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Landing Page Makeover Clinic #27: HiddenSoy.com

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This is another addition to our ongoing series of tutorials and case studies on landing pages that work. Most days I just don’t know what’s safe to eat or drink, but I’ve always thought that soy was a better, more nutritious choice for my protein needs — didn’t you? More vegan and all that. Well, that’s not the way Dianne Gregg sees it. In fact, she thinks the stuff is downright dangerous to your health and well-being. Ever wonder how much soy is actually lurking in the food we eat, unannounced and unidentified? Dianne has the goods on that info, too, and she wants to share. She’s got a blog, a newsletter, and a book. She wants more subscribers and she wants to sell more books. For the purposes of this makeover, we want to focus on growing her subscriber base. Grow the subscribers and the book sales will follow. The Goal: Increase subscription rate to 100 new subscribers weekly toward the overall goal of converting subscribers into buyers for her book, The Hidden Dangers of Soy . The Problem: Need more traffic, unable to directly track sales from promotional efforts, including social networking, article writing, blogs, etc. The Current Landing Page (homepage): hiddensoy.com Value: $17.95 (a little cheaper at Amazon) & $10.50 e-book Click image for larger view The Maven’s 10-Point Critique #1 — Focus your readers’ attention with a strong establishing headline. Your content doesn’t offer a clear entry point (I’ve highlighted the different areas where you dance all around it) where you connect the dots for the visitor. You need a strong headline to tie it all together, like: “Could All the So-Called “Healthy” Soy You’ve Been Eating Actually Be Making You and Your Family Sick?” (A variant for moms could be: “Could All the So-Called “Healthy” Soy You’ve Been Giving Your Family Actually Be Making Them (and You!) Sick?”) It’s not enough to just present the danger; you need to make it personal. #2 — Focus your content on the single most important thing you want visitors to do. Here’s a heat map I did for your current site. (Courtesy of Feng-Gui.com .) Notice how your newsletter sign-up area doesn’t light-up at all. The main focus is on your book cover and your headshot. If the goal is to increase newsletter sign-ups, then all content — directly and indirectly — needs to support the visitor from first view to action. Your current content is a disorganized hodge-podge with no clear path from A to B. You need to put your book and its ancillaries in a secondary position and push your newsletter forward. Also, does your newsletter have an actual title? I couldn’t tell from your current content. If not, give it one. Add “Dianne Gregg’s” in front of the name, just like you did the website. #3 — Focus your content on building your authority and credibility for the topic. Since you’re focusing on you and your expertise, you want to give your visitors enough info on your experience, background, quality of information you present, etc. Starting with your personal story is fine, but you want to bring in scientific and medical experts as well as fans to support your expertise in this space. You do this in your book section, but there’s no reason why these kudos wouldn’t apply as general testimonials, as well. Use them that way. Get them on the homepage where they’ll do you some good, as well as a separate section on the navigation. (Please note that a poorly written testimonial from a medical professional undercuts its value to you. All testimonials — from experts and just folks — should be written in clean and properly spelled standard English.) I like the audio player. I might consider doing a video intro, as well. #4 — Provide intuitive paths for your visitor to move around the site. If you’re going to use your homepage as your main landing page, you need to have a navigation strategy that organizes your content for your visitor in a common-sense way. Right now, you have ZIPPO navigation which makes moving through the site a tedious, frustrating exercise, even for the most committed soy-information seeker. Here’s a recommended first pass: HOME PUBLICATIONS Newsletter Book TESTIMONIALS ARTICLES RESOURCES BLOG ABOUT DIANNE CONTACT You have a lot of content on the site that could easily be thrown into these or equivalent buckets. Don’t make your visitors hunt for what they need. #5 — Rethink and reorganize your homepage/website from the ground up. Detecting a theme here? Sites that do a great job of organizing their content through intuitive navigation and clean, supportive design make for a comfortable and pleasant visitor experience. The easier and more pleasant the visit is, the longer the visitor stays on your site and engages with your message. I found this simple WordPress blog template (courtesy of Notepad Theme Demo at IThemes) that provided a reasonably good format as a jumping off point for a possible redesign. Click image for larger view What works well here is that it allows you highlight several different inputs for visitors to interact with, yet still focuses the primary attention on newsletter sign-up and you. #6 — Rework the current banner. Most people, including myself, wouldn’t know a soybean from a chick pea. I don’t think the image of the soybeans underscores the ‘dangerous food’ motif. I’d substitute a new banner that’s clean, clear and forceful about your topic. #7 — Clarify your calls to action. Right now, your call to action focuses on “Send me free stuff.” There’s no connection to the benefits of your topic (I want to stay healthy) or even that I’m getting a monthly newsletter ( Subscribe or Join us now ). Again, connect the dots for your visitor. Remind me of the value of what you offer and how great it is that I’m going to get this important health information every month — free. #8 — Clarify the newsletter specifics. I read your newsletter page several times and wasn’t sure how the newsletter was formatted or what information/regular features came with it. If this was a print publication, you’d talk in terms of number of pages, size, a number of main articles and a few regular features. So using this as a model, how can you translate this kind of detail to a description of your digital newsletter? Give your prospects specifics. Design a cover visual and pop a thumbnail into the newsletter box on the homepage. Make it real. #9 — Clarify the bonuses new subscribers get. You offer a ton of free information for a sign-up (as noted on one of your interior pages), but I’m not sure what format they’re in. Are they individual reports? Articles? Separate emails? Again, be specific. Don’t just list a title and call it done. Add 1-2 sentences of description and detail. Add a value to each bonus offering, as well. Tally them up, restate the value of good health in the face of lies, and make a strong call to action that makes the prospect ‘gotta have it’ — and wrap it all with a big fat call to action button. #10 – Strengthen your SEO title and description (critical). I did a quick search for “soy risks” on Google and you were nowhere to be found. That’s because your pages are missing those super important SEO title and meta descriptions. Here are your current listings: The Hidden Dangers of Soy; Dianne Gregg Here’s another way of going about it: Health Dangers of Soy, Are You At Risk? Get Free Newsletter | Dianne Gregg Do your keyword research . What are the words and phrases people use to find your info? Those are the words and phrases that will form your site glossary for content as well as SEO and make it easier for people to find you. My thanks to Dianne Gregg for her supreme patience and support of Heifer International. Look for my next makeover in about 4 weeks. Want your own Copywriting Maven landing page makeover? Got a landing page that’s more poop than pop? Need to get better results from your online marketing? If you’re interested in a private page makeover, site audit, or other services, please email Roberta directly . About the Author: Roberta Rosenberg is The Copywriting Maven at MGP Direct, Inc . Find her @CopywriterMaven on Twitter.

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Landing Page Makeover Clinic #27: HiddenSoy.com

Amazing Amazon Domination

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If you have been on the Internet for quite some time, but do not that there is a lot of potential to make money from one of world’s largest online store, Amazon, then you’re in for a nice surprise. Keeping that in mind, Dana Forsythe created a unique money-making program that circles around different aspects

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Final Lessons Learned from One of the World’s Highest-Paid Copywriters

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This is the final installment of a three-part series on how to translate advice from marketing guru Dan Kennedy to a new online environment. One of the smartest things any online marketer can do is to study the “old school” guys who wrote direct mail, magazine ads, and other artifacts of advertising history. Why? Because it took a tremendous understanding of the psychology of persuasion to make those tactics work. When you pair shiny new communication technology with tried-and-true methods to persuade and sell, you hugely increase your odds of success. So let’s continue exploring what old-school guru Dan Kennedy can teach us about 21st-century marketing. This week we’ll cover lessons 11 through 14 from Kennedy’s book The Ultimate Marketing Plan . I can’t promise these tips will make cash start spewing out of your laptop. But they do represent a lot of sound business thinking. (Incidentally, the links to the book are Amazon affiliate links, which means if you buy it, I’ll be able to buy a pack of gum! Put any of this advice into action and you should get quite a lot more out of the deal.) 11. Create a short-term sales surge One of the factors that plagues most small businesses, especially when they’re starting out, is a shortage of cash. Creating quick “sales surges” is one of Kennedy’s specialties, and he has a lot of suggestions for how to do that. (For more ideas, I can strongly recommend picking up his book.) Essentially, though, all the variations come down to one basic strategy: Make a great offer . Limit it in time, number of copies you’ll sell, or both. Make sure you come up with a good story or reason for the promotion. Kennedy, as you can imagine, gives some rather old-school ideas like red tag sales or “My accountant thinks I’m crazy!” He also likes to pluck interesting themes out of current events. For example, at a recent conference he invited loyal customers to bring old copies of his products in a “Cash for Clunkers” promotion. Kennedy’s creativity is mostly involved in coming up with a reason for his promotions. But if selling information is part of what you do, you can also create a brand-new product for your “cash surge.” It doesn’t have to be extensive (it’s annoying how often we’re short on both cash and time). In fact, you can offer something that you develop over the weekend . These “surges” can help any business, small or large, get through the lean times and amplify earnings during the best. And not only do short-term surges bring in cash, they also build your list of customers, strengthening your business for the long haul. 12. Take Advantage of New Marketing Technologies As you might imagine, readers of Copyblogger are well ahead of the curve here. If any of these are missing from your current communication mix, you can very profitably add them to make your business stronger. Audio, Video and Webinars: Record a meeting, training or presentation and post it to the web where you can repeatedly benefit. Autoresponders: With a great autoresponder series, you can write copy which is delivered in a sequence, regardless of when a prospect signs up. This will enable you to automate your marketing and free up time to refine other aspects of your business. And they’re great for creating rapport and trust with your customers. The next hot communication technology. Kennedy is a notorious technophobe; he doesn’t personally use email or the web at all. But like many smart businesspeople, he’s willing to make money with new technology even though he personally dislikes it. In fact, Sonia seemed to have experienced a warm reception when she recently spoke at one of his conferences. As long as a marketing tactic is ethical, be willing to consider it even if you aren’t personally a fan. If you hate Facebook but that’s where your customers are, you may want to suck it up. 13. Avoid employee sabotage For those who use VAs or other employees (whether they’re on a contract or a regular payroll), there are some special areas to watch out for. Employees are a reflection of both you and your business. Whether they are ringing up sales or answering email, they are ambassadors for your policies, and for how you feel about your customers. In my first business, there were times when I would leave my shop on an errand only to come back to a rather unpleasant surprise. “You said WHAT?” “To who?!?!” Delegating is a great thing (and usually necessary if you want your business to grow). But you must be the captain of your own marketing ship, as well as the navigator and the crew. Even the most valuable employees are still just that — employees. And no one will ever care as much about your business as you do. This is one reason the Partnering Profits model makes so much sense in the online world. Small businesses are easier and easier to create. It makes perfect sense to partner with people to run them with you, sharing the workload and the profit. 14. Hiring and firing experts Learn from the best, but take everything with a grain of salt. I’ve bought and absorbed numerous info products over the last year. Some were good, some were great, and a few were barely better than lousy. Nevertheless, even the worst has taught me something. You won’t learn it all in a day or a download, nor should you expect to. Someone asked an awesome question in Sonia’s Remarkable Marketing Blueprint forum the other day. They wondered, “What’s the point in having memberships in different sites, like Lateral Action , Third Tribe Marketing , and the Blueprint?” I’m a member of all three, so I’m happy to share my thoughts on that. There isn’t a single download that holds all the answers. Like life, we pick up a bit here and a bit there, all of it blending to make us who we are. We experience things differently at different times. True success is a slow and steady climb , rung by rung. When you involve yourself with quality people who are putting out quality information, you get a better ladder. You still have to do the climbing yourself.. There is no guru or authority who can give you all the answers. Not Dan Kennedy, not Brian Clark, not Sean Platt. That said, you want to make sure you’re taking advice from someone who’s walked the walk. In Cameron Crowe’s much-quoted movie “Say Anything“, there’s a scene where the hero, Lloyd Dobler, is standing at the gas station listening to a handful of lonely men handing out relationship advice. To which Lloyd says: If you guys know so much about women, how come you’re here at, like, the Gas ‘n’ Sip on a Saturday night, completely alone drinking beers with no women anywhere? Good question. I would strongly recommend Dan Kennedy’s Ultimate Marketing Plan as a powerful resource that should be in any copywriter’s toolbox. He’s “walked the walk” and advised thousands of traditional businesses. And with a little creativity, his advice works just as well in the new online environment. Obviously, the book contains more information than I could squeeze into a few thousand words. But I hope the “Cliff’s Notes” version has been useful! Read the other posts in this series Lessons from one of the World’s Highest-Paid Copywriters: 1 – 5 Lessons from one of the World’s Highest-Paid Copywriters: 6 – 10 About the Author: Sean Platt writes direct response copy , as well as helping authors write, publish and promote their book. Follow him on Twitter .

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Establishing A Brand Image Online

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I thought the following article from Mahesh Murthy via The Wall Street Journal was instructive: One thing I learned from my days in traditional advertising is that a brand doesn’t exist on shelves—it exists in the hearts and minds of people. Your brand is the sum total of perceptions about your product in the heads of your relevant audience. If that’s true, then online media are the most important place for your brand image to be established, defended and grown. This is where your offering comes face-to-face with your audience and where its responses can be measured, shaped and—if need be—countered in real time. This is where perceptions can be built, person by person. This brand building is more effective that the mode we’ve employed until now: TV commercials with 30 seconds of well-produced fiction that try to sell a brand image. It is more credible and much less expensive. In fact, it can cost you nothing, if you have the knack and can do it right. Not too many TV campaigns can match that. Zero-budget advertising is a phrase no traditional advertising firm wants to hear. The old ad business is predicated on your spending lots of money buying space and time in media vehicles such as this one. But if you look at recent times, it’s a model that is dying. Look at some of the world’s biggest brands. Gooogle, Amazon, Ferrari, Starbucks, Ikea, eBay, Yahoo, Apple, Harley Davidson, Reuters and Goldman Sachs are a dozen among the 100 top brands in the world per a recent study by brand management firm Interbrand, each with a “brand value” that averages $10 billion. Word of mouth played a major role in building those brands. We await the Apple iPad with no ads released yet, we talk of Google Buzz without having ever seen a Google ad, and we throng to a Zara outlet without seeing its commercials on TV. Today, the best way to establish your brand among big-hitter rivals is to make it remark-worthy and generate conversations free of charge. See how Red Bull took on big-ad-buying Coke and Pepsi with a product that sold at a higher price for a smaller pack size and built it to a billion-dollar brand with little advertising? The new axiom, call it Mahesh’s Law, is this: your marketing IQ is inversely proportional to your marketing budget. Start on your brand by answering a simple question: Are you remark-worthy? When someone talks about your offering, is there a 10-second sound bite that is “re-tweetable” on Twitter? If not, go back to basics and craft a simple, clear hook that that sets you apart. Like: Google helps you find stuff better, Harley owners are a cult, Starbucks is a great place to be, Red Bull lets you party harder. Now apply a single test: Do a Google search on your brand to see whether every element of the resulting page can support this position. Among the results will be your Web site, news items about you, other Web users who mention you, blogs about you, tweets about you, videos starring you and such. Now work to own the presence in each of these elements. Start with the Web site. If it’s got corporate gobbledygook and you don’t go back a second time, users won’t either. Make it something worth talking about and worth returning to. Find a Web firm that understands your brand, and not a tech firm. Or do it yourself if you’re starting out. Then audit every mention of you. Google alerts alone won’t do it, but it’s a start. See who’s saying what. Then intervene in conversations and respond to complaints, visibly, with your own Twitter account or some other way of interacting. It’s important that on-lookers see your response to a complaint in the open so they know that you can take care of theirs too, if they ever have one. This is where your real brand is built. Are you seen as the one to talk to in your industry? What will make it so? Issue white papers or surveys, or give out fun statistics. Do the things regularly that give you thought leadership in your niche. Are there fun or educational videos you’re part of? Put them up, even if they’re shot on your phone. Are there competitors being talked about? Intervene, and respectfully make your presence felt. Journalists today take more stories from what’s blogged and tweeted about than they take from publicists. Connect with them directly. They’ll respect you for it. Become a “source.” You’re not burdened with the necessity of paying a big ad firm to do cookie-cutter work. You have the advantage of not having any money. So you’ll probably end up ahead. — Mahesh Murthy is the Founder of digital brand-management firm Pinstorm and a venture capitalist at Seedfund. He tweets as @maheshmurthy. Indeed, the web search channel today is where brands live and die.

eb321848e3b.gif Establishing A Brand Image Online

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Establishing A Brand Image Online

14 Lessons Learned from One of the World’s Highest-Paid Copywriters

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This is part one of a three-part series on how to profitably translate advice from old-school marketing guru Dan Kennedy to a new online environment. Dan Kennedy is the Sovereign of Sales Letters. (Or maybe that’s the Duke of Direct Response.) He knows exactly how to deliver a marketing message with maximum clarity and zero confusion. As he’ll readily tell you, he’s one of the world’s highest-paid copywriters. His classic book The Ultimate Marketing Plan promises low-cost ideas and high-profit results. This book delivers on both counts, and it’s well worth the read. But it was written in 1991, and at first seems like it’s more relevant to a restaurant or dry cleaner than it is to a web-based entrepreneur. If you have a hard time translating bricks-and-mortar advice to your internet business, well, just be glad we’ve got Copyblogger. The Ultimate Marketing Plan walks you through the 14 steps Kennedy considers necessary to build a bulletproof marketing plan that can help you to explode your business. And this post will tell you how to translate those to what you’ve been up to. Dan Kennedy’s 14 Steps to the Ultimate Marketing Plan 1) Putting together the right message This is your business’s Unique Selling Proposition , boys and girls. The principles behind the USP have been talked to death. You can call it the Purple Cow, your market position, your winning difference, or just the answer to Why Should Anyone Read Your Blog? The reason the USP has been talked to death is that this core idea is essential to effective marketing. Even though defining your USP is one of the best places to start when you’re building a solid marketing plan, it also seems to be one of the easiest places for people to get lost. Kennedy defines the USP this way: When you set out to attract a new, prospective customer to your business for the first time, there is one, paramount question you must answer: “Why should I choose your business/product/service versus any/every other competitive option available to me?” Kennedy, in his characteristically cranky style, has also been known to call this “justifying your reason to exist.” You must know the facts, features, benefits, and promises that your business makes — inside-out, upside-down, backwards, forwards, and sideways. Because if you can’t clearly articulate what makes your business unique, how can you expect anyone else to care? You will need to crow about your business if you expect it to expand, but it’s pivotal that you are trumpeting the right things. The right USP coupled with the right offer , especially at the right time and place, is important for any business. For a business fighting for attention with millions of other blogs all over the world, it’s essential. 2) Presenting your message Regardless of where you choose to market your product or service, there is a right and a wrong way to deliver your message. According to Kennedy, the customer has five mental steps to take between first contact and completing the sale. Awareness of a need or desire Picking the thing that will satisfy that desire Picking the source for that thing Accepting the price/value argument Finding reasons to act immediately Let’s say your particular product is a vacation package that includes a seven-day cruise. Pictures of an island paradise might spark initial desire, while shots of a cruise ship will put a finer point on the new longing. Information about what makes your company’s cruises different will let the prospect know that you’re the right source to satisfy their craving. Copy that paints a picture of all the fun to be had as well as the tremendous value of the package, backed by proof (user testimonials and pictures both work great), will serve to convince your prospect that his money will be well spent. Finally, a special, a limited time offer, or perhaps a coupon or room upgrade, will help to get the deal done today rather than . . . never . Whether you’re online or off, it’s your job to lead the prospect through these five points. Without clear road signs, your prospect will get lost. 3) Choosing the right audience Who you don’t serve is every bit as important as who you do. It is always okay to trim the tribe. Let’s say you’re planning to open a steakhouse. What do you think is most important to a spectacular opening day? Elegant decor? A well-trained staff? Ample parking? A robust menu? Reasonable prices? Delicious food? The answer: None of the above. The best thing you could possibly have when cutting the ribbon at your new steakhouse is a starving, steak-hungry crowd with a growl in their collective belly. Which means you don’t want to send your marketing message to vegetarians or calorie counters. When it comes to reaching your audience online, you’ve got to find the equivalent of those hungry carnivores. A blog that tries to speak to everyone will find few, if any, readers. It’s always smart to choose a general topic that’s got wide appeal. But within that topic, the tighter your focus , the easier it will be to grow an enthusiastic base of readers, then customers. 4) Proving your case It seems every decade makes us more jaded. The Internet has only accelerated the process. Your marketing messages needs to survive a lot of cold, hard skepticism . Some people might argue that you should never put negative thoughts into your customer’s head. You won’t be. You’re simply addressing what’s already there. You cannot ignore this step. Proving your case will get you a lot farther along on your way to making the sale. Address objections. Your prospect may desperately want your fantastic online cooking course, but she’s got a list of objections holding her back. Fortunately, we’re no longer in Kennedy’s 1991, where you had to use a photocopied 16-page letter to tackle each objection. These days you can do it in blog posts, email autoresponder sequences, and with virtually any form of social media. Social proof is key. You’ll notice up there in the left-hand corner, that Copyblogger proudly advertises its 100,000-plus subscribers. That’s not bragging. It’s a decisive emotional trigger. Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd. Gather testimonials. Happy, satisfied customers can be a magnet for more. What others say about you will always carry a much higher impact than what you say about yourself. While it’s a great idea to put customer testimonials on your own site, you also want to always be aware of what people are saying about you off your site. Pictures tell a story. Before-and-after, shots of the product in use, or bright smiles on the faces of satisfied customers. Seeing is believing. If you can prove your point with pictures, you’ll go a long way toward silencing the skeptic. Images can also set a powerful mood , which gives your copy an instant emotional charge. 5) Putting your best foot forward Like it or not, first impressions matter. If you run a brick-and-mortar business, make sure your store is squeaky clean. Freshly washed windows and a floor you could eat off of will help to create an environment that’s conducive to sales. Believe it or not, the same holds true online. If you’re using WordPress for your business, make sure you’ve got a great-looking theme that’s well optimized for SEO. (As you might guess, we’re rather partial to Thesis .) Even if you’re on a budget, you will still be able to do some basic customization. Make sure your layout is simple and clean. Emphasize your USP with a strong tagline. Be sure your page instantly conveys how you can benefit your reader and potential customer. When you can afford it, have someone customize your site in a way that’s unique to you and your business. Either way, if your website is your business, it should look its absolute best. Fortunately, for a tiny fraction of what bricks-and-mortar businesses pay in rent, you can have a “storefront” that shows you’re serious, professional, and worthy of your customers’ business. (In case you think I’m not too good at counting, the other 9 lessons gleaned from The Ultimate Marketing Plan will come in two future posts. The links to the book are Amazon affiliate links, which means if you buy it, I’ll be able to buy a pack of gum! Put any of this advice into action and you should get quite a lot more out of the deal.) About the Author: Sean Platt writes direct response copy , as well as helping authors write, publish and promote their book. Follow him on Twitter .

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