Below is live coverage of the Always be Testing: Marketing Optimization in Challenging Times from the SES San Jose 2009 conference.
This coverage is provided by Keri Morgret of Strike Models.
We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage. You can interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.
| Always be Testing: Marketing Optimization in Challenging Times | (08/11/2009) |
| 10:34 | Keri Morgret: Good morning and welcome to the first session of SES SJ!
|
| 10:35 | Keri Morgret: Speaker is reminding us of what internet marketing was like in the late 90s, and asking if anyone cared about conversions then. |
| 10:37 | Keri Morgret: Social media is not the next "little blue pill" that will solve all of our problems.
|
| 10:38 | Keri Morgret: Talking about difference between GM and Toyota. GM focus on marketing, Toyota focused on continous improvement.
|
| 10:40 | Keri Morgret: Coverage will be sparse at the beginning of this session as I get everything hooked up. My apologies. |
| 10:41 | Keri Morgret: You can't measure anything until you decide what success is. 80% or so of their clients with Google Analytics don't have any goals set. |
| 10:45 | Keri Morgret: For testing, you need budget, resources. |
| 10:46 | Keri Morgret: Showing history of Amazon.com purchase screenshots over the years. |
| 10:47 | Keri Morgret: 3 key resources you need. Marketing, graphic/design/creative, technical. |
| 10:48 | Keri Morgret: Today, tools for testing are virtually free. Bryan starts talking about Google Website Optimizer. It can't do everything paid tools can do, but you should be able to go for a good year before you run out of things you can do with it. |
| 10:48 | Keri Morgret: Persuasion Architecture Process.
Who are we trying to persuade?
What action do we want them to take?
What action do they want to take? (hint: not always identical to #2) |
| 10:49 | Keri Morgret: Blueprint for Testing:
Step 1: understanding the customer's experience.
- How many different types of profiles will you ahve that would participate in this campaign?
- How do they buy?
Logical versus Emotional
More that I missed |
| 10:50 | Keri Morgret: Bryan is showing eyetracking patterns in a study done by Jakob Nielsen. |
| 10:51 | Keri Morgret: Define the test/experiment. |
| 10:52 | Keri Morgret: Gives case example of working with overstock.com. One page had over 90% abandonment rate. |
| 10:53 | Keri Morgret: Don't do slice and dice optimization -- don't try variations of every element on the page in isolation. Instead use the persuasion architecture process. Look at the four personality types (spontaneous, humanstics, methodicals, competitives) and see if the page is designed for them. |
| 10:55 | Keri Morgret: Changed one graphic, was worth $25M. Immediate 5% lift in sales. |
| 10:55 | Keri Morgret: Not related just to websites, but all of your marketing. |
| 10:56 | Keri Morgret: Shows video of people trying to pay pennies, done by OfficeMax. Made a ton of money. |
| 10:58 | Keri Morgret: The experience of searching has changed in the last few years. Shows heatmap from Google from 2005 and 2008. 2005 looked much more at each result, 2008 shows concentrated on top two listings. |
| 10:58 | Keri Morgret: Ed Chi wrote in a study about how people are information-seeking animals, and talked about information scent. |
| 10:59 | Keri Morgret: People like beagles. Get distracted by too much scent. |
| 10:59 | Keri Morgret: Jakob Nielsen. People look at content, not navigation. if it doesn't meet your needs, hit back button. |
| 11:00 | Keri Morgret: Jared SPool - web page either contains the content user wants, or contains links to get there. If page doesn't follow this rule, user stops clicking. |
| 11:00 | Keri Morgret: No scent? Persuasive momentum is lost. |
| 11:02 | Keri Morgret: Have your landing page match what people asked for, especially with PPC. Shows example of Omniture, Coremetrics. You look for consulting, you land on white paper download page with nothing about consulting. |
| 11:03 | Keri Morgret: Tealium also has landing page, but talks about consulting, and tells you that the white paper is about consulting. Gives logos of trusted brand names. |
| 11:04 | Keri Morgret: Use same branding, same imagery, offer between ad and landing page. Don't do a mismatch. Showing several examples from Victoria's Secret. They keep scent well. |
| 11:05 | Keri Morgret: Optimization is more than just a single page, it's the whole journey. Don't do just landing page optimization. You need more than one click to purchase something from your web page, so plan out your whole experience. |
| 11:07 | Keri Morgret: Sometimes multiple people/departments own the steps from landing to conversion. Makes it harder to keep scent. |
| 11:08 | Keri Morgret: Can you afford not to increase your conversation rate? Small, continual optimization leads to great gains. |
| 11:09 | Keri Morgret: "Execution is not an event - a onetime push toward achieving goals. Rather, it is a way of life." |
| 11:13 | Keri Morgret: Q&A session time. Coffee wearing off, so not getting everything down. |
| 11:14 | Keri Morgret: There are plugins to use google website optimizer with wordpress. [I didn't know this. Cool!] |
| 11:16 | Keri Morgret: Average time it takes for someone adding something to cart to purchase is around 34 hours. |
| 11:17 | Keri Morgret: Give a deal to capture people now, don't count on just add to cart. "Sign up today, save 15% on a purchase in the next 30 days" |
| 11:19 | Keri Morgret: Question: how to use optimizer for content site where you want people to go to lots of pages? Can tag links/images to see if people click on them. One example: two "read more" text options. "click to read more" or "continue reading here" |
| 11:24 | Keri Morgret: Don't have the same 800 number on each page of your website. Have one for your shopping cart, people calling from there have different motiviations. You can also tie to different campaigns different phone numbers. |
| 11:25 | Keri Morgret: What simple things can people do now to get ready for holiday shopping season? Copywriting, scent from landing page, return policy, privacy. This also doesn't require a lot of IT intervention. |
| 11:29 | Keri Morgret: Bryan recommends reading Made to Stick. Learn how to take marketing speak and change it to information scent. |
| 11:29 | Keri Morgret: capt.org has research about personality types and preferences. |
| 11:29 | Keri Morgret: And that's it for this session! |
| 11:30 | 
|
