Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.
Wednesday, June 1, 2016
Localytics pushes Places notifications as key to personalization, mobile engagement
The range of use cases for location is much broader than most mobile marketers recognize.
Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.
Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.
How to Create a Winning A/B Testing Strategy
Sometimes, despite your best efforts, your A/B testing just doesn't seem to work. You run test after test and nothing seems to improve your conversion rate in a meaningful way.
Or, worse, your new pages actually decrease your conversion rate.
In your search for A/B testing success, you've read countless case studies and incorporated their findings into your variants…and still, nothing.
Maybe you've had a few token successes, but those either didn't reach statistical significance or simply didn't improve your conversion rate enough to make a real difference to your company.
What are you doing wrong?
The good news is, you're not the only one with this problem. If you've tried A/B testing, you've almost certainly had that moment when you look at your results and think, why isn't this working?
It's a frustrating situation, but the fact of the matter is that the majority of A/B tests don't improve conversion rates. If you're looking for a big win with every test, you're guaranteed to be disappointed.
Instead, the key to successful A/B testing is strategy.
Strategize Your Way to Success
Recently, we improved a client's conversion rate by 22%.
Seeing results like that, your first impulse might be to say, “Wow, that's an awesome case study! What did you do to get those kinds of results?”
The answer to that question is actually fairly simple: we got rid of the testimonials.
Exciting, right? The moral of the story is, testimonials kill conversion rates!
Except…that's not really the moral of the story.
In fact, testimonials often improve conversion rates. To be honest, when we started working with this client, I never would have guessed that their testimonials were hurting their conversion rate.
So, if we thought this client's testimonials were helping their conversion rate, why did we decide to test a page without testimonials?
Well, we didn't pull this idea out of thin air. As you can see below, we tested a lot of other hypotheses first.
Although not every test improved the client's conversion rate, every test taught us something about our audience and what they were looking for in a landing page.
Building an Effective Testing Strategy
The secret to successful A/B testing is creating a great testing strategy-one that teaches you something with every test. This takes planning and documentation, but it saves time and significantly increases the effectiveness of your tests.
Essentially, an effective A/B testing strategy has 4 parts:
1. Buyer Persona
Before you even build your landing page, you should create a detailed buyer persona.
Basically, your buyer persona is your testing blueprint. It gives you the information you need to come up with testing hypotheses and a framework for understanding your results.
At a minimum, you should know the following about your audience:
- How old are they?
- Are they mostly male or female? Or evenly split across both?
- What are their responsibilities?
- What is their budget?
- What are their goals?
- Why are they interested in your product or service?
- What is their pain point?
- How does your product or offer fix their problem?
To get at this information, it's often a good idea to talk to your sales team or even interview some of your current customers. It's a bit of extra upfront effort, but it can cut a lot of time off of your testing learning curve.
In the case of this client, we knew a lot about their audience. In general, we were targeting middle-aged men and women with money to invest. They knew they needed to be smart with their money, but they also knew they needed someone to help them through the process.
2. Define Your Goals
To test effectively, you need to understand what you're really trying to accomplish with your test.
After all, if you don't understand what you are trying to achieve with your test, it will be very difficult to create variants that produce meaningful results.
Consider the following:
- What is your overall goal? (if you answered, “To increase sales,” give yourself a gold star).
- What does your ideal customer look like?
- How does a visitor become a customer? (what steps are involved?)
- How will your test help you to achieve your overall goal? (increase form submissions? purchases? email signups? phone calls?).
- Are you trying to increase conversion volume or conversion quality?
If you want your page to be successful, you need to understand what your company needs to succeed and be able to track the metrics that matter most. Otherwise, you'll never know if your test was a success!
For this particular client, the overall goal was-of course-sales, but we were testing this page to try and drive more qualified leads for their sales team. Since the client had a lot of different options, our page also needed to identify which option the leads were interested in.
3. Create Your Hypotheses
Based on your understanding of your audience (ie, your buyer persona) and your business objectives, it's time to start coming up with testing hypotheses.
The primary goal here is to identify the points of friction between what your buyer persona wants and what your business wants and come up with ways to reduce that friction.
Here are some potential reasons why your audience might not be converting:
- The offer is wrong. Your audience is looking for something specific and you aren't giving it to them.
- The next step is unclear. Your call-to-action may be hard to find, ambiguous or uninteresting.
- You have a copy-offer mismatch. If your audience is looking for a simple solution and ends up on a complex page, that will create friction and confusion. On the other hand, if your offer is complicated and you don't address an important point, that can create unnecessary doubt.
- You aren't evoking the right emotion. A funeral services page filled with images of laughing people at a party probably doesn't match the audience's emotion. If you don't stir the right emotion in your audience, they won't feel like you are a good fit for their need.
- Your content is confusing. Poorly written, hard-to-read content or awkwardly designed pages can make your page too difficult to bother with.
- Your page doesn't seem trustworthy. People are very wary of marketing, so over the top claims, poor design, lack of social signals or trust seals can seriously damage your conversion rate.
- You have the wrong traffic. Even the most effective site won't convert uninterested traffic. This isn't exactly a CRO problem, but improving your traffic quality will dramatically improve the effectiveness of your A/B tests.
Understanding your potential friction points can help you set up an effective testing strategy. By testing variations that address your friction points in different ways, you can figure out exactly what works for your audience.
4. Document and Learn
The last step is to actually run your tests, document your results and then use what you learned to create new hypotheses and tests.
Your documentation can be as simple or as complex as you want, but it is critical to document what you were testing and what your results taught you.
Here is a simple example of how you might document a CTA test series:
If you don't document and learn, you might as well not use A/B testing. However, if you are documenting your results, you can greatly improve your conversion rate.
For example, while working with this client, we progressively discovered that our audience responded best when they felt like they were in the driver's seat. The less we sold ourselves, the more effective our page was.
Ultimately, this led us to use a simple CTA that invited our audience to identify what they were looking for before we asked for any personal information.
In addition, we discovered that our users wanted a simple and straightforward experience. So, we spoke to that in our headline and body copy.
But, we didn't see our best results until we applied all that knowledge to our overall page design.
In an effort to create as focused of an experience as possible, we got rid of the testimonials and created a streamlined landing page that focused on how we could help our potential clients succeed.
As a result, the new page outperformed every previous variant. But, at this point, that was hardly a surprise.
We knew our audience and we knew what they were looking for in a page. And, as we discovered increasingly better ways to meet their needs…our conversion rate improved.
Conclusion
Most successful landing page A/B tests aren't lucky one offs-they are the result of a great, methodical testing strategy.
It might take a few tests to yield the kind of results you're looking for, but with the right testing strategy in place, you'll get there eventually.
You've heard my two cents, now I want to hear yours. What sort of results have you seen with your testing efforts. Has a strategic approach helped you improve your conversion rate?
About the Author: Jacob Baadsgaard is the CEO and fearless leader of Disruptive Advertising, an online marketing agency dedicated to using PPC advertising and website optimization to drive sales. His face is as big as his heart and he loves to help businesses achieve their online potential. Connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter.
Local SEO Tips For Small Business Owners
Local SEO Tips For Small Business Owners written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing
Marketing Podcast with Phil Singleton
No matter what you are selling – hardware to legal services – people are looking online.
When someone turns to a search engine to find a source locally they intend to buy – perhaps today!
Any business that wants to thrive locally must get very, very good at local SEO. In other words, they must show up on the mobile device in maps, they must show up on the laptop in the “Google 3-pack,” and they must have a credible amount of reviews and social signals to convert the click to a customer.
My guest for this week's episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is a web designer and SEO expert, founder of Kansas City SEO Website Design, Duct Tape Marketing Certified Consultant and co-author of the award-winning book The Small Business Owner's Guide to Local Lead Generation. We discuss SEO, website design and the keys to getting your business to rank.
Singleton is a tremendous source of information about what “actually” works in the trenches on the local level because he lives and breathes it every day on behalf of his small business clients.
Questions I ask Phil:
- What are your top tips for SEO for local business owners?
- How can content help drive SEO?
- How much time should a business owner spend on creating content?
What you'll learn if you give a listen:
- The #1 tactic for improving SEO on a budget.
- How to use content to gain an edge on your competitors.
- Where to look for more information on SEO.
To learn more about Phil Singleton, visit his website here. Click here to find out more about Phil's book The Small Business Owner's Guide to Local Lead Generation. Interested in joining Phil as a Duct Tape Marketing Certified Consultant? Find out more about the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network and attend a Discovery Call here.
This week's episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by our friends at Hover. Do you need a domain name for your next big idea? Hover.com makes it easy to register a domain name quickly. Go to hover.com and use the promo code PhilDTM for 10% off your first purchase.
7 Content Marketing Lessons Brands Can Learn from Journalists
Before making my debut in the content marketing world, I was a journalist living out her days at coffee shops, city council meetings, ribbon cuttings and community gatherings. The daily grind was grueling at times, but it was also exciting. The prospect of breaking news always kept me on my toes and every day I worked to give my readers the latest and greatest news and information. And of course, I aimed to deliver that news and information before the competition.
Now as a content marketer, I find that while my job title has changed, the essence of what I do hasn't. Like journalism, content marketing is all about providing your audience with quality content that informs, engages and develops your brand as a trusted go-to resource.
Journalist or content marketer, I'm still faced with the same challenge every day: actually delivering that quality and engaging content in the face of stiff competition-something all brands and marketers can relate to.
The fact is, B2B and B2C brands alike are creating more content than ever before-and they don't plan on stopping. In fact, for B2B specifically, 76% of marketers said they planned to produce more content this year than in 2015, according to B2B Content Marketing's 2016 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends-North America report. And 60% of those marketers find it challenging to create engaging content on a regular basis.
But all isn't lost. I believe that looking at content and content strategy like a journalist can give brands and marketers a new perspective-and maybe an edge over their competitors. Below are a few lessons that brands can learn from journalists to do just that.
7 Content Marketing Lessons
#1 – Know Your Audience
Journalists understand that in order to create content that gets read and gets shared, they need to understand who their audience is and what they care about.
For brands, knowing and understanding your audience will allow you to build the foundation of your content marketing strategy. To get that knowledge, here are a few tactics to use:
- Perform keyword research: Keyword research not only uncovers the search volume behind your most important keywords, but it can also offer insights into keyword opportunities and search intent. In addition, perform your own searches for various keywords and look through the results to see who's ranking at the top.
- Conduct a competitive analysis. Research your top three to five competitors through their website, social media pages, news articles and search results. How does your brand stack up?
- Dig into data and analytics: Get familiar with your website's analytics to gain insights about the users you've already managed to attract to your site. Look at the most popular pages, the pages with the highest bounce rate, and the pages with the best and worst conversion rates.
#2 – Strive to Be the Best Answer
Journalists are dedicated to being the best answer for their audience. They want to get the scoop. They want to be the go-to resource. And they want to do everything better than the competition.
For brands, being the best answer means providing relevant, quality content wherever and whenever their audience is searching for it. Use the research you've done to identify where those content opportunities lie. In addition, don't be afraid to engage your existing audience. Use social media to pose questions or send out a current customer survey to get feedback and insight. The more you know, the better you'll be at providing the right information.
For example, TopRank Marketing CEO Lee Odden often reaches out to his Twitter audience to gather insights on various marketing topics using polls.
#3 – Write for the Reader
Every piece of content a journalist turns out is aimed at enticing the reader. Content is organized to help readers easily flow through the article and photos are often used to add a visual element to the story. Long-form pieces are often broken down into sections with headers, which is more pleasing to the eye and helps with scanability. In addition, content is written in a way that tells a story-not in a way to please search engines.
For brands, the bottom line here is to create content that's a good experience for your audience to read. SEO is important, but usability and user experience is more important. Read 7 Ways to Optimize Your Web Content for Humans & Search Engines for more tips.
#4 – Mind the “5Ws and H”
Who, What, Where, When, Why and How-the 5 Ws and the H. These are the foundation of every article a journalist will ever write. And they can certainly be applied to your content marketing strategy.
As you map out your strategy, ask the following questions for each piece you plan to create:
- Who is my audience?
- What does my audience want to know?
- Where am I going to publish and disseminate?
- When am I going to publish and disseminate?
- Why am I writing this? (Drive traffic? Increase brand awareness?)
- How will I measure results?
#5 – Follow the Story
In my early journalism days, I thought I needed to cover everything. But then reality sank in. If I covered every piece of news, I was spread far too thin and I wasn't giving my audience enough of the news they really wanted to read. Most of all, I wasn't showing my audience value.
Brands should use their audience knowledge, keyword research, and their website data to hone in on their content strengths and opportunities. Choose a handful of topical areas to get started with-and create as much content around that topic as possible. This will allow you to begin showcasing yourself as an expert in specific areas and eventually you'll be able to expand that to new areas.
#6 – Add Perspective
The best news articles have a face and provide perspective. Journalists use people close to the story and expert sources to give their articles credibility and depth. Brands can do the same with their content by working with influencers. Influencers not only lend expertise and authority to content, but they can also help that content reach a larger audience.
Don't just reach out to your influencers in times of need. Engage with them on their social platforms. Share their content. Shoot them an email to check in. Just as a journalist works hard to build a network of credible sources, brands should remember that building a relationship with influencers is an ongoing journey and there needs to be value for everyone.
Mayo Clinic has a cool and interesting way of using influencers through its story hub Sharing Mayo Clinic. The hub features stories from patients, families, friends and Mayo Clinic staff about the treatments they've had at the famed hospital. The stories often feature photos, videos and personal messages to tell the stories.
# 7 – Make Accuracy a Priority
One of the first lessons you learn in journalism school is that accuracy is a non-negotiable. I once received a failing grade for the misspelling a source's name. (I'll always remember your name Fred Woods.) It was certainly embarrassing, but really it was a careless mistake.
Make sure that you have a solid QA process for every piece of content you create. Little things that get missed can have an impact on your credibility and the effectiveness of your content.
What other professions have helped inspire your content marketing strategy? Tell us in the comments section below.
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Marketing Day: B2B predictive marketing analytics platforms, “frictionless logins” & more
Here's our recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on Marketing Land and other places across the web.
Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.
Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.
How Companies Are Falling Short at Social Media [INFOGRAPHIC]
It's not enough to just jump into social media because everyone else is doing it. Like my mother always said, “If you're going to do something, you better do it right.”
While many brands are dominating social media marketing, others fall short. Not for lack of posting. Not for lack of dollars spent. But because they're just not doing it right.
Fear not, though, for the folks at Socially Aware have made a supremely helpful infographic that not only identifies social media marketing trends, but also highlights where most companies fall short, and how they can do better.
Don't be that company. Don't let your social media dollars go to waste. And for goodness' sake, don't chew with your mouth open!
Embed this infographic on your site
Forrester Research Names Oracle Marketing Cloud a Leader
As digital marketers grapple with the 3800+ vendors that serve the marketing technology landscape, many are demanding a focus on integration to help them deliver more consistent customer experiences. That's according to Forrester Research's newest Enterprise Marketing Software Suite (EMSS) Wave, a market assessment that looks at vendors who compete in the “marketing cloud” landscape. This year, we're proud to share that Oracle Marketing Cloud was a leader in their assessment.
The need for simplicity in the digital marketing landscape is urgent. According to research Forrester shared in the assessment, more than 40% of marketers say their technology environments are too complex, and that separate teams often purchase redundant capabilities. To help combat the need, Forrester defines an Enterprise Marketing Software Suite (EMSS) as “an integrated portfolio of marketing technology products that provide analytics, automation, and orchestration of insight-driven customer interactions to support inbound and outbound marketing.”
As Oracle Marketing Cloud just celebrated its second birthday this year, our performance in this evaluation reflects where a lot of innovation work has been focused. By creating an integrated portfolio of best-of-breed components, we've been to help marketers connect data, build comprehensive profiles, and orchestrate experiences across marketing channels. In doing so, we can not only deliver marketing simplicity to teams, but we also empower them to be more customer-centric in the interactions they tailor for their customers.
Forrester emphasized the data-driven characteristics of our acquisition portfolio and the fact we made a strategic decision to have best-of-breed experience for both B2C and B2B marketers.
The Oracle Marketing Cloud addresses B2C marketers with Oracle Responsys and B2B marketers with Oracle Eloqua. It supports audience management for both with a comprehensive data aggregation strategy based on acquisitions of BlueKai, Datalogix, and AddThis….Oracle effectively addresses multiple B2C and B2B use cases with native functionality and an impressive partner network.
Despite the topic of the report, it's important to remember that marketers still manage heterogeneous technology environments. While we've invested in areas of digital marketing we believe every marketer should have as part of an integrated experience, we remain committed to an open platform strategy that helps them connect all their third-party applications they need to power their customer experience. This is most evidenced through the Oracle AppCloud.
Finally, I'd encourage marketers to think about as their marketing technology becomes more connected is how to configure their organizations to support the shift to Enterprise Marketing Software Suites. Recently, we released the CMO's Guide to Building a Modern Marketing Organization, which I recommend as a starting point.
We're honored to be recognized as a leader in this report, and we look forward to creating more connected experiences for our marketing customers.
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