Friday, October 22, 2021

GA4 Advanced Segments, Audiences, and Comparisons

 

GA4 Advanced Segments, Audiences, and Comparisons are three ways to group your visitors, sessions, and events in Google Analytics data and find deeper insights.  These three features are somewhat similar in their functionality while are also different. In this post, I am going to clarify what these three features are, how they are similar or different from others, and when you use them.

Comparisons in GA4

The comparison feature in Google Analytics (GA4) allows you to compare one subset of your data with other subsets. This feature is available on top of most of the standard reports. Those who are familiar with the Segments or Advanced Segments feature of Google Analytics will find this feature similar. However, this feature is very limited in nature and can't be considered "Advanced Segment".  You can read about this feature in detail at Comparisons in Google Analytics 4 (GA4).

Use Comparisons, when you want to quickly compare your data from past data.

Segments in GA4

A segment is a subset of your data. In GA4 segment allows you to narrow down and focus on a group of users or sessions based on common attributes and conditions.

This feature is only available in Exploration, Segments can not be used in standard reports while Comparison is available for comparing charts and various metrics in Standard Reports. Comparison on the other hand can't be used in Exploration.

Just like Comparison, segments look at the users in past sessions so are retroactive.  Read GA4 Segments Explained for more details on Segments.

Use segments when you want to drill deeper into your data explore it in detail.

 

Audiences in GA4

GA4 Audiences are groups of users based on common attributes, behaviors, etc. You can create an Audience using dimensions, metrics, and events to include any subset of users that makes sense for your business. In this post, you will learn about the GA4 audience so that you can start to create and use them with confidence.

Segments can not be used in standard reports while Audience can be used in standard reports by including them in Comparison as comparison criteria.

The audience is not retroactive, which means the Audience starts to accumulate users from the moment you build it. Audiences can be used to build comparisons and also target and retarget users using Google Ads. Read GA4 Audiences; How to create, edit, archive, and use Custom Audience to learn more about Audiences.

Use Audiences when you are going to target your users on Google Ads and do some quick comparisons.

 

GA4 Audience

 

Other Google Analytics 4 posts that might like

Where to get more help with Google Analytics 4?

Via Marketing http://www.rssmix.com/

Thursday, October 21, 2021

3 Simple Landing Page Tweaks to Help Boost Your Sales

You know the drill: You build a quick landing page and start promoting it. 

The leads start rolling in, but there’s a problem: None of ’em are turning into paying customers. They’re just sitting there, waiting.

Sounds familiar? You’re not alone. Too many businesses throw quick landing pages together, thinking only about the immediate next step (say, generating leads). They often don’t think about the most important thing: How the landing page impacts sales conversions further down the line.

This often causes a pipeline of unqualified leads that wastes your time, energy, and—worst of all—money. What if there was a way you could improve not just the conversion rate of your landing page, but the overall sales conversion rate as well?

Guess what? There is!

By following the three steps outlined in this post, you’ll build more trust with your prospects before they even reach your sales team, making sure your leads not only convert but also turn into paying customers.

1. Use Your Copy to Pre-Qualify Traffic

Here’s a question almost every marketer asks: “How much should we spend per lead?”

And although this question is well-intentioned, it misses a key point. Cost-per-lead is a very important metric and it’s one you should track carefully, but you shouldn’t seek to always generate the most leads at the lowest cost.

Lead generation is a see-saw. You need to balance both lead quality with lead quantity. There’s really no benefit in generating cheap leads if they’re unqualified. Doing so is just a waste of your sales team’s resources.

And this is where your landing page steps in. You can use it to filter out unqualified leads before they ever enter your sales ecosystem.

You can do this in two ways:

  1. By using language that subtly speaks to the people you’re targeting, while pushing away those who aren’t part of your target audience.
  2. By being upfront and clearly stating who you help and who you don’t in a “who is this for” section.

This is a great example from Membership Academy, where they clearly call out who the membership is for and who it isn’t for.

Whichever way you decide to do it, there are typically four things you want to clarify with prospects before they contact you. It makes up the acronym BANT:

  • Budget: Does this person have access to the amount of money required to purchase your product/services? 
  • Authority: Does this person have the decision-making power to approve a financial purchase? 
  • Need: Is the person viewing this landing page someone who actually wants to achieve the outcome you promise?
  • Time: In what timeline are they looking for a solution?

When you’re building your landing page, make sure you address each of these points in your copy to ensure only the right people are making it through to your sales team.

2. Include Imagery of Yourself, Your Team, or Your Office

The more you can do to build trust with a prospective customer before you ever speak to them, the better. This is even more important with service providers where there’s typically more of a 1:1 connection with customers.

Take healthcare, for example. It’s an industry where an enormous amount of trust is required.

Typically you’ll run an ad campaign directing people to a landing page where they can fill out a “complimentary consultation” form. From there, the office will call them to book their in-person consultation.

One of the biggest roadblocks for a funnel such as this is that people will fill out the form but won’t answer their phone when the office calls. After coming across this problem multiple times, it was time to do some research.

It turns out people are nervous. They’re nervous about coming into a health practice without first knowing more about the practice, the team, and the service they signed up for. 

They sign up in the heat of the moment, then get the classic “buyer’s remorse.” (Or, y’know, “buyer’s jitters.”)

To remedy this problem, make sure to add photos of yourself, your team, or even your office space to your landing pages. By doing this, the visitor gets to see who they’re dealing with and (in the case of a health practice) where they’ll be visiting.

UK-based gym

Faultless Fitness is a perfect example of this. They approached us looking for support with their advertising and landing page conversion rate. They told us their target audience wasn’t necessarily “gym-goers” and that they wanted to cater to a wider demographic (i.e., people that hadn’t ever stepped into a gym before).

With this in mind, we wanted to include pictures of the gym, personal trainers, and other members working out on the landing page. This way, people could see that the gym wasn’t a scary place and that it was a fun, sociable environment.

By simply adding pictures like this, we saw the landing page conversion rate increase from 4% to 11%—a 275% conversion rate boost!

Tip: Do you know the average conversion rate for your industry? You can find out in the 2021 Conversion Benchmark Report.

3. Link to an Informative Confirmation Page

The confirmation page (the page someone lands on after the landing page) is the most underutilized piece of real estate on the internet.

Once someone has signed up for the offer on your landing page, they should be redirected to a confirmation page that does two things:

  1. Confirms the action they’ve just taken.
  2. Introduces the next step.

You’d be surprised at how many people sign up for things without realizing what they’ve done. The confirmation page is the perfect place to reinforce the action they’ve just taken, making clear that they’ve signed up for your offer.

You can also use the page to reiterate the benefits of having filled out your form. By doing this, they’re much more likely to actually pay attention to the thing they’ve signed up for. 

Once you’ve confirmed the transaction, it leads you perfectly into introducing the next step. 

When someone has signed up for your offer, they’re in a state of intent. They’re actively trying to solve a problem—and if you don’t give them the opportunity to take the next step, you’re missing out on an opportunity.

Here’s another example from Faultless Fitness. The confirmation page offers success stories—so people have a chance to see what success might look like before they even get on the phone.

Your next step might be to upsell them something, or it can even be as simple as “selling” the next step. If the next step is for your sales team to reach out, tell your customers on the confirmation page! Set up their expectations and you’ll increase the chance that they’ll show up.

Bonus: Show Specific Social Proof

I know, I know—I said there would be three tips. But you’ve read this far, so have another! 😉

Here’s the thing: Nobody likes to be a guinea pig. When people visit your landing page, they’re there because they’re intrigued by your offer. They believe you may help them solve a specific problem. 

The goal of the landing page is to tell people how and why you’re the right person or business to help them. One of the best ways to do this is by providing specific social proof showing you’re trusted by people like them that you’ve helped before.

Image courtesy of Yatter

Videos work particularly well because they feel real. (However, be sure any videos are serving a key purpose on your landing pages, as they’ve been shown to have either a neutral or negative impact on conversions.)

There are many ways you can add social proof to your landing pages, such as showing trust logos, social media support, reviews, ratings, testimonials, or case studies. 

If you can show social proof that is specific to the offer you’re making, that goes a long way. For example, if you’re a dentist and you’re trying to get people to sign up for your teeth whitening offer, share the stories of people who have used that service with you.

Always Think Two Steps Ahead to Turn Those Conversions Into Sales

Remember: When you create a landing page, don’t just think about the immediate next step—think about how the landing page can help you with the entire sales process. 

Your landing page is the first real impression people get of your brand. And as we all know: You only get one chance to make a first impression. So make it count!

A great way to do this is by using Smart Traffic. It allows you to automatically serve your prospects with the landing page that’s most likely to convert ’em based on their unique attributes. This means you could try different variants of a landing page using the tips above, then turn on Smart Traffic and see which ones perform best.

Via Marketing http://www.rssmix.com/

Monday, October 18, 2021

Fearless Marketing: Meet the Small Team Selling Big Dreams

When done right, marketing can be about more than return on investment or brand metrics. 

It can inspire audiences, tell meaningful stories, and share valuable information with the world.

When we talk about “marketing that moves,” global brands like Nike or Dove easily come to mind. Y’know, the big-scale campaigns that go viral, make you cry with their upbeat messages of hope and wonder, and are forwarded to you by your Aunt Annette 10 years after the fact? 

For small and midsize businesses (SMBs), marketing campaigns may be smaller—c’mon, who has the budget to advertise in the Superbowl?!— but there’s no reason they can’t pack the same punch. 

Great marketing campaigns stand out when brave marketers take chances and play by their own rules to get ahead in the game. And that’s exactly what the team at allWomen do. Unafraid to stay true to their mission, they boldly test and re-examine go-to tactics to create a truly unique marketing experience. 

Simply put, they bring Nike’s iconic slogan to life: They just do it.

Meet allWomen—a Small Team with a Big Mission 

What’s in a mission statement? For many companies, it’s a drawn-out declaration painted in bold colors in their foyer. For Barcelona-based allWomen—an academy that upskills women in the workforce to take on and excel in tech positions—it’s something that fuels everything they do, from operations to marketing. It’s not lengthy or overly complicated. It’s simple and gets straight to the point:

Laura Fernandez Gimenez, CEO, and co-founder, allWomen

We aim to close the gender gap in tech, as well as empower women in any field or life aspect within our community. — Laura Fernandez Gimenez, CEO, and co-founder, allWomen

With a goal like that, it’s pretty easy to root for allWomen—what kind of troll is against empowerment, right? But a great story doesn’t mean success is easy for the team.

Looking at the Landscape

Currently, only about 25% of tech jobs are held by women worldwide. Sounds like a big opportunity for talent-starved companies to recruit, right? Wrong. When it comes to increasing the number of women in tech roles, it’s a slow-burning candle. For example, female software engineers have increased by only 2% in the last *21 years*. And it’s not for lack of trying. It’s reported that 66% of women who enter tech fields find no clear career path going forward and often leave the industry entirely. With issues like pay gaps, gender discrimination and bias, and workplace harassment rife in the tech industries, it’s a tough sell. 

Then we’re not even mentioning an increasingly competitive continuing education industry—an added challenge since allWomen only speaks to about half of potential students as their competitors do. (They only speak to women, not all people—duh.)

These obstacles only make allWomen’s results even more impressive. In just three years since opening its doors, the small startup has grown to 11 employees, 20 instructors, 280 graduates (with that number growing as we speak), and thousands of community members who join in their webinar series and networking events—with a global expansion currently in the works. 

Most importantly, 80% of students have been hired in their target positions. That’s in roles across data science, product management, web development, UX/UI design, and UX writing. Talk about a mission that’s more than just bold words on the walls! 

So, what’s the allWomen secret? How’d they grow from a small startup to a budding global player?

It All Starts with Community 

Before launching allWomen, CEO and co-founder Laura Fernandez Gimenez found herself living and breathing in Barcelona’s budding startup and tech network. Coming from a media background, she discovered a passion for building collaborative communities by joining a startup incubator, Makers of Barcelona—and eventually also running the organization. 

Entrenched in the startup, tech, and education sectors, Laura saw the gender gaps within the tech and startup industries, and the idea for allWomen came to life. 

“I always knew what the main ingredients were going to be from the start: education, community, feminism, and tech,” Laura explains.

This notion of “community” is a golden thread that runs through the organization. To promote networking, women holding leadership positions in leading tech companies run courses as well as open-invite webinars that explore topics from feminism to salary negotiation. 

Community is also a key feature in their marketing lead gen efforts. Chief Marketing Officer Patricia Fernández Carrelo explains this is one of the big reasons why they don’t prioritize Google Ads or even SEO. “If you look at the strategies of other competitors, the tactics they are following and the campaigns they are creating are kind of the same, all of them,” Patricia explains.

Patricia Fernández Carrelo, CMO, allWomen

We’re different because we’re not just an academy. If you’re just looking for a boot camp to improve your data science or UX skills, there are many players out there that offer just that. It’s very important for us that when someone finds us, they can feel other women have been there, and they will understand them, from the teachers to the alumna. And that’s something you just can’t put on a Google Ad. — Patricia Fernández Carrelo, CMO, allWomen

Instead, the team gives most of their PPC budget to Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, where they have more space to develop their message and speak with their audience rather than at them. “Community building works much better for us than just typical marketing acquisition strategies. And that’s why it defines our marketing strategy,” Patricia adds.

How’s that for courageous marketing by daring to be different, hey?

Small businesses like allWomen need to be creative to get a competitive edge against big players in their industries. allWomen does that by being courageous in their marketing and not being afraid to test trusted tactics. But testing takes time, and often small teams don’t have that kind of capacity. That’s where conversion intelligence steps in to help you stand out of the crowd. It’s about using the power of artificial intelligence to get more out of your marketing, with less effort.

Powering Up with Design

It’s also interesting to see how “community” shapes the allWomen sales funnel. “We have this marketing funnel, and when we contact or have contact with women, we have a high conversion rate,” Patricia says, “because once someone talks to our admissions department, they generally convert.” 

A trick to ensure prospects move forward through the funnel to meet with the admissions team is to design a targeted and relevant digital experience. “We’ve always tried to make design and usability allies of allWomen,” she adds.

Patricia Fernández Carrelo, CMO, allWomen

Image is important for our community and us. We work with a designer to create a specific brand and look that appeals to our audience. This is also something we have been, and are continually developing. We get a lot of comments from our audience about the design. — Patricia Fernández Carrelo, CMO, allWomen

What does this look like in practice? Let’s start with allWomen’s landing pages.

Click on the image to see the full landing page.

Direct and to the point, right? It’s no accident. Patricia explains: “We always work to deliver all of the relevant information about our courses in the best way possible in terms of copy and content design.” 

This means testing different elements on course landing pages to see which ones perform best. For example, they create variants that include more or less information about the courses to see what leads more to users downloading the syllabus. They also try different angles of their value proposition by experimenting with messages—from the skills you’ll learn to career moves made possible by allWomen courses.

See how allWomen experiments with their landing page variants?
Patricia Fernández Carrelo, CMO, allWomen

We’re really focused on what messages resonate with our audience at every moment, as this is the most important part of building a strong community of like-minded women and is aligned with our mission of creating tech courses for and by women. — Patricia Fernández Carrelo, CMO, allWomen

And that strategy works. allWomen’s landing page conversion rates sit between 16% and 52%. For the education sector, the median conversion rate is a meager 5.8%.

Knockin’ it out of the park. Boom.

Unleashing the power of design … to increase conversions?! What magic is this? Actually, the science checks out on this one. Here’s how you, too, can create a landing page without a designer that not only looks good—but converts better too.

Experimenting Without Fear

A key differentiator in allWomen’s marketing strategy is an experimentation mindset—and not being afraid to re-examine trends that have been proven to work for other companies.

Google Ads not doing the trick? No problem!

Patricia Fernández Carrelo, CMO, allWomen

Our goal with allWomen has always been to generate a community of engaged and diverse women, working to overcome their fears and upskill their professional profile with technological knowledge. To do this, we’ve used different, appealing channels available today to attract them. — Patricia Fernández Carrelo, CMO, allWomen

This can be a scary tactic, for sure. Ultimately it’s about focusing their efforts on channels that best connect with their target audience. Instead of having their already small team trying to do everything, they focus on what works. 

This doesn’t mean the team at allWomen only saddles up one proverbial pony, however, as they are constantly experimenting with new and different tactics. 

You can’t get comfortable in one place. Because technology and digital is a super fast-moving environment, and what works for you today might not always be the best choice,” says Cristina Monclus, digital marketing specialist at allWomen.

This includes bringing artificial intelligence into their marketing game. Using Smart Traffic, allWomen adds a second layer of relevance to campaigns, with the tool diverting traffic to the variant that’s most likely to convert. And to Patricia and the team, the proof is in the pudding. “We actually see an increase in conversion rate, which is really exciting,” she says.

Patricia Fernández Carrelo, CMO, allWomen

We love to explore new channels, tools, features, and tactics. It’s part of our mindset. AI can provide a lot of new insights for us to create new ways to reach our potential audience and students. We are super excited about the present and the future we are moving to with AI. — Patricia Fernández Carrelo, CMO, allWomen

Optimizing with AI—isn’t that like really hard? Actually, no. You don’t need a data scientist or software engineer on your team to get more conversions with the power of AI. Here’s how to get started.

How to Embrace allWomen’s “Just Do It” Mentality

What works for allWomen isn’t going to work for everyone. But that’s precisely the point. What makes their strategy so much fun—and successful—is the courage to test, try, and learn.

Patricia Fernández Carrelo, CMO, allWomen

There are so many tactics and so many channels you could use, especially as a startup. But it’s all about finding what best supports your mission. We love to use tech to get to know our community and our audience better and, with that information, make a bigger impact on women who could potentially be really interested in our courses and services … For us, the future is intelligent, the future is bright, and the future is female. — Patricia Fernández Carrelo, CMO, allWomen

What does *your* future look like? Go make it happen.

Via Marketing http://www.rssmix.com/

Thursday, October 14, 2021

What’s A Car Wash Gotta Do With AI-Powered Marketing?

We’ve all hand-washed our cars before (and regretted it), right? 

We get lured in by fond childhood memories of soaping up the family station wagon. (It’ll be so nostalgic—I’d always spray Dad with the hose!) And then we’re sold by the idea of saving a coupla bucks. (Twenty bucks for a car wash these days?! That’s robbery.)

But then you gotta go round up all the right cleaning supplies. After three washes and rinses, you realize you’ve still missed several spots. You remember you have other household chores to do. You’re sweating. Gosh darn it—hand-washing a car is a lot more work than you remember!

Let’s be real. Many of us are not professional car detailers. We don’t have the right tools, the process takes longer than expected, and the results are… subpar at best. After a life lesson like that, most people opt for an automatic car wash despite the $20 price tag. Why? It’s easier, it’s faster, and it gets you a cleaner car. (Money. Well. Spent.) 

If only there was something similar for doing all those time-consuming marketing tasks…

Wait—there is.

Marketing Needs to be Faster, Easier, and More Effective

How we think about marketing is similar to those childhood memories of washing cars. In theory, it can be a whole lot of fun. There are tons of opportunities to get your hands dirty, create killer content, and make a big impact on business growth. In theory

If you’re marketing a small business, you’re already up to your neck in tasks that are getting your hands dirty. In fact, you’ve probably developed some serious calluses. (The allure of being an artisan is long gone.) Whether it’s a lack of time, resources, or skills, there’s always something holding you back from assembling those marketing campaigns you’d hoped for: eye-catching, relevant campaigns that convert your target audience.

Much like hand-washing your car, your expectations for your marketing campaigns are quite different from reality, aren’t they?

So here’s what we have to say: Say goodbye to doing it all by hand, by yourself. It’s time you run your marketing through conversion intelligence.

That’s Right—You Can Market Your Business Like You Wash Your Car

An infographic showing the value of automatic car washes and AI-powered marketing. They're easier, faster, and get you better results.

Whether we’re washing cars or marketing businesses, we want the same thing: an easier, faster way to get better results.

Instead of operating all the brushes and hoses ourselves, automatic car washes allow us to sit back, relax, and watch all the moving parts rinse, clean, and polish our cars. In minutes, we can have a sparkling clean ride.

That same effortlessness describes conversion intelligence—a new approach to marketing where you partner with AI to create those dazzling marketing campaigns you’ve always wanted. You’re still in the driver’s seat (you know your business more than anyone), but now you can kick back and have an AI team detailing your campaign for you—and trust that you’ll see more conversions in record time.

Intrigued? Then you’ll love how simple it is to get started.

The three-step conversion intelligence loop: Here’s how it works

Similar to running your car through the car wash, adopting conversion intelligence involves a few steps.

An infographic that describes the first step of the conversion intelligence loop: "First, you use AI insights to learn about your audience."

To convert your visitors, you need to know what content piques their interest and what kinda stuff they’ll glaze over. Traditionally, you’d be doing all the number-crunching yourself. But once you enter the conversion intelligence loop, you can hand over the baton to AI to sort through the data and tell you what’s relevant to your audience today.

This step sets you up for a successful campaign because you’re working with insights that are up to date and actionable. (You don’t go straight to waxing your car before you’ve even washed it, right?)

An infographic that describes the second step of the conversion intelligence loop: "Then, you leverage AI-powered tools to help build your campaign."

Much like the automated gadgets that wash your car, working with AI tools simply makes life easier. Powered by data, they can identify the online channels your audience uses, which designs and layouts catch their eye, and what words speak to them. With these insights on your side, you end up building high-converting campaigns right away.

Yep, without the testing and guesswork, the whole building process is done in a fraction of the time. (These AI-powered teammates are probably the best backseat driver you’ll ever meet.)

An infographic that describes the third step of the conversion intelligence loop: "You launch your campaign—and AI will continue to optimize it."

We don’t just wash our cars for aesthetics—it’s also to add longevity. Dirt, grime, and salt are natural enemies to your car’s paint. 

Optimization operates under the same logic. The whole point is to get more mileage out of your campaigns. (You know, more conversions.) Thing is, optimization tactics require a lot of effort and attention—and many small business marketers don’t have either of those. So they launch their campaigns and cross their fingers it’ll bring in conversions. 

With conversion intelligence, you have control over your content even after you launch it. Using its predictive capabilities, your AI sidekick helps you deliver more impactful, relevant content to your target audience. Instead of wishful thinking, you can launch your campaigns knowing they’ll convert visitors. It’s time to set the bar higher, y’all.

Here’s where it’s different, though: you gotta rinse and repeat

Hold up—the automatic car wash ain’t a loop. You go in one end and out the other. 

You got me. The automatic car wash isn’t a perfect analogy. But that’s because what the conversion intelligence loop does is actually much more impressive.

 

When you leave the car wash and drive your car around town, it’ll eventually get dusty and dirty and go back to its previous condition, right? But when you run your campaigns through the conversion intelligence loop, it’ll never go back to its previous (worse) condition. Every time, you generate new personalized insights that’ll help you improve and refresh your campaigns. In other words, it can only get better. 

To return to the car wash metaphor, imagine a car wash that loops on itself and gets your car infinitely cleaner with each pass. Sounds pretty futuristic, eh? That’s because it is. Conversion intelligence is the future of marketing. What will separate top-performing campaigns from the average ones are marketers who leverage AI to learn more about their audiences and improve their content. 

With AI doing all the heavy lifting, how could you say no?

“So Uh, Where Can I Run My Marketing Through This Loop?”

Good question. 

When you’re looking for the best car washes in town, you usually Google it, right? Try searching up “conversion intelligence” and see what pops up. (C’maaan, humor me.)

Yep, you’ll see Unbounce’s Conversion Intelligence Platform right at the top because Unbounce is pioneering this approach to marketing. While other AI marketing tools can certainly help you achieve conversion intelligence, we’re the first to launch a platform dedicated to helping small business marketers adopt conversion intelligence.

In other words, there are no prerequisites to get started. You don’t need training or marketing certifications to use our tools. They’re simple and straightforward—and they’ll keep you from being left behind in a competitive landscape.

Tamara Grominsky, Chief Strategy Officer, Unbounce

There is a much larger problem going on even beyond Unbounce … the world is not built to support small businesses. It’s difficult to start one. They generally have fewer resources. Business owners are often wearing multiple hats. They don’t have the luxury of spending their whole day just thinking about marketing campaigns, landing pages, and conversion rates. — Tamara Grominsky, Chief Strategy Officer, Unbounce

Let’s meet your new AI-powered companions, shall we?

Meet The Unbounce Conversion Intelligence™ Platform

If you know us, you probably know us as a landing page builder

While we still offer Classic Unbounce with our original drag-and-drop builder, we realized landing pages are not enough for small businesses to rev up their marketing and drive results—which is why we launched the Unbounce Conversion Intelligence™ Platform

With so much juicy conversion data in our back pocket, we decided to put it to good use and build a suite of AI-powered products to support your marketing. From the moment you enter the conversion intelligence loop, they’re there to help you learn, build, and optimize. Each product plays a role in optimizing your campaign—just like the different brushes and cleaning agents do in an automatic car wash. 

While the plan is to continually evolve and grow our platform, here are a few tools you can start working with today.

Build your highest-converting landing pages with Smart Builder

Building landing pages definitely gets the creative juices flowing. From picking images to writing headlines and CTAs, the options are endless. 

But that’s also why it’s tricky. With so many possible variations for copy, design, and layout, how can you truly know which combination will score the most clicks? 

That’s where Smart Builder can help. And all you gotta do to get started is answer a few questions:

  1. What is your company or project name? 
  2. What type of page is this? (i.e., what’s your industry?)
  3. What is the purpose of this page? (Are you lookin’ for leads or sales?)
  4. Do you want to include a form? 

Once you provide some information on your industry and campaign needs, Smart Builder uses proprietary conversion data to design a pre-optimized layout that’s most likely to convert your target audience.

Screen shot of Smart Builder user experience: template recommendation

Then, as you plug in your content, it’ll continue to provide personalized recommendations to boost your chances of conversion—like suggesting alternative headlines based on high-converting copy in your industry.

You’re still the one putting the pieces together, just like when you run a car through a car wash—but you skip the hours of guesswork if you were to do it on your own.

Seriously, users starting out with Smart Builder are building landing pages twice as fast as those creating pages manually with Classic Builder. (While there’s no link here, we have the internal data to back this up.)

Write on-brand copy for all your content needs with Smart Copy

No matter your copywriting skills, everyone faces writer’s block—and a nasty bout of it can really set you back in your (already) busy schedule. Especially if you’re tackling all the content marketing on your own. 

You need to write copy for the website, landing pages, emails, ads, blogs, social media captions, press releases, and a whole lot more. That’s a ton of writing on your plate (my hand’s cramping just thinking about it), which means there’s little time to get stuck on a sentence or idea. 

But with Smart Copy, you have a copywriting assistant by your side to help you transform your ideas into compelling marketing copy instantly. All you gotta do is provide some info on your brand once, and you can expect the copy suggestions that fit your needs every time.

Screen shot of Smart Copy user experience: creating a company profile

As you build and optimize your marketing campaigns, Smart Copy is truly there every step of the way. It can help you brainstorm ideas, expand on or remix content, and write original content. 

That remixing capability is my personal fav. I’m always looking for ways to refresh and repurpose old content, but sometimes it’s hard to detach from my current copy and create something new. With Smart Copy, just copy and paste the old stuff and it’ll spit back something completely different. You can even customize the length and tone. Woah.

Screen shot of Smart Copy user experience: customizing tone and length of copy recommendations

Deliver relevant marketing experiences with Smart Traffic

Creating and delivering relevant marketing experiences are essential for grabbing your audience’s attention—but it’s hard to do it (and do it well). 

Why? Because your audience’s needs and behaviors are diverse and constantly changing. (That moment when you finally get the hang of Instagram marketing, and then you find out your customers prefer TikTok. Ugh.)

To keep up a finger on the pulse, marketers traditionally have two choices: 

  • Research industry trends.
  • Monitor their data themselves.

But that’s a lot of work with a lot of room for error. Unless you’re referring to a study written last week or you have a knack for data analytics, your campaign runs the risk of being outdated. When you have to do everything yourself, you constantly feel one step behind

Smart Traffic eliminates that feeling. Once you create a few landing page variants (to speak to your different audiences) and turn it on, you can rely on Smart Traffic to connect each and every visitor with the best-fit variant.

Screen shot of Smart Traffic user experience: button that turns Smart Traffic on

How? It reads your visitors’ attributes, such as geographic location, traffic channel, and device. So you can create variants that target visitors from different locations, devices, and traffic channels—and trust that Smart Traffic will route ‘em to the right page.

And as your audience evolves, it’ll automatically pick up on these changes—so your marketing will never go out of style. (Bring on “the TikTok.”)

For Small Businesses, This is Your One-Stop-Shop for Better Marketing

Sure, there will always be marketers that want to spearhead all the tasks themselves—just like there are folks who prefer to hand wash their cars. But for most of us, there’s simply not enough time in a day to do either of those things.

An automatic car wash is faster, easier, and gets you a cleaner car. You’ve got all the soap, water, wax, spinning brushes, and blasts of hot air you need to clean your car in minutes. 

Similarly, conversion intelligence is faster, easier, and gets you more conversions—without having to break a sweat. With Unbounce’s Conversion Intelligence Platform, you acquire a team of helpers that will add the spit and polish to your campaigns for you. Finally, you have the time and resources to create the high-converting content you dreamed of.

Best of all, conversion intelligence is an ongoing process that keeps delivering better and better results. Oh, you just broke a record for your conversion rate? Put it through the loop again and see what happens.

Via Marketing http://www.rssmix.com/

Tuesday, October 5, 2021

5 Google Analytics 4 (GA4) posts that you must read

Google Analytics 4 also know as GA4 is in news for the past year. Here are some Google Analytics 4 blog posts that will help you demystify this new tool from Google.

18 Key Benefits of Google Analytics 4

If you are wondering what are the benefits of Google Analytics 4(widely know as GA4) then this post is for you. Read more...

How to Downgrade Google Analytics 4 to Universal Analytics?
When you create a new Google Analytics property it is automatically created in GA4, this post shows you how you can create it in the old version. Read more...

GA4 can send data to BiGQuery without any 3rd party tools. Learn how to enable that data transfer in this post. Read more...

35+ Things About Google Analytics 4 That Will Make You Look Like a Genius
The intent of this post is to highlight a few things about Google Analytics 4 without going into the details. Read more...

Should You Upgrade to Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
Well GA4 is all new, this post answers if you should upgrade or not. Read more...

Learn More about GA4

Optizent Academy memberships’ sole focus is to develop data-driven marketers and digital analysts. No matter which stage of your knowledge and career you are at, we have courses and training options for you. Visit https://academy.optizent.com/courses/membership to learn more about Optizent Academy.

Optizent Academy Membership provides

  • Access to courses, eBook, and presentations based on 20 years of Digital Analytics Consulting and Training Experience and 20+
  • Regular training sessions and challenges to test, enhance and add to your skillset
  • Exclusive access to a community to support you when you need it, so you never feel alone
  • Professional Relationships & Network Development
  • Practical advice - apply what you learn right away

GA4 Consulting Services

Contact Us to learn about our consulting services and how we can help your organization.

Get the Book version of this post at https://academy.optizent.com/f/30-things-to-know-about-google-analytics-4

Via Marketing http://www.rssmix.com/

Wednesday, September 29, 2021

How to Write A Landing Page: Slang, Emojis, and Memes—Oh My!

Imagine this: You go to a swanky cocktail party with the top names in your industry. There’s live jazz music and waiters going around with fancy hors d’oeuvres.

Dressed to the nines, you sidle up to a professional acquaintance and show them a dog picture on your phone. You proclaim, “Look at that heckin’ chonkerino!” 

The pianist stops playing. Someone drops their mini cup of caviar. Everyone stares.

Casual language and memes are fun to use, but you’ve gotta know when and where to use them. They can work for landing pages, but only for the right type of audience and with the right execution. When you do stick the landing, you’ll deliver one-of-a-kind landing page copy.

We’re here to help you learn how to line up your audience and brand voices and use popular elements of casual language in your landing page. Read on to set yourself up to create fun landing pages that resonate with your visitors. 

Matching Your Audience and Brand Voices

Before you try adding casual language to your landing pages, it’s essential to evaluate how much of it you should use with your brand and audience. You need to think about your audience and brand’s voices, then figure out how you want to match ‘em.

How does your audience speak?

Language is a powerful tool for relating to your audience. You can gain a lot of trust by mimicking the language they use in their speech and writing.

So before you try any new language styles or tones of voice on your landing page, you’ve gotta have thorough audience research on hand. Your customers’ demographics, interests, and survey responses say a lot about the language that’ll work for them. For example, you have a higher chance of succeeding with meme-speak if you have a younger audience.

How does your brand speak?

While your audience might speak one way, it might be ideal for your brand to speak another way. It all depends on how you want to position yourself compared to your customer. Do you want your audience to see you as a friend or coach?

In some cases, you need to choose more authoritative language to build trust with your customers, even if they wouldn’t use those words themselves. For example, the Unbounce Conversion Benchmark Report found that agency customers prefer complicated language because it shows authority.

On the other hand, the same report also saw legal landing pages perform better when using more straightforward and down-to-earth language. It all comes down to making decisions based on a strong foundation of audience and industry research—whether it’s ours or your own.

For more guidance, you can also check out your brand voice guide if you have one. If you don’t, you should at least sit down and ask yourself questions like:

  • What personality do I want my brand to express?
  • How do I want my audience to feel after they read my brand’s copy?
  • What sets my brand apart from others?

Elements That Affect Your Landing Page’s Tone

Now that you understand how casual you want to be on your landing page, think about the ways these elements affect how it’s perceived:

Jargon (or lack thereof)

Jargon is language that only makes sense within a niche or industry. Best practices suggest cutting jargon in landing page copy. This rule especially applies when you’re shooting for a casual tone.

You see, jargon puts you at the risk of alienating visitors. Unless you’re in a business-to-business (B2B) industry, you’ll want to minimize or define jargon wherever you can to keep your landing page casual.

Look how Wealthsimple makes investing sound simple by avoiding jargon:

Image courtesy of Wealthsimple

Investments are complicated stuff, but Wealthsimple explains the process in one line: “Get rich slow.” That phrase makes it feel like the brand is speaking on your level, implying that they’ll work with you side-by-side.

Slang and informal language

Slang is informal language used outside of standard definitions and speech. When you use it alongside informal language, you can create conversational, relatable copy. But, informal language and slang can also backfire if you don’t use them well.

If you want to try informal language on your landing page, don’t type a single character unless you know its meaning inside and out. One common example of misused slang is “Netflix and chill.” While the original phrase has sexual connotations, many brands combine their product names with “and chill,” leading to unfortunate results.

You should also stay away from informal language if you’re covering a serious topic. It should go without saying, but you’d be surprised to see how often it happens.

Here’s an example of informal language done well from a Mooala landing page headline:

Image courtesy of Mooala

The headline, “BANANAMILK. It’s a Thing.” uses informal language to acknowledge that, hey, banana milk’s a weird concept, but Mooala’s happy to sit down with you and explain. They poke a little fun at themselves, lowering their audience’s defenses.

Swearing

Swearing can be a powerful marketing tool, but you’ve gotta make sure you’re working with the right industry and audience.

While cuss words used to be utterly taboo in marketing, you’ll see them in the wild a lot more frequently nowadays. Heck, some brands use them in their names, like Big Ass Fans.

When you use swear words with the right people, you could increase your chance of conversions. A study by Gong found that sales professionals swear on 20% of their buyer calls and that those calls had a higher chance of closing sales.

So, should you use cuss words in your landing page copy? Check out whether other companies in your niche are swearing, look at the language your audience uses, and go from there. If you decide to try it out, start small and adjust according to your audience’s reaction.

This landing page for a Telegram sticker pack uses a (censored) swear word off the bat. Its audience—developers—and industry—tech—are both pretty casual and open to swearing, so it works.

Image courtesy of Evrone

Emoji

You might think emojis are too casual for a business landing page, but it turns out these little characters have a place in the professional world. About three-fifths of emoji users say they use them at work. So, you have room to use them, too—but, as always, you need to consider how they’ll come across.

If you decide to use emojis on your landing page, you’ll want to make sure all of your visitors feel included. Try to use emojis one at a time and sparingly, so they don’t crowd a screen reader’s content. Show a diverse range of skin tones and experiences in your emojis if you plan on using any that look like people.

Keep in mind that emojis have different meanings across cultures, too. For example, Western folks connect the flying money emoji (💸) to wealth, but in Japan, that emoji means you’re *losing* money.

This Flowmagic landing page ends each of its feature headers with an emoji. This careful use of emoji adds a casual tone to the page without feeling overwhelming:

Image courtesy of Flowmagic

GIFs and memes

Are you looking for more visuals to break up your copy? You could try adding a GIF or a meme to make your landing page more fun and relatable. Consider these factors when deciding to get your meme on:

  • Load time: If you’re using a GIF, is it optimized for fast loading? Speed has a huge impact on conversions, so you don’t want it bogging down your load times.
  • Meaning: Memes and GIFs often have hidden origins or meanings. Research each one you use to make sure you aren’t sending the wrong message.
  • Audience: Will your audience appreciate your meme or GIF? People from different generations and interest groups use different memes.

Does Your Brand Wear Jeans or Slacks?

What kind of casual language should your brand use on landing pages? The answer depends on your industry, audience, and marketing goals—there’s no definitive answer. Only strong research and a little experimentation will show you the way. Since most brands have more than one audience segment, it can also help to create landing page variants with different tones of voice. Try using a tool like Smart Traffic to direct visitors to variants that match their preferences.

Via Marketing http://www.rssmix.com/

Tuesday, September 28, 2021

Unbounce Conversion Intelligence™️ Platform: Meet Your New (AI-Powered) Marketing Team

As online competition intensifies and consumer expectations continue to evolve, Unbounce’s latest innovation is a crucial part of the company’s aggressive ambitions: To help small and midsize businesses (SMBs) optimize their marketing with AI marketing insights traditionally designed for large corporations.

The Unbounce Conversion Intelligence™ Platform expands the company’s offerings beyond landing pages to meet the needs of SMBs aiming to level up their growth.

The platform pairs a marketer’s intelligence with machine learning to increase the conversion rates of marketing campaigns at every touchpoint. Composed of a suite of smart solutions, including Smart Builder, Smart Traffic, and the newly launched AI copywriting assistant, Smart Copy, the new platform provides the fastest way to increase visitor conversions using conversion intelligence—a disruptive new approach to marketing.

“Since opening our doors more than 10 years ago as an innovator in landing page software, Unbounce has existed to help small businesses grow smarter by making access to essential digital marketing tools easy,” said Tamara Grominsky, chief strategy officer of Unbounce. “However, today, we’re seeing small businesses falling behind while large enterprises with big budgets are dominating the competitive landscape.

“Conversion Intelligence allows marketers, with limited budgets and teams, to pair their own expertise with data-powered AI insights to create and optimize the highest-converting campaigns possible. It’s simple: Marketers who aren’t embracing this new approach are going to be left behind.”

Conversion Intelligence: The New Era of Marketing

By leveraging Unbounce’s Conversion Intelligence Platform, small business marketers can pair their creative know-how with machine learning to effortlessly create relevance, improve conversion rates, and understand where to best spend their time for optimal impact. A game-changer for solopreneurs and marketers alike, the platform provides the fastest way to increase visitor conversions through the following conversion intelligence solutions:

  • Smart Copy: A new AI copywriting solution released today, Smart Copy uses GPT-3 to generate human-like copy within seconds and in six different languages for ads, emails, landing pages, blog posts, TikTok videos, pitches, and 40 more copy creation needs. 
  • Smart Builder: An AI-powered landing page builder that allows marketers to create on-brand pages designed to convert and based on a marketer’s specific industry and campaign goals.
  • Smart Traffic: A self-driving optimization tool for SMBs that connects your visitors with their best-fit landing pages to increase conversions by an average of 30%, while identifying conversion patterns in as few as 50 visits for landing pages. In comparison to traditional A/B testing, Smart Traffic saves marketers precious ad spend, time and effort, and eliminates the need for one champion page.

“The Unbounce Smart Copy solution inspires me. It’s like brainstorming with a room full of people, but it’s just me and my AI copywriting ‘assistant,'” said Sebastiaan Hooft, founder of Redesign Records. “Without Smart Copy, I would be spending an extra four hours a day crafting copy—precious time that I’d rather spend on building my brand and business. Now, I can say so-long to writers’ block and be confident in the quality and performance of my content.”

A Solution for Time-Strapped, Budget-Constrained SMBs

Today’s small business owners face limited time, ad budgets, and marketing expertise to reach audiences in the hyper-accelerated digital landscape; research demonstrates that 47% of small business owners run marketing entirely on their own and inevitably end up wearing too many hats.

With Unbounce as a core part of their marketing team, small businesses have been able to increase success without a new budget, improve conversion rates across all segments, and increase the confidence needed to grow their business while reducing the need for a designer, copywriter, or Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) expert. 

“For many SMB marketers, taking on marketing efforts while trying to grow the business on limited budgets is a daunting and seemingly impossible task,” said Jonathan Naccache, founder of Webistry. “The changing digital landscape means that one-size-fits-all and traditional marketing no longer yield results and small businesses like myself need to create meaningful marketing experiences that drive conversions to survive.

“With Unbounce, we‘ve been able to grow our customers, better understand and reach their target audience, and keep pace with the changing digital landscape.”

Via Marketing http://www.rssmix.com/