Bob’s Weekly Reading Picks

2019.6.9 volume 22

Content

1.Conversion Rate Optimization: The Definitive Guide
2.Month by Month Back-to-School Consumer Shopping Trends
3.Display Advertising Stats 2019: SEMrush Study
4.How to Perfectly Manage a PPC Campaign [Template]
5.How to Raise Money From a VC
6.The 16 Best Digital Marketing Tools in 2019
7.How the pursuit of leisure drives internet use

1.Conversion Rate Optimization: The Definitive Guide

Chapter1: CRO Basics
Chapter2: How to Get Started With CRO
Chapter3: How to Run A/B Tests (Enough Traffic)
Chapter4: Conversion-Focused Design

• Persuade With Image Captions
• Guide Users With Directional Cues
• Turn Boring Forms Into Fill In The Blanks
• Make CTAs Look Clearly Like Buttons
• Show a Giant Phone Number for Mobile Visitors
• Use Short Landing Pages for Small Commitments
• Use a Progress Bar
• Use an “Action Color” For Your CTAs
• Reduce Options and Form Fills

Chapter5: How to Create High-Converting Landing Pages

• Test Negative Words In Your Headline
• Replace “Buy” or “Sign up” with Benefit-Oriented CTAs
• Use Action-Focused Copy
• Show Expert Social Proof
• Use Information Gaps
• Make Your Headlines SUPER Specific
• Use Inline Validation
• Use No-Nonsense Headlines
• Use Likes, Users, Followers or Customers as Social Proof
• Replace Jargon With Plain English
• Replace Blocks of Text With Bullets
• Show Your Price on Landing Pages

Chapter6: CRO for Ecommerce Sites

• Use Price Anchoring
• Add “Reassurance Copy” to Product and Checkout Pages
• Show MULTIPLE High-Quality Product Images
• Clearly Mark Your Top Sellers
• Have an (Awesome) Site Search
• Feature High-Revenue Products Above The Fold
• Collect Emails and Nurture
• Add Product Filters
• Let Customers Checkout as a Guest
• Use Discount Popups
• Use Interactive Product Images
• Add Trust Symbols (like association memberships, credit card logos and security icons)
• Optimize for Mobile Buyers
• Make Product and Category Pages Load Lightning Fast
• Hide Your Coupon Field
• Show Why You’re Better
• Test Different Prices to Maximize Revenue
• Keep the Number of Items In Your Cart Visible

Chapter7: How to Create Irresistible CTAs

• Test First and Second Person Copy In Your CTAs
• Add Urgency to Your CTA
• Tap Into Loss Aversion
• Add Countdown Timers to Time-Sensitive Offers

Chapter8: Advanced Tips and CRO Best Practices

• Test The Weakest Links In Your Funnel FIRST
• Ask for Micro-commitments
• Directly Counter Objections
• Give People MORE Information
• Make Your “About Us” Page More Human
• Use Specific Stats and Numbers
• Test Live Chat Support
• Autofill Fields at Checkout
• Create MORE Landing Pages
• Encourage Customers to Share Their Purchase

 A/B testing tools 
Unbounce
VWO
Optimizely
AB Tasty

2.Month by Month Back-to-School Consumer Shopping Trends

June: Father’s Day and Early Back-to-School Shoppers

July: Summer Fun and Back-to-School Research

August: Back-to-School Strategies in Full Force

MoM, brands increased their marketing budgets in retargeting (1%), social (7%), prospecting (31%), and mobile (9%), for a total increase in ad spend of 10% MoM

September: Last-Minute Back-to-School Shoppers

3.Display Advertising Stats 2019: SEMrush Study

Best practices for your own display campaigns 

• Go cross-device
• Focus on responsive ads
• Add our recommended publishers and topics to your list
• Test out those leaderboard ads, along with other popular ad formats
• 

4.How to Perfectly Manage a PPC Campaign [Template]

• Determine your PPC campaign structure.
• Identify, build, or refine your campaign’s landing pages.
• Build a keyword strategy based on your research.
• Create ads based on what you’ve determined in the above steps.
• Share your campaign plan with decision makers.

5.How to Raise Money From a VC

The cardinal rule of VC investing is: Everything starts and ends with market size.

smaller VC funds (often with less than $100 million fund sizes) that do invest very early in companies and for which the business model is to exit companies largely through acquisitions at lower ultimate end valuations.

there are many angel and seed investors who, despite their smaller investment amounts, are also playing the home-runs-per-at-bats game.

the advice we often give to entrepreneurs is to think about your next round of financing when you are raising the current round of financing.

6.The 16 Best Digital Marketing Tools in 2019

• Hubspot
  Price: Free to $3,200/month for enterprises
  You can set up web forms, popup forms, and live chat software for lead capture. Then, you can send kickback emails, pipe all of your data into the free CRM, and analyze site visitors’ behavior.
• Ahrefs
  Price: ranging from $99 to $399
  SEO, Competitive Intelligence
• Proof
  Price: starting at $24/month
  Proof connects to your CRM or website and uses social proof to boost conversions on your site.
• Survey Anyplace
  Price:  free  to $42/month
  Surveys
• Yoast
  Price: Free and Paid
  WordPress plugin for SEO
• Slack
  Price: Free and Paid
  collaboration between employees and teams.
• Trello
  Price: free to $20.83 per month
  content management tool, team collaboration
• Canva Business
  Price: free, $12.95 or custom pricing 
  design platform
  
• Google Adwords
  
• Google Analytics
• MailChimp
  Price: free and range up to $199
  email marketing  tool
• Asana
  Price:  free to $19.99/month
  collaborative workflow management system
  
• BuzzSumo
  Price: Paid plans start at $79/month
  content research tool
  
• MeetEdgar
  Price: $49/month
  social media management tool
  
• Buffer
  Price: Free to $199/month
  social media tools
  
• Hootsuite
  Price: Starts at $29 per month
  social media management
  

See more marketing tools: Digital Marketing Tools List

7.How the pursuit of leisure drives internet use

“Timepass” is the essence of the internet. The vast majority of the top 25 apps by revenue in both Google’s and Apple’s app stores are games.

The most striking thing they are doing is watching videos.

Entertainment, communication and self-expression go hand in hand.