“The landing page, it’s one of those things, it can become its own science,” Matt Bailey, founder of SiteLogic, told me a couple months ago. “The landing page is the critical part that a lot of people forget about in this type of lead marketing or content marketing or even dealing with the funnel.”

Bailey—who will be speaking Dec. 4 at BIMS 2020 with Lauren St. Clair, group marketing director, Diversified Communications, at a session titled Lead Gen Technology: Keeping the Engines Fueled—said that he had just read something amazing in his email, about landing pages.

“At Dell, every new landing page is a multi-faceted project that requires several handoffs taking 6-8 weeks to customize and globalize for testing,” he read. “Contact form completions rise 50% and increases as high as 300% on dedicated landing pages.”

You don’t have to spend that much time on yours, but it does speak to their importance. Here is more advice from Bailey and others:

Test everything on the landing page. “I deal with so many companies, very focused on being at the top of the funnel,” Bailey said. “Let’s get people there with our content, let’s answer their questions. And then they forget about their landing page, throw up the same one they used last year, change a few words and say, ‘I’m done,’ not realizing that the landing page is just as important as the content you used to get them there. And now you have to convert them. Test your landing page, test your call to action, test your offer. All of these things are just as vital as the content you use.” Adam Goldstein of Business Management Daily once said that they use a mystery shopper consulting firm to test their pages.

Establish processes. Bailey once related a story about a friend who ran a test for two weeks, determined how the company could make thousands of dollars more, and then withered when his supervisor asked him who authorized that. “Unless you have a culture that allows that voice to be heard…” he said, not needing to complete the sentence. “What is your plan? Are you testing the usability or easability of getting through your site? The best tests are usually the simplest and easiest. But how are you going to implement them? You have to build processes.”

Create more. More landing pages means more conversion opportunities. “Quite simply, the more landing pages you have on your website, the more opportunities you have to convert site visitors into leads,” recommends Hubspot’s Pamela Vaughan. “There’s also a huge SEO benefit to having more landing pages, which can have an impact even before visitors land on your website. Think about it: The more landing pages you have, the more landing pages will be indexed in search.”

Review your offers. “Take a look at the offers you already have and identify where you might have some holes,” Vaughan writes. “Do you have offers to suit prospects at each different stage in your marketing and sales funnel? Do you have offers in a variety of different formats (e.g. webinars vs. ebooks vs. templates vs. videos, etc.)? Do they cover various topics your target audience cares about? Once you’ve identified what your holes are, then you can start filling in the gaps.”

Vary your landing page length. “No form length is the best—it all depends on what you’re trying to accomplish with the form,” advises Hubspot’s Ginny Mineo. “Are you trying to get a ton of new leads? Keep the form short. Are you trying to get really qualified leads? Make the form longer. One is not better than the other—they just address different goals. Your form length will most likely end up somewhere in the middle. To find your form length sweet spot, run A/B tests and adjust your form length according to their results.”

Use tools. “Our landing pages are designed to be minimalist and straightforward. You either sign up or you don’t….,” said Tyler Denk, senior product lead for the Morning Brew. “We use Google Optimize to test every aspect of our landing page, and that’s especially important for optimizing incoming traffic from our referral program. We split our testing audiences into two main cohorts: referrals via email invites and all other referrals.”

Design a clear landing page. Morning Brew tested the layout of the page, including header text, subheader text, text on the button, style of the form, color of the button, additional images, testimonials, etc. For their emails, they increased the conversion rate by over 4% through a few iterations involving the header, subheader text, button text, and button color. “That 4% increase in conversion rate leads to more than an additional 4,500 subscribers per month via the referral program alone,” said Denk.

“People don’t want to be marketed to; they want to be communicated with.” As I look back on my notes from SIPA 2020, that quote from Jeson Jackson, marketing and customer experience manager, Education Week, stands out. Because even though so much of what we are doing continues to be in response to the pandemic, there will be a carry over of successful ideas and methods.

Jackson will also be speaking at BIMS 2020 Featuring the SIPA Sales & Marketing Leadership Summit in a session titled Marketing Pivot: How Are Publishers Responding to the COVID-19 Pandemic Now? with Charity Huff, CEO, January Spring, and Stacey Bailey, vice president, Chartwell, Inc. It will be interesting to see what has changed for Education Week since June.

“The offer is the distillation of your message,” he emphasized. “Make sure you’re asking the customer to do what you want them to do.” How often have we read an email, agree with what it is saying and move on because it isn’t specific in what action we should take? Where’s the big red button?

Listen to your customers, Jackson urged. “By listening we can [act accordingly] rather than assume. You want to uncover what your customers want, which may be less intuitive than you think.” He said that attractiveness is amplified by relevance, importance and urgency.

“You want well-informed customers making well-informed decisions. Your company’s future is secured by innovation not persuasion. And clarity alone should be the only persuasion you need… Your unique benefit is how you transform your customers. What problems did you solve for them? Be specific. Value propositions need to establish your unique value.

“Take some time and make sure your value prop is still relevant to the moment,” Jackson said.

Kevin Turpin, president of the National Journal, spoke about the big decision his company faced 10 years ago on their future direction.

“We spent a year with our customers, asking them a set of questions over and over,” Turpin said. “The most important one was, ‘What keeps you effective?’ When businesses are trying to recreate themselves and change, they spend too much time inside, in strategy meetings, batting around ideas that they think will work. We don’t spend enough time going around. How are [our customers’] jobs changing? What are they thinking about? What are they investing in this year? This will give you solutions.”

Turpin’s message only resonates more now and into 2021. He said to ask yourself, what customer problem are you solving? “One thing we launched was a presentation center,” he said, explaining that by talking to their customers they discovered that’s what they needed help with. “They were being asked to explain [the] Washington [political scene] in more detail. They knew the content but needed a workable format. We’re actually very good at that. Take what happened in midterm elections and create a 40-page slide deck out of it. We’re still doing that for board meetings of Fortune 500 companies.”

One would think that strategy could still do well in the pandemic, as I’ve heard colleagues say that their presentations have been more effective this year, with the tools available and the opportunity to reach a bigger audience online.

“We knew that the more people we could get using our services the stickier our membership would be,” Turpin said. At that time, pricing went by the number of people in an office, whether it was two people using it or 100. The low end of pricing about doubled when they went from subscription to membership.

A major goal was to stay in constant touch with members, starting with a welcome call from dedicated advisors. “There are significant touch points that we know are viable,” Turpin said. “Like asking them what presentations they have coming up and then we put that on the calendar. We then reach out to them 3 or 4 weeks before and say, ‘we know you have a presentation coming up—how can we help?”

Hear from Jackson on Dec. 2, and Turpin on Dec. 4 at BIMS. See the full agenda here.

Like many others, we pay tribute to the great host Alex Trebek with this challenging, 8-question BIMS 2020 quiz (Dec. 2-4). One other similarity with Jeopardy at BIMS is that we’ll give you loads of answers and welcome all your questions! See how you rank here with your peers!

1. A talent scout for what popular TV reality show recently told BIMS keynote speaker Sherrell Dorsey that they use her platform The PLUG to stay informed on emerging start-ups across the nation.

a. Extreme Makeover

b. Kitchen Nightmare

c. Shark Tank

d. The Bachelor

On Day 2 of BIMS, Dorsey will deliver a keynote titled Audience Data: Creating Inclusive Connections to Grow Your Business. Register here for BIMS 2020.

2. Events expert Robyn Duda recommends doing all of these for your events, in-person or virtual, except what:

a. Look to other industries for positive examples.

b. Diversify your speakers.

c. Reach out beyond your usual audience. Talk to the people who are not coming to your events.

d. Start with a solution and then you’ll get at the problem.

Duda will be moderating an events panel that includes executives from Financial Times, Winsight and Emerald.

3. “The ____________ is the distillation of your message. Make sure you’re asking the customer to do what you want them to do,” said Jeson Jackson, marketing & customer experience manager, Education Week.

a. sale

b. offer

c. open rate

d. content

Jackson will speak with Charity Huff, CEO, January Spring, and Stacey Bailey, VP, Chartwell, Inc., in a session titled Marketing Pivot: How Are Publishers Responding to the COVID-19 Pandemic Now?

4. “What we did was roll out three new featured weekly segments on topics that we don’t traditionally write about,” said Angela Kornegor, executive director, MedLearn Media, adding that they’ve driven traffic up 40%, and laid groundwork for more sponsor and advertising opportunities, and a new subscription model. Which is not one of their new weekly segments?

a. Thoughtful Thursdays

b. Frontline Fridays

c. Stay at Home Kids

d. The Saturday Post.

Kornegor will be on the panel for the session, Sales Leadership for Content Companies: Surpassing Your Sales Goals.

5. Staying with sales… According to a study last year by ValueSelling Associates, the most important skill for a salesperson connecting with new prospects is:

a. conducting research to identify target prospects who are decision makers.

b. getting an introduction via referral.

c. face-to-face networking.

d. Using social media to build personas.

Leslie Laredo, president, Laredo Group and Academy of Digital Media, will moderate a SIPA track session on Pricing Meets Opportunity: Case Studies in Success.

6. One big source of revenue that Kevin Turpin, president of the National Journal Group, implemented in their makeover was ____________________. “[Our members] knew the content but needed a workable format. We’re actually very good at that… Your customers have to feel like, ‘I pay a premium price point [but] they’re always there for me, they solve my problems, they ask to help.'”

a. newsletters

b. data products

c. presentations

d. sponsored content

Turpin will deliver the keynote talk on Day 3 of BIMS titled From Media to Intelligence: How National Journal Became a Premier Insights Platform.

7. Matt Bailey, lead trainer & founder, SiteLogic, is speaking about what when he says, “It can become its own science. It is the critical part that a lot of people forget about in this type of lead marketing or content marketing or even dealing with the funnel.”

a. the conversion

b. the landing page

c. A/B testing

d. the homepage

Bailey and Lauren St. Clair, group marketing director, Diversified Communications, will present the session Lead Gen Technology: Keeping the Engines Fueled. Also, Jim Sinkinson, partner, FiredUp! Marketing, will lead The Ultimate Copywriting Bootcamp: Emails and Landing Pages. So you will leave BIMS 2020 with full copywriting, landing page and lead gen knowledge.

8. Lydia Richards, our professional sommelier for Cocktails and Connection, was asked, “What wine region of the world do you have a particular expertise or love for and why?” She replied, “I think there are so many amazing regions around the world (both known and emerging—English bubbly, anyone?), but right now I’m all about _____________.”

a. Portugal

b. Chile

c. South Africa

d. Spain

Richardson will lead a spirited discussion and tasting at 4:30, Dec. 2 in our Cocktails and Connection. Register here for BIMS.

Answers

1.c – Shark Tank

2.d.

3.b – offer

4.a.

5.a – conducting research to identify target prospects who are decision makers

6.c – presentations

7.b – the landing page

8.d – Spain. “Right now I’m obsessed with wines from the Canary Islands (Los Bermejos in Lanzarote), learning more about the Sierra de Gredos/Vinos de Madrid region (Las Moradas de San Martin and Commando G), and, of course, Galicia (Guimaro) are some of my personal go-tos,” Richardson said.

SCORE

1-3 right – You have to register for BIMS 2020!

4-6 right – You have to register for BIMS 2020 and lead a forum!

7-8 right – You have to register for BIMS 2020 and come to Cocktails and Connnection on Dec. 2! But stay humble.

In 2019, webinar platform ON24 handled 86,802 webinars, roughly equating to an average of 7,200 webinars a month. But in April 2020 alone, they hosted 19,294 webinars—roughly more than 640 webinars a day. Remote work has meant more watching and some new rules.

“We believe these figures represent the new ways in which people engage with online content, which is why we have updated our report to show you the trends at work,” said the Executive Statement for their ON24 Webinar Benchmarks Report: COVID-19 Special Edition: How Businesses Drive Digital Engagement in a COVID World. Download here.

Here are some key findings and numbers from the report:

Webinars are becoming more interactive. More webinars are taking advantage of engagement tools to connect with their audience. Those tools include resource lists (offered by 69% of all webinars in 2020), surveys (38%), social widgets (21%) and polling (18.8%). That still seems a little low for where polling should be—always popular when I’ve seen it used. “Data shows that in 2019, top performers incorporated more multimedia elements into their webinars. These include PowerPoint slides (91%), Q&A sessions (88%), polls (78%) and surveys (73%). Around one in five (22%) also offered training certificates.”

Run your webinars around the middle of the day. The best time for a webinar is one fitting in with your audience’s schedules, but as a rule, lunchtime to early afternoon works well. If in doubt and you’re in the U.S. and covering multiple time zones, shoot for at 11 a.m. PT (2 pm ET).

Use longer campaigns that go right up to the webinar and maybe even 10 minutes in. “Longer promotional campaigns translate to more registrants,” they write. More registrants signed up at short notice in April 2020 than in 2019. Without travel, virtual events can now be signed up for at any time, so that thinking might be carrying over to webinars. Plus there’s just so much on our mind all the time now. The longer promotion cycle can not only increase registration rates but can “increase the likelihood of converting registrants into attendees. Promotional emails shouldn’t just be reminders though. Hit the ground running by including supporting content and building up excitement ahead of your webinar.”

Mid-week promotional emails perform best. Data from April 2020 matches previous benchmark reports in its indication that emails sent on Tuesday (21%), Wednesday (22%) and Thursday (21%) are the strongest performers. Monday (18%) is fairly close and then comes Friday (13%) and weekends (5%).

Try not to panic. Based on their April 2020 data, 75% of registrants sign up in the week of the webinar, compared to just 43% last year. The percentage of day-of sign ups has almost doubled, from 10% in 2019 to 19% in 2020. In 2019, 57% signed up eight days or more before; in 2020 it’s 26%. They write that “webinars are increasingly functioning like on-demand TV.”

Promote afterwards. “One-third (34%) of attendees accessed the on-demand version only, demonstrating the need to make webinars available to audiences on their terms.” Here’s the number that surprised me: 95% of these on-demand-only attendees register a week after the live event. That may suggest getting a couple testimonials from the live event to feed the marketing afterwards. However, the on-demand viewing time averaged just 29 minutes.

Create a content hub. These really worked for COVID-19 resources and stories, so it makes sense that people would be getting accustomed to them. “Right now, professionals are interacting almost exclusively with digital channels. Rather than letting your webinar lead to a dead end, give prospects and customers access to bingeable playlists of content and drive inbound leads.”

Webinars are becoming more visual. More than half (55%) of all webinars in April 2020 incorporated some type of video in their events, a massive jump from 2019 (38%). “This suggests practitioners have become increasingly comfortable with the use of video technologies over recent years, but recent events have taken this important integration to the next level.” Half (50%) of respondents just used a webcam to record video, while 7% used their phone and 2% used a hand-held video recorder. “In fact, 8 in 10 claimed that adding video to their webinars is easy.”

One last note: The average viewing time for webinars in April 2020 was 54 minutes, down slightly from 56 minutes in 2019. Be careful of Zoom fatigue.

Again, download the report here.

‘Lucy Kueng, senior research associate at Reuters and internationally renowned expert on digital disruption, has published a new ebook titled Transformation Manifesto: 9 Priorities for Now. It delves into how publishers can change for the better in the aftermath of the pandemic. She wants to help them “seize the opportunities presented by the undeniable crisis we face, because those opportunities are truly huge.”

Let’s go over some of these priorities, paired with upcoming sessions at our big annual BIMS event featuring the SIPA Sales & Marketing Leadership Summit, Dec 2-4.

1. Move from nice-to-have to ‘must-have’: triple down on data. “You can’t move from want to need on guesswork,” Kueng writes. “You can only shift… by diving deeply into understanding customers and how you can become more important to them… Triple down on data, not just on the volume flowing into the organization but on the caliber of discussions around that data, on the insights derived from it, the hypotheses you develop and test.”

BIMS session: Keynote: Audience Data: Creating Inclusive Connections to Grow Your Business. Data journalist Sherrell Dorsey, founder and CEO of The Plug, will share how she has leveraged data integration at The Plug to forge meaningful connection with her audience, attracting thousands of subscribers, several hundred paid members and over $500,000 in equity-free capital.

2. Seize the moment to do clean-up work that’s overdue. You have cover. In the same way we have been cleaning out our homes of its junk, Kueng wants us to do the same with our business—and stop doing things that aren’t successful. But also she wants us to pivot in the way we do age-old processes. “Remote working clearly offers opportunities to rebalance fixed costs.”

BIMS session: Marketing Pivot: How Are Publishers Responding to the COVID-19 Pandemic Now? How are publishers pivoting in this new environment? What marketing ideas can help you turn this pandemic into opportunity? Hear from Charity Huff, CEO, January Spring, Stacey Bailey, VP, Chartwell, Inc., and Jeson Jackson, marketing & customer experience manager, Education Week.

3. Your culture is unfrozen. There will never be a better time to change it. “Culture is incredibly efficient – it works as an internal protocol that silently influences actions and decisions,” Kueng writes. “Ensure digital voices (often younger and more diverse) have equivalent ‘voice time’ and that they are heard first.”

BIMS session: Keynote: From Media To Intelligence: How National Journal Became a Premier Insights Platform. Kevin Turpin, president of National Journal, will discuss National Journal’s evolution from a trusted 50-year-old media organization to a premier insights and intelligence company. This presented a huge culture change for them! He will provide insight into how his organization stays relevant and forward-thinking.

4. Take extravagant care of your teams. “Remote working is often a boon for productivity when tasks are known. [But] it is bad for innovation and setting up new things (and finding a workaround for this is the challenge right now)… Ramp up communication as much as possible. Gather everyone together more often. Remind them that they are part of a cohesive organization”

BIMS session: Power Panel: Operating in the New Normal. A panel of B2B executives share their views on leading in the “new normal,” including: return to work and balancing legal concerns and workplace liabilities of the COVID era; balancing in-person and remote workflows; morale and productivity; business lines they’re prioritizing for growth.

5. Timing is the rarest of strategic skills. Now is the time. “Agility, innovation, optimism—these were the most critical traits for now, according to 22 CEOs surveyed in September 2020. This is a rare reset moment. COVID-19 has been a crisis on so many levels but it is also a huge opportunity: to rethink, to innovate, to shed things that need to be let go of, and to build for the future.”

BIMS session: Executive Discussion: Why Innovation Fails and How to Fix It. 80% of innovation managers believe that customers do not know what they want and have needs that they cannot express. This gets to the root cause of the problem with current innovation processes and why the majority of new products fail. Tony Ulwick, founder & CEO, Strategyn, will give you a framework to understand your customers that unite the entire organization around a common language of the customer.