What's the most effective web marketing tactic you've seen or used that very few people know about?

[randfish]

I wanted to start a thread to share some of the really cool marketing tactics I've seen on the web that I think few folks are using, AND ask the community here what you've seen, too!

Some of my favorite undiscovered or less-used tactics include:

• Making smart use of bios for conferences, events, interviews, etc. where folks ask you or your team members for a "bio" and you get to control the links, link targets, and anchor text. This is super powerful in my experience, so long as you have a moderately strong profile or regular participation in this type of stuff.

• Price anchoring on conversion pages, e.g. http://www.trackur.com/options - note how they start with the highest price to help "anchor" the audience to bigger numbers. A great principle of psychology in action.

• Using re-marketing to draw people to content rather than just purchase/conversion pages. The effectiveness of these is, I've heard, dramatically higher than the usual re-marketing campaigns that take you to a squeeze or purchase page. I can't share the example I'm thinking of, unfortunately, but I'd urge you to try it!

• Get more social shares and clicks by SHARING MORE THAN ONCE! A lot of folks feel like they are burdening their audience on Twitter/Facebook/G+ or frustrating them if they post multiple times, when in fact, very, very few of your followers are online at any given time. I've tested this myself and I get almost no negative feedback but can triple or more the number of shares/+1s/likes/visits/etc I get just by sharing 2-3X! The key is not to be too repetitive or annoying, and to acknowledge past shares (at least for me). e.g. I'll say "my blog post from last night on XYZ" and get a ton more clicks.

What are your favorites? Please share!

[DiTomaso]

Great thread, Rand!

One of my favourites - Using delayed remarketing, e.g. for oil changes. Set the remarketing cookie on the thank you page when someone signs up for the oil change service, and then hold the remarketing for 90 days to remind them to come in again.

[SEO5Team]

Hi Rand,

I'd like to add amateur video testimonials to the list. Dove started the trend offline by getting actual customers to review the product in their ads and the same concept seems to work quite well online. One of our clients mailed out disposable cameras to their clients and had them record testimonials which were then used in a variety of campaigns including landing pages, email marketing and on their site. Led to an increased engagement as the clients themselves shared the website link where their testimonial was hosted with their friends/acquaintances. Not sure if this qualifies in the "very few people know of" category however i thought I'd still share it.

Cheers,

[djlaidler]

I like the idea of giving an example of price anchoring... Looked, liked, yet to convert...

Good sly marketing tactic, complimentary markets!

[tstolber1]

This is along similar lines to the bio's but for companies that have industry body membership or sponsorship. Many industry bodies allow you to post news and have detailed descriptions where you get a lot of control. These sites are usually authorities on your subject too. I have used these to good effect.

[randfish]

Brilliant! Had never thought of that

[RobertFisher]

Excellent question Rand, and ...

... I was going to keep this hidden away, but love the moz.

For me the most underutilized and proven technique in our shop (not sure for every industry, but certainly for B2C) is having a phone number in the meta description for important pages. We usually have 5 to 10 per client that are distinct and trackable. We use an outside service (IfByPhone) to purchase numbers and their platform.

Each important page for ranking and where we are at least in the top 20 of SERP's, has its own distinct number and we are able to generate calls from there. (Remember don't put them on the site other than in the meta description).

The belief is that some people want the convenience of being able to get the answer now. By having a number where others do not, you can be ranked 6th and "steal" clicks from those higher.

So, if the meta answers the query and there is a number, we see people call without ever clicking through. If they do click through, that's good too.

Thanks,

Robert

[DataDrivenU]

Either live-blogging or writing a summary blog post of a speech given by a featured speaker at an event. While this is time-consuming to do, it creates quality content, engages with a speaker who may have a strong built in audience of fans, and the speaker will likely be grateful for the write up.

You also have a built in audience for consumption of your post in the event attendees who were more interested in the speech than taking notes.

[NakulGoyal]

Great idea.

[Advocator]

Our company, Influitive, believes in the power of mobilizing advocates to improve marketing. The idea being that customers trust other customers and are not interested in talking with marketing or sales persons until their decision is made  Here is an excellent case study by SMARTTech on how they effectively mobilized their advocates to market their product.

[RobertFisher]

tsolber1

I like this a lot. Good one.

Robert

[emieltenhoor]

Using remarketing on thankyou page for quote requests. Goal is to improve quote to sale ratio.

The advertising says thank you for considering us. We want to be your best choice in price, quality and service whatever it takes. So do contact us if you feel we can do better.

(freely translated from Dutch)

We noticed decrease in quote to sale ratio's for one client and the above is our response as of this month.

First results show quote to sale percentage has improved from 30% to 36% but again do note this is our first month of testing this strategy.

Thank you for the remarketing to content pages idea. Will give it a shot for sure.

About hidden psychology in pricing, why don't you give round numbers a shot in a conversion test (ie. $100 instead of $99 or $97)... Nobody is doing this anymore and Dutch biggest supermarket is getting surprising results now testing it (them testing it in itself is nice to know).

[DiTomaso]

Thanks for sharing this! Fantastic idea.

[AndyMacLean]

Using all applicable Adwords extensions. They can make such a difference to campaigns. Some of my client ads look like they're on steroids compared to the competition

[EricPratum30]

I mostly work in analytics, so as you'll see, my focus is much more on the research side as opposed to the implementation side.

Your client is New Airline X. They want both link and social shares.

1. Pick a few competitors – Delta, AA, etc.
2. Get an export of their Twitter followers.
3. Get an export of their inbound links.
4. Look at who follows your client, has a website and doesn't link to them. That's one target list.
5. Look at who follows multiple of the competitors, but not your client. That's another target list.
6. Look at who links to multiple of the competitors, but not your client. That's another list.
7. Crawl the competitor websites and find where people are linking to broken/nonexistent pages on their sites. Cross-reference with the Twitter export, and you've got a list for broken link building with built in social media information.

If you have access to a large list vendor, you can cross-reference your Twitter list with theirs to see if you can automagically get email addresses for these people so that you don't have to hunt for them, but honestly, I generally prefer not to do that because I don't like the idea of working with list vendors, and too much of their data is just not good.

You can do something similar to the process above with Author Crawler & G+, but I find that it's not as easy to work with, so I rarely go through that additional process.

[emieltenhoor]

Have been putting phone in various other tags for ages, but somehow your obvious "extension" to put it in of that never hit me. Thanks!

[AndyMacLean]

Like it, but id bear in mind though its widely believed that CTR is a ranking factor. Encouraging non click behaviour may negatively affect your positioning although I do widely see numbers in PPC ads actually increase CTR.

[emieltenhoor]

Yes this is a great technique. Splitting up remarketing lists in segments in general is a great idea.

Curious, do you have a certain strategy working you would advise for display network (not remarketing)?

For me, the section I use heaviest in display network is the exclusions (any really).

[WebTalent]

Awesome! I actually proposed this idea for a client last week and was wondering if it had a history of success. Thanks for posting.

[RobertFisher]

Thanks Andy,

That is a reasonable consideration, but you have to ask the question: "Whose CTR are you affecting, your own, or the ones on the page without a number?" Yes, I think its both. But if you are lower (6 to 10) I think you take the higher traffic somewhat.

Then, say 10% of those who would have clicked through, called instead and you lost 10% of that traffic. Would you rather have ten click throughs or ten calls where you talk with a potential customer? For my money, I want to talk with the potential buyer.

Best,