Author: Brian Massey

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Find Out How to Raise Conversions for Your College or University

No matter what kind of conversion you’re trying to get – a sale, a lead, a download, or something else – there’s no question that you can always be making improvements that will increase the amount of conversions you’re receiving.

When it comes to attracting potential students to a college or university, there’s no question that things are more competitive than ever. Accordingly, it’s in every educational institution’s best interest to occasionally re-evaluate their web marketing and conversion optimization strategies.

Recently, we gathered data from over 9,000 colleges and universities to get an idea of what they’re doing to attract prospective students, and how they’re converting them into full-fledged members of their community. If you want to take a look at what we’ve found, you can download the report for free. Take a look, and let us know what you think.

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Call to Action Conference Scrapbook

I was privileged to be invited to speak at the inaugural gathering of the Call to Action Conference hosted by the fine folks at Unbounce.

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I may be speaking in a city near you. Details

MarketingProfs B2B Forum Boston
Oct 8-10
Hero Conversion Summit Indianapolis
Oct 13-15
Ascend Summit Philadelphia
Oct 22-24
Ungagged Conference Las Vegas
Nov 15-17
Conversion Hotel Amsterdam
Nov 20-23

You can save on these conferences.

It was quite a time.

My talk was on Optimizing the Crap out of Landing Pages for Lead Generation. Here are the major points from that presentation

Consulting vs. Convincing

When you are generating leads, you are consulting, not convincing. You’re helping visitors make their decision.

Five things that affect Lead Generation

There are five things we look for in a lead generation landing page.

  1. Value proposition and messaging
  2. User eXperience and Layout
  3. Social Proof
  4. Trust
  5. Risk Reversal

One or two of these will be significant issues with your visitors.

Words Matter Most

Of the five things listed above, we find that finding the right words delivers the biggest increases in conversion rate.

This means testing the words used in headlines and calls to action as well as copy.

Measure Quality

As you are working to improve your conversion rate, you must be sure that you are not reducing the quality of the leads you are generating. To measure lead quality consider:

  • Sales close rate
  • Length of the sales cycle
  • Revenue/Inquiries per email recipient
  • Email opt-out rates

If these turn negative, then your optimization efforts may be hurting more than they help.

Here are some images from the event. Will you come see me when I’m in a city near you?

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Brian Massey Coming to Your Town

Brian-Massey-presenting-lab-coat-cities-600x181.jpgOne of the things I love most about my work is getting out and teaching conversion optimization in person.

I take it seriously.

I appear in full lab coat regalia mixing entertainment and education in equal doses. I’ve got a busy fall and may be coming to your town.

This fall, even Google is going to have trouble keeping track of me.

Are you close to one of these great cities?

Hey Vancouver, I’ll be crossing the boarder for an appearance at the Call to Action Conference on September 12th. This is hosted by our good friends at Unbounce.

Yo, Boston! I’ll be coming through town not once but twice. First up is the Business of Software USA, September 15th-17th.

Then, I’ll be swinging back through Boston for MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum, October 8-10.

Wazzup, Indianapolis! I’ll be there for the Hero Conference Conversion Summit, October 13-15. Use Code Speaker15 for 15% off admission.

‘Sup, Philadelphia. Check me out at AWeber’s Ascend Summit October 22-24.

Use the code SCIENTIST for 15% off.
Use the code SCIENTIST for 15% off.

Giddyup, Las Vegas. I’ll be Ungagged for the Ungagged Unconference November 15-17 “The Conference for Unpopular Ideas.” Use the code SCIENTIST for 15% off.

Hoi, Amsterdam! I’ll be attending the Conversion Hotel Conference. You can checkout any time you like, but you can never leave what you’ve learned. November 20-23.

Where are da brats, Chicago? My fellow Conversion Scientist will be appearing at Content Jam October 2. Yes, he rocks a lab coat, too.

And of course, I’m most often in Austin, The Conversion Capital of the World. Come by the office for Taco Thursday sometime.

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Brian

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Are You Missing Massive Opportunities with Inbound Calls?

After your company has spent marketing dollars to drive inbound calls to your doorstep, the worst thing that can happen is to have your sales team deal with those leads ineffectively. It’s like fumbling the ball on the 5-yard line, and it equates to dollars down the toilet.

It would take a nauseating number of hours to individually monitor these sales calls in order to identify the weak points and missed opportunities that need to be addressed. That approach is just not reasonable. Even it were possible, the odds of compiling the resulting data in a way that would actually be helpful and usable are slim to none.

So what can you do to address the problem and avoid wasted marketing dollars?

One option: Find an automated solution that marries the latest in voice recognition technology with thousands of algorithms that can analyze the words, phrases and contexts and pinpoint where you are missing out on opportunities and exactly who you should follow up with to boost your conversion rates.

And yes, this technology does exist.

The infographic below lays out the results, and lessons learned, from analyzing a full quarter of inbound calls with this remarkable technology. Invaluable information for any company to get their hands on.

Biggest takeaway for us? Asking for the business on a sales call resulted in conversion rates 10.4 times higher than when not asking for business. Go figure.

Our thanks go out to www.LogMyCalls.com for their work on this great infographic and on the full data analysis of inbound calls that came in through their remarkable system during Q2 2014.

 

LogMyCalls infographic-Q2-call-report

 

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How to Throw a Great Twitter Chat

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It’s a webinar in 140 character headlines. It’s a speech given in silent sound bites. It’s short attention span theater.

And you’re going to learn a lot.

We call it a Twitter Chat. Since we have only 140 characters, I would call it a Chitter or Chitt or a Twittat or TwiCh. I’m sure there are some more creative abbreviations.

Here are the steps AWeber went through that will make our August 6 Twitter Chat a success.

How to Throw a Great TwiCh

Step one: Some Experienced Guests

A great Twitter Chat involves getting several very bright people together for an hour or so fielding 140 character questions with 140 character answers.

It’s like a conference panel, but no one can steal the mike. No blustering. No raising your hand to ask a question. Everyone has to be very concise and to the point.

Why aren’t all conference panels like this?

Step two: A very important topic and a unique hash tag

I can’t think of a topic more pressing, more critical to the economy, and more likely to scare the natives than conversion optimization, but you might choose something else for your audience.

Hashtag selection is a combination art and science. You want something unique, short and full of your most important keywords.

If you have a TLA (three letter acronym) as a keyword, that can be helpful. I might use #CROTwiCh for Conversion Rate Optimization Twitter Chat. #LPChitt is another abbreviation for Landing Page Twitter Chat.

I hope people don’t think I’m full of chitt.

The folks at AWeber did a smart thing. They branded the event as part of a series they call “The AWeber Hour” by using the hashtag #AWeberHour. It’s short, it has their brand in it, and it implies an hour-long event. Brilliant.

Step three: YOU

Once all of these things are in place, all we need to do is decide on a date and time that you can join the 140-character fun. If you’re a data geek like us, you know exactly when people are sharing on social media.

Here is the graph of social media clicks by hour provided by our fabulous URL shortening service, Captix.

Hourly_Clicks_March_April_May_2014_Conversion_Sciences

For us, mid-day will be the right time for a TwiCh. You can create a Google Analytics’ report to tell you as well.

Come and See

Me and four very smart people will be Chitting about Capturing More Leads Using Email and Landing Pages.

I’ll be Twiching with Oli Gardner of Unbounce, Justine Jordan of Litmus, Justin Rondeau of Which Test Won, and Hunter Boyle of AWeber.

I’m not chitting you! All of them in one place.

Join us on August 6 at 2pm ET, 1pm CT for an #AWeberHour TwiCh and join the fun.

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3 Must Have Tools for Those Who Depend on Google Analytics [AUDIO]

What the chart said vs realitty

The staff was assembled, the stage was set. Representatives from every department plus some of the big brass were sitting around the long conference table.

I was about to present the data that showed how successful my marketing campaigns had been for the past month. This was important, because it had been like pulling teeth to get a more data-driven process in place.

IT had to be cajoled into setting up Google Analytics.

Sales had to be bullied into keeping good account of leads and sales.

Now, with the first full month of data in hand, I was going to point to some steady growth. My pitch was confident as I showed the increase in leads and correlated it with an increase in sales. I was going to be a star.

Until someone spoke up from sales.

“We didn’t get that many leads last month. Most of my sales came from affiliates.”

All eyes turned to me. What I would say next would either raise stature or destroy my credibility.

Was it my programs, or was it my analytics that caused this disconnect?

The right answer would have been, “I personally QA’d our analytics setup. These numbers are right.”

Could you have given that answer?

In my most recent Marketing Land article Is It The Site, Or Is It The Analytics? Debugging Google Analytics, I show you how to be certain that your Google Analytics setup is working as planned.

Whether you setup your own analytics or have your tech team do it, you need to know that the data you’re using is right.

Listen to the Article, Read by the Author

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Chinwag Psych Conference Presentation – Getting Past the Bouncers in our Brains

Chinwag Psych Conf 2014

I have to admit, I was a little more nervous than usual presenting in front of an audience of psychologist-marketers.

You’ll see what I mean in the video.

Why would a Conversion Scientist be invited to speak at a Psych conference? Because our testing is designed to tell us things about your visitors that they cannot even explain themselves. This is why split testing is such a valuable tool. Visitors tell us what they prefer by how they act.

One thing testing has taught us is that there are bouncers in the human brain, and these bouncers must be dealt with before our messages will be processed and acted upon.

It’s just 20 minutes or so.

 Hat tip to Roy H. Williams and the Wizard Academy for introducing me to the research I present here.

References

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

Albert Mehrabian on Amazon

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