Monthly Archives: December 2019

How Mobile Has Impacted the Customer Journey

How Mobile Has Impacted the Customer Journey written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

The customer journey is influenced by many outside factors. As the use of mobile devices has taken off over the past decade, it’s changed the way that businesses market themselves and how customers interact with businesses.

In order to better understand the impact mobile has had on the customer journey, it’s helpful to go through and assess the effect at each stage of the marketing hourglass. By better understanding how mobile changes customers’ behaviors, you can begin to adapt your marketing strategy to meet their evolving needs.

Mobile in the First Stage: Know

How do people discover a new business? Before the days of computers, it was all print and television ads, word of mouth, or simply driving by your storefront. Now, there are dozens of channels for people to encounter your brand. And mobile only further diversifies the field.

In some ways, mobile has shortened the customer journey. Mobile searches with the phrase “near me” and “can I buy” or “to buy” increased by 500 percent between 2015 and 2017. That boost means people are turning to mobile to discover immediate solutions to their problems. By entering this search term, they’re able to quickly check out your website, read reviews, and even find your hours and location on a map. What would have taken more in-depth research in the past is now condensed into a few minutes and a handful of clicks on a mobile device.

It’s also important to remember that not everyone finds you via an internet browser search. With the advent and rise of mobile apps, some people are discovering businesses through a specific app. For example, those who search for local businesses on the Yelp app are only being presented with businesses who have a presence on Yelp. If you haven’t claimed your profile there, you’re not going to be discovered at all. So making sure your business’s profile is claimed on the major local listings sites, like Yelp and Google My Business, is critical to winning at mobile.

For that same reason, you need to have a presence on social media. Some people turn to Facebook or Instagram for advice on which local businesses to patronize. Again, you’re not even going to be in the running if you don’t have a profile on those sites!

How Mobile Influences the Like and Trust Phases

Once someone’s discovered you online, they want to get to know you better. And to do that, they need to be able to learn more about you. Just like you wouldn’t get married after the first date, prospects want to make sure you’re the right fit before they dive in.

You want your content to build that familiarity and trust, while being easy to consume on a mobile device. That starts with creating content that can be enjoyed on the go. Podcasts are an easy listen for folks who are on their commute, and video is often a bite-sized way to share meaningful information that builds trust and authority.

Social media is also critical in this stage. Posting regularly on social media means that those who discover you on mobile can do a quick inventory of who you are and what you do by scanning backwards through your recent content.

For those who aren’t looking to make an immediate purchase, social media remains a great way to stay top-of-mind on mobile devices. People often check their social media accounts multiple times a day, and so if you’re appearing at the top of their newsfeeds each time they log in, you build that familiarity quickly.

Advertising can also help you stay top of mind. Social ads are a way to remain omnipresent on prospects’ feeds. And display ads allow you to keep you name on people’s minds even when they visit other websites from their phone’s browser.

How to Try on Mobile

When we get to the try phase of the customer journey, mobile has an important role in ensuring that customers don’t slip away at this critical stage.

Mobile tactics can help to facilitate the try process by making it easy to prospects to sign up for a demo or appointment. A smart use of chat or SMS marketing techniques can make it easy for you to automate the sign-up process, while providing prospects with a more personalized encounter with your business.

Newer technologies like augmented reality (AR) are changing the way people try on their phones. Take furniture store IKEA as an example. They built an app that allows prospects to try out a piece of furniture in their home through the power of AR. Prospects can point their phone at an empty corner of their room, select the sofa, chair, or lamp that they’re considering, and see on their screen what the item would look like in their home.

While AR technology might not be readily accessible to all small businesses yet, it’s definitely a trend to watch, as more and more retailers incorporate it into their marketing strategy.

Mobile Makes it Easy to Buy

A recent survey found that 79 percent of smartphone users had made a purchase on their phone within the past six months. So not only are folks using their mobile devices for research, they’re actually doing transactions on their phones.

For any small business with an e-commerce component, it’s critical that you make it easy for people to purchase via mobile. This is all about creating a customer experience with the least amount of friction in the buying process. Make it easy for people to navigate to their cart. Don’t ask for lots of additional information in the checkout process–only collect information necessary to process the transaction.

After the initial purchase has been made, great mobile UX can also help facilitate the onboarding process. If you’re an e-commerce brand, provide updates on shipping status, and make sure that customers can easily track their packages.

No matter what kind of business you’re in, there is content that you can create in a mobile-friendly format to make it easier for new customers to get the most out of their new purchases. Put together an email series with responsive design (so it looks great on any screen, big or small!) that outlines special tips and tricks for using the new product or service.

Use Mobile to Inspire Repeat Purchases

Once you’ve gotten a prospect to convert to customer, there’s still work to do! And pushing existing customers towards a repeat purchase can be achieved with some mobile-friendly tactics.

Retargeting is a great way to bring existing customers back into the fold. You can advertise on social media or via display ads, and direct certain content towards those who have already bought from you. If someone recently made a purchase, you can target them with advertising for a related product or service in order to encourage an upsell. If a customer has drifted away over the past few months, you can show them ads welcoming them back with a special offer for return customers.

Building out a rewards program is another way to engender loyalty amongst existing customers. This can be done either through your website (which should be mobile-friendly!) or with an app specifically for your business. The additional benefit of creating an app is that you eliminate the competition. Your existing customers come directly to you via the app to make a purchase, rather than going onto the web to search for your solutions and run the risk of getting drawn in by one of your competitors with a smart SEO or paid search strategy.

Mobile and Referrals

The final stage of the customer journey is getting your customers to refer others. As I mentioned in the earlier phases, reviews are a key part of the referral process, and that’s particularly true on mobile. People who are searching for solutions on the go will turn to reviews in lieu of asking friends or family for recommendations. That’s why it’s important to make sure you’re doing the work to solicit reviews from your customers.

You can also consider creating a referral program. If you have a mobile app for your business, creating a program directly through the app is a great, easy way to help your mobile-minded customers refer their friends.

Finally, social media can help you generate referrals. Share user-generated content that sings your brands praises. Create contests and opportunities for your existing fans on social to give your brand a shout-out to their friends. Get influencers to try your product and vouch for you to their followers. A referral from a real friend or trusted influencer on social can go a long way in winning over new customers.

Mobile marketing has changed the way consumers buy, and so businesses have had to adjust their marketing accordingly. By considering how to get the most out of mobile at each stage of the customer journey, you can position yourself to reach the majority of consumers, who have become more and more focused on mobile over the years.

The Top 10 Duct Tape Marketing Podcast Episodes for 2019

The Top 10 Duct Tape Marketing Podcast Episodes for 2019 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

2019 was another great year on the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. I chatted with some incredible guests, I did some solo shows where I could share a bit about the Duct Tape Marketing philosophy, and I got to share excerpts from my latest book, The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur, which was released in October.

In honor of an incredible year, I wanted to take a look back at the most popular episodes we aired in 2019.

If you enjoyed what you heard here, check out the full line-up of shows. We’ll be back the first full week in January with all new episodes and guests.

Pamela Wilson – Getting the Most Out of Your Content

Pamela Wilson is the founder of BIG Brand System and the author of Master Content Strategy: How to Maximize Your Reach and Boost Your Bottom Line Every Time You Hit Publish. She is an expert in creating the kind of content that grabs your audiences’ attention and can help you grow your business through the four distinct phases of growth.

Biggest takeaway: You’ll learn about the Lifecycle Approach to content management and creation, which acknowledges that your website will have different content needs at different points in the life of your business.

Click here to listen to the episode.

Solo Show – The Benefits of Including Video on Your Website

Video has become a critical element in marketing strategy. People want to watch video content, and companies are investing in creating videos for their brand. If you haven’t done it already, now is the time for you to incorporate video into your website.

Biggest takeaway: We’ll cover the four types of video content you should include on your website. Plus I’ll share practical, technical tips for video content creation, from how to manage lighting and camera work to where to turn for editing help.

Click here to listen to the episode.

Solo Show – Model for Marketing Maturity, Stage One: Build

Digital marketing provides business owners with dozens of channels through which to reach their audience. From paid ads to social media to SMS marketing to SEO, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the options out there. By starting with a solid foundation and a focus on only a handful of the tactics available, you can get those going strong and then expand to more tactics.

Biggest takeaway: We’ll walk through the five elements that go into the build stage of your marketing maturity model, from the creation of your marketing website with SEO and a strong content program, to social media and email marketing. Plus, you can follow the links in this podcast post to catch the episodes on the other two marketing maturity stages, grow and ignite.

Click here to listen to the episode.

Solo Show – Why Your Marketing Must Be Led By Strategy First

One of the main tenets of the Duct Tape Marketing approach to marketing is that your efforts must be led by strategy first. If you’re creating content without a guiding strategy, you’re spinning your wheels. These are the steps you must take to build a solid strategic base for your marketing tactics.

Biggest takeaway: You’ll learn why the first step in developing a solid marketing strategy is identifying your ideal customer, and I’ll give you tips on how to find them.

Click here to listen to the episode.

Jason Kander – Becoming a Great Leader, No Matter What Field You’re In

Jason Kander

Jason Kander served in the U.S. military as an Army Captain before transitioning into politics. He was elected to the Missouri House in 2008 and became the Missouri Secretary of State in 2009. He is also the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Outside the Wire: Ten Lessons I’ve Learned in Everyday Courage.

Biggest takeaway: You’ll hear a handful of lessons from Kander’s book – lessons that are takeaways from his time in the military. And while the stories come from Army life, they’re applicable to anyone in a position of leadership.

Click here to listen to the episode.

Matt Scanlon – Managing an Expanding Business, With Your Mission Guiding the Way

Matt Scanlon is a fellow Kansas City business owner. He runs The Hill KC, which began as a local CrossFit gym and has expanded to offer corporate wellness products and services to folks in the community who have disabilities or need help getting access to wellness services.

Biggest takeaway: You’ll hear from an entrepreneur who’s going through the tricky but exciting work of growing his business. Scanlon shares some of the struggles he’s come up against with respect to branding and bridging the gap between the different audiences he’s expanding to serve.

Click here to listen to the episode.

Paul Jarvis – Finding Success and Happiness as a Company of One

Paul Jarvis is a writer and designer who runs his own business and counts among his clients giants like Mercedes Benz, Microsoft, and Shaquille O’Neal. He discusses how to approach the big questions about how to grow your business so that you can build something sustainable that continues to bring you joy.

Biggest takeaway: When you decide it doesn’t make sense to scale, what do you do next? Paul Jarvis is happy as a company of one, and he shares tips for finding your own path as a solopreneur.

Click here to listen to the episode.

Jill Nelson – Growing Your Business While Growing as an Entrepreneur

Jill Nelson is the founder and CEO of Ruby Receptionists. The company provides virtual receptionist services across the U.S., and it regularly lands on “best of” lists as an employer and a service provider.

Biggest takeaway: When you found a company, your role as a leader doesn’t remain stagnant. It grows and changes as your business does the same. Nelson shares her own experience in scaling her business in the episode.

Click here to listen to the episode.

Neen James – The Benefits of Giving Intentional Attention

Neen James is an author, keynote speaker, and leadership expert. She believes that the key to building strong relationships with teammates and customers alike is being intentional in the way you give attention. She is the author of Attention Pays: How to Drive Profitability, Productivity, and Accountability.

Biggest takeaway: When you’re not paying attention, it can cause big problems in your business. Customers and good employees who feel overlooked go elsewhere. James shares why it’s important to give intentional attention to the people who matter most to your company.

Click here to listen to the episode.

James Fell – Setting the Stage for a Moment of Awakening

James Fell

James Fell is a health expert and the author of several books, including The Holy Sh!t Moment: How Lasting Change Can Happen in an Instant. As a college student, Fell was overweight, floundering in school, and struggling with money. A moment of sudden awakening changed the course of his life. And he wants to help you find your life-changing epiphany, too.

Biggest takeaway: Even if you’re in a bad spot in your life, you won’t necessarily be motivated to change. Fell walks us through the psychological principles at work that lead us to those epiphanies that can change the course of our lives.

Click here to listen to the episode.

Is your favorite episode on the list? If not, we’d love to hear which one you enjoyed listening to the most!

For our podcast audience, we can’t thank you enough for your support over the years! If you like the show, click on over and subscribe and if you love the show give us a review on iTunes, please!

Weekend Favs December 28

Weekend Favs December 28 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.

I don’t go into depth about the finds, but encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one that I took out there on the road.

  • Mailmeteor – Use this Gmail add-on to send personalized emails with this mail merge program.
  • EasyLetter – Create properly-formatted letters with templates for business and personal use.
  • Voice In – Use talk-to-text technology on any website.

These are my weekend favs, I would love to hear about some of yours – Tweet me @ducttape

Conversations with Phil Gerbyshak – The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

Conversations with Phil Gerbyshak – The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

John Jantsch discusses his latest book, The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur, on Conversations with Phil Gerbyshak.

The book is designed as a daily guide for entrepreneurs who are seeking guidance and meaning while on their entrepreneurial journey. Filled with 366 meditations and quotes from transcendentalist authors of the 19th Century, Jantsch closes each entry with a challenge question for readers to ponder that day.

To learn more about the book, Jantsch’s background, and more, check out the episode.

Listen: John Jantsch on Conversations with Phil Gerbyshak

Important KPIs for Each Phase of the Customer Journey

Important KPIs for Each Phase of the Customer Journey written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

The customer journey is often a long and winding road. And that means it can be difficult to track your business’s effectiveness at each phase of the journey. The easiest way to gain greater clarity around your customer journey, and to identify strong points and weak spots, is to pinpoint and evaluate key performance indicators (KPIs) for each phase of the journey.

Once you find the metrics that can help you understand your business’s effectiveness in guiding the journey at each stage, you can begin to make changes to your existing approach. You can find ways to lean into the tactics that are working and eliminate the less effective elements of your strategy.

Because the journey changes so much over time, there are different KPIs to consider at each phase. Let me walk you through the most important KPIs to focus on for each stage of the customer journey.

Know, Like, and Trust

At the top of your marketing hourglass are the know, like, and trust phases of the customer journey. This is where customers first discover your business and then come to understand what you do.

The first thing you’ll want to know at this part of the journey is how many people are actually discovering your business online. To measure this, you can turn to metrics on organic and paid search campaigns.

A tool like Google Search Console allows you to understand how your keywords are performing. You can see search traffic and reach. You can track which queries are actually bringing visitors to your website. When you understand these SEO metrics, you can revisit your keyword research and make tweaks to boost your SEO.

Tracking paid search results is also critical in this stage. Understanding metrics on your ad campaigns like the quality score (which measures the relevance of your keywords) and clickthrough rate give you a deeper understanding of how many people are seeing your ads, and whether or not your copy is compelling enough to get viewers to click your link.

Once you move into the like phase, you begin to evaluate metrics that cover engagement on your website and social media. It’s important to track the number of visitors you have to your website. Are they all first-timers, or do you have return visitors? How many times do people generally visit your site before they move onto the conversion phase of the marketing hourglass? All of this information can help you understand potential bottlenecks in the know, like, and trust portion of the hourglass.

Social media engagement metrics also give you insight into the like and trust phases. How many people are following your accounts? Are you steadily growing your audience? And beyond just the number of followers, are those who follow your account interacting with your content? Are people liking, commenting, and responding to your follow-ups? More engaged followers on social indicates that the content you’re sharing is helpful and meaningful to your audience. You’re doing the work of truly earning their trust.

Try and Buy

Once you’ve won prospects over initially, they move closer towards the ultimate conversion goal: making a purchase. But before they hand over their credit card information, they want the opportunity to try what your business offers. They need that final assurance that everything will go smoothly if they decide to buy.

When it comes to the try phase, you want to measure metrics that clearly showcase the gap between people who were in those early marketing hourglass phases and those who’ve made it to this next level. Tracking site visits versus conversions by source is a great way to visualize this gap.

Is there a certain channel that drives more traffic to your site than others? Maybe you see most of your traffic coming from your Instagram profile. The content you’re creating there is meaningful enough to vault those followers up to the try and buy phase. From there, you also want to measure conversions by channel.

Let’s say that only a tiny sliver of those Instagram followers actually convert once they visit your site. But a larger number of folks coming through your newsletter—a less-popular channel overall—take the next step with your business. That gives you some insight into the effectiveness of the messaging on your newsletter versus your Instagram. While the Instagram content attracts more positive attention, it somehow doesn’t sync up with what visitors find on your website (hence the high number of visits but low conversion). Your newsletter, on the other hand, isn’t as compelling, but provides a clearer picture of the work you do.

Measuring Call to Action button and landing page performance can also provide valuable information at this stage. Are people actually clicking on your CTAs, be they on your website, in your social ads, or in your newsletter? And once they’ve clicked the CTA and landed on your website, are they filling out the form they find there to take the next step to try or buy—whether that’s requesting a demo to give you a try or making a first purchase?

Repeat and Refer

The final phase in the hourglass takes you beyond the initial purchase and into the realm of your long-term relationship with customers. Do your customers like you enough to return to you for additional purchases? And beyond even that, would they refer you to a friend?

There are a handful of KPIs that can help provide clarity around those questions. Retention rate is one of them: How many of your customers are sticking around come renewal time? If you run a gym, do you see people renewing their memberships month after month? Or is there a big drop-off at some point in the cycle?

If you see a pattern in your retention rate, why is that? For the gym that sees a big drop-off in March, as those New Year’s Resolution folks begin to drift away from working out, can you provide an incentive then to get them to stay on? It doesn’t even need to be monetary; maybe it’s a class with a popular instructor called “Maintain Your Resolutions Through the Spring.” And those who signed up for gym membership in December or January are given first dibs on spots.

Reviews can also help you identify issues in your customer journey. Do you keep seeing positive feedback on your customer service team? That means you’ve created an empowered team who’s willing and able to go the extra mile for your customers (a great way to boost retention). But at the same time, do you see a common complaint that leads customers to turn to your customer service team in the first place? If so, take steps to remedy that issue that multiple customers have identified in reviews.

And finally, there’s the Net Promoter Score, or NPS. If you’ve ever taken a survey for a business, you’ve likely encountered the NPS question: “How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?”

People who respond with a nine or 10 are known as promoters—loyal fans of your business. Folks in the seven to eight range are in a bit of a no-man’s land; they’re considered passive. While they’re happy enough with you, they could just as easily go with a competitor, if the right offer came along. Anyone ranking you a six or below are considered detractors. They’re unhappy with you and could do damage to your business with negative word-of-mouth.

Understanding how many of your customers are enthusiastic supporters versus how many could take you or leave you (or worse, bad-mouth you to a friend), helps you gain clarity around the final steps of the customer journey. With detractors, you did everything early on in the hourglass well enough to get them to buy from you. But something went awry in the last few steps, and now they’re unhappy enough to tell others about their negative experience. That’s valuable information! From there, you can assess things like your onboarding process for new clients and take a closer look at your customer service approach to identify weak spots.

When it comes to getting a better understanding of your customer journey, it’s not enough to rely on your gut. The journey is complex. The best way to understand it is with cold, hard data. By tracking specific KPIs for each phase of the customer journey, you can identify the strengths and weaknesses in your strategy, and make tweaks accordingly to better facilitate a smooth journey for your customers.

Small Business Marketing Insights for 2020

Small Business Marketing Insights for 2020 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with John Jantsch on 2020 Small Business Marketing Insights

I wanted to close out the year with a solo show looking ahead to the next one; let’s talk small business marketing insights for 2020.

While there have been some big trends in the world of marketing—things like AI—getting a lot of buzz, I’m not here to talk about those. Trends like that are often not relevant to small business owners. Instead, I want to cover what I think are the insights for 2020 to give you some things to think about, that can actually add to what may be your long list of planning elements.

Insight 1: Audio Content Will Prevail

I think audio content is going to be something that people need to really embrace for 2020. If you’re not podcasting already, now is the time to start. It’s a great way to produce content. It’s also a great way to open up lines of communication with people you want to speak with, whether those are authors and influencers or folks in your target market or even your very own customers.

So podcasting is a great way to build relationships. But beyond that, the format appeals to the needs and sensibilities of a modern audience. People have less time and attention to sit in front of a monitor and read content. I certainly know I’m that way! Same with video. I have a lot of trouble sitting in front of a monitor and devoting time to a video when I could be doing other things.

Audio content, on the other hand, is totally portable. I can download a podcast, stick my phone in my pocket and go for a walk. I can turn it on in the car and listen during my commute. I can walk the dog, I can go for a run. The portability of the format makes it incredibly easy for even the busiest of people to consume the content at some point during their day.

So, if you are not producing audio content, I’m going to encourage you to do so. And there are a number of ways to get started. If you have videos you’ve already produced, you can strip out the audio from those videos and run it in another format. You can use audio to talk about your business, then get the audio transcribed and use that on webpages as written content.

And you can create a non-traditional podcast. It doesn’t have to be all guest interviews. You can occasionally do a rant (like this one I’ve done on marketing insights!) to get results.

Getting started with audio now isn’t just about getting immediate results—it’s also about the long game. I see smart speakers eventually playing a bigger role in the way people consume more of their daily content. So “Alexa: play my flash briefing,” might deliver a daily recap of audio content. While I think this is a ways off, it’s never to early to get prepared for a shift like that!

Insight 2: Take Your Marketing In House

As a marketing consultant and person who trains marketing consultants, I think more small businesses should bring things in house. And there’s two areas in particular that should be outsourced less: marketing tactics and technology.

In the case of both of those areas of focus, it’s not an either-or proposition. You hire a marketing person to handle routine things that include both sides of that coin, from writing content to doing social posts to getting reviews to making Instagram posts. Those are all things that I think you should have an internal resource to do, but the secret ingredient is to marry that with a strategic marketing partner.

A lot of times, small businesses will hire a marketing person who knows how to manage social media, but isn’t given any broader direction when it comes to marketing strategy. (And that’s because there often isn’t a bigger strategy.)

That’s where a marketing consultant or advisor comes in. They can help you with the strategic component, the plan, the operations of the plan, the analysis of results, and make sure that you remain on track in working towards your big goals. Meanwhile, the internal person who knows the intricacies of the business can be directed to execute on this plan and craft messages that align with your strategy. That way, you get the best of both worlds.

In fact, I think this is going to be so critical in 2020 that we’re creating a certified marketing manager program, where we’ll train small business marketing staff on how to hire internal people and have that person directed by an outside resource, like a Duct Tape Marketing Consultant.

Insight 3: Humanize and Automate

Remember how back in the day, every deal was done with a handshake with a trusted partner you could look in the eye? Then technology came along, and suddenly you could do business without ever actually speaking with another human being. Now, it seems the pendulum is starting to swing back the other way, and we’re finding a happy medium.

So this insight sort of seems counterintuitive, but I’m saying you need to both humanize and automate. It comes down to finding the right balance. Both customers and business owners want things to be convenient and efficient—which is where automation comes in—but they also want that human touch.

There’s a tremendous amount of research being done around what makes someone love a company. And in many cases it’s things like convenience, knowledge, communication, efficiency, friendliness—all human traits. But a lot of the reasons a company is convenient and efficient are now aided by technology.

So I think that we need to get to the point where we are automating everything that can and should be automated and we are humanizing or re-humanizing everything else. My insight for 2020 in terms of a recommendation in this case, is get back on the phone. Let your phone ring, answer your phone, call people, that is one of the easiest ways I think to re-humanize our businesses. I’ve certainly been guilty of the opposite, and I look forward to picking up the phone more this year.

Insight 4: Focus on Customer Experience

Customer experience and retention is the golden opportunity for every single business.

PwC did extensive research into why customers stay loyal. They found that very few reasons had anything to do with the actual product or service. For the most part, it was all about customer experience—things like convenience, knowledgeable communication, efficiency, and a friendly staff.

So, how can we look at this in our marketing? You’ve probably heard me talk about the marketing hourglass, where we get people to know trust, try, and buy. But then we think marketing ends at the repeat and refer stages.

In reality, though, all seven stages must come together under the marketing umbrella. Everything from building knowledgeable, efficient communication to reporting results and providing friendly interactions for customers all go hand-in-hand.

I think we as marketers ought to spend at least half our time on creating a better customer experience and then you can spend the other half on generating more leads and converting more leads.

Insight 5: Paid Search Matters More Than Ever

Paid search—Google ads, Facebook advertising, LinkedIn, all the banner ads—have been around forever. So it’s not their existence that’s a new insight. In fact, certain types of businesses, like e-commerce brands, have used paid search to dramatically grow their businesses. But we’ve now entered and era where the small local business of any stripe must embrace paid search. Increasingly, Google is where people turn to find any and every piece of information about a business. Even if they’re already a customer!

An interesting anecdote for you: I did a search the other day for a plumber in Kansas City. And the first real result, meaning an actual business that wasn’t either an ad or an aggregator like Angie’s List or Home Advisor, showed up on page two. So, pay to play is definitely here. Making paid search a real, significant part of your overall marketing plan is no longer optional.

My first bit of advice on that front is to make sure you’re involved in the paid search process and are doing it in a smart way. Do your research about what paid search actually entails. You don’t have to do it for yourself, but you need a baseline knowledge to know you’re not getting scammed.

I see so many small business owners that work with pay per click firms that basically set up templated campaigns and forget them and don’t communicate and just say, “Oh, you got 27 clicks this week”. Well what does that mean? It means I spent X amount of money, that’s all you can tell me. It’s not about how many clicks you got, it’s about how many customers you won.

My next piece of wisdom is the use paid search to capture people with the highest purchase intent. There’s a lot of categories of business where paid searchers converted two to one over people that just went out and had a long tail search and found your blog post.

I’m not saying abandon everything else. In fact, never abandoned your website, SEO, or content. But you want to supplement it with paid search to get that high intent stuff. Maybe there’s categories where you’re having trouble getting your content to rank. Maybe there are certain really competitive search terms like an emergency service for something that you know if somebody finds your ad they’re going to buy it, because they’re trying to fix something.

I believe that the local service ads are going to only get bigger as a category. Eventually, you’re going to find accountants, lawyers, and more in those service ads because Google is making more money on those ads than anywhere else. And, consequently, the ads are going to take up more real estate on the results pages.

One final note on paid search: if you set your campaigns up correctly and are checking in on reports regularly, you come to understand that you’re not really bidding on keywords. You’re bidding on search terms: what someone puts into a search term to make your name pop up.

Once you begin thinking of things in those terms and use analytics to track your results, then you can build a complete roadmap for your marketing plan. When you understand the tactics that are working, and how people are moving throughout their customer journey from start to finish, then you can tailor your content further to encourage others to take that same path to conversion.

Those are my five insights for 2020. I hope you get out there and make moves to implement some of the tactics around these insights, because I really do believe they can make a huge difference in your marketing.

To help you in your marketing efforts, I wanted to announce that—while I don’t have a release date yet—you should keep your eyes peeled for a significantly revised edition of Duct Tape Marketing, the original book. Also, we’re creating a certified marketing manager program, which should be launching at the end of Q1 2020. The program will allow business owners to provide personal development and training to their team. You’ll have your own private coach or consultant, and they won’t just go through the plan, but will also apply the plan to your business.

So keep an eye out for all that and more in 2020. Take care and have a great rest of your 2019. See you in the New Year!

Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on iTunes, please!

This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by SEMrush.

SEMrush is our go-to SEO tool for everything from tracking position and ranking to doing audits to getting new ideas for generating organic traffic. They have all the important tools you need for paid traffic, social media, PR, and SEO. Check it out at SEMrush.com/partner/ducttapemarketing.

Weekend Favs December 21

Weekend Favs December 21 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.

I don’t go into depth about the finds, but encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one that I took out there on the road.

  • Tribute – Create a meaningful video montage for any special occasion.
  • SquadCast – Easily capture guest audio for podcasts remotely.
  • SurveySparrow – Craft engaging customers surveys and track data and results.

These are my weekend favs, I would love to hear about some of yours – Tweet me @ducttape

Why Page Speed Matters on Your Website

Why Page Speed Matters on Your Website written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Lukas Haensch
Podcast Transcript

Today’s guest on the podcast is Lukas Haensch. He is a former Google UX manager and the founder of Pathmonk.

While at Google, Haensch focused on page speed. Page speed might not even be on some business owners’ radar screens, but the speed with which your website loads can have a huge impact on your conversions and sales.

Haensch draws a parallel between brick-and-mortar and online businesses: If the sliding door to your physical store were so slow to open that people gave up and turned around, you’d do something about it, right?

You need to think about page speed in the same way. A slow-loading page can be driving away potential customers before you can even show them information about your business.

On this episode, we discuss page speed in great detail, and Haensch also shares about his new business, Pathmonk, which uses the power of AI to target audiences with SmartCards that are designed to qualify and convert even more leads.

Questions I ask Lukas Haensch:

  • How do we measure what our page speed is?
  • What are some of the biggest culprits that slow sites down?
  • Where do you find the right resource to help you fix these issues?

What you’ll learn if you give a listen:

  • Why we need to care about page speed.
  • The role that hosting plays in website load speed.
  • When and where we should use AMP sites.

Key takeaways from the episode and more about Lukas Haensch:

Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on iTunes, please!

This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Pixelz. Pixelz is the product image editing service powering e-commerce. Retouching is often a slow, expensive time-suck, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

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To learn more, go to Pixelz.com.

Transcript of Why Page Speed Matters on Your Website

Transcript of Why Page Speed Matters on Your Website written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Back to Podcast

Transcript

John Jantsch: This episode is a Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, and is brought to you by pixelz.com. You’ve got to make those images look great. If you want them to pop, if you want them to represent your products, this is a retouching service to make your images look great.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Lukas Haensch. He is a former Google UX manager and founder of Pathmonk at pathmonk.com.

John Jantsch: And we’re going to talk about page speed, website load speed, all UX factors. If people have go to your website and it loads very slowly, that’s a bad experience and that’s why it’s such an important factor. In fact, it’s such an important factor that Google is, outwardly calling it a ranking factor for SEO purposes. So Lukas, thanks for joining me.

Lukas Haensch: Thank you John. Thanks for having me.

John Jantsch: So how does a person, I mean, again, a lot of times people talk about page speed and there’s so many factors that come into play. Somebody could have a great website that loads fast, but somebody is on a slow, like I used to say dial up. We don’t say dial up anymore, do we? But slow connection. And so they’re having a bad experience. I mean, how do we know where we stand? I mean, how do we measure, what our page speed is?

Lukas Haensch: Very, very glad you asked. So I think maybe first and foremost, I think one key concept to have in mind is, why do we even care about page speed? Just very, very briefly, why do we even care about this? If you compare this to your retail store, maybe it’s very, very nice analogies to compare it to your sliding door in your retail store. If this is opening super, super, super slow, how many people would wait to actually go through?

Lukas Haensch: Just keeping that sort of analogy in the back of your mind, once you’re going through all of this, today. So page feed is basically your door opener to your user. There was tons of metrics there and I know there’s a lot of marketeers listening. So I will basically give you one metric, that we used within Google while we were working with Google’s biggest clients, and that is the speed index. So there’s tons of metrics that you could have, load time, first bites being loaded, when does it start to render?

Lukas Haensch: But if you look at the speed index, and I will tell you in a second how you get it, but if you look at the speed index, what you will actually measure is how long does it take until that first screen, the above the fold content, how long does it take until this is fully painted, which means in turn, a user has a meaningful experience of your website? So, that’s what we really, really focused on within Google in our team to optimize for that first above the fold rendering.

Lukas Haensch: And, all the other actions will go from there, because the call to action is there already, a hero image will be there already, and then, everything else unfolds from there. So speed index is something that you can, very easily get. There is a tool called webpagetest.org. It’s actually built from in Google. It’s not an official Google tool in that sense, but it’s built from the team within Google, to look at page speeds websites.

Lukas Haensch: And if you put in your URL in there and you will get a metric called page speed index and it will tell you something like 3000 or 4,000, and that’s basically milliseconds. So if you have a page speed index of 3000, you’re above the fold. Content will fully be loaded after three seconds. So that is one really good thing to sort of, put the attention on.

John Jantsch: So repeat that again, webpagetest.org?

Lukas Haensch: Correct. Webpagetest.org is like a dark blue website where you can put a couple of parameters, you can pick the network, which is really important to pick. You have to pick something that makes a lot of sense for your user base. Not everybody is on 5G and not even everybody is on 4G. It might be funny to hear, but when we were doing this about like two years ago, one and a half years ago within Google, we were actually, we were testing on 3G fast still because such a large user base actually is on slower and lower end devices. So testing in your offices’ wifi, is probably not the best thing to do.

John Jantsch: Where do you find or what did you find were some of the biggest culprits, I mean, that slow sites down?

Lukas Haensch: And this ties exactly into this concept that we just said before. We’re looking at the above the fold content rendering and there’s just one very high level. There’s one key concept out there that’s called the critical rendering path, which means the browser has to go through a lot of resources before it even can start showing anything on the screen. So if you have a lot of white space before your website is showing anything, then you’re usually blocking the critical rendering path.

Lukas Haensch: You will see that actually visually if you go to webpagetest.org, you will be able to see exactly because it’s basically a slowed down version of how your page is loading. You will see in second one, we have a white screen, in second 1.5 we have a white screen and so on and so forth and until you actually show the first content. So the biggest things that affect, these are, is everything that is blocking the rendering because if you’re blocking the rendering, you have a wide page and that usually is a couple of things.

Lukas Haensch: By default, this is going to be always going to be because it’s simply just render blocking. It’s your CSS and your JavaScript in your page. Without going into too detail. But, whenever you have something that has a lot of Java script in it and that can be a video player, it can be a carousel that where you have some flipping marketing messages on the top of your website, that’s very often driven by Java script.

Lukas Haensch: You will have, the techs, an old AB testing tool that you might not be using anymore. That will be Java script. So even if it’s not really needed at the top of the screen there, it will be blocking, what went once you start actually seeing something on the screen. So one of the key exercises is to always to check, is all the Java script files that we’re using, is all the CSS files that we’re using actually required or can you, and it’s called, delaying them or deferring them in technical terms, you can delay to load a couple of those items, which then unblocks the critical rendering path, which then shows the same content earlier without changing anything on the server sites, without changing your anything dramatic.

Lukas Haensch: So the key thing that we learned and communicated within Google all the time is, you don’t have to do those big changes. There is basically every file that you loading has potential to be improved. Is it a CSS file? It might be, not needed at this point in time. It can be loaded later. Is it a JavaScript file? It can be deferred. Is it a font file? Maybe it’s an old font format. And so on and so forth. You can go through all the facts and obviously pictures, there’s one big key trick I think that it’s really helpful for images.

Lukas Haensch: I can go into that, but ultimately it’s about going through those individual items and you as a marketer, if that, it’s maybe something you haven’t been working with all the time, just go to webpagetest.org through in URL and you can step by step see, okay, what is actually loading and what can I see on my screen? And that will give you a good feel of what’s going on your page. If there’s tons of Java script, if there’s tons of images, if there is long loading fond files in there, all of that.

John Jantsch: What role, I mean, I know ultimately it plays a role, but what role does hosting play in maybe slowing sites down or delivering a faster load?

Lukas Haensch: I mean, it basically, it affects sort of the first part of the overall equation on how quickly you’re sending, your first bite, basically, how quickly you’re sending information is basically down the pipe. What we though found is again and again, obviously that has plays its role, but a much, much larger role, the much quicker wins are in optimizing the individual files because there is, like we just discussed before, blocking the critical rendering cluster. There’s so many small things that you can do before having to touch that hosting at all. So, I would look at the critical rendering path and how you’re loading the files a couple of times before switching any major setups.

John Jantsch: Do you find that, some of the content management systems that are out there today, obviously WordPress being by far and away the most popular. Are those part of the problem particularly when people start adding themes and plugins and those kinds of things?

Lukas Haensch: 100%. I think you have to think about what is a plugin. A plugin is basically a bunch of JavaScript in many, many cases. Obviously it depends on what it does, but if it comes with a lot of functionality, yes. So for example, and it’s the same logic being applied, let’s take the plugin logic from WordPress. So you’re loading a couple of plugins. Some of them you will actually not even need on this page. Some of them you will only need on one particular page. Or some of them you will only need at the bottom of your page.

Lukas Haensch: So what you can be doing is, you can be, and there’s even a plugin for that sort of a meta plugin. But you can also run this through code. You can conditionally load your plugins. So if my first move, my screen is loading, if my page is loading, what you can be doing is just using that conditioner loader for the plugins and then pick and choose when which plugin should actually be loading.

Lukas Haensch: If you’re doing this through code, you will have even more flexibility to say, okay, which one should be loading right now? And again, and you mentioned themes there because teams comes with a lot of Java script and all of it is loading at the beginning. That in turn is then blocking the rendering. And you could again go file by file through check, okay, which ones can be deferred and loaded later.

Lukas Haensch: So this is where marketing would have to sort of sit together with the developer and check, okay, [inaudible] actually Java script files, let me give you a quick example. You having, Java script that you need on your checkout page. That JavaScript is not being required at all in the first couple of seconds. The user even has to get there. So it’s a combination. It’s really, you look at the plugins, [inaudible 00:10:52], you look at the Java script, you try to defer some, and this is how you chop down second by second basically.

John Jantsch: So I’ve done testing on using the page tests that you shared as well as Google’s page speed insights. And there seems to be a significant difference in the mobile load versus desktop. In fact, I’ve tested lots of sites and rarely do I find sites that get a glowing review from Google on mobile. Are there things we should be doing? I mean, should we have [inaudible] almost separate sites or separate experiences for mobile?

Lukas Haensch: So, it’s very good question. I mean, I think mobile load… I mean, load time on mobile becomes particularly apparent because the devices, and we are on a connection. So there’s much more breaking points, let’s say, or much more points that are, sort of being in danger to be, decreasing the performance. Which means, if I’m looking at my mobile page, I do think, and I think even with WordPress, you can condition your load certain items to just say no, don’t show this on mobile or show it on mobile.

Lukas Haensch: There’s certain elements to it. Let’s take, I think maybe give you the example of a carousel. If the pink carousel with different image at the very top. So you have this maybe on desktop and it doesn’t really impact your performance, but then you look at mobile and out of a sudden it heavily affects performance because you’re loading five or six images, which is quite a lot of stuff to load.

Lukas Haensch: You’re loading the Java script, which is random blocking as I mentioned. As well, which means now you had the situation where basically you have to have, a performance budget where you say, okay, I have this and that budget to play out. And if you’re looking at your mobile page and you’re already spending quite a budget on your six images plus your Java script, you’re already taking quite some seconds that it will take to load while then you would have to even look at your metrics and analytics to people even interact, with the fifth or sixth image.

Lukas Haensch: Or is it just because marketing or somebody else wanted to have the several messages out there? So, I would definitely consider, looking at especially heavy, heavy, items such as, videos. I’m not saying to not use videos, but there’s smarter ways to how to display videos as well. Carousels, these types of items to be really strict on not to use them on mobile because they don’t usually don’t have a strong UX value and definitely they take a lot from the speed budget.

John Jantsch: If you’ve got a website, if you’re selling products online today, you know that the images are crucial to how people make opinions about your products and services. pixelz.com that’s pixel with a z.com is an image retouching service that can take all of your images. They can retouch them, add shape and symmetry, smooth out bumps, aligned shoulders, things like that, that can reduce wrinkles, that can reduce and remove lint tags, everything that just doesn’t really seem to fit. Get somebody to do it for you. Accelerate your time to market because they’ll give you your images retouched the next morning. Go to pixels.com that’s P-I-X-E-L-Z.com and find out about their re touching image services.

John Jantsch: Can you, without making people glaze over here, talk a little bit about, AMP in this equation, the accelerated mobile pages. Is that something people should be using, for a better load, better experience, but then you have less graphics, you have less control? So how do you feel about that?

Lukas Haensch: So personally, I mean, how I look at this is it’s basically it is a normal website with all the rules already pre given. It’s already giving you a lot of restrictions on your Java script. It’s already giving you, and then obviously there’s further optimizations in the HTML. So in a way it’s taking this types of rules that we were just discussing and pushing them on you in a way. So, that’s why that’s one piece and one reason why these pages load really fast.

Lukas Haensch: I wouldn’t consider myself an AMP expert, but I definitely think just by the pure what it actually is, it’s basically just a website, a normal website with a lot of rules in there, and to which basically prevent you from overusing your speed budget and hence they’re being fast pages. So I think it’s a great way for somebody if it fits your type of content, If you can get your message across with that, I think is a great way.

John Jantsch: So I know anecdotally, I will give a site three or four seconds if nothing’s happening, I might click away, especially on my mobile device. Are there statistics that definitively say, yes, X amount of people will wait X amount of time, but if your site doesn’t load in that amount of time, not only is it a bad experience but they’ll just leave?

Lukas Haensch: Yeah. There’s just tons of metrics. The couple of metrics that we were using within our team and there probably have been just if not have getting worst, at least their state or we’re getting worse it’s like, 53% of consumers will leave a site if it takes longer than three seconds to load. So that’s half of your traffic already gone on mobile, according to those metrics, if you’re not loading a quicker or within that three seconds.

Lukas Haensch: And when I’m saying three seconds speed index of 3000 being able to paint it for screen within three seconds because then a person has no reason to leave. Because I think maybe also one key element there is when we’re talking about speed index or page speed, we’re also talking about, a person seeing something meaningful. It’s maybe not a good idea to detach that from the human experience by looking at like tons of different metrics.

Lukas Haensch: Like can you show something meaningful to a person, which means they will not leave because they don’t see something. They will leave maybe for other reasons. So 53%, there’s tons of other metrics on how there’s a metrics on that, if you load one seconds faster that a conversion rate would increase by around 20% or more. It’s hard for me to release, it really depends on the use case and the traffic that you’re getting. But I think this 53% if you’re not lower learning quicker than three seconds is a really good one to have in the back of your mind. On whether it’s 100% to in your case, that’s another story about that.

John Jantsch: I think it illustrates those the reason, a lot of times when some businesses, marketers only have so much a budget attention span, time to work on stuff. And I think that, I think it’s important for them to realize, why this should be a priority. And I think that’s a good metric for that.

Lukas Haensch: 100%. Like if you’re running a retail store, if your door wouldn’t open, like you would jump on it immediately.

John Jantsch: Exactly. I think part of the problem is a lot of marketers don’t actually visit their own website. They don’t actually have the same experience that their customers or prospects have unfortunately.

Lukas Haensch: Yup. And if they do, it’s very often a cached version. A cached version or a on wifi. So really do that effort. Go on a tool like, or you can even go do it with Chrome, but to go on webpagetest.org and test it out just to see it yourself, what the experiences that most of the people actually have with your website.

John Jantsch: I know that Google doesn’t necessarily, give a list of all the factors they use for ranking. But I think it’s pretty widely accepted that page speed or lack of page speed is a variable in whether or not your pages are ranking. Can you speak to that?

Lukas Haensch: I mean, obviously I do not have all the insights about all the things that are impacting ranking. If so I would be probably, be having not to work anymore. But I think one thing is important maybe to just keep in mind. All of this there is a certain reason for this. So more and more traffic is being on mobile. So mobile traffic has surpassed obviously desktop traffic. So hence, more traffic is coming through the Google search on mobile more and more than on desktop, hence the visitor, hence more market. There’s more opportunity for marketing, in those channels.

Lukas Haensch: But what do we see in general is lower conversion rates on mobile than on desktop. So hence there is quite a significant interest obviously to improve the page speed because it’s one aspect that is affects an experience of a user. So, in a way like the reason why it’s important for ranking is also the reason why it’s good for users, which is the reason why it’s good for conversions, which in turn is good for somebody who’s running advertising on that channel. So, I can’t really, I don’t have any further insights on the ranking factors. I can just say it all comes from a very good reason.

John Jantsch: And what I tell people all the time is just what you said. A page that loads slowly is a bad experience. And so Google doesn’t want people to have a bad experience. So they’re not going to show that page. And I think that that’s the way to look at it. I think that’s always been their intent. And so consequently, things change with the algorithm and whatnot only because they get better at understanding what, all the factors of page are on the site.

John Jantsch: And so I think that there’s no question that, in fact, one of the easiest ways to test this is that when we have clients who have a really bad mobile experience, whether it’s the design or the load speed, I mean, we can’t get them to show up for mobile searches. They just won’t. And so I think that’s as clear indication as somebody would need to suggest that, no matter how, where you put it in the ranking, it is a factor.

Lukas Haensch: I think I would say the biggest thing that I would have taken away from all of this time in Google working on this is, that a lot of teams overestimate the effort that is required to do even small fixes. So page speed optimization on mobile page is to be sort of, titled as a big project. But as I was trying to stress before is, there isn’t a lot of things, a lot of small things that can be done in order to improve.

Lukas Haensch: Like just give me one or two examples that maybe highlight this very drastically. A lot of people try to optimize their hero image. What you can do just very simply as you can do, you take your hero image, you can transfer it into let’s say a string of code. It’s called base 64 in coding and all of a sudden you can send your hero image with the first request in your HTML file. What I’m just trying to say you is, no big changes to be done.

Lukas Haensch: You’d take one image, you transfer it into another format, you send it now with your first file and a big chunk of your first above the fold content can already be painted. So, I think that is probably my biggest takeaway, that there is a lot of small things that can be done rather than making it, to blowing it up unnecessarily as a big project.

John Jantsch: So where would somebody, let’s say a listener is out there thinking, he said a couple of things that make a lot of sense, but I don’t know how to do any of that. Where do you find somebody who, because again, if you just Google page speed consultant, you’re going to get people who are very technical, you’re going to get people who just say they can do that know, but they’re really, all they want to do is move you to new hosting or something. I mean, how do you find the right resource to help you fix some of these little things?

Lukas Haensch: I think that is a really good question. The thing that I can say is, if your team goes reasonably one by one through the files, a lot of this can already be uncovered. Is your font file maybe just in the old font file format? There’s font file format which is TTF. If you transfer it to [inaudible] it’s 30% smaller. Fonts show bigger, faster. So the only thing I can’t really say like one place, what I can say is to go with your team through the waterfall of your website. I think that’s the best source to be honest.

John Jantsch: So we, in the introduction I mentioned that you have recently founded a company called Pathmonk. You want to tell us a little bit about what Pathmonk does.

Lukas Haensch: Sure. So, definitely within Pathmonk, we were looking much closer at conversions on mobile and at desktop. And what we realized is that it’s actually very difficult for marketeers to answer questions such as, how many visits does it take for user to actually convert? Or how many seconds do you have on the page to actually convince them? And I’m not talking about bounce rate, I’m talking about, what is the average amount of seconds that somebody takes until they sign up? Or which user actions show that a visitor is ready to convert?

Lukas Haensch: So we’ve seen that there’s a big gap of being able to understand sort of, anonymous information retrospectively such as, Google analytics data or looking at, heat maps videos like how do somebody behave. But we found that there is a gap that in real time, it’s difficult for people to react to this immediately. What if user X has been on the page and has been doing actions that look like they would be somebody that is converting, can you react to the market? And we found most market is current.

Lukas Haensch: So we build, basically technologies called smart cards that is basically helping, to automatically based on artificial intelligence, learning what a user is doing on the page, what is likely patterns for conversion. So which intents do users have when they’re on the page. And then we show them content about your products, such as, frequently asked questions, testimonials, case studies on what we called smart cards that are sliding and from the bottom or the top. And this is basically how we let a website to react in real time to what is happening on the page with each given visitor down to the level into which type of product or feature they’re interested in.

John Jantsch: And I think if, in the very simplest terms, if somebody is visiting a certain page, they’re probably interested in that topic. And so it really is, instead of just giving them the generic slide in, it really is a way to personalize their experience on pretty much every page or every visit or as you said, their whole path. Because a lot of times on sites, people will do five or six things that certainly indicate that they are exploring a certain topic or have a certain intent. And so then to be able to react to that, as you said in real time, is I think what is becoming a behavior that people are starting to expect unfortunately. And I say, unfortunately, because it certainly ups the bar for marketers.

Lukas Haensch: And it’s funny though, what we see is, there is elements, there’s expected elements, obviously somebody is downloading a certain white paper. But there’s other things, such as somebody deep focusing your page. We saw a strong correlation between somebody going deep with focusing on your page, and then, a submission on one of those refocuses again. And that’s something that the data is sort of reveals and then smart cards can automatically react to.

John Jantsch: And I think that again, because I visited the tool and watched it in action, I think that the smart cards are pretty elegant in terms of how they are delivered. They’re don’t just take over the screen or really, get in somebody’s face. But because they’re kind of personalized, I think they will be seen, I suspect as much more welcomed.

Lukas Haensch: It’s an interesting one. We worked on a lot of UX testing and a lot of UX works because there is a lot of preconceived notions that smart guys had to overcome. It doesn’t shoot and feel a look and feel like a chat bot because there’s a lot of preconceived notions with the chat bot. A lot of people don’t even start a conversation with a chat bot because they think it’s about right, it’s a robot and they don’t want to talk to it.

Lukas Haensch: So the metrics clearly show a lot of people wouldn’t start the conversation. Or if it looks like a cookie banner, we’ve clicked 100 million times on cookie banners. So basically, we work the smart cards to look and feel as a part of your website, so they completely are customizable into what your style and theme of your website is. And then basically just become a part of the website by sliding up and down versus, popping up from nowhere.

John Jantsch: Well, Lukas, thanks so much for joining us and talking about page speed and hopefully we will run into you soon out there on the road.

Lukas Haensch: Thanks a lot. Thanks for having me.

Build a Better Agency Podcast – The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

Build a Better Agency Podcast – The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

John Jantsch discusses his latest book, The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur, on the Build a Better Agency Podcast with host Drew McLellan.

Being an entrepreneur comes with some unique challenges. You can become so focused on serving your clients and running your business that you forget about yourself. You leave your own personal and professional development goals to wither on the vine.

Jantsch’s latest book is designed to help entrepreneurs find their spark again. The book is a series of daily meditations aimed at helping business owners get in touch with their passion and drive and to learn self-reliance.

On this episode, Jantsch shares why he wrote the book, how to use it to become a stronger and more centered business owner, and how investing in yourself can actually help your business more than focusing on work 24/7.

Listen: John Jantsch on the Build a Better Agency Podcast