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

This week at the San Francisco leg of MarketingSherpa’s B2B Summit 2011, Brian Carroll, Executive Director of Applied Research, MECLABS, and Nicolette Dease, Program Manager, MECLABS Leads Group, provided tactical training on optimizing lead generation.

Part of this presentation was a case study on finding the most efficient list source based on a test that looked at several different lead sources.

The objective of the test was to determine if higher-cost/higher-quality data can drive down overall cost-per-lead, and the primary research question was, “Which campaign data source will drive the most efficient value?”

The test design looked at six list segments with 300 accounts and 80 hours of calling per segment. Let’s first look at how much each lead costs for discovery:

• Multi-source 1, validated by phone based on role – record cost $24
• Multi-source 2, validated by phone based on title – record cost $14.50
• Multi-source 3, validated by phone – record cost $6
• Multi-source 4, validated by email – record cost $3
• User-generated, validated by business cards – record cost $1
• Single-source, no validation – record cost $0.49

Read more…

“Make sure we’re not building our dreams, make sure we’re building the customer’s dream.” – Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, Managing Director, MECLABS.

Our team was conducting a product planning session with our CEO, Flint, and he dropped the above quote on us. So simple, yet so profound. (And if you haven’t met Flint, this is pretty much how he speaks – with many eminently Tweetable sound bytes).

Of course, living up to the above challenge is easier said than done. How do you tie into what your customer really wants? Value proposition.

However, if you’re like me, that answer presents another question – “I’m not the CEO of our company, our value proposition is out of my control. What can I do?” After all, while we were conducting this product planning session, I was well aware that I can’t convince Flint to change the value prop for all of MECLABS (nor should I).

In this case, you need to focus on your control points while tapping into your company’s overall value proposition. Enter, the derivative value proposition. Read more…

Ahhhhhh, Fall. There’s a chill in the air. Football is back. And, if you’re a marketer, it’s time once again for MarketingSherpa’s annual B2B Summit, currently happening in Boston, and soon to invade San Francisco.

We’re live onsite, and Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, Managing Director and CEO, MECLABS, opened the proceedings this morning by teaching this enthusiastic audience that most marketers can’t even define “value proposition,” much less tell you their own. Dr. McGlaughlin was out to change this, by helping the audience define the very questions necessary to establish a strong value prop, and differentiate them from competitors.

The fourth step of Dr. McGlaughlin’s six-step process involves a strategic checkpoint in which you measure the potential force of your value proposition(s).

As Dr. McGlaughlin has taught before, “clarity trumps persuasion.” This applies particularly well to value proposition, as we learned value propositions are discovered, not determined. They don’t come about from something that is predetermined; they grow out of what you are as a company or product. This sincerity needs to come through in a value proposition.

Dr. McGlaughlin showed how creating a value prop, measuring its force, and clearly communicating it to the world, let some marketers off the hook, in a sense. You don’t need to be an expert copywriter. You are simply communicating the unique value that your audience is looking for.

But how do you do it? The force of a value proposition can be measured by four essential elements of the offer: Read more…

“She was here on earth to make sense of its wild enchantment and to call each thing by its right name.” – Boris Pasternak (Doctor Zhivago)

Sometimes, as marketers, this is one of our biggest challenges. We must make sense of the “wild enchantment” inherent in our audience so we can call each offering we have by its right name. After all, the way we think about our products can be vastly different from the way our audience thinks about them. This is why specific words matter, and for more than just SEO.

Let’s take a look at a recent test conducted by MarketingSherpa (sister company to MarketingExperiments), to determine which words best tap into the audience’s motivations. 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…

In the MECLABS Conversions Group, we spend a lot of our time trying to reduce the friction and anxiety inherent in our Research Partners’ sales funnels …since we have less control of the visitor’s motivation or the value of the product, service or incentives.

However, I have one Research Partner that values friction in their lead generation process. Read more…