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Unbounce Review: What Does Unbounce Know About Landing Pages?

Landing pages can dramatically increase your marketing success online. Use landing pages correctly and they can make you a lot of money. If your selling or running any sort of campaign on the Internet and your not using a landing page to optimize your conversions (action you want the user to take) your losing money and leads. I have spent tens of thousands on advertising and lately I have been hooked on landing pages – the only problem is I have had to spend a lot of time and money working with developers to create my custom landing page solutions.

I recently came across a service that aims to ease my pain and help me be successful with my campaigns (this means more money folks)

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How to hire employees that fit your organization

How many of you that are responsible for hiring have selected a candidate based on their education, skill, and experience only to find out behaviorally, the hire is a terrible fit for the position?

I have done a lot of hiring as CEO of JellyBarn, Inc. and I can tell you that it is not an easy task. Finding the right fit for a position has been my achilles heel. I can tell you that I have made a lot of expensive mistakes when hiring. It wasn’t from a lack of education, skill, or experience on the new hires part, it was from a lack of the hires behavioral fit (or my lack of a better hiring process). The new hires just didn’t fit the position because their personality behaviors were different from the behaviors required. This can be the case when hiring for any position – developers, sales, marketing, exec staff, etc.

Most hiring is done based on three criteria, education, experience, and skill. I knew there had to be a better way. A systematic approach that would give more visibility into wether or not the candidate was a good fit behaviorally for the required role and not just a good hire based on education, experience, and skill. I needed a way to find out if the candidates would be a good fit for both the position and the company culture.

What I found after some detailed research was a behavioral test, called a DISC test. This test (see mine below) will give you a ton of information on the candidates behavioral traits and characteristics. This is indispensable information for hiring. For best results the DISC process is broken into three parts:

An RBA test (Role Behavior Analysis – this lets you define what you need in the required role)
A General characteristics test (this test allows you to profile the candidate)
The third step is a cross reference of the first two tests and spits out a report that allows you to see how well your candidate fits the defined role

This is also a great way to find those future young superstars that would have slipped through the cracks because they don’t have a resume with a lot of experience. I do want to note that this is not a silver bullet for hiring, but a systematic approach that can be incorporated into the hiring process to help reduce employee turnover.

There are two companies that offer DISC personality tests that I recommend looking at: (each with there own pros and cons)

Target-Teams - target-teams.com

Pros – Great detailed information, good for larger orgs
Cons – $400 per test

Epic DISC – intesiresources.com

Pros – $15-50 per test (cost effective), good information, supplement reports, good for start-ups
Cons – A little less detailed than target-teams

In Summary, if your firm is hiring (especially smaller firms) I highly recommend incorporating a fourth behavioral criteria into your hiring process.

Lets take a look at two tests so you can see the granular visibility that is included in a behavioral test. For me they have been spooky accurate. Recently all the executives at JellyBarn took the test to help us further understand our strengths and weaknesses and be even better as a cohesive/progressive/communicating team.

Thanks for viewing this post! Best of luck with all your hiring.

Devin Day Intesiprofile

Driving Revenue with Authentic Product Engagement

by Devin Day 4 Comments

The question that I want to address in this post is “how can a brand utilize the viral and entertainment aspects of social apps to achieve authentic product engagement that influences consumer purchase intent, rather than settling for surface-level brand engagement?”

Last year my company, Jellybarn, participated in Nike’s FY09 marketing event at the invitation of Avenue A | Razorfish (Great Agency – Be sure to check out Jeremy Lockhorn’s articles on Click Z. He’s spot on when it comes to social media). At the event, Mike Reeder, a brilliant Account Director at Razorfish, gave a presentation on brand marketing authenticity. It was this presentation that really prompted me to start thinking beyond surface-level marketing.

What does this authenticity look like? How does a brand connect with online consumers in a true, authentic fashion in which a dialog or relationship can grow? These questions are often hard to answer, and I think it is the reason that we as a social marketing community have not moved very far beyond surface-level brand engagement. We still tend to broadcast a brand’s inner-app messaging with a simple logo or an embedded banner ad within the application. In my view, social marketing apps will reach a tipping point by the end of 2009 and become not only a staple for brands, but one of the most important ways in which marketers ENGAGE and SELL products to consumers. But first we must become truly authentic!

Let’s look at a Jellybarn app that I feel is a first step on our journey beyond surface-level brand engagement and closer to authentic interaction with the brand’s actual products that engages and drives purchase intent. Screen shots of the app follow below.

The concept was a casual game for Nike designed to interact with customers, compel them to shop, and ultimately sell them shoes. The idea incorporated actual Nike products within the game, as well as a virtual shoe “micro-store” so that, after users interacted with the shoes authentically, they could shop for and even purchase the product. The user chose which pair they wanted their character to use. To encourage users to interact with multiple styles, we gave each shoe different abilities and incorporated many of the benefits from the real shoes into the game.

The result was that users interacted with both the brand and the product in a way that was not broadcast, pushy or “selly.” Users do not want to be “sold,” and with this approach they enjoyed engaging with the brand and product. With this type of authentic approach, users are more inclined and even eager to share the application via the social web. Assuming the application is a viral success and includes some simple XML capabilities, the product lineup can be continually updated throughout the application’s life cycle. Lastly, with the incorporation of the micro-store there are now thousands of purchase point locations across the web where users can keep the product on top-of-mind purchase intent.

One final point worth mentioning is that the apps themselves are simply the vehicles by which these authentic interactions happen. Making money is the goal of marketing, yet much of the industry still tends to look at social apps (from a brand standpoint) as a way to “engage” consumers and build brand recognition. I think it’s time we as an industry became more accountable (brands let’s make this a New Years resolution) to tapping the real power of social apps to actually make money for the brand rather than limiting ourselves to brand recognition. Social applications hold so much more opportunity for driving purchase intent through authentic interactions than we have yet to utilize.

How to persuade others through great usability!

by Devin Day Leave a Comment

The other day I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who is in the office suite next to me. I was suggesting to her that to connect with her customers she should create a blog and start sharing valuable and relevant information with them about her business niche (she has a brilliant niche).

One of the ways I told her she could get the word out on her blog was by sharing it with all the folks that came to her booth at the many trade shows she does each year. Her immediate response – “how should I best do that?”

To me this is a perfect example of usability. If she can efficiently collect email addresses and give them a simple handout that effectively communicates the benefits of going to her blog she will build a loyal audience base that will greatly increase her annual revenue streams.

Most people would approach this suggestion by handing out a flier with tons of other info on and the URL to the blog buried somewhere in flier. Not an effective approach to usability.

Usability (to me) means persuading others. By implementing some key fundamentals, usability becomes highly effective and efficient.

Whether your implementing usability in web design, presentations, fund raising or anything requiring action you have to effectively lead someone from point A to point B, and land them at the place where they are eager to follow your call to action.

Without core fundamentals and a standardized framework (process) to implement usability, you will not be very persuasive.

Let’s look at the core fundamentals of usability that I work with.

Keep it simple – people don’t like to think so keep it simple stupid (kiss).
Keep it focused – if you want people to get from point A to point B, DO NOT distract them with anything else till they have finished your call to action.
Create in your audience an eager want – how do you do this? Simple! See things from your audiences perspective and answer the question what is it THEY want? If you answer this and blend it with your proposition you will become very persuasive.
Ask for it – you won’t get anyone to take action if you don’t ask. In addition to asking, make sure your call to action is clear and in no way ambiguous. (Let’s put this into practice right now – for more tips like this sign up here to automatically receive my future blog posts by email)

These four points will ensure that the person has only two options - yes! or not at this time (to me a delayed yes).

Remember, great usability includes these core fundamentals. It does not matter what your doing - If you need to persuade someone you must have great usability.

Let’s have a look at an article on web interface usability from a site that I love to read (smashing magazine). Keep an eye on their examples and how through good usability the user is lead from the proposition to the call to action. Click here for the article.

Now go and persuade the world through greater usability!

Did you like this post? Please click the TWEET button at the top of this post and SIGN-UP below to automatically receive my future blog posts by email.

Thanks for stopping by! ~ Devin Day

Does your company have a social traffic strategy?

by Devin Day 3 Comments

Having a social traffic strategy is key to building continual awareness in your target market. What is your strategy? If you don’t have one documented that is easily communicated to your staff I encourage you do so.

Let’s look at the social traffic framework we have been working on at JellyBarn can be seen in the flow screenshot below.

We had a few goals when creating this strategy framework:

Provide a steady flow of traffic to our website and blog.
Help us build our brand as market experts and leaders.
Create a process framework that is simple and continually repeatable.
Allow a process that can be delegated and operated by any employee.
Create a foundation that can be continually quantified and improved.

Lets take a look below in a little more detail what the process looks like…

traffic-strategy-flow

This is our website and blog where we create valuable content that is relevant to our target audience.
We are working on a knowledge base that is designed for industry experts and leaders to discuss, share and innovate all ideas relating to social media marketing. (this could be done through a social network software or even a linkedin group. We are preparing to launch our knowledge group at SocialCampfire.com)
We create original content specifically for guest posts on popular blogs that are related to our market focus.
To simplify the process of distributing our content we utilize a syndication service like ping.fm.
The syndication flow is designed to keep traffic from our content flowing back to our website and blog.
Our guest posting is to drive traffic back our website and blog as well as establish market credibility.

Having a strategy is key to building continual awareness in your target market. What is your strategy? If you don’t have one documented that is easily communicated to your staff I encourage you do so.

There are a lot of strategies out there. Don’t forget to comment and share your thoughts, ideas, and what your working on. Please also share your thoughts on how we might improve our strategy.

If you liked this post please click the TWEET button at the top of this post and don’t forget to SIGN-UP to receive future blog posts.

Thanks for stopping by! ~ Devin Day

How to achieve your business plan

by Devin Day 5 Comments

Image of a man holding money

Have you ever wondered where you are with achieving your business plan?

Having a plan (desired outcomes with documented strategies, goals, and tasks) and working that plan is in my opinion the cornerstone of a building a good company. The problem is a “good” plan is often the most overlooked area in a new business. To many Entrepreneurs think a ton of words on a paper satisfies the task of creating a business plan. The plan usually ends up a lengthy (and boring) word document that no one wants to read and ends up lost and buried in a filing cabinet.

Unless your raising money or communicating to your BOD (board of directors) you should not need to a huge document anyway. What you need is a clear internal strategy plan that covers the basic three elements of a business model.

Value Proposition (Great idea that will help our clients more affordably and effectively do a job they are trying to get done.)
Profit Formula (A formula that allows you to keep costs minimal and margins at a maximum)
Business Systems (Standardization for the our habitual ways of getting things done)

The simplest way to get your business plan started is this:

Summarize in a few paragraphs the overall concept and identify your desired outcome.
Write a series of strategies for each basic category and keep it simple – a short overview paragraph followed by bullet points is perfect. Your general strategy categories are – Sales, Marketing, Operations, Business processes, Staffing, Funding, Target market, etc. (for more on business processes view my post here)
For each strategy category write out the goals needed to achieve each strategy and then write out the tasks needed to achieve each goal.

Let’s recap – you have identified your desired outcome (where you want to be financially in a desired amount of time), and created strategies to achieve that desired outcome and you have your list of your goals and tasks to achieve your strategies. What your left with in it’s simplest form is a checklist of action items to achieve your business plan.

(NOTE: There will always be continual planning and prioritizing as you chew through your list. Be sure you stay on top of prioritization because not knowing where your at at any given moment will breed procrastination.)

A final recommendation is to find an SAAS (software as a service) platform to manage all your action items and strategies in your business plan. This will allow you to share/delegate tasks with other team members. Keep track of who’s where and doing what and it will keep everyone in sync. I use (and highly recommend) a service called PlanHQ

planHQ is structured for the very format that I have outlined above and is so easy to use. It’s quite powerful and has allowed our business plan to be a living breathing entity that again keeps the team in sync. Your plan for world domination will quickly take hold if you can document your plan, communicate your plan and execute your plan. Now go and achieve your business plan!

Photo of planhq.com dashboard