For years, at the bottom of every single web page on our web design & internet marketing site was a call to action.

Each one of those calls to action was a unique link that led to our contact form.

“Contact us today for a free consultation.”

“Learn how search engine optimization can bring new prospects to your site.”

“Move your static website to a content management system.”

It was fairly effective, but I wondered if there was a way to remove a step and increase our conversion rates. The simple change we made led to a 50% increase in our website conversion rates. 

What was that change?

The change was rather than send people via a link to a contact form, why not just add the contact form to the bottom of these pages? We now call these forms our Action Forms.

While it did add a bit of clutter to our pages, I was hoping that the Action Forms would be a more obvious call to action than just a simple text link. Like a tip jar on the coffee shop counter, it would work as a visual cue to let people know what the expectation was when they finished reading the page.

In the first week we saw a 400% increase in our lead capture forms, which included both the new Action Forms and our original contact form! That was a bit of an aberration, and by the month’s end it settled into a 50% increase over just the contact form alone…an increase that has stayed steady over the years.

While some people may scoff at a 50% increase in leads, especially when you see these crazy numbers some marketers throw around, a 50% increase in qualified leads is substantial for most businesses, and all it took was adding a streamlined version of our contact form to the bottom of our web page template.

It’s definitely something that you or your web developer can do…and if it’s not, it’s probably something we can help you out with.  

So, here’s my challenge to you: put an Action Form at the bottom of your web pages and see what kind of impact it has on your conversion rates over a 30 day period. Good, bad or indifferent, please share your results with us.

Rich Brooks
It’s All About the Conversions

If you’ve been following this blog for a while you know that for the past few years I’ve been running a conference called Social Media FTW with a couple of friends.

We retired that brand after three successful years but I wasn’t quite done.

So this year I started a new conference that would focus on the three most important channels for businesses and organization today: search, social & mobile. These are the Agents of Change.

Earlier today we launched the website for The Agents of Change Digital Marketing Conference.

This all-day conference is happening in Portland, Maine and online on 9.14.12. 

And while the speaker lineup is just getting started, we’ve got some amazing speakers already lined up:

• Chris Brogan, co-author of Trust Agents and Google+ for Business
• Amy Porterfield, co-author of Facebook Marketing All-In-One for Business
• Derek Halpern, brains behind the insanely popular marketing website Social Triggers
• Rich Brooks, who hasn’t done anything, but might. One day.

So, how much are tickets? you’re probably wondering.

The physical ticket is $199 and the digital ticket is $99. The digital ticket gives you access to the live stream and you can watch the presentations over and over again for a full year!

But for a limited time only, we’re offering an early bird ticket: you can get the physical ticket for only $99 and the digital ticket for only $49…that’s over 50% off each!

But wait…there’s more!

If you order the physical ticket by 11:59pm, Tuesday, 5.1.12, we’ll throw in the digital ticket for free! (And yes, it’s still only $99. That’s $298 worth of edutainment for only $99!) Why would you want both the physical ticket AND the digital ticket? So you can watch all the presentations over and over again, or see presentations you may have missed.

If you can’t make it to Portland, Maine on 9.14.12 we’ve still got an amazing deal for you. The digital ticket is only $25 during this 36 hour sale!

Whether you plan to attend in person or virtually, don’t miss this amazing, very limited sale.

Get your tickets now!

Rich Brooks
Agent of Change 

That was the question that we pondered as we worked on a pilot program with Braden Buehler of Narrative Design for The Rogers Collection, a Maine-based importer of luxury foods. They wanted to promote Pio Tosini’s prosciutto in an engaging fashion, and build their email list at the same time. 

There are already plenty of fine food importers experimenting with QR codes on product packaging and in catalogs. At Rogers, they decided to engage their customers while they stood at the deli counter, eyeing the prosciutto.

“Pio Tosini Prosciutto de Parma is a premium purchase for any shopper, and with good reason. Their melt-in-your-mouth ham has been hand-selected, deboned, trimmed and cured over 500 days in salt and Mediterranean sea breezes by the Pio Tosini family exactly the same way for over a century.

“You can taste the difference immediately. But how to convince customers to take that first taste, and then to treat themselves?”

(Yes, I totally stole that from Braden!)

To get the QR codes in place they needed buy in from the butcher shops. The good news was that the butchers, shop owners and distributors already swear by Pio Tosini prosciutto.

The campaign was a great reminder to showcase it and talk it up to customers. The Rogers Collection reached out personally to the distributors and retailers participating in the promotion to explain the campaign, and offered discounts and prizes to the locations with the highest participation rates. The response was overwhelming.

The next challenge was to create an offer interesting enough that people would be willing to take out their smart phones and scan the QR code.

Cue the prosciutto. An entire leg’s worth.

That was certainly enough of an incentive. (Unless you are a vegetarian. But then, chances are, you’re not standing in front of a deli counter, drooling over aged cuts of meat.)

People who scanned the QR code were taken to a special, mobile-friendly landing page:

Unique QR codes allow Rogers to track which deli generates the most signups. 

Once the shopper has entered the contest (by entering their name and email) they are directed to a second page with a video and recipe ideas:

The contest is just getting going, but as we collect more data we’ll share it here. 

In the meantime, go eat some prosciutto! 

Rich Brooks
Mmmm…prosciutto. 

People are always asking me how to get more followers on Twitter. I tell them that it’s not a numbers game, that there plenty of well known techniques to get more followers.

However, you’ll end up with a lot of followers who don’t pay any attention to you, as they’re in the same mad rush to increase their followers as well.

Then they roll their eyes and ask again.

Well, here’s a technique that will help you attract the right type of followers on Twitter, and all it takes is a free service called Paper.li.

For those of you who don’t know, paper.li is a service that helps you curate content from Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds and Google+ into an online newspaper.

For an example of how to use Paper.li, I’m going to use the Agents of Change Digital Marketing Conference that I recently announced. The conference is going to focus on how businesses can use search, social & mobile to grow. The conference will take place here in Maine, but there’s also an online virtual component that anyone can attend.

I’m looking to build awareness for the conference, so here’s what I did first did on Twitter.

I created an Agents of Change account called @agentconference. Because of the Maine connection, I followed a number of local people that I follow from my @therichbrooks account who are marketers or run businesses.

I then went over to paper.li and created a new account for Agents of Change, connected to the conference’s Twitter account.

Here’s how I did it:

1. Click on Start Your Paper at the top of the page.
2. Choose a title.
3. Add one or more “streams” that will feed your paper.

   Now, there are plenty of stream types. For the Agents of Change, I wanted to start by including everyone I follow under the @agentconference account.

   I also wanted to include people who tweet about the topics the conference is about: search, social and mobile.So I included some tags. This will include tweets from people I don’t necessarily follow but use specific hashtags or keywords.

   I chose the hashtags #seo, #socialmedia and #mobile.

4. Now hit publish.
5. Once the paper is created you can create an editor’s note with a call to action, including a clickable link. (Not sure if it’s no-follow or not.)

    

6. However, the most important thing is to click the megaphone. This tweets out your paper, including mentions of your top contributors.

Why is this so important? Because it lets people know that you’re following them, shows up in their mentions column, and increases your visibility.

This works for both people you’re already following, and new people who are tweeting out the hashtags or keywords you included!

Later, when I go back to my twitter feed and search for mentions of the daily paper, I can see that people are already retweeting the Agents of Change when they’re included in the paper, sharing that link with their network and extending our reach.

As I look at the people who have been featured, I see that most of them have begun following the Agents of Change account. Again, this increases our visibility and reach with people who care about the things we want to talk about: search, social & mobile.

If you liked this video, please give it a big thumbs up on YouTube (or wherever you’re watching it) and consider subscribing to flyte’s YouTube channel.

And, if you want to learn more about search, social or mobile, head on over to The Agents of Change Digital Marketing Conference to learn more about our conference, whether you’re planning on coming to Maine or watching online.

Rich Brooks
Paper.li Publisher

As part of flyte‘s commitment to education this year, we’ll be putting on monthly lunch & learn seminars we’re calling flyte school.

And as part of my commitment to not hog the spotlight all the time, I’m teaming up with some amazing marketing experts to help me out.

The first one is Tobin Slaven of Dream Local. He’s going to be presenting on The Perfect Storm: Social-Local-Mobile.

Last year social media was all the rage, but 2012 will mark the widening gap between businesses that are harnessing social and the power of word of mouth advertising versus those who are going to miss the boat. This presentation will focus on the new consumer and how their use of tools to tune out and filter away traditional forms of advertising, is creating a whole new opportunity for customer service marketing.

Key takeaways will include several free or low cost tools any small business owner can use to build and monitor their brand reputation on social media, local search, and mobile phones.

Sounds awesome, and I’ve seen Tobin present before a number of times. He’s got great material and an easy-to-follow style.

Once Tobin’s done I’ll be presenting on Search Engine Optimization: Rank Higher, Sell More!

You know that search engines can provide your business with loads of new prospects, but why aren’t you getting as much traffic as you’d like? Why are your competitors ranking higher than you? What can you do to increase your search engine visibility? In this seminar, you’ll learn how to improve your organic search engine ranking and drive more qualified leads to your Web site.

Attendees will learn:

• How to uncover which keyword terms will drive qualified leads to your site
• What on-page changes will increase your search engine visibility and how to make them
• How to get more incoming links to improve your search engine ranking
• The Do’s and Don’ts of search engine optimization

Lunch is included with your ticket.

Seating is limited, so act now! Early bird tickets are available only through January 31st.

Date: Thursday, 2/16/2012
Time: Noon – 2:30pm
Place: Rines Auditorium, Portland Public Library (directions)
Cost: $35 early bird, $50 angry bird

If you can’t make it to Portland, Maine, be sure to check out our web marketing webinars.

Rich Brooks
Maine SEO

In the final tenet of Robert Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, he examines scarcity.

Like reciprocity, commitment & consistency, social proof, liking and authority before it, scarcity has an undue influence on us due to our desire for shortcuts.

We have been trained that things that are rarer have more value than things that are common. Therefore, to make things appear to have more value, marketers can promote or even fake the scarcity of an object or information.

Like many people, I subscribe to a number of daily deals, like LivingSocial. I know that if I don’t act now, I’ll miss out on 50% off a massage, food  or snow tires. Interestingly, I’ve noticed I’m less compelled to buy a daily deal these days because I know that if I miss this half-off yoga class, there will be another one from a competing studio next week. The deal is still a good one, but the scarcity has been removed.

Scarcity also plays on our fear of loss. In one example from the book, homeowners who were told how much they would lose by not insulating their house bought at a much higher rate than another group that was told how much they would save.

We also hate to lose our freedom; when an object becomes scarce or won’t be available much longer, we don’t want to lose our freedom of choice, so we find the object more desirable. In one study, people who tasted a cookie from a jar with only two cookies found the cookie more delicious than an identical cookie in a nearly full jar.

What I found even more interesting was a sales experiment for a beef company. The first group of customers were given the standard sales pitch. The second group heard the sales pitch plus were told that there would soon be a beef shortage, and not all orders would be filled. The third group heard what the second group heard, but they were also told that this information was secret, and most people didn’t know about the upcoming shortage.

The evidence was clear, as the second group bought more beef than the first group, but the third group bought even more. Scarcity of product combined with a scarcity of information proved an overwhelming sales tool.

So, how can you use scarcity to improve your web marketing and social media activity?

Scarcity works well in all types of marketing and sales, but here are a few ways you can use it yourself:

• Create a member-only group. Provide these members with information only available to them and sell membership at a premium.
• Limit seats. Limit the number of seats for your next webinar or seminar.
• Use early bird discounts. Offer discounts for people who purchase before an upcoming date. Announce this when tickets first go on sale, and then again as the deadline approaches. An alternative approach is to off a certain number of discounted seats and once those are gone, they’re gone for good.
• Give special offers to a small mailing list. Start by giving people on your internal list a special opportunity to buy early, before you announce it to everyone.

Scarcity is a powerful motivator. Do you have any other ideas on how to use scarcity in your web marketing? If so, please leave a comment below. But please hurry…comments will only be open for one week, then they’ll be closed forever!

The Rich Brooks
One of a Kind

Photo Credit: Kim-bodia

We’ve discussed the power of reciprocity, commitment, social proof and liking in Robert Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, so far. Now it’s time to look at the power that authority holds over us.

Like social proof, authority gives us a short cut in dealing with the complexity of the modern world. We listen to our doctors about health care issues, professors about scholarly matters, and talking heads on TV for everything from child-rearing to national security issues.

Often, this is a good thing. People often become authorities after years of rigorous study. However, in a famous experiment by Stanley Milgram, average people were persuaded to shock another person to near death by a person wielding nothing more than a clipboard and a white lab jacket. (Thankfully, there was no electricity and the person being “shocked” was a confidant.)

Experiment after experiment showed that humans are completely unaware of the amount of autonomy they give over to others, just because of a title, clothing, or trappings.

Let’s keep in mind here, that our goal is to become effective, ethical web marketers. To that end, we need to establish our authority, not fake it.

Here are some techniques you can use to establish authority and improve the results of your online marketing:

• Establish your authority…via blogs, video, etc. Not only will people see your expertise (even if you don’t hold an M.D. or other degree), members of the media will find your blog or video and interview you as an expert on the subject. The number of times I’ve been described as an expert because I wrote one blog post on the subject is astounding. Blog posts have gotten me interviews in both Inc. magazine and CNN.com.
• Use an authority figure. Not an authority (yet) yourself? It’s easy to find someone who is and leverage their authority. A vitamin maker could interview a doctor on the benefits of the vitamin. A maker of dog products could use a dog trainer to pitch her wares.
• Leverage authority from other sources. How many blogs and websites promote the fact they were featured on Oprah, or NPR, or FastCompany.com?
• Brand yourself. In today’s world, you don’t need a formal title to establish expertise and authority. Just ask The Ezine Queen, The Dog Whisperer, or The Diet Ninja.
• Create virtual trappings. It’s been said that visitors to our website make a decision about is in just a few seconds. A generic template isn’t going to cut it. Invest in a custom design, logo, and photography.

Perhaps the best place to establish your authority is by adding intelligent comments to a well-respected blog…like this one. Go ahead and share an example of how you have used authority in your online marketing…or an example you’ve seen.

In my fifteen years as a web marketing authority, I’ve seen the value of a well-constructed comment on an industry blog, so get commenting. Don’t make me take out my clipboard.

Next Weapon of Influence: Scarcity

Rich Brooks
You Will Respect My Authoritah!

You like me! You really, really like me!

In Robert Cialdini’s book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, he talks about the tenets of influence. So far we’ve seen reciprocity, commitment & consistency, and social proof in action, and now we move on to liking.

It’s no surprise that we’re influenced by people we like…what’s surprising is the degree to which we’re influenced by people we like, or even those who leverage the names of people or things we like. (This is why the Tupperware party is so powerful, and why organizations send our kids’ friends to sell us candles and popcorn buckets we don’t need.)

We can see this at work on some of our favorite social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, that “suggest” that we might like a number of other people on the network, thus strengthening the network and lessening the chances that we’ll leave. The social ads on Facebook are similar, when they show a product and let us know a friend “likes” it.

There’s a number of things that impact our liking of a person or brand:

• Physical attractiveness: You want to think you’re above such things, but you’re not. Study after study proves how susceptible we are to the physical attractiveness of people, even when we don’t realize we are. 
• Similarity: In one study, marchers in a anti-war demonstration were more likely to sign a petition by a like-dressed person…even without reading the petition!
• Compliments: It’s amazing what we’ll do when someone says “I like you” in word or deed. Studies show it doesn’t even matter if the compliments are true. (But seriously, your hair does look great today.)
• Contact and cooperation: Studies have shown that the more we see a face, the more likely we are to believe what comes out of it is true!
• Conditioning and association: This is why we hate the weatherman and why we blame the messenger. The flip side of this is associating our offering with something positive. When an attractive model was shown next to a new car, men were more likely to rate the car as faster, better built and more expensive. None of them believed this when it was brought to their attention. (Men…right?) This could explain some of the “green washing” that’s currently going on right now as brands want to be seen as green.

So how do you use this in your own web marketing and social media?

Unfortunately, most of you just aren’t as physically attractive as I am. However, eating right, exercising and wearing flattering clothes can help. Comb overs are a definite no-no.

Here are some ideas on how you can improve and bank on your own likeability:

• Be attractive. OK, maybe being physically attractive is mostly in your genes, but on the Internet no one needs to know you’re a dog. That didn’t actually come out the way I meant. I mean, a smiling profile pic can go a long way. Also, confidence (not to be confused with arrogance) is an attractive feature. A positive attitude can help, too. Studies show that positive tweets get shared a lot more than negative ones.
  
• Act similar to your customers. I’m not talking about being a fake, but I am suggesting that you use the same language that they do. This is especially true as you write articles and blog posts; you need to be talking about the same things they are, and using the same words they do so they’ll find you when they do a search at Google. 
• Be complimentary. Again, don’t fake it. But you can certainly find positive things to say about people through social media, directly in emails, and through other venues. We all know that guy who makes snide remarks and is always trying to cut people down. It didn’t work for him, did it?
• Be everywhere. Or at least appear to be everywhere. I’ve heard time and time again that people always see me on LinkedIn. In actuality, I only spend a few minutes a week at LinkedIn, but I subscribe to the daily email digest of relevant groups, and join in the conversation when I have something to add. I’ve talked to many other social media marketers who always seem to be on Twitter, but are only on there 15 minutes a day in short bursts.
• Associate your brand with popular topics. Create blog posts that tie into current or past pop culture icons that have positive associations for your customers. 10 Things I Learned About Self-Esteem from Miss Piggy or The Amazing Spider-Man Guide to Responsible Word Power.

Do you have any examples of how you’ve used liking in any of your web marketing or social media campaigns? Did it work? Be sure to let us know in the comments below. I promise I’ll like any reasonable comment.

Next Weapon of Influence: Authority

Rich Brooks
Voted Most Likeable Boss At Flyte 15 Years Running

The first two tenets of Robert Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, are reciprocation and commitment & consistency…two items that are hard-wired into us. The next tenet is all about external forces: Social Proof.

From laugh tracks to tip jars, we are influenced by the actions and reactions of others. This is especially true when we’re unsure of how to behave in a given situation.

In Cialdini’s chapter on social proof he includes a number of examples of social proof gone haywire, from Jonestown to the murder of Catherine Genovese and the lack of action or reaction from 38 witnesses.

There are a number of variables that impact social proof’s influence over us.

One is how much we are like the other people we are witnessing. In one story, Cialdini’s son wouldn’t give up his “floaties” until he saw another three-year-old swimming without one. This after multiple lessons from his dad and a 6’2″ swimming coach. Once he saw his friend without floaties in the water he knew a three-year-old could do it.

Another variable is how many people make up the social proof: “The greater the number of people who find any idea correct, the more the idea will be correct.”

You can easily demonstrate social proof yourself. Just get a few people in a crowd to start looking to the sky. It won’t be long before the entire crowd is looking up.

So how can you use social proof in your web marketing and social media?

If social proof seems like an obvious fit for social media, you’re right. In fact, so much of social media marketing is based on social proof. Here are some suggestions to get you started on using social proof in your web marketing and social media:

• Seed your share buttons on your blog posts. You should always start by liking, retweeting, and otherwise sharing your blog posts with any sharing buttons you put on the top of your blog posts. Get co-workers and friends to do the same. This isn’t any different than the bar tender who drops a few singles in his tip jar before his shift starts or the always annoying laugh track. (Interestingly enough, Cialdini rails against bartenders who “seed” their tip jars with bills. Having tended bar in college I’m going to have to disagree with him on this one.)
• Encourage likes, comments and video responses on YouTube. Like many social media platforms, YouTube has an algorithm that looks at social proof. To encourage this, ask for likes, comments and even video responses by including a verbal call-to-action within your video, and do the same using annotations.
• Use testimonials from “typical” customers. Add text and video customer testimonials, especially from a customer group that you’re targeting. When people see people “like” them, they’re more likely to respond.

Do you have any examples of how you can use social proof in your web marketing and social media? Please share them in the comments below. People just like you are adding comments on posts like these, and you want to be like them, don’t you?

Next Weapon of Influence: Liking

Rich Brooks
My Social Proof is My Mirror

In chapter 2 of Robert Cialdini’s masterful Influence: The Psychology of Persuation, we learned that people have a knee-jerk reaction to responding in kind (or better) to favors…a trait referred to as reciprocity. Now, in the next chapter, we learn that we also wish to be seen as consistent.

Cialdini has a wealth of examples of this in his chapter, but one example that stuck with me is the story of people who agreed to put a giant, ugly sign on their front lawn, in front of their gorgeous home, that said Drive Safely. Not surprisingly, only 17% agreed.

However, in another group, they got an astounding 76% to agree to the same ugly signs! What was the difference?

Two weeks previous, they had asked this second group of home owners if they would put a small, inconspicuous window sticker about safe driving in their window. That’s all it took. These people then saw themselves as people who were serious about safe driving, so putting a gawd-awful sign that destroyed their property value was in keeping with their ideals.

In other words, they were being consistent.

There are examples from POW camps to hazing to getting people to write short essays on why they love brand X throughout the chapter, and how by getting people to make small commitments, (window sticker) you can move them to see themselves in a new light, and then take actions that are consistent with that new belief.

As is the case with all of these chapters, the techniques can be used for good or ill…that’s up to you. But if you make a commitment in the comments section below that you are an ethical marketer and will only use these for good, I think we’ll all sleep better at night.

So, how can you use Commitment and Consistency to improve your web marketing and social media techniques?

Here are some examples:

• Run a Facebook contest where entrants write why they love/use your product or brand. The best answer will win the contest, but meanwhile, so many more people have publicly committed their loyalty to your brand, so now they see themselves as your evangelist. Just make sure that you use a 3rd party approved contest provider at Facebook, or the whole contest could backfire.
• Run a similar contest on Twitter. In 140 characters or less, get people to say why they use your brand using your handle and/or a special hashtag.
• Get a prospect to make a small yes, like download a whitepaper or sample.  If leads them to see themselves as a customer, you can follow up with an immediate, bigger ask. I.e., they download an article, and on the landing page (or at the end of the article) you then say, “Since you’re obviously such a dog lover/fitness buff/savvy marketer, you’ll want to join our exclusive club/buy this Quick Start Guide, etc.

Are there any (ethical) methods that you can think of that would tap into our need to be consistent to build your own business? Let us know in the comments section.

Next Weapon of Influence: Social Proof

Rich Brooks
Same As I Ever Was

Photo Credit: Marcus Q