Setting The Mousetrap For Increased Conversion & Engagement
- Written by Kelly Lindenau
- Published in Content Strategies
We’re currently at the halfway point between our B2B Marketing Exchange virtual events, with organizations still digesting everything they learned in February and clearing their calendars in anticipation of B2BMX: Next-Level ABM in June. To bridge this gap and provide old and new attendees with a taste of what’s coming, we’re going to spend the next couple weeks remixing key sessions from February’s online experience.
This week, we’ll dive into Andy Crestodina’s session, “High Impact Marketing Actions To Get Ready For The Rebound.” Throughout his keynote, Crestodina walked companies through several high value, yet simple, actions they can take to prepare for the post-Covid world. Crestodina, the CMO and Co-Founder of Orbit Media, compared these actions to that of a mousetrap: The trap is baited through refined, targeted content and sales pages, and snaps when prospects take action and engage with the brand.
However, companies can’t just throw generic content at prospects and hope someone bites. Instead, baiting the trap requires a systemic, foundational approach that positions each company as a reputable thought leader in their respective industry, followed by high value actions that promote retention. The high-value actions that will be touched upon include:
- Updating sales pages to proactively address frequently asked questions (FAQs);
- Identifying content that generates the highest engagement and refining the content that doesn’t;
- Utilizing third-party endorsements to strengthen marketing claims; and
- Polishing social media presence to present a unified and professional team.
Baiting The Trap (Increasing Conversion Likelihood)
To optimize conversion rates, organizations need to identify what encourages and deters prospects from acting on their website. According to research from the Nielsen Norman Group, findability is the No. 1 cause of user failure, highlighting the need to deploy content that proactively meets buyers’ needs.
“It's about information,” said Crestodina. “It's not that you need a fancier design; it's that you need to provide more clarity and all the answers in your content. You need to preemptively answer prospects’ questions, otherwise they won’t act.”
Crestodina also recommended leveraging testimonials and case studies to add first-hand accounts to strengthen companies’ claims. To generate a comprehensive third-party endorsement, a series of leading questions should be asked to guide clients. They include:
- When and how the client realized they needed help and/or the challenge they wanted to solve;
- What brought them to the company’s website;
- What previous solutions didn’t work out and why;
- What the client would miss most if they switched solution providers; and
- What capabilities the new solution provides for them.
These third-party endorsements can come in the form of text-based accounts (strong) or video accounts (stronger). Crestodina explained it comes down to the “rules of visual hierarchy”: Movement is more powerful than images and images are more powerful than text.
However, that doesn’t mean that text is obsolete — in terms of internal blog content, “there is a tiny percentage of your content that outperforms the rest,” Crestodina said, elaborating on the fact that only a handful of blog posts get significantly more traffic than others and generate the most conversions.
To that end, he categorizes blog content into four categories:
- Traffic champs, which get the most traffic from searches and should be linked to sales pages;
- Potential champs, which rank high but don’t get much traffic;
- Falling stars, which used to get a lot of traffic but are starting to decline; and
- Better mousetraps, which are pages with the highest conversion rates.
According to Crestodina, the best way to identify content effectiveness is simple: Google.
“The pages that appear on Google will have 9,000% more traffic than your average page,” he explained. “If you’re going to work on one piece of content, start with the page that has the highest visibility.”
As these “traffic magnets” act as the entry point to an organization’s website, they need to be reviewed with a fine-toothed comb. Additional insights from Googling a brand include identifying related searches, FAQs about the brand or solution in general, determining which competitors are bidding on the brand, related searches and phrases, and if there’s any room for potential partnerships with complementary solutions.
When this information comes together, it strengthens website content by steering away from a pile of marketing claims by adding more depth and demonstration of a solution or platform’s true value.
Crestodina also emphasized the importance of setting up brand alerts. Whenever an organization receives a notification that their brand was mentioned, they should visit the site and check for relevant links that could pull more traffic to their page.
“If it’s not linking to your website, you have a golden opportunity for ‘link reclamation,’ which includes finding all your mentions, reaching out to the relevant editors and asking to link the content back to your website,” Crestodina explained. “I do this once a week, and it’s valuable — it’s the lowest hanging fruit in SEO, even if you pay no other attention to link building. If your competitors are growing their website’s domain authority faster than you, you’re going to end up with a big disadvantage.”
After The Trap Snaps (Acting On Conversions)
Once sales pages are updated and prospects act, they’re likely redirected to a “thank you” page. When visitors land on these pages, they’re at their peak of interest, giving companies the opportunity to give and get more value by “giving the visitor more actions to let them fall further down the rabbit hole,” Crestodina said.
These landing pages should be helpful and informative with a timeline of when a sales rep will be in touch, expectations for next steps, an email sign-up form and links to the company’s social channels.
Social media presence can’t be overlooked, as profiles improve the visibility of an organization’s website. As social profiles might be a prospect’s first point of contact with a brand, they should feature engaging, helpful and relatable content and prominent, legible and professional imagery. Text-based posts and biographies shouldn’t just regurgitate marketing speak — they should show that there’s a real person operating the account.
This social media polishing expands beyond the company’s singular profiles and into the team’s overall presence on social channels, specifically LinkedIn, as “it’s a kindness to your team and shows you care about their careers,” Crestodina explained.
Organizations must think bigger than their company and help associates nail down their personal brand, which includes the value they bring to a company and their reputation in the market, all of which lends credibility to themselves and the company.
While demonstrating individuality, each employee’s social profile should contribute to a company’s overall brand experience. Crestodina referenced email signatures and the importance of standardizing them across the board. Email signatures should promote an individual’s contact information, company and personal social media pages and include content that’s currently in promotion.
Each step throughout the process of baiting the mousetrap and catching clients is foundational to the next. Companies should enhance their sales and content pages, refine corporate and employee social media presences and actively work to provide prospects with more value to help increase conversion rates.
For similar insights and more information, be sure to register for B2BMX: Next Level ABM