A/B Testing: Changing the Rules of the Marketing Game

What is it? A/B testing (also known as split testing) is a simple market testing technique using which you can test two or more versions of your communication (email programs, landing pages, etc.) for a metric to determine as to which version performs better. You can then use the better-performing version for the real-world use. It, thus, weeds out any guesswork and empowers marketers to take data-backed marketing decisions.

A/B testing: A great testing mechanism for positive marketing results,

What can it do? If done right, A/B testing can result in increased traffic, leads and consequent sales. Marketers can perform A/B testing for many variables like subject line, timing, calls-to action, copy lengths, frequency, content/marketing offer, design, color, etc. The more variables a campaign is tested for, the better marketing decision and results are enabled. Highlighting the power of A/B testing, Matt Cutt (the head of Google’s Webspam team) says that running A/B tests improves the functionality of the website.

When should it be used? If you want quick results from your marketing initiatives, embracing A/B testing is a great idea. As the variables are so clearly defined for each version, it’s easier to assess as to which version has performed better than the other. However, it fails too often if you do not define clear goals for each test and if your theory is too vague.

How frequently should you do it? The answer varies. You can always do A/B testing across the complete marketing spectrum; however, each A/B test that you run must have a definite goal. If you run multiple tests that fetch unclear outcomes, it’s time to rethink your testing approach.

What are the common A/B testing tools? A wide array of tools are available in the market for A/B testing such as – Google Website Optimizer, Visual Website Optimizer, Webtrends Optimize, Omniture’s Test&Target, Unbounce, etc.

 

Why Inbound Marketing? Why Now?

Having spent good 8 years in online marketing domain and worked with multinational companies of high repute and also dozens remote service buyers, I can say with authority that Inbound Marketing Methodology is here to stay.

With all the digital noise around and benefits of embracing inbound marketing being thrown in the faces of marketers day-in and day-out, companies seem to be inclined towards adopting it but largely suffer from the lack of patience required to let inbound do its magic and yield results. Without team, budget and other resources required to build a good inbound marketing team and cultivating content culture within the company, most CMOs seem to be in a rush to see skyrocketing figures on metrics charts from the word “GO”. I know, I know, there’s lots of pressure from the top but believe it or not, inbound does take time, indeed lots of time. Why? Simply, because it does not treat Customers as entries in the CRM or marketing contacts databases. It focuses on talking to customers as HUMANS and triggering interactions not between brands and customers, but HUMANS and HUMANS across both the sides of the conversation. And, you know good HUMAN relationships do take time to get built and nurtured.

Back to the blog title – Why Inbound, why now?

Gone are the days when as a marketer, you could be inconsiderate to interrupt your audiences anytime, anywhere with your cold calls, cold emails (better to call them SPAMS), annoying ads, etc. This was the outbound or tradition way of marketing, which has now gotten replaced with new-age marketing or INBOUND MARKETING, which is customer centric and that uses content as a beacon to attract audiences and help them find your brand on their own. That’s why we call it “inbound” after all. 

Customers or buyers are more connected and informed than ever. Most of them have already researched well before they find your brand to connect with. So they will make their purchase decisions, whether you reach them or not. So, it’s best to adopt a marketing strategy that acts like a magnet and help them find you while they are aggressively researching for solutions to their problems/needs.

Here it’s important to know that to formulate a successful inbound marketing strategy, you got to know your target audiences, really really well before you empower them with information or means to find your brand and engage with your products/services.

1. Create Buyer persona
2. Study Buyer Journey
3. Create remarkable, helpful content
4. Leverage that content

It’s not enough to create great content. It’s equally important to get that content out in the world. Content distribution adds context to your content. And, content + context = successful inbound marketing. Right?

More about Inbound Marketing in my next blog…….Stay tuned!

The Growing Indian Population – a Dividend or Disaster?

For years, India’s booming population was under a firestorm of acerbic criticism. Even the book – Famine 1975! America’s Decision: Who Will Survive? – advocated the policy of forsaking food policy to the hopeless countries including India and let the population starve so as to stabilize the global population.

Population Explosion in India: Boon or Curse?

Even as a decade ago when India officially crossed 1 billion mark in 2000, many experts considered this as a major liability. With adding over 181 million heads more to its humongous population since then, India has been most often found on the wrong side of a tongue lashing and considered as a country that has failed to provide basic necessities to its gigantic population size.

Today, the population of India stands tall at 1.27 billion, and equates to the combined population of Pakistan, Brazil, US, Japan, Indonesia and Bangladesh. Currently, it supports up to 17.5% of the entire world’s population.

Over 50% of India’s current population is below the age of 25 and over 65% below the age of 35. This implies that a major section of the country’s population comprises of students and young workers, which in turn are more than the dependents. So, it’s a good indicator for the nation’s economy. As India continues to add more people than any other nation on the globe, it’s now poised to have one of the biggest talent pool in the world.

Demographically, does that qualify as a dividend or a disaster?

No longer is India’s thriving population considered a liability. Experts opine that the country does not need to be a worry wart about its burgeoning population and that it’s an asset. Now its massive young population is being looked upon as the country’s greatest resource since this able population can be trained into a capable working population for an economically productive nation.

With a mere 2.4% of the global landmass sheltering 16% of the world population, all Indian governments face the uphill task of taking measures to reduce ever-mounting pressure on dwindling resources, and turn its youth population turns into an economic asset. Lest this feat is accomplished, it’s nothing more than a liability as millions of mouth to be fed get added to the population every year.  This couldn’t be further from the truth. The government of India states that 402 million Indians are aged between 15 to 59 – the working age – and that these figures will rise to 820 million by 2020. This age advantage is actually a demographic dividend, an unprecedented opportunity that India can exploit to its huge advantage by infusing new dynamism into the country’s strained economy. The future is bright. Such vast man power is indeed a blessing in disguise for the country. This skilled man power simply needs to be combined with resources to be considered an asset. The gigantic population of India that makes for a big consumer market too has now become an asset. 

The English-speaking, skilled man workforce has opened new doors to the global enterprises, hunting for quality-backed offshore outsourcing services available at relatively much affordable rates. India is a home to 2.5 million IT & life science graduates every year in addition to 6.5 million post graduates in science and related subjects. This young, talented population can really serve as a great source of country’s development.

However, these apparently favorable demographics are not devoid of its set of grave challenges. There exists a yawning gap between the vast workforce available and the job opportunities that are floating around. Employability issue is certainly a heated topic of debate. Also, there exists great numbers of unskilled Indian workers. Shockingly, only 5% of India’s labor force is estimated to have had any formal training, and the remaining still needs to develop the right skills matching the modern job scenario. It calls for the huge-scale development of the country’s human scale. To kick start this skill growth engine, the Union Government of India announced new job policies in the 12^th five-year-plan that aim to generate over 100 million jobs by 2022 in different manufacturing sectors.

As the services sector continues to grow and strengthens the economy, it’s imperative to bridge the widening gap between the skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled labor. Also regional disparities emerging to supply the labor to address the demand forces the movement of labor force to the states that demand them. Kerala is a fantastic examples of this. To support varied economic activities in Kerala, states like Bihar, Odisha, West Bengal and Assam supply the surplus labor. However, Kerala’s own work force is keen on grabbing employment opportunities abroad, primarily Gulf countries. This strengthens Kerala’s economy manifold.

As India is predominantly an agricultural country, this alarming growth rate in population has pressed the panic button since our production of essential commodities such as food grains can be limited to address the needs of such vast population, though we’re self-reliant as of now. The Malthusian Theory of Population Explosion stands valid in such a scenario. As the population blooms over the 1.27 billion mark, feeding these multi-million mouths can pose a huge challenge in future. Current galloping inflation is a just a feeler of a monumental gap surfacing between the demand and supply curve.

The burgeoning population is, however, mounting enormous power on our limited infrastructure and natural resources that have been brutally exploited and squeezed to the tilt. Our finite wealth of natural resources is likely to crash under the increasing pressure of fast-growing Indian population. It has also resulted in the exponential increase in the number of poverty-stricken, malnourished and uneducated people resulting in a sharp slide in the standard of living. Not only this, this population explosion has put excessive pressure on current housing sector, transport network, health care, education and food production. Poverty is intrinsically linked to the exponential growth in India’s population.

No political party in India has until now showed its political will to introduce population check policy. The time is high when we all get above political expediency or democratic compulsions to curb the human population. Rather, it must be our aim to improve the quality of our population and standard of living.

2014 Rings in. Best Apps to help you keep Your New Year’s Resolutions

Happy New Year to all!

It’s 2014 in India and many other places on the “other side” of the International Date Line.

As the New Day and New Year dawn around the world, it’s time for all desk-bound keyboard-toilers (including me!), to draw up our list of resolutions that will make 2014 our best year ever.

I know, I know… we’re terrible at keeping New Year’s resolutions. Shocker! For years in a row, only a few resolutions on the entire list barely last for more than a week. Let’s embrace technology to hold our resolutions together longer. Here are some quick-hit resolutions and cool apps that we can check off in 2014:

# Keep the Weight Off

Eat wise, drop a size. All diet plans, nutritionist’s advice boil down to the same thing: Eat right and exercise well. Meet only your real calorific needs. Check your calories intake and burn out rate. So here are a couple of the obligatory weight loss apps of the bunch – Lose It! from FitNow (free for iOS and Android; for more granularity, “premium” extras available for $40/year), Eat This, Not That! (free app) and Calorie Counter  from MyNetDiary ($3.99).

# Get Organized 

There ought to be a place for everything, and everything in its place since it saves you ideas and time to boost your productivity. Try out these apps for organizing your day-to-day life better – Evernote (an easy-to-use, free app that allows you to take notes, save photos, make to-do lists, record voice reminders – everything on the go; available on iOS, Android, Blackberry). Another app is Things. Available on the Mac App store, Things is an easy-to-use task manager that segments your projects into different milestones, lets you schedule the tasks and puts forth the checklist of the top priority tasks. Things syncs across all your Apple devices and helps you become more efficient as you keep accomplish your goals that come more naturally – one to-do at a time.

# Scale Greater Career Heights

Your job sucks. So does your boss. Fret not! 2014 might be a turning point in your career. Here’s the savior app – Job Search by Indeed. This is a free app available on iOS and Android. As a highest rated tool on Apple’s and Google’s app stores, Job Search helps you scour through its 15 millions+ job database, and helps you meet potential employers in just a few taps on your smartphone screen. You can sort the jobs by relevance or date, GPS-related location, etc. You can also personalize your account to display only the jobs from your preferred employers or companies.

# Manage your Finances

Get your personal finances in order. Mint’s the best app, hands down! Available for free on iOS and Android, Mint is an award-winning finance app with rave reviews on the App stores. Considered as the finest budgeting app, Mint allows you to budget, monitor and manage your money from a single interface. You can open an account and link it to your bank, credit, loan and retirement accounts. This app will then auto-categorize transactions) and then auto-collate all information in easy-to-digest graphical representations. It’s indeed a safe and reliable tool to keep your personal finances organized.

I know sticking to these goals can be hard to accomplish but hopefully your iOS, Android or tablet will empower you this year to keep these New Year resolutions. With this information handy, it’s time to mentally gird yourself to keep the New Year Resolutions in 2014.  I’d love to hear your New Year resolutions in the comments box below.

I wish you all a blissful year ahead.

Article that Won Me “Special Mentions” in IFW Blogging Contest 2013

How Writing Helped Me Regain My Self-Esteem, And 5 Things I Love About This Profession. (Raina Trivedi)

Decoding the Secrets of Successful Content Writers

I love to strut around poofy-chested, when my work wins me plaudits. All inbound marketers do. Content creation and marketing go hand in hand. Content forms the core of inbound marketing methodology today.

Though many content creators buckle under the pressure of hammering out content real fast, and produce boring, mediocre quality content, there are some, who’re real good content creators. So what are those habits that help these content builders produce top-notch, relevant and remarkable content?

So before you run your fingers on the keyboard next time, take a glance at few habits, which only successful content creators have. Those you’re not going to cultivate these overnight, still if you start realizing their importance, you’ll be starting your journey to become a rockstar content creator.

1)    Read, Read and Read

Creating valuable content calls for extensive reading. Reading what? Industry-related news, insights, reports, case studies, competitors’ content and lots more.  A good content creator skims the entire web for the most relevant industry news and squeezes the same to craft a stellar copy, back with cues and facts. Such content is most likely to resonate with your target audiences.

Start bookmarking and using saving all the data on cloud. Set Google alerts of industry-specific keywords to receive relevant content in your Inbox daily. Figure out where your target audience spends most time online, and monitor those online destinations daily.

2)    A Copy a Day Keeps the Writer’s Block away

Losing the knack of writing is quite easy. If you don’t write for long, next time when you sit up to write, you might end up gazing at your computer’s screen without the cursor moving by even an inch. It’s vital to flex your writing muscles every day. This keeps up the constant inflow of ideas, and your fingers churning out good content regularly. If in the humdrum of corporate marathon, you don’t get the time to write a well-structured blog post every day, you can at least set apart half an hour every day, when you can pen down your thoughts, ideas or something of your choice. Grab a coffee and do some free style writing every day so that you don’t have to face that most dreaded, big monster anytime – Writer’s block.

3)    Network

It’s useless to highlight the profound significance of networking in this digital marketing era. A good content creator is one, who’s open to connect with seniors, peers, thought leaders and industry experts to listen to their ideas and observe their work methodologies. Seize the zillion opportunities of networking on different professional networks and forums. Keep an eye on the posts shared by them and skim these to filter out useful information to enrich your knowledge, and use the same while you produce content in the future.

4)    Curate Only Good Content

Today, anyone and everyone is curating content . What distinguishes successful content creators from millions of self-proclaimed content wizards is their zeal to cement their stature as experts, who love to interact with their target community effectively on the Internet. Add a layer of value, when you curate content, and give your community remarkable, engaging and useful information. They are going to love it, and you’ll see your content sparking debates and discussion thereby making your content curation turn into an interactive session (Bonus!)

5)    Be Curious

Great content creators crave for more and more information to quench their curiosity. It’s their  solid analytical abilities that help them to decrypt the gained knowledge and draw inferences and valuable insights to craft useful content. Curiosity, deeply embedded in their nature, is something that makes them stand out from the crowd as they dare to question the status quo of anything and everything that’s happening around them. Critical thinking stems from their curious nature and makes them great content contributors.

Post your opinion in the comment box below if you want to add some more habits of successful content creators. Your suggestions are precious to me and would help me hone my content writing skills.

 

Durga Shakti Nagpal: Being Victimized by the Ruling Dispensation; Honesty Punished

Suspended for cracking whip on the mining mafia in Gautam Buddha Nagar. Pawn in a political game. Acerbic reaction from different political parties. Media cries foul. Clamour for revoking her suspension orders from IAS association getting louder with each passing day. A huge controversy raked up. This is the story of an honest 28-year-old IAS Officer, Durga Shakti Nagpal.

Cornered for daringly exercising her jurisdiction by seizing 24 dumpers to check the raging menace of illegal mining in Noida, Durga Shakti Pal is today the centre of political focus in the country. She was suspended on July 27, less than a year after getting her first posting, by the government of Uttar Pradesh for demolishing an illegal mosque wall. 

Durga Shakti Pal, an IAS officer who took on sand mafia

The issue garnered humongous media attention barely within a couple of hours after her suspension orders, based on flimsy grounds, were served to her. Due to the media furor, a huge backlash from the different sections of the society has stirred up. And, now the Samajwadi Party led UP government seems to be trapped in a political muddle with different political parties policing this issue and alleging that the suspension orders have been placed by the UP government under the pressure of “mining mafia.”

The other day I was discussing this issue with a young gentleman (a 20-year-old engineering student with strong political views and a sky high ambition of clearing civil services examination), and we both had the synergy of views on the brazen corruption in the state and fate of this issue. The media outcry has highlighted the issue really well and has once again proven the intense nexus between political parties and the goons (or rather mafias) operating and blooming in Uttar Pradesh. No wonder the state stands today in a dilapidated state!

What astounds me the most is that this country today shelters two institutions with parallel views on the same issue; one being Akhilesh Yadav’s government that justifies her suspension orders in the interest of communal harmony and the other – Honorable Supreme Court of India that passed an order on illegal religious structures 2009 implying that suspended IAS officer Durga Nagpal adhered to procedures and violated no rules.

As per the order of the apex court of India in 2009, no religious structures could be constructed on public parks or streets and any breach would be seriously taken up by the court. Here Mr. Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav resolutely defends the officer’s suspension by calling her action to demolish the wall of a mosque strong enough to badger the communal harmony. What a faltering attempt to do cover up!

It’s pleasing to see how different groups and individuals – from IAS Association (to withdraw the suspension orders) and Aam Admi Party (offering a ticket to Durga to contest elections against Mulayam Singh Yadav) to Mr. Ram Jethmalaani (senior lawyer, who’d love to take up Durga’s case for Free) – have come out in full support of the suspended officer.

And, more amusing is the most recent turn of events today in which the UP government suddenly seems like going into the damage control mode and contacting the officer after a video (featuring SP Lok Sabha candidate from GB Nagar, Narendra Bhati boldly taking the credit for getting Durga suspended in mere 44 minutes in a speech to his local supporters) went viral clearly stating the deliberate political influence in getting the officer suspended .

Ecocide: An Anthropogenic Disaster in Uttarakhand

Ecocide, Anthropogenic disaster. What the heck is that? Well, my environmentalist friends would know what I’m talking about. It’s the result of nature’s fury triggered by human kind. We’re the culprits of Uttarakhand disaster. A national tragedy that has yet again given a golden opportunity to the political parties to throw cuss words at each other and score their selfish political points.

Uttarakhand – Battling the National Disaster

Back in college years while pursuing my Master’s degree in Environmental Science, I had all core environmental concepts down pat – global warming, anthropogenic triggers for environmental degradation and disaster management. That was just on examination papers then; today I see all that translating into a horrific reality. The truth lays bare that we’ve invited the nature’s wrath. Our Mother Nature has simply responded to the human greed for incessant, rampant development.

Being an avid nature lover, I now don’t miss even a little opportunity to frequent mountains. My last few visits were close. So, I could spend a lot of time amidst the serenity of the snow capped Himalayas – the same fragile mountain ranges that are now a witness to menacing flash floods, landslides and resultant colossal loss of lives, bloodbath, and devastation all around. On my most recent visit to the Himalayan terrain, I was aghast to see the distressed state of the exotic locale. The whole valley was littered with dirt, polythene bags (mind you, it’s banned there), debris and eroded silt. The mountains stood nude, devoid of their vegetation cover.

Reckless commercialization, depleted forest cover, extensive mining, incessant road construction, massive hydro-electric power projects coupled with criminally tardy response of the Central and State Governments to the environmental concerns and alarms raised by environmentalists from time to time – have cumulatively resulted into the catastrophe of this immeasurable quantum. My friends, it’s a man-made or more technically anthropogenic disaster that has taken place in Uttarakhand, an ecologically fragile and seismologically risky state. It’s ECOCIDE (eco = environment; cide = killing) – Development at the expense of ecology. What we reap is what we sow!

Government claims loss of over 1,000 lives; whereas, the victims, who’ve survived narrate a heart-wrecking count of over many thousands. We certainly cannot blame nature for all the destruction. The preliminary assessment of the response to the disaster portrays the state government to be falling woefully short of disaster management standards. In Indian scenario, the Indian Metrological Department (IMD) is the nodal agency that issues early disaster warnings. The Uttarakhand government turned a deaf ear to all the warnings of the IMD and failed to make adequate disaster management control framework. Neither did it do anything to check the uncontrolled religious pilgrims count in the state. Even in this torrent of emotional anguish, no succor – emotional or administrative  – reached the stranded people.

Nearly a lakh of citizens, mostly elderly people, women and children were stranded in the flood-ravaged areas for over 10 days. Till this moment when I write this piece, over 3,000 people are still battling for their lives in the worst-hit terrains. Amidst all this commotion and hour of national grief, I’m dumbfounded to observe politicians shamelessly attending the News Hour debates and publicly displaying the chronic disease they suffer from – Verbal Diarrhoea. One political party downplaying the other. It’s time to shame this greedy brigade of politicians, who overlook the environmental issues and keep mincing money from their nexus with big corporate houses for permitting the setup of these commercial projects.

At the same time, I bow my head to salute the Indian Air Force, Indian Army and ITBP personnel, who fought against the vehemence of nature and risked their own lives only to save thousands of stranded pilgrims. A few of them have even martyred in the line of the duty.

It feels great to see some joyous scenes of teary-eyed reunions and tremendous pain to watch the dejected faces of the bereaved families. 

Going by the reports, North East India is the next region to be hit after Uttarakhand calamity. Let’s wait and watch what proactive measures our Central Government and State Authorities take for disaster preparedness and management.

Online Surveys – A Great Feedback Mechanism to Improve your Marketing

You might be a celebrated marketing champion but sometimes even the best ones fail. You may find yourself on the wrong side of a tongue lashing every time your CMO views the marketing results and ROIs.

Icy pause.

Sitting in stony silence – What strategy to adopt next? How to keep retention numbers high? How to create new opportunities for growth?

Well, it’s time to resurrect your marketing arsenal with only the relevant digital channels that focus on building relationships with your target audiences. Online survey is one such strong marketing tool. 

Online Surveys – Great Feedback Mechanism

Now the question pops up – What marketing challenges are addressed by online surveys? To begin with, online surveys are strong feedback mechanisms that help you get better insights from your community. Besides, these help you in:

• Market Research
• Marketing Optimization
• Internal Communications
• Thought leadership
• And most importantly, aligning the two arch enemies – sales and marketing teams within your organization.

A market research survey helps you in building your brand awareness and positioning your brand on the competitive landscape. Also, it helps you in creating your buyer personas and understanding the attitude and preferences of your customers w.r.t  to your competitors. However, only relying on survey results to draw inferences would be incorrect. These results need to be backed up with behavior-based analytics as this reflects the true data about your audience.

Marketing Research Survey – Analyze and position your brand better!

You can improve your marketing efforts by using online surveys. The survey details can help you improve your email marketing manifold as you can then focus on sending out the relevant emails to a particular buyer segment of your target audiences. Further, you can also leverage online surveys for improving the quality of your marketing messages. You evaluate your content strategy by directly asking your audiences about their preferences for your content pieces. Based on the feedback and subsequent analysis, you can tweak or overhaul your content strategy and devise a new road map for better inbound marketing results (since content creation forms the core of it!).

Event planning and success rate is another aspect, where online surveys can play a miraculous role. You can pass on the volley of questions head on to your target audiences about their preferences for the arrangement. The survey results would be a mirror to the aspirations of your event attendees. You can plan your event accordingly without much fuss. Surveys do play a crucial role even after the event is over. You can send out feedback surveys to all, who dropped by your event. This would help you analyze the success rate of your event and also help you filter the quality leads to follow up with.

Like blogs, online surveys can also help you tremendously in establishing your thought leadership in the industry. And, eventually generate more inbound leads and better marketing results. Based on the survey results and actionable steps, you can publish your data-driven report and establish your credibility as a thought influencer. This helps you drive more PR exposure and also tremendous business opportunities.

Next is the aspect of internal communications. Trust me on this one – an online survey is a terrific organizational tool that can help you get an early product feedback, plan company meetings and calculate Net Promoter Score (NPS).

Let me wrap up the post at this point! I will be talking more about the methodology and approach to launching online survey in the next post of this series. Until then, happy marketing!!!!

Set your Visitor-to-Lead Conversion Rate Register Ringing with Targeted Landing Pages

No marketing fads. Realign your marketing stars your way.

Yeah, I’m talking about one of the most critical marketing aspects. Your Landing pages. Many of the marketers and business owners buckle under the pressure of sky high marketing objectives. Good enough for biggest marketing gaffes. Let’s search for a marketing medication.

Springboard of your new landing page design

An intelligently done landing page targets a particular audience, not anyone and everyone. It’s vital to build landing pages especially tailored to each of your marketing offers. Jump start your marketing bandwagon and begin offering them valuable content offers – ebooks, webinars, whitepapers, case studies, etc.

Increase ROI! – an acerbic sword hanging over the head of every inbound marketer including me. Don’t throw away your leads by sending over all the hard earned web traffic to your home page. Also, don’t use your ‘Contact Us’ page for lead capture. You’ll only end up enticing spams.

Spread your marketing bait for capturing your leads with uniquely targeted landing pages for a particular target audience. Let us learn the golden tips to craft an effective landing page.

As users’ online attention spans are fairly short, your marketing offer should be catchy yet easy to understand. Actually, it should pass the blink test. What’s that? Your visitor should be able to understand your marketing offer as s/he blinks his/her eye. It all starts with a GREAT Headline! A punchy yet simple and succinct headline is good enough to warm the cockles of your visitor’s heart. Done! Congrats! You’re off to an awesome start.

Kick your visitor-to-lead conversions a notch up!

Next is Landing page content. It should deliver value and clearly explain your visitor why s/he needs to complete the lead form to be able to download your content offer. It should be plain, keyword inclusive and well optimized.  Bold or italicize to stress on the key points of your offer. Include bullet lists. Proof read the content carefully as an error –laden page would undermine your credibility.

It’s time to make a GREAT Landing page!

Include Social Sharing buttons. The more visitors your page attracts, the more is the possibility of visitor-to-lead conversions!

Now that you’ve created a stimulating marketing offer and a targeted landing page for the same, you’d not wish to let your marketing efforts go to vain. Hidden navigation would do just that for you! Once your visitor is on your landing page, keep him/her hooked on by eliminating all navigation and landing pages of your website. Leave your visitor with the only option of filling up your lead form.

Let us now talk about another important component of an effective landing page – the lead form. What’s your goal here? That your visitor fills it up. Make sure that it appears above the fold and has a reasonable length. Don’t bug your visitor with too long a form. A short form with thoughtfully laid out fields fetches you high-quality leads.

Always, do A/B testing. Now you might be thinking – What on Earth does that mean? It implies that you must make two versions of the same landing page and keep testing different elements to find out which one works for you better.

Hope these suggestions would help you all my fellow marketers. I’d love to see you guys adding your tips to the same in the comment box.