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Video Marketing: 5 Reasons Why Videos Can Boost Your Website’s Conversion Rates

Wesley Atkins — Tue, 18 May 2010 14:38:51 +0000

Video has changed the internet. What was once a passing distraction has become an essential technology for many websites, powering important informational video clips, fun and goofy videos, and giving marketers the persuasive fuel required to advertise their products to an audience.

However, unlike its television counterpart, online video rarely performs well on its own. Media conglomerates found out how to monetize TV quickly, contacting major companies and independent advertisers to offer effective service. While Youtube’s Partner program has pushed online video towards the TV-style income model, it certainly hasn’t moved it all the way there yet.

For many marketers, online video has other income-generating properties. Popular as an on-page addition and marketing element, online video can dramatically increase conversion rates and levels of opt-in participation. Not convinced? The five reasons below explain just how online video can dramatically improve your website’s conversion rates, your squeeze page’s opt-in numbers, and your service page’s project inquiries.

1) Videos attract attention.

It’s hard to attract attention online. Not only are there hundreds of flashing banner ads competing for attention, but there are myriad other users doing their best to distract readers and steal their focus elsewhere. Add a video and you’ll cut through the distractions and deliver something instantly noticeable, catching attention and cutting down on other distractions at the same time.

2) Videos can draw focus towards highlighted page elements.

Got a particular page element that’s been effective in driving conversions? Rather than putting it dead center and ruining your page’s design, use a video to call attention to it. Browse through the page on camera and you’ll find that your viewers will natively replicate it — perfect for pushing that mouse towards the ‘buy’ button.

3) Sales-driven videos can convince customers to buy.

With some salesmanship and slick persuasion, even the most basic sales-driven video can boost conversion rates. If your page does an effective job of highlighting your product’s value, but is poor at explaining how and why it should be purchased, a sales-driven video could be the right answer. You’ll gain more than just attention — effective sales videos build anticipation and increase the desire to buy your product.

4) Lead generation videos can build trust.

It takes a lot of trust to enter your email address into the average website. Unethical marketers have reduced the internet to a spam-filled wasteland in some parts, making an email opt-in more difficult than an art museum robbery. Thankfully, video allows you to build the trust required to make that opt-in successful, particularly by letting you speak face-to-face with your audience directly.

5) Informational videos help explain an unusual or remarkable product.

Got a product that can’t quite be explained with text? Put together a video explaining and promoting the product and you’ll gain attention and understanding at once. Informational videos are particularly popular amongst software marketers, and for good reason. When your product is suitable for a mass audience but hard to explain to them, informational videos give you the ability to demonstrate value, simplify operation, and show just why your product is worth buying.

5 Surefire Tips for Effective Video Marketing

Wesley Atkins — Sun, 16 May 2010 15:26:39 +0000

Tired of the same dull text-driven sales pages? The internet marketing industry may generate results, but it’s in dire need of a makeover if it wishes to deliver them more effectively. The text-only sales page has enjoyed a long reign as the king of online marketing assets, but it’s time to turn it in and start over.

Why? Because technology has changed, and the market has changed with it. Pages that once worked exclusively with text now rarely do, and it’s not because the content is ineffective. It’s the presentation — particularly the same old text-only style and utterly dull page design.

Want to improve things? Use video. These five tips for effective video marketing will help you make the changes necessary to move your page from dull, uninspiring, and ineffective text, to effective, powerful, sales-driven video.

1) Have a focus before you start.

Videos without a clear focus only go so far. They might generate sales, they might push leads, and they might produce results, but they’re very unlikely to do it consistently. Just like the world’s best public speakers practice with a plan of action, your video needs to have a clear focus and goal before it’s even scripted.

2) Highlight value, not features.

When Steve Jobs pitched the iPhone to the world, he didn’t sell them on the slick design, the touch screen, and the fast processor. Instead, he pitched them on the way the device would completely change the way people used a phone.

And it did. After 37 million sales and an incredibly passionate user base, the iPhone has changed the way phones are used. Without a clear explanation of how it could create value, it’s unlikely that it would have been such an amazing success.

3) Aim for the right customers.

Certain styles of online video will appeal to customers directly, effectively, and very narrowly. While ideal for niche sales and guaranteed results, videos made with a clear focus on one particular audience tend to perform poorly for large audiences and mass-market products.

4) Unless you’re selling with video only, don’t mention price.

There are two reasons not to mention price in your video. The first is that it’s a demonstration of value — your intentions should be to demonstrate how the product is effective, and how it can help people, not how much it would cost to them.

The second is to lower your maintenance requirements. For marketers, change is expected and welcomed. With a hard-encoded video price, you’re stuck making a new video instead of merely editing text when a price change occurs.

5) Cut down on nonsense.

When preparing a script for your product demonstration, it’s tempting to let your directorial indulgences fall into the final product. Remove them. Your demonstration videos should be just that — a demonstration — and will lose effectiveness not with less content, but with more. Trim out the nonsense and you’ll see increased audience attention, boosted involvement, and greater sales.

4 Surefire Ways to Get More Customers to Buy Your Stuff

Wesley Atkins — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 10:36:59 +0000

You’ve got a great line of products. Great. But here’s the tricky part…

…how to get more people to buy them.

It’s every seller’s nightmare. You know, when you’re not getting enough sales even if you truly believe your market will benefit from your product. You can approach this problem in a number of ways. Let me show you some of the easiest methods you can use so you can implement them soon and increase your sales immediately.

1. Market Your Product

Marketing is basic stuff when it comes to selling something. But there are still people who create products and expect others to simply come to them from nowhere and buy. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works. You must tell people that your product exists, and you do that through marketing. I won’t discuss marketing in detail here due to space constraints, but let me put it plainly for you.

Marketing is all about building relationships with your market, and convincing them to buy from you.

If you’re going to sell something, you’ll spend most of your time marketing it. So I recommend you learn as much as you can about marketing if you want to sell your products to more people.

2. Give Incentives to Your Current Customers

Nothing beats word of mouth when it comes to getting more people to buy your product. Some customers would freely recommend your product to their friends. But imagine how many more customers would gladly talk about your product if you give them an incentive for doing so.

If you have a website, you could already automate this process and make things a lot easier for you and your customers. Simply give them a referral code, and if they successfully refer a new customer to you, they get the incentive you promised such as a discount in future transactions or a freebie.

3. Make Yourself Trustworthy

People are more likely to buy from people they trust. They want the assurance that they’re making the right decision in buying the product. And so you must be trustworthy in their eyes before you can expect them to buy from you.

Providing them money-back guarantees, promising you won’t sell and share their personal data, and faithfully replying to their inquiries, are just some of the ways you can earn your customers’ trust. In short, just fulfill your promises to your customers. Never disappoint them.

4. Lower Your Price

Sometimes, lowering your price is all it takes for more people to buy from you. It could be that your product’s price is simply a little out of your target market’s reach, and lowering it helps do the trick.

Beware, though. Because lowering your prices too much tempts your competitors to start a price war with you. And when you start fighting this kind of war, you’ll drive your business to bankruptcy once you can no longer afford to lower your price.

Now that you have these 4 surefire ways to get more people to buy your products, what do you do next? Sleep? Watch TV? Obviously not.

But seriously, look into these strategies I’ve shared with you and see which of them would work perfectly in your business. Test. Keep the strategies that work, throw away those that don’t. Try them out today!

4 Under Utilized Copywriting Techniques That Turn More Browsers Into Buyers!

Wesley Atkins — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 12:30:53 +0000

You may not consider yourself a copywriter, but if you’re writing sales pages for products you sell on the internet (even through direct mail), then I’m sure you’re using different copywriting techniques to do the job.

So you’re likely familiar with creating compelling headlines, telling a story, the power of using PSs (post scripts) on your copy, and all the other basic stuff. Now here are some underutilized copywriting techniques you can use to write even more powerful copy.

Ready? Read on.

1. Closing the deal.

You’ve got the perfect headline. You’ve written a compelling story that your readers can relate to. Now what? Remember that the goal of your copy is to persuade your readers into buying your product. And so now you must close the deal.

Closing the deal is a copywriting technique that many copywriters fare poorly at. Fail to do that, and your prospects will leave the page without buying anything from you.

Here are a few quick tips on closing the deal:

A. You must be able to persuade the reader that the price he/she’s paying for is small compared to the value he/she receives in return,
B. Erase the risk of buying your product by providing a guarantee,
C. Place your prospect at the crossroads to help that prospect focus on the decision he/she’s going to make.

Again, you’re writing the sales letter to sell the product, not tell a nice story. So learn how to close the sale.

2. Writing bullets.

If you’re going to write a sales letter, begin by writing bullets – hundreds of them (yes, hundreds).

Bullets do more than just showing quickly your readers the benefits of your offer. They can also do other things such as stimulate your readers’ curiosity, keep your prospects reading (which is of course what you want to do in your copy), and more. Best of all, if you’ve written hundreds of bullets, you can use the most powerful and compelling one as your headline!

Need an example? How about this: “7 Ways the Recession can Wipe Out Your Savings… Plus, What Can You Do to Prevent It!” If you’re worried about losing your money because of recession, there’s no way you’d want to miss the information the bullet promises.

3. Show, don’t tell.

Your sales letter will be even more effective when it hits your prospects emotionally. When you successfully evoke their emotion about something they can relate to, then selling the product to them would be much easier.

And the subtler your approach, the better.

Don’t simply say, “don’t you just hate working for your boss?” Tell them a story they can relate to instead. Example: “Monday, 8am. I hadn’t even put my bag on my desk yet when my boss called me and said, ‘could you fix me a cup of coffee?’ The gall. And he hasn’t even paid me my last month’s salary yet!”

See what I mean?

4. Split Testing.

Alright, this isn’t in itself copywriting. But if you really want to get the best results out of your sales letter, you should test it. Split Testing is about directly comparing two sales letters, or a number of particular elements (e.g. headline, offer, payment options) and see which sales letter or element wins.

The great thing about testing is that you can find out what works in your copy without the guesswork. And more, you can now do it for free. Google has a free tool called Website Optimizer that lets you perform split (A/B) or multivariate tests. Go check it out today.

Are you using these underutilized copywriting techniques to turn browsers into buyers? How successful were you in using them? How about those new to these concepts? How did it change your palette of copywriting techniques that you use regularly?

The Importance Of Split Testing

Wesley Atkins — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 11:20:25 +0000

I was just in a meeting today with a company that wanted to improve their conversions on a FREE front end offer. Amazingly, the company in question has a big budget and is currently spending in the region of £30k per week on TV Advertising.

The thing that amazes me is that they never even did any split testing on the site first with PPC or their existing traffic to improve their conversion rate from a paltry 14% on a FREE offer. I won’t go into the details of the company or the offer, but for what they are offering for free, they should get well over a 14% conversion on their offer.

Anyhow, I wanted to point out to you the importance of split testing your websites pages, lead capture pages, backgrounds, layouts, buttons, whatever it may be it can be tested to improve the response rate from your visitors.

It’s amazing the improvements you can get in your conversion rates by testing the smallest of things. I recently setup an affiliate site that pre sells a popular computer software tool. On the homepage of the site I was testing how many people clicked on a button to view the affiliate offer, just by testing 3 different colours in Google Website Optmizer I got an improvement of 42% in click volume. Amazing results from just changing 1 thing on a website, and the colour of a button at that!

Big Companies Live Or Die By Testing

Take Amazon and Godaddy for instance, they spent a fortune testing their sites to improve conversions and with the budgets they have, they would be stupid not too. Just take a look around their sites and really pay attention to the upsell process on each and how the elements work together to squeeze more money out of you, once you have your credit card at hand… Clever stuff!

Google Website Optimizer – Use It!

If you have never used Google Website Optimizer on your site then I encourage you to just setup a simple split test and try it, on your order buttons, or your call to action images. Experiment with different colour backgrounds, images, layouts etc. You can read a great blog post here that highlights 108 ways to improve your websites profits using Google Website Optimizer.

To me Google Website Optimizer is the best free tool available online that can have a massive impact on your profitability, if you just use it!!

Go on what are you waiting for, use it, NOW!

Setting up a simple split test or multivariate test could not be simpler, they walk you thropugh the whole process and it takes less than 10 minutes to setup a simple test to see which page coverts more visitors into prospects or buyers.