"We've used Mequoda's strategies and techniques to sell thousands of books, videos, and subscriptions."
- Charlie Spahr, Executive Director, The American Ceramic Society
Catch up on the Mequoda Daily’s blog posts for this past week
Deploy your words to make landing pages more powerful
The best landing page designs aren’t about design.
OK, they’re sort of about design. I know that my copy can enhance and work with the design, or it can put the reader off the product featured in even the best landing page designs.
An example of how to de-clutter your rapid conversion landing page template
How many of you have a primary goal of converting casual website visitors to email recipients?
Chances are if you’re a content marketer, online publisher or author, you use this audience development strategy.
We love when people comment on the blog posts we write, which is why we generally end every blog post with an introduction to discuss the article in the comments section. Often times, we get noteworthy blog comments worth their own blog post, so today I’d like to share some of those blog comments and I hope you’ll add your own discussions in the comments here.
On 9 SEO Blogging Tips for Search Engine-Friendly Articles, which discusses all the ways that you can boost SEO rank on your articles, Matt writes, “I think that commenting is very valuable. The more you comment on other blogs, the more comments you get back on your blog, since many bloggers like to return the favor. Google is also indexing these comments, so it’s like adding extra content, and showing that the blog is ‘alive and kicking’. This has to help a bit as a general SEO factor.”
Catch up on the Mequoda Daily’s blog posts for this past week
Every landing page design is not for every audience
We’re all superficial people at heart because we like things that look fancy and expensive. An ugly Coach bag on the rack will sell for $300 because it’s got a bunch of giant C’s on it and you won’t even need to publicly brag about it because will already identify it as expensive just by looking at it.
This translates the same online, where you have only a moment to convince someone that your website is worth looking at for more than a couple seconds.
Discover guidelines for landing page design that maximize email conversion rates when you download our FREE Rapid Conversion Landing Page Optimization Guidelines white paper.
Due to limited time or budget, the landing page is often given the least priority in a marketing campaign.
Some marketers feel that a great external campaign is more important than a good landing page. Our research has found the opposite to be true. Even a great campaign needs the correct conversion architecture, landing page design is key.
Four free white papers that will kick your landing page design and optimization skills into high gear!
Analyze your landing pages through the eyes of your customers
Internet marketing encompasses a wide range of methods including search engine marketing, email marketing, viral marketing, affiliate marketing, display advertising, interactive ads and others. The nature of the Internet causes rapid and constant change in marketing, and new methods are always emerging. Internet marketers frequently combine several methods, such as email marketing and display advertising.
Clever marketers are combining their tools to offer stronger email marketing campaigns
Ready for an online marketing mash-up? Try video email marketing, a new strategy attempted by only the most daring marketers.
Video email marketing combines three online marketing disciplines: email marketing, landing page design and promotional online video. Each have their own best practices and undefined grey areas, and their combination provides an alluring challenge.
As an online publisher, part of your job is to make information easier to manage for your subscribers
The majority of membership websites and email newsletters are instructional. Members join or subscribe in order to access content that is not available to non-subscribers. Much of this proprietary information is of the how-to variety.
If you’re a publisher of an email newsletter, and you’re stuck for a story idea, think checklist. You’ll almost never run out of ideas and you’ll provide your subscribers with valuable tools that increase your credibility as an expert.
As you may already know, most people arrive at a website and within less than 10 seconds can determine whether it’s clean, professional and worth their time. Your landing page delivers the first impression. It’s usually the most important page on your site. It needs to be a fast, effective messenger.
With a quick glance, visitors to your site should know exactly what your site is all about or what your business does. Determine what image and message you want the customer to “get” in those first few seconds, and design your landing page toward that objective. Anything that distracts from the central message or image you wish to project should be eliminated.
Landing Page Design Tips: Want to know a secret? Of course, you do. Everyone loves secrets. As Homo sapiens we always want what we can’t have and that includes desiring an edge over our competitors or discovering some nugget of information that’ll add value to all facets of our lives; whether its business, financial, personal or dealing with our health.
Landing Page Design: Always Test Graphics
The Taguchi method of landing page testing identifies the following factors or variables that are worth testing on any given landing page:
Landing Page Conversions Gets Personal
For decades, direct marketers have been using personalization to increase direct mail response rates. When you send out a laser-printed sales letter with the prospect’s name in it, you gain his or her attention.
Personalization works equally well online, yet your name doesn’t appear within the copy of most of the landing pages you click on. Glen Hopkins wants to change all that with Page Personalizer.
Some wag once said “the perfect is the enemy of the good.” In other words, the goal of achieving perfection in a new venture often gets in the way of accomplishing an outcome that is “good enough” to succeed. Often an idea for a big, bold new product is one that never gets completed. Meanwhile, simple products quickly get created, marketed and sold, often bringing significant financial success to their developers.
You might know, and subscribe, to one or more products from information marketing juggernauts like Bottom Line Publications, Agora, Healthy Directions or Philips Investment Resources. More importantly, you may study their strategies and creations like an aspiring artist studies the work of the great masters.
The Key to Creating an Aesthetically Pleasing Landing Page is to Know your Target Market and Create an Appearance that Conforms to your Visitors’ Mental Model
"We've used Mequoda's strategies and techniques to sell thousands of books, videos, and subscriptions."
- Charlie Spahr, Executive Director, The American Ceramic Society
"We have used the Mequoda Method to deliver a real-time online magazine that features individual issues and our amazing archive of premium content."
- Paul Belliveau, Vice President New Media and Production, Yankee Publishing
“We’ve used these techniques to boost sales of our higher-priced products, and dramatically increase our multiplatform subscription revenues.”
- Susan Laden, Publisher, Biblical Archaeology Society
"Adoption of the Mequoda Method has produced three benefits for us. First, we are seeing sustained growth in subscription revenue. Second, we monetized a content archive with two decades of news and information. Three, our new customers have immediate access to the content they seek."
- Robert Michel, Founder, The Dark Intelligence Group
"We have used the Mequoda Method to increase our revenue by more than 60% while completely eliminating direct mail from our marketing mix. Unsurprisingly, this has allowed us to dramatically increase profitability and our ability to fund our mission-driven programs."
- Gail Odeneal, Director of Marketing, Program on Negotiation Harvard Law School
"We have used the Mequoda Method to create two successful online magazines that generate subscription revenues that are completely independent of our advertising driven legacy business model."
- Stuart Hochwert, Founder and CEO, Prime Publishing
"We know there’s demand for individual subscriptions based on our limited marketing efforts, but we needed the resources of a top-tier marketing organization to effectively and aggressively scale our individual subscriptions business. Mequoda has the best business processes we’ve seen for getting the job done."
- Hampton Stephens, Publisher, World Politics Review
"Mequoda’s knowledge of the fundamental practices and technologies at the core of the media business is unsurpassed by any other group of consultants I know. If you’re in the media industry, Mequoda would be a valuable ally."
- Bryan Welch, Publisher
“The team I worked with at Interweave successfully transitioned a leading print enthusiast media business into the digital age. The folks at Mequoda were an important part of this team and the company’s most valued strategic advisor. We could not have done it without them.”
- Clay Hall, Former CEO, Interweave
"With more than 3.2 million monthly unique visitors, Mother Earth News has increased its revenues 39X over the past 10 years, using these strategies.”
- Bill Uhler, Publisher, Ogden Publications
