What is TrenDemon?
TrenDemon is a powerful content marketing tool designed to increase the revenue from your website or blog.
You can install it on an “ordinary” (i.e. non-WordPress) website – and the instructions given were so helpful that anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of HTML could set it up – yes even me!
However, for the purposes of this review I have been evaluating the use of TrenDemon from within WordPress, where you will install it as a plugin which enables you to access the TrenDemon dashboard from within WordPress, or by logging into your account from a separate browser tab.
What is the Purpose of TrenDemon?
The ultimate aim of TrenDemon is to increase the conversions / revenue from your website or blog, without the need to increase your content and visitor numbers. (Of course as you increase your content and traffic you are presenting even more opportunities for TrenDemon to boost your revenue.)
How Does TrenDemon Increase Revenue?
When you specify a goal to promote, TrenDemon tracks the visits that generate the most conversions on your site and uses personalized real-time recommendations and call-to-actions to dramatically boost conversions from the content already on your site.
It will help you to identify the most effective conversion paths and traffic sources so that you can direct more of your visitors onto those routes, thereby getting the best out of every visitor.
Being able to see which items and channels are doing best, you will be able to make more informed decisions about the type of content to create and how / where to promote it. This can have the side-effect of reducing costs of ineffective promotions, which will further boost your profits.
Stages of TrenDemon
1. Analyze – TrenDemon's algorithms identify which sources, pages and paths on your site generates are most effective.
2. Automate – your visitors will be shown relevant personalized content recommendations and CTAs (call to actions).
3. Amplify – TrenDemon's publishing partners can help increase your reach to relevant audiences
Setting Up TrenDemon
The basic setup is done from the vertical menu at the left hand side of the WordPress dashboard. Once you have installed the plugin and done the basic setup, you can also login to TrenDemon directly from the web interface which is helpful.
It's also pleasing in these “mobile friendly” times to see that TrenDemon has a Mobile Interface option – in fact it's essential.
After basic set-up you will be prompted to proceed to the TrenDemon dashboard, which can subsequently be accessed also from the WP dashboard in the left hand side vertical menu.
From here access the FINAL item on the TrenDemon Dashboard – Settings, shown in blue below.
After this, if the Status is anything other than “Code is installed correctly”, you should contact support.
You will next need to configure your module settings. If in doubt, leave the default settings. See below for explanation of what these modules do.
When the plugin is first installed it takes a while to analyze your site, and only when the “Ready to Go Live” setting is set to “On” (green) will the plugin start working correctly.
For a very thorough explanation of how to get started with TrenDemon check out Deborah Anderson's TrenDemon Setup tutorial on her site.
What Is The TrenDemon LIFT Module
This is a “content recommendation / call to action” which is displayed when a visitor has finished reading an article. You may be accustomed to thinking of this as “Related Content” – although it has many more powerful functions than a typical Related Content plug-in.
What Is The TrenDemon PLAY Module
This is a module that allows you to reward users for sharing your content on Social Media. I didn't delve deeply into this section as I already have my own strategies in place for Social Media sharing, but it looks extremely powerful. See the screen shot below for some of the options.
TrenDemon Conversion Goals
Your conversion goals are set up from the dashboard:
and activated by adding code to the successful conversion page, see below. You can assign a notional monetary value to a conversion, to help you evaluate your return on investment.
TrenDemon Call To Action
CTAs may be set up on exit or on scroll, and can take the form of banners or forms. The screen shot below shows an example of the options that can be added for a scroll setting. Integration to third-party applications is available as shown below.
There is a particularly helpful geographic CTA filter, because you can either INclude or EXclude countries.
So I was able to set up an exit call-to-action and preview it, as seen below:
TrenDemon 3rd Party Integrations
I didn't test any integrations, but according to the company's information: TrenDemon works well with your favorite analytics, email and marketing automation services, such as Google Analytics, Silverpop, Hubspot, Marketo and MailChimp. See the advanced section within Dashboard | Settings.
Basic API information is available in the user documentation for the LIFT and PLAY units and the support team will be happy to help users with more advanced requirements.
As MailChimp, excellent though it is, may not be the most commonly used auto-responder, I look forward to news of more auto-responders being integrated. Of course it may be that this can already be achieved by using HTML.
TrenDemon Users
There are many interesting tools and options in this software and it is quite clearly very powerful once it starts working its magic on the content in your site and the visitors.
I have seen it in operation on other sites and, of particular note, it is used by:
Conclusion On TrenDemon
To get the best from TrenDemon you must allow time for the set-up and analysis phases. Once these are complete you will have an excellent tool.
The sheer power of the tool means it isn't a plug-and-play option but you have the benefit of a 30-day free trial of TrenDemon to get all the features set up exactly as you want them to be.
This means that you're not paying for the learning experience, and the support team will have every incentive to help you, to turn you into a regular customer.
Price / Trial Of TrenDemon Content Marketing Tool
- Publishers: Can open a free account to monetize their site by displaying content from external sites.
- Marketers: After the 30 day free trial, the price for marketers starts at $89 per month (paid annually) for up to 10k visitors per month.
Do take the free trial of TrenDemon and let me know your findings in the comments below.
