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Jennifer Esty

What is the biggest change in CRO in 2017?

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Conversion Elite, an organisation dedicated to CRO best practice, interviewed Sharp Ahead’s very own Dr John Woods on the changes and trends in CRO in 2017.

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John discusses the biggest changes from 2016, looks ahead to 2017, and offers some advice to people considering a switch to a career in CRO.

Conversion Elite – A CRO Conference

Interested in finding out more about how CRO can help your B2B organisation?

Join John at Conversion Elite on July 6, 2017 in London for a day dedicated to CRO best practice, delivered by the best in the business.

Why come to the Conversion Elite Conference?

  • To learn how to be a world class CRO practitioner
  • Because you want to increase online profits for your business
  • You want to provide great CRO for your clients
  • You want to network with world class CRO practitioners
  • You want to meet Dr John Woods!

About Conversion Elite

Conversion Elite is a one day, one track conference delivering pure practical content with eight actionable sessions designed to equip you with the knowledge you need to strengthen your CRO skills.

There is no nonsense and there are definitely no sales pitches. If you want to improve your skills and industry knowledge, discover the best CRO tools and become a finely tuned CRO machine, then Conversion Elite is for you.

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    Why you should read one more blog article on B2B content marketing

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    Enough I hear you say! Enough about content marketing, and thought leadership, storytelling, brandscaping, big data; and while we’re at it, enough about tailored content, content consumption and low hanging fruit.

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    I promise not to use any of those buzzwords (again).

    But there’s just one more thing we should discuss about your B2B content marketing strategy: Marketing Automation.

    No, it’s not just another piece of technology that will sit unused in your virtual cupboard like the popcorn maker of marketing appliances.

    Marketing Automation is quite possibly the one thing standing between your content marketing strategy and utter pointlessness.

    Back in 2015, SirusDecisions published research that suggested anywhere from 60-80% of B2B content was wasted- as in never read and never nurturing or generating a single lead.

    And it’s not getting better.

    How Marketing Automation can help

    The beauty of Marketing Automation is that it brings process and measurability to content marketing.

    Process to what content is created when, for whom, with what messages, for which stage of the funnel.

    Measurability to what content actual contributes to lead generation and lead nurturing—for the right kinds of leads.

    It can make sure that your content strategy is the right strategy and that it’s being implemented effectively.

    How does it do all that and make popcorn?

    Well it doesn’t really make popcorn.

    But by combining your content library, landing pages, email marketing, social marketing, SEO, website prospecting, lead scoring, testing, and analytics in a single platform, marketing automation helps you understand what content you should create and how it performs once you have.

    Most MA tools offer so much functionality that I’d need a whitepaper rather than a blog article to discuss each one, but for the purposes of convincing you that content marketing without marketing automation is a waste of time, let’s briefly discuss one.

    Lead Nurturing

    Leading Marketing Automation provider Act-On defines lead nurturing as systematically contacting prospects over a set amount of time and providing relevant content that eases them through the buyer’s journey.

    Sounds good, right? And the whole point of your content strategy is providing relevant content. Right?

    But how do you know it’s relevant? For whom? At what stage of the buying journey? And how do you know when it does and doesn’t work?

    Marketing automation provides the following functionality to answer these questions. Or test possible answers to these questions. In real time. In a single place.

    • Lead scoring: a points system to assign values based on pre-determined criteria, such as the person’s industry and job title, website visits, content downloads, event attendance, form completions, etc. This scoring helps define what content you should be creating for prospects at different points in the funnel.
    • Triggered emails: emails sent out automatically based on important or momentous events that are related to your prospects’ actions, ensuring content is relevant.
    • Automated email programmes: email programmes based on real-time behaviours, overall engagement, or a pre-set schedule to push engagement with content based on real knowledge of your prospects
    • Funnel reports: track prospects through key conversions and create models that help you better predict the buyer’s journey and evaluate which, how and when content is contributing
    • Analytics: for everything from your emails and downloads to landing pages and form submissions, helping you answer the question: does my content matter?

    So, if you plan to do any content marketing in the next 12 months, please make Marketing Automation part of your strategy.

    And if you need a popcorn maker, I have one in my cupboard for sale.

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      Is your CRM system killing conversions?

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      My CRM system has nothing to do with online conversions I hear you say. And that should be true.

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      But have a look at your lead capture forms and take a good hard look at the mandatory (and non-mandatory fields) on them.

      Are you asking for first and last name separately? Are you asking for separate address and postcode lines? Are you asking prospects for their company name or job title, their phone number when you have no intention of calling them or their email address when you have no intention of emailing them?

      And then ask yourself—are you doing this because your CRM system ‘needs this information’? Or because someone told you the CRM  system can’t create a record without them? Or that the information needs to be formatted to make it compatible with your CRM system?

      Then your CRM system is killing conversions—because form fields kill conversions. You add more fields you get fewer conversions. You make those fields mandatory you get even fewer conversions.

      You don’t have to take my word for it, loads of conversion experts have looked into this issue. (Check out Hubspot’s blog post for starters.)

      How do you rein in your CRM system?

      A few practical steps to take:

      1. Verify that the claims about your CRM system are true, most systems in the market have different set ups for leads and customers—so the data you need for a lead can be much less rigorous than for a fully-fledged customer
      2. Speak to your sales team—what do they need as a bare minimum for a lead? Can they find out some of that information in other ways?
      3. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes—what does a customer get out of giving you the information? If I ask for a report to be sent to me, asking for email address is sensible. If I ask for a free catalogue, asking for my address is hardly a surprise. If I want to watch a video giving you my first name, last name, job title, industry sector, phone number and an email address is, well, you lost me at job title.
      4. Consider marketing automation—these systems help nurture leads through the process of getting to know your brand, of establishing trust and giving you relevant information at appropriate points in the funnel. A marketing automation system can hold lead data until it is sufficiently qualified to be passed over to Sales, and into the CRM system.
      5. Think mobile—long forms are worse on mobile, if you can’t give up those extra fields on desktop at least consider dropping them from the mobile version.

      Optimise, Optimise, Optimise

      And while we’re on the subject, here are a few more pro tips for form conversion optimisation:

      • Make the form friendly to browser-based tools like autofill in Google Chrome (note that separate first name/last name fields are less likely to work with autofill).
      • Facebook and LinkedIn both have ad products that allow forms to be pre-populated.
      • Some marketing automation systems, like Act-On, support progressive profiling.

      Now go have a look at the fields on your lead generation forms. Remove one or two. Analyse conversion rates before and after. And let me know how you get on!

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        Lead generation CRO for niche B2B propositions: how to shoot in the dark

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        Join Sharp Ahead’s very own Dr John Woods at Conversion World 2017 on March 10 at 17:45.

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        John joins a stellar lineup of CRO specialists during the two day virtual conference.

        He will be discussing how to optimise your B2B marketing when you’re targeting a niche audience, including:

        • Why b2b and b2c optimisation are different
        • How to succeed at b2b optimisation
        • How web analytics can still be relevant for b2b

        Register for Conversion World 2017

        Attending the event is free and places are still available. Register here.

        If you can’t make the event but would like us to send you a recording of John’s talk, just let us know.

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          Get Ready for Christmas: 7 Quick Tips

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          Christmas is nearly here, and you’re probably  looking forward to a week of food, family and presents, but who is looking after your digital marketing while you’re away?

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          If you have an agency helping you out, you might not be too worried. However if you’re looking after it on your own or with a small team, some of whom are also on holiday, there are a few things you can do to make sure all the hard work of the past few months isn’t compromised by a week away.

          1. Google My Business

          There’s every chance prospects will see your business on the Google SERP (search engine results page) before they even get to your website.

          Update your opening hours to let prospects and customers know when and if you’ll be open over the holidays.

          2. Using AdWords?

          If you have Google AdWords campaigns running, download the Google AdWords app (not AdWords Express).

          This handy app gives you top line campaign information including:

          • Stats
          • Bids and budgets
          • Real-time alerts and notifications
          • Call a Google expert
          • Act on suggestions to improve your campaigns

          3. Schedule content

          Not all of your potential customers will be on holiday, so don’t let your content go stale while you are away. You can schedule content for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media platforms. There are loads of tools you can use, including HootSuite, Sprout Social and TweetDeck. Check out this article by Capterra, complete with a handy comparison chart for more information.

          4. Using Facebook?

          With Facebook Pages Manager you can view and respond to comments and private messages from your phone (as well as see Page Insights) and the Facebook Adverts Manager allows you to edit your ads and budgets, get notifications of when ads are finishing and keep an eye on your spending.

          5. Still send emails

          Most email platforms will allow you to send emails scheduled for a specific time. Marketing automation platforms also allow you set up automatic email sends based on user behaviour. So you don’t need to stop your lead nurturing over the holidays or let potential leads go cold while you figure out what to do with all that leftover turkey (incidentally, the BBC do a nice list of recipes).

          6. Think about your website

          As with email most content management systems have an option to schedule content, so you don’t have to leave your Merry Christmas message on your website until the 3rd of January.

          Nothing screams ‘I’ve gone on holiday and don’t care about you right now’ like outdated seasonal content. If your website CMS doesn’t have a schedule function, consider putting your best performing evergreen content on the homepage while you’re away, or at least don’t leave up information about an out of date event (or a picture of Rudolph) during your break.

          7. Check with your Sales team

          Finally, just before you leave, make sure there is a plan in place to deal with inbound leads.

          Although volumes are likely to be low, anyone who does call is probably very motivated and therefore it will be worth ensuring they have a positive experience.

          If you have a small sales team who are also on holiday, make sure someone will be monitoring the group email address, or has turned on an up to date autoresponder that sets expectations about when they will receive a response.

          If you rely heavily on inbound sales calls, make sure calls are being forwarded or put an answer service in place so the phone doesn’t go unanswered.

          Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

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