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What Should You Know Before You Write a Press Release?

It seems Vivianne did not like my straying from my roots.

I think I was feeling a little weepy on Friday. A little metaphysical. Which is okay. As Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

Today then, Monday January 14, I’ll get back to business, and focus on one of the four pillars of real estate success, marketing, by showing you how to generate positive press on a tight-budget with press releases.

Press releases are one of the main ways businesses, organizations and individuals share their news with the local and regional press.

In fact, a Fleischman Hilliard marketing and public relations specialist I know recently confessed [and this was not the first time that I’ve heard this] that they’ve often had to rely on press releases when marketing budgets were tight as a main means of generating press.

Trial, error and desperation have helped them to come up with some surefire tips for writing good press releases. I share those tips with you now.

1. Keep the press release content brief

This isn’t the place to send out an 6-page history of your business. Keep the release brief–to one page, if not, two pages at the very most–and accessible and get all the necessary information as close to the lead paragraph as possible.

It is okay to format the document to single space in the body, but only if there is plenty of white space in the header and the margins. If the page looks cramped and crammed, it won’t entice anyone to scan it over to see what it’s all about. Two space between lines then.

2. Write the press release heading

The heading on a press release should be in the upper left hand corner of the page and should include:

• Release date or, “For Immediate Release”
• Contact name, title and contact information. If possible, include two contact people and their phone, FAX and e-mail, as well as their titles and company name
• Brief preview listing of : who, what, where and when – above the headline and before the copy of the release.

3. Create a compelling headline and sub-headline

Next, give the document a good headline and sub-headline. The headline should be creative and intriguing and the sub-headline should be more factual and fill in some of the specifics.

For example, the headline might say, “Local Realtor Saves the Environment with Unusual Festival” and then the sub-headline would say “Sammy Smith’s Water Festival Shares and Spreads Convservation Agenda.”

The harried reader will get a good, tantalizing idea of what the release is about just by scanning those bolded headlines.

4. Develop intriguing body copy

The copy of a press release should read like an article.

My public relations friend said she cannot count the times she’s had her copy lifted line for line from a press release and put in the newspaper. This is fine with her since she knows she’s getting the story out in her own words. For radio, this is especially helpful. A great release will often just be read aloud on air. All the main information should be easily gleaned and accessible. Use quotes in the copy, if possible, and make sure names and particulars are spelled correctly.

5. Include the essence of who you are

After your 3 or 4 paragraph “article” copy, include a statement about you and your company. Even include a headline such as “About Sammy Smith.”

This is the place to write a brief paragraph saying how long you’ve been a real estate agent, what you do and where, how you can help people and your contact information.

6. Closing the press release properly

Include a final, separated paragraph or sentence letting the reader know who to contact for more information or quotes.

If there are photographs, images, or an interview can be set up–put this at the end and in bold or all caps: “Photographs available in jpg.” or “Sammy Smith Available for Interview.”

The important thing to remember in creating press releases that get results is to make the information as interesting and accessible as possible. Like any other type of marketing or public relations or writing, a press release must compete with dozens, if not hundreds, of other stories.

With effort and practice, you can create press releases that stand out and get noticed. If you are interested, check out these articles on copywriting for tips and advice on how to write compelling copy.

[Enjoy, and I hope this article makes sense. *wink wink, nudge nudge*]

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Political Pollster Spills the Beans: How to Find Those Hidden Desires

Republican pollster and strategic researcher Frank Luntz advises politicians on the language they should use to win elections and promote their policies.

Here’s how you can use his secrets to work with more clients…sell more houses…and grow your business.

His Work Proves One Very Important Point

Although he works on one side of the aisle, he says that what he does is essentially nonpartisan, seeking clarity and simplicity in language.

His critics disagree…and have accused him of using language that misrepresents policies to “sell” them to the public. Frank Luntz is the author of Words That Work.

But whatever you think about Luntz, what he does proves one very important point: it’s not about what you say…it’s about what they hear.

That is, potent persuasion is built around finding and using words that hit people at the gut level.

It’s interesting that one little word can have such a influential impact on an entire population…

But it can.

The Most Controversial Word

Take the term “estate tax” for instance.

Before Luntz, this tax was relatively non controversial. Luntz said that only 50% of Americans thought such a tax should be abolished.

What he discovered in his word lab, where he used focus groups and polls, was that when he replaced the word “estate” with the term “inheritance” 60% of Americans thought such a tax should be abolished.

However, with further research he discovered that 70% of Americans wanted the tax abolished when it was referred to as a “death tax.” [via PBS video “Give Us What We Want”

“Death” takes it to a whole new, deeper level…

When people think of “estate” or “inheritance,” Luntz explains that they think of people like Warren Buffet and his billions of net worth…they think of JR and the 70’s television show Dallas.

They think of people who deserve to be taxed…

However, “estate” or “inheritance” puts an emotional distance between people and the real issue. They are cold, unemotional words that obscure the fact that this tax does not occur until you die.

And that is justifiably hard to defend.

But what does this have to do with real estate? Good question.

Heed This One, Simple Piece of Advice

Bottom line, be the person in your real estate market who has their finger on the pulse on what people are saying, feeling and thinking.

And keep this rule in mind: cab drivers and antique dealers know more about the world and what is going on than anybody else. And when the cab driver feels a certain way, you need to listen.

In smaller towns where there aren’t cab drivers, it’s probably owners of the coffee shop or corner deli who know the pulse of your market. Hang out with these people…visit their spaces…and interview people in these places.

And if you want to get real technical, poll people in your community. Or hold informal focus groups.

This rule is built upon a simple idea: It doesn’t matter what you want to tell the public, it’s about what they want to hear.

And you have to find that out.

Discover the Hot-Buttons That Compel Us to Act

Luntz, when talking to clients, gives them one consistent piece of advice: Heed the public will.

And there’s one technique that’s more important than anything else: listening. That’s exactly what you have to do.

You have to listen to what people are saying, how they are saying it, their body language when saying it, where they are saying it and figure out why they are saying it.

I know most of the public is down on real estate agents…so what are the words, the facts, the data that would get people to say, “You know, my real estate agent, he’s okay”?

You have to find those words when working with the public, clients or prospects.

A few, carefully chosen words can make all the difference. These are words that grab our guts and get us to move on an emotional level.

It matters what you talk about. And it matters what you name things. For example:

• Don’t talk about “energy efficiency.” Talk about “lower bills.”

• Don’t talk about “square feet.” Talk about “breathing room.”

• Don’t talk about a “long commute.” Talk about a “rolling university.”

• Don’t talk about “house.” Talk about a “home.”

How to Get Those Words

When you are with people [and make sure you are hanging out with people from all walks of life, not just a certain strain]…

…talk about a wide range of community subjects…broach controversial topics…and watch people nod there heads and look at each other.

When they all do that at the same time…at that point you’ll know that you’ve struck an emotionally charged issue that people are willing to fight for.

At that moment…that is your Eureka moment. Those are the words that you want to use, those issues. Those are the words that resonate with those particular people.

And don’t forget, just like fire, use those words for good and not destruction or ill gain.

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A Short History on the Friction between Email and Design

If you use HTML in email, then this is a must read post.

You need to discover if you are using HTML in email wrong and then you need to learn how to use HTML in email right.

And trust me, you could be using it wrong because there are a lot of people using HTML in emails wrong, including big name corporations who you’d think would know better.

The following chronology occurred middle of this year. You’ll enjoy the banter, the back and forth bickering between these two web designers, that will make this HTML email lesson not only informative, but fun.

Read on.

June 8, 2007: My favorite potty-mouthed* rant on email versus design: email is not a platform for design.

June 12, 2007: Campaign Monitor’s response to Zeldman’s potty-mouthed rant + 5 steps to better html emails.

June 12, 2007: Jeffrey Zeldman responded to Campaign Monitor’s response over his potty-mouthed rant with a well thought out and much more modest post, Eight points for better e-mail relationships.

June 14: Zeldman lingers on the subject: Nokia is trying to cram a bad web page—the kind of web page that is all graphics and almost no textual content—into a container that can’t hold it.

July 5, 2007: Despite my desire for all text, I confess I am a sucker for this: showcase of elegant email designs that work. The reason they work: design frames the language…not the other way around.

Dig This from the Dustbin: October 2005: Designing Emails For the Preview Pane and Disabled Images

* Zeldman says “sucks” a lot, which my six-year old daughter says is a bad word.

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Stunningly Easy, 25 Minute and 25 second Routine for Finding Buyer Clients

An African bull elephant weighs 12,000 pounds. Stands 11 feet high. Flaunts tusks 6 to 8 feet long. Eats 770 pounds of grass, leaves, roots, bark, branches, fruit and water plants.

A day.

Now, imagine eating that sucker. It would take forever, wouldn’t it? So one bite at a time, right?

Well, that’s the take away for today’s post. If you are in a market with a hefty level of inventory, then finding buyer’s is on top of your list.

But consumer confidence is gloomy . This means people are holding on to their money, saving, perhaps looking for discounts. What you have to do is figure out how to approach them with an enticing offer. Something that will get them off the fence.

It could be a discount or bargain . It could be a one day only sale .

Whatever it is you are offering, once you have that out of the way, use a simple, 25-minute and twenty-five-seconds-a-day tactic to find those hot leads…in a fraction of the time it usually takes.

How do you do that? Easy.

1. Choose the time of day you are at your peak. Whether morning or afternoon.

2. Block out 30 minutes each day at this time.

3. Use a timer: set it at 25 minutes and 25 seconds.

4. Then pick up the phone and return phone calls from leads you received that day.

5. Don’t do anything for that 25 minutes and 25 seconds. Except call.

Once you’re done, pat yourself on your back. And use the remaining 4 minutes to plan how you are going to spend all the money you’re going to make. Make sure you do it again the next day.

I like this method because it’s a great time management principle: time block AND lump tasks. The most important thing to do here is make sure you do nothing else but pick up the phone and dial. It’s unbelievable how much time people waste dilly-dallying simply because they don’t put boundaries on a task .

And get this: once the market is on the upswing, you can switch this tactic around to build a house list. Call friends and families, ask them for permission to call people they know who might have housing needs, focus your time, get to work and don’t look back.

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The 4 Best Agent Inner Circle Articles

For the last year I’ve been following what I think are the best offline marketing articles written for real estate marketing by Senior Editor Craig Forte of Agent Inner Circle.

Craig is a master copy writer, a brilliant mentor, and reading these articles for pure study of copywriting persuasion alone will be worth it.

But there is so much more there for you…offline real estate marketing wise.

I recognize you are time starved, content-overloaded, so what I did yesterday was sit down and go through these articles in the last year and see which four I thought were must reads.

What follows are the ones I chose.

Of course Craig’s got other articles at Agent Inner Circle. Even articles by guest writers. You would not go wrong spending an afternoon sifting through the content.

It’s like an MBA course in real estate marketing online. But it’s free.

[Okay, not entirely free: You do have to hand over your name and email address to access the archives. But it’s worth it.]

Enjoy.

The Three “M’s” of Marketing Success

Have you ever spent hundreds of dollars and countless hours on an ad or mailing program, only to stare at your silent phone or pager?

If so, you’re not alone. Most agents spend an enormous amount of time learning about “real estate”, but very little learning about the “elements” that turn your advertising (or any marketing or prospecting efforts) from a “sunk cost” to a true “money-maker”.

The truth about real estate success is this: Even the most competent and knowledgeable agent will go broke without a steady, consistent stream of qualified, motivated buyers and sellers.

So while knowledge about real estate is essential to being a competent agent, it’s not going to write your ticket to success. You also need to develop prospecting and marketing skills designed to create an on-going flow of leads and clients.

Money-making marketing isn’t difficult if you know a few basics. In fact, all successful marketing has three essential components. I call them…

Read the entire article.

An Investment That Pays for a Lifetime

Would you like a small piece of helpful investment advice? OK… look at these facts:

• If you had bought $1,000 worth of Revlon stock 10 years ago, it would now be worth $4
• If you had bought $1,000 worth of Harken Energy stock ten years ago, it would now be worth $2.
• If you had bought $1,000 worth of United Airlines stock ten years ago, it would now be worth $0.

But think about this…

• If you had bought $1,000 worth of Budweiser (the beer, not the stock) one year ago, and turned in the cans for the 10 cent deposit, you would have $214.

Isn’t it amazing that your investment advisor could have advocated drinking and recycling, rather than investing in their worthless stocks, and you’d be 5 to 43 TIMES RICHER?

Read the entire article.

This does not go in the direction that you think it does. It is well worth the seventeen minutes [if you are a fast reader like me] it takes to read it. In fact, I’ll go as far as saying if you read only one of these articles, read this one: what it teaches impacts everything you do. It puts the horse before the cart.

A Grand Slam Buyer Prospecting System

If you’re looking to generate a consistent daily flow of targeted, red-hot buyers calling you, this quick and easy strategy will have your phone ringing off the hook almost overnight.

You don’t need to make a single outbound call or prospect in any way. It will take you just minutes to set up. And (best of all) you can do it all on a “poor-boy” budget.

In fact, I know agents who have added more than $6-figures a year in commissions with this one system alone.

Read the entire article.

How to Master the Single Greatest Skill for Real Estate Success

Have you ever heard the saying, “If you aren’t outraged, you haven’t been paying attention”?

Well, there’s an “outrage” being committed by well-intended (but misguided) “experts” in our industry…and it’s sending unsuspecting agents down a freeway to frustration and failure.

Read the entire article.

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Guarantee Your Success with This Strategic Planning Tool

Here’s a little piece of business wisdom that may or may not surprise you:

The freedom, lifestyle and income you’ve always dreamed about depend upon you. It depends upon your patience and it depends upon your planning.

In his 2001 book The 7 Keys to Marketing Genius marketing consultant Michael Daehn, writes:

Many marketing books jump right into the promotion process where instructions on how to broadcast the marketing message are described in detail. The problem with that approach is that if you are sending out the wrong message, it will not only be ineffective but counterproductive.

That’s why it’s so important to create a sound strategy before you start the promotion process. Whether you employ new social media or stick to flagging classified ads or build a sales letter campaign from the ground up…

You need to analyze. You need to plan first.

A SWOT analysis will help you do that.

A SWOT Analysis, is a strategic planning tool used to evaluate the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats involved in a business venture.

A SWOT is about defining your advantage over the competition. The questions you have to ask yourself are:

• What do I do better than anyone else in my market?
• What can I do that my competition can’t do?
• What will separate me from my pack?

A simple SWOT analysis will help you find out what you do best. And it will give you the road map to a predictable and profitable business that will last for decades.

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Gather all stakeholders.

Since you are an individual contractor you are in a way defining your individual strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

But it may be helpful to you involve your spouse or a business partner or your broker. Someone who can help you see the things you can’t see.

This is especially helpful when speaking of weaknesses and threats, but sometimes people are so low on themselves they need help to see what they are really good at.

2. Focus on the strengths.

Hammer out all of the positive elements you can think of : education, experience, connections, knowledge.

This is important: Devote enough quiet time. Clear a day or a weekend. Get alone and discover what it is you are really good at. This is important that you get this right.

3. Dig deep and consider your weaknesses.

Even the brightest, most educated, highly successful individual has weaknesses. Find them.

But remember this about weaknesses: when it comes time to work on your weaknesses, only work on those that can damage your life or career.

Habitual drinking or a fear of confronting people are two weakness that could quickly destroy your hopes of success.

Work on these but ignore the benign weaknesses…otherwise you spend all your time on your weaknesses and not your strengths.

4. Evaluate the opportunities in your market.

Unlike strengths and weaknesses, opportunities are outside your influence. You merely exploit them.

For example, perhaps you identify a segment of your market that is not being serviced appropriately AND you have some well-connected people who can help you reach this segment.

This is a huge opportunity for you. Seize it.

5. Discover the threats in your market.

Threats can kill you. That’s why you must pay attention to them.

A threat could be monster brokerage house that systematically mows down competition. You need to realize this and figure out what to do about it. Otherwise you’ll be bankrupt and blue in less than a year.

Or a threat could be a cooling market. You need to identify this and ask yourself the question: is this the best time to go into real estate?

And remember: Be honest during this entire process. The freedom, lifestyle and income you’ve always dreamed about depend upon it.

Related Articles

The Top 10 Miracles of Real Estate Research

Competing with Proctor & Gamble

6 Unorthodox Ways to Become a Market Shaker

SEO as a Marketing Strategy for Real Estate

Developing Your Real Estate Marketing Plan

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7 Concrete Steps to Improve Your Local Search Results

It’s old news that 84% of buyer’s start there search online [wink wink, nudge nudge], that offline advertising places are losing revenue that, that real estate blogging is hot as ever.

All of this begs the question of managing your online presence, winning the local search engine results war.

But it requires a proactive strategy.

What exactly is your marketing strategy for local search?

What Is Local Real Estate Search? And Why Should I Care?

If you live in Nashua, New Hampshire, for instance, and someone types in “Real estate Nashua New Hampshire,” that’s a local search.It doesn’t matter if they live in South Florida or West Washington or smack dab in Nashua. You want to dominate the search engine results page for those “local” keywords.

Here are seven concrete steps you can take to improve your local organic search results.

1. Make sure that you have a crawler friendly web site

The first step in improving your business performance in local search engines is to make sure that the search engines can easily crawl your site, and identify your business keywords.

This means you minimize the use of tables, and avoid deeply nested tables. Make sure that your business name and address are featured prominently on the page as text [in fact, make sure your business appears twice on every page] and not hidden from the crawlers in an image file.

Your page title should include your business name, address and key words. Place an “H1” header near the top of the page that also has your business name, address, and key words.

2. Add 10 pages of content to your website.
Any website that adds 10 pages of relevant content will get a boost in search engine visibility. It’s one of the easiest steps in an SEO campaign. Search engines love content. The more tightly focused, keyword rich [read: focused on your local market or markets] content you have on your website, the easier it is for search engines to understand what your website is about and categorize it appropriately.

A blog is a great way to add content to your site.

3. Use videos to supplement your search engine rankings

Great to see agents already seeing real world success with this strategy.

4. Take charge of your local listings

Yahoo! local search will give you a free 5-page Web site just for listing your company with their service.

Google’s local search service is more like a classified directory, but you still have direct control over how your listing appears.

But don’t stop with their Web listings. Take charge of the Yahoo! Mobile and Google Mobile services, too. People are increasingly using their cell phones to search the Internet.

5. Check out your competition

Do a local search for your business keywords (for example: houses, San Francisco, CA) and see who your competition is.

Find out who is linking to your competitors and investigate whether you can get the same sites to link to your business.

The links can be determined by going to Yahoo and typing “linkdomain:” and then your competitor’s web site (i.e. linkdomain:www.yourcompetitorssite.com). Click on “inlinks” in the results page.

Check inlinks for your site as well, and see who is linking to you. Make sure that the information on those sites is correct, and contact them if it isn’t.

6. Get your business rated

Ask your satisfied customers to write reviews and rate your business at Google, Yahoo, and MSN. More importantly, try to get them to use the same keywords that you use in the business description and on your web site as part of their review. Don’t add too many reviews over a short period of time, and make sure that the reviews are unique.

7. Solicit local links

Find the web directories that are local to your area, and ask them to link to your web site. Contact your local chambers of commerce and ask them to link to your business from their web site.

Conclusion

Of course there is much more you can do. And this only includes your organic search: I didn’t touch on paid online searches. But this is a great way to boost your local rankings if you haven’t done so yet.

I’d love to hear what you think.

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How to Create Electrifying Landing Pages That Will Even Engage a Fruit Fly

The fruit fly.

It’s got red eyes, a yellow-brown thorax and black rings around it’s abdomen.

Fruit flies are so small you could fit five in a drop of water.

It’s got a life span less than 30 days. And a spastic, ridiculously short attention span to match.

Believe it or not, but this, my friend, also describes your typical web visitor. [Just the attention span part, that is.]

This means on the web, you have about 8 seconds to lock-down that attention span and get it to do whatever you want it to do.

Here’s how to do that.

As I mentioned in the past, you are probably going to find yourself working with landing pages if you decide to run a special online prospecting campaign.

This means if you are offering a subscription to a weekly newsletter, market updates or blog subscriptions.

And great landing page design is about leading the eye on a journey that ends in conversion.

However, you can fit an almost infinite amount and type of content into your landing page through links, long copy, audio or streamed video.

For best results, however, you must obey two rules:

1. Relevance: All of the content should be absolutely relevant and focused on conversion.
2. Clarity: Content must be organized so it’s very easy for the visitor to figure out what to look at, in what order, and how to take the conversion step when they are ready.

Now, it may seem impossible to merge these two rules together…at the same time creating a flawless funnel that leads a visitor to conversion.

It’s not.

But to help you accomplish that seemingly complex task, keep these rules in mind:

1. All critical elements above the fold.

Make sure the critical elements in your creative are visible to almost all the visitors without scrolling. Keep them inside the upper 300 pixels of the page.

This way every single visitor can see and act on the critical elements of the page without scrolling.

Remember, your visitor has the attention span of a fruit fly. Your screen must convince them not to bail immediately. That means…

2. Put enough content above this fold.

Definitely your headline, subheadlines, no less than 100 words of copy should be above the fold.

Include critical images, your streaming video [if you are using any].

And DEFINITELY any type of call to action copy with the “Subscribe” button or feed icon visible.

3. Use a single column of copy.

According to Marketing Sherpa, two columns generally outperform 3 columns, and 1 column generally being the best design.

The problem is that more columns equal more confusion.

Over 30 years ago David Ogilvy conclusively proved that multiple columns confuses the eye. The eye is not sure where to look.

One column relentlessly draws the eye in one direction: to a conversion.

4. Eliminate your navigation bar.

The only time you need navigation on your landing page is if it is part of a micro site and navigation is critical to the conversion path and contains no distracting links.

Otherwise, nix navigation.

5. Write emotionally-charged copy.

So, maybe you’d like to spend more time on the world’s most exotic, sprawling golf courses, gazing out over a blue Pacific Ocean while your buddy digs his ball out of a sand pit.

Or maybe you’d just like to buy three pairs of Gucci pumps, a new Prada handbag to replace your old one and a bottle of Versace fragrance on a whim one afternoon and not worry if you have the money or not. Because you do.

Maybe you just want to pay off your mortgage. Or a car note. Or simply climb out of drowning, joy-killing debt.

Whatever your ambition, you need to use emotionally-charged copy if you want any ounce of your marketing to make substantial profits quickly.

Here’s what I know: even if you had all of the elements on your landing page perfect still wouldn’t t save it from bad copy.

On the other hand, great copy could save a clunky, second-rate landing page that looks like a child’s Thanksgiving turkey art project. [Not by much, but imagine if it had bad copy, too!]

So, if you don’t have time to learn the craft and write great copy yourself, then hire a great copywriter.

You will not regret the investment.

So, you’ve got five engaging elements to produce a landing page that will convert more visitors: what are you going to do now?

Go get started. And let me know what you think? Am I missing something? Overbearing about the copy thing? Maybe you got landing page test results that prove some of my points wrong. Please share.

Related Articles

How to Kill the Deal: 5 BIG Landing Page Errors

The Six Steps of Landing Page Design

Your Website Is a Room Full of Furniture for Half Blind People

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The Six Steps of Landing Page Design

Last week I started a mini series on landing pages, which relates to your internet marketing efforts.

The good news is a landing page designed for higher conversion rates probably won’t cost you much more than landing pages you are creating now. It’s more of a paradigm shift, a better way of thinking.

And with some agents saying they are lucky to sell one house a month, better conversion of leads into clients, especially buyer clients is more important than ever.

The bad news, however, is this: it will take you more time and thought. But…you take the time and effort and mental sweat to convert more leads…and you’ll rise above your competitors.

Many marketers don’t want to work all that hard. They like to coast. If you’re prepared to roll up your shirt sleeves, the battle is yours.

Here’s are the six steps to designing better landing pages.

Step One | Landing Page Conversion Definition

Before you start designing your landing pages, define precisely what you are trying to do:

• Lead generation: Are you giving away an article, report or webinar?
• Branding or education: Do you have a significant amount of content on your site that you want prospects to read and interact with? Then your landing page would serve as a gateway for this content.
• Relationship: Are you promising to send them more info about homes, market conditions?
• Membership: Perhaps you have some sort of “second home” club or charity event you use to generate business.
• Viral: Is this leading into an effort to encourage people to share the content on the landing page?

Note: Landing pages should handle only one conversion goal.

Step Two | Selecting URL and Hosting

Here are some questions to think about when selecting the URL:

• Will the landing page have it’s on URL?
• Will each prospect you target have their own URL? [This only works if you have a house list]
• Will you need many URLs leading to the same landing page?
• Is there a chance someone will need to type in the URL? Or cut and paste?
• Does the URL need to be easy to remember?
• How about easy to spell?

One more consideration: use Google Analytics to track results. It’s free. And then decide who is going to monitor those results. It must be a person who can make changes rapidly.

Step 3 | Landing Page Demographic Research

Get your mind off your campaign, your messaging, your creative, your offer and into your prospect’s mind.

Spend some time thinking about the perfect person you want to convert. Then construct your landing page for that perfect prospect.

Don’t try to segment your market here. If you think your market needs to be segmented, then each segment is it’s own campaign.

Here’s what I know: don’t construct a page to appeal broadly. It won’t appeal to anyone. Visitors have to believe the appeal is perfect for their individual needs.

Step 4 | Landing Page Layout

Make a list of all the elements that need to be on the page and then sketch out how you see the page. This is called wireframing.

One thing you want to pay attention to is where your fold is. This is important when you go to write copy.

Step 5 | Landing Page Copywriting

Divide copywriting into 3 steps.

First, your headline. Understand this is the most important element to your landing page. And slight tweaks to headlines can cause conversion rates to soar or plummet.

Second, consider your call to action. You are asking them to do something, correct? Test this with your headline so that they match. And make sure that your call to action not only appears in the copy but appears in on button: “Join Now”.

Third, go through several rounds of writing copy. This includes sub-headlines, bulleted lists, guarantees, testimonials, explanations and descriptions. Getting the copywriting right is critical to your success so don’t cut corners.

Finally…

Step 6 | Testing, Measuring and Tweaking

Here are your standards:

• Lead generation: leads v. number of visitors, estimated sales value per lead generated by traffic source, readiness of particular leads
• Education: Percent of number of leads who stay on your site longer than 30 seconds. The percent over one minute. Average visit time, page views and click paths of visitors who stay a minute.
• Relationship: Opt-ins or feed subscribers as a percent of total visitors. Percent of return versus one-time visitors. Average dollar amount of each visitor.
• Membership: Length of active members. New Members as a percent of visitors.
• Viral outreach: Viral growth curve [visitors per week charted over time]. Number of line-backs from blogs. Emails generated with email tool.

Keep this in mind: try not to rush a landing page. However, you can test and tweak throughout a campaign to optimize a landing page so you don’t have to wait until you have a perfect landing page to launch.

Testing and tweaking is key to getting the best results.

Next post I promise to share with you 5 of the greatest mistakes in landing page design.

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Do You Understand the Importance of Outbound Links?

[Editor’s note: In the scheme of our flagship content, anytime we talk about SEO, blogging or social media we are talking about marketing and prospecting.]

In terms of SEO you may know there is a lot of emphasis placed on the importance of inbound links.

But do you understand the importance of outbound links from your website or blog to other sites?

SEO

One of the common pieces of advice that SEO types give is that relevant outbound links to quality sites can actually help your own performance in the search engines.

I’m no SEO expert but all I can really say on this is that some SEOs that I know and respect argue good cases for this. That is something that I’ve always done with this blog. I don’t know how much of an impact that it has had on this site…but it does tend to do well in search engines.

My suspicion is that search engines have hundreds of factors that they rank a site by and that outbound links is probably one of them – although not one of the ones that they give most weight to (read: it’s not as important as your title tags or the inbound links pointing at your blog).

The only guidelines that I’d recommend in outbound links from a purely SEO perspective (and there are others to consider below) are:

1. Not too many links (apparently too many outbound links can be frowned upon by SE’s)

2. Keep them relevant (link to other sites/pages that are on a similar topic to you)

3. Use appropriate keywords as anchor text (the words you use as the link can help both you and the site you’re linking to with SEs)

4. High ranking sites (some SEOs argue that if you link to highly ranking sites for the keywords that you’re after that it will have more impact).

Of course these tips are purely speaking from an SEO perspective.

My own approach with SEO is to know the principles but not let them dominate my blogging. As a result, the only two principles from these four that I do regularly are 2 and 3 because I can do them without impacting the ultimate goals for my blog.

The SEO benefits of outbound links are something I believe in but they are also something I don’t get to worked up about.

Reader Satisfaction

The impact that links have upon readers is more important to me than SEO.

I link to a lot of other sites. The main reason that I link out so much is purely that I want to give my readership as much quality information on my topic as I can.

If I see something that someone’s written on my topic that says something useful then the chances are that I’ll link to it.

Some argue that linking out to other sites isn’t worth doing because you drive people away from your blog. My theory is that if I send them to useful content often enough that they’ll keep coming back for more. And don’t forget about the Bikini Concept.

And also, keep in mind also that too many links can actually decrease reader satisfaction…if they are not relevant or useful links.

Other Reasons to Link

There are other reasons that it can be useful to link out from your blog including these two:

• Building relationships with other bloggers. Linking out and sending traffic to other sites is one way to get on the radar of their owner

• Perceived expertise. Showing your readers that you have your finger on the pulse of a niche by showing what other sites are doing can increase their perception of you as someone who knows what they’re talking about.

Let me here from you: do you have any other reasons why you’d link out from your blog?

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