What's the most effective web marketing tactic you've seen or used that very few people know about?
-
I wanted to start a thread to share some of the really cool marketing tactics I've seen on the web that I think few folks are using, AND ask the community here what you've seen, too!
Some of my favorite undiscovered or less-used tactics include:
-
Making smart use of bios for conferences, events, interviews, etc. where folks ask you or your team members for a "bio" and you get to control the links, link targets, and anchor text. This is super powerful in my experience, so long as you have a moderately strong profile or regular participation in this type of stuff.
-
Price anchoring on conversion pages, e.g. http://www.trackur.com/options - note how they start with the highest price to help "anchor" the audience to bigger numbers. A great principle of psychology in action.
-
Using re-marketing to draw people to content rather than just purchase/conversion pages. The effectiveness of these is, I've heard, dramatically higher than the usual re-marketing campaigns that take you to a squeeze or purchase page. I can't share the example I'm thinking of, unfortunately, but I'd urge you to try it!
-
Get more social shares and clicks by SHARING MORE THAN ONCE! A lot of folks feel like they are burdening their audience on Twitter/Facebook/G+ or frustrating them if they post multiple times, when in fact, very, very few of your followers are online at any given time. I've tested this myself and I get almost no negative feedback but can triple or more the number of shares/+1s/likes/visits/etc I get just by sharing 2-3X! The key is not to be too repetitive or annoying, and to acknowledge past shares (at least for me). e.g. I'll say "my blog post from last night on XYZ" and get a ton more clicks.
What are your favorites? Please share!
-
-
This post is deleted! -
This post is deleted! -
I work with lots of photographers that have their own Flickr account.
For Local Search it is very effective to have the photographer add in the exif of the images their NAP. Flickr will pull out this info and post in the "meta" page. That creates a new citation in Flickr for every photo posted.
That works with photographers but in any image you can add the Creator exif and post it to Flickr.
-
I call this the "authority interview."
This is a great landing page strategy. Add long tail FAQ's to landing pages using Skype recordings. So if you have a client (or you can do this solo):
- Use Suggest, Quora, http://www.soovle.com or http://ubersuggest.org to fins FAQ's relate to your focus keyword
- document theseFAQ's for every landing/target page
- record a Skype call in interview format using http://www.ecamm.com/mac/callrecorder/ (or use Live Hangouts to create YouTube video)
- pay $10 for a transcript using Fiverr or Speechpad
- post the interview and text on your blog
- syndicate to social and bookmarking sites using OnlyWire and Hootsuite
- Syndicate the video to major video sites
- Make sure you have a video sitemap
- measure organic traffic for short and long tail keywords
- address low performing landing pages and re-syndicate popular ones!
-
I find mixing the seo ppc and social disciplines to be amazing - ie create a infographic and then run a contest based on it to improve interaction with it and then run email marketing and retargeting to promote it. Works even better if you have a co-sponsor in it to help promote it.
(You can even do cheap ppc on the topic the infographic talks about)
-
good one- i did a post on it last year you can read more about here http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/retargeting-hack-for-the-buying-cycle
-
Dave,
That is one thing I did not think about. Excellent point! Cool.
Thanks a ton,
Robert
-
Right on...Thanks again Robert!
-
Excellent
No, the number in the meta description should not affect the NAP (and we have not seen it do so - yes we are watching for a stray to show up in a cite) due to the meta description not being a part of the algorithm and due to the number in no way appearing on the site.
In cases where we want a secondary number on a site/page and we do not want it to affect the NAP, we use an image of the number without the number in alt text. We keep the actual NAP # in the footer for Local cite purposes on that page.
Hope that helps. Great point!
-
Hi Robert,
I totally agree with your comment above. I did have a thought though. With Google's emphasis on NAP data for local search - would hard coding the false, trackable number in the meta description affect the way they verify the accuracy of this data?
-
I like it. Getting video testimonials is so hard! Swiffer is sort of "cheating" check it out:
http://www.swiffer.com/reviews
“Disclaimer: This consumer received rewards from expotv.com for providing their opinion of this product.”
Paying for reviews in any way is unethical, but at least they're saying it in the disclaimer.
Dove isn't paying for the review they're just helping the customer make it happen, which is brilliant.
I wonder if restaurant customers would be willing to fill out a review on an ipad right after their meal. maybe even a video review?
-
Nice tip. I've been using this one for a while as well. In some cases, the meta description phone number will be clickable on a mobile device too.
-
Thanks Andy,
That is a reasonable consideration, but you have to ask the question: "Whose CTR are you affecting, your own, or the ones on the page without a number?" Yes, I think its both. But if you are lower (6 to 10) I think you take the higher traffic somewhat.
Then, say 10% of those who would have clicked through, called instead and you lost 10% of that traffic. Would you rather have ten click throughs or ten calls where you talk with a potential customer? For my money, I want to talk with the potential buyer.
Best,
-
Awesome! I actually proposed this idea for a client last week and was wondering if it had a history of success. Thanks for posting.
-
Yes this is a great technique. Splitting up remarketing lists in segments in general is a great idea.
Curious, do you have a certain strategy working you would advise for display network (not remarketing)?
For me, the section I use heaviest in display network is the exclusions (any really).
-
Like it, but id bear in mind though its widely believed that CTR is a ranking factor. Encouraging non click behaviour may negatively affect your positioning although I do widely see numbers in PPC ads actually increase CTR.
-
Have been putting phone in various other tags for ages, but somehow your obvious "extension" to put it in of that never hit me. Thanks!
-
I mostly work in analytics, so as you'll see, my focus is much more on the research side as opposed to the implementation side.
Your client is New Airline X. They want both link and social shares.
- Pick a few competitors – Delta, AA, etc.
- Get an export of their Twitter followers.
- Get an export of their inbound links.
- Look at who follows your client, has a website and doesn't link to them. That's one target list.
- Look at who follows multiple of the competitors, but not your client. That's another target list.
- Look at who links to multiple of the competitors, but not your client. That's another list.
- Crawl the competitor websites and find where people are linking to broken/nonexistent pages on their sites. Cross-reference with the Twitter export, and you've got a list for broken link building with built in social media information.
If you have access to a large list vendor, you can cross-reference your Twitter list with theirs to see if you can automagically get email addresses for these people so that you don't have to hunt for them, but honestly, I generally prefer not to do that because I don't like the idea of working with list vendors, and too much of their data is just not good.
You can do something similar to the process above with Author Crawler & G+, but I find that it's not as easy to work with, so I rarely go through that additional process.
-
Using all applicable Adwords extensions. They can make such a difference to campaigns. Some of my client ads look like they're on steroids compared to the competition
-
Thanks for sharing this! Fantastic idea.
-
Using remarketing on thankyou page for quote requests. Goal is to improve quote to sale ratio.
The advertising says thank you for considering us. We want to be your best choice in price, quality and service whatever it takes. So do contact us if you feel we can do better.
(freely translated from Dutch)
We noticed decrease in quote to sale ratio's for one client and the above is our response as of this month.
First results show quote to sale percentage has improved from 30% to 36% but again do note this is our first month of testing this strategy.
Thank you for the remarketing to content pages idea. Will give it a shot for sure.
About hidden psychology in pricing, why don't you give round numbers a shot in a conversion test (ie. $100 instead of $99 or $97)... Nobody is doing this anymore and Dutch biggest supermarket is getting surprising results now testing it (them testing it in itself is nice to know).
-
tsolber1
I like this a lot. Good one.
Robert
-
Our company, Influitive, believes in the power of mobilizing advocates to improve marketing. The idea being that customers trust other customers and are not interested in talking with marketing or sales persons until their decision is made Here is an excellent case study by SMARTTech on how they effectively mobilized their advocates to market their product.
-
Great idea.
-
Either live-blogging or writing a summary blog post of a speech given by a featured speaker at an event. While this is time-consuming to do, it creates quality content, engages with a speaker who may have a strong built in audience of fans, and the speaker will likely be grateful for the write up.
You also have a built in audience for consumption of your post in the event attendees who were more interested in the speech than taking notes.
-
Excellent question Rand, and ...
... I was going to keep this hidden away, but love the moz.
For me the most underutilized and proven technique in our shop (not sure for every industry, but certainly for B2C) is having a phone number in the meta description for important pages. We usually have 5 to 10 per client that are distinct and trackable. We use an outside service (IfByPhone) to purchase numbers and their platform.
Each important page for ranking and where we are at least in the top 20 of SERP's, has its own distinct number and we are able to generate calls from there. (Remember don't put them on the site other than in the meta description).
The belief is that some people want the convenience of being able to get the answer now. By having a number where others do not, you can be ranked 6th and "steal" clicks from those higher.
So, if the meta answers the query and there is a number, we see people call without ever clicking through. If they do click through, that's good too.
Thanks,
Robert
-
Brilliant! Had never thought of that
-
This is along similar lines to the bio's but for companies that have industry body membership or sponsorship. Many industry bodies allow you to post news and have detailed descriptions where you get a lot of control. These sites are usually authorities on your subject too. I have used these to good effect.
-
I like the idea of giving an example of price anchoring... Looked, liked, yet to convert...
Good sly marketing tactic, complimentary markets!
-
Hi Rand,
I'd like to add amateur video testimonials to the list. Dove started the trend offline by getting actual customers to review the product in their ads and the same concept seems to work quite well online. One of our clients mailed out disposable cameras to their clients and had them record testimonials which were then used in a variety of campaigns including landing pages, email marketing and on their site. Led to an increased engagement as the clients themselves shared the website link where their testimonial was hosted with their friends/acquaintances. Not sure if this qualifies in the "very few people know of" category however i thought I'd still share it.
Cheers,
-
Great thread, Rand!
One of my favourites - Using delayed remarketing, e.g. for oil changes. Set the remarketing cookie on the thank you page when someone signs up for the oil change service, and then hold the remarketing for 90 days to remind them to come in again.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
We changed our domain, I used the move tool in Google Search Console and I am having our site redirected and go daddy, and now I spoke with someone who suggest we do a 301 redirect for all pages on our site and I’m not sure that’s the correct move.
We just changed our domain name after 15 years. when I bought the new domain name I called Go Daddy and they instructed me to contact my google G sweet admin account and change all of our emails over which I did and then I went into Shopify who is my host and changed my primary domain there and then I went back to Go Daddy and had my old website forwarded to my new site. since then there has been nothing but problems with Google. my product feed from my merchant center account has been suspended three or four times now, I tried to rename and move all of my Google accounts from my old domain to my new one, but I am not an SEO person... after making the changes I have started google chats with analytics department with the merchant center with Google as they all keep saying that it looks fine but I’m not convinced because the product feed keeps getting disapproved. So I posted an ad for help and the Guy I spoke with suggested I do a 301 redirect for every single page on my old site, But I’m concerned that might confuse things further? I’ve already started the move in Google Search console And in Shopify I added the old domain back into the domains section and am having it redirectEd that way too... I guess I’m just looking to know which way I should proceed, any and all advice is warmly welcome thank you in advance Maureen
Conversion Rate Optimization | | TooFast130 -
Is an email signup form more effective than a button?
I'm very confident it is. But I'm looking for a study I can use to tell my conservative bosses that if we replace the button with an email entry field and button, we'll improve conversion greatly. If anyone has a link to a study on how much you can further improve clickthrough by having an overlay form appear, I'd appreciate that as well. Joel
Conversion Rate Optimization | | JoelA0 -
When to determine that a change DIDN'T affect conversion rates
Hi everyone, Description of test: We're a lead gen site trying to add more value by providing users with real, live quotes after they submit a lead. However, we don't want showing the quotes to tank our lead conversion rates. So we're running a test where 50% of leads see quote results and 50% don't, and we compare the lead conversion rates for each. The best possible outcome is to show that showing the quotes DIDN'T negatively affect conversion rates. My issue: When do we conclude the test? In the end, we're hoping to see that the change didn't cause a statistically significant difference between the control and version B, which is the opposite of every other test I've ever run. So, at what point do we conclude that the changes in version B didn't have a significant effect on lead conversions? Currently the control is doing 5% better than the variation with a p-value of .379
Conversion Rate Optimization | | ted-zarceczny0 -
Is there anything obvious about my site to why it's not converting?
Hi I am reaching out to the community to see if anyone can see why our site is not converting or point out anything that might be hindering conversion. Our site is www.tidy-books.com Any help would really be appreciated. I can provide more details on request Thanks
Conversion Rate Optimization | | tidybooks0 -
Which eCommerce site you consider using best practices? Site we can learn from
Hi, I'm looking to hear thoughts and suggestions as per sites that you consider to have great practices in the eCommerce world. Almost none of the sites do everything good so you can split your suggestions by any criteria -
Conversion Rate Optimization | | BeytzNet
the site structure
conversion funnel
Converting product pages (good design)
content creation and blog management / structure
content marketing
SEO guidelines / practices
... Thanks0 -
What is the best mid-level link bait case study that you know about which gained 300+ links?
Just opening this up really - looking for inpiration besides the obvious posts that you see ranking online... What is the best mid-level link bait case study that you know about which gained 300+ links?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Turkey0 -
Will adding to a video's length affect my Rich Snippets?
Most people get to the end of my videos, 85% or so, but there's no call to action at the end of them. So I'd like to suggest what they could do or read next; along the lines of 'Add to basket and receive your XYZ tomorrow'. This will make the video longer and therefore google will know it has changed, I guess. I see no reason for them to object to this but you never you.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Brocberry0 -
Using overlay content on landing pages - possible? recommended?
We want to use an overlay, like a modal dialog, in a landing page to show more information to support conversion without linking to another page or using popups. Anyone have any stats on success or risks? We've considered simple roll-overs to provide some more info, but everyone has raised alarms that we may be introducing a potential technical or usability hurdle for users. The overlay would display when someone rolled over or clicked a "Learn More" link on the page to provide additional offer reinforcement points to drive the visitors from consideration to conversion. Aside from our own testing, we don't have any sources to cite as to whether this approach can or will impact or aid conversion. Any insights would be appreciated.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | lh27121