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

“Marketing is the ultimate custodian of the value proposition.” Dig it, doc… but what about those pesky consultants? #webclinic

@aaron_bolshaw Tweeted this question through #webclinic during last week’s Web clinic.

I quickly Tweeted back…

As someone who has been a consultant I can say a mktg org w/ a well-defined value prop is much easier to work w/ #webclinic

And that’s how Twitter works. I made what Malcolm Gladwell would call a “blink” decision. It wasn’t until I was driving home that night that I realized just how profound Aaron’s Tweet was.

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The value prop is the glue that holds your company’s partnerships together

Core competencies. That is the sole focus of the modern company. If the function is not central to the way your company works, outsource it. This is the reason for the relationship with your advertising agency.

And the business ideology that spurred the explosive growth of, for example, Foxconn – a company with $110 billion in revenue, more than 920,000 employees, and its own “manufacturing city” in China. You many have never heard of Foxconn, but if you’re reading this on a Dell computer or an Apple iPad while receiving a call on your Nokia phone, you are, in essence, a customer.

And your company likely has many similar partnerships. So how do you herd these cats and focus them on your company’s, and therefore your customer’s success?

As I was driving home after the Web clinic, I was listening to “Drucker’s Contributions to Marketing” which I downloaded from iTunes U (on my iPod…thanks, Foxconn).

I had an epiphany and realized how important Aaron’s statement was. Wharton professor George S. Day was talking about this challenge that companies have with outsourcing, and said (I edited slightly for clarity)… Read more…

Last week I spoke on the “Overcoming Operational Barriers to Optimization Implementation” panel at Optimization Summit. The buzz was loud there, the birds were flapping their wings, the bees were swarming, everyone was talking about Landing Page Optimization.

Aside from this event, there are start-up companies with a central focus around this one discipline. There are courses, webinars, books, and even theories about Landing Page Optimization. So here’s the million-dollar question, “Is it possible to optimize a landing page?”

I could sit down with you and tell you a number of ways that you could improve your page:

• Greet the visitor with a clear headline
• Eliminate multiple, equally weighted objectives
• Reduce the number of fields you have
• Be more transparent about your shipping rates
• Add or remove copy

And on, and on, and on…but none of this is landing page optimization.

Even if you tripled your sales by taking my advice, implementing what you saw in a webinar, or going live with a new design provided to you by an Internet marketing company, you still have NOT optimized a page.

To delve into what optimization really is, let’s take a look at the three types of marketing managers I most often come across… Read more…

So you’ve got a piece of marketing collateral you’re working on (an email, landing page, direct mail piece or ad perhaps) and you just can’t figure out what to use for your headline. You’ve asked your friends and associates and they’ve given you some ideas, but you’re not sure which one is right for what you’re doing. How do you decide? Read more…

The mobile Web will be bigger than desktop Internet use by 2015, according to Morgan Stanley. How will that affect landing pages that have been optimized for computer users? And what impact will it have on the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns in general?

This week marks the opening of MarketingSherpa’s Eighth Annual Search Engine Marketing Benchmark Survey (Editor’s Note: MarketingSherpa is the sister company of MarektingExperiments). In putting this together, I found myself rereading last year’s report. Once again, I was particularly struck by marketers’ perceptions of mobile search. We surveyed more than 2,000 marketers regarding the impact of mobile search on their businesses. Interestingly, more than half stated that mobile search has no impact. 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…

To understand online advertising, you must understand women’s haircuts. To wit, have you ever heard this line: “How do you like my new haircut?”

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Gentlemen, you’ve probably been in this same boat before (and ladies on the other end of it). Your wife gets a new haircut. You don’t notice. Consequences ensue.

But as a man, I can attest that we only notice huge changes in things that vastly interest us. She had hair before. She has it now. What’s the difference?

However, if the wide receiver you’re starting on your fantasy team has even the slightest limp, you’ll instantly notice. Because you’re just that interested.

And I have news for you – your online advertising is not something that your audience is hugely interested in. “Visitors view Web pages as content in the middle with noise all around it. That noise is banner ads,” says Dustin Eichholt, Research Analyst, MECLABS.

So, how do you stick out among that noise and grab attention? Do you always want to? I had a discussion about that with our researchers at one of our recent Content Meetings (These are fun and educational meetings. A chance for the editorial team to pick our analysts’ brains. Think “Real Time with Bill Maher” meets “Science Friday with Ira Flatow.”) Here’s what they had to say… Read more…