Advertising Archives | FutureLab Web Design

If you’ve ever wondered what a landing page is and whether your website needs one, you’re not alone. There are plenty of discussions around the planning, designing and using landing pages online, both in blogs and on social media. Answers vary from a landing page being your site’s home page, right through to a page with a strong call to action. However, the truth is, a landing page is a page on your website you have deliberately created to capture leads.

Understanding How a Landing Page Works

Each landing page has a clear goal: to collect the essential details from your visitors. Rather than trying to sell your visitor your product or service, you are providing them with something so valuable they are happy to share their contact details with you. What you provide is called a lead magnet. A lead magnet can range from an eBook, a cheat’s sheet, a downloadable template or a checklist. It has to be something related to what your business offers and which the visitor sees as being valuable and something they want! You then tell them what they need to do to get the lead magnet, called the call to action.

Let’s take a look at how the lead magnet fits into the workings of a landing page:

Your visitor is directed to your landing page, usually from a paid advertisement
They are presented with an irresistible offer; your lead magnet and a strong call to action telling them to enter their details into a form on the page
Your visitor enters their details, usually name and email address, which converts them from being a visitor or being a lead
Their information is stored in your leads database
Your lead is directed to a thank you page where they receive the lead You can also include other calls to action here, such as to check out your blog or contact you
You contact your leads to build up a solid relationship with them and to market your products or services to them

Why Using Landing Pages is Important

The number one reason why you need a landing page is that it generates leads for your business. It is much easier to sell to someone whom you have already developed a relationship with, demonstrated your competence and who are genuinely interested in what you have to offer. A lead has voluntarily given you their contact details because they were interested in your lead magnet. They are a warm lead and ready and waiting to become your customer or client!

Landing pages will also help you:

Collect information about your visitor’s demographics
Provide a place for you to present your best offers
Show you which offers or lead magnets work best with your target audience
Let you test out different aspects, such as your copy, images and keywords

When creating a landing page, all other distractions must be removed to maximise the leads you receive. The copy must also be meticulously written and tested to ensure maximum conversion rates too. We can help you with both of those here at FutureLab. Our web developers will build and design you the ideal landing page, with our copywriting team providing irresistible copy. We’ll take care of the testing and monitoring of the results from your pages, plus establish a high performing digital marketing program for it too.

For further information or to begin the process of custom building your new landing pages, please contact your FutureLab team now!

Exciting news at FutureLab – we recently became certified Google Partners, specialising in Search Ads.

Being a Google Partner is a mark from Google that FutureLab is qualified to create and manage search advertising campaigns on behalf of clients. This is a good benchmark signal to look for when searching for a company to help with digital advertising.

We have been managing our own and clients’ campaigns for a while now, but only recently decided to solidify that experience by going through the steps to become an official Google Partner.

We felt that this step was important to show our credentials as a full-service digital agency – offering web development, digital marketing, AdWords and graphic design services to NZ businesses.

You can read more about the Google Partner program here, or see our profile on the Google Partner page here.

Christmas is fast approaching and in the business world, warm fuzzy feelings and merry Xmas spirit translate into prime opportunity for increasing sales and harnessing rampant consumerism. Yay for the Western world and the spirit of Christmas!

In all seriousness though, with the aftereffects of the 2007 recession still lingering on, Christmas shopping and the holiday sales season have become ever more important dates in the business year. That’s to say, they were always important, but in recent years (and looking to the US in particular, where spending is down), retailers have increasingly relied on the holiday feel-good factor to make sales.

Retailers also seem to have decided that more of a good thing might help their cause. We’re talking of course, about the humble sale. Back in the good old days, sales used to happen once or twice a year – perhaps once a season, max. Some institutions still continue to only hold their sale once a year – Harrod’s immediately springs to mind as an example. The rationale here is that their aura of exclusivity is intrinsic to their value as a brand – and if they started having sales every week, the cost to their brand value would outweigh any extra revenue gained from attracting the masses to their shelves.

Not so with the high street retailers. Dignity is thrown out of the window, in its place giant neon letters permanently – desperately – advertising S-A-L-E-! to passersby. Well, it probably works. I love sale shopping, the irrational satisfaction of having ‘saved’ money by spending on what you probably never needed in the first place. Such is the consumerist society we inhabit, and the nation’s credit card debt ($6.15 billion at May 2014) prove that these habits are hard to break.

So how does this all relate to websites you might ask?

Well, the answer is simple. The holiday season spending habits of the average consumer have been well-established, and do not look likely to alter any time soon. Except in one, crucial way. Consumers in New Zealand are choosing to shop online in greater and greater numbers. We’ve talked about this trend a few times in the past. The 2014 Nielsen Online Retail report has some revealing statistics – there’s a good summary at eCommerce.org with most of the key facts and figures if you want some bedtime reading. Here are a few little nuggets:

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1.9 million Kiwis now shopping online
number of online purchases made per person increasing at a rapid rate
travel, clothing, books, and entertainment tickets most popular categories
$1.3 billion bought online on overseas websites

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Take a good, hard look at that last statistic. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that if Kiwi companies weren’t so slow to wake up to the online shopping explosion, we could have kept some of that revenue from being shipped offshore! Add to this BNZ’s March 2014 finding that online spending on Kiwi websites was only up 5% compared to March 2013, whereas online spending on overseas websites was up 15%. It’s long overdue now for New Zealand business to get a little bit smart. And we’re not talking about the big companies either, who have been onto this whole online shopping thing for a while now – The Warehouse, in particular, successfully increasing its online sales by a whopping 30% in 2014. It’s the small businesses (those with 19 or fewer employees) – who incidentally make up 97% of all businesses in New Zealand – who need to evolve. The same small businesses who produce 30% of the country’s GDP. The small businesses of which only half in 2013 even had a website at all.

As a side note, and perhaps surprisingly, it’s not ‘rural’ New Zealand who are necessarily lagging behind. The same 2013 survey found that only 40% of Auckland businesses were using any social media tools, compared to say, 65% in Southland. For a city believing itself switched on, it seems that the lightbulb hasn’t quite dinged! for Auckland business yet.

Maximise your sales this season

Looking ahead to the coming holiday season, what can Kiwi businesses do to help maximise their sales potential? The Google Analytics blog recommends checking out last year’s data to help forecast for the next few months. They found that in 2013, the biggest online transactions were occurring on the Mondays and Tuesday before Christmas (aside from the wildly successful Cyber Monday and Black Friday online shopping frenzies). They also noted that sales season shopping now starts earlier and finishes later than ever before – with heightened sales continuing into January – all good news for retailers. So, careful preparation of your online advertising campaigns will help take advantage of both the biggest retail days statistically, and your historical biggest sales days too.

That’s all well and good for businesses who are ticking all the digital marketing boxes currently. For those who aren’t?

It’s not too late for an early Christmas present

We’re talking, of course, about maximising your revenue potential with a website. If you don’t have a website at all… we need to talk. If you’ve got an old website that isn’t mobile-responsive… we still need to talk.

If you’ve ticked those boxes, well done! You’re keeping up with the game. If you’re a retailer, what about turning your website into a shop to net those online shoppers?

It’s not too late to upgrade your website in time for the silly season, if you act fast. We offer free consultations to discuss your website, your online strategy, and how to maximise your business results online. Contact us to arrange a phone call or appointment.

If you’re still unwilling to make that investment…

Get on social media

Even if you’ve decided that now isn’t the best time to start your online shop or simple business website, at least start the ball rolling with social media! Create your company page up and invite customers to check out special deals only available online. Post about Christmas specials and discounts. Advertise giveaways and competitions. The world is really your oyster on this one. Plus, while a website is pretty tricky to do in-house, creating a Facebook, LinkedIn or Google+ page could well be managed by a staff member (although if you want this set up professionally and hassle-free, we also offer this service).

You don’t have to miss out on a slice of the Christmas pud this year. Start now and give yourself the best opportunity to reach those frenzied Christmas and sales shoppers. It’ll be the best present you ever give your business.

Want to check our figures? Sources:

BloombergBusinessweek

BNZ

eCommerce.org

Google Analytics

Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment

NZ Herald

Stuff

FutureLab recently gave a presentation in Takapuna at the monthly BNZ Connect event (first Tuesday of every month, see you there!). Our presentation was about – what else? – effective marketing strategies for small business. Number one on the list, of course, is get a website for your business! Whether you sell products, services, or advertise events – if you’re not online yet, you certainly should be.

When we talk to potential clients, we often find surprising resistance among company owners who do not yet have a website. We think that’s because business owners who have never had a website just have no idea how effective a marketing tool it can be. When we speak to businesses that are looking to upgrade an existing website, the company owners are far more enthusiastic about investing in their online presence. They’ve already seen the difference a website makes to their business and they are keen to further this potential with an upgrade.

We provided some facts and figures to our BNZ audience – for example, the majority of Kiwis are looking online for products and services, yet only half of small and medium Kiwi companies have a website! It’s hard to overemphasise what a difference having a business website will make in netting more potential customers each month.[vc_separator type=”transparent” position=”center” up=”20″ down=”20″][vc_column_text]

Choose your social media platform

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We also talked about social media and choosing the right platform for your brand. As our lead developer Ralf put it, a digger for hire probably doesn’t need its own Facebook page! There’s not a lot that you can update or post about for this small company. However, an online booking system and a listing on Google Plus to show the location of the business would both be great ideas. Although we’re fans of the Facebook page, it might not be the right platform for you. Towards the more formal end of the social media spectrum is LinkedIn; for frequent updates and event promotion Twitter is a great place to start. Companies promoting a particular image or look could use Instagram, and there’s even YouTube if you want to get really interactive. However, once you choose a medium, stick with it! Keep active – keeping your audience interested and make sure to update regularly. Write about what’s going on with the company, comment on current events, post interesting articles from around the web. Writing or choosing something to post doesn’t have to be a tortuous process. To get started with social media, you could:

Run a Facebook competition
Connect with other businesses via LinkedIn
Upload a video to YouTube showcasing your product or service
Instagram pics of users interacting with your product or service
Tweet about life in the office
Advertise promotions using Facebook or LinkedIn advertising

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The most effective marketing doesn’t look like marketing

[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Now you’ve got the basics of social media set up – using whichever platform/s are relevant and appropriate for your business – it’s time to consider how to best use these tools. Consumers use social media for a variety of reasons – for fun, to connect with friends, because they are bored, to promote themselves. Rarely is someone using social media to check out company advertising and unsubtle marketing campaigns aimed at getting consumers to make a purchase or sign-up.

Try and blend promotion of your brand, latest work, and special offers with other interesting, thought-provoking or amusing content to actually engage a user’s interest in your brand voice, not just your products or services. Just like your website, if you provide quality content, you’ll attract a fanbase first – and a database of sales leads second.

A good example of marketing via consumer engagement are the Red Bull-sponsored extreme sports videos that can frequently be found on YouTube. In line with their brand identity – think high energy, daring exploits, rave festivals, adrenaline-fuelled sports – Red Bull sponsor athletes or stunt artists to attempt video-worthy exploits that will garner views online. All that you can see of Red Bull might be a branded backpack or piece of equipment, and there’s no overt message given at any point. The latest such video comes from biker Danny MacAskill who has produced videos in collaboration with Red Bull for the last few years – many of which have gone viral.

In this video, we see Danny riding (sometimes hopping) his mountain bike up impossibly rocky and steep ridges in the Isle of Skye. Red Bull aren’t trying to sell product through these collaborations, but they cement their brand identity as cool, exciting, daring and fun – making their brand ever more popular and ultimately selling more products. Nice.

But let’s bring it back down to small business. You don’t need to scale the mountain ridges of the Isle of Skye to showcase your brand identity. You just need to take the first step. Get a business website. Post some company photos on your page. Start a Facebook or LinkedIn page for your business and put it on your business cards.

At the end of our BNZ Connect presentation, we took another first step and demonstrated social media marketing in action to our willing audience. Remember that there are always opportunities to promote your company on social media – you’ve just got to be willing to use them.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_text_separator title=”Takapuna BNZ Connect audience” title_align=”separator_align_center” border=”no”][vc_single_image image=”17904″ border_color=”grey” img_link_target=”_self” img_size=”full”][/vc_column][/vc_row]

A Facebook advert can be a great way to gain popularity for your page or attract new customers to your business. The great thing about Facebook ads is that they allow you to target specific audiences according to age, interest, location and many more. From our experience, the best tactic is to be a little weird. Be bright, be funny, be different! People respond when something strikes their attention, not to images that blend in with everything else on their feed. Use our guide below to get the most out of your investment.

1. Create a new campaign

You may need to create a separate advertising account before you can start setting up campaigns. See the Facebook website for how to do this.

2. Specify what kinds of results you want

Do you want people to like your page? Engage with your app? Get in contact with you? It’s entirely up to you and each option has a slightly different process. In this case we chose page likes.

3. Select the images you want to use for your ads

As we already mentioned, sometimes the weirder image the better. Choose 3-5 different images you think will attract the attention of potential customers. Of course, they still need to be appropriate to your target audience. It’s no use having pictures of beautiful women if you want to sell your landscaping services.

Here we selected two bright, interesting images. Ideally use more than 4 images, as this will give you a better idea of what people respond well to.

4. Reposition Images

Find the button to reposition the images and adjust the positioning to suit your image. Do this for all images.

5. Add text to create appeal

Here you can see the default text. This doesn’t really create interest which is a problem. It doesn’t show our point of difference or give the viewer a reason to go any further.

This new headline is assertive, while also telling the audience about the benefits of our services. The subtext reiterates this fact, while expanding on the means by which we can ‘get your business moving’ (innovative web design and development).

6. Select where you want your ad to appear

Ads that appear in the right hand column are usually less effective, as it is less likely for someone to take their eye off their newsfeed.

7. Define your audience

Here you can select your audience according to their location, age, gender, languages, interests, behaviours and connections. Choose wisely according to your own needs. Ideally you want to create an audience of around 200,000 people.

8. Name your ad, set your budget and schedule

Name your ad so you know who you targeted for future reference. Set a daily budget and time frame that works for you. Don’t let your ad run for too long without checking its efficacy!

9. Select bidding

Select your bidding according to your ad type- in this case, the more likes you get, the more of your daily budget will be spent. No likes, no fee!

10. Place your order!

From the campaigns page you can review your ad, check the results, make changes to details and control when it’s running. If progress seems slow at first don’t be discouraged – try new audience targeting, new images or text in your next campaign. This will help you to find out more about the people that like you!

If you need an assistance with creating your own Facebook Ad, take a look at how we can help or email us at contact@futurelab.co.nz.

An eNewsletter is one of the best ways you can stay top-of-mind with customers. If you do it well, it can become an ongoing piece of communication your customers look forward to and even pass on to friends and colleagues.

To see what appeals to your target market so you can optimise the efficacy of your eNewsletters, ongoing testing is key. However there are some proven tricks that will minimise your bounce rate and make sure your e-newsletter is the one that gets opened.

Standout subjects
If you don’t nail your subject line, your eNewsletter simply won’t get opened. Remember, most people scan their inboxes. As more and more businesses are using emails to communicate with customers, it’s even more crucial yours stands out. Make it arresting and eye-catching. For impact and readability, it’s best to keep it short and to the point. Be descriptive, tempt or intrigue your audience and avoid spammy or overly salesy jargon. To see what works on your target market, try split testing different kinds of subject lines to see which approach has better rates of being opened.
When people scan their inboxes, it’s the subject lines they read first. So always include the name of your business or the name of your newsletter in the subject line to give it credibility. For example, if someone was to receive an email with the subject line “Win a trip to Hawaii” it’s likely to get ignored or deleted without being opened. The same email with the subject line “<Business name> newsletter: Win a trip to Hawaii”, has a far better chance of being opened. It lets your customer knows they’re not being spammed.
Know your limits
To create an effective eNewletter, you need to enlist the help of a specialist. An eNewsletter needs to be built in basic html for easy viewing. If you send it as one large image it will be blocked by the email client and the recipient will receive a warning they have to accept before opening it. And for obvious reasons that dramatically increases the bounce rate.
Upon opening your eNewsletter, the majority of your audience will read the first few lines of the before clicking to download the images, so make sure it’s compelling enough to whet their appetite for more.
If you want to utilise movement, JavaScript or animated gifs, direct your readers to your website. The eNewsletter is not the place. In the words of Einstein – keep it simple.
Swerve the spam filter
Many newsletters go straight to spam due to minor mistakes which can be easily prevented. Spam filters automatically scan key words to assess whether emails class as spam. For example, the subject line “Register to win money” includes 3 potential spam words. It’s not always possible to avoid spam words altogether, but ensure you use them thoughtfully and minimally.
Spam filters count the ratio of html/images to body copy. If you only have images in your eNewsletter, or you have a stunning design but just one sentence, the spam filter won’t approve. You need to have at least the same amount of body copy as html in each email.
Break these rules at your own risk! Spam filters share information between each other. Once you’ve been marked as spam, your domain may be blacklisted. If your email address is on a spam blacklist, you will have to change your whole address including your domain. There is no way of removing your email from a blacklist, there are just too many of them.
Compelling content
When thinking of content to include, consider what interests your target market. The people on your eNewsletter list are unlikely to be excited by your minor successes. As advertising guru Seth Godin once said “No one care about you, they care about themselves”. Your eNewsletter is not the only thing in their inbox. To be read, you need to offer them something. It doesn’t have to be a free gift or offer, it can be knowledge – or even a laugh.
Make your content entertaining and readable, with relevant news and information, topical issues, helpful hints and special offers. Special offers can be used as a tool to increase sales and measure the success of your communications. By regularly including special offers just for the readers of your newsletter, you’ll also be more likely to gain a loyal readership.
Strategic sending
You’d think sending an eNewsletter would be easy. However you can’t just send it from your Outlook as it doesn’t allow you to send personalised emails en masse or include html. Also, to avoid spam filters it’s best to send your eNewsletter from an authorised server. Don’t send it from a personal email address, create a universal newsletter address to send it from.
And of course be sure to include statistics with your email, so you can know who opened your newsletter, and when.
To maximise your success, timing is crucial. Send your eNewsletter at 5pm on Friday, and no one will open it. Generally the most effective times to send eNewsletters are either on Tuesday or Thursday at 10.30am or 2pm. However, your target market may differ. Split up the sending of your eNewsletters and try some tests to determine what works best for you.

Tag: Advertising