Conversion Vs. Growth - What Are You Doing?

Conversion

Remember when you built your website and obsessed over the front page, the product pages, and the bio pages - especially the bio pages!  All that effort was directed to one aspect of the customer journey - conversion. 

These “static” pages exist so that when someone arrives on your website they can find what they need quickly and easily contact you.

But these pages don’t bring in new customers.

Growth

Go to analytics and check the top 10 pages on your website.  If you’re executing a growth strategy at least half of them should be blog posts.

New content is what gets distributed across social platforms, it’s what grabs people’s attention and generates shares which in turn generates traffic II: which in turn generates links which in turn generates greater visibility in search, which in turn generates traffic :II

The Power Of A Single Post

If you don’t have any blog posts in your top 10 pages, maybe it’s time to sit down and think of what you could create. 

I’m not talking here about an easy to replicate and systematize process, not like a weekly or even a monthly thing, I’m talking about something pretty one-off that you would be super proud to create, publish and shout about.

While consistency in publishing is important, throwing in the occasional longer form content piece is a good way to build anchor posts that will consistently drive traffic to your business.

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6 Point Marketing Checklist For Business Owners In 2016

You should have these - if you don’t you’re wasting time and money.

1/ A Marketing Budget

As a business owner you have an Ops plan - yes?  A spreadsheet that breaks down the year into quarters and months and that tracks income and expenses - right?  What do you have allocated to the marketing line this year?

2/ KPIs

Similar in style to your Ops plan, you should have a document that tracks the effects of your marketing behaviors and compares them to revenue.  If you tracked KPIs last year you can now create a beautiful document that projects the entire year and allows you to plan and measure the efficacy of your efforts.

3/ Defined Target Audience

Who is your customer?  What frustrations and needs do your best clients have?  When you’re producing content make sure you are writing for them - not for you, your spouse or your peers.

4/ Key Words

Remember that we’re doing this so that people can find you on the internet.  What are the keywords that they’re using to find businesses like yours?  Pick a handful of keyword phrases - no more than 3 - and make sure you incorporate them into your writing this year.

5/ A Publishing Schedule

I cannot overstate how important this is - it’s one of those things that seem odd - but once you commit - good things start to happen.

6/ Defined Social Platforms

Work out which social platforms you’re going to concentrate on - Facebook / Instagram / Linkedin / Twitter etc.  You can’t do them all and if you’re going to be on one - you need to invest time in developing relationships.

If you need help developing any of the above - get in touch - sooner rather than later.

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Why You Should Forward This to Someone You Know

Think of your next piece of content and ask yourself which one of these behaviors would you like the reader / viewer to do:

• Nothing
• Talk about it to someone else
• Limited interaction: 1 click (like, thumbs up)
• Significant interaction: Multiple click (share, redistribute)
• Considered interaction: Creative (comment, write review)
• Sign up for your newsletter
• Buy something

Make the ask

The data tells us that if you suggest a behavior at the end of a piece of content that people appreciated, they are more likely to do what you ask. 

The thing is - you can only suggest one behavior - try two or more and the likelihood that the recipient will do anything reduces.

One size doesn’t fit all

As with all content marketing - the more targeted and specific you can be the better.

“Got friends on Facebook who would benefit from reading this?  Use the share link below and post it on your timeline - they’ll thank you for it later!”

“I’m focused on building my presence on Twitter, if you tweet and you think your followers would enjoy this article use this click to tweet link to easily send it to them.”

“If you’re watching this on YouTube please give us a quick thumbs up - the button's just down there - if you’re watching on the website - the thumb is up here on the top left!  Thanks!”

It takes time and resource to produce good content, it makes sense to put a little effort into making it as easy as possible for people to share it.

Specific call to action

If you have someone working for you who writes your content - take a moment to forward this to them and the next time you chat, have a discussion about crafting action and platform specific calls to action.  you can use the button right here:

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Written while listening to: depressing music

Image credit: Like by Luca Sartori on Flickr