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

No matter how well you optimize your website, there’s still no substitute for getting someone on the phone with your best salesperson for a complex product. People buy from people, and having a human talk to a prospect on the phone, answer questions, and tailor the presentation of the product on the fly is invaluable for guiding the prospect through the buying process.

One of our recent Web clinic attendees submitted the below page for live optimization (the part of our Web clinics where we have our research analysts review what could work better for audience submitted pages), and is trying to accomplish just that with a banner on their own page:

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Click to enlarge

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So, how can you effectively get your website visitors to call a sales rep with a banner?

As we learned in Banner Design Tested, the Web clinic for which this banner was submitted, there are three key objectives every banner must accomplish to drive conversions:

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1. Attract attention
2. Generate interest
3. Ask for a click

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With these principles in mind, I asked MECLABS Research Analyst, Taylor Kennedy, to help me come up with a few ways to improve the banner for more phone calls. Read more…

In our recent Optimization Summit, the tactical copywriting training by Dr. Flint McGlaughlin was one of our most popular sessions. In fact, looking over our summit evaluation data, the biggest criticism I found was…

“Copywriting session was way too short.”

So I’m pleased to say that in this Wednesday’s Web clinic – Headline Optimization: How testing 10 headlines revealed a 3-letter word that improved conversion more than major changes – Dr. McGlaughlin will spend more time on copywriting and help you learn how to write more effective headlines.

He’ll be sharing a recent experiment with a Research Partner in which we tested 10 headlines to help determine the most effective way to write headlines. Read more…

What’s in a name? that which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet;

William Shakespeare lived in what can only be defined as the pre-Google era. Sure, Juliet didn’t care what a rose was called. She wasn’t searching for rose vendors since she chose a guy from the other side of the tracks and would never have a proper wedding. And she certainly wasn’t selling roses online with a site that relied on organic traffic for two-thirds of its revenue.

However, names do matter if you’re searching for optimization or A/B testing vendors, or if you’re offering those services yourself. Even more important, words matter because they hint at the approach you’re taking to your marketing efforts. That’s why I was so intrigued by two marketing research charts in Boris Grinkot’s 2011 Landing Page Optimization Benchmark Report… Read more…

If you have hung around this blog long enough, you know that we like to occasionally test and reward our audience’s
intuition. We do this by asking you to predict the outcome of a recent experiment from our labs. We might say we do it for the sake of science, but personally, I think we just enjoy stirring the pot. We have yet to reveal an experiment that the majority of our audience guessed correctly, yet some followers of this blog seem to have just a little more marketing genius than others.

So here we are again with a new experiment and a new opportunity for you to finally be recognized as the brilliant marketer that you are…. or weren’t last time. Read more…

Your Value Proposition is at the bottom of every decision made by every visitor for every action they make on your Website. And so when comparing the significance of this fundamental force of value with the transient nature of a PPC ad that has at most 130 characters, it might seem as if I am trying to put David on a seesaw with Goliath.

However, though seemingly small and comparatively insignificant, a PPC ad can provide an invaluable resource for marketers trying to identify and craft an effective Value Proposition. And like the rudder of a ship directs something 1000 times its size, I believe a PPC ad can inform the bedrock of all your marketing efforts, namely, your Value Proposition.

What exactly is a Value Proposition?

But before diving any deeper, we should get clear on what I actually mean by the term Value Proposition. At MarketingExperiments we define your Value Proposition as the answer you have to one simple question: Why should your ideal prospect buy from you rather than any of your competitors? So, your Value Proposition is not a catchy slogan or a detailed business plan, but rather a concise, clear, and credible answer to this question.

Seems simple, yet the answers we often receive from marketers are confusing, unappealing, braggadocios, vague, and sound just like the claims everyone else is making. So, how would you answer this question about your online offer? Can you state it clearly in about ten words or less? Take a minute and give it some thought…

We will teach more on the aspects of a good Value Proposition during today’s live web clinic, but for now, it is sufficient to understand that your Value Proposition is that primary reason why your ideal prospect should buy from you rather than your competitors. Read more…

In a recent Web clinic – Double the Value of Your Online Testing: Don’t just get a result, get the maximum customer insights – Flint McGlaughlin and the MECLABS Conversion Group team conducted the first-ever “Test Strategy Recommendation Session” of audience-submitted campaigns. Looking at the test history of audience-submitted online Web pages, we recommend future test strategies based on a decade of optimization research.

But there was one page on the clinic that we did not have time to get to,  so Flint asked the audience for their take on some test suggestions.

After reviewing  all of the great ideas that participants offered to the optimization of this page, I have selected a small group that demonstrate some best practices to optimizing your own landing pages. Read more…