More content less hype
Over the last few days I have been experimenting with a new approach to advertising and squeeze pages, and quite frankly the results have been astounding.
In just the last few days I have been achieving an opt-in rate of 25% which may not sound amazing but the quality of the traffic has been way better than I usually get.
So what have I been doing ?
Okay well to start with lets think about the traditional advertising and squeeze age.
The traditional ad (I thought) needed to be in your face, say what it was all about, maybe a bit “hypey” (to get attention), and the squeeze page needed to be short, punchy etc etc to “squeeze” the visitor into registering/buying.
BUT
Lots of smart internet marketing people have recently been talking about “Native” ads in facebook, and a “Native ad” is one that looks like content.
Trouble is (apparently) people can feel they have been deceived when they get led to a traditional hypey/direct sell squeeze page.
Which not only creates a dissonance in the mind of the visitor but also leads them to resolve that dissonance very forcefully – by complaining to Facebook, Google etc.
SO
I changed my already successful squeeze pages to see what would happen if I tried running native (content-based) ads leading to a squeeze page that was much more content based and would deliver some “value-added”.
Yes I know it sounds obvious and people have talked about this for ages, BUT have you ever heard of someone actually trying it and what the results are ?? Hmmm, Yess….
And it has worked.
And I have enough evidence from just a few days to prove it to my own satisfaction.
On the face of it this is good news, for me and for all of you that are reading this.
But there are a few more strands that are worthwhile pulling out form this little story.
First, I came across this because I Invested a few hundred dollars in buying a product as part of my continued learning process, which only goes to show that learning is a lifetime commitment.
You, yes you the person reading this ! could have done this little experiment just like I did and it could have been you writing this…
Mindset
The second thing I want to pull out from this story is the importance of the mindset that says “this is my business, I will treat it like one, and I will damn well know the numbers”.
I have invested a fair bit of money in setting things up in my business so I can monitor the key metrics.. conversion rate, av $$ value per customer etc etc.
That means I can run tests like this easily and also be able to compare them against my baseline.. so I know what the numbers really mean.
The third thing that is relevant is this.
The internet marketing world is changing, not just because of new products and new platforms to communicate with customers, but also because our customers are getting more sophisticated and seeing past the hypey/salesy BS that you often see.
We have to understand that and adapt what we do to keep up with our customers.
personally i think its a great idea.
I have always had issues with the scammier end of our industry and the “make money quick” type of of hypey/salesy stuff.
And going this route seems, for me anyway, to align my ethics with the business process much better.
I would much rather be known for providing good content AND having great sales pages !!
Best friends with Google and Facebook
And the other benefit of this approach is that it is much easier to get your ads approved by Google and Facebook, both of them want to see “value added” to people when they click on an advert.
You can expect to see some very different ads and squeeze pages from me from now on. !!