First Impressions

First impressions are important. As this is the very first Sparkle Team Blog, I thought it would be fitting to write about the value of a first impression.

Most digital marketers know that a first impression can make or break a new customer’s view of your brand, product, or service. That’s what makes it so important to do the research on your customer’s wants and needs, how they talk, what verbage resonates with them, what CTA will be the most effective, and what imagery will make the biggest impact.

But putting all of the research and preparation aside, I want to point out one of the biggest flaws I’ve seen: the execution of a campaign strategy. 

I’ve sat through hours long meetings discussing the ins and outs of the customer persona, listing every detail of their day-to-day experience in the hopes of gleaning that last bit of wording to secure a new customer for the brand. 

Then, after one of these grueling meetings (in which only about 30 minutes seem to be productive for the team), a marketing strategy is drawn up. This strategy lists out the calls to action, the imagery to be used, the messaging to be displayed proudly across the screens of people in a carefully selected target audience. And after all these hours of labor, research, and preparation, the day comes for the campaign to go live.

As the ads roll out and the first impressions come in, every marketer knows the anticipation of waiting on that first conversion. It’s like Christmas for us data nerds.

Now, whatever your conversion may be, this is where I’ve seen the trouble start. You have a great, sparkling marketing campaign that’s performing beautifully; no trouble with marketing execution here, right?

Wrong.

The issue starts with that conversion I just mentioned. I can’t stress how many times I’ve seen this happen, particularly when it comes to lead generation. A click leads to a website visit, a website visit leads to a form completion, and the lead is generated. Hurray! But don’t celebrate yet. Just yesterday, I did a test form with a client who professed a great deal of knowledge in digital marketing, going so far as to label themselves a “Digital Marketing Specialist.” I visited clicked through a test ad, visited the site, and filled out the form. Everything went smoothly. And then I got the email follow up.

Oh my.

This, dear reader, is where the trouble started. The email came into my inbox, free of any spam filters. But imagine my horror when I opened said email and saw… templates.

That’s right, not a single piece of content was filled out except for my first name. So kudos for that at least?

The rest of the email was filled with text direction:

• [Goal: This email should create relatedness]

• [insert scheduling link]

• [insert topic of discussion]

• [insert a numbered list or bullet points]

I could go on, but you get the idea.

So what does this say for a first impression? This company, who shall remain nameless, claims to be a marketing consultant. Would you trust a marketing consultant who can’t even get the very first email in a user flow correct? I wouldn’t.

This goes directly back to my original point: first impressions matter.

If I were a true customer, this company would have lost a sale. Even if I had been willing to give them a chance, the email didn’t contain a single link in which I could call, contact, or reach out in any way. It didn’t even have a link back to the website. 

And this same email had been going out for a full year. My question is, how did no one notice that this email hadn’t converted a single lead in an entire year? That would lead me into a long spiel about the importance of weekly metrics review and tracking your data, but that’s a discussion for another time.

Now, this isn’t the only story I have about this issue. Another company I’ve worked with, this one in a different service industry which I will refrain from listing in the name of privacy, was spending thousands on LinkedIn ads a month. Leads were coming in with the CPC well below average for LinkedIn. Everything seemed to be going well, at least from what I could see.

However, the marketing lead was complaining about conversion rates, citing that not a single lead had actually come through from all that ad money. So I did some digging. I started with the email forms, just like before. This marketing lead, who again claimed to be very proficient in digital marketing, had set up an email flow for leads who came through the contact form.

I followed the email flow and received a pretty generic sales follow up. The branding and messaging could have been better, but it wasn’t anything that would have driven away a seriously interested client.

Then I tested the Calendly link. It didn’t work.

So, I got access to the third party system where the leads were flowing to and found that every single lead (there were at least 100) who had come in over the last year had received that same broken link. A lot of them even tried reaching out to see if they could get a new link to set up a call. Do you think they got a response?

Nope.

So what’s the moral of the story? Always double check your emails.

But seriously, the first impression of your brand goes further than just the first image, headline, or CTA that a customer sees. You need to make sure that every step of your process to getting that first contact or product sale goes smoothly. Otherwise, you’ll just end up losing out to a business with a clear path to conversion.

I know I’ve only talked about lead generation here, but this really applies to the ecommerce side as well. A user navigating to a product page isn’t looking to wade through pages of information or 1000 word product descriptions written in the name of SEO (yes I’ve seen that too).

So keep it simple. It doesn’t have to sparkle, but it doesn’t have to suck either. If your campaigns are driving the leads, then you just have to get your process down and get your conversions will go up.

Thanks for reading. I hope you’ve enjoyed your first impression of the Sparkle Team Blog. If you’ve got a good example of some marketing that didn’t exactly sparkle, send us an email and we’ll get your story featured in the blog. I promise to try not to send any broken links.

-STB