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Social Pros 15 – Marcus Sheridan, The Sales Lion

Posted on 10. May, 2012 by Jay Baer in Blog, Email Marketing, Google Analytics, mobile, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

This is Episode 15 of the Social Pros Podcast : Real People Doing Real Work in Social Media. This episode features Marcus Sheridan of The Sales Lion. Read on for insights from Marcus, and our Social Media Stat of the Week (this week: email opens on smartphones and tablets have grown by 82% in the last year).

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Please Support Our Sponsors

Huge thanks to data-driven social media management software company Argyle Social for their presenting sponsorship, as well as Infusionsoft, Janrain, and Jim Kukral at DigitalBookLaunch. We use Argyle Social for our social engagement; we use Infusionsoft for our email; Janrain is our crackerjack social integration company, and Jim is our guest host for the podcast (and a smart guy). Also

Social Pros Transcript For Your Reading Enjoyment, Thanks to Speechpad for the Transcription

Jay: Yes, indeed. That was a new introduction on the Social Pros podcast. We’re stepping it up here a little bit in episode 15. I am Jay Baer joined by my trusty sidekick, Eric Boggs from Argyle Social. Eric, how are you, my friend?

Eric: I’m doing just fine, Jay.

Jay: Glad to hear it. Amazing guest on the show today. Actually, sitting here with me in an undisclosed hotel room in New Orleans, Louisiana, Marcus Sheridan, The Sales Lion. He will be joining us in just a second on the show. He’s going to blow us away. We should’ve gotten a bigger hotel room.

Eric: So Marcus spoke at a conference, evidently, that a couple Argylers attended. And one of them sent me a text saying, “Do you know this guy, Marcus Sheridan? He is blowing the room away.”

Jay: That is his MO. In fact, one of the tweets this morning was, “Who needs bloody marys when you have The Sales Lion”. He is the antidote to what ails you in New Orleans.

Eric: Awesome.

Jay: So I want to just quick shout out to our fantastic sponsors here on Social Pros. Of course, Argyle Social, Eric’s company, data driven, social media management software. Our friend, Jim Kukral from DigitalBookLaunch.com. Infusionsoft, who we use for all of our email stylings. And a new sponsor joining the podcast this week, our friends at Janrain, who do social sign-in and a bunch of other like magical voodoo. We’ll talk more about them in a week or two.

Eric: Yeah, good guys at Janrain. I know a guy named Jamie Beckland that I guess went to work there from working at an agency.

Jay: Yes.

Eric: Good folks.

Jay: Yeah, great. Jamie’s super-smart. We should have him on the show sometime. He used to be at Whitehorse. Really smart guy,

Eric: Yep.

Jay’s Thought of the Week

Jay: So here’s my rant of the week. I actually wrote a blog post about it. And I was so mobilized by this, I wrote a post on Saturday and used it to ignore my in-laws, which is probably a bad call long term. But you know, it is what is.

Eric: Also a bad call to publicly acknowledge that you ignore your in-laws on a public podcast.

Jay: Yeah, I don’t know if they’re Social Pros listeners. They probably are now. Tristan, edit that out.

Eric: Yeah, cut that. Cut. I was with my in-laws in D.C. all weekend, so I feel your pain, Jay.

Jay: Did you write blog posts while they were there?

Eric: No, I didn’t.

Jay: You’re a suckup.

Eric: Yeah, I just keep my mouth shut.

Pinterest 101

Jay: So the premise of this post is that we spend a lot of time in social and in content marketing talking about eyeballs and how much traffic do we have and how many visitors do we have and how many unique visitors do we have and all this. And at the end of the day, that is a crappy metric. It is perhaps the most overrated metric in the history of math, because just because somebody shows up at your site doesn’t mean they do anything on your site that is inherently of value.

The reason I got on this soapbox initially is that there’s been a lot of reporting lately – in fact, I think we even talked about it here on the podcast a few weeks ago – about Pinterest’s power as a referring source, that Pinterest is sending more traffic than Facebook. Pinterest is sending more traffic from Twitter. The original source of that, I think – as you pointed out, Eric, or Tom Webster did – was a ShareThis study, which doesn’t necessarily mean everybody. It just means people who use ShareThis. But beyond that, my question is who cares? So what if Pinterest does send more traffic equivalently than Facebook to your site? Does that mean that people from Pinterest actually buy things from you? Does it mean they fill out a lead form? Does it mean they sign up for an email newsletter? Or does it mean that they look at one pretty picture, never to return again? And unless you know the answer to that question, you are fooling yourself. You do not understand how digital marketing works.

Traffic is actually an expense, not a benefit. You can break it down, right, but ultimately when you figure out your server costs, your amortized design costs, what it requires you to create content, etc., every person who comes to your site actually costs you money, doesn’t make you money unless you’re selling advertising. In that case, it’s a different story.

Eric: I think I’ve used this gimmick before, but I’m going to use it again. Here comes the audible sigh, Jay. Yes, you are preaching to the choir. Yes, marketers are lazy. Clicks are the easy thing, and it’s often the easy way out in terms of justifying existence and justifying resources invested. You know, it’s something that we have been railing about at Argyle since the very beginning, and I imagine it’s something we’ll be railing about forever and ever and ever. As it relates to our listeners in social, this is sort of just a phenomenon that has existed with online advertising and email marketing that is now just being translated to social, which is sort of this inability to get over the hump in terms of mapping channel inputs to onsite outputs. And there are definitely some technology challenges around that, some of which we are working very hard to address at Argyle in terms of making these things possible. But it’s not rocket science, especially as it related to Pinterest. Mapping Pinterest referrals to onsite conversions is as simple as a custom report in Google Analytics. I would imagine everyone listening to this broadcast has Google Analytics on their website, and maybe a lot of these people even ask themselves whether or not Pinterest is moving the needle for their business. So what we’re asking people to do, it’s not impossible. And to me, that’s what’s the most frustrating bit about this kind of stuff.

Jay: I agree. But you know what’s weird about it? I don’t know that it’s always laziness. Sometimes I really believe that people think that traffic and visitors is, in fact, a reliable metric, that that has inherent value. Actually, there are a lot of comments on my blog post about people saying, “Oh, no. Traffic is good because that traffic will eventually create email subscriptions.” To which I say, “Nuh-uh. Not necessarily.”

Eric: Traffic is potentially a leading indicator. I will agree that it is potentially a leading indicator. But you can segment traffic in the same way that you can segment everything else. So traffic from Pinterest may not have the same value as traffic from LinkedIn or paid search or organic search.

Jay: Yeah, and I don’t have enough Pinterest traffic on my blog, although we have a Pinterest account, of course. I don’t have enough Pinterest referalls to really do much with it from an analytical perspective. But my hypothesis, and maybe there’ll be somebody who listens to the podcast who can comment on this on the blog post, my hypothesis is that Pinterest traffic will behave more like search traffic rather than social traffic because Pinterest, in my estimation, is more about discovery than it is about social sharing. It’s more about finding new things as opposed to voting for things that you already know about.

Eric: Yep.

Jay: So to me, I think Pinterest is more like Google than it is like Facebook. I could be wrong, but that’s how I see it.

Eric: I don’t disagree. You ready for some stat of the week?

Jay: I am. What is the social media stat of the week?

Eric: You did it again. That was good. I tease you for the ridiculous stat of the week intro. I guess I could…

Jay: We’re also supposed to do Angry Birds sounds this episode because I was going to do [makes sounds]. That’s the best I can do.

Eric’s Social Media Stat of the Week: Email Opens on Smart Phones and Tablets Have Grown by 82% in the Last Year

Eric: All right. Stat of the week comes from Return Path, which is an email marketing data company. They’ve been around for a while. I think they’re probably, gee, it’s probably 10 or 15 years old. So these guys have been in the business for a long time. They track broad email marketing data behavior from vendors to publishers to email recipients. They released a great report about email consumption and the big takeaway from this is that email opens on smart phones and tablets grew by 82 percent in the past year. So mobile devices are on track to be the dominant email platform over desktops and laptops by the end of this year. There’s a long report. We can link it up. The takeaway here is that marketers aren’t ready for this. Very few marketers are optimizing their email content for consumption on iPhones and iPads and mobile devices.

Jay: No question, especially if you’re in B2B, where you have smart phone penetration that’s upwards of 80 percent in most cases. If your content is not mobile friendly, that’s the first thing you should do. Quit talking about Facebook and Pinterest, and actually make your existing content available, not to mention your email, available on an iPhone and a BlackBerry and a Windows mobile device and any other flavor that you have. It’s just insane, but I understand how we got here. Because you’re right, we’ve been talking about mobile for a long time. Like we were talking about mobile’s going to be dominant, the preeminence of mobile. We were talking about that when I was a kid, and now I have kids. But now it feels like all of a sudden like, oh now it actually is true. It’s like the boy who cried mobile. Every year it’s like, “Mobile’s going to take over. Mobile’s going to take over.” And after you hear that eight years in a row, you’re like whatevs. And now all of a sudden, mobile is taking over, and I think people got caught flat-footed because they’re like, “Yeah, I’ve heard this story before.” But now, ultimately, it’s true.

Eric: Well the funny thing to me is people kind of got hung up on apps with the iPhone App Store gold rush. And now there’s this realization that, “Oh, you mean my website, not an iPhone app or a Droid app. Oh, I get it now.” You know, our website, I think, it’s written completely HTML5. There are parts of it that probably look wonky on an iPhone, but the main bits of ArgyleSocial.com are going to look really good on your iPad and your iPhone. And it’s not easy to do, especially if you’re invested in a custom website and really trying to do something kind of fancy pants. So this issue, I think, is a little different than what we were talking about with mapping traffic all the way to conversion. Mobilfying your online experience can be expensive and it can be time consuming, so it’s something that people should probably start sooner rather than later.

Jay: Yeah, and it’s certainly easier to do in a major construction project as opposed to slapdash after the fact, unless you have WordPress or something like that. So next time you do a website redesign is the time to go through and make sure it’s mobile friendly.

Eric: And next time you do website, a massive redesign, if the person that you’re working with doesn’t suggest a mobile optimized version, fire that person and find another person.

Jay: Yeah, get somebody else. Exactly. Yeah, I’m going to start a company that creates apps to help customers find your app. It’s just going to be a super-meta business.

Eric: There’s an app for that.

Special Guest: Marcus Sheridan, The Sales Lion

Jay: There is. There is. Well, I am excited about our guest today, who has been sitting here patiently. This is the longest I’ve ever heard him be quiet. It is Marcus Sheridan, The Sales Lion. He and I are both speaking at the Counselors Academy PRSA Conference here in beautiful New Orleans, Louisiana. He gave a rousing keynote – he gives no other kind – this morning to a bunch of PR firm owners. Mr. Sheridan, thank you for being on Social Pros.

Marcus Sheridan, The Sales Lion @thesaleslion

Marcus: Hey man, it’s a pleasure. But how do you hear somebody being quiet? That’s what I’m trying to figure out in my head right now, man.

Jay: It’s Vulcan.

Marcus: Okay. I got it.

Jay: It’s sort of a Vulcan skill.

Marcus: I’m feeling it.

Eric: I’ve heard you being quiet, Marcus. You’ve done a really good job.

Jay: So Marcus, in the unusual chance that somebody listening to Social Pros is not familiar with the now legendary Marcus Sheridan story, do you want to summarize your career in 60 seconds with regards to your background as a purveyor of swimming pools, etc.?

Marcus: Yeah, super quick story. Thanks, Jay. 2001 I started a swimming pool company with two other guys. And then in 2008 when the economy crashed, we were going to crash with it. We didn’t have any money for marketing. We had to maintain a lot of sales. We did about 75 in-ground fiberglass pool installations a year at that time. And so without having any money and going basically on the brink of bankruptcy, I was looking around and discovered this whole thing called inbound and content marketing. That’s when we decided to start a blog, and we really embraced the whole concept of let’s just be teachers. So we answered every single question on our blog that we had ever heard from a consumer. Within a year, we had the number one trafficked swimming pool website in the world. It really increased visitors, but more so, to what you were talking about earlier, it increased leads and ultimately customers. It saved our business, and we did it by cutting down drastically all of our advertising dollars.

About a year after we did this, I started another blog called The Sales Lion, and it teaches everything that I’ve ever done, all my ingredients to my secret sauce. It’s been a great ride, and now I teach other businesses how to embrace the power and the vision that is content, which I feel is the greatest sales tool in the world.

Jay: So you were sort of the swimming pool version of Gary Vaynerchuk, where he built his wine business just telling people what he thought about wine and creating tons of free content. You did the same thing in the swimming pool industry.

Marcus: You know, it’s really funny because when people hear me speak, the first time I ever spoke somewhere big, a bunch of people kept saying to me, “You’re like the Gary V of the swimming pool industry,” because we have a similar funky style. We’re really off the cuff and use wacky words and stuff. We come from these industries like how did that happen, type of stuff. But yeah, it’s similar to Gary, and I like Gary a lot. So I take that as a complement. But yeah, and for me it’s great because whenever I hear people talk about marketing, I can relate to it because I’ve been in the trenches. I still own the company, and I just have two business partners that run it. But for me now, it’s a playground where I can experiment all day long with content.

Jay: And you are a big proponent of HubSpot. I know you use HubSpot software. That’s kind of one of the backbones of the things that you use, and you’re familiar with that software. We talk a lot on this show about the difference between the wizard and the wand, and that right now, we’re in a weird space in content and social where a lot of companies believe that the software is their salvation. How do you feel about that?

Marcus: HubSpot has never saved any business. HubSpot certainly didn’t save me. HubSpot is as good as the person that’s swinging the hammer, because that’s really what HubSpot is. It’s a hammer that is effective when used properly. Unfortunately, just like anything else, you can take a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. Same thing with HubSpot. This is the thing about HubSpot. Ultimately its greatest value is the fact that I can sit here and say that because I’ve been blogging and I can track the leads that I have gotten specifically from my blog, my blog has made me over $2 million in sales. That’s why I like HubSpot, because we’re constantly having this ROI mystic debate thing going on, which drives me nuts. Usually we’re debating ROI because most people don’t have proper analytics. I know you use Infusionsoft and I know you have analytics there, too, because we want to be able to track the stuff that we’re doing. Just like somebody came to me today and said, “Yo, Marcus, is PPC good?” I’m like, “PPC is good if you’re making money with it. But if you’re not tracking it, you won’t know that. So the first thing is are you tracking your PPC? Can you tell me how many customers you’ve actually gotten from PPC?” If not, we’ve got to change something up here really, really soon because we have a major break in our ability to close that loop. And everybody’s got to be able to close that loop, man.

Jay: Yeah, and that is the nice thing about that particular platform is that you can get end-to-end analytics.

Marcus: Huge for me, man.

Jay: A lot of times I feel like the challenge for people who believe in the ROI of social and content and believe that ROI is possible is that unless you come out of a analytics background, the way Eric does and the way I do, you’ve got to be your own middleman a lot of times.

Marcus: Yeah, and here’s the thing that people have got to understand about Google. Google tells us traffic, but Google doesn’t tell us names of people.

Eric: So we’ve been working on some content at Argyle about two types of marketers – oceanographers and fishermen. Some marketers are oceanographers that track ocean currents and tidal patterns and things of that nature and other marketers don’t really care about. They care about the fish that they’re trying to catch. You just sort of said exactly that, Marcus, in that Google Analytics is going to tell you how much the water’s rising and falling, but it’s not going to tell you if the big fish is in your neck of the woods or not.

Marcus: Oh, you’re so right. There’s a magic behind writing a blog article and being able to say definitively I know this one article in the last two years has made me at least $150,000 in sales. Until companies catch that vision and they’re starting to use some type of software that allows them to do that, I think content marketing in social media is going to get a bad name, because I can sit here right now and say how much money I have made, minimum, that I’ve been able to track because I can’t track it unless somebody’s filled out the form. But once they have filled out a form, then I can track everything from that point on. And I can sit here and say from the swimming pool perspective or from The Sales Lion or anything else like that, I can say, okay, PPC has made me this much. Organic search has made me this. In fact, breaking down organic, this blog article has made me this because this keyword is what it ranks for and thus I know it goes back to that particular blog article on and on Facebook, Twitter. All those things, I can say how much money they’ve made my particular company at a minimum, because what we can’t track is phone calls to the office. That’s the one thing we can’t really track and say, okay, they called me…

Jay: Well, you could. You could put a phone number on there.

Marcus: Right. The problem is… yes, you can. That’s a very good point. Most companies don’t do that, and that is the other way to deal with that, Jay. But most don’t do that. And sometimes when we ask them on the phone, “How’d you hear about us,” they give us the wrong information.

Eric: Yeah, I don’t know.

Marcus: Yeah. They say the radio and I haven’t been on the radio in eight years. You know what I mean?

Jay: Right, right. Precisely. I’m glad you mentioned keywords. You are very straightforward about creating content that answers customer questions and sort of giving away what you know and things of that nature. Basically, taking the sum total of your expertise and giving it away for free one post at a time has been very successful. How much do you think about high efficacy search terms and SEO and rankings before you create posts?

Marcus: I do think about it, but I think about it in this: Has somebody ever asked me the question? Okay, that’s about the extent of it. And as soon as I know that they’ve asked me the question, then I know that merits being a title to a blog post. Because if somebody’s asked you the question, a thousand people have searched that very same question online. It used to be 10 years ago when we were figuring out search, Jay, it was “pools”. And then five years into it, we might have typed in “fiberglass pools,” and now we type in stuff like “what is the best type of fiberglass swimming pool if you live in Virginia”, right. So we’ve learned how to search differently. And so all I did, my only strategy-and for the first two years, I never used a keyword suggestion tool, because I very, very passionately feel that if we are great listeners, our customers are the best keyword tool that we could every possible use.

Here’s the thing. If people are asking you the question in your business and that answer is not on your website, I think you’re very, very flawed because we have been trained by Google that if we go to a site and we’re searching for something, Jay, and it ain’t there, we’re gone, dude. If I’ve got a question I can’t find, I’m gone. And basically, it’s almost like the teacher that’s not calling on the student in class that keeps raising his hand. It’s crazy to me that we see that everywhere. So SEO works well when you are specifically answering specific questions the way that your specific consumers ask those things. Not like we think them, not with our silly acronyms, but exactly like they say them. Then I think, honestly, I think we make SEO out to be much more of a science than it is. I think truly giving those great specific answers is the only long-term solution to every single Google update from now until the end of time.

Jay: Well and they’ve certainly said that their direction, and the last two or three updates have pushed them this way, is that search needs to be conversational. It used to be you have to do search for Google and, by the way, also for people. But Google has very much moved in the direction of rewarding natural language and rewarding natural content, which I think is a boon for everybody. Eric, you’d agree, I presume?

Eric: Yes, indeed.

Marcus: Well, I see this all the time and people get on me like I’m talking Matrix language, but I feel like Google is going to be smarter that humans in terms of creating search quality, content quality down the road. Now I don’t know how they’re going to do it. But my feeling is that they are going to be able to do that, and so when I write, that’s the only thing I think about. I’m not thinking about all these other things that we see so many SEOs or content marketers think about. Because I think, although it might work for the next six months or it might work for the next six years, there’s going to be a day when that junk I was doing that wasn’t really legitimate, it’s going to come back and bite me. Just like we see all the time these companies freaking out. It’s just like with the recent update and you saw all these people that had been using these link building tools that were supposedly white hat. I mean, come on people. I mean, if it’s a link building tool, automatically it’s black.

Jay: By definition, not white.

Marcus: Yes. It’s black. Let’s call a spade a spade here.

Jay: Well, let me ask you this. Being an old school sort of SEO myself and Eric has done a lot of online direct marketing as well, what would you say to people who posit the notion that Google and the nature of search is going to wane in importance and our relationships will bridge that gap? So that eventually, let’s fast forward three years, Google drives a heck of a lot less traffic than it ever did and Facebook now drives a heck of a lot more because instead of asking Google who’s the best builder of swimming pools in Virginia for fiberglass, we’re going to ask our friends.

Marcus: I don’t think that’s going to happen, personally. Here’s what I see. This is just me, and I’m going to write about this here soon. I see a future of two types of search engines. I see a search engine that is social driven like Google and where it’s going, and I see somebody else that’s going to come up and be old Google, which is not going to be so social, which is going to be purely just great content based on the algorithm. That might sound very unromantic. But see, it bugs me. I’m the type of guy, I actually don’t want to see what all my friends are choosing when I do searches.

Jay: You don’t want +1 s.

Marcus: I log out on specific searches. I see the day when we have two types of search engines, and I think what, in many ways, is Google’s greatest advance right now could be their biggest downfall for inviting a potential second party-which we don’t have a two-party system right now in search. I think we will have a two-party system for general search engines, because Yahoo and Bing don’t count to me. They haven’t made enough ground.

Eric: So Marcus, there is a company called DuckDuckGo, kind of like Duck Duck Goose, but DuckDuckGo. And they just raised a ton of money from Union Square Ventures, and their entire premise is we don’t track you. It’s a high quality search engine you don’t login to. There’s no bubble of sort of tailored results for you. It’s just old school Google.

Marcus: That’s really cool Eric. And I’m glad you bring that up because, honestly, that’s how I like to roll online when I’m researching. Not everybody’s like that. If I really want to know what my friends think, then I am going to go to Facebook. I am. But there’s always going to be certain things, I think-in my opinion-that we don’t do so socially online. Like I have articles on swimming pools that have been read hundreds of thousands of times, but they’ve been tweeted twice and liked once or twice. It’s like people look at them, and they think just based on those share numbers that the articles stink and they’ve made me hundreds of thousands of dollars because…

Jay: You need to go back and get the old school hit counter on the bottom.

Marcus: Yeah, right. Hit counter on the bottom. Classic.

Jay: That’s social proof 1.0, baby.

Marcus: It’s different for everybody. I’m not saying social’s not important. But for certain industries, I don’t think it’s a huge metric.

Jay: In certain categories, crowds are not wise. Other than you, the number of friends that I have who could tell me anything about swimming pools numbers one -you and one other guy. So I could ask all the people I know on Facebook, and I’m going to get not a lot of good information back.

Marcus: Because we don’t practice buying pools until we actually own a pool, right? So most people, they don’t have anything to say about it and we’re not exactly bragging to our friends, I just spent 50K on a pool. So we don’t tweet it out, “Yo, I just dropped 50 grand but I own a swimming pool now.” Most people, unless we’re a professional athlete trying to show our crib, we just don’t do it that way, and that’s why it’s not a very social industry yet. It’s more of a search industry, old school style. And I think there’s always going to be a place for that. But honestly, I’m saying all this stuff, dude. Three weeks from now, I could change my mind because that’s how fast we’re developing, and I think we’re all idiots, kind of.

Jay: You’re going to shut your blog down. You’re going to have a Lion Pinterest board and that’s it. Just different lions, that’s it.

Marcus: Oh man. Going off about that whole traffic thing you were talking about earlier. I’m like Pinterest has become way worse than StumbleUpon in terms of, you know, I have friends that hate it when they get stumbled because it just means that they got a huge…

Jay: A bunch of traffic they can’t convert?

Marcus: …that they can’t convert and drives them crazy and it kills like all their bounce rates and stuff like that. Pinterest, in a lot of ways, potentially does that. Not that I don’t see the value for it, but it’s clearly not the end all. And the quality right today of the Pinterest visitors, so far for many companies, hasn’t been that strong. I mean, let’s just be real. It might be at some point, not right now.

Jay: Awesome. Eric, any questions from you, or are we going to Social Pros shout outs?

Eric: No, man. I’m interested to hear what Marcus reads.

Jay: Social Pros shout outs.

Eric: Shout outs.

Jay: From Mr. Marcus Sheridan. Go.

Social Pros Shoutout

Marcus: Okay. I’m just going to mention two for you that nobody’s ever heard of probably.

Eric: Google and Pinterest.

Marcus: Yeah, Google, who clearly love me now, right? Okay, this is outside of the box. There is a company called Block Imaging. All right. And I don’t even have the URL. Just type in Block Imaging blog. They sell refurbished medical imaging equipment. Here’s what’s special about this company. They have about 70 employees, and 40 of those employees are active on their blog. So they have a true culture of blogging within the company. I think that’s beautiful. And they’re Block Imaging – I know about them, they’re one of my clients. But I think they’re so amazing and I love their story. And to me, they get this whole idea of what it is a culture of content marketing.

There’s another one that most people probably haven’t heard of. I think he’s a big up and comer and his name is Ryan Hanley. He comes from the insurance industry. He is passionate. He is a great guy and he is now starting to talk about marketing. So kind of like Gary V of wine, he is a passionate guy from the insurance industry.

Jay: He’s the Marcus Sheridan of insurance.

Marcus: In some ways, yeah, he is. I think he’s a great young guy, and I think he’s going to be big time because he has the passion to carry the day.

Jay: Awesome. Good shout outs.

Marcus: Thank you.

Jay: Thank you very much for being here. Good stuff. Awesome. That’ll do it for Social Pros. Who do we have next week, Eric Boggs?

Eric: Next week on Social Pros, Maria from Marketo.

Jay: Oh, fantastic. Our friend, Maria from Marketo. That’s going to be great. Talk about content marketing, they’re all about the content marketing over there. Thanks as always to our sponsors, Eric’s company Argyle Social, data-driven social media management software used by none other than me, Jay Baer. Our friends at Infusionsoft, Jim Kukral from DigitalBookLaunch.com, and a big Social Pros welcome to our new sponsor Janrain, social sign-in and a bunch of other wizardry. That’s it for this week. We’ll see you next time.

About the Jay Baer: Jay Baer is a hype-free social media strategist & speaker, tequila guy, and co-author of The NOW Revolution. Jay is the founder of http://convinceandconvert.com and host of the Social Pros podcast.

Social Pros 15 – Marcus Sheridan, The Sales Lion is a post from: Convince and Convert Blog: Social Media Strategy and Social Media Consulting

Odd Way to Double Email Clickthrough Rates

Posted on 01. May, 2012 by Glenn Livingston, Ph.D. in Blog, conversion, Email Marketing, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

Know what’s kinda stupid?

Not optimizing your email follow up sequence to maximize clickthrough and dramatically increase your site traffic, that’s what’s kinda stupid…

Because you spend a lot of time, money, and attention to acquire the prospect…

And you CAN realistically double or even triple the traffic to your website with an optimized follow up sequence.

In today’s interview, Ryan and I discuss an unusual way to double your email clickthrough rate…

And we made sure to give you the 80/20 version after we explained the whole thing too! (Be sure to listen for it near the end)

Speaking of stupid things, wanna know something else that would be really stupid?….

Not getting started for only $4.95 (and locking in your rate forever!) for my bi-monthly live webinars this week before the price raise, that would be really stupid!

And hey, even if you never join me live, you can always download the recordings (available for 90 days).  PLUS, you get two bonuses immediately when you join: (1) Maximum Sales Bumps in Minimum Time – a collection of the BEST sales bumping techniques which I’ve identified as working across markets and (2) Building Your Persuasion Architecture(tm) – How to Focus on a Two Minute Verbal Sales Pitch Before You Publish a Single Page.

The first bonus alone is worth 100 times the $4.95 it’ll cost you to download it, because plain and simple, it’s got the best conversion techniques Terry Dean and I have found to work across markets, presented in under two hours.  Many of which you can implement quickly.

But it’s the second bonus I’m most excited about, because it’s there that I’m introducing the concept of “Persuasion Architecture(tm)”… a powerful way to develop a two minute VERBAL pitch which keeps you focused and grounded in everything else you do.  (One of the biggest reasons I see for websites not earning what they’re worth today is lack of FOCUS… this is the solution!)

Anyway, as soon as I get the word from ClickBank that my preferred higher price has been approved, I’m going to raise the price forever.

But as of the time of this posting, you can still lock in the lowest rate I’ll ever offer on this, just as a reward for paying attention to me
(I guess if my Mom paid more attention to me when I was a kid I wouldn’t need to bribe you… oh well, my deep-seated psychological problems are your gain)

Seriously though, this is one of those head scratchers… I can’t understand why anyone who’s been following me wouldn’t jump on board.  Do it now before ClickBank approves the new prices please.  (Hey, at the very least you can say you finally “made money with ClickBank” right?)

Onwards and Upwards My Fine Marketing Friends…

You can clear away SO much confusion if you’ll just take the time to master a few fundamental conversion principles.  And now you can watch me do it LIVE on site after site.  (Get started as of the time of this post for less than $5)

Dr. Glenn 

Your “Web Sales Hero(tm)”

Convert More Customers: Tips & Tricks For Running A/B Tests On Your Email Campaigns

Posted on 01. May, 2012 by Ashley Zeckman in Blog, Email Marketing, Multivariate Testing, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

Email continues to be one of the most effective online marketing tactics but many companies struggle to establish benchmarks or successfully improve performance. How many people are receiving, reading and acting on email messages? Those are all key questions to improve email marketing performance.

Email open rates can vary depending on the target industry and even the job function of the prospects.  Testing to improve email marketing performance is essential, but determining which variables have the largest impact on the overall effectiveness of an email campaign can seem overwhelming.

However, a process driven approach to identifying success factors that lead to increased conversions will set your company up for success both short term, and long term.

One way of improving your email marketing process involves testing: A/B or multivariate testing, to assess which tactics lead to the desired outcomes such as click throughs and conversions.

What is A/B & Multivariate Testing?

Put simply, A/B testing involves sending out different versions of any email campaign to segments of your existing customer or subscriber list.  Typically A/B testing includes changing only one element at a time, whereas multivariate testing includes multiple elements.  There are many variables to consider when running an email test so it is best to pick a maximum 3-4 items to test for each campaign.  If you are unsure about which variables to test please reference the list below for guidance.

What Can Be Tested?

As mentioned you don’t want to get carried away with testing too many variables at once.  Below I have included some of the tactics that your team may want to consider when running a A/B or multivarite email test.

• Time of Day
• Day of Week
• Subject Lines
• Body Copy
• Layout
• Calls to Action
• Design (including images)
• Personalization
• Offer

Sample Email Test

Who Should A/B Email Test Be Sent To?

If you search online or talk to marketing experts you may receive a variety of answers.  Depending on your list size you will want to send out A/B tests to a large enough segment to collect enough data to make an informed decision.  I would recommend splitting your list into three parts:

• Recipients of test A – ¼ of your list
• Recipients of test B- ¼ of your list
• Recipients of the “winning” email – ½ of your list

What Should Be Tracked?

• Open Rate
• Click Through Rate
• UnSubscribe Rate

A Best Practice Approach For Running A/B & Multivariate Tests for Email Marketing

Data Doesn’t Lie: Base  your course of action on proven numbers, not which email you BELIEVE will perform better.

Use Tools: Services such as MailChimp provide a tool for running A/B tests.

Test Often: The way that your audience reacts to information will evolve, make sure that your process evolves as well.

While we talk a lot about search optimization, social media and content marketing here at Online Marketing Blog, make no mistake: Email Marketing is a powerful communication and conversion tool. It integrates well with other online marketing efforts to both attract and retain customers. Remember ABO: Always Be Optimizing. It applies to email marketing performance just as much as pay per click or SEO.

I’m curious to know what tests your company may have run in the past.  What were your results?  How did these results shape your process going forward?

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2012. |
Convert More Customers: Tips & Tricks For Running A/B Tests On Your Email Campaigns | http://www.toprankblog.com

Marketing Lessons from My Dogs

Posted on 23. Apr, 2012 by Glenn Livingston, Ph.D. in Blog, conversion, Copywriting, Email Marketing, Emotional Marketing, Hyper Responsive Marketing, Information Marketing, Inspiration, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

Hey, maybe this is cliche’, and I know I’m definitely not the first one to say it, but every marketing project starts with enthusiasm and passion.  If you don’t have it, it’s really WAY more difficult to get over the rough spots.

See someone do something you think you could emulate?  Sometimes even if you’re wrong, it’s worth the effort and you DO get partial credit for TRYING.  Consider the little guy in this video:

You’ve gotta believe he saw someone playing, maybe his master.

Then, during the day when his master was away, he took his time and started wailing away…

Who knows where he’ll be after HIS 10,000 hours of practice?

While I’m on the topic, there’s an MP3 interview with Sharon and I below talking about everything OUR dogs taught US about marketing… worth listening to!

For what it’s worth,

PS – Do you ever feel alone in your marketing quests?

PPS – Did you join my live webinar club for the $5 trial yet? (As of time of this posting)

Social Pros 12 – Derek Halpern, Social Triggers

Posted on 19. Apr, 2012 by Jay Baer in Blog, Email Marketing, Facebook advertising, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

This is Episode 12 of the Social Pros Podcast : Real People Doing Real Work in Social Media. This episode features Derek Halpern founder of Social Triggers. Read on for insights from Derek, and Eric’s Social Media Stat of the Week (this week: for Facebook advertising, CPM rates are up 41%, CPC rates are up 23%).

Listen Now

Click the play button to listen here:

Download the audio file:

http://socialpros.podbean.com/mf/web/5emrm/SocialProsEpisode12.mp3

The RSS feed is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/socialprospodcast
Find us on iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/convince-convert-blog-social/id499844469

Please Support Our Sponsors

Huge thanks to data-driven social media management software company Argyle Social for their presenting sponsorship, as well as Infusionsoft and Jim Kukral at DigitalBookLaunch. We use Argyle Social for our social engagement; we use Infusionsoft for our email; and Jim is our guest host for the podcast and a smart guy).

Social Pros Transcript For Your Reading Enjoyment, Thanks to Speechpad for the Transcription

Jay: And we are back with episode number 12 of Social Pros. I am Jay Baer, as always, accompanied, by my trusty virtual sidekick Eric Boggs. Eric, how are you sir?

Eric: Doing just fine, Jay. Happy for number 12.

Jay: I shouldn’t say you’re a virtual sidekick, just that you’re not here in the same location as I am. You are an actual sidekick, but just located virtually.

Eric: Exactly.

Jay: We’re in the cloud, baby.

Eric: Yeah, you could say that.

Jay: Really quick, I want to thank our sponsors, Eric’s fine company Argyle Social, who we use for all of our social media happenings. Also our good friends at Infusionsoft, which we use for all of our email happenings. And our good friend Jim Kukral from digitalbooklaunch.com, super-smart guy. He’s actually going to be filling in week after next. I will be at a conference and he’s going to be pinch hitting, as host of this fine program.

Eric: That’s a good reminder. I need to track down guests. I’ll ping Jim via email and we’ll get somebody good.

Jay’s Thought of the Week

Jay: Fantastic. So, been an interesting week in the interwebs, I tell you what. There’s a lot of crazy stuff going on. Last week we talked of course about the big Instagram deal. This week there’s been a lot of little sticking and moving kind of stuff. Google+ made their profile pictures bigger. Oh, and guess what, a couple days later Facebook made their profile pictures bigger.

Eric: Funny how that works.

Jay’s Thought of the Week

Jay: It’s crazy. As if the extra 20 pixels is going to be the big difference between usage and non-usage. But it is pretty funny how all this is becoming a game of mimicry. I wanted to talk about something else as my message of the week. Our friend Jeremiah Owyang, from Altimeter Group published a really interesting blog post over the weekend, about the trend of social media agencies getting deep into social media advertising. Facebook advertising, Twitter advertising, LinkedIn advertising, etc.

He was on a road show in New York City recently, and met with a number of the mid-sized, and wanting to be larger social agencies in the city. And found that invariably they were getting really serious about social media advertising. It’s a really great post, we’ll make sure we link it up. Excellent comments. To me though, I really think that’s a short term play for the social media agency guys. To me if you look at the mechanics of Facebook ads, Twitter ads, LinkedIn ads, even YouTube ads, the way those ads are bought and trafficked and targeted is fundamentally similar to the way Google AdWords works. In fact it’s highly similar.

For me over the medium term, it seems like the large SEO SEM firms are going to be the ones who can make a legitimate claim to the social advertising budget. Because they have the long term optimization and math experience to do it well. When social advertising becomes more about numbers and less about experimenting with an experimental budget, I think the guys who have been spending millions and millions and millions of dollars on this for years are going to come in and take that budget away. I understand it, right? These social agencies want to get big and they want to get bought. The reality is there’s going to be a handful of social agencies that get bought out at a ten to 12 times multiple, by SEO agencies, or by large multi-national advertising holding companies. The rest are going to end up being $5 or $10 million a year lifestyle businesses, which ain’t all bad, but it’s not the same outcome. I think this is an 18 month play for social media advertising, for the social agency community. And then it’s going to be game over. Mr. Boggs, what do you think?

Eric: I think that you hit the nail on the head when you talk about this in terms of who has experience managing multi-million dollar ad budgets. When Facebook rolled out their ad platform, in such a way that it became very obviously a lot like Twitter’s ad platform, where it was all about promoting organic content, Adam my business partner at Argyle and I hopped on the phone with Jim Tobin a couple days later. He was actually at that conference. Jim is the president of Ignite Social Media. We basically had a very similar conversation about the upcoming battle between social agencies and traditional paid media agencies. The consensus really was that look, this is really about managing a huge chunk of money and less about optimizing individual posts for likes and comments and things like that. I tend to agree that the people that are managing the big ad budgets today are going to continue to manage the big ad budgets tomorrow. They’re just going to be spending a little bit more of it on Facebook and Twitter and everywhere else.

Jay: Yeah, because it’s a different skillset. Saying “look, we’re going to do your community management, we’re going to do your social listening, we’re going to do your monitoring. We’re going to do some high value KPI reports. We’re going to tweet on your behalf.”

A friend of mine who used to work for VaynerMedia which is one of the companies that Jeremiah talked to for his blog post, his job was to tweet the Cap’n Crunch account. He was Cap’n Crunch on Twitter and Facebook. If your job is to charge a brand tens of thousands of dollars a month to tweet from Cap’n Crunch (note: we don’t know what they were paid), that’s not the same skillset as managing a $10-$15 million a year Facebook ad budget. It’s just not.

Eric: Yeah. What’s going to be really interesting is I think there will be a long term place for social agencies, and there obviously will be a long term place for big media agencies. The silos between the two will be curious. We work with a ton of agency customers, and I’ve been in this business for a while now. It boggles my mind how the social agency can’t do some things because some other agency has access to Google Analytics, or some other agency does the email. That to me is going to be the big issue for all the players in this game. What is a problem is only going to become a bigger problem, because now there’s going to be big money funneling into social and there’s an additional party in the conversation, and that’s the social agency.

Jay: Absolutely. You have I think a related social media stat of the week.

Eric’s Social Media Stat of the Week: CPM Rates are Up 41%, CPC Rates are Up 23%, and Ad Engagement is Down

Eric: I do, I do.

Jay: That’s going to be my new sounder, I’m going to do that. ‘Social media stat of the week.’ I’m going to do that.

Eric: I hope you do it exactly like that every time.

Jay: We don’t even need to actually record it because I can do it on command.”Social media stat of the week.”

Eric: Yeah, this actually dovetails nicely. You would think that we actually plan these things.

Jay: I tell you what, it’s amazing.

Eric: We actually found this this morning, doing our daily plotting around the Internet. A group called TBG Digital, which is a big time seller of Facebook ad campaigns, they manage big Facebook ad budgets for big clients. They released a lot of data from the past three months, and they’re basing their findings on 327 billion ad impressions from 235 advertising clients. They basically have aggregated some of their client data. It’s all anonymous of course, and reported some cost and performance information. It’s really fascinating stuff and I don’t think any of it is terribly surprising. One over the past three months. CPM rates are up 41%. This is the theme, everything is getting more expensive. All these data points are cut by geography. The U.S. and the UK have seen the biggest increases over the past three months.

Two, CPC rates are up 23%. The other side of that is that ad engagement is down. When you look at the ad engagement graphs, and we’ll link up to this report in the blog post of the podcast, the changes are fairly small. What you’re seeing is this supply demand issue of the Facebook user base has plateaued or is growing at a decelerating rate, but the site is becoming more and more attractive for advertisers. There are more and more advertisers, a lot of new advertisers actually, clamoring for less ad inventory. Facebook recently rolled out more inventory, so all those things are driving up cost and driving down engagement and performance.

Jay: You said it exactly right, it’s supply and demand. The same thing happened with Google ads. I remember quite clearly back in the day when I was just a young boy, buying ads on Google. Before that Yahoo!, and before that Overture and Go To, back in the way back days. When you could literally get keywords and clicks at $0.10 a click. You could have whole swaths of your campaign that were $0.10 a click. Those days went the way of the dinosaur, as soon as everybody rushes in and says, “Oh, an efficient way to buy advertising. Let’s do that.” It doesn’t surprise me, although 41% in a quarter is a pretty steep ramp.

Eric: Oh yeah. We saw the same thing with LinkedIn ads at Argyle. When we first started advertising on LinkedIn, we were blown away by how cheap it was. It’s more than tripled. This is over a period of maybe 12 months.

Jay: That’s why it’s so important when you’re putting together metrics for your campaigns. You have to measure downstream behavior, that builds your business, not just clicks. It might be worth it. 41%, you might still be killing it, but you will never know that if you’re only measuring clicks. You have to measure the behaviors that those clicks generate, whether it’s leads or sales or something else in your funnel. Because otherwise you say,

“Geez, we’re playing 41% more for clicks or for CPM,” or 22% more per clicks I think you said the stat was. You may say, “It’s not worth it,” but it’s totally worth it. But you don’t know unless you’re measuring the right things.

Eric: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I just wonder how quickly the bidding will accelerate. Are we going to see another 41% over the next three months, or is this going to level out? To me that’s what’s going to be fascinating.

These clients for TBG are big business. I think the long tail local ad market on Facebook will probably be much, much more reasonably priced for the long term, but we’ll see.

Jay: Yeah, it’s a really interesting time. I feel like we’ve seen this movie before. It’s a sequel that had ten years between movies. It really does feel like the early days of SEM and PPC search.

Eric: Yep.

Special Guest: Derek Halpern of Social Triggers

Jay: Somebody who knows an awful lot about getting people to click on stuff, whether it’s an ad or otherwise, is our special guest this week on the Social Pros podcast. Mr. Derek Halpern from Social Triggers, one of the finest and most interesting blogs out there on this great web of ours. Derek, thank you for being a guest. How are you my man?

Derek Halpern, Social Triggers @derekhalpern

Derek: Hey man, what’s up? Thanks for having me.

Jay: It is our pleasure. Now, you were originally a psychology major, right? You actually have a degree in psychology, thus it is actually appropriate that you have a blog and a consulting practice, etc., that focuses people on getting people to behave in a particular way online. As opposed to most people who fake all this stuff, you actually have a background in it. How do you define a social trigger?

Derek: Let me just clarify one thing. I studied psychology in college, but the real studying happened after college. It wasn’t really what I learned in school, it’s what I learned after school. I spent a lot of time reading academic papers or books that talk about persuasion, psychology and science. I guess I don’t have a major in psychology, but I’ve given myself a major after the fact.

Jay: Nice.

Eric: I believe they call that the “school of hard knocks.”

Jay: Yes. Exactly.

Derek: Yeah. A social trigger, quite simply, is a little button that when you press it, it gets people to take some form of action. Any kind of action, whether you want people to share your content, subscribe to your email list, buy your products, click your ads, anything. Social trigger is a little button that you can activate and convince people to click that button, to influence some behavior down the line.

Jay: Not necessarily an actual button. It could be something that triggers them emotionally. You don’t necessarily mean a button you necessarily press.

Derek: Yeah, there’s actually three types of buttons you could press. There’s an emotional button, there’s a logic button, and then the last button is a sense of duty and respect to whoever you are and what you stand for.

Eric: Can you talk about…

Jay: Cool. Which one would be the podcast? I think the listening to the podcast is duty, right? That’s what that one is?

Eric: Exactly.

Derek: Yeah, no. I actually got this from Nancy Duarte‘s book “Resonate.” She actually talked about how there’s the emotional buttons, logical buttons and then ethical buttons. Each button has its own place, but in general you want to be able to push all three of them, especially when you’re trying to sell products. The more buttons you push at any one time, the more results you’ll have for whatever it is you’re trying to promote or sell.

Jay: What’s the most important factor then, in getting those social triggers to be pulled? Is it the quality and the type of content, or is it the call to action itself?

Derek: That is actually a very good question.

Jay: Thanks. I should do this for a living.

Derek: The call to action is vitally important. That’s one of the things that most people mess up on. I see people buying advertisements on TV and finally, it took Facebook to create Facebook pages for big companies to finally include a call to action in their ads. It’s to like them on Facebook which, it’s not “buy my stuff” or anything like that but it’s a call to action, thank God. Call to action is vitally important, but before you even get to the call to action you’ve got to make sure you’re hitting the right emotional triggers and logical triggers in your target customer. You don’t want to just tell people, “Hey, buy my stuff.” They’re not going to buy your stuff unless you set up the sale. Call to action’s important to have, but you’ve got to make sure you set up the call to action the right way.

Eric: Can you walk us through an example? I totally get what you’re talking about, but I think it would be very helpful to paint a picture of a customer that you work with or something that you built on your site, that walks us through the acquisition funnel where you touch people at different places in their psyche as you move them down this path.

Derek: All right. Let’s break this down. Let’s talk about Social Triggers. Social Triggers mainly targets people who want to increase the conversion rates of their website, right? I wrote an article, and in this article I started off very calmly. I was like, “If you leave your web design up to your web designer, you’re an idiot.” Now, this is pushing the emotional button because most people hire web designers so they can create the web design. This is a little contrary to what they think web designers should do. Why does that make someone an idiot? Well, first things first, if you leave it up to your web designer they don’t know anything about conversions. They’re going to give you a pretty picture, not a business building design. I’m giving you this quick example because this is the opening where one of the social triggers is creating an enemy of some kind. You want to position yourself or your content against some enemy. What I did there was positioning myself against web designers who don’t know anything about conversions. That was great for bringing in the people who want to increase their conversion rates for my audience.

As another good example, something that more people would be able to connect with, is just think about the “I’m an Apple, I’m a PC” commercial. What’s that all about? That’s all about positioning as this cool, hip brand against the dreaded PC who a bunch of nerds use. Nerds use PCs. That’s an example of a common enemy trigger. That’s a great way to start off the campaign, to get attention, create the enemy. As you proceed through that campaign after you create the enemy, you essentially set up the call to action before you ask for it. In such a way that gets people to think to themselves, if I don’t convert, I’m obviously siding with the enemy and I don’t want to do that. That’s what the “I’m a PC and I’m a Mac” commercial does. It basically says Macs are cool, PCs are for nerds. If you don’t own a Mac you must be a nerd and uncool.

Eric: That’s like this thing I used to do with my little brother. I would just swing my fists in the air and say, “I’m just going to walk toward you and if you don’t move I’m going to punch you.” It is a little bit of this thing of it’s a clever psychological manipulation. I think it’s very cool how purposeful you are, in how you think about this kind of stuff.

Derek: Yeah. I guess I’m weird like that. I think about everything. Even now when I write certain sentences I think, this is going to hit this psych trigger. Do I want to hit that trigger yet or wait? And I usually move stuff around based on a sentence by sentence basis.

Eric: I totally get it. That’s awesome.

Jay: Would you say then that people should spend more time on their content, or more time promoting that content?

Derek: It’s actually really funny that you’re asking me that question. Because I just conducted a little survey over the last maybe week or so. I asked bloggers especially or businesses, when they’re creating their blog, how much time do you spend creating your content versus promoting your content? I found that most people said that about 80% of the time they spend on creation, 20% on promotion. That’s the stupidest thing you can do. If you spend all this time creating content and not promoting it, how are you going to make sure people even know your content exists? Especially for businesses who are just trying to start building their presence. If you spend all this time on creation, no one is going to see what you’ve created unless you promote it. In the beginning, you’re better off spending 80% of your time promoting the content you create, the 20% of the content that you create.

Jay: Yeah, I would have to agree with that. I think that’s absolutely true, especially for new companies. This whole “we made it a blog post and everybody will read it,” that doesn’t actually work in reality.

Derek: Yeah. I always use Social Triggers as an example here. I launched Social Triggers officially in March of 2011. Within the first 12 months, Social Triggers already, I just looked at my stats, it said 26,000 subscribers on Feed Burner. I averaged only 2.66 articles a month.

Jay: That’s more subscribers than I have, and I’ve been doing this for four years and do three or four articles a week.

Derek: Yes. Because I spent 80% of my time promoting the content that I have as opposed to spending time creating it.

Jay: One of the things that I wrote about a couple weeks ago, that you actually helped me think through when you did the analysis of my site a while back. Actually, we’re going to launch the new site pretty soon. You’re going to love it. You’re going to be proud of me.

Derek: Sweet.

Eric: I’m proud of you, Jay. The preview you showed looked pretty awesome. I like how you’ve clearly dilenated what it is that you want people to do.

Jay: Thanks. A lot of that though actually was from Derek smacking me in the head. We did a Skype interview and he went through my whole site and said, “You’re smarter than this. You’re being way too passive about your calls to action,” and he was right.

Derek: Thanks.

Jay: It just took me a long time to get it fixed because I’ve got a lot of things to do, like podcasts. One of the things I wrote about recently was this notion of donut hole calls to action. Where a lot of companies, in particular on their blogs, they have blog posts and then maybe they have RSS. If they do it’s a tiny little icon. Then they have a contact us page and that’s it. There’s never any ability to take the next step. To say “OK, maybe I’m not ready to convert back, but get me on the email list, download the e-book, sign up for the webinar.” It seems like people feel like if they just have a couple of blog posts, that will be enough to get people to take action. There’s not enough of this content in the middle in most cases. Do you see that? Do you agree?

Derek: That’s the biggest problem, especially for companies, man. They get all worried about asking for calls to action on their blog and it makes no sense to me. If you’re not going to ask people to sign up, no one’s going to read your blog.

They think oh, I don’t want to be too pushy. Social media is not a sales medium. I don’t want to ask for email addresses. What they end up doing is spending all this time creating content, it doesn’t do anything for their business. Here’s the deal. If you’re creating great content and people are enjoying that content, you are doing your target customers and your readers a disservice. Because if you’re not making it easy to subscribe to your site, chances are they’re going to subscribe to some other site where you probably create much better content than that other site, and they’re going to listen to that person instead of you. All because you didn’t want to push for the call to action.

Jay: You’re an old school guy, right? You really emphasize email. Obviously your email list is important and you put a lot of emphasis in it at Social Triggers. You have a podcast as well, the Social Triggers Podcast, which is excellent. Everybody who listens to this podcast should absolutely listen to that podcast, it’s really well done. I’ve listened to a bunch of episodes. But you don’t use Facebook very much. You don’t use Google+ that much. You tweet here or there. You probably tweet more than anything else, but you don’t spend an enormous amount of time on the social media side of this. You’re kind of a throwback, which I find really interesting.

Derek: Yeah. I’ll tell you why. It just comes down to some statistics, man. I remember a few months ago or maybe six months ago now. I did a quick little test. I sent out an email broadcast to 8,000 people or whatever. That email broadcast generated about 2,000 clicks. 2,000 clicks. Then I sent out an update to my Twitter following, my Google+ following, and my Facebook following. That went out to a combined 12,000 people or something like that. And I think I generated 200 clicks. Why do I focus on email?

Because it gets results. Look at it like this. I call it the “Bikinis and Parties” principle. If you’re trying to sell your shit on Facebook, know what’s going to happen? You’re competing with people who are trying to see pictures of their friends and they’re getting personal invites from their friends to parties.

I want to be honest with you. If I’m on Facebook and I see your business offering 50% off to whatever it is you’re selling, even if I like your business and I like what you’re selling, if I see a bikini picture on Facebook I’m clicking that bikini picture every single time. I’m not clicking your Facebook update. However, on email, who are you competing with on email? I’ll tell you who you’re competing with. You’re competing with people who are going through their email for work, probably getting emails from their co-workers or their boss asking them to do something they don’t want to do.Would they rather read your email, buy something, save some money, alleviate some of that pain of their existence? Or would they rather do the work that they don’t feel like doing? It’s a competition game. You can beat the boss. You can’t beat bikini pictures.

Jay: Love it, love it. The other thing is just mechanically, right? In email, if you have 10,000 email subscribers, fundamentally 99.9% of them will actually get the email. Some of them won’t open it, but they’ll all get it. In Twitter, I have 56,000 followers or whatever, but what percentage of those 56,000 even see an individual tweet? The mechanics or the deliverability rate if you will of social is a lot worse than it is in email.

Derek: Exactly. Bottom line is, people are just not clicking. People always say something. The social media people love to tell me this. “Oh Derek, what about your community?” Well, if you look at Social Triggers I’ve got more than 100 comments on every blog post I ever write. Know why? Because people are getting my blog posts, they’re seeing them.

If they’re not leaving comments, I’m getting people to reply to my emails and they write me books. I actually had one person go through a story about how they’re holed up in the hospital and they just wanted to take this time and tell me about their struggles or their problems with the website they were running. They literally went on to write about 15,000 words describing to me, giving me free market research about exactly what I could help them with. You can’t get that on Twitter. You can’t explain anything in 140 characters.

Jay: Last thing I want to ask you about. Because I know you’re passionate about this element as well is the about page, that most companies do not do that very well. Is that true?

Derek: It’s 100% true and I’ll tell you why. Most people don’t realize that your about page is one of the most popular pages on your website, hands down. Not only do you want to tell people what your company’s about, which is what most companies do really well. You’ve got to connect it to outcomes that your ideal customer wants. Start your about page with an outcome that your customer wants, and then tell them later about who you are and what you stand for. Most importantly, you want to include a lead generation form on your about page. It’s one of the most popular pages of your site. Why wouldn’t you put an opt in form on your about page? You’d be dumb not to.

Jay: Yet almost nobody does that.

Derek: Nobody does it for some reason.

Eric: I’m pretty sure we don’t.

Jay: I know I don’t, but I’m going to.

Eric: Geez, thanks, Derek. I feel great about myself now.

Jay: Eric, I think what you should do on your about page is have a sign up form maybe for a free trial and also bikini pictures.

Derek: Win.

Jay: It is all a win. Derek, do you have some shout-outs for us?

Social Pros Shout Outs

Derek: I do, I’ve got three shout-outs for you. First, I want to just call attention to socialtriggers.com, because I love talking about myself.

Jay: Awesome. Duly noted.

Derek: Go sign up to the email list.

Jay: Sign up for the email list.

Derek: I want to tell you about Marie Forleo. You can find her at marieforleo.com. She essentially empowers women to live a rich, happy and hot lifestyle. Whether you’re running your own business or starting a business or working for another company. It’s a great resource for females who want to learn marketing. Second person I want to tell you about is my good friend Jonathan Fields. You can find him at jonathanfields.com. Jonathan Fields is really the man, because he’s the nicest person I’ve ever met in my life. Talking to him is a real pleasure.

Jay: That’s because he’s a yoga dude. He’s all centered.

Derek: Yeah, but in addition to being a yoga dude he’s one of the smartest businesspeople I know, too. Not only did he build a wildly successful web business, before he built the web business, before he authored two books, before all that, he actually ran a highly profitable yoga studio in Manhattan that he sold. Before that, he worked at a high powered law firm in corporate America. He’s got the experience running brick and mortar businesses, he’s got the experience running web businesses, he’s got the experience writing books and he’s got the experience , just basically every part of business you could want, he’s done.

Eric: Know what else he’s got, Derek?

Derek: Bikini pictures?

Eric: He’s got a lead form on his about page.

Derek: He does, good.

Jay: Fantastic. Derek, you were awesome. Thanks so much for taking some time and being on the podcast. Congrats on all of your success. Hope to run into you in person one of these days again.

Derek: All right, cool. Thanks for having me, this is a lot of fun.

Eric: Absolutely, Derek. Thanks.

Jay: Next week on the Social Pros podcast, we have Ryon Harms who’s the director of social media for Farmers Insurance. He is going to talk to us about the Farmers 5 hashtag. Where they actually put the hashtag on the back of Kasey Kahne’s NASCAR for the first time in history last week. We’re going to talk about how that worked out for them and other things that Farmers has going on in social. That’ll be pretty cool, eh, Eric?

Eric: Yeah, man. I don’t know a lot about racing but they’re doing some cool stuff.

Jay: You guys should run some analysis on that hashtag before the show.

Eric: I’ll see what we can dig up.

Jay: If only you had a social media management software company that could do that kind of thing.

Eric: If only someone would build software to help people measure the impact of their social media marketing programs.

Jay: People like Argyle Social, the signature sponsor of the Social Pros podcast, Eric’s company. Also thanks as always to our friends at Infusionsoft and Jim Kukral from Digital Book Launch. I’m Jay, he’s Eric. Thanks everybody.

Announcing the Winner of the Email Subject Line Copywriting Contest!

Posted on 18. Apr, 2012 by Sonia Simone in Blog, Email Marketing, Featured, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

A couple of weeks ago, our friends at MarketingExperiments had the nifty idea of running a copywriting contest to find the best subject line to promote their upcoming landing page optimization conference, the Optimization Summit 2012.

We got 492 comments with your ideas for subject headers.

Some were clever, some funny, some serious.

Some of them shouted for attention, others delivered a quieter message.

(We even had an entry using Sean Platt’s “can’t miss” multi-purpose email subject header.)

We know you’re impatient to find out the results, so let’s get right to it.

The first thing we did was to narrow the hundreds of entries down to a few dozen strong entries:

The first cut

Yes, we really did read every entry!

Obviously, this part of the process was highly subjective. We selected the first cut based on what we’ve seen work best with our own email marketing. That means we looked for email subject headers that caught our attention, that made a compelling promise, that were congruent with the message body (which, as you may remember, had already been written), and that didn’t look like spam.

Because MECLABS wanted to test varying approaches, we broke the best entries into three rough categories — subject headers based on Curiosity, headers based on product Benefits, and headers based on Fear. As you’ll see from our runners-up, the strongest headers often had elements of more than one of these factors.

There were a lot of headers that probably would have been effective, but that we did not include because we felt there would be a disconnect between the promise of the headline and what was delivered in the body of the message.

For example, we really liked the header “Testing — does this link work for you?” (We defined that one as a Curiosity headline.) But MECLABS had some concerns that the element of trickery would annoy their subscribers and lead to unsubscribes … definitely not the result we were after.

And, of course, CAN-SPAM and other anti-spam laws specifically prohibit email headers that are misleading. So if it could be interpreted as deception, we ruled it out.

We also looked for headers that felt in line with MarketingExperiment’s brand and with the voice that was used in the body of the email. Some of the headers submitted might have worked brilliantly … for another brand.

The runners-up

In the “Curiosity” category, we ended up going with Vince Robisch‘s entry:

Quarterbacks aren’t the only changes being tested in Denver.

Denver’s new quarterback has been hot news all over the country, and this header created a good “itch that needs scratching” — just what are those other changes being tested? In copywriting terms, this is known as entering the conversation already taking place in the prospect’s mind. MECLABS also liked the tie-in to the city where the conference was being held.

In the “Benefits” category, we decided on Shaun Connell‘s:

A scientific way to increase your conversions

This header includes both a benefit (improved conversion, which we know is highly desirable to MarketingExperiments’ audience), and also hints at a feature — at how we intend to get to that benefit, with the word “scientific.” This header also harnesses some of the power of curiosity as a secondary element — the reader has a reason to keep reading: to find out what, specifically, that scientific way might be.

Finally, in the “Fear” category, we liked Christine Parizo‘s:

Do your landing pages pass this test?

This is a solidly specific headline — the readers knows that the message will be about landing pages. Passing (or failing) tests is a common anxiety, and in a competitive economy, no one wants to have the landing pages that fail the test.

The word this is important (in fact, there was another entry for “Do your landing pages pass the test?”). That slight added element of specificity enhances reader curiosity to generate those clickthroughs.

The other subject headers

You may remember that our three email headers were going head-to-head against three headers chosen by the readers of the MarketingExperiments blog.

Those three headers were:

• [Optimization Summit] 3 Days to a Better Website ($300 Off Coupon Inside!)
• Learn 3 tips that made 10,000 landing pages extremely successful
• Optimization Summit 2012 – Speakers List Up Now! + Save $300 Today

And the winner is …

Christine Parizo with “Do your landing pages pass this test?”

Christine will be winning a free ticket to Optimization Summit 2012, plus a free MarketingExperiments Landing Page Optimization Online Course. Well played, Christine!

And just because we like to give stuff away, all six runners-up (including the three contestants over at MarketingExperiments) will receive a 90-day free membership to Third Tribe Marketing, our private community of online businesspeople. (We’ll be contacting those runners-up today with details.) The Third Tribe is currently closed to new members, but we know that six strategic, savvy marketers like these will fit right in.

You can see the results of all of the headers below, in a screenshot from the MECLABS Test Protocol, an internal tool they use to manage and validate all of their tests

Click image for larger view

For more details about the results, head on over to the MarketingExperiments blog.

What do you think?

Would this have been the one you’d have predicted to win? Anything that surprised you in these results? Let us know in the comments.

About the Author: Sonia Simone is co-founder and CMO of Copyblogger Media. Follow her on twitter @soniasimone

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Cutting Through Content Clutter with One Social Thing

Posted on 17. Apr, 2012 by Jay Baer in Blog, content curation, Convince & Convert News, Convince and Convert, Email Marketing, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

Besieged by blog posts, articles, and columns about social media and content marketing? I have a solution.

Last week, I wrote about our new blog and editorial calendar, coming soon to this very space. Today, news of our brand-new email service….One Social Thing. (www.OneSocialThing.com)

One Social Thing takes content curation to its logical conclusion. The Convince & Convert team (with help from you, read on!) figures out the single most important and interesting content about social media and content marketing, and sends it to you at the end of every day.

That’s it. The easiest to digest, most useful email update service around (we think). And of course, it’s free.

Here’s a sample of One Social Thing, so you can see the clean lines and smell the rich, Corinthian leather.

If you’re already a subscriber, thanks for your support. If not, please give it a try!

Help Create One Social Thing with #OneSocialThing

We spend a ton of time every day seeking and reading and evaluating content for our Twitter, Facebook, and One Social Thing programs (and soon, Google +). But we don’t see it all. If you find something you think is a MUST READ in social media and content marketing, please tweet it out with the #OneSocialThing hash tag. Not necessarily breaking news (we’re not Mashable) but the most important/useful thing of the day.

If we use your suggestion in an issue, we’ll mention you in the email (with a link), and tweet our thanks. Maybe something else extra-special for folks that really get behind One Social Thing.

Thanks as always for your trust, loyalty, and attention. I don’t take it for granted. One Social Thing is a new concept, and I’d LOVE your feedback on it.

Cutting Through Content Clutter with One Social Thing

Posted on 17. Apr, 2012 by Jay Baer in Blog, content curation, Convince & Convert News, Convince and Convert, Email Marketing, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

Besieged by blog posts, articles, and columns about social media and content marketing? I have a solution.

Last week, I wrote about our new blog and editorial calendar, coming soon to this very space. Today, news of our brand-new email service….One Social Thing. (www.OneSocialThing.com)

One Social Thing takes content curation to its logical conclusion. The Convince & Convert team (with help from you, read on!) figures out the single most important and interesting content about social media and content marketing, and sends it to you at the end of every day.

That’s it. The easiest to digest, most useful email update service around (we think). And of course, it’s free.

Here’s a sample of One Social Thing, so you can see the clean lines and smell the rich, Corinthian leather.

If you’re already a subscriber, thanks for your support. If not, please give it a try!

Help Create One Social Thing with #OneSocialThing

We spend a ton of time every day seeking and reading and evaluating content for our Twitter, Facebook, and One Social Thing programs (and soon, Google +). But we don’t see it all. If you find something you think is a MUST READ in social media and content marketing, please tweet it out with the #OneSocialThing hash tag. Not necessarily breaking news (we’re not Mashable) but the most important/useful thing of the day.

If we use your suggestion in an issue, we’ll mention you in the email (with a link), and tweet our thanks. Maybe something else extra-special for folks that really get behind One Social Thing.

Thanks as always for your trust, loyalty, and attention. I don’t take it for granted. One Social Thing is a new concept, and I’d LOVE your feedback on it.

New Research: Americans Hate Social Media Promotions

Posted on 08. Apr, 2012 by Jay Baer in Blog, Email Marketing, exacttarget, facebook, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media research, Twitter

Among other disruptive characteristics that have altered the nature of business forever (real-time interaction, every customer is a reporter, customer service is a spectator sport, etc.) a major way that social media changes the game is the Democratization of Voices.

Your Company Needs to Be Human Because You’re Competing with Humans

Social media is the first time in history that companies communicate alongside real people, and with no inherent advantage. Go to your Facebook Wall and scroll down for a while. Mine looks something like this:

Friend

Friend

Friend

Brand

Mom

Wife

Brand

Acquaintance

Acquaintance

I’ll bet yours is approximately the same. Now look at Twitter (public feed of the people you follow, not lists). Basically the same, right? A mixture of people you know, people you love, people you want to know, and companies. All of them using precisely the same tools and formats to jostle for your attention. This is simply unprecedented.

Your Mom does not buy full-page magazine ads adjacent to car companies. Your friends do not make 60-second radio spots. Your high school ex-girlfriend doesn’t put up freeway billboards (unless she’s even more deranged than most). Those are brand tactics, not people tactics. Yet in social media, brands and people are using the same toolbox.

Because social media strips away the corporate communication advantages (money, personnel, expertise) they have enjoyed forever, brands often try to fight through the clutter of social media and curry your favor by giving you the BEST OFFER EVER. The paradox is that’s exactly what we don’t want.

We Don’t Want Promotions in Social Media

We the people don’t want promotions in social media. It’s not as if we signed up for social media sites so that we could hang out with software companies and hotel chains and T-shirt purveyors and ham merchants. We signed up to connect with each other, not with commerce.

New research from my friends ExactTarget (I am proud to have them as a client) puts a mathematical fine point on our collective abhorrence for social promotions. In their 2012 Channel Preferences Study (download it here for free) 1,500 Americans ages 15 and older were asked about their usage of email, social media, and text messaging. The results are astounding.

Even for companies that we have given permission to send us offers (not Spam), only 4% of us prefer those messages to be delivered via Facebook, and just 1% via Twitter.

Only 4% of us would look at Facebook first to find a deal from a company. Another 10% would look at Facebook second.

Where do we prefer to receive and look for promotional messages? Email. That old, neglected war horse of digital marketing still delivers the dollars, as 77% of survey participants want promotional email from companies, and 44% would look to email first to find a deal.

Be Social Don’t Do Social

I’ve been critical about Facebook’s Timeline and how the company is forcing companies to act like people on the platform.  But they’re right. If we so clearly don’t want special offers and promotions clogging our social streams, companies must focus on being social, and worry less about doing social media in ways that approximate direct marketing.

I’m not saying never run a contest or a promotion or a special offer or a threshold deal in social media. But if your company doesn’t have a social media editorial program that emphasizes spontaneous, personal, human, light-hearted, interesting, funny, timely, and photo-driven content, you are swimming against a powerful tide of customer desire.

Smart companies use social to turn customers into fans, and fans into volunteer marketers. They worry less about squeezing every nickel and click out of each tweet and status update.

The more you sell, the less you sell. 

I’d like to hear what you think in the comments. Are companies headed down a blind alley by relying too much on social media promotions? Get the Channel Preferences study for free here.

New Research: Americans Hate Social Media Promotions

Posted on 08. Apr, 2012 by Jay Baer in Blog, Email Marketing, exacttarget, facebook, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media research, Twitter

Among other disruptive characteristics that have altered the nature of business forever (real-time interaction, every customer is a reporter, customer service is a spectator sport, etc.) a major way that social media changes the game is the Democratization of Voices.

Your Company Needs to Be Human Because You’re Competing with Humans

Social media is the first time in history that companies communicate alongside real people, and with no inherent advantage. Go to your Facebook Wall and scroll down for a while. Mine looks something like this:

Friend

Friend

Friend

Brand

Mom

Wife

Brand

Acquaintance

Acquaintance

I’ll bet yours is approximately the same. Now look at Twitter (public feed of the people you follow, not lists). Basically the same, right? A mixture of people you know, people you love, people you want to know, and companies. All of them using precisely the same tools and formats to jostle for your attention. This is simply unprecedented.

Your Mom does not buy full-page magazine ads adjacent to car companies. Your friends do not make 60-second radio spots. Your high school ex-girlfriend doesn’t put up freeway billboards (unless she’s even more deranged than most). Those are brand tactics, not people tactics. Yet in social media, brands and people are using the same toolbox.

Because social media strips away the corporate communication advantages (money, personnel, expertise) they have enjoyed forever, brands often try to fight through the clutter of social media and curry your favor by giving you the BEST OFFER EVER. The paradox is that’s exactly what we don’t want.

We Don’t Want Promotions in Social Media

We the people don’t want promotions in social media. It’s not as if we signed up for social media sites so that we could hang out with software companies and hotel chains and T-shirt purveyors and ham merchants. We signed up to connect with each other, not with commerce.

New research from my friends ExactTarget (I am proud to have them as a client) puts a mathematical fine point on our collective abhorrence for social promotions. In their 2012 Channel Preferences Study (download it here for free) 1,500 Americans ages 15 and older were asked about their usage of email, social media, and text messaging. The results are astounding.

Preferred Channel for Promotional Messages From Companies Whom I Have Granted Permission to Send Me Ongoing Information

Even for companies that we have given permission to send us offers (not Spam), only 4% of us prefer those messages to be delivered via Facebook, and just 1% via Twitter. 77% of us prefer offer to be delivered via email.

Only 4% of us would look at Facebook first to find a deal from a company. Another 10% would look at Facebook second.

Where do we prefer to receive and look for promotional messages? Email. That old, neglected war horse of digital marketing still delivers the dollars, as 77% of survey participants want promotional email from companies, and 44% would look to email first to find a deal.

Be Social Don’t Do Social

I’ve been critical about Facebook’s Timeline and how the company is forcing companies to act like people on the platform.  But they’re right. If we so clearly don’t want special offers and promotions clogging our social streams, companies must focus on being social, and worry less about doing social media in ways that approximate direct marketing.

I’m not saying never run a contest or a promotion or a special offer or a threshold deal in social media. But if your company doesn’t have a social media editorial program that emphasizes spontaneous, personal, human, light-hearted, interesting, funny, timely, and photo-driven content, you are swimming against a powerful tide of customer desire.

Smart companies use social to turn customers into fans, and fans into volunteer marketers. They worry less about squeezing every nickel and click out of each tweet and status update.

The more you sell, the less you sell. 

I’d like to hear what you think in the comments. Are companies headed down a blind alley by relying too much on social media promotions? Get the Channel Preferences study for free here.