First things first: What’s a landing page? A landing page is a page a visitor is directed to after clicking on an ad. It shouldn’t be your company’s home page. Instead, it should exist as a separate webpage with one clear message and purpose, leading visitors seamlessly from the initial ad to a clear call to action, and ideally – to conversions.

Whether creating a new landing page from scratch or trying to rework an existing one for better results, here are a few tactics you can use that have been proven to ramp up landing page conversions:

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Happy Monday from HMG!

We were greeted this morning with some exciting news from the American Business Awards and we couldn’t wait to share! Last Friday in San Francisco, the ABA awarded many prestigious companies with Stevie Awards in a variety of categories. HMG Creative had the pleasure of competing and are thrilled to announce we won a Gold Stevie Award in the nonprofit category for our work with Texas Young Lawyers Association! The TYLA “What Do Lawyers Do?” Project was an especially fun one for us as we always enjoy the opportunity to work with local nonprofit organizations.

A big thank you to the American Business Awards, and congratulations to all of our fellow winning businesses – we’re in great company!

You can take a look at our winning site at http://wdld.tyla.org, and learn a little more about how we tackled the project here:

[button size=”large” type=”square” color=”standard” icon=”circle-arrow-right” url=”http://hmgcreative.com/project/tyla/”]View Project Details[/button]

Cheers!

It’s that time of year again friends, the Austin Young Chamber’s FAVE Awards are back! Each fall the FAVE awards recognize local Austin businesses in a variety of categories and this year the winners will be announced at an awards ceremony on November 14^th.  As you can imagine, we’re so excited to have been nominated again and would love the honor of a back-to-back win – but we need YOUR help!

The ballot is now open for voting and it only takes a few seconds to complete. We’re nominated under the FAVE Professional Services Company, but feel free to cast your vote in as many or few categories as you like – we’ve been nominated alongside some awesome local organizations.

If you do vote, let us know! Give us a shout-out that you voted using the hashtag #HMG4FAVE on our Twitter or Facebook page and we’ll draw a winner to receive a fun Austin prize package. We sincerely appreciate your vote!

[button size=”large” type=”square” color=”standard” icon=”circle-arrow-right” url=”http://www.aycawards.org/vote/”]Cast Your Vote Now![/button]

Ever see those stacks of books people have in guest bathrooms at their homes? Home décor magazines, outdated tabloids and self-help books may come to mind. You might even be guilty of having a large (and growing) stack in your own bathroom. We present to you an alternative: Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader. What is it, you may ask? Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader is a series of books filled with short articles chock full of trivia ranging from history to sports to pop culture—and they’re funny, too. But despite its name, Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader isn’t only for the porcelain throne. Leave the book on your living room table for guests to peruse, or bring it with you on a long family car ride for some laughs along the way.

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Ahoy, matey! Pirate Energy, a cocktail-inspired line of energy drinks, has partnered alongside the HMG Creative team to create a highly custom ssh client , energetic and industry-disrupting web experience. A division of Blue Matrix Labs – the brainchild of Kendall Harter – Pirate Energy brings the party to your taste buds with five tasty, healthy and outright exciting energy shots.

In an effort to break into the market in a revolutionary way, we crafted a carefully formulated digital experience for Pirate and its customers. At the nucleus, a responsive, informative and user engaging site with custom animations and an easy-to-navigate user experience. But the site wouldn’t be as enthralling if it wasn’t for the compelling copy. Aligning ourselves with the party theme of the brand, we used a tongue-in-cheek approach to content creation. Using hilarious pirate innuendos, we created informative product-specific copy while portraying the quirky company culture and instilling it into the readers’ minds.

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Have you heard of drip marketing? To give you a real-life reference, the phrase comes from “drip irrigation”—the agricultural process of watering plants and crops with a small amount of water over a long period of time. Hopefully I haven’t lost you yet, because when applied to marketing and sales it’s a lot less boring. Essentially, with a drip marketing campaign, short, quick bursts of sales content are sent out (for example, via email) over a designated period of time. Drip marketing contrasts to bombarding customers with an overload of marketing material that they’d most likely toss to the side, or send right to spam. Still confused? Check out this infographic for ideas on how to launch your own drip marketing campaign.

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Ah, Thanksgiving—family, friends, football, food, more food – but with so much going on in our lives, it’s often easy to overlook these simple pleasures. As the holidays quickly approach us (where did the time go?) we feel it’s an appropriate time, if any, to acknowledge the importance of unplugging and taking a break from work every now and then.

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Meet HMG’s awesome new < and front-end web designer/developer family photography adelaide at Canvas Collage, John Sheridan! Hailing from the one-stop-light town of Dalzell, SC, John graduated from the University of South Carolina with a degree in Journalism, though he mostly studied computer science, design and photography. He was a programmer/designer at Penelope Design (now ShoutFireBrands), and he even helped a couple guys run for Mayor.

Following college, John moved to the Big Apple in 2011 and found work at Bureau Blank. He lived in Astoria, Queens, frequenting the famous Astoria Bohemian Beer Garden and taking advantage of what NYC had to offer. After the busy city life, he decided to take his work down to the rural south. In September 2012, he opened shop as a freelancer in the mountains about 30 miles away from Boone, North Carolina. It was the perfect spot to freelance once again, grow a beard (which is a great excuse to read reviews of beard bombs) and sit by the fireplace in the snowy weather. Being gear hungry for the latest shaving gizmos is one of my most enjoyed pass times, I guess on can say it is my hobby.

In his free time, John likes to play basketball, and has been playing/coaching for must of his life. In January 2013, he decided to make the move west to the great city of Austin, landing him here at HMG Creative. Give John a warm welcome by commenting below.

We hope everyone had a wonderful and warm Christmas! As we make the transition into 2014, it’s hard to believe that this year is drawing to a close–but before we say goodbye to 2013, let’s rewind and take a look at some of HMG’s major highlights of the year. You know what this means – that’s right, a little trip down memory lane.

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Mark Twain had Huckleberry Finn in the late 1800’s. You (read: everyone) had the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in middle school. And in 2014, we all have Huckleberry- the leading website for professional quality facial treatments delivered to your door.

But let’s rewind a bit to Chapter 1 of our Huckleberry tale. It was a warm September afternoon when Joyce, the founder of Huckleberry, and I sat down to discuss her business idea. A Princeton grad and entrepreneur at heart, Joyce is no stranger to determining her goals and carefully executing on her plans to reach them. The goal on this particular day: world domination. Kidding, she chose to save that for 2015. The idea she approached me with was simple: provide high-end products and services at an affordable price to everyday folks in the convenience of their own home. What type of products and services you ask? The types you’d find at your favorite luxury spa- facial treatments. In the comfort of my own living room, you say? Yes indeed! But this plan needed a team that could deliver the functionality she envisioned in an easy-to-use platform and, for lack of a better word, badass website. Enter HMG Creative.

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