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

B2C e-commerce is probably the road most traveled in landing page optimization. With shopping cart processes becoming increasingly standardized, e-tailers have learned on their own and from each other, creating better and better shopping experiences. Top names like Amazon.com and Ebay certainly waste no time in their testing and optimization work (or so I hear).

However, in B2C, there is a special segment of sites that sell…nothing. That is, they sell an idea, a feeling, an emotion. These are typically charitable or other non-profit organizations that solicit donations for a cause.

Selling air

When you sell a physical product, the value is largely encapsulated in the features and benefits that the product will deliver. Before I get death threats from branding experts, I certainly do acknowledge that there is more to the product than its physical and functional attributes—but it’s sure easier to explain on a Web page what an air conditioner will do for you, as opposed to what the Clean Air Act will.

When non-profits ask for a contribution, being able to delineate correctly the value exchange in the mind of the website visitor will make a huge difference in their ability to attract donors. In this post, I am looking at how Sierra Club approaches this issue.

Click image to enlarge

At first glance, the page that our friends at Sierra Club initially provided for our Live Optimization Web clinic looks fairly plain—much like many other donation pages I have seen in the past. Here is some quick math: in the space between the header and the footer, (to be gracious) about 10% of the content is dedicated to what Sierra Club does, 20% to the gift incentive that the donor will receive, and the balance to the payment information form.

This layout is typical, and contains an inherent contradiction: the minimal information about the organization and a single-page long payment form would be ideal for highly-motivated visitors, who are ready to donate; in contrast, heavy emphasis on the incentive suggests that visitors to this page are yet to make their decision.

Incentive overkill

I am going to make an explicit assumption that people that want to help the Sierra Club are not doing it because of the free backpack (what on Earth is a rucksack?!). People who are shopping for backpacks probably want to see several different styles, different brands, and few will buy without having touched one (e.g., in a store).

They don’t go to Sierra Club for their backpack (or even rucksack) shopping. It’s a nice gift, but in the framework of value exchange occurring on this page, it is incorrectly positioned as the most prominent part of the offer. It is the single most distinguishable image on the page. The “loudest” message on this page is: free backpack.

However, I am not saying to kill the incentive! Since this item is probably not available in stores, it might be a great way to show off being a donor. As such, this may truly be the right incentive—one that directly connects with the same motivation as the core offer: people that would be willing to support Sierra Club financially may also want to help support its brand and thus influence others to provide financial support.

Value Exchange, Part 1: What will I get?

Sierra Club offers something very special to its donors. It’s the satisfaction of knowing that their hard-earned cash is going to help plant more trees, clean up an oil spill, protect wild places, and so on.

Importantly, Sierra Club does this on a lean operational budget—a hot button topic, especially for large, experienced donors. There is an attempt to communicate the immense number of things that Sierra Club does in two sentences of the intro paragraph. However, this is simply not clear enough to lead to an exchange.

The objective in conveying value is to paint a complete picture in the mind of the visitor of the value to be received—in this case, experienced as a thought and/or a feeling. As I stated above, without a physical product, this is challenging (hence the crutch of using a physical incentive), but not impossible.

Ironically, the clearest expression of value is stated at the very bottom of the page (I noticed it only after examining the page in fine detail), after the visitor, presumably, has filled out the form—in other words, it doesn’t help to get the visitor to that point: “Your gift will help support our efforts to protect our wildlands and wildlife, keep our air and water free from pollution, stem global warming, and promote a clean energy future.”

This page needs to tell the visitor succinctly, but clearly all the things that Sierra Club does, and how well it does it. More importantly, this page needs to relate what Sierra Club does with the donations being requested below. A headline like “Last year, 2,394 donors just like you contributed over $350,000 that was used to [fill in the blank]” can get that conversation started.

Making a reference to “other people just like you” has been shown to be effective not only in online offers—Robert Cialdini conducted an experiment on reuse of towels in hotels. In his experiment, referencing “other visitors that stay in room 125” (I’m paraphrasing) in the card that asks to consider reusing towels—as opposed to leaving them on the floor to be replaced—to save water and energy, dramatically reduced the hotel’s laundry bill.

Value Exchange, Part 2: What do I give in exchange?

The form itself is simple enough, but there is room to make it appear even simpler. The pre-selected radio button is already a plus. In past experiments, we have seen that suggesting a choice is more likely to prompt action—even if the visitor ends up choosing a different option.

The “Don’t send me the free gift” option is just a little confusing the way it’s laid out. This is not a critical issue, but making it clear that text belongs to an item by indenting it can go a long way to making this long form easier to read.

More importantly, even within the form, we must never forget that a value exchange is in progress. If we are asking for a physical address, it’s an opportunity to remind the visitor about the value he/she will get by entering the information.

Both the gift and the magazine need an address, so a value-focused subhead like “Where do we send your gift and magazine subscription” both make the form more relevant and reinforce value to be received. Likewise, organizing all the fields into sub-sections will make the form look less lengthy and more manageable, reducing psychological friction that online forms necessarily create.

The form button is an often overlooked opportunity to reinforce value. Simply “next” communicates little. It implies a negative: that the work of donating is not finished—there’s more to do. Instead, it needs to communicate something positive, related directly to what we are asking the visitor to do (click).

Thus, “Start My Sierra Club Membership” can make a succinct value statement (since “Use my membership dues to protect our wildlands and wildlife, keep our air and water free from pollution, stem global warming, and promote a clean energy future” just can’t fit on a button).

Finally, in asking for value (form completion), we can make the process to feel like less value is being surrendered by increasing the credibility of the request. In the case of Sierra Club, adding testimonials from fellow donors can create a clear connection in the mind of the visitor between the request and the ultimate outcome: between the payment and what the contribution does for the person contributing.

Going back to Cialdini’s research, this is similar to the “social proof” mechanism that he had uncovered. Enforcing the social aspect, letting the donors upload their photos, or better yet, the photos of natural wonders they’re hoping to protect (or both!) may on the one hand reinforce the value being implied in the offer, and on the other hand provide invaluable material that can be used by Sierra Club to demonstrate social proof.

Other innovative ways of saying “other people like you are doing it” is to let visitors sign in with their Facebook® credentials. Building a simple Facebook application that would post something like “Jane Smith is now a member of the Sierra Club” with a link to a special landing page would let Sierra Club leverage the network effect with no additional marketing efforts. Likewise, implementing the “Like” button should be effortless.

More test ideas

Here are a few other tests that Sierra Club may want to try:

• Depending on traffic quality, perhaps try test a two-step process—The first page could focus entirely on communicating the value of being a member/supporting Sierra Club. Since there is a dollar cost, mention something like “for as little as $15 your first year” to minimize price anxiety. The second page could focus on the incentive and payment page.
• Obviously, test different membership levels (probably already did that)—Both with one- and two-step processes. In the two-step process, it may be easier to list higher membership levels.
• Video testimonials—Expressing an idea or a feeling is certainly easier through video than through text.

Related Resources

Live Optimization: What we’ve learned from the last 200 experiments distilled into three principles

Web Page Optimization: Consider this post the help desk for free trial landing pages

Web Page Optimization: In search of a value proposition as fast and reliable as Verizon FiOS

Landing Page Optimization, Research Topics

Editor’s Note: In a recent interview with MarketingSherpa Editor Sean Donahue, Research Analyst Corey Trent outlined errors even experienced email marketers make when conducting tests. (My personal favorite – #5). We thought this information was valuable, and wanted to share it right here on the blog for those who do not have a MarketingSherpa membership. Special thanks to our sister company for allowing us to republish the below article…

SUMMARY: Before you conduct your next email test, make sure you’re not falling into a trap that can muddy your results or limit the gains you might otherwise achieve.

We spoke with an email testing expert from our sister company, MarketingExperiments, to uncover common mistakes marketers make when running email tests. Read why good analytics and segmentation are crucial forerunners to testing, and why a blockbuster discovery from one test actually can be a risky thing for a marketing team.

by Sean Donahue, Editor, MarketingSherpa

Testing is an essential component of a strong email marketing strategy. But only if the tests are conducted and analyzed properly to ensure you’re helping – not hurting – your email performance.

“There is a cost for bad testing,” says Corey Trent, Research Analyst, MarketingExperiments. “Bad assumptions based on bad tests can cost you a lot of money and cause you to lose out on a lot of business.”

Trent routinely conducts email tests as a member of the MarketingExperiments sales and marketing optimization research team. Through this work, he’s seen how mistakes, misconceptions and simple oversights can derail a well-meaning marketer’s testing strategy.

We asked him to share his advice for avoiding testing pitfalls, so you can achieve your goal of improving email performance. Here are seven common mistakes he’s observed:

Mistake #1. Not having the right analytics behind your tests

Sometimes marketers must recognize they are just not ready for email testing, says Trent.

In particular, he says, marketers often don’t have the processes or the analytics systems in place to capture a complete data picture — you must be able to tie your email metrics to business goals, such as revenue.

For example, if you’re only measuring email metrics, you might test a new subject line treatment that increases open rates by a few percentage points. Sounds exciting, but without tying subsequent clicks from those messages to website sales, you might not notice that you’re actually decreasing conversions and total revenues because the subject line is creating the wrong expectations about your message.

The good news is that it is now relatively easy to track email activity through to website metrics using tools such as Google Analytics. This program offers marketers ways to track email messages through specific goals on your site, such as product pages viewed or time spent on site (see Related Resources below).

“Email tracking all the way through to business goals is available for everyone, and doesn’t take a long time to set up or require having an IT team to do a lot of programming for you,” says Trent.

So make sure your analytics systems are robust enough to support your objectives before you begin email testing.

Mistake #2. Not segmenting email lists for tests

Many marketers have large email databases, but don’t know a lot about the records held within. In these cases, they may conduct an email test using their entire database – and create a muddy results picture.

“Without segmented lists you don’t get good test results,” says Trent. “You get all these people responding differently to your emails, which pulls your results in all different directions.”

Spend the time to segment your database and understand the different characteristics of the segments before you embark on email testing. The more you know about unique segments within your database prior to testing, the better chance you’ll have of finding the right messages to appeal to them.

Mistake #3. Stopping tests after one big win

“With email more than anything, we see people get a big win and stop testing,” says Trent.

As exciting as those big wins may be, they shouldn’t be the end of your testing process. The makeup of your email lists is constantly changing; external factors, such as the economy, also impact subscriber behavior; and your competitors’ campaigns and tactics are always changing as well.

This constant state of change means you must routinely work on the messaging, layout, calls-to-action and other elements of your email messages to ensure you’re getting the full benefit of a testing program.

Mistake #4. Testing too often

The flip side of stopping tests too quickly is falling into a pattern of repeated testing, to the point that you simply can’t keep up with all the data you’re generating.

When finding the right pace for testing new email treatments, think critically about the tests you want to perform and their potential impact. Focus on the ones that have the greatest potential impact on your specific business goals.

Trent suggests researching your current email strengths and weaknesses: Examine your own email and website metrics and study industry research to benchmark your own performance against your industry peers. This process can uncover where your email programs are delivering weak performance – and where you have a bigger chance of improving your company’s bottom line through testing.

“Those deep dives into the data you have available help you prioritize that list of potential tests,” says Trent.

Mistake #5. Overlooking email copy tests

Today’s email messages are so versatile that marketers have a wealth of options to test: Layout changes, images, fonts, colors, social media integration and so on.

But the ability to tweak these elements can make marketers forget about the old standby: copy tests.

“What often gets left out is how important the copy and communication pieces of an email are,” says Trent.

Copy changes can deliver surprising results, so keep them on your list of test options. You can try using a different voice for your message, long copy vs. short, different copy layouts, or even a personal letter from someone in your company.

Mistake #6. Always testing additions, rather than subtractions

The pressure to generate more engagement with subscribers can push marketers to continually test new additions to their emails: More images, more buttons, more links or more colorful text.

Too many additions can actually confuse recipients, making it hard for them to decide what to do with your message.

Instead, Trent has seen marketers achieve strong performance gains by eliminating elements from an email and reducing the number of decisions a recipient has to make.

By focusing a message on a single goal — such as inviting recipients to an event or generating sales within a specific product category — you can see whether there are extraneous elements that might be distracting recipients from the desired action. You can then test the impact of removing those distractions.

Mistake #7. Not asking other customer-facing teams for test ideas

Great test ideas don’t always come from the marketing team. It’s likely you have other sources within your company whose insights can shape a good email test.

Trent recommends talking to sales people or customer service representatives to learn what they’re hearing from customers. The feedback these teams receive from customers about your products and services — or why they chose to buy from you — can spark ideas for new subject lines, email copy, or specific products to feature in email promotions.

“Don’t be scared to go down and talk to those people to get some good ideas.”

Related Resources

The Magical Metrics Tour: Demystifying the secrets behind analytical “tricks” to help you drive ROI (describes how to track email clicks with Google Analytics)

What Else Can I Test….To Increase Email Click-through?

Discover the Best Time to Send Email: 4 Test Ideas (for MarketingSherpa members)

Improve Your Email Programs: 5 Test Ideas (for MarketingSherpa members)

Email Marketing, Research Topics

What will your biggest B2B marketing challenges be in 2011? And how can you overcome them to (over) deliver on your numbers while staying on budget?

These are the kinds of questions our colleagues at MarketingSherpa, our sister company, obsess over. To help them zero in on some data-driven answers, they’ve just launched a survey to benchmark best practices, tactics, and results.

If you have about 15 minutes to share your expertise by participating in this year’s study, you can access the survey via this link. In return, MarketingSherpa will send you a free copy of the 2011 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report’s Executive Summary, which will include highlights and key findings from the study, along with an invite to a webinar where study data is shared.

Senior Analyst Jen Doyle is already knee-deep in B2B marketing data to find insights to help marketers focus on key tools and tactics to fill pipeline in 2011, but was kind enough to answer a few questions about lead generation…

What are the most significant marketing challenges for B2B marketers today?

Jen Doyle: The greatest challenge for B2B marketers is generating high-quality leads to deliver to their sales teams. It is because of this challenge that marketing automation, lead nurturing and lead scoring have become critical for B2B organizations.

In order to optimize the efficiency of marketing and sales departments, walls are being broken down and these teams are working together to identify various stages of the buying cycle or the complex sale, and determining what marketing collateral or level of sales contact is appropriate for each stage.

Through this process, marketing’s role has changed from generating leads to generating and nurturing leads to the point that they are qualified and ready for sales involvement.

What are the top challenges to managing a B2B site and how can marketers overcome those challenges?

JD: The greatest challenges for managing a B2B site include developing content, attracting the right traffic, and optimizing for conversions.

Developing marketing content is an expensive and time consuming tactic, but essential for attracting and converting traffic. Marketers can overcome this challenge by repurposing and reformatting existing content for website purposes.

Most B2B organizations have a library of marketing content that has been developed over time, including case studies, presentations, etc. Why not repurpose this content to drive traffic and conversions on the website? For example, case studies can be re-formatted into blog posts or reformatted into a whitepaper to be used as an offer for conversion.

Search engine optimization and social marketing are excellent tactics for achieving an increased level of targeted traffic to B2B websites. Organizations need to first understand the social behaviors of their audience, what terms their audience is using to describe their products or services, and which of these targeted terms generate high volume traffic.

This research can be conducted by monitoring the activity of their target audiences on social media sites and conducting keyword research utilizing various online tools like Google’s keyword tool or Wordtracker to identify search volume and competition levels.

In order to optimize a B2B site for conversions, organizations need to continually test the performance of their traffic funnel, landing pages and lead forms. In order to accomplish this, a solid analytics solution and dedicated website management and design team are required.

How can marketing automation help with lead nurturing and lead management?

JD: By implementing a marketing automation program, organizations are able to elevate the effectiveness of their lead nurturing and management programs.

Select marketing automation programs allow organizations to automate the delivery of lead nurturing content based on lead behavior, such as visiting the website or opening an email, and attributes such as budget amount and timeframe for purchase.

Organizations that implement marketing automation programs are able to test the frequency and content of lead nurturing campaigns to improve performance. Marketing automation programs also enable marketers to automate the process of handing leads off to sales teams once they have met certain criteria or a certain lead score.

These are just a few of the benefits B2B organizations stand to receive from marketing automation programs.

Many lead scoring systems have become overly complex, often discouraging marketing and sales from using them diligently. Can marketing automation help here as well?

JD: Absolutely. Select marketing automation platforms simplify the lead scoring process by automating lead score calculations based on a predetermined set of rules. Rules can be based on lead attributes or behavior and are constantly changing based on activity.

Additionally, depending on the automation tool that is selected, updates made in CRM systems such as SalesForce can be used to calculate lead score. This allows for lead scores to automatically be adjusted if a sales person makes a certain indication on the lead in the CRM system. With automation features like these, lead scoring processes are simplified and streamlined.

If you would like to participate in MarketingSherpa’s 2010 B2B Marketing Benchmark Survey, you can gain access via this link.

Related Resources

B2B Success Stories: Four tests with gains of 21% to 254%

Social Media Marketing in Four Steps: A methodology to move from sporadic to strategic use based on research with 2,317 B2B and B2C marketers

Search Marketing: Tips on mastering the latest innovations in this mature category

Lead Generation, Research Topics

You know, I could tell you about the latest issue of the MarketingExperiments Quarterly Research Journal. But it represents three months of blood, sweat, and (virtual Internet) tears for myself and the rest of the MarketingExperiments team.

So my description would be highly biased, full of hyperbole, and probably be along the lines of… “Our latest Journal includes four never-before-published marketing research articles featuring 12 experiments and…well…this Journal is the single most important piece of writing since the invention of the Internet!”

Out of control. That’s why you don’t need to hear from me. Instead, I’ll share what our readers have been telling us about the Journal through email and Twitter. But first, here is your free digital copy…

(click Full Screen to zoom in)

“Wonderful publication!!! Many compliments from Italy.” – Andrea Berselli, Partner and COO at Markeven srl

“Take some time to read this ebook: The @mktgexperiments Research Journal, 132 pages of marketing+science” – @Sparksheet

“Fusing online/offline campaigns for impact (and how not to do it!) – new insight from Marketing Experiments” – @eugenieverney

“This is full of good stuff – ‘The MarketingExperiments Quarterly Research Journal, Q2 2010′” –@HomeportCrew

“@MktgExperiments new online journal out. Loads of great content, thorough and readable” – @dotpinkney

We’d love to hear what you think of the latest Research Journal. Share your comments below, email us, or fill out our seven-question survey.
Read more…

Landing Page Optimization, Lead Generation, Research Topics, Site Design, Social Media

Social media is essential for promoting content marketing. You might have the Mike Tyson of blogs, but without the Don King of social media promoting it, you likely won’t be discovered and will never even get to step into the ring to prove your mettle. But together, social media and content marketing drive up demand generation like an Iron Mike uppercut knocks out Michael Spinks.

To get some inside-the-ring advice, I turned to the demand generation experts at one of our strategic partners, Eloqua, to learn how they promote their own offerings.

Eloqua CMO Brian Kardon recently created a new role at the company – director of content marketing –  and filled it with an old face – Joe Chernov. Joe was the global director of communications and social media at Eloqua – where he was responsible for analyst relations, press relations, and social media.

In addition to being the marketing automation company’s newly named director of content marketing, Joe co-chairs the Word of Mouth Marketing Association’s member ethics panel … so if you like this interview, please tell three friends.

One of your first decisions upon heading up content at Eloqua was to launch Eloqua’s new It’s All About Revenue blog.

When asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, English mountaineer George Mallory simply stated… “Because it’s there.” Why did Eloqua start this blog? Simply because it wasn’t there?

Joe Chernov: Hall of Fame football coach John Madden once said, “If you have two quarterbacks, you have no quarterback.”

We had three quasi-corporate Eloqua blogs – one thought-leader blog, one best practices blog, and one product “how-to” blog – in addition to several executive blogs. Each had its own voice, own look-and-feel, and own (desired) audience.

Early on in my lead communications role, I wanted to blog about the story behind a new social media product we were launching, yet none of the blog owners would accept my “commercial” content. That’s when I realized that we needed a central blog, a resource for Eloqua to talk more broadly about the industry, competition, and our plans for the future.

We launched the blog in April, and we’ve averaged about three posts per week, with the most popular post receiving about 6,000 views. Not a bad start.

Also, it’s become an outlet for news commentary by Eloqua. Within 24 hours of Oracle buying a competitor of ours, Eloqua CEO Joe Payne blogged his analysis. He picked up so much press that super-influencer David Meerman Scott himself blogged about Payne being an example of the importance of executive nimbleness, the value of being fast.

Even though Eloqua is an established company, launching a new blog from zero is an ambitious (and daunting) endeavor. How did you use social media to begin to build an audience? And how do you continue to use social media to promote content and deepen that engagement with your audience?

JC: Here’s an unpopular answer: You have to earn it. For the most part, our good posts generate lots of views, our not-so-good posts generate few views. Believe me, I know: I own the “least viewed” post award.

Now this isn’t to say you can’t effectively promote your own blog. There are a number of practical steps you can take to build an audience:

• Invite guest contributors or interview known figures in your industry – in other words, involve people that have a vested interest in promoting their post to their followers.
• Mix media – video, illustrations, and graphics tend to be hyper-consumable formats.
• Don’t be afraid to stir the pot – Sometimes controversy is a good way to attract new visitors. Everyone rubbernecks, even online. But market at the margins. Your central focus should remain on the quality of your content.

Sometimes content is about clever repurposing, and when you launched this blog you did just that. You took two internal documents and made them public.

Let’s talk about the first one – “The Content Grid.” This really shows how the blog is the hub of your content marketing, right there in the middle, next to Twitter. But how does this awareness and consideration get turned into revenue? After all, “It’s All About Revenue,” right?

JC: We have a long sales cycle. Most prospects that enter our database aren’t ready to convert immediately, so we nurture them over time. So it’s a little early for us to measure the ROI of this initiative.

But the indicators are strong. For example, we know that visitors to Eloqua.com who watch a product demo ultimately convert at a much higher rate than those who don’t. And we know that a disproportionate number of visitors who discover Eloqua.com through our blog view a product demo. We also know that the It’s All About Revenue blog is referring visitors to Eloqua.com at a much higher rate than all of our other blog assets combined. We are confident that in the next quarter or two, we’ll begin to see these leads convert.

There are a couple of media channels that we may inch in one direction or the other in our next rev of The Content Grid, but one change I cannot imagine making is to shift the location of the blog.

The blog is the hub of the content wheel. It allows for immediate posting, direct language, reader engagement, and it feeds traffic to the corporate site.

It’s also a medium that third parties are comfortable pointing to. Could you imagine someone like Jeremiah Owyang tweeting a link to a company’s website? No way. He’d never do it … and with good reason. Jeremiah’s loyalty is to his reader, and readers don’t want to be pushed to websites that are trying to sell them stuff.

A properly executed blog, however, is different. It’s the human voice of the company, and, as such, people are reasonably comfortable pointing their readers to that channel.

If all of your content marketing efforts eventually drive into Eloqua.com as the main place for lead conversion, how have you worked to test and optimize the website, and the entire process, to maximize lead conversion and reduce the potential for leaking leads and therefore revenue?

JC: Content marketing is leaky. We leak out a lot of leads. It’s literally a daily conversation I have with our demand generation director. It’s a Catch-22: You can’t capture leads if you don’t gate content, but your content won’t spread if you gate it. So what do you do? We are experimenting.

We set The Content Grid and Social Media Playbook free, completely ungated. If we sponsor an analyst report, we may gate that – after all, it’s a very specific, and highly valuable, piece of content and one that our audience is used to paying for.

We have some other content planned – topical guides, ebooks that we’ve written – and we may set them free for a finite period of time, after which we could introduce a small gate. Or perhaps we will embrace the channel: if the guide is distributed on the social Web, it’s ungated; if we send it to someone in our database, we may direct them to a landing page where we can collect more information.

We are trying different models. In the end, Eloqua is shifting to the school of thought espoused in the new David Meerman Scott/Brian Halligan book, “Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead.” In the long term, setting your knowledge free is the most direct route to success.

The second key piece of internal content you posted was the Social Media Playbook, and you weren’t shy about it either. The Abbie Hoffman-esque blog post you wrote to promote it is entitled, “Steal Eloqua’s Social Media Playbook.”

I was most interested in the ethical considerations you mention in the Playbook, which seem to be inspired by your role with the Word of Mouth Marketing Association. It seems like everywhere you turn there is some flashy/shady social media “evangelist” using black hat tactics.

As you say in the Playbook, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog. But they can smell a marketer from a mile away.” So what are some key tips for being an ethical social media marketer…both to be a more effective marketer and also simply to be a decent human being?

JC: I am going to take that Abbie Hoffman comment to my grave with me. That made my day.

But the ethical component of social media marketing cannot be understated. The fact is there are federal guidelines designed to protect unwitting consumers from deceptive businesses.

But I think the social Web does a remarkable job at policing itself. I believe what the government has been good at is giving some fundamental ground rules.

For years, marketers struggled to distinguish cunning from deceptive, but now the FTC has done that for us. In their guidelines for testimonials and endorsements, they make it very clear that if there is a relationship between a company and a consumer, and that consumer “speaks” (blogs, tweets, etc.) about that company, then that testimonial is a form of advertising, and therefore must be disclosed.

I don’t think companies realize how far this directive reaches. Frankly, it means that if a staffer at your organization runs a personal blog in which he writes about your industry, then he must disclose his employment. I think many companies are in violation of this FTC rule, not out of malice, but ignorance. I wanted to include a larger section on ethics in the Playbook, but feared it’d come off as preachy.

To sum it all up, what are the main things companies should focus on to drive demand and leads with content.

JC: Here are a few things to keep in mind:

1. Use your blog as the hub of the content wheel
2. Stop thinking of Twitter as the goal, consumption is the goal…Twitter’s value is that it is a useful tool in directing people to points of consumption
3. Don’t expect the world to find you. Yes inbound marketing works, and your blog should be your hub. But of the 20,000 downloads (in the first month) of The Content Grid and Social Media Playbook, nearly half occurred “in the wild” (SlideShare, Scribd, Facebook).
4. Assume that 50% of your time will be spent in the dialogue phase of content marketing. Creating remarkable content, distributing it broadly and measuring the impact is, together, only half of the battle. Engaging in a dialogue everywhere you publish your content is vital for success. It’s also the best trigger for sustained interest and long-term word-of-mouth.
5. In the end, remember that this is a meritocracy. Good marketing isn’t going to turn bad content into a success.

Related resources:

Marketing Leader’s Perspective: No cogs allowed in social media and content marketing

Google Caffeine: Use social media and quality content to get a jolt for your site

Social Media Marketing in Four Steps

General, Research Topics, Social Media

In today’s Web clinic, Live Optimization: What we’ve learned from 200+ experiments each year distilled into three basic principles – plus live-optimization examples, Flint McGlaughlin and the MarketingExperiments team will spend a full 40 minutes optimizing audience submissions to help you identify changes you can make today, based on our research, to improve conversion.

Thanks to BMC Software for submitting this landing page for optimization…

Most technology company names are three letters followed by an IT noun (software, systems, etc), so the name BMC Software probably sounds vaguely familiar. If you’re not familiar with them, they provide a solution called Business Service Management, which they describe as “A unified platform that simplifies, standardizes, and automates IT.”

The intended audience of this campaign is IT management and help desk managers. And the objective for the landing page is to get that audience to sign up for free trial of BMC Service Desk.

OK, now that we’ve got our introductions out of the way, let’s roll up our sleeves and dive right in to some heavy-duty optimizing. First off, I’d like to comment that BMC has done a great job with the email-to-landing page continuity. The imagery and messaging are carried through seamlessly, which helps the prospect identify that they are indeed in the right location when they click through from the email to the landing page.

[click to enlarge]

[click to enlarge]

Alright, let’s look at the free trial sign-up page. We’ll diagnose some problem areas and offer solutions for increasing free trial sign-ups.

When I am analyzing a landing page, I always start off by asking three questions:

• Where am I?
• What can I do here?
• Why should I do it?

When trying to answer these questions on the BMC landing page, the first two questions are pretty easy to answer.

• Where am I? – Like I mentioned earlier, with the consistent imagery you can easily identify that you’re in the right place if you were motivated enough to click on the call to action in the email.
• What can I do here? – It’s pretty apparent, I have to fill out the fields to sign up for a free trial… everyone should be able to answer that.
• Why should I do it? – This is where I encounter some difficulty. Let’s look into to this a little deeper…

Supporting the Value Proposition

Images often help to support the value proposition. In this case, while the main image connects with the email, it does not emphasize the value proposition. Since it takes up a lot of real estate, I’d recommend that BMC test an image that better supports the product benefits.

I do like the screenshot of the BMC dashboard. I think this could be a great supporting feature, although it’s kind of small and difficult to see the specific details of the dashboard. I’d recommend making the image larger or at least offer an option to enlarge.

I’m assuming that the “consolidation of information” is the key selling point, so let’s highlight that with a better image and supporting copy.

Terms and Conditions

In the scroll box below the form, you can see the terms and conditions (T&Cs). The T&Cs look daunting. There are six pages of information condensed into a small embedded scrolling box. You’re already linking to the document, embedding it is overkill.

Test adding event tracking to see how many people are scrolling vs. clicking the text link. In making visitors scroll through the T&Cs, my initial thought is “what are they trying to hide?” Since this is one of the last items on the page before making the commitment to hit “submit,” this could really be a roadblock in the process.

Headline/Page Content

There are no real differentiators in the headline. The “free trial” offer and “risk free” guarantee are great benefits, but why should I choose BMC over another solution? Test a comparison chart or a features matrix. This could be in place of or in addition to the right-column content.

If you’re testing it in addition to the right column, I’d recommend adding a “Why BMC Software” text link that prompts a DHTML pop-up. This is always a good practice when including supplementary content without overwhelming the user.

Related Resources

Live Optimization: What we’ve learned from 200+ experiments each year distilled into three basic principles – plus live-optimization examples

Web Page Optimization: In search of a value proposition as fast and reliable as Verizon FiOS

Landing Page Optimization: Regions Bank opts for the information underload strategy

General, Landing Page Optimization, Research Topics