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

Great things happen … when you extend your manufacturer’s protection right away!

I recently wrote a blog post about the audacity of hype – how companies can overreach with their advertising claims … and the potential customers who just don’t believe them.

So today, on the flip side, let me address the copywriting that doesn’t say anything at all. Take the above headline, for example. For lack of a better word, let’s call this …

Blandvertising

Blandvertising is a wishy-washy marketing claim. Like the italicized headline above, it wants to mean something … but it just doesn’t mean anything.

Maybe because the marketer didn’t want to have to deal with Legal. Or maybe because the marketing manager or copywriter had an empty text box in InDesign and just had to throw something in there.

This background noise, this elevator music copywriting is a total waste of your marketing budget. If you’re paying for the opportunity to say something, whether with a direct mail piece, a PPC ad, on product packaging, or just on your website … then actually say something.

But what exactly? You’re crazy busy. Perhaps you’re not a writer. And you have an empty text box staring you in the face. What do you put in there?

Through our testing, we have found that …

“Art & Copy” is a recent film about advertising and the title pretty much sums up your marketing communication tools right there. In Wednesday’s free Web clinic – Images vs. Copy: How getting the right balance increased conversion by 29% – Flint McGlaughlin, the Managing Director (CEO) of MECLABS, will a strategic process for integrating images and copy to increase response.

But first, we wanted to hear how you balance art and copy. And while no one responded, “Steel cage grudge match between the copywriter and the art director,” here are a few of our favorite answers… Read more…

Point of personal weakness – I love buffets! I try to eat healthy, I try to live in moderation, but when I see a gorgeous spread of fresh seafood and fruit and all sorts of goodies like at the Marketplace at Atlantis Resort in The Bahamas, I just don’t know where to begin.

I’m afraid we might have created the same situation with our new MarketingExperiments Quarterly Research Journal… Read more…

One of my favorite aspects of working in a family of research companies is getting to see new theories tested. It is a core essence of our “Discover what works” tagline, and when a recent “discovery” experiment came across my desk the other day, I couldn’t help but want to share its implications with our audience. Let me explain the background and give you a little preview of the discovery that will be fully revealed in today’s web clinic.

What’s the story?

We are currently running tests with a large subscription-based news service that has a large direct mail (DM) aspect to their marketing campaigns. We saw this as an opportunity to test some of the hypotheses we have been formulating related to the connection between offline and online efforts.

Now, as with most DM efforts, their campaigns had a call-to-action that included an online option. For those interested in signing up for the offer online, they could go to a specific URL. The URL was unique, the path was clear, and the impact of the direct mail campaign would be easy to track. Right? Well… Read more…

If you’ve flipped through your favorite print magazine lately, you might have seen an ad for a product you’ve never seen advertised to consumers before – magazines. In fact, magazines now even have their own tagline – The Power of Print.

At the same time, the publishing industry is falling all over itself to promote the supremacy and fresh capabilities possible with every new digital distribution tool (Hearst is even looking at buying digital-marketing firm iCrossing). It is quite a post-modern experience for my print version of The Wall Street Journal to try to sell me on reading that issue on the iPad instead.

The way the publishing industry has reacted to the digital world is akin to your wife trumpeting how wonderful your marriage has been at the same time she suggests you would have been much happier with her sister. Read more…

“Loooovin’ you, is easy because you’re marketable….la la la la la la la laaaa.”

Valentine’s Day is fast approaching and love is in the air all throughout the MarketingExperiments lab. In honor of this well-marketed holiday, we sent a few virtual Valentines to our favorite advertising and marketing industry news sources.

Cuddle up with your favorite blog and watch the love flow… Read more…