Avoid “anticipointment”: bridging the gap from ad to site

• Ads and web site work together – don’t just invest a ton in one medium
• Marketeers fall easy into the ad trap because it’s easier than creating an usable, engaging web site
• People expect that the click from the ad will be of even more value than the ad
• Online Marketing Value Chain: Basically Customer Lifetime Cycle
1. Click ad, engage deeper in the landing page
2. Make their way through conversion opportunity
3. Become loyal customer
• Most of these steps will be on the web site!

Creating a Successful Lead Nurturing Strategy, Part III: When Should I Call?

1. Call within 5 minutes of the initial contact
2. Call early at morning or late in the afternoon
3. Call on Wednesday or Thursday – I personally tried this against Monday and Friday and it was highly effective
4. Call them up to four times and send one email in the first 24h
5. Test these tactics

Creating a Successful Lead Nurturing Strategy, Part IV: Your Long-Term Strategy

• The main is not to sell but to maintain a relevant conversation
• Offer relevant and personalized content – recent study showed that most content simply sucks, so watch out
• Email – automated, personalized and relevant; reports, tips, guides, best practices
• Phone – Follow up; provide deeper information, answer questions
• Direct mail – reinforce what you’ve talked about; again personalized and relevant
• This process should be repeated maybe once a month

Optimization Is Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts

• Testing & Targeting are greater than just once
• however often they are siloed
• Start with testing and segment the results
• This helps you to find better content for targeting

Building a Business Case for Optimization

• Biggest problems are processes and politics
• They hadn’t ownership over the site
• Testing generates positive ROI!
• Optimizing landing pages increases off-site ROAS (Return On Ad-Spending)
• Test to fail faster – some of your assumptions are probably wrong
• Dig into analytics, segment and provide insights

The Collaboration of Testing Ideas

• Include other people and departments in your testing
• Often people in development, IT, creative, etc. have ideas – just ask them
• Test Ideas:
• Test different landing pages: home page, product page, internal search, etc.
• Reinforce ad text/graphics on the landing page/multipage setup
• Test ads
• Test incentives for submitting to your email database
• Test emails
• Build a story with the ad and following pages
• Test different viral/referral elements: coupons, vouchers, …
• Test different forms
• Test % Off vs. $ off
• Test your CTA copy, size, color, style
• Test scarcity on offers
• Test different copy approaches: informative, funny, benefits oriented, etc. and analyze segment behavior
• Test signs of trust: security message, shipping info, return policy, etc.
• Test geographical targeting
• Test simple content vs. rich media
• Test content vs. no content
• Test free shipping vs. % off vs. $ off vs. guarantee vs. …
• Test promotion tresholds: 10% on $50 vs. 15% on $100
• Test different internal search results – hand picked, automated, editor picks, big brands, cheapest first, best selling first, highest rating first, etc. and segment(!)
• Strategies
• Understand your goal – what are you’re trying to improve?
• Start with the bottom in your funnel – it’s easier to get more impact
• Try to understand why alternatives work better
• Try to improve one theme at a time, e.g. decrease registration drop off, copy style, etc.
• Focus on big things: product shown, pricing, primary copy, images, offer, CTAs

Five Times to Test: 1 — When you need to optimize beyond the click

• Data without analysis and communication is not very useful
• Even then without taking action, it’s practically useless
• Often lots of money is invested in driving traffic but less in converting the traffic
• Example: large business $100MM PPC budget, less than $200k for optimizing landing page/website
• Mark Typer, Wunderman: 15% Optimization, 85% Ad spending

Five Times to Test: 2 — To resolve internal disputes

• Do you have a dispute? Just test the idea
• Similar things can work different on different websites, e.g. CTA wording