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

Today on the MarketingSherpa blog, I discuss length as it applies to content marketing. But in this MarketingExperiments blog post, I’m going to discuss length as it applies to marketing copywriting on a landing page.

While content marketing and landing page copywriting are very similar in one element – you are not hemmed in by the same media space restrictions you would have in a print ad – they are very different in the main goal of the piece.

Content marketing should help your audience, and by helping your audience eventually help your business goals as well. In this instance, you are mainly aiming to serve your audience.

Landing page copywriting should serve your business goals, and assuming you have a product or service that has a true value proposition, in the end help your audience as well. In this instance, you are trying to express your value proposition as clearly as possible. Sometimes length adds to clarity, sometimes it detracts. Read more…

Perhaps you’ve been in a similar meeting. We were discussing plans for the upcoming Email Summit, when someone brought up an idea for an interesting pre-event workshop.

We debated it a little. The pros. The cons.

Personally, I loved the idea.

But how should we decide if this was the right approach to take? Based on our past experience? Based on the highest paid person’s opinion? Based on the stars?

The fault, dear Brutus, lies in our value props (or lack thereof)

And then Justin Bridegan, Senior Marketing Manager, MECLABS, said something that instantly killed the conversation, “Wait a minute…this idea goes against our value proposition.”

As Alex Bogusky has said, “The most effective advertising a company does is the way it conducts business.” If we do something that goes against our value proposition, that flies in the face of the value we provide our customers, and all the marketing and advertising in the world is not going to help us once we’ve burned that bridge.

For this reason, a value proposition serves as an excellent North Star to help guide decisions made in any strategy meeting or on any steering committee, much like an A/B test is a great way to win any marketing debate (“Which headline will perform better? Instead of debating, let’s try both and see what our customers tell us.”)

If we didn’t have that clearly defined value proposition, the decision would not have been as clear cut. Read more…

Where do new ideas come from? I often find they spring up at the intersection of two old ideas. Take today’s blog post. I recently wrote about ensuring that there is true value in your value proposition. Then I worked with Associate Editor Brad Bortone on the MarketingSherpa Wisdom Report submission form – where we publish our audience’s top lessons learned from this year.

Voila. A new idea. It made me wonder what “good” marketing you did this year.

After all, whether your hope this year is peace on Earth and goodwill toward men,tocelebrate a great miracle that happened there, or to just not get a lump of coal in your stocking…this is the time of year when our thoughts wander beyond year-end performance to actual, well, “good.”

So, with the holidays upon us, I thought it best to highlight your marketing efforts that contributed to the greater good…however you choose to define that. As well as get your thoughts on whether a marketing campaign can benefit more than just you and your company, or client.

One of my favorite “good” campaigns this year was the Pepsi Refresh Project. Pepsi decided not to advertise on the Super Bowl for the first time in 23 years in favor of giving away $20 million through what is, essentially, a social media marketing campaign. So, how goes it? Will this approach become the choice of a new generation of marketers? “The brand equity is so huge we’d be crazy not to continue to work on it,” said CEO Indra Nooyi.

Well, that’s my pick. Here are some of my favorite responses from you… Read more…

What worked (and what didn’t) in your marketing programs this year?

On December 8^th’s Web clinic, we’ll be sharing our lessons from 365 days of experimentation. I’ll be joined by five research analysts and managers, and we’ll be sharing six case studies. Well, at least that’s what we’ll attempt to do. We’ll try to pack more into 60 minutes than we ever have before on a Web clinic.

But first we wanted to hear from you. Here are a few of our favorite answers… Read more…

We recently released the third quarter edition of the MarketingExperiments Quarterly Research Journal. It includes four never-before-published, in-depth research articles and 27 how-to articles. All for the low, low cost of…absolutely free! That’s right, we don’t even require an email registration…

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So please pass it around to all of your employees, sponsors, clients, friends, family colleagues, members, fellow Elks Lodge members, tweeps and that nephew who is just looking for some direction in life. Read more…

“Our job is to help you do your job better.” That’s how I sign every MarketingExperiments Journal email, and it’s a mission all of us at MarketingExperiments take very seriously.

One of the main ways we help marketers is through the production of MarketingExperiments Web clinics – free, hour-long webinars where we share our research discoveries, analyze what they mean, share actionable advice for using these discoveries in your day-to-day job, and often provide live optimization advice for submissions from our audience of their marketing material.

These Web clinics are crucial to our educational and enablement activities, so I want to take today’s blog post to introduce Web clinics to those new to the MarketingExperiments community while addressing some key comments that may be helpful to long-time audience members as well.

I’ll get to those comments in a minute, but first a look at the replay of our latest Web clinic… Read more…