What are the key metrics you should be
checking to ensure your web pages and landing pages are effective?
Let’s learn all about them in this episode of Closing Time.
Thanks for tuning in to Closing Time, the show for go to Market Leaders.
I’m Val Riley, VP of marketing for Unbounce and Insightly.
Today I’m joined by Jennifer Denney.
She is the founder of Elevated. Marketing Solutions.
Welcome to the show, Jennifer.
Thank you for having me.
Pleasure.
So excited we finally get to connect in this way.
We’ve known each other for quite a while.
And when this topic came up, I thought you were the perfect person to talk to.
Talk to it.
But just in general,
the paid media position at any company is really a tough role, right?
They’re always being asked to spin up
campaigns quickly and sometimes they don’t have the right tools to do it.
Yeah. Yeah.
I definitely 100% agree with that. It’s.
It’s definitely like.
Okay, I can get instant results with paid ads, right?
And I’m, like, kinda sometimes a little faster in organic.
I mean,
no one that will argue that these days clicks seem to be more and more expensive.
And it really
I mean, the paid media managers really just need to be more efficient.
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, they’re they’re getting up there like, for sure.
Like, you know, five, ten years ago and nobody was really doing it.
So the cheats were relatively inexpensive.
And you could you can still get them inexpensive, but
there’s like this immense pressure that I’m paying per click.
And so somebody is getting over to the website.
I need them to convert right then and there.
But they’re like missing the whole human element.
So what are some ways you think
we can make conversions easier for visitors?
So you really have to match
where somebody is at in their like, buying cycle.
And I don’t care what you’re selling unless you’re selling bubblegum at the
like store.
Whereas like that instant purchase, there is a process,
a psychological process that people go through to buy products and services.
And so you got them to your website.
You need to get them to your website in order to probably purchase,
at least be able to contact you.
You have to make it easy when they get there
that wherever they’re at in that buying cycle
that they can like quickly and easily be like, okay, yeah, that’s where I’m at.
Let me go through the journey at that point and not force it.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, absolutely.
So you’re saying let’s just make the experience make sense for them?
Essentially. Yeah. Yeah.
so like when they get to a landing page and they’re there
and you call them a landing page, like, I,. I feel like
you should have navigation there that is easy.
Like buttons that, you know,
you can use that anchor tags and lead somebody down where they’re at. So
as soon as they get into the page, you’re, you’re trying to evoke the emotion.
You’re trying to answer, however they got there.
So depending
because there’s so many varieties now on paid ads, you know, the old way
was like just a singular keyword, which is super hard
because there’s no context there where they’re at.
Sometimes there’s not context between B2B or B2C.
And so you’re not really sure where they’re at in that cycle.
Now, there’s some more advanced when you start
talking about Google Performance. Max or, or social ads,
where you can get more into the psyche of where somebody that
but they come in there and,
you have to think through the buyer
cycle of, I don’t know who you are,. I’ve never heard of you.
This is the first time.
Don’t be that person that walks up to a networking event and start shoving
your business cards in front of everybody, like thinking somebody is ready to buy.
Only 3% of the population is ready to buy right now.
So what are you doing with the other 97% to meet people where there are?
So you point to two metrics that Google uses to indicate a successful experience.
A successful ad experience.
Let’s talk through them.
The first one being engagement rate.
What is it? And what’s a good one?
Okay, so engagement rate is when somebody comes.
So this is coming from G4, which is Google. Analytics used to be universal.
And that happened last year.
And Google essentially switched from bounce rate.
Did I come in and just immediately leave
to engagement rate.
And it’s it’s the inverse.
You want between 40 and 60%.
But what does it really mean?
It means you spent longer than 10s.
You looked at multiple pages
or you completed what used to be called
conversions is now called key events.
And so you you get to be in charge of that.
You get to set up like what is a key event. And
this is where I think things get real.
Like everybody’s like, oh,. I want the phone call or form fill.
I want to do it right now.
I’m like, I understand that, but you’re not meeting them where they are at.
Maybe they need a download.
Maybe they need to like fill out a quiz.
Like, we we do this excellent quiz for this client that, is in real estate.
And, you know, it’s are you ready to be a real estate agent?
And it it walks people through that psychological process if they are.
And we’re actually building emails for like longer funnel.
And then we have like all this automation series.
But it wouldn’t have happened without getting somebody there.
I think it’s just business owners, CMOs.
Whoever is that psychological I put out,. I put out money to get them there.
Okay. Yeah, you did I get it.
But that doesn’t mean there’s going to be this instant exchange.
I feel like.
Yeah.. It’s more about playing the long game.
I mean, compared to bounce rate, this engagement rate metrics
seems to be more comprehensive in that
it’s testing multiple, multiple things.
Not just that one.
Like, did I come and did I leave right?
Yeah, yeah.
Well, and why it’s so important is if you make the connection between
how easy it is to, right, and I say easy.
And so maybe it’s not easy for me to produce content and produce things.
And then this AI world.
And so it’s the one metric that Google can look at
and say, well, they had a good experience.
They came in, they did what you said you wanted them to do,
and they did the they there’s also scroll rate.
I didn’t mention that too.
So like scrolling down the page and and so they had a great experience.
That means they’ll keep coming back to. Google and I can keep selling ads.
And so Google’s getting what they want,
the users getting what they want, and everybody’s happy.
But I would say.
People want to shorten the sales cycle.
And we’re living in a marketing bubble right now.
We’re living in a built up demand
that is going to burst and people will want to spend money.
But if you try to push it too much right now, you’re going to ruin your brand.
And people remember how you made them feel
when you equate them to just a dollar bill and give me that money now,
they’re not going to give you the money later. So,
playing the long game will play off.
But we’re taught and society
that the short game is there that I can. I can get it quick
because
we’re living in a social media world where, like all we see are the highlights
and we see all the good things, but we don’t
we don’t see the people that are like upset and crying and having a bad day.
All we see is the really good stuff.
But at, at, I think ads are great
because you got to get people to at least know who you are.
You just need to use them in different fashions.
You can use them at top of the funnel.
You can use in the bottom of the funnel, like there’s a lot of ways to do it,
and you just got to work people through and give them what they want.
Yeah.
I would say, as a marketing leader,. I always think.
Well, my SEO, my organic strategy is my long game.
And in between now and when that starts to be amazing, right?
I’m going to run ads to try to generate that traffic.
So I think we all have this vision that one day
we won’t need to rely on ads anymore.
But I’m not sure how realistic that is.
No, no, you’re always going to need, like, fresh eyeballs.
It’s it’s the concept of continuous marketing versus campaigns.
What you described is like the continuous marketing,
like you always need the continuous marketing and campaigns
is more geared towards, maybe there’s certain seasons where your buying cycle
is higher, or there’s certain things that you want to focus on.
And so you build this like campaign that is focused on all that,
and you can use ads to drive that,
but you still have your continuous marketing going on behind the scenes.
I think that’s another mistake, too.
You don’t always have to be running ads.
You can you can go up and down.
There was at one time where like, it was kind of a bad thing to stop
and start like ads because they wouldn’t remember your information.
But that’s kind of that’s gone now.
You’re good as long as you’re consistent out marketing.
So you mentioned Scroll rate, as being another key metric for Google it.
That lends me to think about some of the technical
aspects of a website and how that can hold you back,
like, regardless of how great your content is, right?
Like that, you have to nail the technical stuff.
Fast load, easy scrolling, etc..
You could spend all this money
driving someone to your site, but it doesn’t load fast enough
and they’re not willing to wait.
And so like that that’s going to be a problem
or the other metric is scroll rate.
So do, do people like scroll down the page and do they get that.
The average performer is between 50
and 60% will scroll halfway through the page.
So you have to have like,. I know some people would be like,
oh, I’ll just put the form at the top and make it easier.
It’s like, but you’re not meeting them where they’re at.
That’s what I would also challenge.
Like,
there’s so many ways to communicate these days.
Like do you have a chat bot?
Do you have a chat are you using?
Maybe AI chat because you have a lot of content
and maybe you can like answer like, can I text you?
Can I call you like,
you know, I’m
going to have like the the sale is happening
anywhere from 60 to 70% before they ever even fill out
that form or pick up that phone call or do whatever,
because everybody wants to buy, but nobody wants to be sold.
They don’t want to be sold, so they want to be informed.
And if you think about AI today, like,. I can go out
and I can ask a whole lot of questions.
So what you need to think about is,
how do I be that guy
after they’ve done their research?
And if you’re like Johnny, like closer like using this like closing too much.
There’s closing strategies
but like ask questions to try to understand where they’re at.
So switching gears a little bit, Google. I feel like is continuing
to stress like like a quality search experience for ads.
Right.
And just back in February they came out with another update.
And it wasn’t necessarily anything new, but I think they felt like
they had to double down on it because, the quality experience
of a funnel with a landing page that is specific to the ad that you’re running.
And at this point, for digital marketers, that feels like a no brainer,
but I this stat blew me away.
52% of Google ads still just go to
like a home page, and I just can’t comprehend that.
That’s still happening, Jennifer.
Well, it’s happening because of a lack of resources
that people have with being able to create landing pages.
And that is getting much, much easier.
And there’s definitely tools out there, like Unbounce, that make it way
easier for, when in, when you’re not a developer
and you’re not techie and you can make that happen quicker.
You know, or if you’re a really large company
and you have a really large, website and you’re trying to work through like,
oh, well, that only like, develops in like two weeks.
And this is where, like, sales and marketing are,
like, fighting with each other because you’re like, but I gotta make sales.
I gotta make my quota.
And so I need this now.
And I was like, well, sorry you got all this other stuff.
And so it’s really just a resources problem is what it is.
But Google has their own resources problem because they’re fighting with like LLMs
now, like the chat bots and the, the ChatGPTs and the Perplexitys and
you know, so they want people to continue to use Google.
So that’s why they’re coming out with this.
Like hey, like slow it down and make sure you’re
providing a good user experience
and you are meeting people where they are.
Or people will stop using Google.
The wrinkle that Google added in that an update.
And I’m not sure if you had a chance to look at it was.
And something you mentioned earlier is about navigation on landing pages.
It was pretty vague, though.
I think how you interpreted it
was, you know, making the page very easily navigable.
Right.
So that people could move around the page with ease.
How do you think digital marketers respond to that?
Well, so I think we want to again,
we have demands on us to, you know, produce results.
And it is all about results.
But you’ll notice on my own website
that if you put the user first.
So in your navigation, you’ll see like I have like knowledge
podcasts, socials like, hey, we’re just getting to know each other.
Here’s everything I know okay. Strategy.
All right.
Let’s start thinking about like what we need okay.
Here’s some solutions okay.
Here’s case studies.
Here’s how I did it for everybody else.
Why us.
Like why we’re different then about me.
And then all the way to the right is like contact.
So it’s like, put them first.
If you help enough people get what they want,
you will get what you want.
You have to think about what you’re
by buyer and their buyer persona and not have any marketing bias.
I think a lot of times we have marketing bias where we think we are the buyer.
You’re not the buyer.
Sometimes you might be you’re usually not the buyer.
So what problems do
they have that I can provide this solution?
And don’t be not everybody has to be your buyer.
You just need a percentage of those people and just speak to those people.
So one thing I you mentioned just now was about video
and even audio components on your web pages or landing pages.
You feel like that’s a key to getting a conversion.
Can you talk me through that?
Yeah, yeah. So, we all learn
and we all want to consume information in lots of different ways.
And so I am a strong proponent that when you take a topic
where everybody’s wherever somebody that if you produce it in video,
which might be the easiest way for you to create it, it might actually be,
I don’t know, it might be written, you need to make it in video, audio.
So like podcasting, or just video podcasting, you need to make graphics.
So that’s like bite size information and you need to make it into written.
And then then you start getting into subsets of like video
like short form and that, and it’s all on one page
so that you’re meeting people where they are.
And here’s the objection I get.
But, Jennifer, not so much.
Well, stop trying to do so many topics.
You think everybody’s paying attention to you all the time,
and they’re not like, take one subject, one big subject,
and just continually break it down and say it in different ways
to like, meet people where they are
and give it in those different formats and
be you’ll you’ll get your message
will come across, you know, like you’re just again meeting people where they are.
I love it.
I think that’s the theme for our episode.
Well, if you the
it plays into the engagement metric.
If you get people to spend time on that page
and you are helpful to Google’s end user,
you will end up paying less per click
with Google Ads.
Same thing with social ads,. Facebook, all those.
But you’ll also get the benefit of like SEO because they want you
to serve them up more because you spend more time on those websites.
So it’s just like a win win win, when you put other
people’s needs first instead of your,. Jennifer, thank you so much.
If our audience wants to follow you or catch your podcasts or learn
more about your firm, where’s a good place to find you?
So I’m hanging out on LinkedIn a lot.
Jennifer Denney, D-e-n-n-e-y, for sure,
I am over on Facebook and all the information is over there.
So just Google Jennifer Denney. Awesome.
Thank you.
And thanks so much to all of you for tuning in to Closing Time.
Remember, you can get this episode delivered right to your inbox
if you click the link in the show notes and we’ll see you next week.
