Start At The End

Once while I was struggling to complete a narrative on another post a friend said “start at the end and work your way to the beginning.” Common sense but still very wise advice. This stands true for your marketing. Often we start with technology and then try to wriggle our way to some kind of cohesive effort. In a practical since this means that you are picking your service, then realizing that you need a landing page and an ad that is running to link to said landing page. Oh! Don’t forget that on these landing pages and ads you also need text and images. They can’t be blank that is pretty ineffective. You might also want to have a form to gather email addresses and contact information that are interested in your small business.

The place that this scramble seems to start is the concept of landing pages. If you were to have all these concepts in a pile and pick up landing pages the time line would hang neatly off of this corner stone technique. Now you might be worried right about now if you find yourself mixed up in a backwards way of marketing. Kind of like trying to pour the slab for the house after the walls have been painted.

So lets start at the end with Dyana Victricius, she sells the most fabulous hand made yoga mats this side of Pacific ocean. She has already setup her e-commerce store and everything. Alas no one even knows about her. In fact her yoga mats are so obscure her only customer has been this one hipster just excited to be the only person with one. They are so obscure her mother, who does yoga, was surprised when she found out Dyana has been making yoga mats for three years, but can’t buy one because well she just bought a new one from Walmart. Man that stings!

So what is she to do? Well lets start at the end of her story. An indeterminate amount of time and on-line marketing effort, Dyana has sold 10 mats and is beginning to gain some traction. She can now rely on at least 2-3 orders a month. This may seem like a low number but lets keep in mind she has spent three years with no sales. She is determined. “You go girl.”

So what do we know?

Dyana’s goal is to sell her hand made yoga mats (maybe even to her own mother).
The yoga mats are a high quality.
Dyana is determined and believes in what she is doing.
She has done little to no marketing.
She has been doing this for three years with no sales.
The end of this phase of her business looks like a steady 2-3 orders a month.

On a side note please don’t let me tell you this story without doing this for your business. Seriously you will be surprised to put down your business goals like this. Have some fun write the story.

It’s A Transaction What is In It For Your Customer

You need five things to make a landing page:

A call to action

In Dyana’s case she wants to sell mats. Over the course of three years she has perfected her method, her materials and even given away a few to get feedback. Her landing page will say “By A Yoga Mat Now”

A pitch

This is usually where people get all tripped up. When we are trying to describe why someone should even care about our company we can be a little “introspective.” You have to stop that! There needs to be some bounds on what we are doing to keep us from wandering far afield of the matter at hand. If you end up with something like “Don’t be evil” then you have probably gone to far. We are selling yoga mats after all. Here are some rules for your first run.

Be able to describe what you do in six to eight words you can ignore the conjunction and if your product is two words count it as one. (you can’t break the rules unless you know them.) In all sincerity, keep this short simple and to the point.

I make beautiful, durable, and sustainable yoga mats.

Have a one to two sentence elevator pitch that follows this pattern: Problem -> Product -> Resolution

You know how yoga mats start to break down after you sweat on them and then just end up in a landfill somewhere? Well my yoga mats are made from extremely durable materials, machine washable and biodegradable. People who use our mats use them for years and can sleep well knowing they are helping the environment.

A place to build the landing page.

Ideally your website. No not ideally! If you are not building your landing page on your website please contact us today. Seriously there is no reason on God’s green earth that you should be giving all that sweet sweet ad traffic to anyone but yourself.

A distribution network

This is a matter of preference and audience. If you are focusing on showing up in search results then it is time to run Google ads. If you are focusing on social media, Facebook, twitter and Instagram ads are where it is at. We can help you choose the right network, setup the ads and focus your target audience for maximum impact.

A transaction incentive for your visitors

This is the bait on the end of the hook. When a visitor comes to your landing page the question you want to answer for them is “what is in it for me?” If you are getting emails for your news letter then maybe they go into a drawing. If you are looking to gather information about your readers then maybe they get an free ebook download. If you are selling the best yoga mats on the planet then you offer a free digital coupon for signing up for the newsletter.

Keep It Simple So Very Simple

Now that we have all of the parts we need to make our landing page. Lets assemble it. A few rules before we go breaking them. Your call to action is what you want them to do. The coupon is the bait. Make sure you keep it simple. Don’t try to get them to do anything but enter their email and click the button. You also need to make sure you are prepared to send them the digital coupon. The temptation is to have them follow you on social media, and tell them about every single product you have. Focus; the point is to have them sign up for your newsletter and receive a digital coupon.

Your page does not have to be super complicated. A nice image or background, your tag line, a picture of your product, and a form or button that gets the job done.

Run Your Campaign

Getting your campaign out there is a little more difficult than making your landing page. Services like Facebook and Google have an ad-manager application that can help you keep track of your budget. In Dyana’s case she is going to spend thirty five dollars for this run. She figures if that gets her one sale then it will be worth it. On top of that she is starting to blog about yoga and post it to her social media. With direction, data, and the steps in the right order she is well on her way to 2-3 sales a month, and maybe more.

If you need help with any of this, web design, e-commerce, landing pages, digital marketing or ad campaign management. Give us a call we can build you a marketing platform that can bring your small business to the next level.