How CRE made SEOmoz $1 million | Hacker News Reader

How CRE made SEOmoz $1 million

conversion-rate-experts.com

95 pointsbearwithclaws24 comments

The best thing about this post was the case-study description of the full, 'first principles', customer development-type approach to landing page optimization including lessons learned from face to face selling, and a handful of very specific surveys and customer conversations. Usually, these kinds of case studies focus on either landing page opt. or customer development, but don't put it all together.

This is one of the best content-to-sleeze-ratio posts you will ever see about Internet marketing.

My favorite part of the whole sale page (that this article did not point out), was the cutesy little "Warning!" at the bottom that tells people they are absolutely going to be OVERWHELMED! by the amount of tools and features they're going to get...

I actually first noticed this sales technique in one of those late-night fat-loss commercials where the chick starts out by saying "WARNING: Hydroxycut (or whatever) is only for people who need to lose a serious amount of weight and should not be used by average dieters!"... absolutely brilliant.

I initially missed it, but the page itself is at http://www.seomoz.org/pro_landing.php

What is it about these "clickbank"-type self-contained pages that purportedly lure so many to part with their cash? Anyone that have one of these long-ass-single-page-big-bold-font-with-testimonial-blurb pages explain the allure of these things? What is the attraction? Is it the big bold typefaces? Is it the shill-y feeling testimonials? I have to admit, it does stir something non-negative in me to read on, but I just can't quantify or describe what it is I'm feeling. It's kinda like an attractive revulsion to it. Weird.

There's a gotta be a study on the efficacy of these pages, I'm sure; but I bet I'll have to pay $19.95 to read it.

One of the biggest keys to the technique is the headlining. If you look at a typical geek blog post or article, you'll get a title, then perhaps a few subheads with paragraphs of text in between.

In these long sales letters, you get perhaps 10-30 different "headlines" all the way through the piece that, on their own, attempt to sell the product. These pieces are ridiculously easy to scan and use either positive, targeted language, keep asking questions (a key tactic), or allude to interesting things within the rest of the content or in the actual product.

Examples from the SEOMoz page:

"When eBay, Disney and Marriott need SEO help, here's what they do..." (you want to know what that is now, right?)

Boost your website’s rankings within 30 days–Guaranteed (Hmm.. these guys look legit and they're making that claim? They must have something serious going on.)

We’ll give you the tools you need to quickly boost the website rankings for any website – on demand. (Speaks for itself. This is one helluva promise.)

Every month, ask your burning questions to our team – and get prompt expert replies (So even if I don't understand the product, I can ask about it and know these guys are keen to give me a response.)

Plus, get these 8 must-have SEOmoz PRO guides—worth over $250 (A classic dirimens copulatio. Learn more about this at http://www.copyblogger.com/but-wait-theres-more/ - they've already convinced you the product is cool but now they're piling up the perceived value so they can gently hit you with the price..)

I appreciated the self-referential nature of the page.

1. We created a web page long enough to tell the story

2. We infused the headline with curiosity rather than overt "buy me" language

5. We augmented the message with video

Et cetera.

If it works for SEOmoz and CRE...

Awesome marketing and meta-marketing.

And there is a negative option $1 trial, $79 monthly rebill: stay classy SEOmoz.

Did you read the article in detail? It's clearly and unambiguously communicated as a $1, one month trial, as a way of offering a minimal risk option to people who might like to try but are unwilling to risk the $80 they charge upfront.

Yes. The $1 one month trial is automatically followed (the negative option part) by a monthly $79 charge (the rebill part) unless the user cancels by the 29th day of the trial.

A (usually large) proportion of customers will be confused and unintentionally pay for at least one month of full priced service: perhaps they don't understand they need to cancel before the 30th day, perhaps they forget to cancel, perhaps they try to cancel and fail.

There is a more honest alternative. Amazon Prime requires user input after the trial before their first $79 subscription charge is made. This is called positive option billing.

There is absolutely nothing dishonest about clearly communicating to the customer what you're going to do, then doing it. You may run your business differently and wish others did the same, but that doesn't make intro pricing dishonest. This is doubly true when you're marketing to internet marketers.

There's more to "communicating to the customer" than just putting it out there. Maybe a wall of text is just as bad as traditional "fine-print".

If you think you made the conditions clear but you get unhappy customers anyway, you've failed to communicate.

To me, if the intent and main effect are to basically trick people into paying for something they don't really want, it's at least sleazy, if not outright dishonest. There are legitimate uses for trial offers, so it's a bit of a judgment case, and I think depends to a large extent on just how clearly the terms are communicated. In particular, it should be very clear to customers of average sophistication exactly what will be rebilled, and exactly what they need to do to avoid the rebill if they'd like to cancel--- and the cancelling should be easy.

I agree. If you genuinely feel that your product is worth the $80/month and that your customer will feel the same way, why not send them a reminder a few days before the trial stops to let them know? Maybe give them a freebie if they continue the membership.

I used to have a subscription to a UK magazine where apparently automatic subscriptions are not legal, so they have to sell you the magazine again, every year. I thought this was great, as opposed to the situation in the Netherlands where you have to cancel at the right time, or else you are stuck with another year. (There are laws in progress to change this, so clearly many people are annoyed by it)

We of course knew that a $1 offer would boost subscriptions but the real goal was to keep these users active beyond the trial period.

I suspect it didn't work. I just did a search and I got this e-mail back in February 2009. If the $1 idea had worked, I'd expect them to still be running it. (It'd tempt me to upgrade my account, I think. I've considered upgrading to PRO but keep putting it off as $70/mo is a lot for something I might not have the time to tinker with.. I think I need to get a better "live" feel of it to be sold on the tools.)

I paid the $70/month and dumped it after a few months. I just wasn't using all the tools to make the cost worth it (an issue of time mostly). And to make matters worse a lot of the tools simply didn't apply to how I sell my services/do my business.

I do know that given the time and investment I could get good value out of the services but for now it's just too much to spend each month it goes under-utilized.

This article points out exactly why the "above the fold" debate is an absolute MYTH when you're building a sales page with a specific function.

In my experience length wins out 99% of the time.

I've always wondered why almost all(relatively speaking) affiliate marketers use long pages - Sales pages. Now I know why.

If you've got a site and want to test a long-page ad, here's a template that works pretty well:

- Here’s what I got: Just say what you have, don't sugar coat or spend a lot of time dancing around.

- Here’s what it will do for you: what problem are you trying to solve?

- Here's what it did for other people like you: testimonials.

- Here’s what to do next: Just come right out and ASK for the money, tell people what to do. Don’t ruin the close.

You're implying that it's written in the first person, but you're missing the gif of the entrepreneur character's signature at the bottom right above the paypal button :)

LOL - spot on ;-).

What's interesting though is to observe a monster organization like Fool.com leverage this exact same style - it scales, believe me!

People won't be around to read your mile long page if the top part of it (don't say fold) isn't captivating. Let's not call it the fold, but the first 300-400 vertical pixels are more important than the bottom.

It is not a myth, what worked for SEOMoz may or may not work for you. As even they point out, that is why you should A/B test - avoid applying "best practices" directly to your site. It can actually harm your conversions.

I have personally interacted with Conversion Rate Experts and they are a fantastic team, solely dedicated to the art of conversion rate optimization. They do their job excellently and as you can see from this post they write great content too!

Really well done, Karl (from CRE) - if you are here on HN, that is.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com