Starting a new job comes with a lot of training, learning and new experiences. It is an exciting time where you will be able to take in a lot of information and put it to use. However, some downtime is bound to happen as you are adjusting to your new role.…
The post How to Make the Most of Down Time at a New Job appeared first on Seer Interactive.
What does a gym with 10 locations have in common with a fast-food chain of over 13,000 locations? They both offer a good or service that effectively allows a customer to fulfill something.…
The post 4 Digital Advertising Tips for Franchises appeared first on Seer Interactive.
Everyone who works in Google Ads knows that you can spend every hour of every day continually finding areas of improvement. There’s always something Google is changing, and always something that you can make more efficient.…
The post 3 Scripts Everyone Should Be Using in Google Ads appeared first on Seer Interactive.
You may have noticed a new feature has popped up in your Google Ads campaigns. So what exactly is an Optimization Score and why should I give it my attention?
Optimization Score is a helpful new feature that highlights relatively simple ways to improve the performance of your Google Ads campaigns.…
The post A Quick Dive Into Optimization Score appeared first on Seer Interactive.
This post was written by Rachael DiNicola and Crystal Hopkins of our PPC Team.
Want more efficient campaigns, higher CTR, and more conversions? Who doesn’t? While there are many levers to pull when optimizing accounts, a great place to start is by analyzing keyword Quality Score (QS).…
The post We Improved CPA by 30% and CTR by 24% with Our Quality Score Analysis appeared first on Seer Interactive.
At Seer, we like to think about search holistically – as one results page, regardless of which channel the results come from. If we have organic data, why not use it to our advantage in our PPC campaigns?
Below I will walk through 5 different ways to use SEO data in PPC deliverables, including:
Utilizing these tactics is dependent on your access to your SEO data and deliverables, however, these are easy ways to enhance and drive more value in your PPC deliverables if you do have access to this data!…
The post 5 Ways to Incorporate SEO Data Into PPC Deliverables appeared first on Seer Interactive.
This isn’t a new or earth-shattering concept but just like how you can run surveys to learn more about how users perceive your product, redesigned website, or new branding, you can use them to learn more about your competitors.…
The post How to Spy on Your Competitors Using Surveys appeared first on Seer Interactive.
Audience Insights uses Google’s network data to help you understand more about your audience segments and recognize key patterns and opportunities moving forward. It is designed to help discover new audiences, make informed decisions about how to target your ads and make bid adjustments, and benchmark your audiences against the general population.…
The post Uncover New Targeting Options with Google Ads Audience Insights appeared first on Seer Interactive.
UTM Parameters are tags added to the end of URLs and are mainly used to track:
The post How to Use UTM Parameters and Tracking Templates for PPC appeared first on Seer Interactive.
Buttons are actionable touchpoints for users to engage with content in actionable ways. Small but mighty, buttons can make or break user experience on a website if poorly designed, so it’s important to follow best UX practices when designing buttons.
Pressing buttons is gratifying.…
The post UX Checklist Series: Button Design appeared first on Seer Interactive.
A few months ago, I found myself in a full leg brace following knee surgery. Everyday things I took for granted (like sitting in a chair!) suddenly became very challenging.
There are a handful of particularly stressful moments I remember well, but the moments I remember most are all the small gestures people did to help me—from the receptionist at my doctor’s office who brought out a little footstool so I could comfortably sit down, to the bus driver who pulled up *seamlessly* to a high curb so I could step off with ease—those people made choices, and those choices helped me.…
The post UX Checklist Series: Accessible Design appeared first on Seer Interactive.
Conducting audience research may seem like a daunting task. Yes, it’s a bit of work, but trust me, it’s worth it and can yield valuable insights that can help you cobble together a far more informed approach than if you were working on hypotheses alone.…
The post Audience Research in Marketing: Start With Data You Already Have appeared first on Seer Interactive.
OK, it’s 2020. To celebrate a new year and a new decade, let’s take a brief look at how search results have progressed over the past 10 years:
2010
2020
An entire decade has passed between these two images.…
The post MSV is Ancient History: A Decade of Search Marketing appeared first on Seer Interactive.
PPC specialists are tasked with keyword research and expansion frequently. We use Google Keyword Planner, search query data, landing page content, and various other tools to guide strategy. However, at Seer, we like to think about search holistically – as one results page, regardless of which channel the results come from.…
The post How to Use SEO Data to Inform PPC Keyword Expansions appeared first on Seer Interactive.
Are you looking to optimize each page on your website to make it easier for Google to crawl, resulting in higher rankings? This is a form of on-page SEO—a set of tactics you apply page-by-page with the aim of improving a specific page’s presence in search engines.
It’s easy to optimize a page once you know where to look. But it can be tricky to comb through each page on your website and find areas for improvement.
Luckily, you don’t have to fork-out for an expensive SEO tool to find them.
Siteliner is a great budget-friendly option.
In this guide, we’ll cover:
Siteliner is marketed as a duplicate content checker for your website. It shows how many pages on your website have similar content on another internal URL.
For example: If you have one paragraph on URL.com/tips and the same is copied on URL.com/advice, Siteliner should show it.
Siteliner is an important tool because duplicate content is a major SEO problem. It confuses Google, who doesn’t know which page best answers a searcher’s query—and therefore, which URL to rank in their search engine results pages.
The goal is to have unique content on every page. Siteliner was designed to help you find (and replace) those pages containing duplicate content before it becomes a bigger problem.
Siteliner and Copyscape are both duplicate content checking tools.
However, there is one main difference.
Siteliner only finds duplicate content within your website. It does an internal scan of every page on your website and searches for duplicates.
Copyscape, on the other hand, checks your website’s content against other pages found on the internet. It will flag any instances where content has been copied from your site and used on another.
(Fun fact: Both tools are created by the same parent company, Indigo Steam Technologies.)
Siteliner is more than a duplicate content tool; it helps you do a full (and free!) content audit of your website.
Add your URL into the search box and use their tools to:
We’ve already mentioned that duplicate content can cause issues for you in SEO.
Siteliner’s report shows the percentage of your website that has unique, common, and duplicate content:
Click through to see those URLs flagged as having duplicate content.
You’ll see the number of words that are duplicated, the match percentage, and how many pages it is found on:
Click through to each link and Siteliner will highlight the content that has been found on several pages of your website.
Judge whether it’s sensible to change the duplicate content. For example: If you have the same paragraph in two blog posts, edit the second piece to rejig the sentences. The context can stay the same, but it shouldn’t be a word-for-word copy.
(You probably won’t need to change the duplicate content if it’s a generalized, branded piece of text—such as your “About” information, customer testimonials, or contact details.)
Broken links are the equivalent of a dead-end. Google and your visitors land on a 404 error page and don’t get to the link they wanted to end up on. They’re bad for SEO for this reason: Google prioritizes sites with awesome user experience.
Dead ends don’t fit those criteria, and you’d be frustrated if you landed on a broken page, right?
Siteliner helps you find these on your own website. Head to the ‘Broken Links’ tab to find them, and click through to find the broken URL highlighted on a specific page:
Once you’ve found them, you’ve got two ways to fix the problem:
Did you know that fast-loading pages rank better in Google?
It’s easy to understand why.
You click a result from a Google results page. The page itself takes 10 seconds to load, but even when the basic text is there, it takes another few seconds for other on-page elements to be shown.
It’s frustrating, right? Hence why Google prioritizes fast-loading pages in their search results.
One major thing influencing loading speed is the size of a page. Hundreds of elements, large image files, and complex code take longer for a web browser to load.
Siteliner shows these under the “Comparison with Other Sites” section:
You’ll see how large your pages are, compared with the average for a normal website. It shows the same data for your load times.
If you’re higher than the 25th percentile for either, consider making some on-site changes to reduce your page size and your average load time. It’ll work wonders for your SEO strategy and user experience.
Siteliner shows a breakdown of links on your site, including the number of:
…links you have on each page.
This report is useful because you can compare and balance your links.
Generally, it’s good to have an equal balance of both internal. Internal shows Google around your website and you can control the anchor text. External links (backlinks), however, associate your site with high-authority sites, which helps to build credibility in your industry.
Alongside each link, the count is the average of a typical page to help you compare. You can use this to add (or remove) links if they’re way out of the “norm.”
The majority of Siteliner features are geared towards on-page SEO tactics; changes you can make on a page-by-page basis in a bid to improve your keyword rankings.
However, Siteliner also offers a “skipped pages” report. It’s a list of URLs that Siteliner didn’t scan, along with the reason why:
Reasons why Siteliner skipped your page might be because:
Each of these technical SEO elements could cause search engines to also skip certain URLs on your website. Check whether the reason for the skip is intentional. If not, fix it.
Now we know the different ways you can use Siteliner for SEO, there’s one question still remaining: Does it really work?
We put Siteliner to the test and found it has its advantages and drawbacks:
One positive thing we noticed about Siteliner was that it’s incredibly fast to retrieve results.
But arguably one of the biggest benefits of Siteliner is that it’s free for most users. The basic, free version of Siteliner allows users to scan up to 250 pages—which is likely enough for small websites or blogs.
Siteliner also has several features inside one free tool. You don’t need one tool to check for broken links and another to scan for duplicate content. Siteliner can do it all, making it a superb addition to any SEO’s toolkit.
Plus, you can download Siteliner reports in a variety of formats, including PDFs, CSV files, and Excel sheets. This makes it easy to show reports to show clients, highlight important results, and change the formatting.
While Siteliner is a great tool as a whole, there were a few limitations we ran into during our tests; the first being that scans are limited to your website.
Whilst Siteliner does show how some metrics—like page speed and loading times—compare to the average, it is the average of the entire internet. It’s not a direct comparison against your competitors… Whose actual timings might be much faster than what you’re comparing them to.
And, speaking of comparisons, Siteliner doesn’t give any insight on how to improve page speeds and loading times. It simply tells you how you compare. (Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool is a better replacement for this feature because it gives personalized recommendations for your site.)
We also ran into an error with the broken link feature. It highlighted our affiliate link to SEMrush as being broken, but it isn’t. It directs people to a live sign-up page on the SEMrush site:
Finally, the overall interface of Siteliner feels very basic.
There has been no effort put into the design, which although it doesn’t impact the performance, it doesn’t give the impression of a professional and trustworthy SEO tool.
As we touched on in the positives of Siteliner, their software is free for up to 250 pages. That’s usually enough to scan a small website or blog.
(Check how many pages your site has by doing a site search in Google.)
If you’re over the 250-page allowance, Siteliner offers a Premium version. This costs 1 cent per page, which is still affordable compared to most SEO tools. (For context: A full scan for a 500-page website with Siteliner Premium would set you back a mere $5.)
The Premium version has a cap on 25,000 pages, but it also saves previous results to look back on. You can see how your reports change over time as you make changes based on their recommendations—like reducing page sizes, for example.
With the free version of Siteliner offering enough features for most small to mid-sized websites, most users can get away with the free account. You likely only need to run the comparisons once a month, or once a quarter—and you’d still be within your limit each time.
We’d only recommend the Premium Siteliner account if you’re an agency with lots of client websites to scan or own a large website with more than 250 pages.
Other than that, the basic version will do everything you need… Without costing a dime.
Siteliner is a great, free tool that SEOs can use to get an overview of their on-page elements. It highlights issues like duplicate content, broken links, and skipped pages—all of which could hurt your rankings in the long-run if not fixed early.
Head over to Siteliner and judge for yourself. It’s free to get started and can give tons of valuable information.
In this case, you get more than what you (don’t) pay for.
P.S. Check out Duplichecker if you’re looking for an alternative.
Not to brag or anything, but I have always been a fairly early-adopter of automation tools over the course of my decade-long career. That’s why I’ve always been somewhat disappointed when they turn out to be lackluster and harm my campaign performance!…
The post We Improved Client CVR by 110% in 2019 by Doing More Smart Display appeared first on Seer Interactive.
The list of settings, adjustments, and targeting levers in any given digital marketing platform (search, social, display, etc.) is seemingly endless. Because of this, it is too easy for human digital marketing practitioners to make mistakes – our brains are just not optimized to keep track of it all.…
The post How to Implement An Accurate PPC Quality Assurance Process appeared first on Seer Interactive.
Human beings experience a wide range of emotions, and this can easily translate into what we search. With that in mind, I found myself recently wanting to dig in further into how users are actually feeling when they search.
The post How To Understand Audience Emotions in Search Data appeared first on Seer Interactive.
A distributed team is typically made up of team members who work in different offices or work remotely. With the increase of remote roles opening up at companies (including Seer!) and as companies expand into new and different locations, distributed teams are popping up more and more.…
The post Fostering Community Within a Distributed Team appeared first on Seer Interactive.
And the client is on board to test! But before hitting start on your campaign experiment, ask yourself if your account is structured for success.
Automated bidding strategies are more sophisticated than ever, whether you are managing your campaigns directly from the search engines or using a third-party bid management tool such as Kenshoo.…
The post How to Structure Your Account for Smart Bidding Success appeared first on Seer Interactive.
Anyone that is making data-driven decisions is typically looking at more than one data source. Data gives us the power to tell stories, but nobody likes an incomplete story. Luckily, for us digital marketers, Screaming Frog comes equipped with APIs from popular tools to help you cut down on collecting data sources from various tools to compile into one place.…
The post How to Use APIs in Screaming Frog appeared first on Seer Interactive.
Whether you’ve recently published a new piece of content that just isn’t performing as well as you’d hoped, or have a reservoir of outdated and stale blogs from 10 years ago, auditing your content is key to ensuring you get the most bang for your buck from those pages.…
The post How to Audit Your Website Content: A Step-By-Step Guide appeared first on Seer Interactive.
Think back to a time when you took a stab at something brand new or stepped into unfamiliar territory for the first time. How were you able to establish a foundation and feel comfortable in your new surroundings?…
The post Four Impactful Ways to Mentor a New Hire appeared first on Seer Interactive.
Industry content resonates directly with your target audience, especially if your company has the Subscription as a Service (SaaS) model.
Last year I was in a series of customer interviews where nearly every single customer interviewed mentioned they liked how our client showed various industries the client worked with.…
The post Why SaaS Companies Need Industry-Specific Content appeared first on Seer Interactive.
We’ve been talking about “digital maturity” at Seer a lot lately. In particular we’ve been really excited about adopting, and helping our clients adopt, the Digital Maturity Model (DMM) that Google and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) created.…
The post An Introduction to the Digital Maturity Model appeared first on Seer Interactive.
NOTE: The instructions below are the most up to date for 2020. However, we wrote a blog post back in 2013 that is still worthing checking out here!
At Seer, we preach that clean data is better data, and better data leads to better decisions.…
The post Excluding Internal Traffic from Google Analytics Data appeared first on Seer Interactive.
This post is for any users of Google Analytics — note that Google is ending the collection of data for Network Domain and Service Provider — two dimensions that were very useful for uncovering spam or other anomalies in your data.…
The post Google Analytics Deprecating ‘Network Domain’ and ‘Service Provider’ appeared first on Seer Interactive.
Every company has a set of highly competitive search terms that they are trying to rank for. Unfortunately, not everyone can rank on the first page. We have a few tactics to help you move closer to the first page or even move higher onto the first page of results.…
The post 3 Tactics to Help You Rank for Your Most Competitive Keywords appeared first on Seer Interactive.
From a user perspective, site speed is only a problem when it’s broken. When all is well, no one notices, let alone, appreciates it’s seamless functionality.
As users, we don’t appreciate site speed because we live in an era of immediacy and expected outcomes.…
The post How to Use Google’s Speed Report for Effective SEO appeared first on Seer Interactive.
As a PPC practitioner, nothing’s quite as nerve-wracking as revamping an account structure and seeing how it performs post-launch. Talk about pressure! Restructuring a PPC account is quite an undertaking but often a necessary one. As your project evolves over time, so do the engines.…
The post Conversions Increased +101% and +644% YoY When We Restructured Our Paid Campaigns appeared first on Seer Interactive.
I read about a concept that changed my life a few years ago. This concept is called – “it’s not crazy, it’s a clue” – and I learned about it from the groundbreaking book on negotiation Never Split the Difference.…
The post Reading Clues: How To Understand What’s Going On Behind The Scenes With Your Client appeared first on Seer Interactive.
Early in my career, I was really bad at saying “no” to people. Seer is a place where opportunities to help others out, work on side projects, and go the extra mile for clients are aplenty, and this got me into trouble early on.…
The post How To Amicably Say “No” appeared first on Seer Interactive.
We recently had a unique client request to identify potential partners for their new affiliate program. Apart from using affiliate networks, we wanted to create a method for selecting potential partners using competitive backlink data, as we would when identifying prospects for outreach.…
The post How to Find Affiliate Partners to Grow Your Business appeared first on Seer Interactive.
At Seer, whenever we begin an engagement with a new client, we organize an in-depth, strategic planning session for the client team and their designated account team. The purpose of the Kickoff meeting is to help the account team determine what success will look like for this project and outline the steps they’ll need to take to get there, aligning with the client’s goals and expectations along the way.…
The post Important Client Information to Gather at Kickoff appeared first on Seer Interactive.
About a year ago, Facebook added a section onto their ads that provided users a better understanding of why they were being targeted that specific ad. Even though users were getting information about the lists they were in, they still had to be stuck in that list.…
The post Learn Why You’re Being Targeted on Facebook AND Opt Out appeared first on Seer Interactive.
Are you in the market for a new online form builder?
There are hundreds of options to choose from. But in business, return on your investment is important. You need to make sure that any new tool you’re thinking of purchasing is worth it—something you’ll need to prove to your boss, too.
We put one of the most popular online form builders, Paperform, to the test.
The goal? To find out whether it’s worth splashing the cash on.
In this guide, we’ll cover:
Before we dive in, let’s quickly iron-out what this software is.
Paperform is an online form builder. The difference to other form creators is that you don’t need to use a drag-and-drop interface. In Paperform, you can add question-fields, images, video and text anywhere on the page, just like when writing an online doc.
Think of it like the Canva for forms. Paperform has templates for every form you could think of— from wedding invitations and dinner reservations, to client on-boarding forms.
There are hundreds of templates you can use within Paperform. Businesses can use them for a variety of uses, including:
Are your marketing team struggling to engage potential leads? You’re desperately trying to put a lead on your email list, but no matter how hard you try, they’re not biting.
Interactive content—which encourages your reader to do something—could be your answer… Especially as 66% of marketers say their audience engagement increases with interactive content.
You can use Paperform’s quiz templates to create your own:
Simply put together a list of quiz-style questions, then customize the form’s settings to make it mandatory for people to enter their email address to view their results.
It’s the best way to grab your audience’s email address—and nurture them towards a sale.
Do you know what customers think of you? Where your product fails? The most impressive features you can play on in advertising campaigns?
The answers to those questions are invaluable for businesses. That’s why companies that successfully implement customer experience projects begin by focusing on how they collect and analyze feedback.
Get to know your customers by using Paperform to survey people once they purchase your product or service. There’s a bunch of templates specifically designed for this:
Requests from your staff come in from all angles: email, Slack, and in-passing in the corridor.
Instead of forgetting who asked what (and disrupting everyone’s workflow by finding out), use Paperform’s feedback templates to funnel their requests into one place.
You can use this for any type of internal request, such as:
It’s predicted that customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator in 2020.
Paperform has templates for customer feedback that you can link-to from your purchase confirmation emails. That way, support is always available—and your new customer doesn’t need to scavenge around your website to get some extra help.
But it’s not just improved customer service that these templates will give.
You can use them to find ways to improve your product/service, get testimonials, and calculate your NPS.
One of the most frustrating things about onboarding a new client is the constant back-and-forth. You’ve got tons of documents you need to send, contracts to sign, and things to approve.
Paperform has a selection of client onboarding templates to get everything you need upfront, making the entire process smoother.
The best part? According to Harvard Business Review, this perfected onboarding process “offers significant or moderate positive impact over the life of the contract for revenue, client renewals, and client referrals.”
Now we know what Paperform can do, there’s one important question: does it work?
Here’s what is great about the tool (and the things that could do with some improvement):
Paperform was designed for non-coders, and it does a great job at it. Users rave about its simple and easy-to-use interface—something that impressed me, a non-techie, when I started using it.
This might be down to the fact it has lots of customizable templates. But even if you’d prefer to create a form from scratch, the tool has a WYSIWYG editor. It’s easy to add content to your forms and customize how you want your form to look (and more importantly, to say.)
Plus, Paperform uses conditional logic. It uses the answers from previous questions to alter the following questions—something bound to make it easier for people to submit their answers.
It’s an ideal tool for businesses, too. Paperform offers over 1,000 integrations with popular tools like:
You don’t need to manually copy the answers to any other tool you’re using; the integration will do it for you.
But arguably one of the biggest advantages of Paperform is that it has a 14-day free trial—no credit card information required. You can sign-up and start using the tool in a matter of minutes, for free.
We’ve covered the things Paperform is good at. But where does it fall? I could only find two negatives.
The first: There’s no free plan once the 14-day free trial expires. It’ll set you back a minimum of $12.50 per month to access your forms after that timeframe.
The second: Paperform is only available in English. There is an option to translate the content of your form for your readers, yet you can’t build the form in another language. That means it likely won’t be the best form building option for companies who employ non-English staff.
Search the term “online form builder” into Google, and you’ll see over 397 million results:
Granted, some might not fit the bill—but there are still thousands of options for you to choose from.
Here’s how Paperform stacks up against the most popular:
Typeform is one of Paperform’s biggest competitors. Both have a simple interface and are easy to customize forms.
However, there are some things that mean Paperform pips them to the post.
One of those? The fact you can send emails directly from Paperform once a submission is received. With Typeform, however, you need to use another tool—like ConvertKit or MailChimp— to send automatic emails.
While that might not sound like much, it could mean you just need to pay for one tool. That’s usually a huge factor for smaller businesses or marketing teams.
You’ll have access to a free form builder if you have a Google account: Google Forms. But again, it comes up short when compared against Paperform.
Why? Because you can collect payments through Paperform, but not Google Forms. The latter needs another integration (or worse, manual payment recording) if you’re creating forms like event registrations, for example.
Plus, Paperform has more in-depth analytics thanks to the option to add your Facebook Pixel or Google Analytics code to the form itself. This means you can track people who’ve submitted or clicked the form—maybe even remarketing to them on social media, in the future.
Finally, let’s take a look at how JotForm compares to Paperform.
Admittedly, there isn’t much difference between the two. Both have hundreds of excellent templates, post-form customizations, and offer very similar features.
The only major factor I could find was the pricing.
JotForm has a free plan (limited to 100 form submissions per month.) Paperform doesn’t… But that doesn’t mean Paperform works out more expensive for everyone. For 10,000 submissions/month, Paperform is the most cost-effective option. It costs $12.50 per month versus $32.50 per month with JotForm.
Ready to start using Paperform to build forms for your business? It’s simple and easy to get started.
Here’s a quick-start guide to get you going:
To use Paperform you’ll need to create an account. Click here to grab your 14-day free trial. Remember: You won’t need to add your credit card details, so there’s no worry about being charged once your trial ends.
Use the two-week trial to play around with the tool and start customizing form templates.
You can choose to create a form from scratch, or customize one of their professionally-designed templates.
To do so, hit the “Create Form” button and press “Use a template”:
You can search for a specific template you’re looking for, or scroll through their range:
Once you’ve found the one you want to customize, press “Use.”
You customize the form on the next screen—by adding your own questions, or changing colors and fonts. Just use the blocks to do so.
Fancy creating your own online form from scratch?
Instead of hitting “use a template,” you can create a completely unique form by hitting “Start from scratch”:
On the next screen, you’ll see a plain form.
Use the icons at the side of the form to add a photo, video, spacer, or question:
You might notice that the interface has a similar concept to WordPress’ Gutenburg editor; using blocks to add images, questions, and breaks. This makes it extremely easy to use if you’re already familiar with WordPress.
After you’ve designed your form, it’s time to set-up how your form actually works.
Hit “Configure” to give your form a title, description, and cover image:
You can also customize the URL—ideal if you want a catchy link to send to customers without having to search for it.
If you want to configure payments through your form, you’ll also do that here. Bear in mind that you’ll have to add a payment method in your account settings, first:
On the Analytics and Form Behavior tabs, you’ll also see options to: add your Facebook/Google Analytics pixel, enable CAPTCHA, and limit your form to a certain amount of submissions.
All of these things give you greater control over your form.
What happens after someone has completed your form? Leaving them a message that says “thanks, we’ll get back to you” probably isn’t the most effective thing—especially if they’re a hot lead.
To customize this, hit “After Submission.” You can choose to:
For example: You can set-up your form so that when someone registers to your email list, they’ll get a piece of bonus content as a downloadable PDF.
They’ll be sent to a page that gives them a limited-time coupon to say thanks, and your CRM automatically adds them as a lead.
It’s much easier than doing all of those steps manually, right?
It’s wise to test your form before sending it out into the world. To do this, copy your form’s customized URL and plug it into an incognito tab. Fill in the answer to each question, and check the right things happen once you hit “Submit.”
If it does, you’re ready to share your form—be that through the URL or by embedding the code into your email or website content.
Go back to your dashboard and hit the “Submissions” tab to view responses.
You’ll be able to see an overview of how many people have viewed and submitted your form.
Or, you can get more granular and press “X submissions” to see their individual responses:
We’ve already mentioned that Paperform doesn’t have a free option once your trial expires.
However, it doesn’t cost the earth to continue using their online form builder.
The following plans are available:
There’s no doubt that Paperform is a great tool for any business to have in their toolstack—regardless of whether you’re a one-man band or large agency.
With their free 14-day trial available to anyone, judging for yourself is a no-brainer.
*This post contains affiliate links.
Who is Russell Brunson and why should you listen to him? That’s what I’m going to tackle right now. Let’s jump in.
Russell Brunson is the founder of ClickFunnels. ClickFunnels is a SAAS company that helps you build sales funnels for your business.
Russell is an Internet marketer at heart and that’s where he adds insane amounts of value.
According to Inc, ClickFunnels’ annual revenue was $94 million in 2018.
ClickFunnels’ also has between 101 – 300 employees according to Inc, Owler and Crunchbase.
Russell has built a beast of a company and here’s the most impressive part:
ClickFunnels is completely bootstrapped and self-funded.
Russell has also authored two successful books, Expert Secrets and DotCom Secrets (both are must reads for any marketer). He has a third book coming out soon called Traffic Secrets as well.
Now let’s examine Russell’s marketing performance:
According to Ahrefs, Russell’s company website ClickFunnels gets around 126,534 organic search visitors per month.
Now what’s fascinating about ClickFunnel’s SEO performance is that most of their organic search traffic comes from branded searches.
This is an important lesson for us SEOs. You can drive organic search traffic by having a great product and great marketing.
Ranking for non-branded keywords can volatile, but you’ll always dominate your branded keywords.
Something to keep in mind.
I do think ClickFunnels is underperforming when it comes to SEO because their website is so authoritative.
They could drive tons of new organic search traffic for non-branded keywords with a refined SEO strategy.
As of 1/4/2020, Russell has:
Now let’s jump into the lesson I’ve personally learned from Russell.
Here are 16 timeless business, marketing, and even entrepreneur lessons I’ve learned from reading Russell’s books and following his work for years:
Testing is the only way to achieve real marketing and business results.
Russell emphasizes the idea that you should rely on market feedback. Not you or others opinions or theories. Let people’s credit cards do the talking.
He is a relentless tester and lets the data guide his decisions.
That’s something that we should all be doing as SEOs, marketers, and business people.
Theories and hypothesis are fine as long as you actually test them. If you don’t test them, they aren’t true. Seek real market feedback when it comes to everything in your business.
That includes your marketing, products, customer experience, etc.
To put Russell’s love for testing in perspective, he created a book called “108 Proven Split Tests Winners”.
The truth is that he’s probably done 100x more testing than what’s in that book. I believe that becoming a relentless tester is the key to getting unicorn-like results and for developing lifelong skills.
Experience is the best teacher.
Russell is an obsessive learner. He learns through testing, analyzing, reading, and getting 1-on-1 advice from mentors.
I’ve heard him say before that he collected advertisements when he was younger because he enjoyed studying them so much.
He’s also read hundreds of books on advertising, marketing, sales, etc.
Plus, he’s studied and worked with all the great direct marketing greats like Frank Kern and Dan Kennedy.
Russell is a passionate learner and seeks new information that can help him 100x everything he’s doing.
If you get anything from this article, model his passion for learning.
There’s one thing that elevates Russell above other entrepreneurs I’ve seen:
His insane passion.
Russell’s energy is unmatched and that’s because he loves what he does. If you want to achieve success if whatever you’re doing, you have to love it.
Entrepreneurship is HARD and you need to love what you’re doing to push forward.
My favorite quote about this is from the great Steve Jobs.
He said:
“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.” – Steve Jobs
If you study Russell, you’ll see that he surrounds himself with other high-performers. This isn’t an accident. He seeks advice and mentorship from the best of the best.
That behavior helps him elevate his performance.
One of the best ways to accelerate your results is to get help from people with more experience than you.
The truth is that you can’t learn every skill you need to succeed in business because there isn’t enough time. You need help from other people who have already become experts in their respective fields.
This helps you accelerate your growth because you don’t have to go through the process of learning.
It’s been said that it takes 10,000 hours to achieve mastery in any skill.
The average person lives 27,375 days, which equates to 657,000 hours in your life.
If you subtract 8 hours of sleep, you only have 438,000 waking hours in your entire life.
The conclusion is that we don’t have much time. You need to get help from other people.
Push your ego to the side and you’ll achieve results you never thought were possible.
Russell isn’t new to Internet marketing or entrepreneurship. He’s been consistently playing this game for over a decade. You need this type of commitment.
Becoming “successful” in whatever you do takes TIME. This is one thing that most people never talk about when it comes to success. It doesn’t matter how hard or how effective you work.
It will still take a substantial amount of time to reach your goals.
All you can do is put in consistent effort day-by-day towards your goal and be patient.
As cliche as it is, success doesn’t happen overnight.
“Write the sales letter first. Come up with the best offer, the most insane bonuses, and the craziest claims you can think of. Write with abandon—the only limit is your imagination. Create the best marketing vehicle for your imaginary product, and when you’re finished, you’ll have an incredible sales letter. Your next job is to make the product live up to the sales letter.” – Russell Brunson
This simple lesson will stick with me forever. I used to think that you needed to create your product first and then work on marketing and sales.
I had everything backwards.
Instead:
It’s best to write your sales letter BEFORE creating your product.
Why?
Because when you write your sales letter, you’re creating a vision for what your product should be. You outline all the amazing things that you want to do.
Then you just need to make that sales letter become a reality with your product.
This backwards approach literally transformed everything that I do when it comes to product development.
Try it once and I promise, you’ll never go back to the old way.
Also, you’ll create products and solutions that are 100x better than your competitors.
There are countless distractions when you’re first starting a business.
Should you redesign your website? Should you do social media? Should you do Google ads? Should you do SEO?
You get the point. The possibilities are endless. And that’s both a blessing and curse.
These things are all distractions in the beginning.
All that matters in the beginning is selling your product and/or service.
“The only thing that matters, if you want to go from zero to a million dollars, is sales. Sales are the only thing that matters.” – Russell Brunson
Remember:
No one knows how good your product is until they use it.
That’s why you have to focus on creating a minimum viable product and then put it into the market.
Focus on sales and iterate on the product based on real customer feedback.
That’s all you can do.
It’s no secret that Russell believes that backend sales are more important than front end sales.
In fact:
This methodology is the foundation of his software ClickFunnels.
In essence, he believes you should offer low-end products on the front-end and then sell your higher priced products on the backend.
The front-end offer is used to break even with advertising and to acquire customers affordably. It’s also lower priced because getting the first sale is the hardest. Once someone pulls out their credit card, it becomes substantially easier to sell them other products.
Russell refers to this as sending them up the value ladder.
The goal is to increase the lifetime value of every customer. Sometimes this happens immediately after the first sale by means of upsells, cross-sells, etc.
However, it can also happen overtime.
For example, with Gotch SEO Academy, it’s only $25/mo. We break even or even lose money on the first month.
But when people stay on for several months, we increase the LTV of that customer.
That also doesn’t include anything else we might sell during that process as well. That said, the real money is made on the backend with existing customers.
Effective marketing and advertising disrupts and grabs your ideal customers attention. This is particularly important on social media when people are mindlessly scrolling.
You’ll notice that Russell’s ads are purposely disruptive.
He does this because he knows that you can’t drive leads and sales without capturing people’s interest and attention.
Attention is everything.
That’s why we all need to work on it because it IS a skill. It’s also why I always say you need to aim to be different in your marketing, advertising, etc.
Russell isn’t someone who repurposes identical content across all platforms. He believes that content should always be native to the platform.
I agree with this 100%.
It’s much more challenging to create unique content for each platform, but it’s a necessity.
Not only that:
It’s lazy to repurpose your content without tailoring it to the channel. I believe every channel should have content that’s unique to it. That’s because every channel is different.
For example, what works on Instagram may not work on TikTok.
And vice versa.
While your sales page/video is a persuasion vehicle, it’s not the only factor.
What matters the most is what happens BEFORE a prospect gets to your sales page.
This comes down to framing, positioning, and seeding. You must establish rapport and interest BEFORE they see your sales message.
It begins with your organic content and then it has to continue with your advertising. You want to prime your prospects early and that will make sales easier.
Nothing is known in business until it receives market feedback. That applies to your products, marketing, advertising, etc.
You must seek market feedback so you can iterate on everything.
If you don’t, your business is built on nothing but opinions and theories.
Opinions and theories don’t pay the bills.
You have to TEST your opinions and theories. You must get real market feedback.
Don’t be scared because it’s the only way to grow your business.
Unfortunately, Internet marketers have abused scarcity beyond belief. Some Internet marketers use fake scarcity to get people to buy their products.
This is wrong.
If you decide to use scarcity, it must be real. Otherwise, it’s nothing more deception.
Persuasion and deception are not the same thing.
Russell knows that scarcity is key to driving sales. Based on what I’ve seen from him, it’s genuine when he uses it.
There are many ethical ways to tap into this deep principle of human psychology.
You can use deadlines, limited time discounts, expiring bonuses, limited quantities, or even limited spots available.
It will depend on the type of product you sell.
Find ways to leverage scarcity in REAL WAY whenever you can. It dramatically boosts sales in my experience.
One thing that Russell does better than most people I’ve seen is to build a movement/community around his products. The ClickFunnels community is super connected and the community is strong.
That’s all the doing of Russell.
As a result, the ClickFunnels community creates a powerful network effect.
In other words, ClickFunnels customers are also their biggest salespeople.
Imagine having thousands of sales people?
That’s what happens when you build a strong community (and a good affiliate program ;)).
No actions are perfect. No products are perfect. Nothing is perfect.
You can aim for perfection, but at a certain point, you must put your work out.
Because at the end of the day, you don’t know how “good” or “bad” something is until people interact with it.
Once again, make sure your decisions are based on real market feedback.
Create and iterate on your product based on how customers are using it and the feedback they’ve given you.
Stop guessing. Stop trying to be “creative”. Embrace imperfect action like Russell and you’ll achieve insane results.
The goal of every business owner should be to build a business that isn’t reliant on them. The only way to do that is through building systems and hiring the right people.
Russell has surrounded himself with A-players who help his company achieve its goals. He’s realized that he can only go so far by himself.
We can all learn from his operational excellence. We all need other people to achieve our wildly important goals.
Russell has achieved tremendous success in business and entrepreneurship.
But here’s the deal:
He has dedicated himself to his craft for a long-time.
That’s the only way to achieve mastery in anything. You must be willing to do the work everyday.
But that’s all:
You also have to be willing to do it for an indefinite amount of time. The biggest factor that people disregard in the field of “success” is total time invested.
In other words:
Achieving success in whatever you’re doing takes time and there’s no way around that. If you expect to be successful overnight, in a year, or even in a couple of years, you’ll likely be disappointed.
Play the long game and your efforts will compound overtime, which leads to more success. Ultimately, the more you act and learn, the more effective you become.
The more effective you become, the easier success becomes.
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Thanks for reading!
