MarketingExperiments.com Web Clinic Podcasts

Landing page optimization and search engine optimization are two completely different entities. While optimizing to convince a human to take an action - such as buy, or fill out a lead form - can clearly increase your conversions, what effect will it have on those computerized spiders that visit your site and determine your SERP ranking?

If you’ve tuned into past MarketingExperiments Web clinics, you’ve seen some pretty impressive gains: 141% increase in conversion 12% more revenue across an entire ecommerce website $4.9 million in additional sales pipeline growth (in only eight months) And we’ve shared transferable principles to help you achieve similar gains yourself. But for this Web clinic, the MarketingExperiments team took a different approach and showed you not just what we did to get these types of results, but gave you an inside look at how we did it.

When executed correctly, banner ads can be a powerful way to drive traffic to your offers. Unfortunately, many marketers don’t have the time and resources to devote to "correctly executing" banner ad campaigns. What they need is a formula for designing banner ads that produce results. In a recent test, our researchers found that by designing a banner ad to accomplish three key objectives, they were able to drive a 285% increase in conversion on the landing page.

Testing and optimization can lead to impressive, triple-digit gains and far higher conversion rates for all the traffic you're spending time and money driving to your website. However, testing anything on your website can be a bit frightening to the average marketer. For instance, what happens when you don’t get a lift? Well, that's exactly what happened with a recent test we did for one of our research partners...

One of the easiest elements to change on a page is the headline. It’s also one of the most important parts of the page to optimize if you’re trying to get a lift in your conversion rate. However, when tasked with writing an engaging headline for a marketing piece, many marketers get it wrong. In this Web clinic, Dr. Flint McGlaughlin speaks to this problem and shows how 6 real-world headlines (submitted by our viewers) could be changed for to increase customer response.

It’s one thing to talk about landing page optimization and another thing entirely to execute. That’s one of the key findings in Boris Grinkot’s new 2011 MarketingSherpa Landing Page Optimization Benchmark Report. Drawing from his report, Boris and Daniel Burstein (Director of Editorial Content, MECLABS) walked marketers through the process of making the business case for optimization in this recent live Web clinic.

Whether your company offers 10 or 10,000 products online, the shopping cart can be one of the most mysterious and difficult areas of your Website to optimize. How many shopping carts steps are optimal for conversion? What information should be required of customers? What product information should be revealed and when? Which incentives are the most effective? Despite the myriad of questions, recent research from our labs indicates that a select handful of small changes can make significant impact in most online shopping carts. In this Web clinic, we tackle some of the hardest shopping-cart-related questions; all while providing simple, yet strategic tweaks that any marketer can use to get an immediate lift.

So you’ve just increased the effectiveness of your online lead capture by XX% using optimization strategies you've recently learned... Now what? How do you ensure that this gain is not lost in the sales pipeline? How do you keep the online marketing efforts you invested in to get the lead from being squandered? Many marketers end their optimization efforts on the Web page, not realizing the significant revenue lost by not taking simple steps to optimize a lead before passing it off to Sales.

Your value proposition is at the foundation of all your marketing efforts. It is that primary reason why your ideal prospect should buy from you rather than your competitors. Yet many marketers have never tested this crucial element of their marketing strategy; they have only assumed it, essentially building an empire on sand. However, according to Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, real-world testing is essential to determining the most effective value proposition, and there are five simple steps any marketer can take to identify their optimal value proposition.

Your ideal prospects delete most of the emails they receive each day. How do you ensure your email doesn’t get dumped into the "Trash" folder? According to Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, CEO (Managing Director), MECLABS, one principle is key - the objective of an email is to get a click. In this live Web clinic, Dr. McGlaughlin reviewed an email message that applied this principle to generate 85% more recipient response. He then taught specifically on how to engage email recipients with just enough value to inspire them to click, and quickly switched to hands-on application -- where he (along with researchers Jon Powell and Adam Lapp) reviewed and optimized audience-submitted email campaigns.

Competition for a customer’s attention has been a roaming battle throughout the years. Newspapers. Radio. TV. But today, the front lines are in online search. As reported by our sister company MarketingSherpa, forecasts on the spending for search advertisement alone will break the $25 billion mark for the first time in 2011. But spending lots of money is never enough when it comes to gaining your customer’s attention. For as bad as an economy may be, you will never be the only one spending money to speak to your customers -- especially in the case of PPC. Addressing this current marketing challenge, Dr. Flint McGlaughlin covered the number one contributing factor to the success (or failure) of any PPC campaign. Often, many marketing departments can get swept up in the rigmarole of trying to stay current with all the new technological "bells and whistles" associated with search optimization, when only one thing really matters. Our research suggests that ensuring a PPC ad clearly communicates a value proposition is the single-most effective way to drive more qualified clicks.

If there is one thing consistent about online customers, it’s that they are consistently changing. Trying to pin down marketing tactics that work from year to year can be a daunting task. That’s why it is essential to always be testing - especially testing those "best practices" that are commonly accepted across the Web. As our researchers discover again and again, it’s often our biggest assumptions that are the biggest hindrances to conversion. This year (2010) was no different, as new tests revealed what worked and what didn’t - with a few surprises.

When it comes to choosing an image for a web page, most marketers and designers rely on gut feelings or personal preferences. Few have a concrete way of determining the "what, when and where" of an image. So, in this Web clinic, we revealed new research findings that provide simple tactics for using both images and copy effectively. We discussed three key elements of an effective image, as well as two unique advantages copy has over images. For the first time, we revealed strategies for balancing landing page optimization (LPO) with search engine optimization (SEO).

Though a test may improve a page’s performance, its greatest gain often comes from what it teaches you about your visitors. This is because the value of customer insights extends far beyond a single test. However, often the potential insights of a test are overlooked, and consequently, lots of revenue is being left on the table. So, in our October 30th Web clinic, Dr. Flint McGlaughlin provides a robust methodology for proper test interpretation to ensure the greatest long-term return on marketing investments.

By applying the principles from this Web clinic, you will be able to optimize your homepages according to the specific objectives you have identified and visitor profiles that your homepage receives.