WORKWEEK

Happy Sunday!

I hope you’ve had a great weekend so far and you’re sitting on a nice couch, feet up, beverage in hand, and you’re feeling relaxed.

If you’ve followed me on Twitter or heard me on a podcast over the last year, you’ve definitely heard me rant about something that should be a non-starter in today’s day and age: landing pages.

Not using a landing page is like putting your car in reverse and backing up without using the backup camera that’s right there. You can… but why wouldn’t you use it? It makes backing up so much easier, gives you fewer chances for something to go wrong, and in today’s day and age, it’s a staple when you get out of the garage. Similarly, if you’re running paid traffic for customer acquisition without a good landing page… sure, you can… but why wouldn’t you use a landing page?

Blame iOS 14.5 and Tim Cook

For the longest time, it wasn’t even necessary. Before the iOS 14.5 update, Facebook had so many data points to understand your intent as a customer, how familiar you were with a brand, and because of that, it knew exactly what to show you.

Pre iOS update, If you went to Caraway’s website, Facebook was getting data on how long you spent on the site, what products you looked at, whether or not you clicked in to see how different colors look, if you read the reviews, which reviews you spent more time looking at, etc. Then, if you went to PopSugar to read a review, it knew that too. With that data, the magical algorithm could determine what ad creative to show you in order to drive conversion with the highest probability.

That’s why it was always important to have 5-10 solid pieces of creative for each audience set — once you gave it to Facebook, you trusted them to decide what was the best. It was so good at knowing what to put in front of someone, that driving to a mediocre homepage could still work.

Today, ad platforms don’t get any of that data, anymore. That’s, in a nutshell, why iOS 14.5 was such a big deal for marketers. Almost overnight, it changed the way that online advertising was done for the past few years.

The game of online advertising amongst DTC brands changed from trusting Facebook on what to show, to “We need to create a reason that someone would want to buy us, and champion that from ad creative through the purchase experience.” Something that most companies weren’t equipped to handle right away.

Overnight, acquisition costs tripled, and most people scaled back their ad budgets.

The Solution To Fix It

With our clients, we immediately pivoted toward creating the red carpet web experience, and it started to improve performance. The red carpet web experience is basically a very thorough landing page. Here are some examples:

• Cometeer Coffee – Iced Coffee LP
• JuneShine Hard Kombucha – Sampler Kit LP
• Poo~Pourri – Build Your Own Bundle LP
• Milk Bar – Collections-Style LP
• Caraway Home – Cookware Set LP

The Difference with Landing Pages

On average, the CPA went down around 30% when running on paid social channels and the clickthrough rate from the LP to checkout was ~34%. In fact, these have become so efficient that we even started a company called HOOX to make landing pages on a per-page basis.

If you have any questions about HOOX, just reply here. Otherwise, place an order on HOOX.co (you can pay by credit card), fill out the onboarding form and I’ll reach out to setup a call for what I think your landing page should be (type of LP, offer, products to merchandise, etc). From there, we will copywrite the page and put it into a wireframe. With your approval, it’ll go into design, and then again, with your approval, it will be developed. All in 2 weeks! Start here if you’re interested.

Types of Landing Pages

When you think about what would make the perfect landing page for you, it’s important to understand where the traffic is coming from, how your product/brand is perceived, and what the intent of the visitors is.

Where the traffic comes from helps you understand how much time you might have (TikTok = little time, whereas, Facebook = lots of time). Knowing how your brand is perceived helps you understand how to message what you’re selling, and what benefits or traits you should focus on, more than others. The intent of the visitor helps you understand if you need to focus more on selling or educating (though, I think the best pages have a good balance of both).

At HOOX, here are some of our go-to landing page styles:

Hero Product/Bundle.

In these landing pages, we focus entirely on the education to show someone why they would benefit from buying a specific cookware set or a skincare routine. What’s in it for them? How does it compare to what’s on the market? Why is this the best option at the time? What do they get back from it (health benefits, time, convenience, etc)?

These pages are loaded with social proof, but also when we’re pushing a product that is actually helpful to consumers, we can use landing pages to really show how this product fits into their life, and improves it, too.

Listicles & Comparicles.

You’ve probably seen something like, “7 Reasons Why Guys Are Switching to Mack Weldon” or “5 Reasons Chefs Are Choosing Caraway”. Listicles focus on a handful-ish of reasons that customers love the product. The idea is to show someone who might be considering a purchase in the category, why this brand is the best one for what they’re looking for.

To make this a Comparicle LP, make it a listicle with your brand, and the other side is your competitor.

Goal-wise, it’s very similar to the Hero Product/Bundle page, but the Listicle & Comparicle LPs work harder in the upper funnel levels.

First-Person Reviews.

With First-Person Review LPs, someone on the HOOX team who hasn’t tried the product before places an order tries the product themselves, really understands why someone should and would buy it, and writes a first-hand experience of that.

First-Party Data Collection.

Not every landing page’s goal is to drive a sale! When you’re running ads on podcasts, TV, satellite radio, or with influencers, all of which are upper-funnel marketing channels, you might want to use your LP to collect first-party data (an email address, a phone number, an Instagram handle, etc).

This is common with higher AOV products or products with a high barrier to entry (requires customization, a prescription, etc).

The Ingredients in the Secret Sauce

So, why do these pages do so well? There’s a few reasons:

1. Clear messaging
2. We give the consumer all the info
3. Social proof
4. Understanding the traffic source & intent

Clear messaging. The most important part of a good landing page, outside of the UX, is the copywriting that goes on the page itself. Good LP copy is focused on demonstrating the importance of the product in someone’s life, as well as personifying how their life gets better as a result of owning the product itself. It constantly answers:

• What is the product?
• Why should I buy it?
• Why is this the best option?
• How does this improve my life?
• How can I get it?

If you can nail answering those 5 questions over, and over again, you will give yourself the best chance at converting a new customer.

Give all the info. Through a combination of sections of the LP, you want to give your consumer as much information as you can, so they can make an informed decision of whether or not your product is right for them. But, it starts with the information you give them, and the sections you implement on your landing page.

Remember, the goal isn’t to trick customers, it’s to show them how valuable your product can be to them. You want to convert customers through education. That’s how you keep high lifetime value customers in the long run.

As someone scrolls through your landing page, they should feel their questions are being answered with every scroll.

Social proof. Through customer reviews, user-generated content quotes from editorial reviews or PR articles, translate what people love the most about the product. This is now less about the benefits of the product itself, and more just copy/pasting what other people say about the products.

If you’re using a quote from an editorial site, look for a quote from a publication that matches the demographic of the customer you’re going after.

Traffic source and intent. With a good landing page, you want to make sure the UX and the copy of the page is designed around two variables:

1. The intent of the person who comes to your site (how badly do they want to buy the product?). If the intent is low, you need to educate more, go deeper into the benefits, understand all the reasons someone wouldn’t buy and counter them, and help the consumer build a case as to why they need it.
2. The channel they are coming in from (their on-site behavior will be heavily dictated by the platform). If someone is coming from TikTok or Snapchat, you’ve got to have a LP that speaks differently than one that is serving a Facebook user.

If this was helpful as an email, I can go deeper next week.

And, if this is exactly what you think you need, then check out HOOX or reply here with any questions.

On to some fun stuff…

Vendor of the Week:

Certainly — The chatbot that completed 95% of Feastables’ customer service inquiries.

Yes, you read that right. 95% of customer service inquiries for Feastables, Mr. Beast’s snacks company, were solved with Certainly. In fact, near launch, we staffed up for customer service reps and then had to pull back after we realized how many tickets Certainly could resolve on their own (no human touch). Oh, and the AOV of customers who used the Certainly bot was 20% higher! But, how?!

Well, Certainly is a conversational AI platform designed to deflect customer service tickets. I know most things that say “AI” don’t really have AI. Certainly actually does. In fact, Feasty Bot, which lives in the bottom-right corner of the Feastables site, gets smarter with its responses every time someone uses it.

On average, Certainly customers see a 20% increase in AOV and a 3x increase in on-site conversion rate from customers who interact with the bot. The app also plugs right into your customer service ticketing software, so the entire experience for a customer is seamless and wrinkle-free.

If you’re doing over $300K/month in revenue, I highly recommend getting a demo of the product. They can put together a demo of how it would work with your site fairly quickly.

With Feastables, we’re averaging around 120,000 conversions per month and have a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 100 — which is wild, but it’s true.

Schedule a demo and see why we love Certainly!

Jobs of the Week:

• Sharma Brands – Jr. Video Editor
• Long Wknd – Content Creator
• Revela Health – Marketing Lead

You can see more jobs on my jobs board by clicking here.

Brand of the Week:

Muddy Bites — The tastiest part of a drumstick, in a bag.

If you love chocolate ice cream in a cone, and then love the last bite (the bottom tip of the cone) even more, then Muddy Bites is a match made in heaven for you.

Jarod, the founder, took his love for that piece of the ice cream cone and made a snack out of it. You can buy it on the Bodega, or if you want to try something cool, scan the QR code on the product page and checkout using Batch’s instant checkout. It takes 15 seconds, and it’s the coolest checkout experience in the world. Try Muddy Bites!

Question of the Week:

Would you rather have to fight one horse-sized duck or 10 duck-sized horses? Why?

Reply to this email with the answer. Whoever has the best answers will have their answer featured next week in the newsletter & get a $50 MadHappy gift card!

Last week’s QotW was Alexis Katsafanas! She recommended Mars 2112 because, “It was a bat-sh*t crazy dining experience that allowed guests to (hypothetically) leave the planet and with it, all their worries/stress/egos behind.” Unfortunately, it’s closed now.

That’s all for this week!

I hope you enjoyed today’s Sunday email. I’m gonna say it one last time — if you have any questions about HOOX, reply and ask! I’d love to get you set up with a nice landing page.

I hope you get 9 hours of sleep tonight and feel good about the upcoming week! Stay hydrated, stay active, stay healthy, and I’ll see you in a week. As always, I’m reachable here or on Twitter — @mrsharma.

Have a great week!