Etika Marketing

Tag: inbound marketing

How Positive Thinking Can Kill Your Marketing

Don’t worry, I’m not going to launch into a rant about rainbows, puppies and unicorns, or the “let’s put it out to the universe” crap that masquerades as positive thinking. (Although that’s not bad idea for a future post.)

This week I’m looking at one example of how flawed thinking can kneecap your marketing efforts (and mine): Inbound marketing purism and the aversion to pop-ups.

The rise of inbound marketing over the past few years has led many marketers to abandon traditional “outbound” marketing techniques, like display advertising, cold-call-based telemarketing, and other forms of interruptive marketing where the marketer initiates first contact with a prospect.

Inbound marketing flips outbound around by using content to attract a self-educating prospect. With inbound marketing, the prospect makes first contact, usually by opting in for a content offer with their name, email address and other basic information.

The goal of inbound marketing is low-pressure, non-intrusive contact with prospects only after the prospect has given their permission to be contacted. Inbound puts the buyer in control.

As a buyer myself, I prefer this approach. I hate high-pressure salespeople and I always do my own research before making a buying decision. Inbound is a good fit for me as a buyer.

I also think the inbound approach is a more comfortable for people who dislike using high-pressure sales tactics (for some people, however, ALL sales tactics make them uncomfortable—another topic for the future).

This is where things start to fall apart for some inbound marketers who attempt to be inbound “purists.”

The spirit of inbound calls for marketing that attracts visitors, converts them to leads, then customers, and never offends them. But some adherents to inbound make the mistake of placing their concerns of not offending anyone above the primary goal of all marketing—attracting new customers.

Let’s face it, if your business fails to attract new customers (and retain existing ones), you won’t stay in business very long.

And that’s the ultimate marketing fail.

The Pop-Up Abomination

I’m adding something that many inbound marketers feel is an annoying (and therefore “bad”) feature to my website. It’s a “pop-up” subscription form for my blog. Technically, it’s not a true pop-up, but it’s a subscription box that appears when the user scrolls down a blog post page.

Mention pop-ups in the inbound community and you’re likely to be barraged by disapproving comments about how pop-ups are annoying, spammy, and a turnoff to your visitors.

So why am I doing it?

Because they generally work far better than the standard top-of-right-column subscription boxes you see on many websites, including mine.

But Why Are Blog Subscribers Important?

The goal of most inbound websites is to present enticing content-based offers (downloads of ebooks, white papers, etc.) to capture prospect info and potentially initiate a conversation with the prospect. Info gathered from these offers is usually considered to be of higher quality than simple blog subscriptions. No one in their right mind would pick up the phone and call a blog post subscriber to start a sales conversation.

However, a blog post subscriber is still important. Think of them as the very first level of your sales funnel. When they subscribe, they give you a direct conduit to them via email, allowing you to stay on their radar. As subscribers, they’ll receive your most recent blog posts AND your newest content offers.

If they complete one of your content offers, they hand over more intelligence about themselves and move one step closer to qualifying as a potential buyer. Also, blog subscribers are likely to forward an interesting blog post email to a friend or colleague. Another bonus for the marketer.

That’s the value in generating more blog subscribers.

In Marketing, What Works Is What Works

One of the early lessons I learned as a direct response marketer was to do what works, not what you personally like or prefer. Direct response marketing is all about numbers; and inbound marketing borrowed this concept wholesale in “closed loop marketing.”

I don’t like pop-ups, but I’ve found them to be extremely effective in generating subscribers—often 5 to 10 times more effective than sidebar subscription forms. But they are frowned upon by many inbound marketers as being annoying and intrusive. In an effort to be a “good inbounder,” I refrained from adding them to this website.

And I paid the price. Literally, no blog subscribers. Not one—nada, zip, zilch.

Of course, I can congratulate myself for being a good inbound citizen and not offending a single visitor with pop-ups (though I’m sure I probably annoyed someone with a blog post or two). I can tell myself that I need to stay the course, build my audience and, eventually, I’ll start attracting blog subscribers. That’s the kind of positive thinking that hurts your marketing—hoping the results will change when the numbers say it’s not working.

What’s that old saying about the definition of insanity?

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.

Unfortunately, many businesses approach their marketing this way. They throw something out there and assume it will work. When it doesn’t work, they continuing on the same path and hope that something magically changes and it suddenly starts working.

Ultimately, in marketing, what works is what works. You can study proven marketing strategies and tactics and you can make educated guesses. But, until you put them in play and measure the results, you won’t truly know what works for your business.

What I’m doing currently isn’t working, so I’m installing a pop-up. In addition to tracking my subscribe rate, I’ll be tracking recurring visits and visit duration, two metrics that will likely be affected positively or negatively by the pop-up.

I’ll report back with my findings.

Please share your thoughts and experience with pop-ups. Did they increase opt-in rates or hurt the visitor experience (as determined by your analytics)?

March 27, 2014
How to Write Kick-Ass Blog Headlines
A powerful headline is more than a sexy phrase or sentence. It’s the hardest working collection of words in your entire blog post or article. Think of your headline as the gateway to your article.

But, before we get into what goes into writing a powerful headline. I’d like to offer some advice: Write your blog post first and save the headline for later.

An easy way to vapor-lock your brain with writer’s block is to obsess on the headline before writing your article. If you’re uncomfortable writing a blog post without something up top pretending to be a headline, then go ahead and write a placeholder. Even something silly, like “The Blog Post about Writing Headlines,” will do just fine.

Direct response copywriters (people who sell using only persuasive words on the page) usually leave the headline for last, because they know that nothing else they wrote matters if the reader never gets past the headline. So it needs to be perfect. In fact, many of these same copywriters force themselves to write more than 100 headlines before selecting the one they believe will most likely succeed (assuming they can’t perform an A/B split test, which is hard to do with a blog post).

Am I suggesting you write 100 blog post headlines? No, but you get the point (I hope). Now, back to the basics of what every strong headline needs.

Put Your Topic In Your Headline (Yeah, it’s that simple)

Otherwise, what’s the point? This is the promise or contract you make with your potential reader, as in “Here’s a blog post about writing headlines.” That potential reader will reasonably assume that they will see an article about writing headlines if they click the link.

If you attempt to be cute and serve up an article that isn’t about writing headlines, then your reader will feel deceived, leave your site immediately, never share your content, never subscribe and—most importantly—never become a customer.

Ideally, your headline should incorporate the primary keyword phrase that relates to your topic. Including your primary keyword phrase isn’t always possible, but give it a shot.

Remember, your headline is often the first—and sometimes only—piece of content a potential reader will see in search engine results or on social media. So make your topic obvious.

Use Specifics To Strengthen Your Promise and Draw Them In

Okay, you now have your topic, but are you providing enough specifics so your potential reader can decide if they want to spend time with your content?

What title sounds more appealing to you?

Some Thoughts about Blog Post Headlines

or

How to Write Kick-Ass Blog Headlines

“How to” implies useful, actionable information, as opposed to philosophical musings about the nature of headlines.

Even better (if my blog post was structured this way):

8 Tips for Writing Kick-Ass Blog Headlines

In copywriting, specific numbers are your friend. “8 Tips” elaborates on your promise to provide useful information about writing headlines by the very fact you are giving your reader 8 tips.

Specificity builds credibility.

A weaker headline would be the vague and non-committal “Some Tips for Writing Kick-Ass Blog Headlines.”

Grab Attention With Sexy Headlines

Now, more than ever, your content is competing against a tsunami of content, all fighting for your audience’s eyeballs.

The sexier you make your headline, the more people will read and share it. Strangely enough, people will often share a piece of content with a sexy title without even reading it first, simply because the headline sounds cool or provocative.

So, what makes a headline sexy?

The best headlines
- Offer something desirable. (The Complete Formula For Creating Killer Offers)
- Tease, arousing curiosity. (Double Your Traffic With This 5-Minute Trick)
- Provoke, shock and challenge—and sometimes piss people off. (Content Marketing Is Dead)
- Play against expectations. (Triple Your Leads By Writing Fewer Blog Posts)
- Play off familiar or popular subjects. (Inbound Marketing’s Hogwarts Is Now In Session)
- Use edgy language. (Why Your Blog Posts Suck)
- Have fun and generate smiles. (Never Post Content While Drunk: A True Story)
- NEVER, EVER use weak language, make vague promises or evoke a bored “so what?” response.
If you want examples of sexy headlines, check out the covers of Cosmopolitan magazine and The National Enquirer. You might not be a fan of these publications, but the story headlines jump out at you.

Keep It Tight And Punch It Up

Cut all excess verbiage, use strong, active verbs when possible, and employ visual, compelling words that jump off the page.

Here’s my first stab at one of the sample headlines I used above:

The 5-Minute Trick You Can Use to Double Your Traffic

“Can Use” is a weak verb choice, especially when I have a perfectly good verb available with “Double.”

A little cutting and mixing yields:

Double Your Website Traffic With This 5-Minute Trick

It’s shorter and I managed to incorporate a better keyword phrase of “Website Traffic.”

Deliver on Your Promise

Finally, make sure your blog post delivers on the promise of your headline. Never over-promise on your headline and under-deliver on your blog post itself.

Your blog post should be relevant to your headline and contain everything promised by the headline.

Fail to deliver, and you’ve lost a reader, an advocate, and possibly a customer.

Don’t Let Google Slash Your Headline

Back in my days as a direct response (DR) copywriter, before SEO and Tweets chopped headlines into bite-sized morsels, a headline could run several lines long. One of veteran DR copywriter John Carlton’s most successful headlines from a golf info product website has 28 words and more than 170 characters:

Amazing Secret Discovered By One-Legged Golfer Adds 50 Yards To Your Drives, Eliminates Hooks and Slices… And Can Slash Up To 10 Strokes From Your Game Almost Overnight!

But, Google, Bing, Yahoo and the other search engines now cut off page titles at 70 characters (your headline for a blog post would usually be your page title).

If John Carlton’s monster classic were a blog post headline, it would appear in the search engine results as

Amazing Secret Discovered By One-Legged Golfer Adds 50 Yards To Your

That’s it. All the impact is gone—gutted. So limit your blog post headlines to 70 characters or less.

Writing headlines is a topic I’ve barely begun to touch with this blog post and I plan to visit it again in future posts. (In other words, it’s bedtime for me.)

Please share your favorite headline resources in the comments below.
February 27, 2014
Stalker or Helpful Salesperson? Using Lead Intel to Reach Out to Prospects

Are you a creepy sales-stalker or just being helpful?

It depends on your timing and how you approach your prospects when using lead tracking software.

Today’s marketing automation and lead tracking software often allows marketers to identify individual leads and track their online activity, including visits to the marketer’s website, plus email opens and clicks.

For a marketer, seeing a lead’s progress through your website—even in real time—can give you amazing insight into their interest in your offerings.

For example, a prospect visits your website and completes a short form to download an ebook or whitepaper. Lead tracking software records their name, email, company, phone number and other information, links their IP address to their contact info and sets a unique tracking cookie on their browser to track future visits. From this point forward, all visits to your website from that prospect’s computer and IP address are logged. You’ll know what web pages they visited, how much time they spent on each page, and how many times they viewed those pages.

It’s the online version of being a salesman hidden behind a two-way mirror in a store, watching a customer shop before stepping out to help when the customer starts to look around for assistance.

Personally, I find the ability to track leads invaluable. Others (usually non-marketing types) find it a little creepy, on par with cyber-stalking.

Reaching Out Is Fine—If the Timing Is Right

So how can you take advantage of this lead intel without freaking out your prospects?

As is usually the case in sales, it’s all about timing.

If you pounce like an overeager kitten at the first sign of interest (such as someone subscribing to your blog), then you will come across as an annoying creep—emphasis on annoying.

But if you notice that someone has downloaded your carefully crafted buyer’s guide ebook, has made several visits to your website, and has spent a lot of time on content that you have aimed at serious buyers—now you might have a good reason to reach out with an email or—heavens forbid—a phone call.

A phone call might seem intrusive these days, but not if your timing is right. If your new lead has just downloaded that ebook after having spent more than a half hour reading your content—especially, if this is a repeat visit—then a phone call might be exactly what they need. Now is the time to pounce, while they’re still on your website or reading that ebook they downloaded.

So, how would you make such a phone call?

First, stay out of sales mode. You’re calling to help, that’s it. Your conversation might go something like this:

“Hi, Mary Jones, I’m Karl Barndt from Etika Marketing. Did I catch you at a bad time?”

“No, now’s fine. Who are you again?”

“Karl Barndt from Etika Marketing. I noticed that you downloaded the ‘Getting Started with Inbound Marketing’ ebook from our website and I thought I’d reach out to see what questions I could answer.”

“Yes, I just opened it. How did you know?”

“Well, I practice what I preach. My marketing software signaled me that you had downloaded the ebook. People who download that ebook usually have questions about Inbound Marketing.”

From here, if Mary seems receptive, I would question her about whether her company has already implemented inbound marketing or was planning to do so soon. Then, I’d probe further to learn more about her company and how far along she was in the process.

However, if Mary reacts in a way that indicated she is uncomfortable or annoyed with my call, then I’d back off, encouraging her to read the ebook and feel free to contact me with any questions.

I’d keep her in my lead nurturing workflow and plan to reconnect at a better time, when she was ready to talk.

Too many marketers fail to take advantage of the power of lead intel because they’re afraid of offending or scaring away prospects.

Give it a try and adjust as you go. You’ll get a feel for the best timing and your success rate will improve.

Besides, imagine the reaction you’ll get from prospects who truly appreciate your speedy and attentive service.

February 5, 2014
Why B2B Companies Need to Start Publishing Content Now
Most of January 2014 has seen a debate raging over Mark Schaefer’s “Content Shock” blog post in the content marketing community.

If you haven’t been following this debate through the hundreds of comments and more than 75 follow up blog posts and podcasts, here’s the short version:

According to Mark, new content output is exceeding consumers’ ability to—well—consume it. For businesses in competitive niches, especially very small businesses, the cost of generating enough high quality content to compete against better established content publishers with deeper pockets may exceed any gains they would realize from new business generated by that content.

Essentially, the little guy in a crowded, noisy niche is going to have a harder time winning at content marketing.

The idea that content marketing is becoming less effective (for some businesses, anyway) touched off a firestorm of debate. Many people objected to Mark’s ideas, calling him an alarmist and mistakenly accusing him of proclaiming that content marketing was dead.

That wasn’t Mark’s point. In my opinion, he was acknowledging the reality that content marketing is maturing as an online marketing strategy and it will become harder—for some businesses, not all.

Marketing is one of those niches where Content Shock has already made an impact. I can testify from personal experience that it’s much harder today to reach my intended audience.

Many B2B Companies Still Have It Easy…

Now for the good news: Many businesses in the B2B sphere have little to no competition for content, especially businesses that provide technology solutions.

Content Shock simply doesn’t exist for them.

Aside from the basic reasons I already discussed in the my last post about why you absolutely need content on your website today, there’s one huge motivator for B2B businesses ready to jump into content marketing now: Easy market domination.

And we’re not talking a herculean effort, either, to dominate a market niche. Blogging once or twice a week with articles relevant to their customers would put them light years ahead of their competition.

..But Don’t Wait Too Long

Why start now? Simply because Google rewards publishers (that’s you, if you’re blogging) who have a track record of publishing quality content on a regular basis. By starting now, you are creating a deep reservoir of content.

Imagine you have no competitors who publish “real” content on a regular basis. By “real” content I mean the kind of articles that your customer search for, content that educates and helps them identify and solve problems. Truly useful stuff, as opposed to boring “about me” fluff, the kind most businesses publish on their blogs, like product announcements, employee promotions, and other irrelevant stories that customers rarely would care to read.

Seriously, would you want to read about how your supplier recently completed refurbishing their employee break room? Not likely.

By starting today, blogging just once or twice a week, you would have between 50 to 100 blog posts at this time next year. Imagine how Google would view your website with content like that when your competitors have nothing or are barely getting started.

Content like this does three things for your business:
- Increases website traffic by giving Google and the other search engines reasons to recommend your website over your competitors.
- Creates instant credibility and authority when a prospect visits your website.
- Becomes an integral part of your online lead generation process.
So commit to publishing content now and become the 800 pound gorilla that your competitors fear.
January 29, 2014
The “Death of Content Marketing” Controversy

The brouhaha surrounding the recent blog post by Mark Schaefer about “Content Shock” pushed me to finally write this post. I’ve been holding off some time, mostly because I didn’t want to be accused of being a “Negative Nancy.”

People in sales (and, to a lesser extent, marketing) tend to immerse themselves in a cult of positivity, most likely because it’s so damn hard for many salespeople to keep plugging away every day, facing frustration and rejection. When you spend much of your day hearing “No!” it’s probably not a bad idea to surround yourself with people who constantly say “Yes, you can!”

I’ve run into much of the same positivity in the inbound marketing community, particularly the community around HubSpot. Sometimes, I have this perverse image in my mind of HubSpot’s employees waking up grinning ear to ear in absolute freaking joy at the prospect of another day at HubSpot. But it’s very hard to have a conversation with them about a subject they perceive as negative.

Me, I’m more of a pragmatist. I’m old enough to have experienced several cycles of business success and failure, and I know that positive thinking and good, old, stick-to-it attitude won’t always carry the day. Sometimes, shit happens, regardless of how positive you are.

Content marketing—an essential part of inbound marketing—is changing, and not necessarily for the better. Is this a negative opinion? Maybe, but negative events happen and you must recognize and deal with them.

I believe it’s important to have these conversations for the sake of our own efforts and for those of our clients. Refusing to address so-called “negative” issues is naïve and even dangerous.

Changes in online marketing are inevitable. How you react to them isn’t.

Introducing “Content Shock”

Mark Schaefer published a blog post last week (January 6, 2014) titled Content Shock where he described a tipping point whereby content marketing would no longer be an economically sustainable strategy for many businesses.

His post set off hundreds of comments, blog post rebuttals by Shel Holz and Copyblogger, a podcast rebuttal by Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose and at least five more-or-less supportive blog posts by Mark himself, Jay Baer, Christopher Penn and Geoff Livingston.

Mark’s premise is that content production is increasing faster than the rate of content consumption. He defines Content Shock as

“The emerging marketing epoch defined when exponentially increasing volumes of content intersect our limited human capacity to consume it.”

Mark uses the chart below (taken from his blog post) to demonstrate this concept.

Chart from Mark Schaefer’s blog post

The result, according to Mark, means that small content creators (solopreneurs and very small businesses, for example) must devote more time and/or money to create quality content to keep up. But trying to compete against larger businesses with deeper pockets who are generating increasing amounts of quality content is not economically feasible for these very small businesses.

At some point, the cost of creating increasing levels of new content will exceed the monetary benefit of new business attracted by this content. Mark likens creating content to attract new business as “paying people to read your content.”

For businesses just starting with content marketing, the cost of building an audience might present too high a barrier for many to overcome. It’s much harder today to attract readers to a new blog.

He concludes by saying that he doesn’t believe content marketing is over. How content shock affects businesses will vary. Not all will feel the pain immediately, depending on factors like their business niche.

The 277 comments (as of 9PM last night) make for even more interesting reading. Commenters seem to run the gamut from “Mark has a valid point” to “Mark is way off base and being unnecessarily alarmist.”

Go read them for yourself. You’ll find plenty of thought-provoking material.

How Does Content Shock Affect You?

My own take is that Mark has a valid point—if you look at content marketing purely as a lead-generation tool. I, too, believe that it’s getting harder for very small businesses to succeed in niches where competitors are better funded or where simply too many people are producing quality content.

However, I don’t believe Content Shock is reason to stop producing content and I don’t think Mark does, either. If anything, the rise of content marketing has upped the game for anyone maintaining an online presence.

Back in the latter half of the 1990s, just having a website gave you a leg up on the competition. Now, everyone has a website. And having a “brochureware” website is NOT a competitive advantage.

Prospects and customers (your audience) expect to find your website useful—and that means good content. Content in this case means anything prospects might need to help them research a product or service they need to solve a problem, to determining who to buy it from (hopefully, you). an intelligent buying solution. In the case of customers, they want answers about how to use your products, how to fix a problem with your product, or to connect with a larger community of fellow users.

This is nothing new to those of you already experienced in content marketing.

But for those who question the value of launching a new content marketing program or who think it’s all totally hopeless, so why bother, here are my initial thoughts on the subject.

If nothing else, quality content creates a better impression with prospects and customers who visit your website. It makes your business appear more substantial and credible.

But what if you generate most of your business from referrals?

Business by referral makes quality content even more critical. A referral is a powerful inducement, but no one with half a brain would do business with someone without at least checking the website. Case studies, white papers, ebooks, plus thoughtful and useful blog posts, all create a strong aura of credibility about you and your business.

This content also helps with lead nurturing, one of the key stages of a inbound marketing program. Even if you don’t rely on content alone to drive traffic to your website, content is crucial as part of lead nurturing.

I’m going to dig more into this subject in my next blog post and offer some constructive suggestions.

January 15, 2014
Simple Fixes To Make Your Content Mobile Friendly
In my previous two blog posts about mobile-friendly content, I wrote about what I feel is missing from most of the marketing content delivered to mobile devices.

I mentioned technologies that I believed are coming in the near future or are only available now from a small handful of providers (usually at a rather high cost, too).

So where does that leave you, right now? What can you do to improve the effectiveness of your communications on mobile devices, especially smartphones and smaller tablets?

First, let’s get the tech solutions out of the way.

Enhance Your WordPress Site’s Mobile Capabilities with Plugins

If you’re using WordPress you can take advantage of plugins that will automatically swap out graphics and other content based on the device being used to view your content. I’d love to offer a list of suggested plugins and I even started making that list, but ultimately scrapped it.

Why? Because, as I began vetting the WordPress plugins in my list, I noticed a high degree of volatility in support and updates. Plugins popular a year ago were now all but abandoned. New plugins with tempting feature lists were still in alpha or beta release. This area of plugin development is in its infancy and changing very rapidly.

My suggestion? Do a web search with keywords like wordpress plugin, mobile, responsive, content, graphics. You can also perform a similar search within WordPress.org for plugins, where you can also see a plugin’s update status and user reviews. And always check the support forum of a particular plugin to see how well it’s supported and if it’s working for most users.

Some features to look for:
- Images optimized by size. Instead of downloading the full-sized image and resizing it on the fly to fit a device, the plugin would manage different sizes of images and download only the one best suited for a device’s screen size. This improves page load speed.
- Alternate CSS loading. Plugin detects the device and loads a different stylesheet for certain page elements to present a better viewing experience.
- Content optimized by device. Plugin gives you the option to serve content for a specific device type by using shortcodes to bracket that content. For example, replacing a detailed image or photo with a simpler one. More advanced uses would allow you to replace longer passages of text with shorter ones for smartphone users.
- Mobile-enhanced menus. The plugin would allow you to create custom menus that are easier to use on mobile devices (particularly smartphones).
- Mobile-friendly forms. You’ll probably need a plugin specifically for contact and subscriber acquisition, so don’t expect to find this feature bundled into a plugin that includes any of the above features.
Consider Mobile When Writing Your Content

Sometimes the simplest solutions are best.

Technology-driven solutions might be cool and impressive—when they’re working—but in a rapidly-evolving area like mobile-responsive, they are prone to breaking and incompatibility.

So go back to your writing basics:
- Keep your written content lively, interesting and as short as reasonably possible.
- Use shorter sentences and much shorter paragraphs.
- Use frequent short and relevant headings to help readers skim and navigate your articles and posts.
- Use bulleted lists (just like this one!)
- For email, make your subject lines short and provocative. Include a call to action, like “Open Now” or “Details Inside.” Keep the body copy short and sweet. Includes links back to your website for more detailed info. (a little story on this below)
All of the above tips will also help your desktop readers, who happen to be adapting their desktop reading habits to match their mobile ones.

I have a story from a good friend of mine, Mike Young, about how smartphone users respond differently to email.

Recently, Mike was telling to me how he tends to scan email subject lines on his smartphone much the same way he does text messages. If the subject line appears to contain the bulk of the sender’s message, he moves on, never opening the message.

But the tables turned on him when he sent an email to his customers announcing an product update. Mike’s product, Website Legal Forms Generator, is web-based software that creates legal disclaimer and policy documents for websites. His email bore the subject line, “Announcing new Website Legal Forms Generator documents,” and discussed recent changes and updates to the forms produced by the software. Of course, the email went on to say that you could simply log into your account and retrieve the updated forms.

To Mike’s surprise, he received a number of support calls from customers asking how they could get the updated forms. It was obvious they’d never opened the email he sent or read the entire message inside.

After a few of these support calls came in within hours after sending the email, he starting asking these customers if they’d read his email. Most replied that they saw only the subject line or scanned the first part of the message. The instructions about logging in to retrieve the updated documents were near the bottom of the message.

My first fix for this problem was to change the subject line:
- “Open Now For Your New Legal Forms”
- “New Legal Forms Added — Details Inside”
I also suggested simplifying the email body copy and starting with a sentence like:

“I just uploaded 5 new forms to Website Legal Forms Generator. Log into your account now to access them.”

Then provide a short summary of those five forms in the email copy.

Anticipate Mobile Limitations

The other big tip you can use now is to anticipate potential mobile limitations and offer simple alternatives in your content.

For example, if you include a video in your content, offer a link below that video so mobile users have the chance to view your video in a corresponding app (like YouTube or Vimeo), in case the video won’t play properly from the web page.

For graphics, consider loading a thumbnail in the copy, but link to the full-sized image.

Of course, you’ll need to test your own web pages on mobile devices to identify these potential problems.

Big Changes Coming Soon

Undoubtedly, we’ll witness enormous and rapid change over the next several years as mobile becomes the dominant platform for online access.

Your challenge as a marketer is to master this new technology as it becomes available (and affordable) and study the evolving behavior of mobile users. Most importantly, look to your own analytics for insight on how mobile users respond to your website and your online campaigns, then adjust your marketing efforts accordingly.

I see some exciting (and scary) times ahead.

And please share your experiences in the comments below. Theory is great, but real world experience is invaluable.
December 18, 2013
Do Mobile Users Require Different Content?

My previous post discussed the need for website and email design better suited for viewing on mobile devices–as anyone who has tried to view a non-mobile-optimized website on a smartphone understands.

Responsive design is one of the easiest ways to adjust a website’s layout and fonts to fit the size of the screen being viewed. Likewise, many email marketing platforms now offer responsive design capabilities and templates.

But is this enough? Or do we need to consider how mobile users consume content while on their devices?

Speaking for myself, my browsing habits while parked in front of my 24″ flatscreen monitor are far more leisurely than when I’m hunting up a product review on my smartphone in a crowded store.

Unless I’m surfing my phone to kill time (while waiting in the airport for a flight, for example), I prefer to get to the information I want quickly and with as little futzing around as possible.

The Shopping Experience on Mobile Versus Desktop

Amazon is a good example of what I’m talking about.

On the desktop, your basic Amazon product page is packed with content. Some relates to the product being viewed, like descriptions and reviews, while much of it is tied to related products, promotions, and account info.

But view the same product on your smartphone and the experience is completely different. Gone are all the distractions. Sections of the product listing, like description and features, are truncated, with the option for the shopper to view the full info with a click.

I see this approach to serving up different versions of content to mobile users becoming quite common as our content publishing platforms grow more sophisticated and methods to accurately identify mobile devices improve. But it’s also going to require more testing and a deeper understanding of how mobile users consume content and respond to calls to action.

The Landing Page Must Change for Mobile

Perhaps landing pages (also called offer pages) provide the most relevant example for inbound marketers of the need to serve up alternate or optimized mobile content. Building a landing page for a desktop screen is fairly straightforward. You’ve got a headline, a short block of copy, benefit bullet points, a relevant graphic, maybe a short video, and a lead capture form.

Below, to the left, is a typical landing page on a desktop or laptop screen. To the right is the same page as viewed on a smartphone. The mobile version was created using responsive design technology, but was not optimized specifically for a mobile device.

Notice how the mobile version requires quite a bit of scrolling and is hard to follow when compared to the desktop version? I don’t have the data, but I would guess that the mobile version also converts poorly against the desktop version.

This is a good example of a key issue that marketers must grapple with as mobile continues to become the preferred method of accessing online content.

Customizing Email for Mobile

Let’s consider email on the desktop and on a mobile device like your smartphone.

If a subscriber receives your email and opens it on the desktop or laptop PC, they will see not only a layout optimized for a large screen, but they may have longer paragraphs and more of them, plus additional graphics.

However, if they open the email on a smartphone, the email might contain a different set of text and graphic content, organized in a simpler layout. The text will likely be shorter and written for fast and easy reading on a small screen. Graphics may be different than those in the large-screen version; they will not only be smaller in size, but may be simpler in composition.

Lots of Change Coming Very Soon

And that’s only the tip of the iceberg. As marketers, we must learn how prospects behave while using mobile devices versus desktops. We must test, adapt, and test some more. We must push our technology providers to give us the features and capabilities we’ll need to improve our marketing efforts to mobile users.

I wish I had an easy solution for how to deal with content optimization among desktop and mobile devices, but I don’t. Many of our content delivery platforms have yet to provide the technology to optimize for specific devices. The growth of mobile has been so rapid that it’s caught most of us with our pants down.

But we’re learning, and I think we’ll see more solutions in 2014.

If you want to dig deeper into the state of mobile internet access today and how we might adapt our content strategies, then I encourage you to visit Karen McGrane’s blog. Karen is the author of Content Strategy for Mobile, an ebook outlining her thoughts and research on this very subject, with her recommendations about how content management systems can be modified to serve “packaged” content to specific platforms.

The third and final part of the blog series on mobile will look at some practical solutions you can employ immediately, using readily available tools.

December 4, 2013
Mobile Marketing Is No Longer Optional
A few days ago, Movable Ink posted their US Consumer Device Preference Report for Q3 2013, showing that 61% of email opens occurred on a mobile device like a phone or tablet. That’s more people opening emails on mobile devices than desktops (“desktop” referring to both desktop PCs and laptops.

And the Pew Research Center reported in September 2013 that 21% of adult cellular device owners do most of their online browsing via a smart phone. You can view the full report here.

Mobile users require a different viewing and interactive experience than do desktop users. At the very least, they need to be able to view and navigate content easily. The days of being faced with microscopic type, unwieldy layouts and broken navigation are over for businesses that want to stay competitive. Mobile marketing is here for everyone.

This means a change in how marketers serve up web and email content to their prospects and clients.

Only a few years ago, being “mobile-friendly” meant having two websites: one built for desktops and one for mobile devices. You might have identified mobile websites by their URLs having an “m.” as a prefix to the regular URL. Browse eBay with your smartphone and you’ll see m.ebay.com for the URL.

Simpler websites would have their “m.” sites designed and maintained separately from the main site. You could imagine the pain that would be. More sophisticated sites (like eBay) would dynamically generate the mobile version from a database engine.

But the fun doesn’t stop there. HubSpot has a detailed blog post describing the SEO problems multi-URL sites can have. Recommended reading if you fall into this camp.

And then came responsive design…

Responsive Design is a Good Start

There’s plenty of discussion about responsive design for websites and email in the popular Inbound Marketing channels.

Responsive design often uses a combination of meta tags and CSS to deliver content in a layout suitable for the device or media being used. Fonts are larger; menus and links are simplified and optimized for touch; complex, multi-column layouts are reduced to single columns; large graphics are replaced with smaller and/or simpler graphics suitable for the screen size being viewed.

A responsive website should also strive for faster load times on mobile devices. Again, this means optimizing the layout and graphics to reduce bandwidth demands (smaller images and less complex layouts).

Here’s a recent blog post of mine displayed on a Samsung Galaxy S3 phone, a Nook 8.9″ Android tablet, and a laptop screen:

Samsung Galaxy S3 screen

Nook HD 8.9″ Android tablet screen

Laptop PC screen

HubSpot has a very handy tool to simulate how your website looks on various mobile devices. It even lets you navigate your website on the simulations. Very cool stuff. You can find it here.

My WordPress site (the one you’re reading right now) happens to use a responsive theme that relies on CSS for the mobile-friendly features. A “media query” in the HTML header or in the CSS determines the screen size (usually width) of device you’re using to view the site, then sets style parameters or loads an appropriate stylesheet.

Here’s an example of an HTML header tag to load a special mobile-optimized stylesheet in the event a small screen is detected:
```
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="only screen and (max-device-width: 500px)" href="small-phone.css" />
```
Other WordPress websites might use similar themes and CSS for responsiveness or they might use a combination of theme/CSS and a mobile plugin or just a mobile plugin with a non-responsive theme. There are pros and cons with each of these options.

And Don’t Forget Email

But responsive design isn’t limited to websites. In fact, email might be a more critical application of responsive design, especially since the number of people viewing email on mobile devices is rapidly overtaking desktop use. Simple responsive email designs work much like responsive websites do, by changing font sizes and simplifying layouts into single columns. Here’s an example of an email newsletter using a responsive design:

Email on a desktop browser

Email on a phone

However, some email marketing platforms allow email designers to create completely different emails for mobile users. Chad White, Principal of Marketing Research at ExactTarget and author of the book Email Marketing Rules, writes about how some businesses are making email content mobile-friendly on the Content Marketing Institute’s blog.

He talks about responsive design, where the layout alters to accommodate smaller mobile screens, but he then gets into “mobile-targeted” design, where elements of the email content are changed to accommodate mobile users. These elements might include mobile-specific offers (“show this coupon to the cashier for an extra 10% off”) and call-to-action buttons (“click to call now”).

But, before we can create this alternate email content, we must understand how mobile users consume content on their devices. It’s a new dimension to marketing, but one we can’t ignore.

Next week, in Part 2 of this post, I’m going to explore the possibilities of how marketers might go beyond responsive design. How does “responsive content” sound?
November 20, 2013
How and Why to Hide Your PDF Content from Search Engines
This blog post is the result of a recent discussion started on the LinkedIn HubSpot Partners Group about PDF files and duplicate blog content penalties. (Note: This group is a closed group, so you won’t be able to view the discussion if you’re not a member, sorry.)

I made a few suggestions in the LinkedIn discussion about hiding PDFs from search engines, but I realized that this topic required a much longer treatment to be useful. For this blog post I’m going to focus on using PDFs in an inbound marketing website. But my suggestions are also applicable for most business websites.

Here are some examples of PDF content you might offer on your website:
- Your own premium content, like ebooks, tip sheets or whitepapers for lead generation purposes.
- Content intended for printing, like worksheets, maps, how-to lists, mind maps, etc.
- Marketing collateral intended for downloading, printing, or redistribution, including brochures, data sheets, spec sheets, etc.
- Content from other sources that you are redistributing (with permission, of course), like articles, whitepapers, ebooks, etc.
In my opinion, the two biggest reasons why Inbound Marketers should consider hiding their PDF content form search engines are the duplicate content penalty and loss of leads.

Avoid the Duplicate Content Penalty

The duplicate content penalty is quite simple, so let’s get it out of the way now. Google and other search engines penalize websites that use the same content in different places on the same website.

Say you collect a number of related blog posts into an ebook PDF file and use that as a premium for lead generation. If the search engines robots can find that PDF, they will index all the text inside the ebook. Now, when the search engine sees those same portions of content in the old blog posts, it will flag those posts (or the PDF file) as duplicate content.

The easy solution is to make sure the search engines can’t find or read the PDFs. Duplicate content problem solved.

Protect Your Lead Generation Machine

As Inbound Marketers, you’re goal is to attract visitors to your website with quality relevant content and convert them into leads via an appealing offer. In many cases this offer is a piece of downloadable premium content, like a PDF file. The visitor completes a short form on a landing page to gain access to the PDF file.

It’s a basic lead generation technique, but it only works if the visitor completes the landing page form. If they can find your PDF offering directly through a web search, then they’ll likely view only the PDF file itself.

Even worse, by opening or downloading your PDF directly, they might never see your website and its accompanying navigation. They only see your PDF file, nothing else. All your hard work creating an accessible and useful website is wasted. And forget capturing their information or plugging them your marketing funnel. Not likely to happen. You’ve missed your chance.

Some marketers try to compensate by placing their website URL in the header or footer of their PDF, hoping that the curious reader clicks the link and visits.

Don’t count on it.

Be ruthless in forcing your visitors though your landing pages and opt-in forms. And the only way to enforce these opt-ins is to hide your PDF content from the search engines.

Fortunately, it’s not hard to hide PDFs and other files from compliant search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.

The Right Way to Upload Files and Hide Them

First, upload your PDF to your website. In HubSpot’s COS you would follow the instructions provided here.

For other websites not using the HubSpot COS, you need to upload your file to a directory. You can create a unique directory for that PDF or you can have a directory that holds all of your PDF files and other downloads. If you choose to have a single download directory for all of your downloadable files, then make sure you protect it with an index file that prevents visitors from viewing a directory listing. If your website is installed on an Apache server, then you can add this simple line to the beginning of your .htaccess file:
```
Options -Indexes
```
This will prevent any directory listings.

If this change causes problems, then you will need to create an index file for your download directory.

In WordPress or other websites based on PHP, you can create an index.php file that contains the following line to redirect the visitor back to your home page:
```
<?php header("Location: /"); ?>
```
For non-PHP websites, you can create index.htm, a simple HTML file to redirect prying eyes back to your home page:
```
<html>
  <head>
    <title>Forbidden</title>
    <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;URL='http://www.yourwebsite.com/'" />
  </head>
  <body>
    <p>Nothing to see here, go <a href="http://www.yourwebsite.com/">home</a>.</p>
  </body>
</html>
```
Upload the completed file to your download directory.

Modifying the Robots.txt file to Hide Pages, Files, and Directories from Search Engines

The robots.txt file contains instructions for blocking search engine robots (or search bots) from certain pages or directories. A compliant search bot will obey the instructions in your robots.txt file and skip indexing that content.

If you’re using the HubSpot COS for your website, then you can edit your robots.txt files using the instructions here.

For everyone else, you’ll need to find your robots.txt file, located in the root directory of your website. This directory usually contains your index page.

Open your robots.txt file in an FTP program or online file editor. Or, you can simply enter your domain name with robots.txt at the end (www.yourwebsite.com/robots.txt) and save the text file to your computer for editing in a text editor, like Notepad on Windows.

NOTE: Don’t edit the file in a full-fledged word processor like Word. Use a text editor that can save ASCII format

If your site doesn’t have a robots.txt file, don’t worry; it’s easy to create one. Use a text editor to create a new blank file named “robots.txt”.

Now you’re ready to edit your file.

If your file doesn’t have a line starting with “User-agent,” add this one now:
```
User-agent: *
```
The User-agent refers to the specific search bot you are allowing to crawl your website. The * allows all search engines to crawl your website. You can edit your file further to block certain search bots, but that’s a subject for a future post or your own research.

Next, we want to block access to the directory we are using for our PDF files. In a WordPress website, you might create a “downloads” directory in your “wp-content” directory. Your full URL would look like this:

www.yourwebsite.com/wp-content/downloads

To block this directory in robots.txt, you would add the following line:
```
Disallow: /wp-content/downloads/
```
You always list the directory path starting after your domain name. And pay close attention to capitalization. It counts.

If you started with a blank robots.txt file, your file would now look like this:
```
User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-content/downloads/
```
You can also block individual pages or files in the same way. You should always block the download page (also called the “thank you” page) that contains the download link for the PDF file, unless you choose to provide the download link only in the confirmation email.

The download page for an ebook at www.yourwebsite.com/ebookdownload.html would look like this:
```
Disallow: /ebookdownload.html
```
The same page in WordPress, www.yourwebsite.com/ebookdownload, would look like this:
```
Disallow: /ebookdownload]
```
If you are using WordPress, you might want to consider using a search engine blocking plugin like PC Hide Pages to hide your download pages. It’s much easier to use than editing robots.txt.

To hide a specific PDF file (or other file) at www.yourwebsite.com/downloads/ebook.pdf you would enter:
```
Disallow: /downloads/ebook.pdf
```
Finally, this command will work to hide PDFs from most major search engines, but is considered non-standard:
```
Disallow: *.pdf
```
For more examples, take a look at Google’s very useful page on robots.txt.

You can also use one of several robots.txt file generators to create your file. Do a web search on the phrase “robots.txt generator.”

Using “no follow” Links

If you have PDFs that are available for download from any public page on your website (those pages not hidden by robots.txt or other means), then you should consider making all links to those files “no follow” links.

The “no follow” link will tell compliant search engines that you don’t want them to index that link; thus, hiding the PDF.

You’ll need to add rel=”nofollow” to your link, like this:
```
<a href=”www.yourwebsite.com/downloads/ebook.pdf” rel="nofollow">Download PDF</a>
```
As a Last Resort, Use PDF Security Settings to Hide Content

Many PDF creation and editing programs allow document creators to apply security settings to a PDF file. These settings include file opening and editing restrictions, plus search engine attributes.

Access restrictions on a PDF file means encryption, which requires a password. We’re going to set a password, then customize the permissions available to users and search engines.

For this example I’m using screens from Adobe Acrobat Pro X, but the settings terminology should be similar for most programs.

First, you need to access the security settings at the time of PDF creation or when you edit it afterward.

In Adobe Acrobat you can find the settings in Document Properties, under the Security tab:

You’ll need to select password security to set restrictions.

Then set the options like this:
- We want to encrypt all document contents to hide the text from search engines.
- We don’t want to require a password for opening the document, but we do want to set a password to restrict editing the document.
- We want to allow high resolution printing.
- We only want to allow readers to comment and fill forms.
- Do NOT enable copying of text, images or other content.
- Do NOT enable text access for screen reader devices. This is important for hiding the PDF text from search engines.
Confirm your security changes and save your PDF.

That’s it! Upload your PDF and set your robots.txt file.

What about PDF Content NOT Used for Lead Generation?

If you have PDF that you provide to your visitors without requiring a lead gen form, then you should still consider hiding the PDF files from search engines.

Why?

First, the duplicate content penalty. Second, you want visitors to have the full experience of your website. That won’t happen if they access the PDF files directly from a search engine.

Of course you don’t want to hide the fact that you have this PDF from the search engines, but do it right. Describe the content of the PDF on the page that features the download link. Make sure you describe what’s in the PDF and the benefits of downloading it.

Do you agree with my reasons for hiding PDF content? Any suggestions for doing it better? Please share your thoughts below.
November 13, 2013
Selecting a WordPress Theme for Inbound Marketing
With the re-launch of the Etika Marketing website under a new design, I thought it only appropriate for the inaugural blog post to discuss WordPress theme selection. The theme I’m using for this site is called Good Bones, by Make Design, Not War (MDNW on Themeforest) and ~~available from Themeforest~~. (9/10/14 update: The Good Bones theme has been pulled from sale at Themeforest after many promises from the developer to update it. A perfect example of why you need to consider developer support of a complex theme or theme framework. Themeforest is not at fault; they are merely the marketplace. I suggest avoiding any themes by Make Design, Not War. I’m now shopping for a new theme for this website.)

I’m a big fan of using WordPress as a CMS (content management system) for inbound marketing websites. I enjoy the design flexibility, the ease of expanding capabilities through plugins, and its search engine friendliness.

Clients appreciate the ease of adding content via a familiar WYSIWYG interface. I like to tell newcomers to WordPress that adding a blog post is as easy as editing a document in Microsoft Word. And they don’t need to deal with the technology to perform routine tasks.

Another huge plus for WordPress sites is the availability of thousands of themes, which allow you to alter your website design with only a few clicks.

Well… maybe.

A (Very) Short History of WordPress Themes

As WordPress has evolved, so have themes. In the old days you had a fairly straightforward collection of templates and CSS (cascading style sheet) files and a limited number of configuration options. It was rather easy to recognize WordPress-driven websites without peeking at the source code.

If you wanted to modify your theme beyond the out-of-the-box configuration, you needed to delve into CSS and PHP coding to make those changes—and pray the next release of WordPress didn’t break those customizations.

Then themes like Thesis appeared, giving the more tech-savvy among us the ability to control many design features via dashboard controls. More complicated CSS and PHP customizations were managed via customization files. This made the theme more stable and less likely to break during both theme and WordPress updates.

Along with Thesis (and later, Genesis) came the rise of “super themes,” called “frameworks.” Frameworks are base themes that allow for much more sophisticated customizations that could be saved as “skins.”

Not long after, WordPress introduced “child theme” capabilities. Child themes allow users to customize a theme without changing the original or “parent theme’s” files. A child theme is a set of customized CSS files, templates, function files, and images stored in a separate directory. Only the customized files are stored in the child theme’s directory. WordPress will automatically use the parent theme files if a required file is not presentin the child theme.

When a developer releases a new version of a theme, only the parent theme’s files are updated. Customized child theme files usually need to be updated manually.

In addition to themes based on frameworks and others based on parent-child relationships, we have hybrid themes that use both.

What’s Needed in a Theme?

So what does all this have to do with selecting a WordPress theme for your inbound marketing site?

Be patient, I’m getting there.

Today’s WordPress themes can range from simple “old school” themes to hybrid monstrosities with frameworks, child themes, skins, additional settings files, and even special plugins.

So what’s the best theme for you?

In the old days you would either pick a theme whose design appealed to you or you would contract with a web designer to create a custom theme for you.

For now, let’s forget about custom theme development and focus on how to pick an off-the-shelf theme.

As an inbound marketer, you should have the following elements available in the theme or through third-party plugins:
- Ability to create landing pages free of distracting elements like sidebars and navigation.
- Flexibility to customize your sidebars (third-party plugins like Custom Sidebars can provide this capability if your theme doesn’t).
- Responsive design, where the layout automatically adjusts for the screen size or device type, like desktops, laptops, tablets and smart phones. Third-party plugins can handle some functionality for mobile devices, but it’s far better to have a responsive design built into your theme.
- Ability to easily add boxes to your pages and blog posts for calls to action. This can also be handled through third-party plugins, like Call to Action.
- Flexible page layouts, like multiple columns and boxed content, which are easy to create and modify. This allows for more modern and dynamic page layouts.
How to Shop for a Theme

Here’s how I shop for a theme:
- Find several themes that have designs that appeal to me or my client. I usually ask clients to provide several examples of websites they like, then I review those sites with the clients to establish the design elements they want and need.
- Check to see which themes support my “must have” design elements, like responsive layouts for mobile devices, flexible page design via widgets or customizable boxes, sliders, tables, etc. I also view the theme documentation, if available, to get an idea how the theme works from the inside. Some themes require extensive CSS experience for customizing, while others don’t.
- Look for active developer support. I want to see recent theme updates–at least within the last six months. And the developer must maintain a community support forum. That’s an absolute for me. A support ticket system is also appreciated. Some themes have a flat license fee with lifetime upgrades and support, while others require periodic license or support subscriptions.
- Read customer reviews about the theme. Start with the negative reviews first to expose any fundamental problems. Then move to the support forum and view the common user complaints and questions. Not every developer will offer refunds, so do your homework, especially if the theme is expensive.
- Lastly, buy the theme and test it on a development WordPress installation. You won’t know if a theme is right for you until you try it. You might have to sacrifice the cost of a theme to test it, unless the developer offers a good refund policy. How much you are willing to sacrifice is up to you.
Regardless of the theme you buy, expect to invest several hours to learn how your theme works and even more time to tweak and adjust your site to your liking. How much time you spend and how much frustration you experience depends on how wisely you pick your new theme.

The plus side of picking a smartly-designed and well-supported theme is the time you will save after you’ve covered the initial (unavoidable) learning curve. Changes and updates should go much more smoothly—your site will look great—and it will meet your needs as an inbound marketer.
June 12, 2013