Madison Marketing Group Blog

Data-driven design for B2B websites

If you’re a marketer conducting research in advance of an upcoming website build, you may have heard the terms data-driven design, data-informed design, UX design, and user-centered design batted around. For the uninitiated, this can be a bit confusing.

Pillar pages are a great tool to organize and plan future content as well as improve SEO and the user experience of your site by giving both searchers and Google what they want.

Thinking about writing a pillar page for the first time and don’t know where to start? Here, we’ll walk you through the process of making 10x content pillars, from laying a foundation of research to launching your page.

Quality content is the backbone in any inbound digital marketing strategy.

But "content" has come to refer to so much, that it pretty much just means "stuff." Stuff you put on your webpages, stuff that makes up blog posts, and stuff you post on social media.

It's a broad term that can apply to almost anything (website copy, downloadable whitepapers, ad copy, etc.), yet each type of content has its own unique set of features and best practices that necessitate its own creative process.

While creating a full content library covering various topics is still important to generate search traffic, today we're going to focus on creating a gated piece of content, sometimes referred to as premium content or a lead magnet.

Pillar pages have become a popular content format and the subject of experimentation and discussion among content marketers. Maybe your colleagues have talked about them. Maybe you’ve been tasked with writing one. Or maybe you’ve come across articles discussing their virtues and where they fit into your marketing mix.

But pinning down a satisfying definition of exactly what a pillar page is—in a way that's genuinely helpful for creating one—can be tough to find. There's tons on perspectives floating around the web.

So at the risk of adding more noise to an already loud conversation, we've kept it short and simple.

Read on for a functional definition of a modern pillar pages and learn how the concept has expanded to included several varieties of pillar pages.

In 2020, when 86% of consumers rely on the internet to find a local business, and visitors judge your site based on aesthetics in just .05 seconds, it’s critical that franchises have a high-functioning website that attracts and engages visitors.

Here, we’ll explore 10 essential practices to help your franchise website hook visitors on the first page they visit. We’ll also explain how to ensure a convenient user experience and use SEO best practices to reach more potential customers. Lastly, we’ll discuss what to look for in a vendor if you need a partner to help you.

SEO and franchises

In the past few decades, the internet and growing popularity of smartphones has changed the way people shop at local businesses. No longer chained to a desktop, Americans are free to research local businesses and make purchasing decisions on the go. Consider these statistics:

Franchise websites come in all shapes and sizes, but when it comes to generating quality leads online, optimized franchise landing pages are absolutely essential.

If you’re not familiar with landing pages, these are simply the website pages where your visitors can submit their information in exchange for something. That something could be a whitepaper, demo, or promise that you'll contact them directly.

If you’re intent on building a franchise website designed to attract and convert the serious buyers out there, it’s crucial to make sure you’re leading interested visitors to landing pages they can use to take the next step.

Landing pages are all over the web, but very few are actually designed with best practices in mind. Marketers have had years to test and compare all kinds of landing pages to figure what works and what doesn’t and today, we can clearly see the patterns common among the most successful pages out there.

In an effort to nail down exactly how to maximize the probability of getting a conversion on the page, the folks over at marketingexperiments.com analyzed over 10,000 trials of landing page testing in order to extract a single “formula” for the correctly optimized landing page.

Before I go any further, you don’t have to be a whiz at math in order to grasp this and apply it yourself.

Poker players go all-in for one of two reasons: Either their hand rocks and they know the pot is theirs or it stinks and they want to scare everyone else into folding.

When done right, the payoff is big, but it takes confidence, timing, and the will to actually take a chance with your chips even when you can’t be sure it’ll pay off.

The same is true with inbound. Just like sitting around the poker table, it’s hard to win big by playing it safe with little bets here and there. Winners see opportunities and make big, smart moves.

For businesses focused on selling to a local market, reviews are crucial not only for driving business to your door (as many as 90% of shoppers read reviews before making a purchase), but also for helping your business appear higher up on search results. Having positive, recent reviews can significantly improve your search rankings in your local market.