Transparency in Digital Marketing

We’ve all heard people refer to our point in time as “the information age.” It’s true, our generation has unprecedented access to information. Researchers estimate that between television, radio, the internet, email and social media the average person digests the equivalent of 174 newspapers worth of information EVERY DAY (source).

Even Siri and Alexa sit nearby ready to relay nearly any nugget of information you would want to know. Wondering who won the Super Bowl in 1974? Just ask Siri! (I just did, and the Dolphins beat the Vikings 24-7).

With information so abundant and readily available, our prospects demand access to information when consuming marketing messages. Imagine you’re looking to purchase a new book on Amazon; you read the reviews, the description and the price, but nowhere on the screen does it reveal who the author is. That’s something you definitely want to know before pulling the trigger on a buying decision!

One of the things that we pride ourselves on at Steep is something we call Two-Way Transparency. This means we showcase your photo, your logo, your company information, your contact information, your licensing information, and even your RIA/BD disclosures on each landing page we build. We also provide all the registration information to you in real time for everyone who registers for your event. This way you know as much as we do about the people signed up for your event, and your prospects know exactly who you are. There are two main reasons we do this.

It’s the right thing to do

The first reason two-way transparency is important is that simply put – it’s the right thing to do. You deserve more than someone playing games with you and withholding information about the leads you’ve paid them to generate for you, and the consumer expects (and is entitled) to know exactly what they’re signing up for. We regularly have advisors tell us that they build such good rapport with their seminar attendees even before the event occurs because of the way we feature them on the landing page. We’ve even had compliance reviewers tell us that they will not approve marketing if the advisor’s information is not represented on the landing page because they believe it to be misleading.

It works better

The second reason two-way transparency is important is that it works better! Here’s a screenshot of an A/B split test we did on a recent landing page at the advisor’s request. This advisor was concerned that his company didn’t have enough of an online presence, and that featuring him on the landing page may reduce his response rate. Rather than totally removing his bio from the landing page, we created two versions of the page: one that had his bio and company information on it and one that didn’t. Then we sent 50% of the traffic to each variant of the landing page so we could see which version of the page converted better.

As you can see we saw an increased conversion rate of 16% on the page that featured the advisor’s information on the landing page. This is a perfect example of the desire consumers have to fully understand something before they act. Simplifying the call to action and being transparent in our marketing is not only the right thing to do – it also works better.

These principles are true in every part of our marketing and our business. Whether you’re marketing on television, radio or through old-fashioned mail – giving consumers access to all the information they need to know without masking your intentions is a proven way to build better relationships and market like a pro.