via bloomberg.com
Singapore’s Home Sales Drop May Curb Price Gains | Chappaqua Realtor
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Daily Archives: July 16, 2012
Midwest Drought 2012: Forecast Shows Dry Weather Will Get Worse, Not Better | Armonk Realtor
Cities Are Considering A Housing Solution That Makes Investors Furious | North Salem Real Estate
FONTANA, Calif. (AP) — In the foreclosure-battered inland stretches of California, local government officials desperate for change are weighing a controversial but inventive way to fix troubled mortgages: Condemn them.
Officials from San Bernardino County and two of its cities have formed a local agency to consider the plan. But investors who stand to lose money on their mortgage investments have been quick to register their displeasure.
Discussion of the idea is taking place in one of the epicenters of the housing crisis, a working-class region east of Los Angeles where housing prices have plummeted. Last week brought another sharp reminder of the crisis when the 210,000-strong city of San Bernardino, struggling after shrunken home prices walloped local tax revenues, announced it would seek bankruptcy protection.
Now — and amid skepticism on many fronts — officials from the surrounding county of San Bernardino and cities of Fontana and Ontario have created a joint powers authority to consider what role local governments could take to stem the crisis. The goal is to keep homeowners saddled by large mortgage payments from losing their homes — which are now valued at a fraction of what they were once worth.
“We just have too much pain and misery in this county to call off a public discussion like this,” said David Wert, a county spokesman.
The idea was broached by a group of West Coast financiers who suggest using the power of eminent domain, which lets the government seize private property for public use. In this case, they would condemn troubled mortgages so they could seize them from the investors who own them. Then the mortgages would be rewritten so the borrowers would have significantly lower monthly payments.
Steven Gluckstern, chairman of the newly formed San Francisco-based Mortgage Resolution Partners, says his main concern is to help the economy, which is being held back by the mortgage crisis.
“This is not a bunch of Wall Street guys sitting around saying, ‘How do we make money?'” he said. “This was a bunch of Wall Street guys sitting around saying, ‘How do you solve this problem?'”
Typically, eminent domain has been used to clear property for infrastructure projects like highways, schools and sewage plants. But supporters say that giving help to struggling borrowers is also a legitimate use of eminent domain, because it’s in the public interest.
Under the proposal, a city or county would sign on as a client of Mortgage Resolution Partners, then condemn certain mortgages. The mortgages are typically owned by private investors like hedge funds and pension funds.
Under eminent domain, the city or county would be required to pay those investors “fair value” for the seized mortgages. So Mortgage Resolution Partners would find private investors to fund that.
Mortgage Resolution Partners will focus on mortgages where the borrowers are current on their payments but are “under water,” meaning their mortgage costs more than the home is worth. After being condemned and seized, the mortgages would be rewritten based on the homes’ current values. The borrowers would get to stay, but with cheaper monthly payments. The city or county would resell the loans to other private investors, so it could pay back the investors who funded the seizure and pay a flat fee to Mortgage Resolution Partners.
The company says that overall, all parties will be happy. The homeowners, for obvious reasons. The cities, for stemming economic blight without using taxpayer bailouts. And even the investors whose mortgage investments are seized. Mortgage Resolution Partners figures they should be glad to unload a risky asset.
Rick Rayl, an eminent domain lawyer in Irvine, Calif., who is not connected to the company, isn’t so sure.
“The lenders are going to be livid,” he said. He thinks the plan could have unintended consequences, like discouraging banks and other lenders from making new mortgage loans in an area.
The company says that focusing on borrowers who are current on their loans is a smart way to do business, rewarding those who are already working hard to keep their homes. But, Rayl pointed out, those are also the exact mortgages that investors are eager to keep.
Already, the outcry was heard at the first meeting of the joint powers authority on Friday, even as chairman and San Bernardino County chief executive Greg Devereaux said the entity — which was inspired by Mortgage Resolution Partners’ proposal — has not yet decided on a specific course of action.
Timothy Cameron, managing director of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association’s asset managers group, told the authority that residents of the region would find it harder to get loans and investors — including pensioners — would suffer losses. He also said such a move would invite costly litigation.
“The use of eminent domain will do more harm than good,” he said. “We need mortgage investors and lenders to come back to these fragile markets — but this plan will force both groups to avoid them.”
But Robert Hockett, a Cornell University law professor who serves as an unpaid adviser to Mortgage Resolution Partners, was unsympathetic. He likes how the plan forces the hand of uncooperative investors, who have sometimes stifled plans to reduce mortgage payments.
“It’s kind of like saying a loan shark objects to anti-predatory lending laws,” Hockett said.
Theodore Woodard, a 62-year-old retired air conditioner installer, said he’d welcome the help on his five-bedroom home in Fontana. So far, he and his wife have kept up with monthly $3,100 payments, plus taxes and insurance, but it hasn’t been easy, and they have watched several neighbors in the well-manicured neighborhood some 50 miles east of Los Angeles lose their homes to foreclosure.
“We’ve been making our monthly payments, barely making them, but we just pay them and try to survive off what’s left,” said Woodard, who estimates his house has lost a third of its value since 2004.
In San Bernardino County, the problem is clear. The median home price has plunged to $150,000 from $370,000 in five years. The combined San Bernardino-Riverside metro area has the highest foreclosure rate of any large metro area in the country, at four times the national average, according to RealtyTrac, which tracks foreclosure properties.
Devereaux, who has seen other plans to fix the housing crisis peter out, is cautious.
“I don’t know whether this will work or not,” he said. “But we do think we have a responsibility to explore it.”
11 Effective Twitter Strategies for Brands | Mount Kisco Real Estate
Brands are missing out on big opportunities to engage with consumers on Twitter by tweeting at the wrong time or in the wrong way, according to an interesting study from Buddy Media.
The report, Strategies for Effective Tweeting: A Statistical Review, found that many brands aren’t using Twitter effectively and outlines the top strategies for engaging with consumers. Buddy Media looked at user engagement for the top 320 brands on Twitter between December 11, 2011 and February 23, 2012 to see how successful they were at getting @replies and retweets. Their engagement rates were also assessed to quantify the relationship between @replies and retweets based on their number of followers.
Use these best practices and proven tactics to communicate effectively on Twitter:
1. Tweet on weekends
Twitter engagement rates for brands are 17% higher on Saturday and Sunday vs. weekdays, but brands don’t leverage this trend. Only 19% of all brand tweets are published on weekends even though engagement is highest on these days. Tweets on Wednesdays and Thursdays are wasted because that’s when engagement is the lowest.
2. Best days to tweet by industry
Clothing and Fashion: Tweet on weekends
Engagement for clothing and fashion brands is 30% higher on weekends, but only 12% of the industry’s tweets are posted on Saturday and Sunday. Followers typically have more time for shopping on weekends, so this is when to communicate with them. Thursday produces the lowest engagement.
Entertainment: Tweet on Sunday and Monday when people are
looking for events to attendTweets published by entertainment brands on Sunday and Monday receive 23% more engagement than average, while Thursday receives the lowest engagement. Followers may be more engaged on these days because they’re looking for movies and other events to attend in the coming week.
Publishing: Tweet on Saturday when people catch up on reading
Publishers, including bloggers, are missing a big opportunity to engage with followers on Saturdays, when they’re catching up on news and current events. Engagement on Saturday is 29% higher than average, yet only 7% of publishing brands tweet on that day.
Sports: Tweet on weekends when big games are on
People are far more likely to engage with sports brands on Twitter during the weekend, which is no big surprise. Engagement rates are 52% higher on Saturday and Sunday than on weekdays, with Monday coming in third. Most major sporting events are held on weekends, and people like to discuss them on Monday. Only 9% of sports brands tweet on Saturday, so they’re missing an opportunity.
3. Tweet when people are busy to create more
brand engagementTweets sent during busy hours (8am to 7pm) receive 30% more engagement than tweets posted at other times (8pm to 7am), including Saturday and Sunday. 64% of brands tweet during busy hours and take advantage of this trend.
4. Use different social networks so your conversation
is always onWhile Tweets during busy hours receive significantly more engagement, Facebook posts show the inverse results — posts during non-busy hours receive 17% more engagement on Facebook than those posted during busy hours. Facebook posts can remain at the top of a user’s News Feed based on their EdgeRank scores, even if they’re published while the user isn’t on Facebook. Tweets, on the other hand, are quickly pushed out of sight by newer tweets, making them more difficult to find when they’re published outside of busy hours.
5. Figure out how to pace your tweets throughout the day
Plan your tweet schedule according to the days your tweets perform best, and tweet more frequently on those days. But don’t overdo it — there’s an inverse relationship between tweet frequency and engagement, so the more you tweet per day, the less engaging your tweets may become.
6. Keep tweets short for best performance
Tweets that contain fewer than 100 characters receive 17% higher engagement than longer tweets. And leave some room in tweets — if you don’t use all 140 characters, followers can add their own text either before or after your content.
7. Use links in tweets to drive clicks and retweets
Links with short, tempting descriptions entice followers to click. Tweets that include links are retweeted 86% more than tweets with no links. Adding links drives a lot of traffic to desired destinations and magnifies your brand messages.
8. Make sure your links work
Ever see an interesting tweet with a link that you really want to click but can’t? We’re all familiar with that scenario. It’s often the result of a simple formatting error in the tweet — 92% of all linking errors are caused by not inserting a space before the actual link, which forces users to copy and paste the link into a browser. I don’t want to do that, do you?
9. Use hashtags increase engagement but don’t overdo it
Hashtags are a Twitter staple and a popular way to identify themes or topics in a tweet. Tweets with hashtags receive twice the engagement of those without hashtags, but only 24% of tweets contain them. It’s possible to overuse hashtags, though, and many brands do — tweets with one or two hashtags have 21% more engagement than those with three or more, which yield a 17% drop in engagement.
10. Tweet images
Even though followers can’t see an image instantly on Twitter as they can on Facebook, regular publishing of images has a pronounced impact on Twitter performance. Tweets with image links (via yfrog, instagr.am, Twitpic, and other sites) have engagement rates 200% higher than those without.
11. Ask for retweets
Don’t be afraid to ask people to retweet your posts — it can make a huge difference. Tweets that specifically ask followers to “retweet” or “RT” are retweeted 12 times more than those that do not, but fewer than 1% of brands actually implement this call to action. Asking followers to retweet is an easy and effective way to amplify your brand messaging.
via pamorama.net
Digital Marketing is Integrated Marketing | South Salem NY Real Estate
Inbound marketing has become popularized largely by HubSpot and supported by inbound marketing agencies across the globe that specialize in creating online marketing strategies to attract prospective buyers to a business. At Find and Convert we perform inbound marketing services, but we call ourselves a digital marketing agency. Here’s why.
Digital Marketing Begins With Strategy
It’s important to begin new digital marketing initiatives with a strategy that starts by asking questions like; “what business are we in,? “what is our brand strategy,?” “who is our target customer,?” “what are our target personas,?” “who are our competitors,?” “what are our strengths/weaknesses,?” “which marketing programs have produced results in the past,?” “what is our sales process,?” “what is our customer service strategy,?” and other questions that cause executives to reflect on the big picture. Asking these questions usually results in detailed conversations about the business with executives. The outcome of these discussions allows us to build a digital marketing plan that includes brand strategy, inbound marketing strategy (which includes content marketing, SEO, social media and PPC plans) and an outbound marketing strategy. Yes, outbound marketing too…
Inbound Marketing Inherently Has No Outbound Elements
One philosophical difference I have with inbound marketing purists is that I consider email marketing outbound marketing, not inbound marketing. And, I’m way okay with outbound marketing as an element of an integrated digital marketing plan. We’ve had many clients in our 10 year history who sell a product or service with a very defined universe of target customers. Reaching out to them through outbound marketing tactics using online and offline channels can produce viable leads and brand preference. This integrated marketing approach is pivotal to a digital marketing strategy. The tactics vary widely depending in part on B2B or B2C factors.
Multiple Touch Points
Let’s face it, we live in a noisy world in terms of marketing messages. Most of us are exposed to over 5,000 marketing messages each day. A marketer needs to create multiple message touch points to create brand awareness, or differentiation. Touch points may include PR communications, direct marketing, email marketing, live events, webinars, online paid advertising, sponsorships, endorsements, content marketing, social media and SEO. Throw in this mix the fact that 50% of all online touch points are mobile, requiring a distinct approach to engage buyers on mobile devices, and we have a digital marketing environment that requires multi-touch attribution.
Social Media is Not Inbound Marketing
In fact, social media is not a strategy. This is a pet peeve of mine. Social media is a channel where a marketer has potential to engage with customers and future customers. A marketer can use social media as an outbound marketing channel as well as an inbound marketing channel. For example, you can send a direct marketing message to a consumer via an ad, direct mail or email, drive the recipient to a landing page that has an offer, and ask the recipient to share the offer with their network through social media. When the recipient shares the offer on Facebook or Twitter with their network, is that inbound marketing? Frankly, I don’t care to split hairs over this. This is integrated digital marketing with multiple touch points. The recipient may visit your website or Facebook page before even going to the landing page and proceeding with the offer. As people share your offer through social media, if you can measure their influence as shown in the image below, you can effectively leverage digital marketing channels across multiple touchpoints.
Integrated Digital Marketing is King
The purpose of this blog post is not to open up a debate with inbound marketing purists. My purpose is to acknowledge that marketers have a difficult job reaching their target customer because the lines are blurred between online and offline channels. When someone sees a marketer’s message in any channel, be it online or offline, eventually there is usually an online touch point. Because there are multiple touchpoints, I characterize this as integrated marketing. And, I characterize the online touchpoints as digital marketing because whether it was an article, a blog post, an email, a banner, a print advertisement, a radio or TV ad (let’s include Pandora in this) or an organic search listing the catalyst is not always attributable to one online touch point. Therefore, integrated digital marketing is the most effective way to execute marketing plans that deliver measurable results.
6 Reasons Digital Marketing is Like Building a Skyscraper | Waccabuc Real Estate
You’re familiar with the cliché “don’t put the cart in front of the horse.” That is exactly what many marketers do when they develop a new website. They design the look and feel of a website, commission the developer to build it, and then they add the content as the last step. When it comes to digital marketing strategy, this is backwards!
Start With the End in Mind
That’s another familiar cliché, but it’s not so commonly applied to website design. The content strategy of a website should be planned first! Your website’s content serves two masters. It should serve the visitor to your website first and foremost, with relevant and compelling content that engages the visitor to your website. Additionally, your content should be friendly to search engines so your website is discoverable for desirable keywords in organic search results. Every website owner wants this.
How Well Do You Really Know Your Customer?
In order to be in business you have to know a thing or two about your customers. But how well do you really understand them? Most businesses have multiple customer segments. Your website content strategy should not use a one size fits all approach. Persona analysis helps you identify your target customers by segments, as well as who influences each segment. Most important, persona segmentation should identify their needs from the customer’s perspective so that you can develop your content strategy to address the specific needs of each segment.
For example if you sell a health care product that serves children your persona segments may include K-12, national, state and local government entities that govern children’s health care, pediatricians, parents, non-profits who specialize in child care services and others. The content for each segment should speak uniquely to how your product addresses a need that is relevant to the persona segment and (in this example) children. How well you segment your customer persona segments feeds right into your keyword research.
Persona Analysis Precedes Keyword Research
Any SEO professional knows the importance of conducting keyword research. Keyword research that is conducted after the persona analysis is far more relevant. It will help the marketer greatly align keywords against their targeted persona segments. It will allow you to prioritize keywords. And, it will help in developing an effective content strategy for the new website.
Competitive Analysis
Understanding your competitors’ digital strengths and weaknesses is essential in building a digital marketing strategy with a competitive edge. Your biggest competitor’s digital marketing strategy is sometimes not one you should emulate. In order to build competitive edge, you should understand which aspects of your competitor’s digital strategy have been executed well. You may discover that some of your desirable keywords return results on page one in Google for companies with whom you don’t even compete. By returning to your content strategy, you can determine which competitive battles are worth fighting. Few businesses have the resources to win every digital marketing battle. The appropriate cliché here is “pick your battles carefully.” Thorough online competitive research can reveal many insights to help you decide which battles you should fight so you can concentrate on winning the war, not just a few battles (another cliché).
You Need a Strong Foundation to Construct a Skyscraper
A skyscraper is not just a building. It is a very tall building. The construction project of a skyscraper starts with months of work creating a very strong foundation before the building construction begins. Likewise, a strong digital marketing strategy should begin with a rock solid foundation. Your website is the most important digital asset. Therefore, your investment in creating a strong foundation can provide outstanding digital marketing ROI. In addition to having a well planned content strategy, the website’s underlying architecture should be very solid.
Website Architecture is Mission Critical
A sound website architecture generally includes a good CMS that is SEO friendly, a well executed internal link structure and URLs that align with the content on each page. There are other factors, but these are the big ones to list in this brief article. In our ten years as a digital marketing agency we’ve been engaged countless times by companies that redesigned their website with little or no regard for the architecture’s impact on SEO. This is like building the skyscraper with no thought given to the plumbing and wiring infrastructure. It’s mission critical to a website.
Contrary to conventional thinking, your website is not about your company. Your website is the most important digital asset for visitors to discover what you offer that solves a problem or interest. Your navigation strategy must be intuitive to what visitors are looking for. The navigation of your website must be simple and intuitive. The content should address your visitor’s interests, not your interests. Make content easy to find, and when they find it, it should be about the visitor, not about you. Your calls-to-action (CTA) should be relevant to each customer segment to capture leads or online transactions.
For example if you sell a consumer product in the sports industry, your navigation and content should speak to each customer segment specifically by sport or by demographic. As you deliver CTAs, segment your list so that you can nurture people according to their specific interests.
Digital Marketing Success
Digital marketing is all about attracting customers to your business through various digital channels. Each industry is competitive. And, customers have choices. The marketers that outperform competitors with persona segmentation and deliver a relevant navigation and content experience in all digital marketing assets starting with their website, followed by all social media assets, win the most customers. Visit our digital marketing success stories to learn more.
Chase analysts expect home prices to rise 12% by 2016 | Cross River NY Real Estate
JPMorgan Chase ($36.07 0%) analysts expect national home prices to rebound 12% over the next four years.
“We believe that, nationally, home prices have hit a bottom, and we continue to project a gradual recovery path for the next few years,” according to a report from the banking analysts this week.
Most price indices began turning upward this year — see one from Clear Capital, another from Lender Processing Services and the latest CoreLogic report. And the Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller index, which lags behind the others, showed slowing declines earlier in the year.
A recent Zillow ($42.11 0%) survey showed economists expect an average 0.4% decline in prices through the end of 2012 followed annual by gains of 3% through 2016.
Chase analysts said they expect the more pessimistic view in the short term (another 2% decline this year) followed by a more optimistic recovery to prices in the survey as shown in the chart below. (Click to expand.)
The uncertainty revolves around the artificially low supply of homes on the market, due mostly to a slowed foreclosure process. Sales of the distressed homes will happen and when they do, prices in nearby areas suffer.
Chase estimates a supply of roughly 4.8 million possible homes in the shadow inventory, which includes those backing loans delinquent for 90 days or more. Cure rates and other variables trim the number, though. Assuming 75% of the delinquencies and 90% of the foreclosed homes are sold as distressed properties, the shadow inventory estimate drops to roughly 3.6 million, the analysts said.
Demand is creeping up after being negative (more looking to sell than buy) since 2007. Chase analysts expect more than 2.5 million problem loans to be resolved in 2012 through enhanced foreclosure prevention efforts, which would put “a major dent” in the shadow inventory.
“Of course, given the large supply and volume of continuing delinquencies, we expect it will take years to work through all the defaults, but significant progress is being made, which gives us reason to be more bullish on housing than we have been for years,” the analysts said.
via housingwire.com
Aggressive laws stall foreclosure sales in key states: ForeclosureRadar | Katonah NY Real Estate
Foreclosure sales dropped dramatically in three states last month, suggesting some state legislation is stalling the natural cycle of the market, ForeclosureRadar said Thursday.
The new Homeowner Bill of Rights in California is expected to have a huge impact on housing supply in the state, the research firm said.
The report said foreclosure sales fell 13.4% in California in June from May and 48.8% from year-ago levels.
Foreclosure sales plummeted 18.5% in Arizona over the previous month and 42.1% from June 2011.
Meanwhile, Nevada foreclosure sales dropped 14.6% month-to-month and 72.1% from year-ago levels.
Foreclosures riddled these markets after the housing bust, but now ForeclosureRadar is worried about legislation that could stall the overall market recovery.
The report covers Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.
“California Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law the Homeowner Bill of Rights, an anti-foreclosure package which naively thinks that slowing foreclosures will benefit homeowners and the economy by leaving those owners stuck in their prison of debt,” said Sean O’Toole, founder and CEO of ForeclosureRadar.
“We’ve long said negative equity, not foreclosures, (is) the problem,” O’Toole said. “Fortunately this bill was watered down significantly from its original form, so we don’t expect it will have the same impact that we’ve seen from more aggressive legislation in Nevada.”
O’Toole said that foreclosures in California “have already plummeted, and that the real housing crisis in now a lack of homes available for sale.”
Home sales in the Western markets remain generally low and stalls in foreclosure sales will further reduce inventory levels, ForeclosureRadar said.
O’Toole said banks in California are now taking 272 days to resell properties at auction. With this in mind, he says real estate agents, investors and homebuyers will discover reduced inventory levels next year.
via housingwire.com
Mortgage rates dip to new lows | Bedford Hills Real Estate
Following a lackluster employment report for June, long-term U.S. Treasury bond yields eased somewhat this week, allowing mortgage rates to fall to unseen depths.
The Freddie Mac survey showed 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages averaged 3.56% for the week ending Thursday, a record low from last week’s 3.62%. Last year at this time, the 30-year FRM averaged 4.51%.
The 15-year FRM, a popular refinancing choice, also set a new record, averaging 2.86%, down from last week‘s average of 2.89%. A year ago, the average rate for a 15-year FRM was 3.65%.
The average 30-year fixed has remained below 4% for 16 weeks. The average 15-year fixed has been below 3% for seven weeks.
Five-year, Treasury-indexed, hybrid adjustable-rate mortgages averaged 2.74%, also declining from 2.79% last week and falling from 3.29% a year earlier.
And one-year, Treasury-indexed ARMs averaged 2.69%, up from last week’s 2.68% and down from 2.95% last year.
Only 80,000 net new jobs were added to the economy last month, not enough to lower the unemployment rate from 8.2%, Freddie Mac Chief economist Frank Nothaft noted.
“This was the concern of the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy meeting,” Nothaft said. “Minutes released from that meeting on July 11 revealed that a few members felt further monetary stimulus was needed to promote satisfactory growth in employment to meet the committee’s goal.”
Home loan analytics firm Bankrate, which surveys large banks, reported the 30-year FRM fell to 3.79% from 3.87%, while the 15-year FRM dropped to 3.05% from 3.13%. The 5/1 ARM ticked down to 2.95% from 2.96%.
via housingwire.com
16 Ways to Simplify Your Prospects’ Decision-Making Process | Bedford Real Estate
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16 Ways to Simplify Your Prospects’ Decision-Making Process
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In an effort to break through the clutter and get the attention of more potential customers, are marketers going too far? A recent article from Forbes reported that decision simplicity was the number one driver of likelihood to buy, and the impact of simplifying purchase decisions for consumers is 4x stronger than the favored marketing strategy of engagement.
In fact, research company Corporate Executive Board (CEB) also found that a 20% increase in decision simplicity results in a 96% increase in customer loyalty, 86% increase in likelihood to purchase, and 115% increase in likelihood to recommend.
CEB is not the first organization to tout simplicity as a key driver in increasing conversions and sales. MarketingExperiments also advocates for limiting “unsupervised thinking” among your prospects in order to effectively guide more people to conversion. As it relates to landing pages, many marketers have adopted a lot of best practices based on this principle — removing navigation and distracting calls-to-action, keeping forms short, and clearly advertising the value of the offer. But this principle is applicable to all areas of our marketing — by simplifying our marketing, we can illuminate the path to conversion to drive better results.
Here are 16 ways you can simplify your marketing to make your prospects’ decision-making process easier.
16 Ways to Simplify Your Prospects’ Decision-Making Process
1) Add Calls-to-Action
The first place to start is to add a call-to-action (CTA) to your website. On any given web page, you should be able to answer, “What do I want people to do here?” Then, make it clear to your visitor that exact path. Do you want them to call you? Download an ebook and become a lead? Follow you in social media? Tell people exactly what you want, and it’s more likely they’ll end up doing it. Effective calls-to-action use actionable language (e.g. “Download Now”), numbers, a sense of urgency, and stand out among the rest of the page.
2) Limit Distracting Calls-to-Action
On the flip side, you don’t want to overwhelm your prospects with too many calls-to-action. From the visitors’ perspective, suddenly they’re in Times Square with ads all around, and they don’t know where to look or what to do. Rather, you want to create a one-way street — not a 10-way intersection that paralyzes your prospects or helps them tune out your calls-to-action. If you do have multiple CTAs on a page or in a piece of content, make one primary by featuring it more prominently, and when your prospect clicks through to its actual landing page, remove any additional navigation links or CTAs on that page to focus their attention on completing the conversion you want them to.
3) Deliver What’s Advertised
Some sneaky marketers used to do a bait and switch — advertise a raffle for a free iPad, but when someone clicked through, they’d display an ad to buy a car. Any time you deliver on something different from what’s advertised, you not only confuse your leads, but you also generate unqualified leads. If someone’s signing up because they’re interested in iPads, it’s very possible they’re not going to be interested in whatever you deliver that is not an iPad.
4) Tell People What They’re Getting
Any time you’re offering something to your prospects, be clear about exactly what it is. The point of the offer is to give your prospects a reason to engage with you — if they don’t know what it is, why would they bother? Is it an ebook, a webinar, a slide deck? What is the topic covered in your offer?
5) Tell People WIIFM?
Not only do you need to tell people what they’re getting, but you also need to explain why they should care — the value of your offer. In other words, ‘What’s In It For Me?’ (WIIFM?). Any transaction should be an equal (or better) exchange between you and your prospect; for example, they give you their email address in exchange for a free ebook.
6) Don’t Hide Your Pricing Information
Any time I come across a website with no pricing information, I start to think that something is fishy. Either they customize their pricing for every deal individually (in which case, I worry I’m going to get tricked into a worse deal), or the price will be so high it’s out of my range. Either way, I’m not interested in engaging with your company. Don’t withhold your pricing information. Instead, make it easy to navigate to within the products section of your website.
7) Provide Product Guides (About Your Product and Your Industry)
I (as a prospect) have a decision to make: whether or not to buy your product, or possibly opt for another competing product. I’ll take any information you or anyone else can provide to help me with that decision. Providing product guides — either about your own product or an analysis of the industry and the competing products available — is a great help in supporting your prospects’ evaluation process.
8) Share Recommendations/Testimonials From Customers and Experts
While it’s great to provide your own take on your product and the industry, you are of course biased, so providing any third-party recommendations — from users or experts — is a great way to ease a prospects’ decision to go with your company. At HubSpot, for example, we curate social media threads, blog articles, and case studies from customers and experts and feature them on our website — even on our homepage.
9) Let People Know How They Can Get in Touch
How can prospects get in touch with you? By phone, through email, via online chat? Make it clear on your website how people can get in touch with you, so those hottest prospects can reach out when they most want to talk with you. At HubSpot, this was a big piece of feedback we heard from our prospects — a lot of people wanted to talk with someone and didn’t know how. As a result, we added our phone number and a way to contact sales in the footer of every web page on our site.
10) Align Navigation With What Your Buyers Are Looking For
As marketers, we can sometimes get lost in our own work and how we discuss things internally, and if this translates into our marketing, it can cause a lot of confusion for your website visitors and prospects. For the content on your website, think about how your buyers speak, think, and what they might be looking for — and align your content and navigation around those revelations.
11) Surface Top-Searched or Top-Visited Content
Aside from surfacing the key sections of your website that your prospects want to navigate to, take a look at the most popular content on your site, and surface that as well. By looking at your most popular content (top-searched, top-visited, etc.) you can understand more about what your prospects are looking for and make it even easier for new prospects to find it. Two great ways to do this is to feature your top-performing offer on your homepage, and list the most popular articles on the homepage of your blog.
12) Don’t Ignore Questions or Feedback
Sometimes we marketers get tough questions and critical feedback — especially considering prospects’ ease of commenting on blog articles or speaking up in social media. Oftentimes, ignoring these comments can worsen the situation, leaving a prospect unhappy or inciting them to post even more critical comments. Every time a prospect asks a question or provides feedback, you’re given a great opportunity to engage with them and address any questions or issues they have. Be sure to monitor and respond to any blog or social media comments to catch these opportunities to lead more prospects to conversion. There are plenty of free and paid tools available to help you monitor conversations in social media. And if you’re both a HootSuite and HubSpot customer, you can use our closed-loop social integration to directly monitor your leads on Twitter!
13) Categorize Your Content by Skill Level, Role, Etc.
It’s very likely that you’re already targeting different types of potential customers — various roles, backgrounds, and needs among your buyer personas. Help these personas to self-identify what content and which products are best suited for their particular needs by categorizing and labeling your content. At HubSpot, we label our content by skill level (introductory, intermediate, and advanced — just check out the top of this very article!) and by industry and role (small business vs. marketing teams, non-profit vs. ecommerce, etc.). This helps your prospects find the best content for them more quickly, rather than giving up, getting overwhelmed by the sheer amount of content we provide, or getting lost on your website.
14) Assign a DRI/Owner for Each Channel/Asset
A DRI is a Directly Responsible Person — an owner for a particular asset. Having an owner for each marketing channel or asset allows you to make sure nothing falls through the cracks. You’ll be more able to evaluate the potential conversion paths, respond to questions from prospects stuck at different stages of the conversion path, and make sure you’re getting the best results from each channel and asset. Here are a few more ideas for structuring an effective marketing team.
15) Pick a Campaign, and Focus All Channels on It
It can be overwhelming to juggle a lot of different offers, channels, and campaigns all at once — both for you as a marketer, and for your prospect as someone following your company. Look for opportunities to combine marketing efforts and focus multiple channels on a single campaign. Not only will you rest a little easier, but you’ll also get better (compounding) results and help focus your prospects on your top campaign.
16) Focus on the 1-3 Metrics That Are Most Important to Your Business
Not only do you want to simplify your prospects’ experience with your company, but you also want to simplify your marketing efforts. This helps you focus your efforts for better results. A key part of that is focusing on a few metrics that are most important to your business, as this will influence your strategy and where you focus your time, your calls-to-action, and other efforts mentioned above. To determine which metrics should drive your strategy, spend some time determining your marketing team’s specific goals, and then identify the top metrics that will indicate success or failure to achieve those goals.
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via blog.hubspot.com