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

There’s something about putting a video on YouTube and watching the view count climb as more and more people find your message and click play. Think of all that time you wasted hitting the refresh button over and over on your last video.

It’s thrilling because there’s always a chance it will go viral and reach one million views and you’ll finally be able to buy that yacht you’ve always wanted from the bonus you’ll get.

Of course, it never turns out that way. But, according to a recent experiment we ran with a Research Partner, there is one thing you can do to ensure that more people who see your video will actually click the play button.

It’s simple really — almost too simple. But it works. All you need to do is adjust your first frame to something somewhat interesting.

Here’s the test we recently ran on one YouTube video with two different first frames …

“There are no expert marketers; there are only experienced marketers and expert testers.” – Dr. Flint McGlaughlin

Once upon a time, marketers could claim they knew what marketing collateral would generate the highest response from the customer. Now, with the advent of online testing, it has become more challenging to “make definite assertions” about which treatment will perform better.

The best we can do is pose  a hypothesis.

Of course, it never hurts when your hypothesis turns out to be absolutely right.

So to give you a 50/50 chance at gloating (even over a lucky guess), you can hypothesize which call-to-action performed better in the slides below.

Once you’ve studied the slides, go ahead a leave your hypothesis for which call-to-action won (and why) in the comments.

The commenter with the best hypothesis will get the recognition of his or her peers and be featured in the body of this post with a link to their site.

Here is the test we will highlight in today’s 4:00 p.m. (EST) Web clinic: Minor Changes, Major Lifts: How headline and call-to-action optimization increased conversion 45%.

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How can you get the greatest amount of return on the least amount of marketing investment?

We’ll share our own top discoveries about low-hanging marketing optimization fruit in our next free Web clinic on Wednesday – Minor Changes, Major Lifts: How headline and call-to-action optimization increased conversion 45% – but first we want to hear from you.

Share what you’ve learned in the comments section of this blog post. And here are a few insights from your peers …

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Pay-per-click advertising is a mysterious subject. A lot goes on behind the scenes at Google that they simply won’t let us in on.

Because of that, marketers often struggle to get their PPC questions answered.

In our most recent Web clinic, “Online Advertising Forensics: We investigate how and why a text-based PPC ad produced 47% more conversions,” we had several great questions from our audience. But we didn’t have time to answer them in the clinic. So, to help them (and you), we wrote this post with answers to the most pressing questions.

Hopefully you can find questions similar to the ones you have so you can apply it to your own PPC campaigns …

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A test is a great way to settle arguments. The highest-paid person in the room thinks he has a better headline? No problem. Just test it.

But, to truly optimize, sometimes it helps to start a few arguments as well. Get some key people in the room, question your landing pages, question your value proposition, and let everyone (Sales, Customer Service, Product Development, Consulting Services) come up with test ideas to really push the envelope on your marketing.

The way we do that at MECLABS is with a series of meetings called Peer Review Sessions. It gives everybody – from the most senior to the most junior members of the team – a chance to jump in, question the status quo, and come up with test ideas.

Because, as marketers, optimizing by ourselves is hard work … even for the experienced optimizers at MECLABS. No one can truly optimize in a vacuum. We need other minds to broaden the horizons of our creativity and give us ideas for what to test and how to test.

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This time of year, many marketers are beginning to execute on their new marketing plans. However, sometimes you have to deviate from the plan and just need a sale or lead generation lift… RIGHT NOW!

When your boss or client challenges you to gain a quick conversion increase on your landing pages, what tools do you turn to in your marketing toolbox?

In Wednesday’s Web clinic – Rapidly Maximizing Conversion: How one company quickly achieved a 53.9% lift with a radical redesign – MECLABS Managing Director Flint McGlaughlin will share our top discoveries around how to quickly improve your conversion rate.

But before we share what we learned, we wanted to hear from you. Here are a few of our favorite “quick hit” tips from your peers …

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