Jon DiPietro is Domesticating IT

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Everyone who is tired of anecdotal “social media success stories” please raise your hand. OK, you can put it down now (but keep reading anyway). This article is not a lecture about why you should be using social media for customer support. This article is a tear-down of how to do it correctly.

I had a very short Twitter exchange with UPS this morning. It was quick, enlightening and illustrative. It begins with my frustration over waiting for my second Motorola Droid 2 replacement phone in a week. Naturally, both failures occurred on a Friday evening and so I had to wait until Monday for delivery. The interesting thing is that the ability for me to track shipments – a very good feature – actually becomes a frustration for me. I happen to live about ten minutes from the UPS warehouse at Manchester airport in NH. When I look up the tracking data for my phone, I can see that it was loaded on to a truck for delivery at about 6am this morning, but I also know that I am dead last on the route and won’t receive my phone until after 4pm.

Which lead to the following Twitter exchange:

Social Media Customer Support “Done Right:”

1. The elapsed time between my Tweet to @UPS and their response was 4 minutes! Even for a big company, that is impressive.
2. The response was from a person (@evanatups), and not a faceless, generic corporate account.
3. They gave me information that was valuable, timely and will improve my customer experience while also reducing their costs.
4. While it’s not on the screen shot above, he also joked around a bit, responding to my claim for credit with “The check is in the mail (DISCLAIMER: A check is not actually in the mail)”

So what exactly did they accomplish?

For starters, they made a customer happy and demonstrated that they are listening. This improves my perception of their business and makes me much more likely to use their service. From an ROI perspective, they just spent about two minutes of employee time and substantially reduced their bottom line costs. How? I’m going to use this option many times in the future to go to their location and pick up my packages, cutting the cost of the truck and driver coming to my house.

Maybe I would have found out about this option some other way at some point in the future. But how? I never watch TV commercials anymore because of my DVR. I listen to satellite radio in my car. I haven’t read a (print) newspaper in about 4 years and have an ad-blocker installed on my browsers. Whatever means they would used to reach me, I can assure you it would cost them more than these couple of Tweets.

And let’s not forget the added value of my re-Tweets and this blog article. They were able to satisfy a customer, gain additional visibility through my promotional activities, and build important social capital with this blog article.

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Brian Halligan presenting at Inbound Marketing Summit 2011

One of the first presentations came from Brian Halligan, co-founder and CEO of Hubspot. As one of the people who literally wrote the book on inbound marketing, it makes sense that he would give us his vision of the future of inbound marketing. He didn’t disappoint!

Shifting the Funnel

Brian began with a review of inbound marketing and its effects on marketing. In the beginning, he said, sales reps had all the power. They controlled the information flow with catalogs and collateral. If the buyer wanted information, they had make the sales rep part an integral part of the buying cycle.

Not anymore. The sales process (more often than not) now begins with an Internet search. The buyer has all of the information and, therefore, the power. This has shifted the sales funnel and requires a new approach, since the buyer now keeps the seller at arms reach.

Top of the Funnel

Inbound marketing 1.0 was about expanding the top of the sales funnel. By creating remarkable content, optimizing it for search, promoting it via social media and building effective landing pages, businesses can expand the top of the funnel. It’s not just about generating more visits – it’s about generating more qualified visits. Good inbound marketing achieves exactly that.

Middle of the Funnel

Where inbound marketing 1.0 is about expanding the top of the funnel, version 2.0 is about improving the conversion rates throughout the funnel. Halligan spoke about the gaps in the funnel and losses from them:

The aim of inbound marketing 2.0 is to reduce those losses as much as possible and to improve the conversion rates throughout. So how do we do that? Like so many other answers to business questions, it’s “Do what successful companies are doing.” Halligan points to companies like Amazon, Google and Netflix as examples. What’s one secret to their success? Personalization. The more you use their services, the better the user experience becomes and the more value users gain from it.

LinkedIn profile percent complete - irresistible

The inbound marketing takeaway is to keep track of every activity your lead takes on your site and personalize that marketing experience. The more I use your website, the more personalized it gets. The more personalized it gets, the more valuable it is. The more valuable it is, the more likely I am to convert to a customer. One example he offers is the “percent complete” profile builder on LinkedIn. “It’s irresistible!” Halligan insists.

And he suggests you incorporate similar marketing profiles into your websites. The entire goal is to segment the crap out of your leads toward the ultimate goal, which I think is absolutely brilliant:

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Dead End courtesy of monstersweare on Flickr

I’ve performed a bunch of free inbound marketing evaluations for businesses large and small. There are two mistakes I see companies making far more than any other. I covered the first mistake by describing why companies fail at social media. But there is another mistake that is even more common.

It seems that a majority of companies have conversion aversion.

This mistake is even more pervasive and costly. If you’re creating well-optimized, remarkable content and doing a bang-up job promoting that content via social media, what’s the point if you’re just sending them down a dead-end road? Converting those hard-earned visitors into leads is the final step in inbound marketing. And, frankly, it’s the only one that truly matters at the end of the day.

con-ver-sion a-ver-sion [kuhn-vur-zhuhn uh-vur-zhuhn]

noun
1. opposition to and/or apathy toward providing website visitors with strong calls to action
2. failure to describe the problem being solved or solution being offered
3. implementation of high-friction process for obtaining goods/content

Landing Pages to the Rescue

The first step in curing conversion aversion is the creation of landing pages. These pages are  highly specialized and single-minded in their mission to achieve their goal. Each page’s goal must be clear and action-oriented (e.g. buy, download, join, etc…). What exactly is a landing page?

Ideally, a landing page contains a strong call to action, clear value proposition, and a low-friction conversion form. You’ll notice from the screen shot above that these are the only things on this page. The widgets have been removed in order to remove distractions. You don’t want to give visitors any extra shiny objects to take their attention away from the task at hand.

Crafting the Message

Create pages with compelling headlines.

It all starts with the headline. Along with the sub-heading, this is the main message that must communicate exactly what is being offered (Free Inbound Marketing Evaluation) and the problem that is solves (How well does your site compare? How can you improve it?). Focus on creating a vision for the audience that allows them to see how much better off they will be after taking the action you want them to take. Be sure to include one of the seven fascination triggers in your headline (lust, vice, alarm, power, prestige, mystique or trust).

Connect with the audience.

Build off of your headline by showing the audience that you can identify and empathize with their plight. People want to buy from people who are more like themselves.

Clearly define your offer.

Tell the customer exactly what they will get in exchange for their lead information (preferably no more than an email). Don’t get cute here – be extremely concise with your language and don’t hide anything.

Provide testimonials.

If people have made it this far, a powerful testimonial can seal the deal. Social proof is a vital aspect of the buying process.

Dispel their fears.

Try to anticipate the buyers’ reservations and address them head on. For example, tell them it won’t take as much time as they may think or won’t be as risky as they may fear. Making the offer completely risk-free (e.g. money back guarantee) is another way to accomplish this.

Low Friction

Every field of data the visitor must provide lessens the chances of conversion. Don’t ask for data just because you’d like to have it; only ask for the minimum amount of data required in order to fulfill the request. In many cases, the only field really and truly required is an email address. In the example shown above, some additional data is required because the offer is a free evaluation. As a general rule, the more valuable the offer is, the more friction users will tolerate.

Optimize

Which title should you use? What color is best for the submit button? Should you include a picture of the product or a human face?

Landing pages are incredibly fickle and tricky to optimize. Fortunately, there are some free tools available to help us to exactly that. Google Website Optimizer will allow you to create multiple versions of landing pages, then rotate them randomly and measure their respective conversion rates.

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The annual ISA Marketing and Sales Summit is rapidly approaching (7 – 9 September in St Louis). Last year, I taught an intro to inbound marketing workshop that was very well received. This year, we wanted to “kick it up a notch” and so I’ll be focusing on advanced strategies and tactics for creating remarkable content.

Content is the fuel that powers inbound marketing (What is inbound marketing?). It needs to be compelling enough that your audience wants to share it with their peers. That’s the definition of “remarkable.” This workshop is going to present some strategies and tactics for planning, crafting and promoting remarkable content.

Here’s an overview of what we’ll be covering:

Introduction

The first session will provide an introduction/review of the five fundamental components of inbound marketing; content, search engine optimization, social media promotion, conversion and analytics.

Characteristics of Remarkable Content

The cornerstone of inbound marketing is remarkable content. This session will explain the three characteristics that determine whether or not content is truly remarkable.

Planning

It is more important to be consistent than prolific when it comes to content creation. “Planning Content” will cover strategies and tactics for developing ideas for content and establishing an effective publication schedule.

Crafting

The heart and soul of this workshop, “Creating Content” will break down the components of any content (title, lead, body and kicker) and explain the role and importance of each. Next, it will cover valuable techniques for creating appealing and engaging content.

Promoting

What good is remarkable content if nobody knows it exists? “Promoting Content” will explore some strategies and tactics for actively promoting your content via social media and passively promoting it via search engine optimization.

Wrap-Up

The wrap-up session will feature case studies, questions and demonstrations of some of the tools and techniques discussed.

About the Marketing & Sales Summit

Sponsored by the ISA Management Division, the ISA’s Annual Marketing & Sales Summit will help marketing and sales executives in the automation markets meet the strategic and tactical challenges of the 21st century. This unique event is designed exclusively for senior sales and marketing professionals in the automation markets.

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I spent this past weekend at WordCamp Boston. If you use (or want to use) WordPress, this event the best use of $20 and 14 hours of your time you will ever spend. The event was well organized, the speakers were dynamic and interesting, and the presentations were instructive and inspirational. As is always the case with a well run conference, its value is equal parts information and motivation. And therein lies the rub…

The agony: So much great information, but my head is swimming with possibilities.
The ecstasy:  I have a plan and a blueprint.

While this blog post is – in part – a review of WordCamp, there is also plenty of good stuff that applies to internet marketing regardless of the platform you’re using. In other words, don’t stop reading if you’re not a WordPress user.

One last note: There were three simultaneous tracks running so, obviously, this is my review of the 1/3 of the conference that I saw. I’m sure there was other excellent content and fabulous speakers.

Big Picture: Strategy

A number of presentations covered planning and strategy. As Christopher Penn mentioned in his presentation, “The strategy of, ‘If you build it, they will come‘ only worked for, like, the first five blogs on the Internet.” If you want readers for your blog, and if you want your blog to actually accomplish something, you need a plan.

Don’t Be a Tool

My award for Cleverest Title goes to John Eckman, who had the audacity to suggest that WordPress may not be the best solution for every website. His point was that, too often we select a tool first and then try to shoehorn our strategy into that paradigm. In a humorous and briskly moving presentation, he chronicled the potential pitfalls of selecting a CMS (content management system) and presented five strategies for getting the CMS decision right; business, technology, content, engagement and optimization. Developing these before deciding on the tool will help ensure that everything is aligned.

You can view his presentation on Slideshare: Don’t be a Tool: Content Management Strategy

Now What?

My favorite presentation of the conference, “How to Market Your Blog (okay, Mom’s reading, now what?)” by Chris Penn gets my award for Best Presentation. I would have paid the $20 and sat in the horrible I-93 traffic just to see this presentation. At the end of his talk, he said “Well, there you go. Eight weeks of marketing education in forty minutes.” And he wasn’t wrong. Chris broke his talk down into three categories; grand strategy (why?), strategy (what?) and tactics (how?). Using a mind-map to illustrate the relationship of the dozens of topics he covered, the presentation was fun and informative.

You can download his mind-map here: How to Market Your WordPress Blog

Inbound Marketing

There was no way I was going to write a review of WordCamp and leave this out, right? The talented and vivacious Karen Rubin gets my Energizer Bunny award for the presentation with the highest energy. Karen delivered an overview of how to implement inbound marketing on your blog with a nice balance of strategy and tactics. Being a certified inbound marketing professional myself, much of it was review but I still took away several helpful tips and nuggets. One that I intend to investigate is the Hubspot for WordPress plugin she mentioned. It has some badges and a call to action feature that looks helpful.

Karen’s presentation isn’t online yet, but hopefully it will get posted to her talk on SpeakerRate: WordPress & Inbound Marketing: How to Generate Leads With Your WordPress Blog

Tactics

Most of the presentations I saw fell into the category of tactics (as opposed to strategy) and there was no shortage of tips, tricks and advice here.

Security

D.K. Smith grabs my Head-Slap award for the most sobering wake up call in the conference. He revealed some basic best practices everyone should follow in order to put in place a baseline of security that will protect from script kiddies and basic malware. With regard to plugins, he advises that you keep it simple and use these three: Login LockDown, WordPress Firewall 2, and WP Intrusion (could not find a link). Other suggestions include using secure FTP, configuring long passwords and blocking folder indexing using the htaccess file.

Custom Post Types

K. Adam White receives my Rookie of the Year award for his presentation, Stepping Into Custom Post Types. He is a natural at presenting and seemed really comfortable for his first ever presentation. The information was well organized and helpful. While these tactics were obviously quite specific to WordPress, the concept of extending a CMS and making it your own is worth considering. Using custom post types is a way to automate content creation and organize it in a way that makes it easier to develop and maintain.

Check out his presentation on Slideshare: Stepping Into Custom Post Types

Convert or Go Home

Last, but by no means least, my Can I Get an Amen! award goes to Ross Beyeler’s presentation on conversion. With all of the inbound marketing evaluations I perform, the lowest score is consistently conversion. It’s something that is either not done well or completely ignored by an overwhelming number of websites. Ross did a nice job in presenting conversion from a designer’s standpoint and suggested five principles for designing for conversion;  audience segmentation, clear messaging, building trust, targeted offerings and clear calls to action.

Check out Ross’s presentation on Slideshare: Converting the Crowd

If anyone else has a review of WordCamp Boston 2011, feel free to leave a link in the comments and I will add it to the body of this post.

Updates:

From FirstTracks Marketing: WordCamp Boston 2011 Review

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