate lots of QUALIFIED leads at a low cost.
It’s a constant balancing act, ensuring that you have both quality and quantity.
The best way to strike the balance is to simply increase or decrease the fields you have in the form.
This increases or decreases the friction that someone has to go through in order to convert. The more questions/fields, the higher the friction. The fewer fields, the lower the friction.
If you’re struggling with lead quality, try and add some more fields to the form, specifically around the main reason your quality is low. For example, if you find the people you speak to aren’t motivated, add a “how motivated are you?” question.
If you’re not getting enough leads, try reducing the number of questions in the form and monitor what impact that has.
Whenever we’re starting a new campaign, we will always start with fewer fields to make sure we generate as many leads as possible. And then if we feel like we need to improve the quality of the leads, we’ll start slowly adding more fields to the form.
7. Include Social Proof Throughout
If there’s one thing that stops people from converting in a funnel, it’s a lack of trust.
A lack of trust in the people behind the funnel, the offer itself or the promise the funnel is making.
So, how do you build trust with people? How do you show them that your offer is legitimate and will have an impact on their lives?
Show the results that other people have achieved.
Everyone in the world has problems. And they have desired results.
Your job as a marketer is to show people how your product/service is a bridge from their problems to their desired results.
And the most effective way to do that is by showing the stories of others who have successfully achieved that with your product/service.
Social proof can take the form of: case studies, testimonials and even quotes from previous customers and people who have already converted through the funnel. The more you can share, the better.
Even better – if you can have your social proof cover the main objections you know people have when converting, your social proof will do some of the selling for you!
Wrapping Up…
Improving the funnel conversion rate can have a drastic effect on the performance of your overall campaigns and business. If you’re able to get your funnel and ad campaigns to a point where they are profitable, you can scale your spend quickly.
Start implementing some of these strategies and I guarantee that you’ll see improvements in your overall results.
Let me know – have you tried any of these? Which was the most effective for you?
The post 7 Ways To Improve The Conversion Rate Of Your Funnel appeared first on DigitalMarketer.
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Successful businesses know their consumers are constantly evolving. The modern consumer is selective when they consume media. They don’t appreciate top-down marketing strategies anymore. Rather, they want businesses to cater their content according to their needs and not the other way round.
Context marketing is an excellent solution for any brand that wants to up its advertising game. It’s a consumer-centric approach that involves pushing relevant content to your target audience based on what they’re doing at that moment. The ultimate goal is to ‘catch’ your consumers when they’re engaging in an activity that is related to your brand.
For example, a woman is searching for an easy recipe on YouTube to make lunch for her children. She clicks on the video she wants to watch and a pre-roll runs before she can access her content. The pre-roll is advertising a bento/lunchbox brand. The woman finds this to be useful and clicks on the provided link to purchase bento boxes for her children. This would be a context marketing win.
Context Vs Content Marketing: The Guide
Brands that regularly advertise know all about content marketing but here’s a quick recap just in case.
Content marketing is all about content creation and sharing. You can create multiple forms of digital content pieces, including but not limited to short and long-form videos, static graphics, 2D/3D animations, blog posts, and 360 videos. This content is intended to generate interest in a brand but doesn’t specifically use consumer preferences as insights.
Context marketing is different because it uses data-driven insights to target your consumers at the most relevant times. Brands can select from a variety of options to create a contextual campaign that makes consumers pay attention because it promotes something they need at any given moment.
For example, if you were advertising a call masking app using a content marketing strategy, you would create a bunch of posts promoting the app. You’d post these on your social media and use media spends to advertise it to a general audience. This strategy might work, but it won’t get you the ROI you need.
Alternatively, you could use a context marketing strategy and place ads for the app in YouTube videos involving pranks. You could also use Google AdSense and have your ads pop up when people search for privacy concerns when making phone calls. This strategy would ensure you hit your marketing KPIs and would be much more efficient.
Why Does Context Marketing Work?
It’s a good time to segue into the whys of context marketing. Why should your brand adopt a context marketing strategy? What’s in it for you? These are great questions to ask and the answers will reassure you.
Here’s why context marketing works for advertisers:
Context Converts
The key to getting crazy conversions is to study your consumers’ journey. Traditional marketing focused on a funnel approach, where the brand would guide the consumer towards purchase. Context marketing asks you to consider the consumers’ needs before pushing content to them. Adopting this strategy leads to better content performance and an impressive conversion rate.
Context is Affordable
Brands can get efficient results that are lighter on the pocket than a content-based approach. There’s no need to create endless campaigns to sell your product or services. You can use one or two key content pieces, target them to pop up at the right time, and enjoy successful results.
Context is Retained
All brands want to break through clutter. In an over-saturated digital space, thumb-stopping power is king. Context marketing allows brands to increase both Top of Mind (TOM) and recall because it creates brand equity, i.e. provides consumers with branded yet impactful experiences. These make them less likely to forget about the brand.
How to do Context Marketing the Right Way
Context marketing should be your go-to strategy across the various touchpoints in your marketing plan. The approach applies to ideation, comms, and even your brand’s digital eCommerce strategy. We will discuss implementation in greater detail below.
An efficient context marketing strategy simultaneously identifies and solves consumers’ problems or pain points. Brands shouldn’t be worried about getting eyes on their products. They should be more concerned about solving key issues that their consumers have, to increase their customer base and win loyalty over time.
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Keeping this in mind, these are some of the points to consider when formulating your brand’s context marketing strategy:
1. Use Popular Platforms to Craft Experiences
According to Statista, approximately 6.648 billion people own smartphones around the world. This is a staggering number because it accounts for almost 83.72% of the global population. Any successful brand knows they have to be where their consumers are, which is to say on smartphones.
Brands can utilize context marketing to create relevant experiences for consumers right on their cellphones. An efficient and uncomplicated way to do this is to follow PUBG’s example.
The mobile game collaborated with K-Pop girl group BLACKPINK last year to create a set of in-game billboards, electronic displays, and custom outfits for playable characters. With K-Pop on the rise, BLACKPINK placed themselves in a relevant space and targeted gaming consumers so they would create a positive association around both the brand and the band.
Context marketing through mobile phones is also possible through geotargeting. Dominos ran a successful campaign where they pushed offers and deals to consumers based on their exact location. This was all done in real-time; consumers got texts urging them to order Dominos with a unique discount for their area. The campaign was a major win and resulted in a high conversion rate for Dominos.
This model can be replicated: imagine efficiently reaching consumers through texts or voicemail at the time they need it most. Their brand love would increase exponentially.
2. Place CTAs in Effective Spaces
All branded content being pushed in online spaces should include a Call To Action (CTA). Context marketing works when a potential consumer sees your advert in a space where it’s hyper-relevant.
For example, if an employer is browsing online about “remote culture”, they would be open to seeing an advertising blog about remote work. A strong CTA like “Visit Here!” might give them the extra push they need to open your webpage.
3. Create Spaces for Social Sharing
Virality can make or break brands in this digital age. Brands can amp up their shareability with a focused context marketing strategy. A good example to follow is to look at what Buzzfeed does.
Buzzfeed is a content giant and it works solely on the principle of social sharing. If your friend enjoys an article or quiz made from Outgrow Quiz Maker, they will send you the link. You will engage with the content piece, earning Buzzfeed revenue, and you might share it forward, too. Buzzfeed engineers this process by customizing the sharing buttons on the bottom of its web pages.
So, based on a consumer’s online habits, the article they see will have specific buttons for the social media sites they visit most. Frequent Instagrammers will see the Gram button first in order, whereas Twitter users will see the blue bird. This is a smart way to contextualize your content since it places the audience in the top spot.
Brands can also incentivize social sharing and/or engagement. For example, everyone knows how to rate an app but not everyone wants to do it. Your brand can offer a small incentive such as a discount coupon or a BOGO offer to get consumers to rate your app. It seems like a small gesture but this kind of context marketing can increase retention and build a positive association around the brand for the audience.
Bonus: Contextualize your Marketing with Facebook
It’s worthwhile to note that Facebook is an important platform for brands looking to deploy context marketing. Numerous Facebook groups cater to almost every niche you can think of. Some of these groups also allow brands to covertly advertise their products or services cleverly.
For example, an FMCG brand can offer a month’s or year’s worth of goods to users that engage with its digital campaign in the group. Consumers love when brands engage with them in a personal space as long as they’re not obnoxious about it and Facebook groups are a good way to do that.
Facebook also makes it possible to target ads based on what users have liked or engaged with. If you like a page about rock climbing, for example, you’re likely to start seeing adverts from brands selling safety gear or sports apparel. This makes it possible for brands to pull in new customers from a specific pool, meaning they increase their TOM for their audience.
Whether you leverage Facebook or Google to contextualize your adverts, the point of note is that context marketing works. It delivers results backed by data, allows for reduction in marketing spends and content budgets, and enables businesses to build brand equity through relevant and impactful consumer experiences.
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If you’ve spent any time at all learning about marketing, hopefully one thing that has jumped out to you is the focus of video marketing. It makes sense. We all carry in our pockets everything we need to create, edit, and publish our own video content.
Prior to the smartphone, the cost of producing and distributing video was immense. Most small businesses couldn’t afford to do video marketing. Video was dominated by major brands that had the budgets to make professional videos and air them during commercial time on TV.
In so many ways, the smartphone changed the rules of the game. And for once, it stacked them in favor of the little guy, not massive corporations. No where is that more evident than with video.
Now, a small business owner can create and publish a video in a matter of minutes and reach hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people.
In this article, we’ll discuss why video is so effective for small businesses and ways your small business can take small steps to begin video marketing.
Do Your Customers Really Care About Video?
While video marketing can be low effort, it’s certainly not no effort. And let’s face it, as a small business you already have more on your plate than you can handle.
Why should you invest your time and resources into video marketing?
The answer is simple: because you’ll get more customers if you use video.
We recently conducted a survey to try and better understand how, why, and where consumers went about researching and ultimately patronizing small businesses. We wanted to hear from the consumers themselves what was important to them, so that we could help small businesses better understand where they should focus their limited resources.
One of the most startling insights we gleaned from the survey was just how important video is for most customers.
51% of consumers said they were more likely to patronize a small business if they were able to watch videos introducing the company and/or highlighting their products/services. Only 16% of respondents said the opposite.
So whether you are a retail store selling jewelry, a catering business selling wonderfully curated meals, or a dentist selling healthy teeth and gums, video should be a part of your marketing strategy!
Why is Video so Effective?
Clearly video works, but why? Much of it has to do with how our brains are wired.
Video can elicit an emotional response that other mediums simply can’t and studies indicate as much as 95% of purchasing decisions are done subconsciously on an emotional level.
Reason No. 1: We Process Images Faster Than Words
One clear reason video works better than other forms of communication is that our brains can process images much faster than words. In fact, MIT researchers discovered the human brain can process an image in just 13 milliseconds.
Not only that, but our brains can process images simultaneously, whereas it processes words in a linear manner. Why does that matter?
Because if it’s easier to process information, it’s easier to retain information.
Studies show that we retain 95% of information from video versus only 10% from text. And when it comes to advertising, what good is it if they don’t remember it?
Reason No. 2: Seeing People’s Faces Evokes Empathy
Again, it comes down to how we are wired. Our brains have what are called mirror neurons. These neurons fire when we observe the facial expressions of others, causing us to empathize with them.
We basically see ourselves in their shoes.
And speaking of shoes, now do you see why Nike commercials are so powerful? For a few brief seconds, you can literally feel greatness because they so artfully portray people and acts of greatness.
Here’s a great example of a small business creating the same psychological effect. How can you not envision yourself enjoying this winery after seeing the joy on the faces of their customers in the video?
How Can Your Small Business Get Videos In Front Of Potential Customers?
Before we jump into the how-to’s, let’s be clear: videos don’t need to be professionally produced and edited. This article isn’t about creating a commercial for TV. We’re talking about making and distributing videos where your customers are most likely to be found. Unlike the good ol’ days of TV dinners, consumers are likely not glued to the TV screen during commercial breaks.
Understand Who Your Customers Are
Hopefully you’ve already created a customer avatar and understand who your customer is. Understanding who your customer is is the first step in understanding where they spend their time.
For example, a CPA offering tax services for wealthy individuals has an audience that looks vastly different from someone selling beauty products directly to consumers.
Who They Are Informs Where They Are
Once you know who your customers are, you can then start to understand where they spend their time online.
In the example above, which small business owner is better served creating a weekly insights & advice video series and promoting it on LinkedIn?
And which owner should be pumping out quick video testimonials of happy customers and product reviews on Facebook and TikTok?
Remember, video is a form of content marketing, which is designed to attract and retain an audience. That way, when it comes time to buy, you’re top of mind.
That can’t happen if you don’t get your video in front of the right people.
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So Where Are Customers These Days?
While there’s well over a billion websites online these days, the reality is that a majority of people’s time online is spent in one or multiple of the following places:
- Youtube
- Yahoo
- Email inbox
- TikTok
All of these channels provide the ability for you to reach your audience en masse with whatever videos you wish to create. There’s no shortage of resources out there to help you understand how to optimize your video strategy to reach more of your target audience for each of these platforms. Make sure you understand the best practices for whichever platform(s) you choose.
What Types of Videos Can Your Small Business Create to Attract New Customers?
Now you know why videos work. You’ve done your homework to find where your customers spend their time. You’ve even educated yourself on how best to get your videos in front of them. Now you need to decide what type(s) of videos you want to make.
Here are 4 of the most effective low cost and low effort videos you can produce:
Demo/Explainer Video
If your small business sells products, create short demo videos allowing people to see how those products solve their problems. Video is the perfect way to explain how those products work, so that people can see them in action.
Testimonial Video
Remember when we talked about potential customers putting themselves in the shoes of the person in the video they are watching? What better way to sell your products or services than to allow potential customers to imagine themselves in the shoes of one of your happy customers.
Next time you’re with a happy customer, plop out your cell phone and ask a couple of simple questions about their experience with your company.
Informational Video
These can be great if your small business offers a service of some type. As a service professional, you obviously have a wealth of knowledge that people pay you for. Offering up some of that knowledge in the form of a video allows people to better understand their situation, but also allows them to see you know your stuff.
When it comes time to hire a professional, you will have already created a level of trust with the potential customer that makes it more likely they will come to you for help.
Company Story Video
Especially when it comes to small businesses, people buy from people. You aren’t some massive, stale corporation. You’re a small business with a unique story to tell. Use video to tell customers…
- Who you are
- Why you are so passionate about your business
- What they can expect from you
Let them see and feel how much you love what you do. There is simply no better way to do that than with video!
Now It’s Time To Push Record
So what are you waiting for? While diving into video can feel daunting, there’s no better time than the present to begin. Your customers prefer video over other mediums. And you can create a huge advantage amongst your competitors by making the type of content they want! So get that iPhone out, press record, and start having more meaningful engagements with your potential customers.
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