Small Biz Tip: uber-simple landing pages

Do you want more from your email and social media marketing efforts? First look at your landing pages.

Most of what you do online - especially email and social media campaigns - include links back to your web site. You have most likely designed the best campaign you can to encourage people to respond - to click on that link! But have you spent as much time designing your landing page as you did designing the campaign?

A landing page is the web page people "land" on when they click your link.

But what happens next?

That's the key to effective online campaigns - making that 'next step' as interesting and as effortless as possible.

If the browser lands on your Home page, they still have work to do. They have to navigate through the site to find the offer / product / information that inspired them to click-through in the first place.

If you ask the browser to do more work to find what they're after, they most likely won't. So all your efforts to inspire them to click-through are wasted!

Design a landing page that points them directly to the topic of the originating link. If you're offering a 50% discount on wrapping paper, create a page with a huge image of wrapping paper, a huge confirmation of the 50% offer, and a huge "Buy now" button. All they have to do is click the button - no real effort required. If you directed them to your web site and made them find the gift-wrap section, you're asking them to do too much.

Here's an example from Staples. If you were so inclined to click the link on the email for a refurbished computer, optical mouse or printer paper, you're only one more click away from having the product in your shopping cart. Simple. Effective. Effortless.

That's how you increase your chances of online marketing success.

LESSON FOR SMALL BUSINESS:

• Every link you put out there through your marketing efforts should have a dedicated landing page.
• Those landing pages need to be simple, obvious and effortless.
• Don't forget to use web analytics to track campaign effectiveness (how many people land on the page; how many of them click to buy; how many of them actually buy and so on). Contact me for more information about web analytics tools and how to implement them (I don't sell them, so it's not a blatant pitch).

YOUR TURN:

• Any favourite landing pages... or bad ones?

Customer information is like gold to marketers - handle it with care!

For all businesses, and especially those that classify themselves as small or medium-sized, good customer data is the cornerstone of any decent marketing function.

Email marketing, the second most important marketing tactic according to marketingsherpa.com (next to social network marketing), is quite simply impossible without good email addresses. Direct mail, making a comeback of late, also depends on accurate data.

We all know how hard good data is to collect. Marketers want it, and consumers want to protect it, thus creating the most significant struggle marketers face. So when we have an opportunity to collect it, what can be more important than showing gratitude to the prospect for their willingness to offer it to us, and thanking them afterwards?

Still, I see examples of unappreciative data collection, which to me is quite troubling.

Take this example: This is the online registration process for submitting a classified ad in our local newspaper. As you can see, there is no indication of how my information will be treated by this organization. I am asked to submit my information and move on to the next step without being promised that my information won't be sold to the highest bidder. In this case, because I am the one that wants to place an ad and I'm led to believe that this is the only way to do it, I am forced to submit.

They are saying to me: "we don't really care what privacy concerns you have, if you want a classified ad, this is what you have to do."

Not exactly the treatment I expect as a prospective customer.

And they SHOULD be treating me better than this. This is a newspaper! Newspapers, perhaps more so than any other type of business, are threatened by the prevalence of online news and information. They need my information. They need me to like them. They need to treat me better than that. If I had a better online experience with them, I might be more tempted to subscribe to their paper. Instead, I will rely on local web sites and media sites for my news, thank you.

After some digging, I did discover that they have a decent privacy policy, but I shouldn't have to dig! Make it obvious for me early on in the process and treat me like the valued prospective customer that I am.

TAKEAWAY FOR YOU:

1. You need good customer information. Check the accuracy of the information you have.
2. When you have an opportunity to collect customer information, there should be nothing more obvious than the privacy policy (only a link to it is required) that dictates how delicately you will treat it.
3. Your privacy policy better not be three pages of legalese.
4. Thank the customer for it!
5. Give them something in return! You can sell them something later. Now is the time to thank them.