Maze Marketing Podcast

In this episode we talk to Ryan Baker about 'The Market Journey Path'. 

Listen now to learn:

• What is 'The Market Journey Path'?
• Why we need to consider our customers and clients as real people, not just dollar signs
• The difference between the buying market and the waiting market
• What to do when people aren't ready to buy from you
• The importance of knowing your customer's pain points
• Why it's important to grow beyond the buying market and into the waiting/contented market
• Why YouTube is a great way to educate your audience
• How you can use your ad content to qualify people

To find out more about Ryan Baker and his company, 417 Marketing, visit https://www.417marketing.com/

In our last conversation with Chris (episode 37) we only scratched the surface of Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO). Chris helps people improve their conversion rates as part of their paid advertising strategy. We continue that conversation in this episode by digging a little deeper and discovering how to run A/B tests.

Rob, Jonathan and Chris talk about...

• The best times of the year to run A/B tests
• What the home page on your website should not be trying to do
• The type of A/B test to run to discover what matters to your page/website visitors
• The trouble in making assumptions without testing
• The questions to ask in helping create AB tests
• Three things you can do with the simplest of A/B tests
• Why you probably don't need a big fat website redesign
• What a failed A/B test can tell you
• Whether to use a landing page builder or create a website
• The minimum threshold of traffic and conversions you need to run A/B tests
• The advantages and disadvantages of hiring an agency to handle your CRO
• And if you decide to use an agency, how do you select a good one.
• The free tool you can use for running as many A/B tests as you like
• The tools to use when you're ready to scale up
• And the tool not to use when you're getting started with CRO
• The biggest mistake that people make when A/B testing

To find out more about Chris, visit smart-cro.com or on LinkedIn @chrisdayley.

There are more PPC agencies around than ever before. You'll find PPC experts at every networking meeting. But if you generate leads to feed an offline (or these days online!) sales process, it's hard to find an agency who can deliver GOOD affordable leads to your sales team.

In this episode, Rob and Jonathan talk with George Krahn, who runs an agency helping people create transparent end-to-end online lead generation systems that deliver on a good ROI. 

Whether you work for an agency, hire an agency or do the work yourself, you'll get a lot from this wide-ranging, holistic conversation. 

They discuss...

• An 80/20 holistic approach to improve your systems and generate more leads
• The importance of retargeting
• Why you absolutely should be following up with your leads
• The elements that all good CRMs must have
• What an audit of your marketing systems will look like and what you'll get as a result of one
• Why there's so much wastage in marketing systems
• A clear example of where data and a simple tweak saved a client tens of thousands of $s
• Why you must have conversion tracking in place
• Why you should know the source of your leads and their most recent activity

To find out more about George Krahn and his agency, Proven Results Marketing, visit https://provenresultsagency.com/.

For the 80/20 Marketing Analysis mentioned in the conversation, visit https://provenresultsagency.com/8020-marketing-analysis/

In this episode, Rob and Jonathan are talking to Chris Dayley, who specialises in Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO). Chris helps people improve their conversion rates as part of their paid advertising strategy. They discuss two techniques that you can apply immediately to your paid advertising strategy. And even if you're not running ads, there's a technique you can use to improve conversion rates on your website. Listen now to learn:

• Why improving your conversion rates is a big win
• What makes a good A/B test (if you haven't heard of A/B testing then you really should listen to this podcast!)
• Where most people get stuck when running an A/B test
• Why it's essential to begin with a good business question
• Why you don't need super design skills to run A/B tests
• The first two A/B tests you can run with any new landing page or advert to get started.
• Why you don't want to be making assumptions until you have data
• How to run an Existence Test on your homepage
• How much traffic do you need before you can run A/B tests

To find out more about Chris, visit smart-cro.com or on LinkedIn @chrisdayley.

Page speed has been a big thing in SEO for a long time. But many people don’t realise that page speed is very important for paid advertising too.

Dan Wilkinson started work as an AdWords consultant, but was always deeply interested in Google Analytics. He noticed a few years ago that Google and Facebook were penalising certain advertisers without notice or reason. He started spotting patterns: the things that looked like ad fatigue in Facebook or low impression share in Google were in fact indicators of poor page load speed.

Listen now to learn:

• The typical difference in conversion rate between 2 and 3 seconds
• Why most web developers are ill-equipped to improve site speed
• The difference between a ‘web developer’ and a ‘web optimiser’
• Where the tipping point in performance now lies
• How improving your paid speed can improve ad profitability, without changing your ads
• Why Google has introduced ‘Core Web Vitals’, and why it matters
• The points deduction on page speed for each incremental second in load time
• What Google is measuring in terms of page speed and user experience
• The three measurements Google really cares about
• How to improve performance with lazy loading
• Page speed advice for Shopify users
• Page speed comments on all the main ecommerce platforms
• Page speed challenges with WordPress
• The fastest Shopify and WordPress themes
• The fastest non-WordPress page builder
• A myth surrounding Google Analytics page load time
• Why blindly pasting tracking codes into the head of the page can slow page load time by 10-15 seconds
• How to achieve a 98-100 page speed score
• The page speed problems caused by video
• What fonts improve page speed (and which ones harm it!)

Dan’s website is https://pagespeedoptimized.com/ (notice also how fast it loads!)

When we talk to people about LinkedIn ads, we usually hear objections such as:

“Do they really work?” (Yes)

“Aren’t they expensive?” (Cost per qualified lead can be low)

It is time to debunk these myths. LinkedIn have put a lot of work recently into their advertising platform. On this episode, we interview LinkedIn Ads expert AJ Wilcox. On the call AJ explained:

• What ad format to run with 95% of the time
• Whether to use single image or single video ads
• Whether to write long or short copy ads
• Why people go to LinkedIn, and how they respond to ads
• How we now have engagement retargeting on LinkedIn :-) :-) :-)
• Why the targeting options on LinkedIn are essential for B2B marketing
• What customer lifetime value you need to run LinkedIn ads profitably
• What kinds of offers work on LinkedIn (i.e. what to say in your LinkedIn ads)
• How to get very senior people to respond to your ads
• How long to run an offer before changing it
• What is a reasonable testing budget for new LinkedIn advertisers
• What’s the lowest budget you can spend to still see results
• How to complement your paid LinkedIn efforts with organic networking
• The breakdown between mobile and desktop impressions
• The two biggest mistakes people make (i.e. how to avoid the ‘LinkedIn Stupidity Tax’)
• How many ads to test at any time

AJ’s website: www.b2linked.com

AJ’s free LinkedIn ads checklist: www.b2linked.com/checklist

AJ’s course: The LinkedIn learning course on LinkedIn Advertising (free for LinkedIn premium members)

AJ’s podcast: The LinkedIn Ads Show Podcast

We're all familiar with the concept of nurturing potential customers over the buying cycle. But how should you prioritise your efforts?

One approach is to use something called a 'Behavioural Engagement Nurture Sequence'... where the marketing people receive from you is driven my the recency of their engagement.

Listen now to learn:

• Why a long-form sales page can easily out-perform webinars and sales teams
• How people really read (and re-read) sales pages
• Whether to use a video sales letter or a long copy sales page (and the one exception)
• How a behavioural engagement nurture sequence differs from a conventional nurture sequence
• Why you need content in multiple formats
• How many emails you really need to write
• What to do with unengaged contacts
• How to organise all your marketing nurture efforts around the principle RFM (recency, frequency and money)
• What a Fibonacci sequence is, and how to incorporate it into your efforts

Roland's website is www.rolandeva.co.uk. The book Roland mentions is No B.S. Direct Marketing by Dan Kennedy.

Offering a 'lead magnet' - an incentive for people subscribing to your email list, is a key ingredient in growing your audience.

The trouble is, most lead magnets don't work as well as they used to. In this episode, copywriter James Daniel explains:

• Why the humble 'special report' has taken a battering in recent years
• Why lead magnet signup rates have tumbled
• James' insights from testing all kinds of lead magnets
• 12-types of lead magnets to consider testing in your marketing
• Why the title of your lead magnet is critically important... and how to get it right
• How long your lead magnet should be
• How to define the scope of your lead magnet
• What to put on your lead magnet thank you pages
• The difference between influence and manipulation
• Whether to focus your lead magnet on pain or gain

To grab James' full list of 12 effective lead magnets, email [email protected] with 'lead magnet' in subject line.

Vicky Fraser is a former direct response copywriter who now helps people to write outstanding business books. Books that actually change the lives of your readers. Listen to this interview now to learn:

• Why most business books are dull
• How to decide the scope of the book
• Why your book should be a delight to read
• Where to start your planning
• Why the 'big idea' for your book will often emerge over time
• Whether to write your own book... or hire a ghost writer
• Why work with at least one writing accountability partner
• How to plan and protect your writing time
• Why to strictly separate writing and editing
• Why to keep one person in mind when you're writing
• Why your stories and anecdotes don't have to be strictly true
• How to test your stories before including them in your book
• How to reuse and re-purpose content when writing your book
• How to promote your book once it's written (and why to start this NOW)
• How to come up with your book title
• When to write the back blurb (hint: not as you're about to publish the book!)

Learn more about Vicky's work and grab her book at www.moxiebooks.co.uk.

Testimonials are a critical part of any marketing and sales system. The problem? Most testimonials are lousy - and fail to reveal the true value you provide.

Justin DeMers has a different approach to testimonials. Listen now to learn:

• Why your customers have stories your potential customers NEED to hear
• Why a "success story" won't do you much good
• Why the universal thread in any successful story is conflict
• Why perfect testimonials can attract bad clients
• How to ask for great testimonials without feeling awkward
• How to guide your customer through the testimonial
• When to ask for testimonials (not necessarily the end!)
• How to pull customer objections into your testimonials
• Why you should capture your own testimonials
• What format to capture your testimonials in
• What formats to publish in - and why video is king

You can sign up for Justin's workshops at socialproofclub.com.