Author: Umaima Afzal

Making a good landing page isn’t rocket science—but it does take some work.

Landing Pages are kind of the most important tools for business, because for most business this is where the conversations happen!

Customers are overwhelmed with the amount of Advertisements that are thrown at them everyday. On average a person visits several thousand ads per day. (Adalytics, 2021) They have so many choices and variety for each products and services, that it is important for companies to use their tools effectively. Getting consumer attention, and converting them should be the main goals for each business. This is where landing pages can do their magic!

What is a Landing Page?

A landing page is the first webpage that a visitor sees when they are directed from a social media, search engine or email marketing ad. Landing pages are mostly associated with a marketing campaign in mind. (Larson & Daper, 2021)

NSAMCWADLP is a popular acronym in the digital marketing arena which means “Never Start a Marketing Campaign Without a Dedicated Landing Page”

This is because companies’ main goal when creating a marketing campaign in to get as many conversions as possible, and Landing Pages help in doing that — that is if they are done well. You always want to have a clear campaign goal in mind when you are creating a landing page so that you can set up the landing page accordingly and effectively.

Landing Pages Vs Home Pages?

Lets clear this confusion many people have. There is a distinction between a landing page, and a Home Page. Landing Page is a standalone page and is specifically designed for a particular campaign that the company is running. (Harris, 2021) Mostly people are redirected to the landing page through an Ad on social media, search engine or email etc. There is a clear call to action, and there is less to nothing that distracts the audience from converting. On the other hand, Home page is essentially the front page of a larger website. It has much more information than a Landing Page and it focuses on introducing the company. While a company could set the home page as the landing page, it would result in less conversion as compared to a dedicated landing page. (Larson & Daper, 2021) These five simple ways to increase your landing page conversions should give you a head start to creating a successful landing page!

1. Call-to Action (CTA)

A call to action is a short phrase that guides the visitor to take the converting action. This can be something like “Sign up Now!” or “Get a Quote” or “Get Started” (figure 3) is essential part of each landing page. Landing page should have just one call-to-action. This is so that the customer is not distracted from the campaign and converts easily when they do not have other options. Most lead generation sites want their consumers to fill out a form, or check out so having a button to represent can boost your leads. Research suggests that CTAs are so essential that they can make a big difference in the click-through rate by 285 percent. (Neely, 2021)

2. Use Engaging Visuals

Landing pages can often the very first website visitors see for your company, so it must be attractive and encourage then to engage with your page. here are somethings you can do to make your Landing Page engaging.

First, Digital Trends suggest that it is extremely important to have a strong and attractive color pallet. According to Institute of Color Research, 84.7 percent of survey population think color accounts for more than half of the factors that lead to choosing a product. (Morton, 2019) Color can be used to draw attention to the desired action such as the “Sign Up” button. Headline & Subheads are where everything begins – the audience interest, attention and understanding. This is where the reader will decide whether they want to see the rest of the landing page or no. It should be something that grabs your readers attention and also give an intro to what the service is about. Pictures – Visual content is an essential component of landing pages that work. The picture should be relevant to your product (figure 4). The brain processes pictures faster than words (Parsons, 2018), this means that pictures can appeal to them more quicker than text.

3. Power of Reviews

Customer reviews are a significant influence in the success of your landing page. (figure 5) They provide value, boost personality, highlight current customers, so visitor can understand that the company has brought value to other customers, and reviews speak to the most human aspect of your business. Just one review on a landing page can increase conversion by 10 percent, and 100 reviews can boost conversion by 37 percent. (Summy, 2022) Adding reviews also build credibility about the brand in the minds of the customers.

4. Keep it Simple

“Keep it Simple, Stupid” – when it comes to landing pages you always want to remember this phrase. In order to increase conversions and measurable actions on a landing page, it is very important to eliminate distractions.

A distraction & clutter free landing page can lead to higher conversion rate. The ratio of links on a landing page to the number of campaign conversion goals. In an optimized campaign, the attention ratio should be 1:1. (Unbounce) there should be 1 link/button and one goal such as Sign up, Free Trial, Create an account etc.

5. Testing and more testing!

Once your landing page has been built make sure you are testing it out. This is because when you make a landing page for the first time, it may not be as successful, however as you change components and elements you will see that your landing page conversion will improve. Testing can help in identifying elements that are leading to converting vs distracting behaviors by the visitors. (Spinutch, 2020)

A/B Testing is one of the best strategies in optimizing your landing page. A/B testing essentially allows you to create two variation of the landing pages such as changing the CTA, updating color scheme or changing the text etc. Then, you can identify which changes have made the greatest impact on the user behavior.

To sum up, having a well put together Landing Page is extremely essential for a company to boost their conversion rates. We hope that these tips can help you discover a few changes you may make to your own landing pages. While low conversion rates might be discouraging, you can easily improve things by making a few little modifications.

In the digital age, businesses need to be very careful with their Online Brand, and how they are portrayed on various social platfroms as wel as SERP. Business want to make sure that their online presence is as positive as it can be. This is because the modern customer likes to be infromed and aware about the brands that they are purchasing from. As such, when they buy a brand, their first instinct is to do a quick google search, or a social media search to look at reviews and publicity about the brand. People trust a business more after reading positive online reviews. In fact, positive reviews make 74% of consumers trust a local business more. (Anderson, 2017) Additionally, a whopping 97% of consumers search online for local businesses. (BrightLocal) Online reputation of the business is continously evolving as new blogs, reviews, and social media posts pop-up about the brand — and it can become very tedious to continouslythink of this. Thus, there are a few tips that you as a marketer can follow in order to help with the work of managing the online brand.

• Brand Monitoring

Online review sites, directories, social media sites and blogs etc are a way for users and consumers to share opinion about the brand, and its products. (Larson & Draper, 2021) This content can appear in so many places, that sometimes it can be diffiicult to track it. The company can use brand monitoring technologies and tools such as HootSuite, Sprout Social, Brand Mentions etc, and look out for words such as “brand name + “keyword for negative conotation” such as scandal, unethical, scam etc. (Larson and Draper, 2021) Additionally, using Google Alerts in order to use negative keywords to beware of so that the company can try and minimize or respond effectively and timely to bad online press. Additionally, it is important to monitor the Search Engine Results page to see the major conversations that are happening about the brand.

• Responding to the Reviews

Reviews can be posted on various websites such as Yelp, Zagat, and can also be posted in terms of Press articles. (Larson and Draper, 2021) Responding to negativity is important, but it is just as important to do it in an effecient manner so customers do not feel as though their reviews are taken for granted. A deleted review may result in a new review from the client claiming that you removed it, making your firm look even worse. When you have a disgruntled consumer, time is of the essence. As a result, take sure to respond to bad evaluations as soon as possible. According to the RevLocal blog, more than half of customers expect a response from a business within a week after submitting a bad review. Negative feedback is difficult to deal with. You put in a lot of effort to make sure your company is successful, so hearing someone critique it can make you want to shout. Regardless of how you feel about the poor review, you must respond to the customer. Here are a few explanations for this: If you fix the problem, 70% of unhappy customers will continue to patronize your company. (Smith, 2022) Consumers investigating your company will see your reaction and understand that you care enough to make things right for dissatisfied clients.

• Creating Good and Positive Content

Content creation aids in the development of a relationship between your company and its target audience. You can connect with customers and answer their inquiries. (Hubspot, 2021) Your audience is more inclined to trust your advise and suggestions if you provide value without expecting anything in return. Additionally, creating positive content is important because that will rank higher in the SERP as compared to the negative press or negative reviews site. Some ways to create positive content about the brand that will rank higher are (Larson, and Draper :

1. Corporate Website
2. Corporate Blogs
3. Social Media Profiles of the Brand
4. Customer Support Site
5. Product Microsites

I took the Google Ads Measurements Certification, and I would like to use this platform to give a review on it, so you can decide whether this certification is the correct choice for you.

Some logistics first:

• Time for Completion: Approximately 5-6 hours, and 75 mins for Exam.
• Company: Google Inc.
• Level: Beginner
• Aims: Gain an understanding of how to change marketing objectives in to measurable actions. Optimize performance of marketing strategy by using KPIs. Use google metrics and insights through Google to improve performance, and increase sales.
• Exam: 50 questions, need atleast 80% to pass and 75 minutes to complete.
• Cost: $0

It took me about 5 hours to complete the knowledge portion of the certification, and I took the exam in about 60 minutes. Once you finish the certification exam, you can upload your credentials on Linked In which can be really helpful.

Themes: Creation of SMART Goals that align with Business Objectives, Assigning Values to these SMART Goals, Evaluation and Improvements, Analyzing and Optimizing Conversion Data, Introduction to using Google My Business Suite.

Tips:

• Limit distractions
• Pace yourself: there is enough time for the exam and you can learn each of these modules at your own pace.
• Do well in the assessments after each module, as the exam questions are similar.
• Dont stress – if you do fail, you can take it again after a 24 hours.

What I liked, and did not like in this certification?

I really liked how they used simple examples to build upon the basic knowledge such as a basic difference between KPIs and Metrics which are often used interchangeably. The course started wth the understanding of a small business, and explaining a few different objectives that companies may have such as increasing sales, increasing engagement, or media specific goals. Additionally, after each module, there was an assessment on what we have learned in the module and feedback on what can be improved. This helped in going back and learning if you did not do well in any of the questions in the assessment.

I would have liked it if there were hands-on activities such as creating metrics for business, and carryingout activities to achieve these goals. I felt that this certification was a lot more concept based, rather than activities which personally, helps me in learing better. A more activity based CRM certification course can be taken through Sales Force Trailheads.

I think I gained important insight on how to translate marketing objectives in to goals that are measurable. I learned on tracking conversions, and effectively measure sales, Analyze the conversion data and update strategy accordingly. Additionally, I got some insight on using Google My Business.

Over all, I think that this certfication exam was a good way to refresh some of the concepts that I had learned before. Google’s certficates hold a lot of value, especially as you are looking at job prospects and can be a really good resume builder, which is why I would recommend it. I do not think there is anything to loose here, since the certification is free. I would recommend that new marketers take this, and some other small certification in order to build enough knowledge for a significant certification exam such as Google Analytics Exam.

When people usually think of “Email Marketing” their first instinct is that it is a type of spam or shady email from companies. Additionally, customers also assume that we receive their emails from unsolicited methods unethically. Email messages are the preferred method of communication with companies by customers. (Larson and Draper, 2021) About 70% of the customers in a survey responded that emails are the preferred method of companies to communicate with them. (Burstein, 2015)

What is Email Marketing & Why is it so important?

Email marketing is a method of informing clients on your email list about new products, promotions, and other services. It can also be a softer way to educate your audience about your brand’s worth or keep them engaged in between transactions. It could also be anything in between. Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective tools as well that is available for marketers. However, one thing to point out here is that the company must capture an Email List through ethical means only so that the emails do not go in to spam folders or blocked. In a 2015 study done in the UK, the Direct Marketing Association found that for every dollar a company invests in their email marketing content and an email sent, there is an average Return on Investment (ROI) of about $38. Email marketing is important for the following reasons:

Improving customer loyalty and retention is a major goal for all marketers, and email marketing is a major way to do that. Brands can use email marketing to reach out to the consumers and remind them about exclusive offers for the customers. Emails can also be used to tailor specific campaigns to consumer groups. Additionally, inviting and enrolling in a VIP program can make the consumer realize that they are valuable to the company, and can encourage them to engage with the company. Email marketing can also be used to convert inactive users/customers into loyal customers by targetting exclusive offers to this group and sending them incentives to re-engage with the company. (Mughees, 2021)

According to survey research conducted by Litmus, an approximate 82% of the consumers open and interact with the emails that they recieve from companies. (2020) Because it gives you a direct line to your customers’ or potential customers’ email inboxes, email marketing is a terrific approach to build your brand identification. You’ll have a leg up on your competitors if you start providing quality material for them. This shows that customers do see and interact with the emails that we are sending to them. This is especially beneficial as a small business when you are trying to spread awareness of your product and service, email marketing can be a major tool in spreading awareness.

Email marketing can help in boost businsess sales by a lot. As mentioned before, for every dollar that businesses spend on email marketing, they can make up to $30-50 on their investment. (2020) conversion rates. Additionally, 66% of the customer make atleast one purchase being influenced by their emails. (Campaign Monitor) Companiess should do the following to drive up sales through their Email Marketing Campaigns:

• Use catchy statements, and show how the company can bring value. (see image)
• Write concise, and to-the-point messages
• Have a strong CTA for each email.
• Include high quality visuals on your emails.
• Create targetted email campaigns using personas.

What are Personas and Why are they important for Email Marketing?

• Create a Email Marketing Strategy

• Ad-Copy Improvements

When creating an email marketing and ad copy campaign, it is important to utilize personas to find and target the customer. Improvements should be made after understand how and what each segment effectively responds to. Companies would benefit from making headlines stand out, adding attractive imagines and colorful vidyals and make sure that they are focusing on the value brough by the product. Optimizing based on the CTR, and responsiveness is essential to improve the quality of email marketing.

• Segmented Emails

• Call to Actions and Offers.

Business Ethics are one of the most crucial parts of business operations in the current day and age, and rightfully so. Ethical businesses succeed because most customers prefer the brands that they purchase from. Customers today have a variety of options, so ethics can really set you aside. Like all business operations, ethics play a crucial role in Marketing Departments. This is because marketers are using very specific data that the consumers may or may not be aware of that is being shared. This is why, it is important that Marketers are also handling the data ethically, responsibly, and legally. Brands may engage customers with high trust, customer loyalty, large market share, greater brand value, better sales, and better revenue by implementing proper marketing ethics. Additionally, there has been a rise in this dialogue about data privacy for marketing because of the recent policies such as the EU’s GDPR. (Kurzer, 2018)

What is cookieless advertising?

A cookie is a data that browsers such as Google Chrome, Safari, and Firefox utilize, and these cookies store bits of information that are personally identifiable. As marketers, we use this data to target users based on the likes, dislikes, brands they use, etc. in order to better sell our products. In order to understand the term cookieless, it is important to realize the differences between two cookies; First-party and Third-Party.

Types of Cookies

First-Party Cookies are created by the same website that the user is currently using, and these usually save information such as username, password, consumers language preference, and carts they have saved on the website. (IBM, 2021) On the other hand, Third-Party Cookies are controversial, because they are created by domains that the consumer is NOT using. These tend to save information that will most likely be used for marketing and targeting purposes. For example, they will save used site navigation data as they toggle through websites, use Ad serving which is displaying the ads in an optimized and targeted way, and also enable Adware. (Bump, 2022) These cookies are controversial because while they are very effective for the marketers and brands in reaching their target audience, the user has not even interacted with this domain, so it is difficult to justify the use of the third-party domain to store users’ data. Major companies are taking steps to phase out and stop using third-party cookies. This is because not only do they violate the privacy of end-users, but also have become inefficient and ineffective in recent years. (Publift, 2022) As a marketer and a consumer, this topic is particularly dividing. As a marketer, third-party cookies can be an effective tool if it is used in combination with other marketing tools. However, third-party cookies also do violate privacy and store data that the user did not necessarily agree to.

If I need to decide – I would err on the side of cookie-less because there are many advantages that come with it.

Why go cookieless?

• Reaching the consumers in the right state of mind

Without third-party or cookie advertisements, consumers will not \be given information that does not necessarily align with their intents. For example, when someone is searching for “Hiking Boots”, third-party cookies can indicate that the consumer is looking for shoes and boots and general and that may not be their intent and deem the advertisement ineffective.

• Cookieless Targeting helps in gaining real insights

Marketers may monitor real-time information and optimize for maximum performance because relevant advertising campaigns are supplied accurately to consumers. Additionally, we can use the metrics from these targeted advertisements in order to better optimize their advertisements through KPI analysis, and the use of factors like keywords, and page optimizations.

• Builds Brand Recognition

As we mentioned before, consumers now more than before are conscious about what and where the brand is choosing to advertise. Relevant advertisements that are targeted allow the company to focus on their target customer base more appropriately and the consumers will have a better chance of knowing the brand because it follows their search intent.

• Transparency for users

Cookieless advertisements will allow consumers to have stronger control over their data. (IBM, 2021) Moving on, the website will give the consumers to give consent or agree to allow cookies which means that they will know what and who is collecting their data. Consumers need to have the choice of consenting to the data collection and advertising needs to protect consumer data. This is an opportunity for all marketers and advertisers to adapt and respect user privacy. (Gross, 2021)

A Cookieless Marketing Industry

The marketing industry is adapting to be more ethical because the change is already happening and Big Tech companies such as Google and Apple Inc., have taken significant steps in this because of laws and policies announced nationally, and internationally. For example the GDPR act and the California Privacy Protection Law. Google announced that it has “phase out” third-party cookies in its Chrome browser ‘within two years,” which means by 2022 (Bowles, 2021), and Apple announced that the users will be able to opt out of sharing information about their IOS ecosystem. “Today, we’re making explicit that once third-party cookies are phased out, we will not build alternate identifiers to track individuals as they browse across the web, nor will we use them in our products” Google tweeted. However, tech companies have not been readily accepting this because they believe that this law hinders the efficiency and the innovativeness of the Advertisements and provides less opportunity and choice for the users. (Mellor, 2022) /

What do marketers and advertisers have to do differently now?

With the lack of data available about consumers’ activities through third-party cookies, the job of a Marketer will be complicated and challenging. It is now more important than ever that Marketers put more focus on contextual and targeted advertisement campaigns, and focus on what and who the customer is as well as how the company can add value.  60% of senior executives say that the loss of third-party cookies will have a disruptive effect on their marketing. (Abramovich, 2021)

Marketers can try and utilize the first-party data for their benefit. This data includes phone numbers and emails. These can be used in order to create an optimized consumer base and the company can target based on factors such as demographics, income, age, etc.

Marketers would now have to be more focused on the consumer experience, and consumer relationship with the brand because that will be the way that consumers are generally attracted to the brand. However, the consumers would not be able to trust the companies and marketing more now. For companies that relied mainly on third-party cookies, advertisements would benefit from understanding the consumers, and why they would want the product the company is selling.

Without third-party cookies to provide marketers with audience insights that help them target and customize, developing more personalized experiences would become more difficult. Marketers should try and create content that is relevant to their target customers and helps them in engaging.

This change has its pros and cons, just like everything else. However, in my opinion, these pros outweigh the cons and provide for a better, safe, and transparent use for the users. Marketers must use this as an opportunity to strengthen other marketing techniques and utilize Martech tools for their benefit.

What is webpage ranking?

Webpage ranking is an algorithm that search engines such as Google or Bing use in order to assign a “numerical value” to a web page as a score. The search engine rank refers to a particular position a webpage holds in the results of a query.
For every business, being able to achieve a higher spot in the search engine ranking is a goal because it indicates to the user that the site is a credible resource and it is relevant to what they are searching for. When you put so much effort, money and attention are making sure that your webpage looks good, you also want to ensure that it is ranking higher on search engines so all that effort doesn’t go into vain.
Here are some steps you can take to make your website rank higher in search engines:

1. Content relevance

Making sure that your webpage has quality content is one of the most important considerations without it search engines won’t have enough information to index your pages correctly and help you rank. Quality and relevant content is one that can answer the searcher’s intent effectively (Fishkin, 2016) This can vary from business to business. For example, pictures, videos, maps, or articles. Do they want information? A How-To-Guide? Examples? Product recommendations? Search and you will find. It is important to approach it from the user’s perspective to see is the best way to explain a specific concept.

2. Keywords

Keywords play a major role in the search engine ranking. It is important that businesses research critical keywords that the searchers are using and the business can be an answer to those searched. (Fishkin, 2017) A small business may have more success with a long tail keyword. (Larson & Draper, 2021) Long-tail keywords are multiword phrases that are extended and have a much less low search volume but can help a page rank well because there is less competition on long-tail words. For example “Dog food” may be the fat head term with a large search volume but “buy dog food” may still display your page as relevant and at a higher rank because there is less competition on this keyword.

3. Blogging

Blogging is good for Search Engine Optimization because it helps in many things that are important ranking factors. When you have a blog that is regularly updated with blog posts that are of high quality and on topics relevant to your web pages, services, products, and audience, it can make a big difference in how your entire website ranks in search engines. Most internet users agree that blog posts are trusted sources for information or advice. Updating an old blog with new information can increase the effectiveness of your search results by 74%. (Crestodina, 2021)

4. Page Speed

Page loading speed affects the ranking of your website because it is a factor for search engines. This is because search engines typically want to give their users the answer faster and effectively. 40% of users will abandon a website that takes over three seconds to load. (Levity) Website owners must devote time and effort to improving their site’s performance and ensuring that each page loads as quickly as possible.

Follow these steps, and we hope you will be ranking in no time!

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