When it comes to attracting potential students to a college or university, there’s no question that things are more competitive than ever. Accordingly, it’s in every educational institution’s best interest to occasionally re-evaluate their web marketing and conversion optimization strategies.

Recently, we gathered data from over 9,000 colleges and universities to get an idea of what they’re doing to attract prospective students, and how they’re converting them into full-fledged members of their community. If you want to take a look at what we’ve found, you can download the report for free. Take a look, and let us know what you think.

Here are my instagraph notes from his presentation “Stupid SEO Mistakes You Didn’t Even Know You Were Making.”

[sitepromo] [signature]

The Blue Line of Conversion

Get your visitors above the Blue Line.

The “blue line” is a metaphor we like to use that separates the number of people that have taken action on your website and the number of people that come to your website. You need to get your visitors above that line. You’ve done the ground work to get your leads in, but have you provided the tools necessary to get your visitors above that line?

Lead Generation is different from Selling Online

Lead Generation is not ecommerce.

Lead generation is a consultative approach. Don’t try to convince your visitors but provide information to help them make a decision. What are you offering your audience to help them take action? Are you designing proper landing pages with offers like free reports, videos, or more information?

Segmentation in CRO

Have you become a victim of segment cancelling?

Let’s say you created a seemingly brilliant conversion strategy, but you don’t see any significant increase in revenue even after multiple tests. Is all hope lost? Not necessarily. Maybe you’ve seen some response in a few leads, but not in others. Segmentation focuses in on the specific characteristics of your audience like demographics and behavior that helps you target and optimize your offers for better conversions.

Now after reviewing these terms, are you feeling pretty confident about your conversion knowledge? Take the Unbounce Conversion Marketing Quiz and prove just how brilliant you are.

[sitepromo]

[signature]

I may be speaking in a city near you. Details

MarketingProfs B2B Forum	Boston Oct 8-10
Hero Conversion Summit	Indianapolis Oct 13-15
Ascend Summit	Philadelphia Oct 22-24
Ungagged Conference	Las Vegas Nov 15-17
Conversion Hotel	Amsterdam Nov 20-23

You can save on these conferences.

It was quite a time.

My talk was on Optimizing the Crap out of Landing Pages for Lead Generation. Here are the major points from that presentation

Consulting vs. Convincing

When you are generating leads, you are consulting, not convincing. You’re helping visitors make their decision.

Five things that affect Lead Generation

There are five things we look for in a lead generation landing page.

1. Value proposition and messaging
2. User eXperience and Layout
3. Social Proof
4. Trust
5. Risk Reversal

One or two of these will be significant issues with your visitors.

Words Matter Most

Of the five things listed above, we find that finding the right words delivers the biggest increases in conversion rate.

This means testing the words used in headlines and calls to action as well as copy.

Measure Quality

As you are working to improve your conversion rate, you must be sure that you are not reducing the quality of the leads you are generating. To measure lead quality consider:

• Sales close rate
• Length of the sales cycle
• Revenue/Inquiries per email recipient
• Email opt-out rates

If these turn negative, then your optimization efforts may be hurting more than they help.

Here are some images from the event. Will you come see me when I’m in a city near you?

Last month, Roger and I talked about some of the ways that human psychology confounds our best intentions and derails common sense. We recorded it for the Brainfluence Podcast and you’ll enjoy this engaging interview.

[podcastblock]

From This Episode of the Brainfluence Podcast

• What a Conversion Scientist is.
• How to earn the trust of your potential customers.
• The counter-intuitive way to generate more telephone calls.
• Why we spend too much time telling people what we offer and not enough time on their needs.
• The 2 reasons why Brian always wears his trademark lab coat.
• Why Brian says that most designers are going to give you well-meaning, but altogether bad, advice.

[sitepromo]

[signature]

Most businesses value phone calls at five, seven or ten times the value of online form fills.

• It’s sometimes hard to get form leads to respond after they leave the site.
• Talented phone jockeys and sales people will close a high number of the people they talk to.

So, what’s our secret. Listen our interview with Tim Paige of LeadPages and find out.

[podcastblock]

[sitepromo]

[signature]

I take it seriously.

I appear in full lab coat regalia mixing entertainment and education in equal doses. I’ve got a busy fall and may be coming to your town.

This fall, even Google is going to have trouble keeping track of me.

Are you close to one of these great cities?

Hey Vancouver, I’ll be crossing the boarder for an appearance at the Call to Action Conference on September 12th. This is hosted by our good friends at Unbounce.

Yo, Boston! I’ll be coming through town not once but twice. First up is the Business of Software USA, September 15th-17th.

Then, I’ll be swinging back through Boston for MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum, October 8-10.

Wazzup, Indianapolis! I’ll be there for the Hero Conference Conversion Summit, October 13-15. Use Code Speaker15 for 15% off admission.

‘Sup, Philadelphia. Check me out at AWeber’s Ascend Summit October 22-24.

Giddyup, Las Vegas. I’ll be Ungagged for the Ungagged Unconference November 15-17 “The Conference for Unpopular Ideas.” Use the code SCIENTIST for 15% off.

Hoi, Amsterdam! I’ll be attending the Conversion Hotel Conference. You can checkout any time you like, but you can never leave what you’ve learned. November 20-23.

Where are da brats, Chicago? My fellow Conversion Scientist will be appearing at Content Jam October 2. Yes, he rocks a lab coat, too.

And of course, I’m most often in Austin, The Conversion Capital of the World. Come by the office for Taco Thursday sometime.

[signature]

Brian

So, what are a couple of good questions that you can use to help you become statistically significant as a digital marketer?

Question 1: Are the results I’m seeing from my online marketing telling me what really happened?

Question 2: Are these results “good” enough to predict what will happen in the future?

The answer comes in a two-part series entitled .

Part 1: 2 Questions That Will Make You A Statistically Significant Marketer Find the audio here.

Part 2: Be A Statistically Significant Marketer (Part 2)

[podcastblock]

Brian tackles these challenging questions by introducing us to three characters involved in life-like scenarios that will seem all too familiar to some of us.

Finally, he ends with the question that every marketer has to continually ask at every step along the way: What do I do next based on the results I am seeing?

Here’s another solid question you can ask yourself: “Self, is it worth 15 minutes of my time to find out how to begin asking the right questions in my marketing efforts?” We’re going to help you out here and encourage you to go with a resounding “YES” on that one.

Download This Episode

It would take a nauseating number of hours to individually monitor these sales calls in order to identify the weak points and missed opportunities that need to be addressed. That approach is just not reasonable. Even it were possible, the odds of compiling the resulting data in a way that would actually be helpful and usable are slim to none.

So what can you do to address the problem and avoid wasted marketing dollars?

One option: Find an automated solution that marries the latest in voice recognition technology with thousands of algorithms that can analyze the words, phrases and contexts and pinpoint where you are missing out on opportunities and exactly who you should follow up with to boost your conversion rates.

And yes, this technology does exist.

The infographic below lays out the results, and lessons learned, from analyzing a full quarter of inbound calls with this remarkable technology. Invaluable information for any company to get their hands on.

Biggest takeaway for us? Asking for the business on a sales call resulted in conversion rates 10.4 times higher than when not asking for business. Go figure.

Our thanks go out to www.LogMyCalls.com for their work on this great infographic and on the full data analysis of inbound calls that came in through their remarkable system during Q2 2014.

[sitepromo]

It’s a webinar in 140 character headlines. It’s a speech given in silent sound bites. It’s short attention span theater.

And you’re going to learn a lot.

We call it a Twitter Chat. Since we have only 140 characters, I would call it a Chitter or Chitt or a Twittat or TwiCh. I’m sure there are some more creative abbreviations.

Here are the steps AWeber went through that will make our August 6 Twitter Chat a success.

How to Throw a Great TwiCh

Step one: Some Experienced Guests

A great Twitter Chat involves getting several very bright people together for an hour or so fielding 140 character questions with 140 character answers.

It’s like a conference panel, but no one can steal the mike. No blustering. No raising your hand to ask a question. Everyone has to be very concise and to the point.

Why aren’t all conference panels like this?

Step two: A very important topic and a unique hash tag

I can’t think of a topic more pressing, more critical to the economy, and more likely to scare the natives than conversion optimization, but you might choose something else for your audience.

Hashtag selection is a combination art and science. You want something unique, short and full of your most important keywords.

If you have a TLA (three letter acronym) as a keyword, that can be helpful. I might use #CROTwiCh for Conversion Rate Optimization Twitter Chat. #LPChitt is another abbreviation for Landing Page Twitter Chat.

I hope people don’t think I’m full of chitt.

The folks at AWeber did a smart thing. They branded the event as part of a series they call “The AWeber Hour” by using the hashtag #AWeberHour. It’s short, it has their brand in it, and it implies an hour-long event. Brilliant.

Step three: YOU

Once all of these things are in place, all we need to do is decide on a date and time that you can join the 140-character fun. If you’re a data geek like us, you know exactly when people are sharing on social media.

Here is the graph of social media clicks by hour provided by our fabulous URL shortening service, Captix.

For us, mid-day will be the right time for a TwiCh. You can create a Google Analytics’ report to tell you as well.

Come and See

Me and four very smart people will be Chitting about Capturing More Leads Using Email and Landing Pages.

I’ll be Twiching with Oli Gardner of Unbounce, Justine Jordan of Litmus, Justin Rondeau of Which Test Won, and Hunter Boyle of AWeber.

I’m not chitting you! All of them in one place.

Join us on August 6 at 2pm ET, 1pm CT for an #AWeberHour TwiCh and join the fun.

[sitepromo]

[signature]