The sports and entertainment media industry is highly competitive in Australia, but Fox Sports head of marketing, brand and social, Chris Gross, shows …
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… worse, Facebook’s (NASDAQ: FB) shares continue to soar on the strength of its increasingly ironclad grip on the social-media marketing world.
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If you’re like me, you stay busy.
Running a business is a tall order in and of itself. When you throw marketing into the mix, things can quickly become overwhelming.
If you haven’t felt this way yet, you’re going to feel it soon: There just aren’t enough hours in the day!
Here is one thing I learned early on in my business: outsourcing will save your life.
I speak from personal experience. There’s no way I could have done what I’ve done without strategically and carefully outsourcing a lot of the day-to-day marketing tasks that took up my time and kept me from focusing on other goals.
Outsourcing has tons of benefits.
Most businesses rely on outsourcing because they want to “focus on the core.” That’s another way of saying “we want to do what we do best.”
For you, the reasons may be different. You might have 29 things you have to do for a client, but you only have time to do 18 of them. You can outsource the rest.
I’m a major proponent of outsourcing a lot of the day-to-day tasks that are laborious and only hold me back from focusing on more pressing matters.
I’m probably different from other business owners, though. While some people have a top-down or hands-off approach to running their companies, I prefer to be in the thick of it.
You’ll see me personally interacting on Facebook, jumping into blog comments, and working on blog articles.
I like to be involved in these aspects of my business because I feel like they are one of my important business tasks—connecting with and learning from other marketers.
That’s one of the great things about outsourcing. You can be as involved as you want or as hands-off as you want. It’s up to you.
A lot of people I talk with are concerned about the cost of outsourcing. “But doesn’t it cost a lot to outsource these tasks?” they ask.
The answer is yes and no.
Yes, you have to pay for quality work.
But no, it doesn’t cost a lot because of the time you’re saving. If your time is worth, say, $50/hr, doesn’t it make sense to pay someone $35/hr to post to Facebook, create a video, proofread an article, or respond to blog comments?
If you can be doing your $50/hr work while your outsourcer is doing their $35/hr work, it’s a win-win-win. You win. They win. Your client wins.
And it’s not just time you’re saving. You’re also creating efficiency and increasing your quality. So maybe it’s a win-win-win-win-win.
Sure, there are risks to anything.
I’ll admit that outsourcing has its fair share of risks. You can risk hiring the wrong person. You risk an outsourcer going AWOL. You run the risk of poor work standards. You even risk your brand being tarnished when an outsourced worker gets shoddy with their work.
There’s a flip side to this.
Most entrepreneurs and marketers are concerned they’ll get low quality work if they outsource.
What I’ve discovered is that you can actually improve the quality of work if you outsource.
Let’s say you need to create an explainer video for a new product. You can do it yourself with your iPhone and feeble editing skills.
Or you can outsource it to an explainer video professional.
If you outsource it, the quality will be a million times better than the quality you’d get if you’d tried to do it yourself.
See what I mean?
Besides, you don’t always need perfection when it comes to marketing. Although I tend to be a perfectionist, I’ve realized that done is better than perfect.
But I believe the rewards are greater than the risks. Besides, part of being a good marketer is being a good manager to other marketers.
The great thing is that there is a wide array of virtual assistants and marketing professionals available who will ensure that your campaign runs like a well-oiled machine without you having to hold their hand every step of the way.
Here are some specific tasks you should outsource right away.
I always strive to maintain high quality standards on both NeilPatel.com and Quick Sprout. I’ve found I’m consistently able to do so without it devouring my time by outsourcing.
And I’m not alone. In fact, 64% of B2B marketers outsource their writing in some capacity.
Here are some of the ways you can improve your blog quality through outsourcing:
In my opinion, social media may be pound-for-pound the easiest area of marketing to outsource.
One of the biggest challenges of social media is curating the content you plan to share. It can take an enormous amount of time simply to find good, relevant articles that your audience will benefit from. Outsourcing this task is an instant way to free up several hours a week!
Think about the importance of visuals in your social media content too. Adding images to individual posts is a massive time drain…unless you outsource it!
A lot of tasks don’t require an immense amount of experience. Most virtual assistants are fully capable of handling them with minimal supervision:
While you don’t want just anyone handling the more complex aspects of SEO, there are several elements of SEO that virtual assistants are fully capable of looking after. Many freelancers have the skill to perform keyword research, create a 301 map, or generate a thorough sitemap.
If you’re looking for someone to deal with the nuts and bolts of SEO, you’ll want to go with a highly qualified SEO firm who has a track record of success.
This post from Kissmetrics discusses what to look for in an SEO firm and how to tell if they’re helping or hurting you.
These are some of the SEO tasks that can be outsourced:
Did you know that 72% of large organizations and 33% of small companies outsource their content creation?
Content marketing is my jam. I love it. I do it. And I’ve experienced incredible success with it.
As experienced as I am, I feel completely comfortable outsourcing numerous aspects of content marketing.
Let’s face it: content marketing takes serious time. As content marketing grows, you’ll discover there are more and more tasks you need to—but don’t have time to—do.
You’re left with a single choice: outsource or drown.
Here is what you can outsource:
You can learn more about the process of outsourcing content marketing on one of my previous posts. In it, I discuss some important questions to ask to ensure you get the most bang for your buck.
Every good marketer makes decisions based on analytics.
But analytics can be tricky. You have to set up your analytics, configure the analytics, generate reports from your analytics, monitor these analytics, analyze the analytics, determine takeaways from the analytics, and then make strategic marketing decisions in light of these analytics.
Thankfully, there are parts of the analytics maze you can outsource:
Knowing what the public perception of your business is at all times has never been more important than it is today. In fact, 97% of consumers say they read reviews about local businesses.
Due to the fact that reputation management can be inherently time-consuming, I’ve found outsourcing it to be a smart move:
Email marketing matters more today than ever before.
As old-school as it sounds, email marketing is one of the best methods of attracting and retaining high-value leads for your B2B or B2C.
But, as with any area of marketing, things can get tricky here too. Why? Because it takes a lot of time to set up email, integrate it, create updates, format newsletters, and take care of the nitty-gritty of mailing lists and scheduling.
It’s one of the first things you should consider outsourcing:
WordPress could be considered the universal blogging and publishing platform.
In fact, 26% of all websites on the planet use WordPress. If you run your site on it, you can make your life a lot simpler by outsourcing a few key tasks:
We’re living in a globalized, digitized world with a surplus of professionals who can handle nearly every aspect of your marketing campaigns.
As a result, outsourcing many marketing tasks makes complete sense and has never been easier to do.
I’ve had a lot of success with outsourcing, and I know I’m not alone. Many of my industry colleagues and clients have told me the same thing. If it weren’t for outsourcing, they wouldn’t be in business!
Once you start outsourcing, amazing things will happen to your business.
You suddenly find yourself with more time to focus on high-level strategy. Instantly, you encounter new opportunities for growth and expansion. Your vision becomes clearer. You open up new channels of engagement. Things simply improve.
Outsourcing is a small move that starts the cascade of great benefits.
If you haven’t been taking advantage of outsourcing, I would recommend first identifying which tasks are hurting your efficiency and then hiring others to handle them.
Here’s my challenge: This week, outsource just one marketing task. That’s it!
Use Fiverr, Upwork, or Craigslist. Find someone who’s skilled. Give them a task. See what happens.
Have you outsourced any other areas of your marketing efforts that I didn’t cover?
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Wouldn’t it be great if every single person who clicked on one of your articles read it from start to finish, unable to pull their eyes away from the screen?
I think we both know the answer to that question.
To achieve this goal, however, you must master the art of writing intriguing introductions.
Wait a second, you’re thinking. Writing introductions? Isn’t that kind of a small detail of a 2,000-word article?
Your article intro is not a small detail.
The introduction to your article is often the difference between engaging readers and having a bounce rate high enough to make a click-baiter cringe.
Think about it. If you don’t grab your readers right away, you’ll lose them.
You went through all that work of writing a killer article, right? You worked hard at it. You spent a lot of time on it. You did a ton of research.
But if your introduction sucks, your efforts will be all for nothing.
You lost before you even got started!
If you want to write great content, improve the success of your marketing campaigns, and increase the loyalty of your fans, you must master writing introductions.
Let me show you how.
To have a strong introduction, you need to open with a strong first sentence.
The millisecond your reader hits the page, they have an extremely high likelihood of leaving the page.
The first sentence has one single purpose: to entice the reader to read the next sentence. In doing so, it sets the tone for the rest of the article, hooking the reader in, one step at a time.
If you fail at this, you readers won’t scroll.
This is a histogram showing how far people scroll through Slate article pages. Each bar represents the share of people who stopped scrolling at a particular spot in the article. (An article is assumed to be around 2000 pixels long; if the top of your browser window gets to the 2000-pixel mark, you’re counted as scrolling 100% through the article. The X axis goes to 120% because on most pages, there’s usually stuff below the 2000-pixel mark, like the comments section.) This graph only includes people who spent any time engaging with the page at all (users who “bounced” from the page immediately after landing on it are not represented.) The graph shows that many Slate readers do not scroll at all. That’s the spike at the 0% mark, representing about 5% of readers. Most visitors scroll about halfway through a typical Slate story. The spike near the end is an anomaly caused by pages containing photos and videos—on those pages, people scroll through the whole page.
And if they don’t scroll, they won’t engage.
Check out this article by Dilbert author Scott Adams to see how the first sentence is done.
He writes this:
I went from being a bad writer to a good writer after taking a one-day course in “business writing.”
That’s a great opening line.
Why? Because it makes me want to know more!
Adams nailed it. He drew us in by making us ask questions.
If you don’t know how to craft an intriguing first sentence, the remaining 980 words of your article will be a complete waste.
Luckily for you, with a few simple tricks, writing a phenomenal first sentence can be quite easy.
The first thing to keep in mind is that you want to keep the first sentence short. This makes it easy for the reader to digest the first bits of information and prevents them from losing interest quickly.
But there is more to it than that.
You have to make sure that the first sentence grabs the reader’s attention and holds it for the rest of the article.
Here are a couple of tried-and-true tactics that make for super compelling first lines.
This is an easy way to get the reader’s attention and get them engaged without a whole lot of effort on your part.
For example, if you are writing an article on quitting your job and starting your own company, you could open with the question: “Did you know that almost 70% of Americans report being actively disengaged from their careers?”
Why does this work?
It has to do with the brain’s “limbic reward system.”
When this system is activated, dopamine is released. And dopamine gives us a sense of reward and pleasure.
When we are intrigued by a question, i.e., experience a sense of curiosity, the limbic reward system lights up. And that’s why we want to keep reading—it’s rewarding to satisfy curiosity.
Writer Olga Khazan asks a question that’s on everyone’s mind, causing the reader to be instantly interested.
We want to know the answer to that question, so we keep reading.
That’s why a question is a great opening line. You can even use the question as the article title.
The brain also lights up when it encounters a story.
According to the theory of neural coupling, certain portions of the brain are activated when a reader thinks about the same mental and physical activity that a character in a story is doing.
James Clear usually starts his blog articles with a story, often a true story.
The story makes his readers interested in the article and keeps them reading to the very end.
Another great way to start your article is to use an attention-grabbing quote.
Let’s say you are writing an article on world travel. A great way to introduce the article would be with the quote from Helen Keller:
“Life is a daring adventure or nothing at all.”
Sparking the imagination is an instant way to draw the reader into the experience of the article.
Notice how this article from Wired For Story begins:
The reader tries to obey the imperative by imagining. This effort compels the reader to read further, drawing them into the article.
Writers for The Atlantic are experts at their craft. This writer does the same thing—asking the reader to imagine.
In a day and age when the Internet is so rife with crappy information and fraudulent “gurus,” people are skeptical. They have every reason to be.
Opening your article with a relevant fact or statistic is a great way to establish trust and authority from the first sentence and let readers know you’ve done your research.
Okay, so you’ve crafted an excellent first sentence, and you have your reader’s interest.
Now what?
Now, you have to hold that interest by having something interesting and uncommon to say.
Very few people take the time and energy to regularly produce new, thought-provoking content. If you do, you’ll set yourself apart from the herd in a big way.
Forget re-purposing of old articles or rewriting stuff from other people’s websites. If you want to have the reader’s respect and attention, you have to say something they’ve never heard before.
Unfortunately, a lot of the stuff you read today has been regurgitated 28 times before.
Let’s imagine you run a travel blog. Based on my advice, you write a number of 3,000-word comprehensive “How-To Guides.”
Whenever a reader opens your guide on financing their first around the world trip, they’ll expect to read all about airline rewards programs, frugality, and credit card points.
And that information is great, but it is also very generic.
A better introduction would be something like this:
How would you like to save up enough money in the next 6 months to spend all of 2017 traveling the world?
That would be pretty epic, right?
Well, this is entirely possible, and in today’s article, I am going to show you how you can do this.
It’s not by skipping your morning latte or spending thousands of dollars with your credit cards on a few hundred miles either.
I am going to show you how you can create a life of mobility and freedom by leveraging the skills you already have, tactically selecting your destinations, and using a little known tax secret that will save you thousands of dollars!
Sound good? Let’s get to it.
It’s hard to be different. I realize that.
Sometimes, in order to create unique stuff, we simply have to work harder, think longer, and research more than our competition.
Here are some ways you can develop that unique voice in your article introduction:
Unique isn’t easy. But it’s worth it.
We live in a world where most people have an attention span of only a few seconds.
Apparently, our attention span is getting shorter!
After a few seconds, we get bored and move on to the next shiny object.
If you want your readers to make time in their days to read what you have to say, make sure you present things as simply as possible.
Longer articles, of course, deserve longer introductions. But it’s important to respect people’s time and attention. You can’t change what is (people’s short attention spans) by writing a long introduction based on what should be (longer attention spans).
Avoid rambling about how great your information is, and just share it already!
Whenever you are writing educational material for other people, you want to use the word “you” as much (and as naturally) as possible.
In this article, I’ve used some variation of the word you more than 100 times. Why? Because I’m talking to you! I want you to know this information. I want you to benefit from it.
By emphasizing the word “you” in your article, you show the reader you are directly addressing them and their situation and not just writing a generic article to the general populace.
But there’s another side to this. I should refer to myself as well. My goal is to convey a personal feel to this article. After all, it’s me talking to you, right? So it’s only natural that I would refer to myself too.
The point of an introduction is exactly that: to introduce the content that will be presented in an article.
I cannot tell you the number of times online articles left me confused even I after I’d read a few of their paragraphs.
I couldn’t tell whether the authors were teaching me how to run successful Facebook ads, or telling me a weird story about their childhood.
Take a few sentences, and clearly explain what the article is going to cover without giving away too many details.
This will build suspense around the subject matter while still letting your audience know what they may be in for.
A great example of this comes from the Buffer blog. Notice how the introduction poses a question and then proposes to answer that question.
Your curiosity stays high, but the introduction sets the stage.
Once you’ve explained what the article is, now it’s time to explain why people should care.
Everyone on the Internet approaches every new piece of information with a simple question: “What’s in it for me?”
If you want to write introductions that hook the reader and help your content go viral, you have to master the art of explaining what the reader stands to gain from the information you are sharing—the benefits.
How will it benefit your readers’ lives? How will it solve a problem they are facing? How will it cure a pain they are feeling?
If you understand how to quickly and efficiently answer these questions, you’ll keep your readers glued to your article till the last word.
Few things can make or break your article as easily as an introduction.
If you can master the art of the first few paragraphs, you’ll be able to increase reader engagement, improve sales, and earn a reputation as a phenomenal writer.
It’s not an easy skill to master, but like many things in Internet marketing, it’s fairly straightforward.
If you put in the work, you’ll get results.
What tactics do you use to create a compelling article introduction?
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When was the last time you took a long hard look at your landing pages?
On paper, landing page optimization seems easy enough. In fact, you’re probably following some sort of formula to design your landing pages.
Follow a few basic principles, capture the attention of your visitors, put to rest any doubts they may have, urge them to purchase, and let the money pour in.
Right?
In reality, it’s not this easy.
My experience with landing pages has taught me that it’s hard work to design the perfect landing page.
There are principles to follow, sure. But there’s also a lot of information you need to gain before you can design that killer landing page.
That final question—what’s going to make them convert?—is the most important one.
You want to know what I really care about when it comes to landing pages?
Conversions.
I just want more conversions.
You probably do too. According to the studies, “only about 22 percent of businesses are satisfied with their conversion rates.”
Let me get to the point. Here are 10 landing page tactics I’ve had immense success with and that can help convert even casual visitors into customers.
The “less is more” idea rings true throughout many aspects of marketing.
Science and research have shown that this minimalist mindset and strategy lead to breakthroughs in life and business.
What Minimalism is really about is reassessment of your priorities so that you can strip away the excess stuff—the possessions and ideas and relationships and activities—that don’t bring value to your life.
What’s true in life is true in digital marketing too.
Tommy Walker’s expert article, “Why ‘Simple’ Websites Are Scientifically Better” tells exactly why and how the mind responds to a simple, minimalist website.
Your landing page is no exception.
The simpler, the better.
Saturate your landing page with a lot of unnecessary extras, and you’ll be sure to distract and confuse your visitors.
One area where marketers often go wrong is having multiple offers. In fact, 48% of landing pages contain multiple offers.
However, multiple offers can decrease conversions by 266%!
That means you need to keep things relatively sparse and avoid giving your visitors a cognitive overload.
Take a look at this example from Vimeo:
Bold and beautiful, right?
This landing page for Vimeo Business wants you to do one thing and one thing only: Get Vimeo Business.
There is no doubt in your mind what your next action should be.
Either way, Vimeo’s got you hooked.
Why? Because this is a minimalist landing page with zero clutter, zero friction, and zero hurdles to conversion.
By avoiding complication and excessive choice, you will help your visitors to maintain better focus, which is a surefire way to boost conversions.
The pop-it-in-the-microwave culture we live in means one thing for landing pages.
Stuff happens fast.
Instant engagement is essential, and you need to get straight to the point.
That’s why I like to treat it as if I’ve got only five seconds to capture the attention of my visitors.
How do you achieve this?
This goes back to my first point about taking a minimalist approach. Often a snazzy headline, an image, and a CTA are all it takes.
Also, keep key benefits above the fold so that visitors can be persuaded to buy without having to scroll down.
Craig Tomlin, a usability expert, explains why five seconds matter:
The reason five seconds is so important is because of research studies which demonstrate that visitors to websites take a very short amount of time (in some cases a fraction of a second, as little as 50 milliseconds) to judge the quality of a website.
What about those “research studies?”
Let me reiterate:
It takes five seconds or less for a user to decide whether or not they like your website.
Whether or not you realize it, you’ve proven the power of the five-second rule when you look at landing pages.
For example, let’s say you saw this ad in your SERP.
What happens next?
You see this page:
It took me 1.86 seconds to read the headline, subheadline, and CTA. (I timed it.)
Do I like it or not?
Keep in mind, I’m being subtly influenced by the color of the website, the image behind the text, and the negative space surrounding the information.
In less than five seconds, I’ve decided whether or not I like this page and whether or not I’m going to click on the CTA “get started now.”
That’s the power of the five-second rule.
As I mentioned in one of my posts on Quick Sprout, for every second delay in page response, there is a 7% decrease in conversion rate.
This ties into the five-second rule: visitors should be able to get the gist of what you’re offering and understand the inherent benefits of it within five seconds.
If your landing page is cumbersome and slow to load, scale back your content, and do whatever it takes to speed it up.
To test your website’s speed, use Google PageSpeed insights. All you need to do is plug in your website URL, and get a quick score.
You could make the argument that these look cool from an aesthetic standpoint.
Maybe that’s why so many marketers think that it’s a good move to use carousels/sliders above the fold on a landing page.
But in reality, this can be a deathblow to your conversion rates.
To prove this point, the University of Notre Dame tested a slider on its homepage and found that approximately 1% of visitors clicked on a feature:
Not exactly ideal, is it?
When users see something, they will click on it. If that “something” keeps changing, the likelihood that they will click on it drops.
The bottom line here is that such elements only add to the “busyness” of a landing page and detract from its value.
Decide what your landing page should display—instead of a slider or carousel—and stick with that.
Today’s average visitor is a skimmer and scanner.
They don’t want to get bogged down with lengthy paragraphs and bulky blocks of text.
In fact, “a study found that good use of white space between paragraphs and in the left and right margins increases comprehension by almost 20 percent. Readers find it easier to focus on and process generously spaced content.”
You can make it easier for visitors to navigate their way through your landing page by following this principle.
Notice how Buffer uses white space on its landing page:
If I were to cram all that content together, it would take up a tiny corner of the page.
There’s not a lot of stuff. The white space on the page makes it easy for my brain to analyze the information and decide what to do next. The result? I’m more likely to make the right decision—the decision to convert.
Apple is famous for its use of white space. Its branding, product design, and even its store layout is founded on the importance of negative space/white space.
Its MacBook landing page shows the use of white space:
Take a page from Apple’s playbook, and use more white space.
It’s pretty undeniable that humans are social creatures by nature, and we’re all influenced by others, at least to some extent.
Often, all it takes to convert someone who’s on the fence is a bit of social proof.
For instance, you might include a list of some top companies who have used your product/service, along with their logos.
I’ve dubbed this term “logo porn.”
On Crazy Egg, I display some of the recognizable companies who have used the product.
This doesn’t take up a lot of space, and visitors can quickly scan your landing page without a lot of effort.
Leadpages uses the same approach on its landing page (which, ironically, is about landing pages):
This can really boost your trustworthiness and reputability in your customers’ eyes.
Putting yourself in the shoes of prospects is critical for increasing conversions.
For all they know, you’re some charlatan, snake oil salesman who’s just going to take their money and run.
To alleviate their fears, it’s helpful to include your contact info so they can view it without having to click on anything.
I Done This, a team productivity tool, displays its contact information at the top of the landing page. If you’re so inclined, you can pick up your phone and give them a call.
This piece of information lets your page visitors know you’re a legitimate business with an actual physical location, which should put their mind at ease.
Although this tactic might not seem exactly cutting-edge or game-changing, it can still help conversions.
Testimonials (especially with pictures) can really hammer home the value your product/service provides.
Quip’s landing page provides a great example of how this works:
As HubSpot shows, testimonials that display a name, picture, position, and company logo are particularly powerful.
Sometimes, the testimonials can come from well-known people. Other times, they could come from ordinary people, more aligned with your target customer.
I Done This displays some testimonials from both groups of people. (Dan Pink is a well-known author.)
Testimonials like these can help a casual visitor start thinking about becoming an actual customer.
Did you know that using videos on landing pages can increase conversions by 86%?
That’s not a number to scoff at.
I realize that this seems to be at odds with me recommending a minimalist layout, but it’s possible to keep it simple while incorporating video.
Take a look at ClickFunnels. Its landing page displays a video that starts playing automatically when I hit the page:
It’s quirky. It has real people. It has dialogue.
I’m hooked.
After spending a few minutes of my life watching the video, I’m more likely to convert. Why?
Because I spent time watching the video. And because while watching that video, I realized the importance and usefulness of the product.
Just keep it relatively brief (five minutes max), and use it as an opportunity to educate and entertain your visitors and create a personal connection.
While the debate over just how much of an impact social shares have on SEO continues to rage on, you can’t deny that having plenty of social shares on a landing page can have a positive impact on conversions.
This is yet another way to use social proof to your advantage.
Even those visitors who don’t have any intention of buying when they reach your landing page can be persuaded to take action if you use the techniques I showed you above.
Landing page optimization can be complicated. It can be confusing. And it can take a lot of time to get in the mind of your customers and determine how to satisfy their needs.
I would never recommend that you shortcut the research, the persona development, and all the hard work that goes into creating a compelling landing page.
However, I realize that sometimes you just need a brief guide or a list of tactics like this one.
These ten methods will allow you to jump into any marketing situation, create effective landing pages, and convert those casual visitors into customers.
Are there any other specific landing page optimization techniques you’ve had success with?
