This interview with Brian Massey of Conversion Sciences is part of the Convirza Webinar Series. The following is the Q&A portion of the interview.
Brian: McKay, were there any questions on this page?
McKay: Yeah. Let me read a couple to you if I can, Brian.
Brian: Okay.
McKay: Let’s see, Patricia asked, “For service organizations, sometimes stock photos can be more effective. Say for example, like a pest control company or someone for a home service like that. Would it be more effective to have an actual photo of a technician spraying a house rather than business porn?” Which is the best phrase of all time.
Brian: Yes. Let’s talk about pest control business. I am a woman. Let’s say that I am 35. I am home alone during the day and I’m going to have a pest control person come into my home. What are some of my concerns that I could handle with an image? Are they trained? Are they professional? Are they men? Are they women? Are they going to have nice clean outfits on? Are they going to put little booties on their shoes so they don’t stain my carpet, track stuff in on my carpet? Are they going to show up in an old, beat up, late model Chevy? Or are they going to show up in a truck that is labeled?
Let’s think about some of the things you could show as an image. Guys in nice overalls with labels. Guys or girls, it shouldn’t be, it doesn’t have to be men with booties on their shoes doing a good job of securing the house from bugs. Another great thing to offer is that if you’ve got trucks that they go around in, you’ve probably paid for expensive wraps. Go ahead and show a picture of the trucks, so I can expect someone to show up in a truck where it is obvious that they are part of that business, obvious to my neighbors what’s going on. I feel safer.
Thing about what your objections are and apply that image opportunity to doing, to overcoming those objections. Another great use is customers. Show a picture of a real customer. Put their name on there and put a little testimonial next to it. “They were professional and didn’t stain my carpet.” That’s a great image. That builds trust, and it shows that other people have used the business. And I can imagine someone coming into my house with little booties on. That makes sense. Does that help?
McKay: Perfectly. Perfectly. The other question we’ve got here is, “Do you like the idea of people using the like box forms?” I’m not sure whether this person means as a pop up, if someone is leaving or entering, or just on a landing page generally. But if you can give us sort of your rules for light box forms, short forms, and light box, that would be office.
Brian: Like box forms and popovers, everyone you talk to says, “I hate them, I hate them, I hate them”. I’ve never seen a situation in which they did not increase conversion rates. Yes, use popovers with a few caveats. Number one always give them an easy way to cancel out. I’ve seen a number of popovers that don’t have a little x, or a “close” link, and you can click in the grey area outside of the box to close it, but most people don’t know that. They’re just like, “What do I do? I feel stupid.”
So the first brand experience they have of you is, “I’m dumb; I don’t know what to do.” And they’re as likely to hit the “Back” button and close the browser as they are to move forward. As long as it is easy to dismiss, I think you’re going to find an increase in conversion rates.
If you use a popover on a landing page, what you’re probably going to do is actually poach, cannibalize leads from the landing page itself. I wouldn’t necessarily use that on a landing page, but on a home page, or another popular entrance page, where you can’t control where the traffic is coming from, it’s a good opportunity to make a quick promise and a popover. But make it very easy for them to dismiss it if they’re not interested in your offer. That’s a great questions.
McKay: The other question is, “Are there any different. over-arching rules for B2B landing pages, versus B 2C landing pages? Are there any fundamentals that are different? Or is just applying the same principles in a different way?
Brian: It really is applying the same principles. One of the mistakes that we make in the business-to-business world is to assume we’re not talking to humans. We speak to them like we’re automatons. We use big words and we pump it full of adverbs. Probably the number one mistake we make on business-to-business pages is we talk about ourselves. The Eisenberg brothers call that “we-weing all over yourself”.
Go ahead and take the copy of your business-to-business landing page, and count the number of times you say “we”, “us”, or the name of your company. I think you might be a little embarrassed. The landing page needs to speak about the offer, and what the visitor gets from the offer, not about you. You only need to speak about yourself to the extent that you’re building trust. But again, saying that you’re great and saying that you’re the leader, if you have to say it, it’s probably not true. It’s not a very good trust builder.
Otherwise, they’re humans. Speak to them as humans. The only other issue would be if they wanted to send their boss to your landing page, make sure that you have a professional looking design. Not a whole bunch of stuff. You don’t need to bring in the big header, and the rotating sliders, and stuff like that. Just make sure that it looks professional and doesn’t look like something that was designed in Front Page in the 90’s.
McKay: Brian, I know it’s top of the hour, and I know you’ve got to run. We want to make sure everybody gets back their day, but I’ve got one more question if you can take it, if you’ve got two seconds.
Brian: I can do it.
McKay: Perfect. Patricia asked a good question about top navigation on landing pages. If it goes back to somebody’s own site, maybe to a pricing page, or to other pages, is top navigation never a good idea to go back to someone’s home page or other pages on the site, from a landing page?
Brian: Yeah. So your landing page needs to contain everything it needs to contain to overcome the objections. That doesn’t mean you can’t use secondary pages, but we’re really talking about a microsite here, a landing microsite.
If you send them off to pages on your corporate site, or pages on your general site, you’re going to lose them. They’re not going to come back to the landing pages; even if you open in another window, you’re going to have lost them. The landing page needs to contain everything it needs to do its job. That’s why, for more complex landing pages and more complex sales, we see things like the tabs we saw on the auto site.
Don’t send them somewhere else, because the landing page is single-minded. It’s focused not distracted. It is oriented towards action, and it’s the page that’s going to keep the promise you made. The other pages are only going to confuse and distract. I hope that helps.
McKay: Great. That does help a lot. Brian, thank you, sir. Did you have any parting words, or final bits of wisdom for everyone? That was a fast hour. It means it was entertaining. It went by very quickly. I looked at the clock and I was like, “Oh my goodness, the hour has passed already.” That’s a good thing.
Brian: I am glad to hear that. I am glad to hear that. Final words of actions: I’ve given you all of these components; I hope I’ve made landing pages easier for you, but go ahead and use them. When you go to launch an ad, or when you go to send an email, don’t suffice, don’t settle for sending them to your homepage. It doesn’t keep the promises.
Take a little extra time, generate that landing page, do the best you can. Even if you make some mistakes in your copy, if you talk too much about yourself or the image you pick really isn’t that great, or if you didn’t have time and had to put a stock image in there, you’re going to find the landing page performing better for you anyway. Because it is very focused on what your visitor is looking for.
I think that when you develop the landing page you start to say, “Not only do I need the landing page to match my offer, but I need my offer in my email to match my landing page.” So the offers that you place in your emails or in your ads are going to be better. Try it. Try some landing pages and I think you’re going to find much, much better success.
McKay: Awesome. Brian, thank you very much for your time, sir. We appreciate it and we appreciate everyone for joining us today.
