MarketingExperiments Blog: Research-driven optimization, testing, and marketing ideas

So when Daniel Burstein proposed this oh-so-witty blog debate about Foursquare, the first question I asked him was, “What’s in your pants?” Sure enough he whips out his keys and there is a flimsy plastic reward keychain (complete with barcode) for Native Sun, an organic foods market here in Jacksonville.

Carrying around a Native Sun loyalty card while questioning the wisdom of Foursquare is a prime example of how the duality of man is witnessed through marketing. “Your idea is stupid, while mine is smart (yet they are both the same).”

It’s good to be the mayor

Foursquare allows marketers to conduct loyalty programs without having to rely on customers carrying around yet another piece of pocket flare with a bar code. In fact, it’s the easiest, most customer-responsive way to have a loyalty program.

A good analogy would be a comparison between a pay-per-click (PPC) ad and a TV commercial. A PPC ad gives you continuous, real-time metrics that can be changed to react to new information on the fly. A TV commercial is a great chance to go grab a beer before getting back to the Jaguars game.

In the same vein, with Foursquare you can change your promotions in real time. Perhaps you decide your #1 fan (your “mayor”) gets some free food. You can change that overnight to giving a reward for every five times a customer visits your restaurant…or even giving a dollar off for every check in.

Also, how many plastic pieces of junk will Dan carry on his keychain to be rewarded for his loyalty? Since Native Sun was the only card on there, I’m guessing not many.

But man doth not live by (even organic) bread alone. With my iPhone, I check in anywhere using Foursquare and am rewarded for my loyalty. Thus a deeper set of marketers can have a relationship with me than just the local organic grocer Dan carries in his pocket.

So I got that goin’ for me, which is nice

Using Foursquare at retailers just scratches the surface. Unlike Dan’s synthetic keychain, when I say I can check-in anywhere using Foursquare, I really do mean anywhere – no bar code scanner required. This is where the possibilities really start to open up. No longer are loyalty programs only easy to pull off for retailers with inventory management systems.

Say you’re a golf course. All you have to do is sign up with Foursquare, and then you can give your mayor a free drink at the 19^th hole. Even better – how about a parking space right at the front of the country club? This is another benefit of Foursquare, your customers fight for bragging rights.

Let your fingers do the walking

If you’re a local marketer, hopefully I’ve got you salivating already. Now here’s the biggest benefit I see – local search. If I’m hungry, I just whip out my iPhone and Foursquare tells me what deals are near me. Hey, a dollar off at Starbucks. Ooh, free chips and salsa at Chili’s.

This is a local marketers’ dream come true. I remember when running a TV ad for pizza around dinnertime was considered targeted. Foursquare blows the rabbit ears off of that strategy. You are able to target people near your location who are interested in your product. This was unthinkable just a few years ago!

Now go and learn

Of course, Foursquare is just starting and there’s a lot to learn. I wish we were at the point where we could give you test results. However, we are currently testing with Foursquare and hope to have results to share in the near future.

Oh, and Dan, perhaps you can get Native Sun to fix that pothole for you with some organic gravel. This mayor is out to lunch (and getting some free chips and salsa while I’m out.)

Daniel shared his opinion of Foursquare on Monday. You’ve just read what I thought. Now we want to hear what you have to say. Let us know how you use Foursquare or Groupon for marketing, if you think they have any value, or if you have a better local social media technique. We’ll publish the best answers right here on the blog in a future post.

Related Resources

Local Social Media Marketing: Obama is not the mayor of the White House

Antisocial Media: Social media marketing success does not lie in you

Social Media Marketing Human Factor: Finding the right person for the job

Marketing Insights

On our June 30 web clinic, Flint McGlaughlin, the Director of MECLABS Group, will be discussing the Compounding ROI of Sequential Conversion Rate Increases: How one company took a small gain and multiplied it tenfold.

As we prepare the content for that web clinic, I wanted to get the perspective of Andy Mott, Senior Manager of Research Partnerships at MarketingExperiments. As his title would suggest, Andy manages Research Partnerships with some major, enterprise-level companies.

As he is on almost every topic from email copy to Jacksonville Jaguars’ draft picks, Andy was fired up about holistic marketing optimization and what marketers who feel lost in large organizations can do to really make an impact…

Marketers can get excited about one-off successful tests that show huge gains. And rightly so. But in next Wednesday’s web clinic, we’ll be focused on teaching how to take a step back, look at the big picture, and drive even greater ROI. That’s hard enough for a small ecommerce site. But what does that mean to a marketer in a Fortune 500 company?

Andy Mott: In some ways, the average marketer has a bigger challenge than a CEO. The goal of a CEO is simple – make more money. You might argue that CEOs should have a wide range of goals from satisfying all stakeholders to running oil rigs that don’t explode, but the end result of all those decisions boils down to one clear place – the bottom line.

However, once you move down the chain of command from the CEO, things get a little more murky, don’t they? And when you finally find yourselves in the deep, dark trenches of the marketing department, it becomes clear why holistic marketing optimization is so difficult.

Most marketers aren’t given the simple task of “make more money.” Sometimes their compensation is driven by secondary or tertiary goals that actually conflict with their colleagues.

So there are too many cooks in the kitchen and they’re not even cooking the same meal?

AM: Well, beyond just individuals with conflicting goals, many large marketing organizations, have entire siloed departments that are working towards (because they’re getting compensated for) different goals. For example, the email marketing group is hyper-focused on open rates and clickthroughs because their bonus depends on it. And then you have branding, product group A, product group B, the search marketing agency, the creative agency…

And then the battles begin. All these different groups end up throwing more elbows than Kevin Garnett grabbing a rebound, fighting for space on the homepage and engaging in turf wars over who should be in control of the optimization cycle.

If you’re shaking your head right now agreeing with Andy, feel free to use that tweet button in the upper left to share your most frustrating experiences.

AM: I’d love to hear what marketers out there have to say. Here’s my story. I was working with a major company that had several divisions and layers with (much like an unoptimized landing page) competing objectives.

The technology organization had a set of benchmarks for different back-end aspects of a product. Each aspect had to meet an individual benchmark. Essentially, the focus was on separate checkboxes and not the big picture. After all, the customer didn’t interact with separate backend pieces, the customer just knew how the overall product worked.

One aspect of the product did not meet its individual technology benchmark, but the impact on the overall product performance that the customer would notice was minimal (less than 1%).

Now, there was a fix that would ensure that this piece met its benchmark. However, the fix would mean that that 1% of customers would not be able to use the product at all. They would install the product and be met with a totally blank screen.

So, essentially, either 100% of customers would feel a less than 1% impact (and probably not even notice). Or, 1% of customers would feel a 100% impact – the product just wouldn’t work.

So what do you do in these situations? How do you take a holistic approach when different groups and organizations differ over the right thing to do? Who should decide?

AM: The answer is very simple – the customer is in charge. And you, the intrepid marketer, must be their advocate.

“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.” That sounds great, Andy, but it’s easier said than done. I hope you have a Henry V-style motivational speech in you, because speaking truth to power is one of the most difficult things any person in any organization will ever be asked to do.

AM: And, I would argue, the results are just as predictable as they are dire, from oil-covered pelicans to plane crashes that wipe out the entire leadership of Poland. The people higher up in an organization tend to have all the power yet are the farthest away from where the rubber meets the road and the impact of the actual decisions.

So how do you decide when to stick your neck out and how do you protect yourself to make sure that, even if you’re wrong, your head doesn’t roll?

AM: Here are the main points I try to keep in mind:

• What’s more likely to be tweeted? – So, from the story I just told you, what do you think will be more likely to be tweeted? Marginally slower load time? Or a program that you took the time to download, and then when you try to run it, your screen is totally blank?
• Emphasize the value of sequential conversion rate increases – Sure, if you’re in charge of search marketing and you optimize your patch, you’ll see a gain. But what if you took a holistic approach? What if, as an organization, you optimized the PPC ads, the landing page, and the shopping cart or lead gen form? The total ROI increase would be so much more beneficial for the entire organization. Focus on the value to the entire team.
• Just recommend tests – Every marketer likely has a slightly different opinion about what makes the best headline. Or copy. So go back to the simple principle above…the customer is in charge. You don’t have to fight for your idea over someone else’s. Just propose a test. And that way, the customer will tell you with his actions what works best.
• Share the credit, take the blame – This is just one of my maxims in life. I learned it from Dwight Eisenhower. Or perhaps John Wooden. Or maybe it was Harry S Truman. You see my point. Every true change agent leads the charge by focusing on the benefit to the team over the individual. You don’t just want to be able to make a difference in your career. You want to make a habit of it. And while you’ve probably mitigated the downside risk with the testing suggestion above, something can always go wrong. Other organizations (and superiors) will trust you more next time if you don’t try to pass the buck.

OK, Andy, I like the practical advice. But you can’t overlook the fact that what you’re asking is still very hard to do. Isn’t this what the President has been criticized for lately? All common sense and no emotion?

For this blog post to work, it needs to be an inspirational blog post that will be posted in every marketer’s cubicle in the nation. Where’s my Braveheart moment? “They can take our marketing budgets, but they can never take our freeeeedddoooooommm!!!”

AM: I am seeking to inspire every marketer to speak up for what’s right against the tide of inaction, inefficiency, and incompetence that can define the modern-day large corporation. But I will do you one better Dan. I’ll see your Mel Gibson quote, and I’ll raise you one. I will leave you with one of my favorite quotes, from a man that optimized an entire nation…

The Man in the Arena

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

– President Theodore Roosevelt

Related Resources

Compounding ROI of Sequential Conversion Rate Increases: How one company took a small gain and multiplied it tenfold

The Business Case for Testing: How one marketer convinced her business leaders to start testing and drove a 201% gain in the process

Embrace Your Inner Sleazeball: How to gain enterprise approval for the marketing resources you need to succeed

Practical Application

Whenever anyone says to you, “He reminded me of a used car salesman,” we all have the same image in our head. High pressure, no class, just wanted to get you “to sign on the line which is dotted” (as Alec Baldwin said in Glengarry Glen Ross).

We’ve probably all heard the famous sentence, “So, what will it take to get you in this car today?” and shuddered. And because of this, many of us are adverse to the entire idea of selling. But in reality, we are all selling things all the time, right?

We sell the idea of a particular vacation spot to our families. We sell our experience and expertise in job interviews. We sell our teams on our genius marketing plans. In today’s free MarketingExperiments web clinic, we’re going to talk about how to pull off the last vague sell you’ll ever have to do – because every idea you will pitch after you sell enterprise-level use of the testing-optimization cycle will have black and white numbers to back it up.

Decision makers don’t care about testing…

They care about making money. Or meeting some other business-level goal they have. And testing only matters to them if it helps them meet one of these goals.

We’ve talked about how to execute great tests, and what to test, and how to deliver results for your organization for years. But, as a team, we’ve generally failed to help you push past the organizational red tape and bureaucracy to give your idea some teeth.

I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with many of you who have expressed an interest in testing, but for one reason or another couldn’t get your organization to see the vision the way you see it. Believe me, you’re all in great company – from global corporations to SMBs, everyone is still having the challenges they were having a year ago to really make the case for testing.

…but they care passionately about results

In today’s live web clinic, I’ll share a success story that I’m sure you can easily relate to – a behind-the-scenes look at not just how we made a change on a landing page to get a big result, but how one company ran a series of successful tests, worked through setbacks, and eventually created a culture of testing and optimization in their organization.

And for all who dislike selling, I have some good news. We’re going to take our hour together today to talk about how to make the case for testing and equip you with the tools you’ll need to convince the powers-that-be that they should be making a strategic investment in optimization.

Because once they do, and you get your chance to create that culture in your company, the results will do all the selling for you.

Related research

Execute great tests

What to test

ROI

Analytics & Testing

It’s the time of year when I’m preparing the annual sojourn to Salt Lake City to gather with my fellow digital marketers at the Omniture Summit, and it makes me a bit nostalgic. No, not because I grew up in Utah, or because I miss the cold mountain air (as a former Montana-resident-turned-Florida resident, nothing could be further from my mind), but for my navy days. Years ago, when I was just out of high school, I joined the navy and the first boat I served on was USS SALT LAKE CITY (SSN-716). It’s tough to make a visit to SLC without thinking about these days.

I remember being a scrawny high school kid, band geek, 97 lbs, and hearing over and over that I would never make it through boot camp. By the time I got there, I actually started to believe it myself. But, nine weeks later, I had finished all the trials, gained 25 lbs, and was marching with the rest of my class in the pass-in-review ceremony. I had done it, and (to borrow a popular phrase from that year) thought I was the king of the world.

What does being in boot camp have to do with online marketing?

Well, let me say that when you first get to boot camp, your mind does wander to thoughts of quitting and getting back home to a comfortable life where all you really had to worry about was next Friday’s math test. However, you can’t just quit when you get to boot camp; no, they make you persevere. And by the time it’s done, you’re very glad you stuck through the tough times and accomplished something remarkable.

I think that my experience at boot camp can be a lot like the experience we marketers go through when starting to test online, except it’s MUCH easier to quit testing than it is boot camp. There is a large temptation to think that it will just be too much work – first figuring out what to test, designing alternative creative, selecting a testing tool, getting your boss to sign off, then moving mountains to get the IT work prioritized. It’s easy for a marketer to just stick to the status quo and quit the fight before it’s even begun.

Why the mountains are worth moving

I’m not going to deny that testing, like boot camp, has challenges we must persevere through and overcome. But just like boot camp, testing also has significant rewards that we might miss out on if we are jumping ship in fear. Rewards like the incredible feeling of accomplishment when you actually get that first test done, and one of your treatments won! Rewards like knowing you’ve discovered how to stop the leaks in your funnel and contribute directly to your company’s bottom line.

At MarketingExperiments we’re lucky because we get to feel this all the time with our research partners. We get to see our partners grow and establish the culture of testing in their own organizations, which really breathes new life into the old marketing routine that many of us know all too well – “Hey guys, St. Patrick’s day is coming up, let’s trot out all our old shamrock creative and talk about finding a pot of savings at the end of the rainbow.” You won’t ever have that conversation again.

So my message to you is this: don’t give up

The good news is that if a 97lb band geek can experience the reward of surviving boot camp, then there is much hope for the marketer out there starting to online test. You can survive; you can make it.  Just hang in there, don’t give up, and know that the rewards will far outweigh the struggles.

If you are like me and are going to be at the Omniture Summit this year (currently sold-out), consider spending a day with the MarketingExperiments team learning how to optimize your online marketing campaigns. We will be teaching our Landing Page Optimization Workshop during the Omniture University training day in Salt Lake City this year. I’ll be there with the MarketingExperiments team helping your fellow peers learn how they can apply a decade of marketing discoveries to their own campaigns.

Photo provided by: http://www.flickr.com/photos/78428166@N00/ / CC BY 2.0

Analytics & Testing, Internet Marketing News, Internet Marketing Strategy

Like millions of other NFL fans, I lamented the elimination of my favorite team from playoff contention last weekend. Yes, my beloved Jacksonville Jaguars ended their season at 7-9 and pro football for me will not carry as much passion over the next four weeks as it did for the last 17.

But, like my fellow fans of the 20 teams that didn’t make the cut, I’ll find someone to cheer for during the playoffs and will ultimately enjoy watching a Cinderella make some magic happen in the Super Bowl. And of course, I will enjoy this annual celebration of advertising as millions watch every Super Bowl commercial almost as intently (and sometimes more so) than the game itself.

Watching Super Bowl commercials is fun, but as a marketing researcher I have to ask the question – what is the return on this investment? Are you filling the stadium for your brand or playing to empty seats?

Every day I talk to marketers from all over the world. Companies like Royal Bank of Canada, Johnson & Johnson, and 1-800-Flowers who are asking the same question about their advertising budgets.

MarketingExperiments conducts research to not only help marketers answer this question, but find the most effective use of their marketing budget.

If you never ask, you’ll never know

Sometimes marketers are afraid to question the status quo, but in a time when every dollar counts we must ask the hard questions and find answers with real data rather than just intuition.

So, to my friends in the marketing departments of the national network Super Bowl advertisers, I offer you this: Share your objectives, metrics, and results from your Super Bowl campaign with us and we will help you determine the actual ROI from this media spend by constructing a model, analyzing the data (our specialty), providing short- and long-term ROI projection modeling, and measuring the financial impact to brand value.

All of this we will do FREE of charge and present the results to you and your team in a manner that is both powerful and easily understood. If your Super Bowl campaign was a winner, we’ll make that win easier to socialize. If you didn’t get the value you expected, we’ll help you understand why so you’re more informed next year.

Maybe your favorite NFL team won’t win the Super Bowl. That doesn’t mean that YOU are eliminated. Win the marketing Super Bowl this year by being the hero that brought in the experts (for FREE) to show how big your win really was. Email or call me at (904) 339-0068 and we’ll talk about the details.

Marketing Insights