MARKETING
Get Negative – How to Overcome Objections on Your Landing Page
You have carefully selected your keywords and crafted ad copy in a way that would make Don Draper proud.
Users type in your search queries, click your ads and are then are brought to your landing page where they….. well, you are not really sure what they are doing, but one thing for sure is that they are not converting.
You wonder – is there something seriously wrong with your landing page?
Each day you spend more money on your campaign, try various different optimization techniques and each day users click on your ads and just leave.
You spend hours in front of your computer until your eyes are blurry from looking at spreadsheets and the only conclusion you can come to is that Google is making a lot of money off of you.
Your landing page receives traffic every day from users you know are actively searching for your offer, only next to none of them convert.
What’s holding users back from converting?
If that question is more confusing to you than Kanye’s new rap album, you are not alone.
The Problem: You Don’t Address Users Objections
You know your value proposition inside and out and present all of the benefits and features on your landing page in a clear and concise way.
However, if your conversion rate remains low, your landing page needs to not just focus on the positives of your offer – you need to address and overcome user objections.
Sure, it is important to focus on the positives, but you can’t just bury your head in the sand like some sort of digital ostrich and pretend that your customers won’t think about their objections just because you haven’t mentioned them.
Doesn’t work that way.
If customers don’t have the objections they need addressed, they probably won’t convert, especially when you are asking for bigger commitments like their time or money (as opposed to just their email).
It’s your job to figure out what those objections are and overcome them in an elegant, clear and practical way on your landing page.
If you don’t, your conversion rate will continue to suffer, your business won’t get the leads and sales it needs and you’ll end up living in a van down by the river.
Solution: Create a Landing Page That Addresses and Overcomes the Main User Objections
Your need to craft your landing page in a way that both highlights the positives and also answers and overcomes common objections.
The landing page should also do this in a way that’s clear.
This actually isn’t as hard as it sounds and in the following section I am going to show you how to how to discover users main objections are as well as three actionable tactics to overcoming them on your landing page including:
- An FAQ section
- Live Chat
- Reframing
Overcoming these objections are vital to producing the business outcomes that you should expect from your Google Ads campaigns.
How to Create a Landing Page that Overcomes Objections
Step 1. Research, Discover and Understand What Users Objections Are
To figure out what your customers’ primary objections are, it is best to start by having a discussion with your sales team as they have contact with prospects every day and can provide you with great qualitative data.
Your sales team has the kind of insight that heat maps can’t tell you, but Dwight from sales can.
Some great questions to ask your sales team include:
- When customers say they are not interested, what are some of the reasons they provide?
- What are the most common questions you get when you speak to prospects?
- What are some of the common ways you overcome customer objections? Are there any phrases that they need to hear to make a purchasing decision?
- What additional education do you wish customers had before you spoke with them?
- When a customer purchases from a competitor, what are the reasons they do?
Step 2: Address and Overcome Objections on the Landing Page
After having robust conversations with your sales team and discovering the users main objections, it is time to overcome them in a way that is non-salesy and (more importantly) clear.
Here are three actionable ways to do so:
A. Overcome Objections with an FAQ section
To put it simply, FAQs are the great objection busters – you basically list out the “questions” (which are objections in disguise) and then overcome them all in one area.
One sales philosophy I utilize is to think of questions as objections in disguise, because in a way that is what they are.
A question such as “Is this right for me?” is really the objection “I am not sure this is right for me” in disguise.
An FAQ section brings clarity to the user and allows them to scan for their particular objection, read your objection busting response (OBR), and understand that objection should not prevent them from proceeding with the conversion.
KlientBoost does a great job of this in the example below, where they made an FAQ section for customers to scan and find the exact objection that’s holding them back from converting and have those objections overcome.
For example the above overcomes the objections:
- What if I get stuck?
- What if I need additional help?
- What if I don’t have enough time at this exact moment?
- What if the digital marketing world changes?
- What if I need personalized help?
- Who will be answering my questions?
Instead of just letting these objections languish in the user’s mind and prevent them from converting, each objection is overcome each one in a clear and non-salesy way.
B. Overcome Objections with Chat
There is a reason that Netflix crushed blockbuster – and it is not just because Blockbuster charged rewind fees.
Netflix crushed Blockbuster because they provided for instant access.
The same is true with Uber providing instant access vs. cabs, Tinder providing instant access vs. socializing (talking to people in real life!) and Deliveroo vs cooking.
Users are used to and want everything right now and that includes answers to their objections.
Not later. Right now.
So give that to them.
Using chat allows the opportunity to step in during a customer’s decision-making period and answer their objections instantly and we have found this to be very useful especially around high friction asks like a demo/consult.
Here are a couple of ways to do this:
The first way is with a chatbot.
A good example is Drift who utilizes one on their demo page. Demo’s are high friction because you are asking for a user’s time, so they can have very low conversion rates.
Drift has a chat pop up when you ask for the consult and actually avoid forms completely.
This particular bot shows users a series of questions that allow for their objections to be overcome instantly prior to booking a demo in real-time.
If the user has more questions at the end of the bot chat they have the option to speak with a human where all of all objections continue to be answered in real-time.
The other option with chat is to start with a live human on the chat, and a good example is PPC Hero and their HeroConf landing page.
Literally, if the user gets to the bottom and still have questions (objections in disguise), a live human will overcome them instantly with them.
Chat works amazingly well and can help “personalize” the objection busting responses to the unique questions instantly.
C. Overcome Objections by Reframing Them
Sometimes, you just need to look at something in a different way.
Reframing is the strategy of taking a piece of information and presenting this same piece of information in a different way.
Reframing is a really good way to overcome objections and is kind of a weasel way since you aren’t necessarily addressing it head-on but are 100% addressing the objection.
The best way to demonstrate how to do this is with an example and UnBounce (a landing page builder) who does a great job with this on their landing age.
A common objection they get (I assume) is that “I can’t use this product because I don’t know how to code”.
They could have put it in an FAQ section, or answered with a chat, but instead of doing that they simply reframe it by saying “No coding required”
In just a few sentences they have reframed the objection “I don’t know coding” to “You don’t even need to know coding to use our product” and now the user will no longer have that objection in their mind preventing the conversion.
Overcoming user objections on your landing page is vital and you need to do it to get the max amount of conversions possible on your paid search campaigns.
How have you overcome user objections on your landing page?
MARKETING
How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals
A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.
The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.
The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).
Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.
Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.
So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.
1. See journalists as your audience
Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.
Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.
“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”
Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.”
Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”
Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.”
2. Learn the media outlet’s audience
Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).
PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.
WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’”
3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)
Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.
“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”
At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”
While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”
BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”
4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency
Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.
At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.
Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.
“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”
5. Measure what matters
Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.
“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”
To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:
- Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
- Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
- Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
- On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.
But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.
“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”
Don’t fear the merger
Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”
But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.
HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:
Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
MARKETING
Trends in Content Localization – Moz
Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.
Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.
Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.
MARKETING
How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy
-
SEO7 days ago
Contact Us Page Examples: 44 Designs For Inspiration
-
SEARCHENGINES7 days ago
Daily Search Forum Recap: March 22, 2024
-
PPC7 days ago
Mastering Lead Generation in Paid Search Advertising
-
MARKETING6 days ago
The 5 Best AI Relationship Chatbots in 2024 + How They Work
-
SEARCHENGINES3 days ago
Daily Search Forum Recap: March 25, 2024
-
SEARCHENGINES6 days ago
Google Spam Update Done, Patience With Core Update, Helpful Content Recoveries, Yahoo Search Coming & New Head Of Google Search
-
AFFILIATE MARKETING7 days ago
Legendary Marketer Accused of Misleading ‘Side Hustle’ Ads
-
AFFILIATE MARKETING3 days ago
27 Passive Income Ideas to Make Money & Build Wealth in 2024