Tim Ash
Beginning now, we are introducing a weekly post recognizing top Internet marketers for their contributions. Our goal is to help business owners, marketing managers and others gain a broader understanding of the marketing landscape as it exists today.
These are the thinkers and pioneers in online marketing. They’re the people we pay attention to and learn from, while we develop cutting edge technologies of our own. Hopefully, in learning a bit about them, you’ll be inspired to take your own marketing efforts to ever greater heights.
I first learned of Tim Ash in 2007 when I read his book, Landing Page Optimization. By then, I already had several years of digital marketing experience behind me—especially SEO and conditional messaging, and sales-pipeline kinds of activities.
In the 2-3 years prior, I had begun formulating my own ideas about how marketing, especially online, was more of a statistical exercise than an artistic one. It was Tim Ash’s book that solidified my thinking, and gave words to what had previously been vague ideas and thoughts.
Even today, I recommend Landing Page Optimization to all of our newly hired Internet Marketers at OCG. Around here, Landing Page Optimization is referred to simply as “the book.” Save for the expected evolutions in available technologies, “the book” is a relevant today as it was in 2007.
Tim Ash is the President & CEO of a company called Site Tuners, a CRO (conversion rate optimization) firm that works with large organizations to ensure the highest possible ROI for their online efforts.
His Ph.D. studies were in Neural Networks and A.I., and he has a Master’s degree in computer science…. So, enough said about qualifications.
In many ways, we build and utilize landing pages the way we do today, because of the effort of Tim Ash back in the 1990s. I was an Internet Marketer at that time, working with some of the very first companies engaged in this new concept, e-commerce. That was before Google, and the search leaders were companies like HotBot, Inktomi and Ask Jeeves!
To imagine someone like Tim, with the foresight to analyze consumer behavior at a time where we were just focused on getting our SSL connections to work is amazing to me. It’s also humbling.
So, thank you, Mr. Ash. You’re an inspiration to me, and a great resource for our company.
If you’d like to learn more about Tim Ash, visit http://sitetuners.com/about/management/tim-ash/.
If you want to start an email campaign for your business, you might be tempted to buy a list of leads. Before you do that, I would suggest something even better, and that's building an organic list from your website. Why? Building your email list organically ensures that your leads will actually want to hear from you. It will result in less opt-outs and getting marked as spam. If you get marked as spam too many times, you run the risk of being "blacklisted" or blocked from email servers. If you're new to this, do not fear. You can build your own list through website lead generation.
Lead generation online consists of building a list of qualified individuals who are interested in your products or services. You can collect this information through forms and calls to action (CTA) on your website. How do you get visitors to fill out forms? Offer something of value. People will exchange their contact information for something that benefits them or sparks their interest. At minimum, you want to collect a name and email address. However, for more extensive offers, you can ask for a mailing address and phone number. Make sure you don't ask for too much information upfront, as it will cause people to bounce off the page. Are you ready to start building your email list? Here are a few different campaigns you can use to start generating leads on your website:
Is your business taking advantage of offering discounts online? Now, this may seem like a no-brainer, but sometimes the best way to get somebody to initiate contact is through an old-fashioned freebie. Giving an attractive discount, free sample, or trial offer can attract leads that otherwise would have kept on clicking. How to do it: Incorporate a free offer or discount into a landing page, pay-per-click ad, or social media ad. Make sure you pick one goal for the user and focus your landing page around that. Learn more about landing pages here.
To blog or not to blog, that is the question. When you blog for your businesses, you create the opportunity to attract new leads by positioning yourself as a thought leader in your industry. You can also position yourself as an expert by creating educational videos, downloadable guides, white-papers and E-books. Offering exclusive content is a great way to build your list and generate leads. How to do it: Integrate a sign up form with your content offer at the end of a blog post or on a landing page. Blog posts are great because your audience is already reading your material and might want more information. Having trouble coming up with content? Read our tips on overcoming writer's block.
You know you love the camera. If not, that’s okay. You can still host an online class or webinar via podcast or voiceover. Do it live or send out recorded sessions—the choice is yours. There’s endless options for connecting with potential leads all over the world now, and turning your office into a virtual classroom. How to do it: Develop your content and promote your class via a landing page that can be shared through ads, social media or on your website. People will exchange their contact info in exchange for the free class. If it’s good enough, it may convert them to a customer! Alright, I have to go do some online shopping. And my coffee is cold. Cue the end of this blog post. Thanks for reading and check back for more marketing tips and lead generation ideas!
If you’ve been brushing up on your web terminology, you may have heard the term “landing page” floating around. What is that exactly? In the marketing world, a landing page refers to a web page designed with one specific purpose in mind: to convert visitors into leads.
Let’s take a minute and break this down into simple terms. These pages solely exists to get visitors (i.e. the people visiting your site) to perform a specific action like filling out a form or clicking a call-to-action. By completing this action, you are able to collect important information about this person or direct them further into the sales funnel. Once you have their information, they became a “lead” that you can add to your database of potential customers.
If you’ve ever been enticed to sign up for an e-book or free sample, there’s a good chance you were lead without even realizing it. A well-designed landing page will persuade you to exchange your contact information for an attractive offer, such as a discount code or newsletter. Basic design elements combined with the right page layout can also help boost your conversion rate.
As mentioned above, these pages help guide visitors toward completing an intended action on a website. By definition, a landing page should not have global navigation linking back to your main website. This keeps visitors from clicking off the page and getting distracted from the main conversion goal. To learn more about how landing pages are used, check out our previous blog post.
Landing pages come in two basic forms: lead generation landing pages, which direct you to fill out a form and click-through landing pages which direct you to another page. Both types are important and serve different purposes to maximize conversions. It does no good to place random forms or buttons all over your website in hopes that people will click them. Instead, placing these strategically on a landing page statistically leads to better conversions. Thanks for reading! We love hearing from you. If you have more questions about landing pages or Reno web design, contact OCG Creative.
In loose terms a website landing page is simply the webpage your visitor “lands” on when first entering your site. The page might be the result of a keyword search, an online ad, a link from another page, or even a directly typed URL from a printed coupon or a commercial.
A landing page differs from the rest of your website in that it has a specific purpose, and all of its copy, images, etc. are focused on meeting that purpose. Later, I suggest every page should be viewed as a landing page. Nevertheless, here are a few common reasons for creating landing pages…
There are as many reasons for creating landing pages as there are reasons to do business online. The point of a landing page is to support a single, undiluted purpose and outcome.
Many books have been written on the topic of landing pages. Most will tell you to provide plenty of information and be liberal with your placement of calls to action (CTA)—at least that’s the takeaway of most Internet marketers. The reality of creating effective landing pages is a far more complex statistical exercise. (A great book on the subject is “Landing Page Optimization,” by Tim Ash.)
I like to view landing pages like infomercials. Those paid 30-minute segments for the blend-o-matic or some such thing are catchy and conversational. They always feature people you feel like you could get to know. Usually there’s a product expert and one or more stunned onlookers, amazed that he/she has gotten by this long without a blend-o-matic of his or her own.
Over the course of 30 minutes, the advertiser takes you through the entire buyer’s journey (awareness, consideration, decision). If you watch closely, you’ll see them bolster interest and overcome objections until anyone with a telephone and a credit card places an order.
Starting at the top of the page, your only purpose should be to create interest. In fact, that pretty much sums up marketing in general. Too often, marketing messages center around the seller rather than the buyer. “We’re the number 1 this…” or “In business since 1878.” Trust me, no one cares—at least not yet.
Read any book on sales and it’ll tell you to sell the benefits, and demonstrate the features when there’s interest. In other words, start with the why, and work toward the how. The blend-o-matic will save you hours in the kitchen and make your hair grow back. How? It’s as easy as pushing a button.
If you are effective, your webpage visitor will scroll further down the page. The idea is to underscore the benefits in as many ways as it takes until you hit on the message and delivery that resonates with the reader.
You never know what that will be, so I often try them all. I’ll use testimonials, video, info-graphics, lists, headings and catch-phrases. With so many elements, you run the risk of creating very messy web pages, so they need to be divided into segments using white space and typography to define clear, digestible messages.
If you’ve been in business for a while, you already know what motivates your customers or clients. Ours come to us because we bring them more business. How we do it is secondary. The primary motivator is more business.
Our business is all about credibility. Chances are, yours is to. A business owner or decision maker has to believe we will solve the problem or meet the objective. YOU DON’T BUILD CREDIBILITY BY DOING WHAT YOU PROMISE. YOU BUILD CREDIBILITY WITH THE RESULTS.
One of our promises is more traffic and better qualified leads. If we don’t deliver that, it doesn’t make any difference what we did.
One powerful way we build credibility is by showing what we’ve done for other clients. It’s even better if it comes straight from the client in his or her own words. Testimonials are powerful motivators. However, most business owners that use them blow it by creating a “testimonials” page with a long list of quotes.
For a testimonial to be effective, it must be timely and contextual. The best way to achieve that is by using individual testimonials that give credibility to the point you’re making, in that exact spot on the page. It’s best when they are accompanied by a real name with a picture of a live human being your landing page visitors can relate to.
There is nothing more powerful than an enthusiastic customer or client gushing about how your product or service made his or her life better. Forget about making a polished, highly produced video piece. It takes too much time and costs money you don’t need to spend.
Grab your iPhone and ask your happy customer to tell you what she likes best about whatever you did or sold. Let her go on as long as you still feel flattered, or she remains interesting to watch. Clip out the best 45 seconds to a minute and get the video up on YouTube (or Vimeo, whatever you want…) so you can embed it in just the right spot on your landing page.
If you don’t have anyone to talk about you, talk about yourself. Be genuine, honest and human. People have a high tolerance for questionable production quality, but none at all for BS.
As a side benefit, if you tag and describe your video properly, you’ll get a boost directly from YouTube. Also, modern smartphones shoot pretty incredible video, so it’ll probably end up looking pretty darn good. Trust me, online video is worth it.
It is important to recognize that your site visitors might enter through any page on your website. In fact, the entrance could even be the result of an image search. Whatever page, post, picture, video, pdf file, Word document or text file happens to be the most relevant to a given search phrase, that is what Google will display on its search engine results page (SERP). Therefore, it is in your best interest to make sure you provide enough information to at least get through the interest stage of the buyer’s journey.
Have a purpose and a plan for every page on your website. Support that with keyword goals, and even conversion goals. Know what keywords you want that page to rank for, and do everything you need to to make that happen.
Also it is important to use tracking tools so you’ll know how each page ranks compared to your goal (and your competitors). Do the same for other website metrics like the number of visits, average time on the page, etc.
Treat every page as a landing page, because it may be the only page your visitor sees. You’ve only got about a second and a half to be interesting, so it better be pretty obvious to your visitor why he or she should keep reading.
You’ll find that it takes planning, follow-through, and a bit more work, but you’ll be rewarded with more visitors that are better qualified. More qualified visitors means more leads. More leads means more sales. More sales means you’ll have a bigger house, more vacations, you’ll save time in the kitchen, lose 20 pounds and your hair will grow back.
