Online Marketing Today

BREAKING NEWS:

By Justin Handley – Resident Testing, Tracking & Conversion Expert 

Justin Handley - Conversion Guy

A couple of days ago MarketingExperiments.com released an amazing video on the distilled knowledge of over 200 marketing experiments into three simple principles. If you haven’t heard of them, MarketingExperiments.com holds what is possibly the largest archive of marketing split test results that exists. 

As Flint McGlaughlin says in the video, these concepts may seem extremely simple, but this is a simplicity derived from a verifiable and scientific analysis of over 200 marketing tests. In short, it works… 

If you aren’t much for long online videos, I’m going to distill the findings here. If you prefer the video version you can watch the archived version of Marketing Experiments “Live Optimization” Webinar. 

What did they learn? 

Be Specific

One major trend that resulted in significant increases across the board was an increase in specificity. Instead of putting broad generalizations up front, pick the specific numbers that matter to your audience and put them out there. Don’t claim to be the “best” or the “fastest”. No one believes that any more. Instead, say “Outperformed our competition in 97% of online tests” or “#1 Design Firm named by Design Awards”. 

A great tip that a co-presenter threw out was to mine your “About Page” and the other content on your site for the things you should be telling people up front. Often companies will put specific information on their about page that adds to the credibility of their offer that should be on the front page, and leave the front page to broad generalities. For example, on the about page of my web design company’s site, it says we’ve been in business for 11 years, which adds credibility to us as a company, and is a specific detail. Maybe I’ll take a little time later today to add that to the home page. 

Seek Continuity in Your Message

The second thing they found was that continuity across your marketing platform could result in a large conversion increase. In the example they used, they started at the beginning (a PPC ad) which they had optimized with specific details. Let’s say you run a company that helps other companies find financial drains and plug them. You define the key specific details that define your service as: 

4,987 Clients Worldwide. $4.8 Billion Saved Last Year Alone. 

For continuity, you would then include that message in your ads, on your landing page, and on every page of your process right up to and including the order page or sign up page. In their most successful example this was achieved by their message being top and center in a very prominent sub-headline on every single page. You could also test that against keeping variations of the message in your theme but in different places, using different wordings throughout. 

Also in design – keep your design consistent. If you use a 3rd party order page, figure out how to modify it to match the design of your site as closely as possible. Keep your same professional look and feel from beginning to end. 

Make Sure Your Message is Relevant

This may seem extremely obvious, but it is key. When you are defining your specific marketing points that you are going to use, make sure you find the ones that are most relevant to your audience. How can you be sure? Test! 

If you have the capability to run a survey or study group, great, but most of you probably don’t. You can always survey your clients, but you need to be careful about this. Are all of your clients good clients, or are some a pain? when you run these surveys you want to find out what the relevant message is to your best clients, the kind of people you want to work with over and over, the 20% that make your business a success. 

Your product might have a million features, and this is about distilling the ones that are key and relevant to your market. You sell a fan that: 

- Uses a new design to save energy
- Is great looking – you’d think Apple designed it
- Puts out 95% more air than traditional fans
- Runs silently
- Costs 25% less than your average fan 

Good for you. But what does your audience care about? You can keep all of your points, but how do you figure out what goes in front? Test. One easy way to get results is by running competing PPC ads and seeing which ones get the most clicks and sales. You could try: 

A Greener Fan
Our fan uses 23% less energy
with an award winning design 

We Blow Away The Competition
With 95% more air being pushed (OK – I could probably find better wording here!) our fan guarantees you stay cool 

Enjoy A Quieter Cool
Most fans run at 4 db
Ours runs at .02 db 

In this case I might not even mention the lower price – why try to compete on price when you have better features, but it is something you could test out. 

Once you’ve found your winning offer, make sure you put it across all of your pages to ensure the continuity of your sales or lead generation process. 

To Sum It Up

So, take a second today to look at your site and ask 

1. Is my message specific? How could I use more specific details?
2. Is my primary sales proposition clear across every step of my sales process?
3. Am I targeting the right specific details that speak most closely to my audience’s needs and desires? 

I can almost guarantee there is room for you to improve in at least one, if not all three of these areas. When you do, remember to make sure that you test your new version against your current version of your site – don’t just trust that because the experts say so it will work – make sure you get scientifically verifiable results yourself. When you do, please share them by commenting below! 

Justin Handley is the resident testing, tracking & conversion expert here at Online Marketing Today. Find out more about Justin, or you can view all articles & advice by Justin here. Be sure to rate this post, share the knowledge, and/or leave your comments below.

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