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- [00:01]
A
Hey, before we get started, I wanted to share some exciting news. Social media Marketing World 2026 just wrapped up and marketers from all over the world walked away with strategies they're already putting to work. But here's the thing. You actually didn't miss it. Why? Because right now you can get a virtual ticket, which is access to everything that happened at the conference. Every session, every keynote, every workshop. We're talking about dozens of sessions on AI, Instagram, Facebook, ads, content strategy, and a whole lot more, all from the world's top experts. Attendee Jules McGuire said, quote, Every single session I attended, I've been able to take away probably three things minimum, that I'm going to be able to immediately implement, unquote. And with your virtual ticket, you get access to all of this for the next 18 months. You can watch on your schedule, you can pause, you can replay, you can take notes at your own pace. Right now, these Virtual tickets are $200 off, but only until May 15th. Don't wait for the next conference to level up your marketing. Head to social media marketing world.info and grab your virtual ticket today.
- [01:11]
B
Welcome to the Social Media Marketing Podcast, helping you navigate the social media jungle. And now, here is your host, Michael Stelzner.
- [01:21]
A
Hello, hello, hello. Thank you so much for joining me for the Social media Marketing podcast brought to you by Social Media Examiner. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner, and this is the podcast for marketers and business owners who want more exposure, more leads and more sales. And I'm very excited to tell you today is all about getting more leads and more sales. We're going to talk about how to increase conversions in 2026 with Jay Swindelson. And I'm telling you, there's an absolute gold mine inside of this episode. If you are new to the show, follow us on whatever app you're listening to us on. Let's now transition over this week's interview
- [01:57]
B
with Jay Swendelson, helping you to simplify your social safari. Here is this week's expert guide.
- [02:07]
A
Today, I'm very excited to be joined by Jay Swindelson. He is a leading expert in demand generation and he's got a brand new book called Stupider People have Done It. Marketing truths, career moves, and life advice for doers. He's also the founder of Guru Media Hub, which is which hosts large online events. Jay, welcome back to the show. How you doing today?
- [02:26]
B
I'm doing great. It's an honor to be back. You are a legend. I'm so excited. Anytime I Get to spend with you. This is going to be fun.
- [02:32]
A
Well, I appreciate all your kind words. Today. Jay and I are going to explore how to increase conversions in 2026. And I don't know anybody who's a marketer that doesn't want more conversions. So I'm just going to start. You know, we're recording this in in March. It's will be coming out in April of 2026. Why is it so challenging right now to get conversions? Like, what's been going on in the world that's changing. That maybe might explain why this is getting a little more difficult to be a marketer.
- [03:01]
B
Listen, obviously there's a lot of noise, right? There's a lot of noise. There's more emails being sent out than ever. There's all this AI slop that's going out. And part of the AI slop, okay, is allowing us to just pump out more of everything. We're able to pump out more offers, right? It's easier to get out our offers on social media. It's easier to get our posts on social media. It's easier to do all of that. So now in order to get conversions, we actually have to do lots of little things that add up that actually make a big difference. And I think that we are missing the boat on our websites, on how we're doing our marketing, all the little things that help you stand out because it's more competitive than ever for everybody's eyeballs and earballs.
- [03:49]
A
So do you feel there might be a little bit of like, opium going on a little bit here where people are just like, hopeful that something's going to work itself out? I mean, what's your thoughts on that?
- [03:59]
B
Listen, the irony of all the AI stuff, and I love AI don't get me wrong, is that we all lean into AI say, wow, AI could do all this for us. So now we can get more conversions, we could do more stuff. And the irony that we are seeing actually, and what is actually converting is the stuff that is unaided, which is so ironic. So the lo fi content, right? The lo fi, somebody's out there with their product and they're taking their phone out, they're saying, I'm using it this way and check this out. Or they're having an influencer do that. Or even on LinkedIn, lo fi content. This stuff that doesn't feel like AI was involved is actually what's converting exponentially higher than the stuff that is AI made. I thought it was amazing the other day that Adam Mosseri, who's The head of Instagram, he came out okay on Instagram, and he said, this is the way you can get the highest engagement on your posts. He said what you want to do is if there's a dog barking in the background on your video, if there's a car beeping, that's good. Any signals of humanity is what you want in your videos, because that's what people want to engage with. They want to engage with what's real. So conversions are actually tied to humanity. And good news, we're all humans.
- [05:15]
A
Love it. Okay, so when we were prepping for the show, one of the things we talked about was the idea of growing a database. And I want you to kind of explain conceptually what the heck we're talking about, talk about why it's so important, and then we'll get into kind of how we can go about doing something like this.
- [05:29]
B
Yeah, I think that this is probably the biggest fail by marketers, consumer marketers, business marketers in general, which is the growth of your database on an annualized basis. Believe it or not. You, your email database, your database overall, you'll have about 20% attrition. You will lose about 20% of people. Balanced email addresses. People move, people change. Addresses, 100 different reasons. So 20%.
- [05:51]
A
How often are we losing 20%?
- [05:53]
B
Annually? Annually.
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A
Well, that's important.
- [05:56]
B
That's huge.
- [05:57]
A
I mean, let's talk about that for a second. Right. If you have a thousand people and you lose 20% in one year, that's 800 people. You still have a thousand people on the list, but maybe 800 of them are just only paying attention. And then the next year you take 20% of that. That's 160 less people. Right?
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B
That's right.
- [06:14]
A
So now you're at 680 people. Right. Which is almost 40% less of what the entire thing was. So talk about that a little bit just so people can wrap their head around that.
- [06:23]
B
Yeah. And I think that that's the KPI we're not focused on. If you don't have in your dashboard your growth and your growth is how many people you're losing and how many people you're gaining. Right. If this is not something you're looking at weekly, monthly, quarterly, and you're not having that as a focus in terms of growing, and it's not your center, your North Star, you're going to wind up with nobody to market to. Forget about people that are not engaged. You know, the people that aren't opening or clicking or checking out your social media posts. I'm just talking about people that literally are going to disappear. They're not even deliverable anymore. So you having as one of your core focuses as a marketer, what are the simple things that you can be doing, the always on things that you could be doing to grow your database. If you don't thinking about that, then you are going to have a massive problem in very short order.
- [07:14]
A
Okay, but Jay, I'm just going to say the things that I know are true and everybody's probably thinking about. But J, traffic is down on my website enormously because AI Right, yeah, that's one of the biggest problems. Right. So don't we have to reset our realities now? I mean, isn't it realistic that that before AI it was. I mean, I'll be intellectually honest, I was adding 20,000 people a month to my email list back in the day. So let's just address that a little bit. Is this a reset of expectations right now?
- [07:44]
B
So I think it's a reset of our organic. Yeah, organic. You need to have a, a reset of how aggressive of a posture you're willing to take to get those organic. We'll talk about paid in a second to get organic growth.
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A
Growth.
- [07:59]
B
So here's what you should be doing, which is what the best marketers are doing. Now. First of all, let's talk about your website. 100% website traffic is down because a lot of people with, you know, Google review, you know, AI overviews, they don't have to leave Google and all the different things. So website traffic is down, but that doesn't mean you're not getting website traffic. Now on your website, there's two things that you should be doing. Number one, right there on your homepage, not on a landing page or some sort of other destination point on your homepage. The primary real estate on your homepage should be data collection right there smack in the middle. Get on our discounts list. Get this free guide. Join our newsletter. Not at some bar on the top of your list, on your top of your page or on the bottom of your page. But it should be the primary hero thing in the center of your page where you are doing some sort of incentivized thing to get people to join your list. That's what I mean by an aggressive posture. It used to be, you know, buried somewhere. Sign up for our newsletter. Go to our resources area, whatever. No, because we need every single person that's going to our homepage to possibly sign up. You want to incentivize them right there.
- [09:08]
A
Wait, I want to dig in on this. Okay. So we've got a lot of people that have all sorts of different kinds of products. Now obviously if you're selling information, it's very easy to do this, right? Like I run a media company, you know, you run effectively a media company as well. So it's easy to do this to have a newsletter or a report. But what about for like E commerce people? You mentioned, you mentioned like discounts and stuff. Like help people that are selling products understand how this would work.
- [09:31]
B
Oh, I mean how would people like ALO or any of these other companies that are selling products get on our early drop list, be the first to know? Get on our insiders list. You know the funny thing about fomo, okay that you know we're also used to always sell on urgency gain. Get this before it runs out. That used to be how marketers sold, but the world now is everybody actually wants to be first. They want to be the first one to get that new thing. Okay? It's not about will it run out. So if you are selling a consumer product of any kind right there on that homepage, get on our insiders list. Get on our first to no list. And this is crushing it because that's what we all want. You got to play into the mindset of what everybody wants. And on the business side you're right, it's so easy. You know there's a million different guides, templates, things, who cares get you give your email address. But whatever it is, your North Star has got to be that, that primary real estate is about data capture because that website traffic is super, super valuable.
- [10:33]
A
Okay, a couple clarifying questions on this. This is really important for, for some people I've been on websites where there's an incentive where you can get 10% off if you get on their newsletter and they'll send you a discount code. Help people understand why that might be worth it. Because like if they're selling a $50 product and they get 10% off, then they're basically paying five bucks for that person. Right? Is that something you recommend like giving them a discount code right there or with a pop up or. I mean I know we're going to get the pop ups eventually but, but like is it worthy of giving them a fiscal incentive to get on the newsletter if you're selling physical products?
- [11:05]
B
So I think, listen, every company is different and the lifetime value of your customer, you should know the lifetime value of a customer that comes in via discount, that versus somebody that does not come in via discount, lifetime value of the customer comes in via the discount, matches up with the lifetime value of the person that just straight up buys your product. They get on your list. Beautiful, fantastic, you've won the offer, you know, lottery. If it doesn't, then that's when you want to lean into more of this access type of incentive where you're not saying you're getting 10% off, you're saying you're getting early access to our first products. Because what you're really saying to those people are you're the people who really, you know, love what we have going on. You're really buying into our brand. So I would first say know your lifetime value about what the discount drives on the back end. And then if the value plays out, then it's a home run. I also think there's seasonality, you know, depending on where you are and discounts and all of that. So there's a lot of different moving levers. But as long as this is what you're thinking about is how do I get people onto my list? That's really, really important.
- [12:09]
A
Okay, I stopped you on the first one. You're on a roll. So keep going. Like, what are some other ways we can get them on the list? From our website.
- [12:16]
B
Okay, so the website, so this one's gonna make me. No one's gonna like me. And that's okay. People don't like me. I'm okay with that. But let's talk about pop ups for a second. I lost half your audience just now. Oh.
- [12:26]
A
Because we all know it works.
- [12:28]
B
It works. But let me tell you why you have to do it for. The worst thing that marketers say is this. I don't like pop ups, so we don't do them. They annoy me, so we're not going to do them. That's what every marketer says. But here's the deal. When you go to Nike's website and you're a first time visitor, they do a pop up, all right? And you need to buy sneakers. Do you see the pop up and say, you know what, I'm so angry at you, Nike, for having a pop up. I'm never buying from you. Or do you click the little X in the upper right hand corner and you forget there was a pop up like three seconds later? Okay, you're not going to be losing business because you have a pop up. But I'll give you the most wild stat for first time visitors to your website. If you have a pop up that has any kind of incentive, whether it's a guide on the business side, a discount code, early access, sign up, whatever it is, any kind of incentive. You will see roughly 5% of first time visitors to your site actually give you their email address. Okay, five times visitors to your site, if you're still running, that pop up will go up to about 9%. So if you don't have the pop up, you have nothing to show for that traffic. You're going to cookie them and retarget them and annoy them. That's garbage. Get their data now. The other pop up that everybody sleeps on is timed pop ups. Here's the game. It does not matter what website CMS platform you use, wherever your website is hosted, I don't care if it's the most infamous inferior tool on the planet. Every website hosting tool can do timed pop ups. What does that mean? Let's say you sell socks. I don't know. Somebody goes on the pricing page on your website where you're selling socks, they're on there for 10 seconds debating what socks they're going to buy. You can pop up a pop up after they're there for 10 seconds that, hey, we know you're really into our socks. We love it so much, we're going to give you an extra 10% off if you buy right now. Or they're on the pricing page of your SaaS product, your B2B SaaS product and they're looking on this pricing page and then after 30 seconds of looking at your pricing, you pop up a pop up. It says, hey, we know you're checking this out. We know this is perfect for you. We want to give you this extra doodad if you sign up right now. It doesn't have to be just your pricing page, it can be on your resources page, it could be on any page. But timed pop ups, but based on the person's activity, crush it. You're Talking about over 10% conversions on those pop ups when they're on the timed units. It's incredible.
- [15:00]
A
Okay, this is coming out just days before social media marketing world. So I can kind of expose this, if you will, to the world right now. But if you go to our sales page and you click on the page that's got all the prices for all the different ticket types and you're there for a certain period of time, we pop up $100 extra off there.
- [15:15]
B
Yeah.
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A
And it really does work. Now there's some people saying, yeah, but if I didn't pop it up, they might have paid $100 more. What do you want to say to that, okay, great.
- [15:24]
B
And you know what? Maybe they wouldn't have, because it's a complex purchase.
- [15:27]
A
They might have come back later.
- [15:28]
B
Right, right. A lot of things might happen, but the bottom line is we're trying to get as many conversions as possible. And you're like, I don't want to annoy people. Maybe they would have paid more. Maybe they would have done seven other things. Guess what? We need the business. We need them on our list. Okay? If you want to play a game of what ifs, that's great. Go out of business. And that's a fantastic way to operate. We need to do everything we can. You know, that's why I say aggressive posture. And then, you know, one other thing, just to talk about bringing people back to the website. Okay. Before we get into any kind of, like, paid meat or any of that stuff, the secret sauce thing that we are seeing right now in terms of getting traffic back to your website from all the AI tools. Right. The one simple thing that you could do, everybody's sleeping on is, is everybody's got evergreen stuff on their site. We have evergreen content, right? The 10 best running shoes, the 10 best HR software tools. Everybody's got evergreen content and offers the AI tools. Doesn't matter if it's ChatGPT or Claude or you name it. What they want is recency signals. That is the number one thing that they want. If you go back to all of your offers, if you go back to all of your content and you just add in the month and the year, okay, the 10 best running shoes. April 2026. The 10 best HR software tools. April 2026. You added back to all of your old blog posts. You add the month and the year. AI tools are picking up anything that has a recency signal. All right? Sales. The Nike sale for sneakers. Our summer sale, 2026. Anything that has a recency signal is getting picked up by the AI, is being included in AI answers more than 50% of the time as compared to those that don't. So there are games to bring people back to your website, grab more of that traffic. If you just play the game a little differently, if you're just doing the same old. I hope people sign up for my newsletter. They find it. I hope my stuff shows up in AI and they find it. You're not taking that aggressive posture. And in order to really generate that activity, okay?
- [17:34]
A
So just to bring everybody back, we're talking about how to grow your database, and we talked about how on your homepage you should have some form at the Top for some offer. Then we talked about pop ups and then we talked about this content recency thing. I want to get back to pop ups for a second. Do you have any insights as far as the kind of language that seems to work or any kind of tips on like how to phrase the pop up that you've maybe done in your own experience so that we can get someone to act right now?
- [18:00]
B
You know, the one version that I think works the best but you have to really, I think everybody needs to add more humanity, their marketing, everybody. And this one works really well across any kind of brand. And it's this idea of the negative option. Meaning I'm not talking about a pre check box or anything like that. Oh yeah, yeah.
- [18:17]
A
You mean like you can opt out if you don't care about saving money? Is that what you're talking about?
- [18:22]
B
It's exactly right. So it says, hey, do you want this thing? Yes, I want to be smarter. Or, or no, I like being a doofus. Right. When you make the no option a negative, whatever your offer is. Right. Do you want these comfy socks? Yes, I love them. My feet are comfortable. No, I like when my feet are cold and I can't sleep. When you make the same thing for business. Right. Do you want the HR software? Yes, my team will get better. No, we don't have hr. We don't believe in human rights. I don't know, whatever.
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A
Right.
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B
When you make the no option a negative, the conversions skyrocket because you're adding in this humanity to it all.
- [19:00]
A
Because nobody wants to click on that button. Right.
- [19:03]
B
Nobody wants to be a doofus. Nobody wants to click the thing that says no, I'm a doofus. Right. And so that is like the number one secret sauce to actually getting a higher conversion rate on pop ups that people aren't doing enough.
- [19:14]
A
Okay. And for folks that are not active on AI, just take a screenshot of your pop up, plop it into your favorite tool, mine's Claude. And just say help me create a negative option or give me some options and then pick something that you feel like is on brand for you. You know what I mean? But the easiest one for discounts is no, I don't like saving money.
- [19:31]
B
That's the best one. That is the best one always.
- [19:34]
A
Okay, so we've hinted a couple times about how you can actually pay to grow your database. So talk to me a little bit about like your, your thoughts on that.
- [19:41]
B
Yeah, there, listen, there are on social media specifically there and I don't work for meta or Reddit or any of these places. Okay, I'm not incentivized to saying this, but my agency business is. What I do all day long is I'm trying to figure out what is the lowest cost way to grow people's databases, get you on the newsletter file, their special offers file, whatever. So I've tested everything and right now, what is working the best? Okay, let's talk about trying to get people onto your. Either your consumer or your business newsletter file. There are two spots that are absolutely crushing it. Coming in well under $5 per subscriber, oftentimes in the 2 to $3 range. And those two things are on Instagram. Okay. Doing paid reels or story ads where the person and you've seen them, right? Hey, you describe this thing. Yeah. Yes. Register pops open like two fields. You fill in the two fields and you hit submit those ads on Instagram Reels and stories.
- [20:37]
A
Is that like a lead ad or something like that? Where you stay on platform? Is that the idea?
- [20:40]
B
You stay on platform. And here's a secret for everybody for social media, paid social media, period, end of story. When you are trying to get people to subscribe to something to give you their information, never take them off the platform. Nobody wants to go on Instagram, see your ad and say, this is the greatest ad of all time. Let me stop doing brain rot and scrolling and leave Instagram to look at this garbage newsletter. I was barely interested. And nobody wants to do that. What they want to do is say, oh, I'm scrolling. I see a bunch of stories. Oh, this newsletter looks good. Yes, three fields. And I keep on with my brain rot. Keep them on platform. You get the data. That's how you keep it the lowest. And by the way, this is not just a consumer thing. Business to business is crushing it. On Instagram, your audience is there. 3 billion monthly active users. They are there. So whether you're a business marketer or consumer marketer or a nonprofit marketer does not matter. E commerce using Instagram reels and stories to grow your database. Sub $5 growth per. The other one now is Reddit.
- [21:48]
A
Before we go to Reddit, how do you get those leads into your database? Because that's a question I have and maybe others have as well.
- [21:56]
B
Oh, yeah, no, it goes right in. I mean, you got a file right there. You give an API right into your CRM and hook it to a zapier connection. Okay, this is not hard.
- [22:04]
A
So most of the email platforms of choice have some sort of connector, for lack of better word. So that that so you don't have to go into messenger and grab it or anything like that.
- [22:14]
B
Okay, you can automate all of this.
- [22:16]
A
Well, the next question is, are they pre filled typically or not?
- [22:19]
B
It really depends on what you're collecting. Usually the email address field is pre filled with whatever the email address is that you're using on Instagram and then you have the option to ask, you know, whatever other things you want to ask. Obviously, the less you ask, the cheaper the cost per acquisition is going to be. But usually we try to max out about three fields on things like Instagram because if you go too much further, you're just going to lose people. The cost goes into the stratosphere and you know, listen, I love LinkedIn, I'm a LinkedIn guy, but running the same program on LinkedIn, you're going to be looking at 4 or 5x the cost, going after the same audience. It just is what it is for B2B and B2C. So that's why I'm a bigger fan right now of Instagram and Reddit too. I can take you through Reddit.
- [23:03]
A
Last month I was on the ground at Social Media Marketing World and a lot of marketers were telling me that they're overwhelmed and there's a really good chance you're feeling the exact same way. My opening keynote was called the Future of Marketing how to Thrive when AI Changes Everything. I shared research, real AI applications and a framework for utilizing AI as your most powerful ally, which ultimately will make you irreplaceable. And here's the thing, you can still watch it, and it doesn't stop there. Not just my keynote, but all the keynotes and sessions and workshops are available for you right now. With your virtual ticket, we're talking dozens of quality sessions covering everything from AI to Instagram to Facebook ads, content, strategy, all of that available to you right now. Grab your tickets at $200 off, but only until May 15th. Head to social media marketing world.info, that's social media marketing world.info to get your tickets today. For people that are mostly focused on organic, this is a way to acquire people. But it sounds like the benefit here is you can do super specific targeting, right? Because obviously I don't want to have to pay 3 to $5 because that could get really expensive is what I'm thinking. But at the same time, I guess if it's super targeted and I track them really, really well inside my database, those could turn into a pretty big return on investment down the road.
- [24:24]
B
If those are qualified 100%. And you know, listen, maybe three to five dollars is expensive, but really you have to see what the value of your newsletter is, what you are putting out. I wouldn't say you want to start doing this until you knew that you had, you know, good content, you had a good funnel, you had a good, you know, nurture cycle, all those different things with your actual newsletter or whatever your VIP list is that you're building. But growing your list organically is just hard, right? So you got to find a few levers that you can.
- [24:51]
A
This might be the future of the way we have to do it. Let's be intellectually honest, right?
- [24:56]
B
Yeah. Organic social is like half dead. I mean, it really is. Yeah.
- [25:00]
A
And organic traffic coming in from Google is dying as well. So this, right, this is the reality of the situation that we're in, is that we're going to have to do something that costs money that we'll have to pay to someone else in order to be able to do this. Just out of curiosity, what's your thoughts about ads and other people's newsletters? Does that work or is that kind of a waste of money?
- [25:17]
B
Ads in other people's newsletters. First of all, I'm a big fan of swaps. Swaps with other newsletters all day long. But the ads that work in email newsletters are endorsement style, period, end of story, hard stop. Where whoever that newsletter is coming out from, if it's coming from a creator, like a person, like you're in somebody's newsletter that has a big following, you want an endorsement style ad from that creator that will exponentially do better than whatever it is, the boring copy that you wrote, you know, for a lot of generic, you know, publisher ad, you know, if you're a regular magazine type publishing type of newsletter file, endorsement style is going to be a little bit harder to do. But if you are working with a creator's newsletter, you want to push for the endorsement style, it will do a lot, lot better.
- [26:00]
A
What does that mean? Explain to people that don't know what that.
- [26:03]
B
Okay, I'll example like my own newsletter, right? So we get ads in my own newsletter and they'll say, oh, we want endorsement style. And that'll mean that, okay, so let's say I'm doing an ad for some sort of, you know, design platform or something, right? In the newsletter. I'll say, oh, this design. I'll say in first person, this design platform is amazing. I was able to create an ad in three seconds. You got to try this thing out. You are using your voice to endorse a thing and the same thing. Got it. You know, oh my God, I wear these socks every day and if one of these socks I can't imagine, I think I dropped dead. So that works so much better because the readers already bought into, that's why they're subscribed.
- [26:37]
A
Got it. Okay. Reddit.
- [26:38]
B
So people are sleeping on Reddit. Reddit, you know, in the last four or five months has changed their ad units. Reddit used to be really, really tough to do anything on there that would produce any type of meaningful results with paid ads. But they launched new ad units. The one ad use I love is called their lead gen ad unit. Identical basically to what's going on in Instagram, that you could be in some subreddit community. You know, you could be in the pop culture subreddit community or you could be in the Star Trek subreddit community or the IT security subreddit community. And you could have a pop up ad there that says for your newsletter, your special offer, your guide, what are your VIP list? And just like on Instagram, it pops open, the little thing says, hey, you interested in this? And then you put in your, your information, your email address and two fields. You hit submit again, you don't leave Reddit and this can go right into your CRM or email sending platform. So this only happened the last few months that Reddit actually did this. And then about in the last few weeks they launched another ad unit called their reminder ad unit, where while you're on Reddit, you could actually run these ads that you remind people about a sale. Right click here. If you want to be reminded about Nike's upcoming sale, you click remind. Okay. And then what they do is Reddit will actually send you an email reminding you about that sale as it's upcoming and will actually do a push notification on the app as well on your phone. So this reminder ad unit has also been really, really great. So bottom line, if you haven't really seen some of Reddit's new ad units, I think it's worth looking at to grow your database, to grow your reach, to do all the things.
- [28:14]
A
How do you feel like Reddit compares to Instagram as far as pricing and stuff?
- [28:19]
B
Instagram is still less expensive, but what we found is that Reddit further down the funnel from a buying cycle. And what I mean by that is Reddit's really good for way top of the funnel. Get on a newsletter, get on a VIP list and like that. People that are going to Reddit by And large are really going there to solve for something. Like I'm trying to figure out how to do X or how other people are doing this or what's going on with that. And so from what we are seeing, if you're actually trying to sell product or sell service instead of just growing, you know, a list per se, Reddit users seem to be more mid funnel than top of funnel, which is what Instagram is.
- [28:58]
A
Okay, so we have talked about you can add something to your homepage, we've talked about pop ups, we talked about, we went off on a little thing on content and, and then we talked about paid real story ads. And then Reddit is very interesting to me just because there's so many communities in there that it sounds like you could target. Okay, let's talk about our landing pages. And when I say landing pages I mean, well, generally we're talking about a page with an opt in on it, are we not? Or are we talking about a what do we mean by landing pages and from your perspective and what can we do to make them better?
- [29:29]
B
I love this topic because when we talk about a landing page, it could be a destination page. It's any place where you are taking somebody that just clicked on something, you're trying to convert them, right? It could be somebody clicked on a search ad, you're taking them to a specific page, trying to convert them. They clicked on an email offer, they go to a specific page, trying to convert them, a consumer offer, a B2B offer, a social media post, you're trying to convert them to a webinar registration, to a discount, to buying a product, whatever it is, you're taking them to this specific page. The thing that boggles my mind, the thing that is unacceptable and we're going to solve it right now for everybody, is that we think it's okay. We think it's okay that you get 100 clicks on some email offer that you send out and they go to this destination page, this landing page. And then 95% of these people bail, they bounce. And you convert on maybe 5% if you're lucky. And we think it's normal and acceptable that a second ago a hundred people were interested in this thing and then collectively, like they were on a party line on a phone and they said nobody, everybody bail on it. I know we clicked on it, but just bail on it. And only 5% of the people convert. It doesn't make any sense. They were just interested. So what are the little things that, that you're not doing right on Your landing page, it's causing to turn people off so fast. So let's go through some of the things that you probably would never think of. First off, the big hero image on that landing page. Okay. You got this big image on the landing page. Here's a secret sauce thing. Wherever you just took them from, let's say you sent them out an email and the email had an image of me waving hello. And then they get to the landing page. You want to have the same primary image, that image of me waving hello again on that landing page. Same thing with a social media ad. Same hero image from that social media ad right onto that landing page. You want the same hero image, why? Because we're a simple minded species, we get nervous in our subconscious, are we in the right place? And when we see the same picture from the email on the landing page, like, oh good, I'm in the place for the thing that I want. So having that same primary image will actually increase your conversion rates over 10% just by making sure that people feel comfortable.
- [31:48]
A
Hold on a second. But Jay, Andromeda, which is like the new update from Meta, they want a whole bunch of images and they're going to decide which image goes with the ad or Jay, I'm testing out a bazillion images, I don't know which one's going to convert. Talk to me a little bit about how, what do I do in that situation.
- [32:05]
B
Yeah, listen, it's not going to be a perfect science, a perfect thing across the board. Right? But it's something you need to keep top of mind because even if you can't say it's this exact image, it needs to look like the same feel, the same vibe, the same place.
- [32:20]
A
Okay, okay.
- [32:21]
B
You need to create that comfort zone. It can't be this radically different spot. And you're like, okay, I hope it all works out. Right, because that's why you're turning people off, they're confused.
- [32:32]
A
Got it. Okay, cool. What else?
- [32:33]
B
Okay, now let's talk about the number of fields. Okay, the number of fields that you're asking.
- [32:37]
A
Wait, wait, what are you talking about? Fields you've already.
- [32:38]
B
Okay, you go on a page, it says, I want your first name, your last name, your pet's name, your zip code, everything about your life.
- [32:45]
A
Are you talking about a lead generation? Like a page? That's the page.
- [32:48]
B
We ask you for all the different fields. Okay. In general, first off, for every additional must fill field that you require, you'll lose about 8% of your registrants. And I share that because you may want to collect a lot of data on people because you want to have all this information, but the more that you are asking for, your form is looking visually boring. They get to the page, you're like, nah, too much work. So first off, you want to think about how many fields you have. Now you may say, but we do need to collect a lot of fields because of this. That or who cares, whatever. If your form is has more than eight fields, okay, I tend to lean towards five. But if your form is more than eight fields, you want to go to a multi step form. I think that is step one, step two, step three. You don't want somebody to show up to your page and see eight fields that they have to fill in because it doesn't matter. They look at it and it feels like work to them. It turns them off and that's why they're part of that 95% that's leaving. So if you've never tested that multi step form and you have more than eight fields that you're collecting, this is probably the primary reason that you're losing conversions. And once somebody and everybody out there knows this, once you've given a little bit of data, you feel kind of like half screwed. You're like, they already got half of it, I might as well keep on going because what else am I going to do? And it gets you to convert. So think about if your form is visually boring. Boring, because that's actually what turns people off.
- [34:21]
A
Okay, this is interesting and I'm thinking creatively, first of all, I have tested this and I don't know if this, you found this to be true, but I found that first you have a button and then you reveal the form. So for example, get the thing. And once you click get the thing, that's the first micro commitment. And then typically I would imagine if you really wanted to, and I've seen some sites do this where it's simply name and email and then send me the thing. But then afterwards they give me another incentive to fill out the rest of the form. Have you ever seen this double incentive kind of thing?
- [34:52]
B
Yeah.
- [34:52]
A
I don't know how in the world they do it, but it's like, hey, and by the way, we'll send you this extra thing if you answer all these other questions. I don't know, I'm just thinking creatively. But does this even work?
- [34:59]
B
Yeah, no, it works. Sometimes the problem you have is your database gets a little clunky because some people do parts of it, some people don't do other parts of it. Like, okay, we have 47% of the people that did this part, but not this part. You're like, what do I do with all this?
- [35:11]
A
That.
- [35:11]
B
Right.
- [35:11]
A
What do you normally ask? Then? You said you ask 5. What are you asking for?
- [35:15]
B
No, what I'm saying, I, when I say five, I'm saying if I go beyond five fields, that's when I go to multi step.
- [35:20]
A
Okay, but what are you typically asking for?
- [35:21]
B
Like, well, it just depends on what you're doing. If you're selling product, right, you know, you have to ask for, you have to ask for all the, you know, shipping address, all that stuff, email address, whatever. It's. When you get into the variable ones, the ones do you have to ask, you know, what are your interests? You know, how often do you do X, Y and Z? You know, what do you really, you know, care about this or if you're a business one, how big is your company? How many employees? What's your job function? What's your title really? If you really want to get the most data out of somebody. And now we're going kind of off a beaten path a little bit. Quizzes are secret sauce. Everybody loves filling out quizzes. You get, you use a quiz as your lead gen play, and people love quizzes. Then you tell them about themselves. You spit out a stupid thing at the end that says, oh, my God, you're, you're actually, you're a dinosaur lover because you told us all these different things or whatever. But quizzes actually crush it because then you also have all the information you could ever need about that person. But, but let's come back to what else you could do on that landing page to get conversions because enough talking about dinosaurs. So we've talked about the number of fields. I want to talk for a second about what happens at the bottom. You have a button at the bottom. Okay, you have that conversion button. And if anybody out there on your destination page or landing page, if you have your button language, it says the word submit, you probably should stop listening, get a new job outside of marketing, because that's ridiculous. It's the worst word in the history of marketing. I don't even know how it got into marketing. It's actually weird if you step back and think about it. Yeah, I know.
- [36:49]
A
It's like, what am I submitting to? Exactly.
- [36:51]
B
It's just very, very strange. So what should it say? Okay, what you really wanted to say is two things. Number one, it should be written in first person and. And it should repeat the awesomeness of the offer, Right? It should say, let's say you're selling insurance quotes. Yes. Exclamation mark. I want my three free quotes, right? Yes. Count me in for this awesome webinar. You know, have it written in first person and then repeat the offer. Because what you're doing is you're building that last vote of confidence where the person's like, yes, that is what I want. And they're not going to look at the button. Be like, this button rocks. I love this button. But quickly as they're moving fast and they're subconscious, like, I like this. This is what I need.
- [37:34]
A
Yeah. On. On Social Media Examiner's homepage, our button says, yes, I want to be a better marketer. And when. When you click on it, then it pops open the fields and then it says, send me a copy. And it probably should say, send me my copy, but, you know,
- [37:50]
B
so that's it. First person. Yeah.
- [37:52]
A
So, okay, what about social proof? Let's talk about that and let's testimonials, all that fun stuff.
- [37:57]
B
Yeah, yeah. So, okay, so now we. We figured out the button, but now the other secret sauce thing that you want to have right near that button, either right below that submission button, we won't call it a submit button, right below the submission button, or on, let's say the left of that button, you want to have one hero testimonial. Every company on earth has a testimonial. You could ride one testimonial and build the greatest company of all time. And you want to put it right near the button. It would say something like, these are the most comfortable socks ever. You know, said a recent buyer, right. This Software saved us 50% of our budget. One testimonial in quotes, right near that button, it is that final vote of confidence that the person's like, okay, somebody else likes it. And then the other thing that you want to think about, the two other things that are. You want to think about is have logos on that page, on your destination page, on that landing page, have logos of other major companies that you've partnered with. Your brand has done anything with any type of logos on that page. Because when the person gets that page, you're like, is this company legit? Should I work with them? And then they see this testimonial, they see these logos, and then the last secret sauce is awards. People sleep on awards. I don't care, okay? If you won the MVP award on the softball team when you were nine, it doesn't matter. You put any Awards that your company has won of any kind and you put it on that destination page. Because when that person's like, should I buy this thing? Like, well, they won some awards. Nobody actually cares what the awards are. I have no idea what any award is. I just know, oh, they won something. They're legit. They have logos, they have a testimonial. If you do these things, this is how you increase your conversions. It sounds gimmicky and cheesy, but welcome to marketing. The people that are successful are the ones doing the tiny little things, right? They say the riches are in the niches, right? It's all about doing these little things. And that's what we have to focus on.
- [40:01]
A
How long should a landing page be?
- [40:03]
B
As short as humanly possible. I mean, no scroll landing pages. If you could have a no scroll landing page, it's all right there. Amazing. And then the last piece of it is if you have a navigation bar on your landing page. Again, horrendous. Unacceptable. You need to trap them, okay? You need to trap these people. It's like Love Island. They bring these people that they can't get off. They don't like each other when they get there, but by the end they're in love because there's nobody else to look at. Okay? It's the same idea on your landing page. They get to your destination page. If you have links going off of that page, if you have your standard nav bar on that page, they're going to leave. The only thing they should be able to do on that page is convert. That's it. That's how your conversion rate goes up.
- [40:47]
A
Okay, what about mobile versus desktop? Because obviously it's almost impossible to get it on a page if it's on a mobile device. So what's your thoughts on that? Do you have any insights for mobile stuff?
- [40:56]
B
Listen, obviously the mobile. Everything's mobile first. And the most important thing is you're not going to be able to do everything we just said. It's very, very hard. Mobile first. But what I will say, the mistake that people make is when they're testing things, when they're setting things up, they look at all their pretty pictures on their computer. Don't do that. Right? Test everything on your phone. Look at your emails, you're saying on your phone, look at your social ads on your phone. I mean, on the email side alone, to give you an example, over 70% of primary opens, which is the first time somebody opens up an email, business or consumer is on their phone. So whenever you're setting up any of your marketing, your landing pages or whatever, look at it at the Experience Mobile first. Because that's what the majority of things are happening. Unless you're selling to people that have an AOL address and are 900 years old.
- [41:42]
A
Hey man, I have one, but I don't use it anymore. You probably have one too.
- [41:46]
B
I live Boca Raton, I could say that type of stuff.
- [41:49]
A
What happens after they hit the submit button? Is there any tips that. I called it a submit button, but we know what I mean. What happens after they either purchase or after they've completed the form? So maybe under thought about things that we can do after that.
- [42:03]
B
I'm glad you brought that up. It's probably the most underutilized real estate on your website. Right. So recently my son just went off to college and we got in this, this filter, this big filter thing for his dorm room because there's like no air, good airflow or whatever. And then after we bought this filter thing on this website, which whatever, there was another page which had all this other stuff that we could buy that could make a healthy, you know, air and whatever, end up buying all this other junk that I was like, oh my God, why did I buy all this? But the reason I bought it is because what happens is you, you get excited like, oh, I'm into this brand in this moment, in this second, and you buy it. And that real estate, that thank you page, the worst thing that you can do is just say thank you and your thing will ship out soon. Right? Horrendous. You want to say. You got that? Well, you'll also love these three things. Okay. And this is for business marketers and consumer marketers. They sign for a webinar. You love that webinar. You should download these three guides. You like this product, you love these products. There is no higher click through rate, no higher click through rate that you will have anywhere on your website than on that post page than that post submission page for the offers that you put on that page in that moment. If you're not intentional and thinking about those offers lining up with where the person just came from, you're leaving the best real estate that you have on your website untouched.
- [43:29]
A
What about on a freebie, you know, like a resource or whatever. Any thoughts on what to do after they get that quote, unquote thank you page? Because they're not ready to buy, obviously, because you're going to mail something free. How can we take advantage of that without selling them on something? Any thoughts?
- [43:43]
B
Yeah, I think that there's more freebies to give. And then this is where you start to get into a little bit sophisticated marketer. You know, you'll have other freebies and then you'll see those people that take advantage of the other freebies. And then what I would be doing is tracking, okay, if somebody took advantage of, you know, two freebies versus just the original freebie, what is the difference in that person? Right. Is the two freebie person converting, you know, two x versus the one freebie person and then you start to kind of play that game and see how you could segment your database. But there's no scenario of what you are getting somebody to convert on that you shouldn't be giving them additional offers on that page.
- [44:18]
A
Okay, last question. One click actions in the email inbox. A lot of email providers allow someone to simply click a link to get something and it triggers an action behind the scenes. Any thoughts on using that? Because the friction is like almost nothing, right?
- [44:36]
B
Yeah.
- [44:36]
A
Do you use them? Do you recommend them?
- [44:38]
B
The reason that the one click thing is very, very important, taking a one click action is that in order to stay in somebody's inbox nowadays it has nothing to do if you put the word free in the subject line or something nonsense like that. It's the person's engagement with the emails that you're sending to them. Right. And the problem is, opens are viewed as very limited engagement by email providers. Right. By the email inbox providers. But clicks are magic. If somebody clicks, then the next time you send them an email, it's going to stay in that person's inbox. So getting them to click on anything is crazy critical now. And these one click motions work really, really, really, really well. One of the things that works well if you've never tested is one click quizzes. Give people two options as if it's a quiz, this one or that one.
- [45:26]
A
Oh, and then you can tag them on the back end. Huh.
- [45:29]
B
And then you got it. You, you won. And you also have the data, right. You know what they're interested in. So the one click motion is, is helpful for data as well as deliverability.
- [45:38]
A
Jay Swendleson, we have covered a gold mine of stuff here and I know there's so much more where that came from. So I want you to tell everyone where they can connect with you on the socials, if that's an option and also where they could maybe reach out if they, I don't know, want to work with you or buy whatever you have to sell.
- [45:57]
B
I appreciate that. Well, first off, I also, I have an inferior podcast to this one, but it's called do this, not that for marketers. I'd love if you check it out.
- [46:05]
A
I can't believe I forgot to mention that. It's a great show. I'm making the formal endorsement. It's a great show I've been on multiple, multiple times. Strongly recommend it.
- [46:13]
B
Yes, Michael has been on multiple times, which. Don't. Don't take that as a negative. No, I'm kidding. He's been incredible always. So that's do this, not that. For marketers, jschweddleson.com is where you can find out how to work with me and my agency and partner with me and all the things and my primary socials. I'm all over LinkedIn. I share horrible memes. Please connect with me. And I'm also on Instagram so you could find me there. But jschwettelson.com has got all the jazz and it's an honor to be on the show. You are the absolute best and this has been fun.
- [46:42]
A
Thanks, Jay. Hey, if you missed anything, we took all the notes for you over@social mediaexaminer.com 715. If you're new to the show, follow us on whatever app you're listening on. If you've been a listener, we would love a review and we'd love you to share this show with your friends on the socials. Do check out my other show, the AI Explored Podcast. If you're into AI, it's just as fun as this one. And this brings us to the end of the Social Media Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner. I'll be back with you next week. I hope you make the best out of your day and may your marketing keep evolving. Catch you next time.
- [47:16]
B
The Social Media Marketing Podcast is a production of Social Media Examiner.
- [47:24]
A
Don't forget you can save $200 off on your virtual ticket to Social Media Marketing World, but only for a few more days. Go to socialmediamarketingworld Info and secure your tickets today.