Digital Geckos ON AIR: Recent Episodes
Eddie from Digital Geckos
Many online marketers do one of two things when posting PDF documents to their organization’s site - either gate their PDF content behind web registration forms or else leave it completely free. The goal of gating PDF documents would be to generate sales leads from visitors that find enough benefit in the material to identify themselves and be flagged as potential customers. However, if used wrongly, web registration forms act as a hurdle and discourage potential visitors.
Would it be suitable to gate all content?
No. Often the gated content really should not be used for PDF lead generation purposes, because readers have not been educated to the stage where they’re motivated to identify themselves. To put it simply, the content just isn’t beneficial enough in their eyes to give up their details for but also you need ongoing SEO for it.
There are two types of content that are crucial in the PDF lead generation process for marketing experts, educational content and sales lead-generating content. What is the difference between the two and which should be gated?
Marketers have to fill their websites with educational content that will supply the reader with sufficient know-how and understanding to encourage them to want more information, creating momentum in the direction of becoming a sales lead. This sort of content needs to be open and free of hindrances to access so that it’s viewed by the maximum number of people feasible. The more people that access it, the greater the number of visitors who will be interested in learning more information. Types of educational content can be product descriptions, newsletters, and blogs that inform the visitor sufficiently to know that they would like more in-depth knowledge on a subject.
That’s where content that generates sales leads is essential. It needs to be “meaty” enough to inspire the visitor to identify themselves as sales leads without them being concerned that an aggressive sales rep will intrude on their day. The more worth that the reader gets from the PDF document, the more likely they will be to provide their contact information. White papers and research reports are perfect examples of content that delivers sufficient substance to encourage readers to opt-in and identify themselves.
Marketing experts need to bear in mind when designing content for websites, that they cannot gate everything nor can they provide everything for free. Determine what the end goal is when creating content – do you need to educate and encourage your audience to learn more, or do you want to give them valuable content for PDF lead generation purposes? Take into account that gating a PDF at the beginning can be a discouraging factor for a lot of visitors, so ensure that you give them a preview of the document so that they can determine if it is what they are seeking. This will increase the number of accurate details you gather, strengthening PDF lead generation efforts substantially.
It’s worth it to try to increase your RSS subscriptions, and there are many benefits to doing so.
One of the most common yet effective tips to increase your RSS subscribers is to produce great content. This may seem like a no-brainer, but it works beautifully. This is crucial because your RSS subscribers must have a reason for signing up with you. If you hope to get lots of return visitors, you must make sure there’s information on your page that they will want to come back to. Now, when we talk about great content, it means your content needs to be fresh, to the point and interesting to your target audience. If you select your niche with care, this should be a simple endeavor. Having quality content and good SEO services will push your readers to subscribe to your RSS feed so that they can stay updated. Then, once you have your subscribers, you need to consistently give them what they want if you want your stick rate to remain as high as possible. If your content is always of the best quality, this will never be an issue.
People love getting something free but also has some decent value, and that is a technique you can test with RSS subscriptions to your site. Internet marketers have been giving away free stuff like a valuable ebook or a report in order to get people to subscribe to their email list. The only way to find out for sure is to test. You’ll get the best results if you add value to your subscription by way of a decent valued gift. If you do it well, then you may have a good size list of subscribers that become genuinely interested in your content and site.
Always make the most of your email signature, and we’re talking about including a link to your RSS feed in it. Your entire marketing process is a culmination of a lot of bits and pieces that all contribute. You can join forums that allow links in signatures, and then simply place it in there, as well.
You’ll find that people will naturally want to subscribe to your RSS feeds if you help them solve their problems with quality information that is unique.
If you have a website, you want to become a traffic magnet. If you think of your prospect’s frame of mind when they come to your site, it’s easy to begin attracting them.
Why aren’t they buying from you?
First, you should use an analytics program. This gives you insight into why people leave without buying. If you know why they leave, you can fix it and they might stay and buy. Google’s analytics works really well and doesn’t cost anything. If you have the data from visitors, you can improve the performance of your sites and make more money.
Now, find where your audience is already going. Do a search for your most basic keyword terms (if you sell expensive chairs, a search for the chair would do the trick). What sites pop up? Visit the 3 sites that show up first. Then, look at the bottom of the site for a link that states “advertise” or something similar. Advertising on one of these sites is a great shortcut when trying to get more traffic. You may even find forums, blogs, or other social sites where you can post there for free.
Do you know about Google’s alerts program? Google’s alert service lets you know when people use keywords you want to know about. Imagine this: Your prospect goes to a forum and asks something related to your products. You get a notice in your email and are able to go and answer that question, of course, you leave a link to your website where they can buy something that solves their problems. Setup questions as Google Alerts! To find the questions, go to Yahoo Answers and do a search for your most basic keyword term to find questions that others have already asked. The key is to take a piece of the question and wrap it in quotes, that tells Google to only send you alerts with that exact term included in it and will save you from having to dig through alerts you don’t need or want (example: “how do I get traffic”). The best part is that Google already knows that the question is there, so it will be back to find your link to your site and will give you credit for it.
Here is an obvious step that nobody considers. Google implemented something called Universal Search in May of 2007. They took all of their individual search engines (video, news, blogs, images, etc…) and put it all into one gigantic index of the web, so the content writing is king. I’m sure you saw this the last time you searched for something on Google. What this change told us smart marketers is that we should be targeting those other variations on Google’s search engine to gain rankings a lot easier. There are a lot fewer videos competing for your keyword terms then websites. Use this and send out a press release when you have something newsworthy to announce.