21. Delivering value: Crafting lead capture offers that resonate

Introduction

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Episode Transcript

You know the struggle of turning website visitors into paying customers? It feels like as soon as they arrive, then they're gone without taking any meaningful action. It can be disheartening, especially when you know your business has so much to offer them. When you're running a small business, capturing leads from your website is crucial for growth. It's not just about getting people to visit your site, it's about converting them into qualified leads and ultimately loyal customers. So how can you improve your website lead capture strategies? Today I'm joined by Georgi Nemtsov. He spent much of his career helping companies to optimise their website and landing pages for conversion. And he shares with us some great tips on how to make sure your webpages actually capture new leads. So join us and we'll show you how to turn your website... into a powerful customer acquisition tool. Let's let the journey begin. Hi there and welcome to the Authentic Marketing Podcast in association with Demodia, where we give you actionable advice and help you to create marketing that works. I'm your host Simon Harvey and I'm joined by my co host Daniel Klaber. Hi there

Daniel. Hello, Simon, and hello,

listeners. So, Daniel, something that seems to be a pretty hot topic at the moment, at least in marketing circles, is data protection. I watched Apple's recent events and announcements, and I'm seeing companies like that making some really good and strong moves to limit the amount of data that developers and advertisers are able to collect through. apps or other tools. The other thing relating to that has been a lot of stuff happening on the legal side in recent years. So over here in Europe we've had GDPR for around five years now, and the U. S. has started to introduce their own privacy measures, and in Switzerland here we've got our own rules coming in in September this year. I don't know what you've seen Daniel, but from my perspective I do see that people are starting to think a little bit more now about the data that they collect. Yes, you're

right. It's happening everywhere. I get asked for my data a lot when browsing through the internet. Almost all websites try to collect data these days, and even if you don't pay money for the information you receive, you still pay by giving you data. Nothing is free anymore these days.

You may say that nothing's free, but I completely understand though, as marketers, we need to capture data. Sometimes I don't mind actually providing my data as long as it's a reputable company and that maybe I know I'm getting something worthwhile back in return. Yes, I

agree. If I get valuable information in return for my data, I'm also happy to give it away. But I only do give my data if I get the feeling that it is going to be worth it. That is only the case if the website that wants my data communicates clearly what I'm going to get

from it. You're right, the ultimate goal of a website, as we've talked about in previous episodes, is to attract people and turn them into paying customers. And in order to do this, they need to be clear, as we've said many times before. So that's particularly true, I think, when it comes to asking for personal data. And there's a couple of things that personally I look out for all the time. Firstly, I'd say I always check for a privacy policy. So something at the bottom of the site that clearly tells me what they're going to do with my data and how they're going to use my data. And the second thing that I look for is some text on the page that explains what I'm going to get in return. I, for one, probably like yourself, you know, hate being conned when I fill in a form and give all my data out and then I just get back some generic bland paper in return. That sort of thing really annoys me. And that's, I guess, what we're talking about in today's episode. So we're going to talk about how to create landing pages and forms that give people the comfort they need to get them to fill in the forms. So, I'm going to be talking later in this episode to Georgi Nemtsov, and he's going to teach us a little bit about some of his best practices. But before that, I think there's already a few things that are worth calling out, Daniel.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to hearing from him. I don't know what your main points were, but to me there are probably four things that I consider are key when I'm browsing

websites. Yeah, what are

those? The first is to look for sites that are well optimized. By that, I'm talking about page loading speed and usability. If I can't get to a point where I can fill in my information quickly, then I'm gone.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. I hate it when I want to look up something and have to wait for minutes before the page even loads or, you know, you click on a button and find that your form doesn't submit, something like that. I

would say my second point relates to CTAs that sites use.

And by that you mean calls to action, so the text they put in the banners or use for the links on pages, is that right?

Yes, exactly. For me, that text needs to clearly explain what I'm going to get from the site and also somewhere on the landing page, they need to explain what's going to happen after I submit the form. I hate filling in forms thinking that I'm going to get something like a recorded demo. Only to find they sent me an email asking when I'm available for

a call. Yeah, that really annoys the hell out of me too. Sites need to be open about the process as well. It actually removes a lot of friction from the process. If, as a visitor, you know what to expect in return for your data. That

is true. And the last thing I was going to say was about the length of forms. I don't know about you, but I never fill in forms that are more than about four to five

fields. Yeah, I think I'm exactly the same as that, unless it's something like a tax form or a passport application, maybe. I never understand, to be honest, why some companies require so much information, you know, what do they need it for? In reality these days with integrated CRMs in most cases all you need is an email address and you can find out just about everything else you need about the person. So certainly enough to market or to sell to them. There's something else that I think is worth calling out here called progressive profiling or progressive forms and they can be a really effective way of collecting small bits of information in chunks. In these cases you don't have to ask for everything in one go, you can ask for it in bits each time a visitor interacts with your site. If you're using a

CRM system like HubSpot or Salesforce, the data that is gathered will be turned into lead profiles automatically. You can use those leads to do customer segmentation and target different

audiences. Precisely, so you don't need to capture all of that sort of stuff directly within one form. It's much better to capture it in small chunks or to use the data systems behind the scenes to actually pull in some of that information from other third party sources. So anyway, earlier in the week I had the chance to sit down and speak with Georgi Nemtsov. So he's been working in the field of lead conversion optimization for many years now and he explained to me how he goes about solving the problem of landing pages and forms that just don't convert and don't get leads. So I think you're going to learn a lot today from this conversation. And here's my interview with Georgi Nemtsov. Cool. So yeah, if we get going, maybe you can start off by giving us a brief introduction to who you are and what you're doing. Yeah, Simon,

it's a pleasure. Well, you know, I have a background in digital product design. I've designed quite a few products and, uh, There's a notable number, you know, of them being successful. That's kind of what I'm kind of proud of. And then during my pursuit of designing and developing successful digital products, I had to become good at marketing because I somehow view marketing as an integral part of what a product is. For example, I don't even jump designing a product without knowing how to market it, without knowing how to sell it. That's what I do. I help. Uh, startups design products, successful products. I teach them how to design successful products and I help them do it in practice and then for larger companies, for established companies, we also help them improve the conversion rate of their marketing pages. So that's kind of in a nutshell.

So it's a little bit more than just doing sort of basic website conversion optimization in there as well if you're doing sort of products and UX type things around that

as well. Yeah, I think to be able to do successful marketing you have to understand products, you know, I mean ultimately you have to understand products. people, you know, for both, you have to understand like why people buy and why people use products in order to design products and being able to market them. It's all connected for me. I really view product and marketing as one type of interconnected union type of construct.

Yeah, no, that's very true. So on the episode today, we've been talking so far about how to optimize landing pages and optimize your website, I guess, for lead capture and lead conversion. So from the work that you've done, what's some of the key things that people should think about when they're creating landing pages, when they've got to think about sort of optimising leads in there, you know, what are some of the key primary

things? Yeah, well, I think the basic thing that they should keep in their minds at all times somehow is that conversion is a matter of some sort of return on investment calculation, you know, or cost benefit analysis, if you want, like if what you're asking from them. is kind of less than what you're giving them. They're going to convert. It's kind of as simple as that. Yeah, there needs to be a value in there. Yeah, absolutely. So the first thing they should ask themselves is, Am I asking too much? Mm hmm. Am I not asking too much anyway? So, um, and the second question is, Am I giving enough? Yeah, what I'm asking. Let's say. So this is something which we noticed that people kind of forget that they're not really aware of that they have their targets. Um, they have their processes. There's also this list of best practices and an essential page elements and things like that. But yeah, they often just simply ask too much.

And Um, So by that, you sort of mean that, you know, you're giving away your, your offer behind the scenes has a certain implicit value to somebody, you know, it helps them with a certain business problem that they've got, for example, inside there, or it gives them some specific advice or a formula or something like that, that they need. And what you're saying is that they're weighing up in their mind, basically the cost of having that versus filling in so many fields on a form. And so the less fields

they've got to fill in. Yeah, yeah. For example, yes, absolutely. I mean, it's not a conscious process, but the brain's definitely doing it. So, and by the way, by cost, I don't mean just how lengthy a form is. That's actually quite a common thing we encounter. Lengthy forms. But also how easy the content is to process, let's say how easy the page is to navigate. Ah, okay. Yeah. Yeah. So basically there's this cognitive cost of processing a page, you know? Yeah. Let's say how much text is there on the page? How is it organized? Like a common thing we see is multi column layouts, you know, on landing pages, which are normally Lending pages for some campaigns, so they typically put a whole bunch of text on the left and the lengthy form on the right and some very vague title could be also long title and you land there from some very attractive campaign probably from like a single image in a single sentence, you know, normally from some social media, let's say, and then you're confronted with this whole bunch of information a confusion. And And you're wondering like where to start, you know, processing this page. Yeah,

makes sense. I've seen those before. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, for example, so, so yeah, actually optimizing the cost, let's say, because at the end of the day, I think to optimize a page for conversion, you have to lower the cost and boost the perceived benefit, let's say. So,

what might be some suggestions that you have for how people can increase the value of this in people's eyes or lower the cost in people's eyes? Yeah,

I mean, use simpler layouts, let's say, use single column layouts. That's one of our principles in a way. People perceive better, easier, linear stories. You know, I mean, that's how we watch movies. Even if there are multiple storylines in a movie, we'd still watch them consecutively, you know. So try not to confront people, especially in the beginning, that is, with multiple columns. That's kind of one of our rules number one, somehow. Okay. That's one thing. And then make sure, for example, that the first thing they see is very simple, very focused, very value oriented somehow.

Yep. So your header at the top of the page, that

is. And also, yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Basically, the headline, let's say, it has two purposes in our view. It should give you enough reasons to continue, let's say. It should get you interested enough, curious enough to continue with the page, to stay on the page, you know, more than like two seconds or five seconds. Yep. I mean, you know that with time on page, chance of conversion increases dramatically. So this is one of the purposes and the other purposes is it actually a different purpose? So it's kind of the same thing, but said in a different way. It should provide a very smooth transition. You know, it should not be overwhelming. You know, it should be really. easy to digest, easy to read. So I remember one of the most effective headlines I've encountered was on the website of Unagi or Unagi scooters. I don't remember. It's an American brand. I mean, I don't know how it's pronounced, but let's say UnagiScooters. com. They changed it by the way, but before the first thing you would read was freedom of movement. Oh, this reminds me of another property of a good headline. Actually the headline is your main marketing claim, let's say it needs to be a bold claim. Yeah, because at the end of the day, I mean, let's say the conversion process starts with someone being interested enough to continue reading, you know, exploring, browsing the page, and then it ends with them being confident enough to buy. And basically, if you speak with confidence about your product from the very beginning, your chances dramatically increase. Let's say we think about it as the third element, you know, in the conversion formula. And so the first is cost. The second is benefit. And the third is, is related to a perceived probability of like, let's say how credible the marketing claims are, how likely it is that you're going to get what the page promises you. Yeah. And so if you speak with pride and confidence about your products, that's what you're projecting. Yeah, you're projecting this confidence onto the users. So short. Bold, confident titles.

When you're talking about sort of copy inside the page, I mean, how much copy would be sort of good to have? You mentioned short titles inside there. Should it be just short bullet points inside there and a few short paragraphs? Or do you have any sort of typical things that you've seen work better than

others? Yeah, I mean, think of it like this, and that's what we try to explain to our clients that in the beginning they have a very low attention credit, you know, so start short, simple and to the point, to the point, meaning value for their benefit for the, for the customers. And then throughout the page, you can, uh, slowly but surely, you know, become more, what's the word, exuberant? I don't know. I'm not sure. Yep. Um, you can kind of lavish them with text. Because the thing is, if they do stay long enough, they, chances are, they're researching you.

Yeah. How much is too much with some of these? I mean, I've seen some landing pages where literally it's not much more than just one paragraph saying, you know, here's a couple of bullet points, fill in the form to download. Let's just call it this report or something. Whereas, as you say, I've seen others where you have a much longer sort of set of content inside the page in there. Again, do you have recommendations or things that you've seen one work better

than the other there? Yeah, sure. I think the more content, the better. But it depends how it is distributed throughout the page. If you want to make some point in detail, just push it down, push it further down the page because there's a very, very low attention credit. So, yeah, they really need to be interested first. They need to see that, OK, this is what this thing sells me. And that's why it's good for me. Or that's why I'm interested in it. We always give this example. It's, um, Speechelo. com. We are not affiliated, by the way, with them. We probably should because we give them as an example way too often. But, um, so I think what they are selling is a text to speech AI speech tool. Okay. Yeah. We use them to preview our scripts for marketing videos, for example. So before recording it with a voiceover artist, we just type in our text and um, yeah, we edit it together with the animation or whatever the video is. We just preview it like this. And their page is absolutely amazing. They're doing something really well. And another principle which we push to our customers. And this is show the product in action as soon as you can. Basically the hero, the hero section, the hero image should ideally be a video. Like, for example, Sonos, they're doing this also relatively well, sonos. com. The first thing you see on the page is their products being used by people, preferably people like you, you know, but this is a physical product. It's easier to put some models on set, but if it's a digital product, just show the product in action and especially the output of the product. Yeah. Like what end product kind of you end up with. And that's what these guys Pitchlow are doing. The first thing you see on the page is a video that is showcasing their own product. I mean, the video itself. The voiceover of the video is made by their software. Oh, okay. So basically, you're experiencing the end result of their product.

Which is actually exactly what you want to do. Yeah,

exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's amazing like how simple this is. And, uh, we have only a few examples from the thousands of pages that we've seen. So, um, I guess there are many reasons for that, but that's what you should aim to do. Yeah.

So you mentioned earlier, one of the common things that we see on landing pages is, is a bit of text. I mean, particularly let me think of a webinar registration page or something like that. You know, you commonly see a piece of text down one side and a form down the other side. So. Your suggestion, I think quite sensibly, is to sort of move it in line. You know, we talk a lot about story in terms of what we do, you know, very much into all of that sort of idea. And, you know, follow the ideas of what authors and Hollywood creators do basically when they tell a story and, you know, we're trying to do the same in a landing page, exactly. So, uh, within the page, again, just from experience, how far down should you put the formula? Well, I'm presuming we're going to put it, you know, in line now somewhere with the text in here. How far down the page should that go? Should that be sort of fairly near the top? Because people don't scroll. We often hear this thing about, you know, keep things above the fold, basically, which I think is why people want to move it to the side. Is that something that's still true? Is that an old

paradigm? Yeah, I mean, it is old. Just the term above the fold or below the fold, it just sounds so print media time somehow. But I think the problem is that it's not really understood. Just people take it like a best practice, you know, like shove everything above the fold. No, no, I'm sorry. People don't scroll because you don't give them enough reasons to scroll. You don't grab their attention. You don't keep their attention. So why should they scroll? Basically, there's nothing compelling in what they see when they land on the page. Like that, that's the reason why they don't scroll. And not because something is below the fold. If you're compelling content is below the fold, well, push it above the fold, you know, and then see what the effect is going to be. So. That's what I would say. Like if you really have some content, which impresses, which creates interest, put it above the folds. If it's really effective enough, if it's good enough, they're going to scroll down to the form or like, for example, the speechless page is a perfect example. You don't see a form. Basically what they're doing is they're creating such a strong desire for you to buy the product that you're going to look for the form yourself. That's the thing. Um, or the CTA or the buy now button, you know, or whatever the conversion event is. I mean, that's generally the best thing you can do. If you don't know how to do it, well, then you speak with people like us that have done

that before. Exactly. Again, on the form side, do you see any difference in the conversion, whether or not on the landing page, you put the form in line? So physically it appears in the flow of the page or again, another thing that I'm seeing more and more often now is these sort of pop up forms, basically you click on a call to action and then it will, you know, take over the page with the form in there. Is there anything that works better one way or the other there?

Um, yeah, well, I would say it doesn't really matter how do you access the form. It really doesn't matter as long as they are ready when the form appears. If they're baked, yeah, sure. Get them out of the oven. So that's why, for example, I think confronting them with a form way too early. is not a good idea. It's not like, yeah, okay, they're not going to scroll down, but they're not going to fill in and submit the form either. So, like, I would say you can even ignore the scrolling behavior for now. I mean, if the page is not converting experiment with ordering the content, let's say, but like. I don't know. Anyway, trying to push the form above the fold is a misguided, I think, effort to improve the situation. Okay. Yep. Makes sense. Um, so yeah.

Cool. Good. Well, George, I think we're, we're running up to time now. It's been great to have a chat with you. Uh, so yeah, thanks very much for joining us today. Oh,

you're welcome. It was a pleasure. Definitely.

I think you'll agree. That was a great conversation there with George. Thanks, George, for spending time with me. It was really appreciated. Yeah, I learned so much from that conversation. And one thing in particular, which actually quite surprised me, was not putting the form next to the text at the top of your landing page. I think that's very different from the sort of traditional advice that we see where... You know, we want everything above the fold, but I think, you know, things are changing, times are changing now and people are prepared to scroll. And it is about not confusing people. George's comment was absolutely fantastic in there. You know, keep it simple, keep it aligned with what they're talking about. And as you go down through the page, you know, build that journey and take them to the next element in there. So that's definitely something that I'm going to be doing when I sort of get back to the office and I'm going to try that out in our own website in the coming weeks and see what happens there. So if like me you've learned a lot from that interview, you're going to be pleased to hear that George will be back with us again next week and you can hear the second part of my interview with him in the next episode. So if you're having problems setting up your website or optimizing it, then you can hire an authentic engagement coach. Just go to demodia. com to hire a coach that will show you how to increase the effectiveness of your website and give you an easier way to grow your business. So, how about something now to take away and do for yourself here. Today, what I want to do is actually very simple. It's something that's only going to take you a few minutes to do. I've got to be honest with you, it's probably going to be one of the biggest things that you do that's going to have the most significant difference to the conversions on your landing pages. What I want you to do is to go and read the copy on each of your landing pages or your main web pages. And make sure that it clearly explains the value that your visitor is getting by completing your form. That's something that George mentioned in here. It's all about making sure people understand the value of what they're going to get that reduces friction more than anything else. When you read your landing pages, if it's not completely clear what somebody is going to get when they're down there, and I don't mean technically what they're going to get, i. e. they're going to get a white paper, but what they're going to get out of that, what the value is that they're going to get out of this thing that they download or this. thing that they fill in to get the form to get access to. Then I want you to go through the text on that landing page and I want to update it until it's completely clear what that value is. You know, your mom should be able to read that page and know exactly what she's going to get out of it and exactly what value she's going to get from that. So to help you out, you can be using and you should be using your talking points from your brand script here to make sure it's absolutely clear. There's two points I typically tend to pick up on when I'm going through and doing this exercise. The first of them is the problem, you know, if you're relating to the problem, they can understand that problem and they can say, Oh yeah, this is the solution to that problem. They can feel that. The second thing that I tend to pull out from these scripts. is the transformation. So again once they've downloaded this asset or filled in the form and started a trial or whatever it is that they're getting out of completing that form this is how it's going to transform their world. So I'd suggest when you're going through this start with the pages that you're paying for. You know, you're paying for traffic to those pages, whether it be coming from social media ads, whether it becomes from keyword adverts on Google or something like that, and you want to make sure you're getting value out of those pages. So go through those first and start a few tests inside there, change that and see how that impacts the conversions that you're getting on those pages. It might seem overwhelming at first. There's definitely going to be a lot to do in there, but I promise you making sure that you show and offer the value on those pages and make sure that's communicated clearly. It's the single biggest thing that's going to make the difference to conversions on your landing pages. So that's all for today's episode of the Authentic Marketing Podcast. Thank you as ever for listening and don't forget to bookmark the podcast and share it with your friends and colleagues. We love to share our knowledge so that we can make your business succeed. See you next time.