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

Still sifting through plain old text search results? How old school of you.

Apparently, “blended” search results are becoming all the rage for GenY, says a new iProspect study. That is, search results containing images, videos, news, blogs, and reference results on the same page.

The study found that 31 percent of users are now clicking images, with twice as many searchers aged 18–34 clicking them compared with those over 35. 17 percent are clicking on videos. The most frequently clicked vertical within blended search is news.

While Google kicked off the blended results craze nearly a year ago, and MSN and Yahoo followed suit later in 2007, newbies Askx.com and searchmash.com are among the blended search engines trying to find a toe-hold in Google’s world.

What does it mean for online marketers? It’s time to optimize all of your digital assets.

Video press releases. That podcast of your CEO giving a brilliant speech. Sneak preview images of sexy new products. Post them to your own site, tag them, and inject them into other high-profile content streams, like YouTube or top blogs like BoingBoing.

Start paddling now to catch the blended results wave.

One-third of those surveyed also said they consider those in the first few pages of search results the leaders in their space. The assumption is that if you’re really a player, you’ve got search all figured out by now.

Another interesting finding: We’re getting more impatient in our pursuit of instant gratification, regardless of our generation. More users than ever are clicking only on the first page of results, the study showed —68 percent in 2008 compared with 62 percent in 2006 and 48 percent in 2002.

The new bottom line for CMOs?

• Page one of search results, “classic” or blended = product/information/service leader.

• Page two or three = your company is middle of the road, maybe a nice fallback option.

• Page four or higher = start packing your cardboard box (don’t forget your stress ball).

There’s a mountain of data available from your analysis tools (and you should be using more than one, by the way), but do you know where to find the real ROI gems?

Are you creating a solid foundation for measuring your marketing efforts before you race down the hall to the boss’s office?

To help you answer those questions, I’ve spent the last week trolling through test data and speaking with our analysts about our next free Web Clinic on Wednesday, Aug. 16: Measuring What Matters: How simplifying your metrics can increase Marketing ROI by up to 75%.

After doing the research for the Clinic, it appears MarketingExperiments and Cory Treffiletti, president and managing partner for Catalyst SF, are singing the same song: Click-through rates don’t impress savvy CEOs.

He even uses this analogy in his recent blog post, “Please Stop Asking About Click Rates!”

“In the offline world, how many times have you seen someone hop into a taxi cab as a result of seeing an ad on the cab, and ask to be driven to the store featured in that ad? This is the functional equivalent of tracking click-through rates — and if you look at it in those terms, it sounds a little silly.”

Well put, Cory. We couldn’t agree more.

In this tough economy, experienced and inexperienced online marketers alike would do well to focus on data quality over quantity and get back to basics:

• How much is it costing you to acquire customers?

• How many of them are there?

• How much are they worth?

• What’s their lifetime value (LTV)?

• What’s the net result?

Our upcoming Clinic is designed to help you lock on to the ROI indicators and metrics that matter most – to you and your CEO. We hope you’ll join us for this free Webinar.

So you’ve got your Value Proposition honed like a Puukko knife and your landing page is optimized for a smooth, anxiety-free glide to the checkout.

Now comes the scary part. The leap of faith that you, the “customer not present,” his bank, the card processing company, and your bank all have to take together to finish the transaction.

If you’re the proprietor of Android’s Dungeon & Baseball Card Shop.com, how do you know it’s Rod Flanders buying all those Itchy and Scratchy comics and not Bart?

In the current economy, wouldn’t it be nice to feel confident you’re going to get paid?

And what about everyone else (mentioned above) who gets a taste? Of course they should be paid fairly for services rendered, but how can you avoid paying the excessive fees that eat away your net returns?

You may want to check in with our friend Scott Adams of The Direct Response Forum, a non-profit trade association that helps companies navigate the vast gray area between their checkout pages and their bank accounts. The DRF is holding its 19th forum in San Diego, Aug. 11-13, focusing on the latest ways to save money and avoid being ripped off in that gray area.

Topics will include basic training in credit card processing, chargebacks, and recurring charges. And panel discussions between merchants, card companies, and service providers will cover best practices, regulations, and security.

Let’s see: Potentially saving thousands of e-commerce dollars. San Diego in August (or whenever, really). Throw in a carnitas burrito from Taco Express, and it could be the best business trip you take all summer.

I got a shiny, snailmail brochure today touting a famous research organization’s upcoming workshop. One track offers expert advice on social marketing to “Generation Y.” According to the blurb, selling to this audience requires a “non-traditional approach” that includes “adding YouTube and Facebook to your marketing mix and leveraging user-created content.”

Yawn. It sounds so 2006, I’m already asleep.

As I said in an Oct. 2007 blog post, if it gets to be 2008 (Mr. or Ms. CMO) and your product isn’t in the top 10 search results on Baidu, embedded in South Korean social networks, wrapped around a Brazilian YouTube video, certified carbon neutral, and bookmarked on a Google phone, better get out the cardboard box and start packing your stress ball.

Yet I’m sure hundreds of CMOs will shell out thousands to attend the yakfest, hoping to gain an edge and keep their jobs.

Why does it seem that all of these events are led by Baby Boomers who’ve never skated, surfed, played Tekken 6, or shopped at Karmaloop? I say spend your $2,000 to come on down to Jax Beach and holla at these kids surfing by the pier on spring break instead.

According to the South by Southwest interactive festival Web site, a similar panel at that conference discussed and nominated “ten terrible ad campaigns that abused the ideals of people-powered media.” The campaigns the panelists roasted included:

• Businesses pretending to be bloggers.

• Businesses pretending to be journalists.

• Businesses pretending to be “Joe Blow” in order to flog their products in blog comments.

• Bloggers and vloggers who turn out to be paid floggers.

Trouble is, the panel voting on “The Worst of the Worst in Social Media Marketing for 2007” included reps from companies that oh-so carefully arrange for product pitches on blogs.

As Jack Nicholson said, “My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch.”

My advice to those who want the scoop on social media and reaching the elusive GenY:

#1: Don’t lie.

#2: Don’t have others shill, lie, and pretend to be authentic for you. You will be discovered, and you will probably regret it.

#3: Be authentic. If you are a zillion dollar global leviathan, own it, be it, learn to love yourself. Don’t try to be something you’re not. It’s as repelling as grandma wearing Zoë Bikini. You don’t want to see it, and neither does GenY.

Did any of the companies mentioned in this blog (except of course my fulltime employer, MarketingExperiments) pay me for it? Not a chance.

For more on this subject, check out the MarketingExperiments Creed – our attempt at an in-house reminder to keep it real. And let us know if you’ll be dropping by the beach. Our own GenY crew just got a new grill and they’re waxing their boards for these killer waves.

According to a new Nielsen Mobile report, 90% of cell phone users with data services think pushing ads to their device is unacceptable. (Of course, irritation with the process didn’t stop half of those who had seen an ad from responding).

Now, at least two companies are working on technology that enables cell phone users to easily pull digital content to their phones when they want it instead.

They’ve created a two-dimensional code (think UPS packages — and see the “Space Invaders” image at left) that, when photographed with a cell phone camera and processed with onboard software, pulls content to the user from pre-loaded databases. Essentially, it turns your cell phone into a barcode scanner, but better.

Any business using the technology can upload content to the system then create a unique 2D code to use on packaging, billboards, flyers, newspaper and magazine ads, display windows—anywhere it can be photographed with a phone camera.

For example, Mobile Discovery, a company associated with Case Western Reserve University and Scanbuy, partnered with cell service providers and Billboard magazine to use the 2D code in an ad for a new album. Readers photographing the code instantly received content such as sample songs without having to type in URLs or use search services.

The beta test project requires users to download the software to their phones, but Mobile Discovery envisions a day when the software comes bundled on all new cell phones.

Scanbuy says the marketing applications are virtually limitless, from using it on business cards to buying tickets or entering contests to accessing the latest bus schedule.

I can certainly picture it in viral campaigns – think 2D code stickers on light poles, bumper stickers, and fast food packaging.

Will it catch on as the latest marketing craze? What do you think, mobile marketers?

Mission: Take a Web site with multiple domain names, channels, and products, and make it sleek, sexy, and ready for boffo business (in other words, optimized).

The twist? This major optimization project has to be completed and live in mere weeks–when the site will get a tidal wave of traffic from its promotion on an upcoming TV series.

At today’s Training and Solutions Session (TSS), analysts and managers from the MarketingExperiments science and journal teams learned several techniques to help us deconstruct and solve online marketing challenges like these.

The question posed by Dr. Flint McGlaughlin: “What is the most effective way to help [the company] capture the highest yield from the TV opportunity?”

Put another way: What can we, or should we, change or test–with only four weeks until showtime? We can’t test everything that needs to change.

As most marketing researchers know, to achieve confidence in your findings, a test must have run a certain number of cycles. Four weeks isn’t much time to complete valid tests. Within these constraints, Flint asked, what is the best that we can accomplish?

After hearing which elements the group would change first, Flint recommended a simple, linear “ultimately optimizable” approach:

• Pare down the number of confusing, competing URLs;

• Sequence the offers, highlighting the product being advertised during primetime;

• Create a moderately-priced subscription offer to complement the main product; and

• Capture email addresses at every opportunity along the transaction path.

The thinking behind that approach: Maximize simplicity and revenue. And focus on the areas with the biggest potential impact given the time crunch.

Which of these changes will be implemented? How well will they meet the objectives? Will these ideas continue to drive revenue long after the series ends its run? That’s why they call it a cliffhanger.

Tune into our summer or fall Web Clinics for the answers…