How can you make Facebook Advertising work for B2B? I sat down with Curt Maly, Facebook Advertising Expert @ Black Box Social Media, and he says: it is all relationship building. Instead of just asking people to buy your stuff, we want to engage them with relevant, high-quality content in the way they want to learn. The key is leaning into the Facebook algorithm to deliver the right content at the right time.
How do you become a great copywriter? Do you blindly follow copywriting best practices and what people say online? I scoured the internet to find 12 things people say you must do and ran them past my friend, Momoko Price one of the best conversion copywriters out there. You’ll be surprised to hear what she says.
Should you redesign your website? Probably not. In this episode, Peep discusses reasons why people choose to redesign websites and how these reasons usually cause the project to FAIL or can fail due to poor management. Don’t think radical redesign, think evolution.
Do you get several messages a day from customers asking for a discount or coupon code? You probably also have a bunch of abandoned carts In this episode, Peep discusses how to reduce support requests to your customer success team and abandoned carts, just by removing the coupon code field from the checkout page. Coupons are still very important. Peep also discusses how you can still use coupon codes for special cases.
Is shopping cart abandonment an
issue? A lot of people on
support asking for discounts?
There is a quick and easy
solution to this.
Remove coupon code fields from
your checkout.
We have this issue at CXL
institute where every single day
people were complaining on our
support live chat that hey can
you give me a discount can you
give me a coupon like you know I
want to buy something but I want
a coupon and we say oh we don't
do this.
We always say no we don't do
discounts the like well but you
have a coupon code.
Like what.
Yeah about like this.
You know I have a different way
of using it then but like people
see a coupon code feel and there
is some thinking holy shit
there's a coupon code somewhere
out there.
I'm not getting the best
possible deal.
I must go and google the coupon
code.
Now what happens is that while
a) you can plant the coupon for
yourself and that's it's a very
common tactic and you should do
it as well if you if you have a
coupon code field so place it
somewhere else if the google
your coupon you want them to
find something.
Five bucks offer five percent
off but some need to be a lot at
least they feel satisfied.
Yes cheating you know the system
and beating the man.
Like I got the coupon code. Two:
what happens is that they don't
find your coupon they find your
competitors copy your
competitors Mark.
And is it advertising maybe
doing PPC ads or they have an
SEO or page that is ranking for
a keyword your brand plus coupon
or you can do that to your
competitors so they find a
competitor's coupon selling a
similar or exactly the same
product and they go buy from the
competitor or they don't find a
coupon and then they're angry
and they're just you know and
then the phone rings and their
child is crying and their
husband is calling and to forget
about you and move on with the
life and then come back.
So you just want to avoid this
to begin with.
So basically you want to remove
the coupon code field from the
checkout page sometimes you
probably want to or need to use
coupon code.
So there are two great
alternatives here.
A have a secret you URL where
that maybe a query string that
opens up the coupon Goldfield in
your checkout page or you do
these email coupon codes.
Basically you send out the promo
to e-mail list and if you if you
click on the link in your email
code is automatically applied
already.
They don't need to type anything
in it just automatically applied
to your cart.
Yeah.
So those are the two great ways
to you know still be able to use
coupon codes.
So get rid of the field gets rid
of the terrible chads reduce
your cart to ban them and then
live happy ever after.
How do you achieve growth through conversion optimization? You need high-quality research and experimentation. In this episode, Peep discusses why research is critical to understand the problems on the website and why you need to develop multiple hypotheses in order to find the right solution.
Speaker 1: Growth through
optimization is research plus
experimentation and the research
bit is 80 percent of the
results.
How can you grow your company
through conversion optimization?
There are two things that go
into it.
One is you need to figure out
what are the actual problems
people are having with your
website.
So that part we call research.
There's qualitative research
talking to a target users you
know after they've bought
something while they're using
your side the checking into
usability it's all the
qualitative bits.
And then there's the
quantitative bits.
Digital Analytics quantified
data like how many people did
what where and qualitative
answers why.
So understanding this problem
set.
Understanding what people are
doing and understand what are
the problems and why these
problems are problems to begin
with helps us formulate our
hypothesis.
So once we understand the
problem we can now formulate a
hypothesis like if we would
change x y z to ABC we would
expect this behavior to change
and as a result we see this
result.
Now even if we understand what
the problem is we do know what
the optimal solution is.
So let me give you an example.
So a couple of years ago I was
doing conversion research for an
e-commerce site.
They were selling pool parts you
know like outdoor pools and
there's various parts that go
into it.
So the number one reason that
people didn't buy a pool or
sorry didn't buy parts for their
pool was that they weren't sure
whether the parts they were
looking at fit their pool.
That's the problem and I think
like 40 percent of people that
we surveyed that didn't go
through with the purchase stated
that that's the number one
reason.
That's a big problem.
But now we understood Aha it's a
big aha moment for us.
This is the reason they're not
buying more because they're not
sure whether it fits their pool
logic right.
But what is the solution.
Well in this case there is no
obvious idea sometimes there
might be an obvious idea like I
can't read your fonts which make
them bigger obvious but in most
cases there are no obvious
answers and hence you need to
come up with multiple good
hypotheses for solutions as many
as you can.
And ideally all the ideas are
very different from each other.
And now you need to do
experimentation to basically A B
test A B and test.
Which of these ideas for a
solution actually works or works
the best because some idea might
work but some of that is another
idea that works even better.
It never ends.
What also often happens is like
the first and the most obvious
idea for a solution is not the
best one the seventh the eighth
idea is actually the one that is
that is the best.
So what I like to I like to do
is like gather around people
like a cross-functional group.
So we have designers you X
people engineers customer
success people marketing people
all together debating or not
debating but like discussing
what could be the best idea for
a solution where essentially
we're brainstorming and we get a
variety of ideas and some and
then then we'll score these
hypotheses we like to use the P
Excel framework Google it to
then ranked ideas because we can
if we come up with nine ideas
for a solution we can really run
a Navy test with nine
variations.
In most cases you don't have
enough traffic for that and then
hence you need to prioritize
which which idea to test first
second and so on and so forth.
So as I said growth through
optimization is research plus
experimentation and the research
bit is 80 percent of the
results.
If your research is not done or
is done sloppily what you
experiment with does not matter
because most mostly you'll be
experimenting with stupid ideas
that will make no difference.
Should you follow a list of best practices when working on a conversion optimization project? Maybe. Best practices in the conversion optimization world get a bad rap, but it doesn’t mean they are wrong. In this episode, Peep discusses why following some best practices at the beginning of a project, is actually a good thing. If you don’t have enough data, best practices can at least give you somewhere to start.
Should you use best practices to
optimize your website?
There is a best practice for
everything really.
There is a best practice for
homepage there's a best practice
for designing a checkout page
e-commerce product page you know
SaaS pricing page you name it.
Actually there are five best
practices for every type of page
out there.
If you google enough. So should
you use them?
The answer is probably yes.
The thing is that best practices
is your first hypothesis.
You're building your new pricing
page and you don't know what you
know.
You have no data of your own.
You start with following the
best practice you'll like your
competitor is your first
prototype so to speak.
And the best practice is a
synthesis of what has worked for
a number of companies in the
past.
There is no guarantee that any
of that stuff will work for you
but it's the best chance you got
to ship something that that
might have a chance of working
right out of the gate.
Now of course best practices is
not optimization in the
conversion optimization world.
Best practices off the laugh
that are made fun of and then
and for good reason often.
But this practice is to have a
great place so when you're
building a first version of
anything you're designing your
first home page etc. you start
with the best practice and then
you optimize from there.
So best practice is where you
start not where you end up.
Do you have all the data but it’s siloed in various marketing tools? How do you connect, pipe, and automate data transforms to get value out of your data and why? In this interview, Peep sits down with Dan McGaw, CMO @ EffinAmazing. Dan breaks down marketing automation tools, customer data platforms, and what you can do to plan and organize your marketing tech stack and data pipeline.
what's the difference between CDI and
CDP this is kind of becoming a blurred
line because marketing automation tools
are now saying well I'm a CDP because I
store your customer data and I could
show you the life-long of them and I can
send that somewhere else
but isn't that really a CDP is that
really a marketing automation tool hey
guys I'm here with Dan McCall from effin
amazing and then here is an expert at
building and optimizing marketing tech
stacks marketing tech stacks are a
problem for marketers because there's a
huge amount of data silo vacation it's
like you have your email marketing tool
but it doesn't talk to CRM so if you
want to email people who bought these
two products you often can't do that or
they're separate from digital analytics
where I want to email people that bought
these two products but not this one and
read this blog post and after marketers
are not able to do this so how do you
solve all that yeah so it's it's
definitely really really difficult but I
mean it's fun enough when you say this
whole kind of explanation there's some
tools that come to mind I think you're
probably familiar with one of the most
popular ones will just hold that i/o
Sohal which is like kind of the
traditional customer data platform so
you have customer data infrastructure
and all of these different ways that you
can pass data through different tools
but I'd have to say the most popular one
is zapier right like if you're not using
zapier then I mean you kind of live on
an island I guess and I call it zapier
it's not zapier to me it's zap-zap you
I'm calling it zapier I don't care I'm
putting my flag in the ground on that
one but zapier is by far one of my
favorite ways to automate everything and
keep him up to date but the whole would
be the other tool that I would use but
that's a bigger picture less
integrations okay what other CDP's or
similar tools could you use to set up
email CRM and all these other tools to
make them talk to each other yeah
segment is really popular segment com is
really good they have the ability to
pass the data between a lot of different
tools and be able to use them as sources
and destinations I really like segments
we're a solutions partner of theirs we
recently were introduced to Mehta router
we ever heard a meta router Mehta
routers very much similar they're a
little bit younger so they're a lot
cheaper right now
and they give you much more volume with
passing data between tools so between
those two they're known as what's a CDI
customer data infrastructure so they're
all about taking data from one tool
setting it to another they just require
you to basically push that data compared
to zapier where you can kind of go fetch
data and pull it around so just a little
bit different what's different what's
the difference between CDI and CTP yeah
a great question so the CDP actually
customer data platform stores customer
data so this is kind of becoming a
blurred line because marketing
automation tools are now saying well I'm
a CDP because I store your customer data
and I can show you the life lifelong of
them and I can send that somewhere else
but is that really a CDP is that really
a marketing automation tool so the
domain difference between CDI and CDP CD
is don't store that is pipe CDP's
actually store the data about the
customer right yeah I mean we love CDP
for the you know single source of truth
type of type of stuff so everything sits
together is there is so is there any any
any other way to do this single source
of true type of stuff or you have to use
the CDP yeah the CDP is really becoming
more popular but what we really have
started to learn is that it's not only
about having one central location of
data it's about making sure that data is
constantly pushing from all of these
different tools to keep all these
different tools up-to-date because your
marketing automation tool if it's not
your CDP you're constantly having a push
data to it so as data gets updated in
Salesforce you need to push that data
from Salesforce to a CDP the CDP
hopefully pushes it somewhere else or
you have a different way of creating a
data pipeline which they think is for
marketers it's kind of a not known and
not really familiar but really the data
pipeline is what keeps all these things
going and the CDP just becomes a big
axle in that that pipeline so who is
responsible for all this should it be
the marketer or the engineer yeah
definitely in between so a lot of
organizations have a marketing
operations person and that's typically
the person who does this so it's usually
owned by marketing operations or sales
operations I don't recommend it to be
owned by engineering just because they
don't think about hey this is their
first name they think about like this is
a user ID okay I have a random hash
they're users the marketer is going to
think about this as a customer so it's a
little bit separate put marketers at the
same time don't
think about the technical ability of
attaching a user to an ID number and
then having that manage throughout
different systems so hopefully there's a
marketing operations person in the
middle that can help translate for both
of them and that's also what a lot of
companies hire us for is to figure out
what are their operations of all this
data how do we manage the customer
journey and things like that and some
marketing operations in your definition
is something something like growth
engineer I've seen that title of being
thrown around
yeah growth engineer would definitely
fall into that classification however
the growth engineer is much more focused
typically on taking demand generation
efforts and then getting that to turn
into some sort of viral loop or
something like that
which is much more the product the
marketing operations people are less
focused on the viral loop in many cases
that's not their their objective their
objective is how do I store all this
information about a user or a customer
and then make it so we can report upon
that later so there really operations of
marketing a lot of times you see these
people building emails as well doing
more operationally focused tasks but
they're not the growth engineer because
their job is not measured just upon
growth of new users right so that's one
thing that typically you see marketing
operations at larger companies where
this is a primary focus so in smaller
companies usually this is done by
marketing and marketing is asking
engineering to do something about it
and that's where it can be a little
difficult to get things done right right
right so talking about difficult what
are the typical things that can go wrong
when somebody's starting to you know I
call this kind of data integration
things yeah the first thing we see
everybody forget about is planning they
just start going out and doing it so a
thing that I don't think a lot of
marketers think about is taxonomy or
schema and those words are kind of
synonyms of each other taxonomy and
schema are like just what we're gonna
call things so yes first name is really
easy company is really easy title is
really easy but when you start getting
into attributes about like how did
somebody at C Excel go through a course
did they enroll or did they register do
they start there's different names that
are used these all have to match between
all the systems and that's where we
really see a lot of mistakes happen as
you might be familiar with UTM do our
other product that's all about data
governance and making it so that people
can store UTM is the same way every time
so they can report upon it later you
have that same problem in the stack
we're marketing automation calls it a
registered and then you have this the
CRM that's calling it enrolled and if
those two things don't line up the data
it actually doesn't map over very easily
so you have to think about that
especially if the stack is bigger than
bigger if you want more interviews like
this subscribe to my channel
Dan’s marketing tech stack tips:
Engineers shouldn’t own the marketing tech stack pipeline
Will copying market leaders best practices grow your business? NO! You must apply best practices, design, copy, etc that are suited for your business to get real results. In this episode, Peep discusses why you shouldn’t rip off companies like Amazon and expect growth in your business.
Should you copy market leaders?
Companies that are doing really
really well should just copy
what they're doing?
The answer is no you shouldn't!
So let's think about Amazon.
So Amazon is doing pretty fine
right?
Conversion rate for Amazon Prime
subscribers is 74 percent.
So e-commerce conversion rates
so 74 percent of people who go
on Amazon Prime members will log
in end up buying something that
is insane.
Right.
So what is your conversion rate?
Let's imagine it's 5 percent.
So then Amazon's conversion rate
is 15 times better than your
conversion rate.
So does that mean that Amazon's
design is 15 times better than
your design or their copy on
their website is 15 times better
than your copy?
No.
So if you just go and rip off
their design their copy and
expect that you'll you'll now
get Amazon style results you´r
naive.
It doesn't work like that and
it's the same thing with any
competitor.
You built the live chat
software.
Oh we just going to copy what
income is doing just fine.
We'll do the same doodles and
ta-ta-ta...
No that is not how the world
works because what goes into
somebody's success is there are
so many other variables too like
what Amazon has done since the
90s and that their brand and
their relationship with their
customers and like anybody was
bought from Amazon before has
had you know how many great
experiences and there is just so
much that goes into building a
successful company be it Amazon
or intercom or you know whatever
it may be.
And you just can't copy that by
copying the super superficial
elements from the website.
Have you looked at your competition? They probably are very similar to you and that’s not helping you make more money. In this episode, Peep discusses why research and building your brand is key to stand out against the sea of sameness.
What do you do if what you say
about your company on your
website is exactly the same what
everybody else is saying, like
your competitors saying on the
website. This is a very typical
case so the other day I was
Googling or I was checking out
the competition for CXL
institute.
You know just going you know
from one web site to another and
evaluating the value
propositions and seeing how
they're presenting their you
know their business.
And basically my conclusion was
in this market in this online
learning space is the sea of
sameness pretty much everybody
is saying the exact same things
about themselves.
And this is probably very true
about you as well.
Have you done research like
looking into your next project
management software or invoicing
billing accounting one of those
you know it's a commodity that
projects products most often
what you see is that everybody
is saying the exact same thing
that some are doing a little
better job than others maybe
design or copy wise but
essentially it boils down to the
very same logical rational
arguments.
So what do you do you invest in
your brand. Your brand is what's
going to going to set you apart.
Do you sell an idea.
And if people are going to like
that idea the story they're
going to buy from you not these
other guys even though on paper
they can rationally.
It's pretty much the same stuff
but they're just like they're
like how you position yourself
like they'd like to buy into the
idea that you really represent
the idea that you hold in their
brain about you whenever you
give people an emotional reason
to buy from you they'll go for
that.
Why is networking and building business relationships important for growth? It seems that most people who go to conferences or industry events don’t know how to network. How do you become better at networking?
What else can you do to like
maybe you're seeing something I
really want to talk to that
person.
The lakes don't really know how
to start clarity of intention
and having that intention be
almost third party verified.
Any schmuck can have an
intention.
I want to get laid.
I want to get rich.
I want to get skinny.
Hey guys I'm here with David
Gonzalez and David here runs
this event called the Internet
Marketing Party and there was
just a 10 year anniversary.
And David here is a super
connector so he knows everybody.
And I go to events and you
probably go to events and I go
to David's events every now and
then and and I am my own events
and I see people going to these
events and failing at
networking.
You know there's a guy that just
tries to sell you something.
And so like a lot of people
don't know how to network.
So what would you say what's the
best way to go about it.
Well as we talked about for a
second before we started there
are people that have this
process codified way better than
I do because I'm more of an
organic networker.
I love networking and I hate the
word like most even even people
that don't like networking hate
the word.
So it's one of those weird
things that when it's done
right.
Like nobody likes a salesperson
but when someone's good at
selling you you like buying from
them right.
So I kind of feel like a good
networker somebody you enjoy
conversing with.
So if you know the art and the
skill of conversation then you
are automatically a good
networker.
It doesn't matter whether it's
at an event with a thousand
people or a small intimate
dinner party with six people or
even if you have one friend over
to share with you on a podcast
or a video blog like technically
speaking you could argue that
we're networking right now with
our invisible in that moment
that you're watching this you
are no longer invisible you have
become real It's like
Schrodinger's kind of thing and
I don't mean to sound
metaphysical but at the end of
the day you and me are having a
conversation then that
conversation is being
transferred to to the viewer
right now.
But if we were on at an event
technically speaking we're
either going to step away from
the crowd and just have a one on
one like sometimes the speaker
comes off the stage and the
people crowd them.
You'll notice sometimes if
somebody is really prominent
they can pull the speaker away
from the crowd.
You've seen that happen right.
I give you.
No I don't think it's like who's
out there like that's the head
of operations at Google and
everybody's like oh like don't
even try and listen.
Like give them even if you're in
a crowded room right.
So that leads to the idea of
like no no.
When I say no your place I don't
mean that as in like at the end
of the day like we're all
created great like equally like
where else are astronauts on
this spaceship Earth right.
So like nobody's better than
anybody and in the context of
business sometimes it's worth
giving credence and paying
attention to pecking order
meaning if you're brand new in
an industry and you're when you
have a vision and a goal and an
idea of where you want to be.
There's a giant gap between
there in time and experience and
energy and attention and
education and intellectual
property.
There's all the assets that you
could possibly amass to get you
from there to there in a shorter
amount of time.
Like if you've got a lot of
capital you can show up at an
event.
If you had one hundred million
dollars liquid in your bank
account you can show up to
pretty much an event and don't
have to pay the same kind of
pecking order attention because
they probably would like some of
that money.
Yeah yeah.
So it's hard to go and connect
to A-list celebrities but rather
connect with people at your own
level and grow together.
Absolutely.
And you pay attention like you
you care you put some thought in
it.
Yeah.
So besides being a great you
know bringing great and having
conversations and just making a
human connection what else can
you do to like maybe you're
seeing something I really want
to talk to that person but like
I don't really know how to start
or go you've led right into the
next thing which is I alluded to
it but I don't think I did a
good enough job of clarifying
what it is it's clarity of
intention and having that
intention be almost third party
verified because Any schmuck can
have an intention.
I want to get laid.
I want to get rich.
I want to get skinny like like
so but like Do you have a
trusted adviser whether it's a
business partner a consultant a
spouse.
You can say hey my intention for
this event that I'm going to is
X do you where do you see the
flaws in that.
Well that's that's pretty big.
What you're looking for.
I think you should ask.
You should go there with a
bigger intention and like get
clarity on your intention with a
third party that you trust and
respect to.
Then when you're interacting
with people the conversations
are geared towards those
intentions because sometimes you
need to go deep to hit a certain
intention.
But if you want more interviews
like this.
Subscribe to my channel.
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