Here are 13 more gems from Sherpa’s B2B Lead Gen Summit held in DC this week. Read the first eight gems here.
#9 Revising or re-launching your site anytime soon? According to Future Now’s Jeff Eisenberg, you should write EVERY WORD of copy for your new site before you design it. Read it over. Prioritize your information, offers, calls to action: #1, #2, #3, etc. Only then should you talk to a designer. Makes sense although difficult to do. It’s so tempting to start with what you think the various categories of your site should be… About Us, What We Do and so on… Ditch those.
#10 Check your site for its we-we factor with Future Now’s We We Monitor. I.e. your copy should say “you” and “your problems.” You’re writing to engage your visitor. It’s always about WIIFM (what’s in it for me).
#11 Best tip for increasing conversion on your landing page (from Sherpa’s Anne Holland): Match the words in the headline of your landing page with the exact words in the ad that your visitors clicked from. That way they recognize they’re in the right place and are more apt to move on and take action.
#12 Remove any other site links from your landing page. You’re not offering a guided tour of your site. You’re trying to get a click-through visitor to take a specific action (sign up, register, whatever). Don’t give them any other options!
#13 Don’t let your Web designer make you a fancy “Submit” button. Use an ugly gray one (again, from Anne Holland). I’ve followed this advice for a year. It’s excellent. Why is it important? Because those ugly gray Buy Now or Submit buttons convey an unconscious message: just click. (They’re generated by code, BTW.)
#14 Want to get your news all over the Web at almost no cost? Use PRWeb or eMediaWire to post your press releases. Of course, they need to be newsy releases with an interesting twist. But you’d be amazed at the pick up you’ll get and what the reverberations are over time. Here’s one about blogging (Blogging Is Here to Stay) that I posted several months ago to eMediaWire.
#15 Limit your e-newsletter to one article. An “insider’s tip” from MarketingSherpa’s Anne Holland. Subscribers are much more likely to open it if it’s short and sweet.
#16 Here’s a free tool to check the spam rating of your email or e-newsletter before you send it out: SiteSell SpamCheck.
#17 Trying to reach CEOs who won’t or can’t read HTML email? Send them an HTML email that looks like text. I.e. use a Courier font, left-justified on a white background. Wrap the lines at 65 characters. From ExactTarget’s Chris Baggott. Details from me on how to format it.
#18 Think a white paper is too much trouble to produce? Think again. According to BitPipe’s Nick Copley, 57% of surveyed IT professionals said their decision to purchase was influenced by reading a white paper from that company.
#19 Want ideas for good titles for white papers that generate leads? Here are a few from Nick:
Eleven Steps to Success in Data Warehousing
Ten Principles for Knowledge Management Success
Are Your Call Center Practices As Effective as They Can Be?
#20 Bad titles are not just… bad. They depress response. Fewer downloads and hence fewer leads. Here are some bad ones:
Server 623C Subsystem
Customers at the Door
Good Data, Good Decisons
Note that the last two are kinda catchy. But they’re not specific enough. They don’t offer the promise of specific, useful information. In general, being “clever” with marketing copy doesn’t work. That’s my editorial comment.
And finally…
#21 I couldn’t have said this better myself, as it’s exactly what I preach. From BitPipe’s Nick Copley: “Marketing with content means thinking like a publisher.”
In other words, commission a white paper with a specific audience in mind (IT managers, CXX-level execs, whatever). Make sure it’s written in the right voice and with the right approach. High-level charts and graphs showing business results for CEOs. Technical specs for the IT types.
THEN decide on your delivery strategy (email, Webinar). Don’t start the other way around.
That’s it for today… and I didn’t even catch every minute of every session. Wish I had. Again, if you’re interested, you can catch the B2B Lead Generation Summit in San Fran Nov. 18 – 19.