That Time Unbounce Stopped Posting for 2 Weeks… And Scored 700 New Leads

In my kitchen I’ve a poster that reads, “SLOW DOWN.”

It’s a easy reminder, however one which I want continually. Stroll extra slowly. Cease and recognize the straightforward issues. Take a break and name your mother.

We dwell in an period of high-speed web and keyboard shortcuts and push(y) notifications and instantaneous gratification. Even our meals is anticipated to be quick — slap a patty on the bun and get the client their order as rapidly as doable.

Typically, content material creation can really feel a bit like that: pump out piece after piece. Slap on a lead gen kind. Run the studies. Rinse and repeat till you develop previous and grey.

After all, there isn’t something inherently mistaken with being a productive content material producer! ?

Nevertheless it’s problematic in the event you get so caught up within the each day grind that you just by no means take a step again and look critically at your day-to-day work and processes.

Which is why the Unbounce content material workforce determined to halt publishing for two weeks: so we may decelerate, do our analysis and discover alternatives for experimentation and optimization.

The optimization work we did on this two-week interval gave us a welcomed break from feeling like we had been on a hamster wheel at a content material farm. Nevertheless it additionally introduced us measurable outcomes that exceeded our expectations (and that of our bosses):

• 274% extra conversions from our 17 highest site visitors posts
• Extra engagement from our readers
• A greater understanding of our viewers and what they’d wish to see subsequent so we are able to preserve creating related, high-converting content material

Mmmmm, outcomes.

We achieved all that by slowing down, taking a step again and discovering small areas for enchancment and experimentation.

But when we weren’t producing contemporary content material, what within the heck had been we doing (and how are you going to do it too)?

I’ll inform you proper now… in the event you promise to name your mother later.

Part I: Optimize excessive site visitors posts (particularly for lead gen)

Should you do any digging round in Google Analytics, it’s possible you’ll discover that the identical 5-10 posts persistently convey you essentially the most site visitors month after month. Most frequently, these are posts on high-interest subjects that you just’re rating for in serps.

For us, a few of these posts dated way back to 2012. And whereas the content material was nonetheless related and actionable, there was all the time one thing to optimize — particularly with reference to guide era.

We created a spreadsheet with our 20 highest-traffic posts for the previous month. It regarded a bit one thing like this:

Click on for bigger picture.

The weblog workforce (comprised of Helen, Amy and I) took a detailed take a look at every submit and decided whether or not it was evergreen and if it nonetheless met our editorial requirements:

• Are there any damaged hyperlinks?
• Is content material nonetheless updated?
• Are all graphics and pictures nonetheless in step with model pointers?

Ensuring that you would be able to nonetheless stand behind older content material is essential — however for us, the main target of our optimization lay within the calls to motion…

Optimize for lead era

A few of our high-traffic posts linked to outdated property or had lead gen types all the way in which on the backside, buried below 3,000 phrases.

What’s worse — we discovered that a few of these posts had been lifeless ends, with no clear “subsequent step” for readers.

Updating your high-traffic posts for lead era is when issues actually get attention-grabbing. Ask your self:

• Are there not too long ago created conversion carrots (book/worksheets/webinar recordings) which are extra related to article subject? Particularly for actually previous posts, we had a ton of recent property to select from.
• Are you able to create a brand new high-value, hyper-relevant conversion carrot with minimal effort? In a single case, we created an email subject line worksheet that we thought could be useful to readers.
• Is your lead gen kind positioned contextually inside the article, moderately than all the way in which on the backside? It ought to come as no shock that we’ve run warmth map exams that reveal most individuals don’t make it to the underside of the web page. Check incorporating types contextually into the submit — we usually place inline types no decrease than 1/3 of the way in which by way of the submit.
• Does the conversion carrot require extra “promoting” or is its worth communicated inherently within the article? If it’s a easy asset that has been defined by the submit, check an inline kind just like the one beneath. Should you’re freely giving one thing that requires a little bit of clarification (like a breakdown of book chapters), check linking to a landing page.

All that work appears to have paid off thus far.

In whole, we optimized 17 posts. In a one-month interval earlier than the experiment, natural site visitors to those posts introduced us a complete of 248 conversions (kind completions).

One month post-optimization, those self same 17 posts introduced us 928 conversions — a 274% enhance.

Part II: Get to know your leads

Okay, part two sounds much less attractive than part one, which promised you’d “get extra leads.”

Nevertheless it’ll repay in the long term.

As a result of the tip objective of any enterprise often isn’t to “generate leads.” It’s to make cash.

And if you wish to generate extra of the proper sort of leads who usually tend to fall in love with you and your resolution and finally turn into clients, then you might want to get to know who you’re speaking to.

As a result of a billion weblog subscribers are ineffective to you if none of them are coping with an issue your product solves.

We devoted about half our time throughout the two-week experiment to studying extra about our expensive readers to raised perceive their pains and targets so we may serve them up extra of what they need.

Ask your readers what they need

Producing leads offers you quantitative suggestions about whether or not your content material is fascinating, however generally all you might want to do to find out what readers need is to… simply ask.

This highly effective query can educate you concerning the individual you might be relationship (for higher or for worse) and is equally as efficient in a enterprise context.

Throughout our hiatus, we did two issues to raised get to know our prospects.

1. Survey says…

In our weblog submit giving readers a heads up that we had been going to chill it for 2 weeks to optimize some stuff, we despatched readers to a Typeform survey.

You’ll be able to take the survey and steal the questions we used here.

2. Encourage engagement on weblog welcome emails

We additionally needed to have the ability to interact with readers in a extra private method — probably even begin a dialogue — to point out that there reside, respiration people behind our weblog.

Plus, we knew we may do higher than our previous welcome e mail:

We up to date this welcome e mail to sound extra prefer it was coming from a human moderately than a enterprise. Most significantly, although, we prompted new subscribers to answer to the e-mail with a advertising downside that’s presently baffling them:

Earlier than this e mail, I not often obtained replies to the welcome e mail. I actually can’t consider a single reply.

As I’m penning this submit, the brand new welcome collection has been dwell for per week, and I’ve obtained a handful of actually considerate replies to this e mail. I anticipate many, many extra.

It permits me to get to know our readers in a brilliant private method, whereas over-delivering in worth by providing recommendation after I can. Bonus? If I get the identical query time and again, I can reply it with a weblog submit. 🙂

Would we do all of it once more?

Our weblog publishing hiatus allowed us to satisfy enterprise targets in a method that can carry on giving — by organically bringing in additional leads each month.

It allowed us to take the time to deal with our readers like people and actually take heed to what they need extra of (so we are able to proceed to #dobetter on the weblog).

However the hiatus had unintended outcomes too — we had extra time and perspective to debate the construction of the weblog workforce and who ought to personal what (the topic of its personal submit, maybe?).

It allowed us to satisfy our private targets of feeling enthusiastic about our work by stepping again and experimenting with new issues.

Possibly you’ve heard us say this (about 51 instances) earlier than…

I believe we’d be fools to not do it once more!