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

“The first step in exceeding your customer’s expectations is to know those expectations.”

-Roy H. Williams, Author and Marketing Consultant, Wizard of Ads trilogy

One way to know your customers’ expectations is to set them yourself. Recently, as we’ve been looking for speakers and case studies for Lead Gen Summit 2013, I’ve come across a few different lead generation pages that failed to meet the very expectations set by prior stages in the funnel.

For that reason, I thought it would be helpful to review six steps you can use to set expectations for your customers. But first, let’s look at a three-part process an insurance website requires to receive a quote on home insurance, and how it incorrectly sets customers’ expectations.

On the homepage, visitors see three main objectives: auto insurance, home insurance and business insurance. Each call-to-action promises an instant quote, and that message sets a certain expectation in the minds of customers.

Clicking on that button with that expectation, and prior experiences, I expected to fill out information about the home, myself and my desired coverage. I also expected to either receive the quote on a follow-up page or to receive it in an email immediately after I submitted the form.

Anything other than those two options and the process would come up short of my expectations. What else would you expect with a word like “instant” in the call-to-action?

The second step in the quote process includes a simple form, from which I immediately deduce a quote will not be coming from – despite the CTA’s promise. There is not enough information gathered to calculate even a basic quote.

Frustrated by the misleading CTAs, I went back to Google and continued my search on another website. But, to show you the full process, I returned to the form to see what hid on the other side. And, no surprise here, it wasn’t a quote. In fact, the subsequent page tells me a representative will contact me, which is the first time I’ve learned of the required contact to receive my quote. I wanted an instant quote, not a sales pitch.

The company sets customers’ expectations on the homepage and reaffirms them with “Get My Quote” after the form. However, customers find themselves without a quote and are left with anxiety over a looming phone call they didn’t want or expect.

Now that you’ve seen a subpar example of setting expectations, I’ll use that example to illustrate a better way to meet customer expectations, using these six steps:

Step #1: Know the expectation you want to set

You can’t properly set expectations if you don’t know what you want them to be. Like Stephen R. Covey’s second habit, you must begin with the end in mind. What will visitors gain from filling out your lead gen form? When will they receive that benefit? How will they receive it? Through email, phone call, mail or something else?

For example, if you want to provide leads with a free special report, you need to determine when and how they’ll receive it. Will they receive a hard copy in the mail in two weeks? How about in an email within 24 hours? Or, can they instantly download a PDF version?

When, what, where, why and how. These are factors potential leads will weigh to determine if the cost of their personal information is worth the value you are offering in exchange.

Once you know what your customers will experience through your lead gen funnel, then you can begin to set expectations based on that experience.

Step #2: Establish expectations using calls-to-action early in the funnel

You want to use any calls-to-action early in the customer decision-making process page to begin setting expectations. That could include a button on the homepage like the above example, a PPC ad, an email hyperlink, a Twitter post, and the list could on and on. You want to have continuity between all parts of your conversion process, so each part the customer interacts with should promote the value of converting.

Look at the example homepage. The yellow call-to-action (CTA) buttons provide direct value, which is a good practice to follow. Many consumers looking for a quote to compare to others don’t want to wait, and they’ll find high value in an instant quote.

This would have been a great way to show the value of the click and the value of the rest of the quote process if the website carried through with the promise.

However, because the quote is anything but instant, customers now have incorrect and misleading expectations.

The button could leave out the word “instant” and still follow through. This leaves out the required phone call to receive the quote, which could cause some visitors to feel misled.

You want to use as much real value as you can to entice the click. So, if the company wanted to accurately set up customers’ expectation and earn the click, it might use call-to-action copy such as “Request a Quote” or “Learn How to Get a Quote.”

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Scott Stone, Advertising and E-Business Manager, Cisco-Eagle, submitted a form field page for live optimization on a recent Web clinic.

Unfortunately, we do not have time to optimize every submission live on Web clinics, and did not get to this submission.

So, we’ll offer some optimization suggestions in today’s MarketingExperiments blog post from Adam Lapp, Associate Director of Optimization and Strategy, MECLABS, to give Scott’s team specific suggestions while providing examples how these form field optimization principles can be applied in a real-life setting and hopefully spark some test ideas for your own forms.

Money isn’t the only cost

The page is an excellent example of one of the key principles featured in that Web clinic – “Do Optional Form Fields Help (or Hurt) Conversions?” – that explains cost doesn’t just exist where monetary transactions exist.

Any time you ask a prospect to give up something, there will be an associated cost.

So, before we get into Adam’s suggestions for addressing that cost, let’s take a look at the form field page Scott submitted.

Cisco-Eagle Top

Cisco-Eagle Bottom

Optimization suggestion #1: Don’t start a conversation with bullet points

Adam’s first suggestion introduces the importance of applying customer theory effectively.

“Quite frequently on the MarketingExperiments blog you will see recommendations for landing pages to use bullet points in order to make the content easier to read and scan. This is true. However, on this page the bullets are being fired off before the pistol’s hammer is even cocked.”

When I asked Adam for a little insight, he explained, “Part of the meta-theory behind offer-response optimization states that ‘people buy from people’ and this involves dialogue and a proper introduction.”

Adam further explained the impact offer-response has on conversion by using Burstein Automotive – a hypothetical car dealership owned by our Director of Editorial Content, Daniel Burstein.

Imagine you’re in Daniel’s car dealership and someone walks up to you holding a sign that reads:

• Good fuel mileage
• Leather seats
• Sun roof

“You’re probably not going to buy a car from them,” Adam declared. “How it happens in real life is a sales person introduces themselves and says, ‘Welcome to Burstein Automotive, How can I help you?’”

So before you fire the bullets, give some introduction copy telling customers they are in the right place and what they can expect to find.

“THEN, fire the bullets,” Adam said.

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Friction on your lead generation landing pages is bad, because it reduces conversions.

Except that is not always a bad thing. Hear me out for a moment …

As we teach in the MarketingExperiments Landing Page Optimization Online Course, you’re certainly not looking to eliminate friction. When it comes to lead generation, you’re not even always looking to reduce friction … what you’re looking for is the right balance that ultimately makes your company more profitable.

This might seem counterintuitive at first, especially if you work in a marketing department that has a relentless focus on only one number – the amount of lead generated.

However, high-quality leads will likely result in less dead ends for the sales force. Thus, Sales will invest more of its time on leads more apt to close, which should make everyone happier at the end of the day.

Use the lead gen dials to flexibly optimize your page

But you don’t have to be locked into only one approach. The great thing about the lead gen dial approach (shown in the image above) is that it can help you flexibly adapt to your company’s needs:

• If your sales force is simply starved for leads, you can reduce friction to increase the number of leads they receive.

• If your sales force has a long list of leads they still haven’t contacted, you can dial up friction to reduce the overall number of leads, but acquire higher-quality leads that go straight to Sales with a clear priority attached in them.

Of course, if you work in the marketing department, these changes shouldn’t happen in a vacuum. You should create a flexible universal lead definition with Sales that can adapt and scale as the company’s needs change.

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Deciding what to test can be a difficult decision for marketers. Simply setting a test up and running it can be hard enough, but planning a test so that you can actually learn something adds another layer of complexity to the process.

At this year’s Optimization Summit 2012, marketers from HubSpot gained the input of 280 event attendees to determine what to test on a lead generation landing page for the HubSpot All-in-One Marketing Software.

The result was a 6% increase in lead generation rate.

The funnel is a convenient paradigm for the complex process of guiding a potential customer from initial interest to final conversion. Convenient, yet flawed.

Dr. Flint McGlaughlin elaborates in an interview with Jim Ducharme, Community Manager, GetResponse Email Marketing, in this video from MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2012.

A few key points:

1:05 – The flawed image of the traditional Marketing- Sales funnel. “Gravity is not our friend”

1:58 – The “gravity” you, as a marketer, must overcome

3:08 – The “yeses” you need to get from your customers to make that happen

Related Resources:

Video produced in cooperation with GetResponse Email Marketing. See more at: http://www.getresponse.com/promo/emailtv

Marketing-Sales Funnel Optimization: 3 questions to ask as you kickoff 2012

Marketing Funnel: How to optimize your Sales and Marketing funnel in 5 steps

B2B Funnel Optimization: What happens after you capture the lead?

According to MarketingSherpa’s 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report, lead generation is the top priority for B2B marketers. Yet it is also the second most challenging business objective for marketers.

Part of the problem with capturing quality leads is that there are quite simply an infinite number of ways to do it. And every time someone comes up with a new way of doing it, a layer of complexity is added to the fundamental question every B2B marketer asks:

What is the best way to acquire leads for my business?

At our recent Email Summit  in Las Vegas, Jim Ducharme, Community Manager with GetResponse, interviewed MECLABS Executive Director of Applied Research, Brian Carroll and asked him this question.

You can watch the interview below to see what he had to say.

In the 5-minute video below, you’ll learn:

• How testing tactics can help you choose the best one for your business
• Why driving leads with a single event is ineffective
• 3 steps you need to implement for effective lead generation
• 3 questions your potential leads are asking on your site

Read more…