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

On the MarketingExperiments blog, we often write about landing page optimization and email optimization. And, while optimizing these channels can have an outsized impact on your results, you sometimes need to take a step back and look at your marketing campaign, even your sales-marketing organization, as a whole.

So, with the new fiscal year right around the corner, grab every smart person you work with (yes, even those that work in Sales), throw them in a room for an hour (bring some eggnog, it will help the festive brainstorming), and ask these three questions about your current sales and marketing funnel:

Question #1: Do we have the right “ask” at every stage of the funnel?

The picture we have in our minds of a funnel is so pretty, isn’t it? A big, wide mouth at the top for all those leads to fall into, and then, they nicely fall down the path to closed deal. But is it really so easy?

Flint McGlaughlin, Managing Director, MECLABS, wants you to question the very way you look at the funnel. “People don’t fall into the funnel; they fall out. Gravity does not work for the marketer. It works against the marketer,” Flint says.

So, what frame of reference can help you as you optimize your funnel? Perhaps a tower.

“The prospect climbs it, and the force which ATTRACTS the prospect upward is the force of the value proposition,” Flint says.

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At every stage of the funnel, the prospect must make a decision, and will only say “yes” (essentially, a “micro yes” leading up to the ultimate “yes” of a purchase) if the perceived value outweighs the perceived cost. And, of course, it only takes one “no” to halt the entire process.

Here are five examples of what can cause that “no”:

1. An “ask” to the wrong person
2. An “ask” without sufficient value force
3. An “ask” with too much cost force
4. An “ask” that is premature (in the thought sequence)
5. An “ask” for too much

  Read more…

Everyone wants to improve cost-per-lead, right? And so, it would be logical to assume that the cheaper the lead is to obtain, the lower the cost-per-acquisition, the greater the margin, and the bigger the bonus in your paycheck at the end of the quarter.

Well, at MarketingSherpa B2B Summit 2011 in Boston, Brian Carroll, Executive Director of Applied Research, and Nicolette Dease, Program Manager (both at MECLABS) showed, essentially, that cheap leads can be downright expensive.

I grabbed Brian at the networking event after he spoke and asked him to explain …

Read more…

Upon the completion of the recent MarketingSherpa 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report, we learned that because of an ever more challenging environment, B2B marketers are beginning to embrace sales conversion as a Sales and Marketing responsibility, and not just Sales alone.

We are on the right track. The challenge is that marketers are having trouble gaining funnel optimization maturity.

Chart: B2B marketers show high levels of maturity at top of the funnel, not at the bottom

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B2B marketers are the most likely to have formal processes established for lead generation, and the least likely to have them for overall funnel optimization. Now is the time for marketers to capitalize on this trend, and really get ahead of the curve to establish their companies and themselves as industry leaders and champion over the competition.

So how can marketers gain maturity in funnel optimization? As a highly complex process, it is likely the reason for marketer’s struggle. Starting with some funnel optimization is going to be more effective than paying no regard to it. In this interest, we have identified a simplified, five-step process to getting started with funnel optimization. Read more…

After driving potential customers to your website through PPC ads, organic search results, or a targeted campaign to create online traffic, the most logical way to turn those visitors into leads is by getting them to register via an online form.

For this blog post, let’s assume you’ve already presented an offer with a strong enough value proposition to get your visitor to actually be interested in filling out your registration form. Let’s just focus on optimizing the form itself.

A form can have any number of fields, of course, and it would seem if you have more required fields on the form, you will generate more lead information for the database.

Can we all agree to that point? Great, let’s take a look at a recent lead generation test then. Read more…

I’m hoping that one thing you have learned from reading the MarketingExperiments blog is that there isn’t much in the marketing world that can’t, or shouldn’t be, tested and optimized. We are used to looking at the top of the funnel – optimizing landing pages, website headline copy, email campaigns, etc., but what happens after you capture that lead? Can’t the buying process be tested and optimized as well?

The short answer is, yes, the funnel can be optimized – and it should be! Before you can optimize lead progression through the funnel, you must first identify what that process looks like.

At MarketingSherpa, we have just launched our annual B2B Marketing Benchmark Survey to identify key tactics B2B marketers can use for funnel optimization, and to ensure success in an increasingly challenging environment.

As we embark on this new study, I’d like to look at a key chart that was included in MarketingSherpa’s 2011 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report. We asked 935 B2B marketers what funnel stages they have identified for their organization. The results are presented in the following chart: Read more…

A complex buying process is, well, complex. And as H.L. Mencken said, “Complex problems have simple, easy to understand, wrong answers.”

So, if you have a buying process that requires more than grabbing a candy bar of the shelf, today’s Web clinic at 4 p.m. EST is for you – Converting Leads to Sales: How one company generated $4.9 million in additional sales pipeline growth in only 8 months. Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, Managing Director (CEO) of MECLABS, and special guest Brian Carroll (author of “Lead Nurturing for the Complex Sale”) will help you find the right answer for your company based on our lab’s discoveries.

But first, we turned to your marketing peers for tips you can use. Here are some of our favorite insights… Read more…