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

Technology is becoming more and more essential to marketing – from marketing automation platforms to complex databases. In fact, Gartner analyst Laura McLellan has predicted CMOs will spend more on IT than CIOs by 2017.

While this focus on technology can be helpful to marketers, the danger is that it causes marketers to become technologists instead of, well, marketers and overlook the fundamentals of marketing.

To help get back to the building blocks of marketing, I turned to Bob Kemper, Senior Director of Sciences, MECLABS, to help you understand how some of the fundamental teachings you read about on the MarketingExperiments blog were initially developed.

The mechanics behind how MECLABS (the parent company of MarketingExperiments) teaches marketers may have become more structured since its beginnings, but the philosophy is still the same, according to Bob.

In the earliest days, Bob said, “we were kind of feeling around for what it is that marketers needed to know, and didn’t know.”

Research Partnerships are an important element of today’s MECLABS that took time to develop into their current, structured format. In the beginning, it was a much more informal conversation with Flint McGlaughlin, Managing Director, MECLABS.

While the logistics have changed, Bob said the essence of the approach is the same, and “there’s a continuity of approach from the earliest days,” he said, only with a refined set of processes. 

Bob discussed four fundamentals.

Fundamental #1: Ideal customer

Working with Research Partners, Bob said the team would look at a page together, and identify “what today we would call an ideal customer.”

It wasn’t as well defined at the beginning, he said, and discussions centered on questions like, “tell me about your best customers, those that you are most able to help – who are they, how do they think. When they arrive at this page, what’s in their minds?”

This process evolved over time toward what’s now referred to in the MECLABS Offer/Response-Optimization meta-theory as “customer thought sequence.”

Theory into practice: You should focus on your ideal customer while crafting your value propositions at four levels, and then use them to keep every member of your company focused on communicating and delivering on those value propositions through not only your marketing, but also your sales, customer service and product development organizations.

Fundamental #2: Thought sequences

“It’s principally about the process of decision making — about what to buy, from whom to buy, and how,” Bob said.

Flint has always had an approach that adopts the frame of reference of “a customer arriving at your conversion funnel, in whatever form it might take, and addressing it as a thought sequence,” Bob said.

Theory into practice: By understanding how your customer thinks, you can create more effective landing pages, offers and campaigns.

Fundamental #3: Redefining marketing 

“[Flint] would conduct consultation calls with marketers … reviewing their current landing pages and conversion paths together, and make recommendations based not upon the operational ‘here’s what has worked before,’ or ‘I’ve done this,’ but based upon the philosophical principles of human decision making,” Bob said.

Marketing began to be viewed as a process for gaining insights about what compels people to make the choices we do, instead of the more established method of constantly pushing onto customers. The focus became placing value at the forefront, not “convincing or cajoling, but rather simply revealing the truth,” Bob said.

This revelation of the truth to consumers centers around whether or not your business has a value proposition, he said, and if “you are truly the best for some significant group of people who are definable, who are discernible.”

That shift in thinking became the basis for how MECLABS approaches marketing as “a revolution of thinking, a complete reversal, a dichotomy from even professional marketers coming out of business school,” he said.

Theory into practice: are you conducting your marketing in a rigorous fashion and using A/B testing to learn how and why your customers make the decisions they do? For example, you can review the MECLABS methodology for discovering what really works in optimization.

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Some industries require an abundance of information from leads before they can deliver their product or service. It can be extremely difficult to show value without handing out exact price quotes.

However, leaving breadcrumbs of value along the lead generation path can earn conversions later when the price is finally revealed.

A good example of this was discussed in MECLABS’ twice-weekly PRS, or Peer Review Session. A lead generation form for a mortgage lender was brought up among the conversion team – an industry where leads are looking for any excuse to bounce at handing over large amounts of information. It is especially confusing, as one team member voiced, because of new regulations and government safeguards on the industry.

In this and many other industries like it, value needs to be shown along the lead generation path so  people will continue to be motivated, even without knowing the exact cost.

Tip #1. Establish an end goal

Discuss everything from what you want your business to achieve at the end of the day, to what you want this one lead generation form to accomplish. They should work together to serve those goals.

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In any aspect of marketing, it all comes down to value proposition. A marketer’s job is to communicate the value of a product or service to a potential customer.

Even companies with big advertising budgets can lose sight of the necessity and responsibility of every marketer to convey value – they may actually be more susceptible to it.

For instance, ever since Apple’s renaissance, pretty much everyone wrote Microsoft off as the poor (and old) man’s Apple. Even they seemed to, with its not cool enough to be a Mac ad campaign a few years ago.

With all of the recent talk about Windows 8, and the debut of the company’s first tablet, Surface (set up to be an iPad competitor), a Cinderella-story comeback seemed possible. Maybe not likely – but possible.

When Microsoft announced it wasn’t going with one of its usual three agencies (Crispin Porter & Bogusky, Deutsch or Razorfish) to produce an ad for the Surface — instead choosing the relatively unknown 22-year-old Caleb Slain, who incredibly made Internet Explorer cool again with this ad — I thought Microsoft might pull it off.

However, instead of spotlighting the sleek and cool but extremely product-focused video that Slain created, the one I see on a constant loop is the incredibly distracting (and after the tenth view, annoying) dancing people and clicking noise ad, as seen below:

“The click” is the highlighted aspect of the ad, an external keyboard that attaches to the tablet. Other than that, I’m just not sure what is supposed to motivate me to purchase the Surface. The krumping school girls? Maybe the ability to leap through mid-air while clicking into place the keyboard that comes with it?

“I think the only people who have a legitimate chance of going to the store and purchasing are people who are sold on Microsoft already,” says Adam Lapp, Associate Director of Optimization, MECLABS, adding, “The ad doesn’t do anything to distinguish itself from the iPad, and you don’t even know cost. It does nothing to motivate you to learn more.”

As you design your own ads, consider these three steps to create an ad with a strong value proposition.

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