Hubspot held their 2017 summit in San Diego recently with several amazing guest speakers. The in-depth talks ranged from conversion optimization, developing video content, and paid advertising strategies in Facebook and Instagram. Here’s a few quick tips that you can use to improve your marketing this year.
LANDING PAGE OPTIMIZATION
As visitors come to your site via content outreach, you can quiz them when they reach the landing page. Think about the different types of customers you have and where they fit in the sales funnel. With that approach you can tailor the content offering for each user. Plus they will be more invested in what they receive as it will be customized for their unique situation.
Example questions could include:
- Are you an engineer, marketer or CEO?
- Are you looking for a whitepaper, product demo, or a consultation with us?
- Here’s what we have available: what email would you like us to send to?
This is just an example that can easily be used with offers you are promoting. You can probably already see how much more invested a person would be by the end of that quiz compared to a generic landing page experience. Neil Patel, an online marketing expert and the founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar, and KISSmetrics, presented this tip and mentioned it increased his email signup rate 108%. Why? Because people want the internet customized to their interests and needs.
FORMS ON LANDING PAGES
Break up forms that are too long into multiple parts. Forms can easily become intimidating once you start asking for more than just name and email. Short forms generally have a higher signup rate than forms that ask for all sorts of detailed and in-depth information.
So what should a marketer do if there are several form fields that you absolutely need? Here’s a clever solution that uses human psychology — ask for only name and email on your initial form. Once this is completed and they submit it, have the rest of your form on a second part or step. At the top of this section call it Step 2 or Final Step with a progress bar showing that they are halfway done.
Here’s why this works:
- They realize you already have their email so they might as well finish the form. Individuals are more aware of marketing email tactics, and they don’t want to get emails just about finishing the process.
- They are psychologically invested because it’s human nature to want to finish something incomplete. Once they see the progress bar they’ll feel a need to justify getting this far.
Should the user not complete the second portion of the form it won’t be a loss. In either situation, you get the benefits of a shorter form and a higher chance of receiving the rest of the data you need.
VIDEO CONTENT
There is a massive rise in video content across all major social networks, mostly because it’s never been easier to create quality video. No matter the size of your business there are ways to generate and use great video content. Just about anyone can now afford professional quality equipment and develop a following on sites like YouTube.
A few interesting stats:
- In the past few years there has been a huge rise in YouTube, Snapchat and Facebook video views
- Facebook Video posts increased in volume 94% year over year
- Video ads on Facebook have 3x the link CTR of image ads
- One third of ALL worldwide online activity is watching video
So how can you take advantage of this amazing trend? Utilize video content on your website, product pages, and emails. Studies show that 64% of people are more likely to buy after seeing a video demonstrating the product. Several companies presenting at the summit replaced most of their content with video – this included testimonials, case studies, product demonstrations, and even their top FAQs. By sending new customers video answers to their most commonly asked questions, the amount of support issues dropped and the client services team could instead focus on more difficult issues.
Here are several experiments that were run by various companies:
- Video in an email led to a 300% increase in CTR (this was a snapshot of the video which drove the user to where the video was hosted)
- Video on a landing page created an 80% increase in conversion rate compared to the original format.
A special consideration with video is to utilize captions and/or lower thirds, which are graphics at the bottom of a video naming the speaker and their title or expertise. With video advertising being extremely popular on Facebook, most people will watch these on mute. As a result, using captions and lower thirds can introduce products, people, and topics. These are very effective on Facebook and Instagram for brand awareness, app installs, and even whitepapers and other B2B strategies. In fact, technical companies such as GE and HP are producing amazing video content on their Instagram social channel. These can be promoted at an even lower cost than Facebook while having very low bounce rates.
How can you use a platform like Instagram to reach your important metrics? You could show off new products or services, as well as easily repost customer pictures and videos that are using your offerings. These add a huge amount of social value and are an important testimonial component to consider. By focusing on these tactics you can encourage and grow your following to make social channels work greatly for you.
The Hubspot Summit was held to give marketers easy-to-implement, actionable steps to improve results. See which of these strategies align with your plans for 2017 so that you can take advantage of these trends. Just a few of these insights can drastically improve your results online, whether it be in landing page optimization, video content creation, or enhancing social media presence.