Three-piece suits. A smoky conference room. Wood paneling. And then, Don Draper drops one of these on the brand-side marketers in the room …

“This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine. It goes backwards, and forwards … it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not called the wheel, it’s called the carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels – around and around, and back home again, to a place where we know are loved.”

As we gather in Boston for MarketingSherpa and MarketingExperiments Optimization Summit 2013 over the next few days, I realize how much marketing has changed since the 1960s.

People haven’t changed. Human nature hasn’t changed. We probably choose to buy or not buy T-shirts from Patagonia for the same reasons our ancestors chose to buy or not buy togas from Parthenon Pete’s Emporium.

But you, the marketer, has changed

The marketers I’ll learn from over these few days here at Optimization Summit aren’t Mad Men — they’re Smart Men and Women.

While ideas are still as important as ever (and don’t get me wrong, I love a good concepting session more than anyone), data has become pervasive. And with it, there is the opportunity for more informed (and better tracked) ideas.

It really struck home for me on a recent trip to Kennedy Space Center. The Apollo computers, which helped put man on the moon, had less computer power than the phone in your pocket. Heck, they had vastly less computing power than a desktop PC … from the ‘80s.

The rise of the evidence-based marketer

Easily available computing power allows marketers to learn unprecedented insights. So, they can achieve a better understanding of their customers to inform their concepting.

Even better, they can see if that clever “carousel” concept that sounds so good in the conference room really resonates with customers. [Spoiler alert: In working with many of the presenters on their Optimization Summit case studies, it’s always refreshing to see how often A/B testing surprised experienced marketers. “We thought they were interested in luxury, but they were really interested in trust.” On the flip side, “We thought they were interested in convenience, but what customers really wanted was luxury.”]

Beyond seeing what really works, this computing power (when combined with optimization and testing) gives marketers the ability to prove it works. And, it has an impact where it really matters … on the bottom line.

So, I was pretty surprised that when we asked marketers about return on investment (ROI) in the MarketingSherpa 2012 Website Optimization Benchmark Report, they told us this …

Q: Did optimization or testing demonstrate ROI in 2011?

Simply put, the majority of marketers are taking the time, effort and resources to invest in optimization, but they don’t know if it’s worthwhile.

38% of marketers said optimization and testing demonstrated a positive ROI

Now, in fairness to those marketers who don’t know the ROI, it can be difficult to track. How much IT time was involved? How much was our agency involved? Is that time we spent discussing a headline part of an optimization effort, or just everyday marketing?

And, of those who do track ROI, an overwhelming number found a positive ROI, so many marketers might safely assume (even if they can’t prove) that it’s worth the effort.

But if you’re tracking analytics, customer intent, transactional data and test results with this fancy new computing power, perhaps it’s at least worthwhile to dip a toe into some ROI measurement, like Andrew …

“We just started tracking our website optimization ROI in 2012, albeit via fairly non-scientific methods. We focused on traffic, since that’s the main KPI for our small business,” said Andrew Schrage, Editor-in-Chief, Money Crashers.

“Since doing so, we’ve seen a positive tracking throughout,” Andrew said. “We are looking at a more scientific approach to tracking ROI, but for the moment, we’ve been pleased with our efforts. We also now understand that it’s essential to track website optimization ROI to determine if marketing dollars and time are being well-spent.”

Over the next few days at Optimization Summit, we’ll be discussing many powerful case studies that show just how profitable optimization can be. But, it never hurts to know for yourself. After all, even Don Draper is wrong every now and then.

Related Resources:

Email Testing: How the Obama campaign generated approximately $500 million in donations from email marketing

Marketing Optimization: The 3 phases of evidence-based marketing

5 Things You Need to Start a Small Business (via Money Crashers)

Color can be used to guide customer thinking on a landing page by placing stronger emphasis on particular elements in your offer, and less emphasis on others.

Today’s MarketingExperiments blog post will show how the MECLABS research team discovered the impact color emphasis has on conversion.

Background: Company provides educational resources for health and fitness professionals who subscribe to one of its online memberships.

Goal: To increase number of membership sign-ups.

Primary Research Question: Which landing page will generate the highest clickthrough rate?

Approach: A/B split test (Variable cluster)

Control

Treatment

The research team hypothesized the control did not place any emphasis on distinguishing between price points in the offer.

In the treatment, the team simplified and sequenced the pricing, and used a color design to emphasize the value of the offer.

Results 

What you need to know

By strengthening the communication of the offer’s value through color, copy and layout changes, the treatment increased clickthrough by 81%.

You can watch the full free Web clinic, “How Do Website Colors Impact Conversion?,”  to see Flint McGlaughlin , Managing Director, MECLABS, reveal four more surprising findings from our optimization testing and experimentation.

Related Resources:

Landing Page Optimization: Simple color change increases conversion 10%

A/B Testing: SAP increases conversion 62% by using images

Web Usability: The Squint Technique and other insights from your peers

“The first step in exceeding your customer’s expectations is to know those expectations.”

-Roy H. Williams, Author and Marketing Consultant, Wizard of Ads trilogy

One way to know your customers’ expectations is to set them yourself. Recently, as we’ve been looking for speakers and case studies for Lead Gen Summit 2013, I’ve come across a few different lead generation pages that failed to meet the very expectations set by prior stages in the funnel.

For that reason, I thought it would be helpful to review six steps you can use to set expectations for your customers. But first, let’s look at a three-part process an insurance website requires to receive a quote on home insurance, and how it incorrectly sets customers’ expectations.

On the homepage, visitors see three main objectives: auto insurance, home insurance and business insurance. Each call-to-action promises an instant quote, and that message sets a certain expectation in the minds of customers.

Clicking on that button with that expectation, and prior experiences, I expected to fill out information about the home, myself and my desired coverage. I also expected to either receive the quote on a follow-up page or to receive it in an email immediately after I submitted the form.

Anything other than those two options and the process would come up short of my expectations. What else would you expect with a word like “instant” in the call-to-action?

The second step in the quote process includes a simple form, from which I immediately deduce a quote will not be coming from – despite the CTA’s promise. There is not enough information gathered to calculate even a basic quote.

Frustrated by the misleading CTAs, I went back to Google and continued my search on another website. But, to show you the full process, I returned to the form to see what hid on the other side. And, no surprise here, it wasn’t a quote. In fact, the subsequent page tells me a representative will contact me, which is the first time I’ve learned of the required contact to receive my quote. I wanted an instant quote, not a sales pitch.

The company sets customers’ expectations on the homepage and reaffirms them with “Get My Quote” after the form. However, customers find themselves without a quote and are left with anxiety over a looming phone call they didn’t want or expect.

Now that you’ve seen a subpar example of setting expectations, I’ll use that example to illustrate a better way to meet customer expectations, using these six steps:

Step #1: Know the expectation you want to set

You can’t properly set expectations if you don’t know what you want them to be. Like Stephen R. Covey’s second habit, you must begin with the end in mind. What will visitors gain from filling out your lead gen form? When will they receive that benefit? How will they receive it? Through email, phone call, mail or something else?

For example, if you want to provide leads with a free special report, you need to determine when and how they’ll receive it. Will they receive a hard copy in the mail in two weeks? How about in an email within 24 hours? Or, can they instantly download a PDF version?

When, what, where, why and how. These are factors potential leads will weigh to determine if the cost of their personal information is worth the value you are offering in exchange.

Once you know what your customers will experience through your lead gen funnel, then you can begin to set expectations based on that experience.

Step #2: Establish expectations using calls-to-action early in the funnel

You want to use any calls-to-action early in the customer decision-making process page to begin setting expectations. That could include a button on the homepage like the above example, a PPC ad, an email hyperlink, a Twitter post, and the list could on and on. You want to have continuity between all parts of your conversion process, so each part the customer interacts with should promote the value of converting.

Look at the example homepage. The yellow call-to-action (CTA) buttons provide direct value, which is a good practice to follow. Many consumers looking for a quote to compare to others don’t want to wait, and they’ll find high value in an instant quote.

This would have been a great way to show the value of the click and the value of the rest of the quote process if the website carried through with the promise.

However, because the quote is anything but instant, customers now have incorrect and misleading expectations.

The button could leave out the word “instant” and still follow through. This leaves out the required phone call to receive the quote, which could cause some visitors to feel misled.

You want to use as much real value as you can to entice the click. So, if the company wanted to accurately set up customers’ expectation and earn the click, it might use call-to-action copy such as “Request a Quote” or “Learn How to Get a Quote.”

Step #3: Be clear in your headlines

Looking at the landing page to the left, where do your eyes immediately go? Mine go the attention-grabbing blue bar. The bold color and large text start visitors’ eye-path almost halfway down the page.

I see “Get Your Insurance Quote Today!” before anything else … including the real headline that says I’m only using this form to request a quote.

More emphasis should be placed on the top headline, as it gives the best indication of what value this form has. After all, if I submit this quote at 11:00 p.m., am I really going to receive the quote today? Or what about anytime on Sunday? Will a representative contact me then?

You don’t want to try to persuade visitors with fancy words or false promises. Instead, you want to be as clear as possible, and the headline is the first place on the actual landing page where you can do that.

As Flint McGlaughlin, Managing Director, MECLABS, says, “Clarity trumps persuasion.”

Step #4:  Provide deeper details with copy prior to form

The paragraph hints at the value of the form: Qualified insurance agents can assist you with anything you need. However, it could better voice why visitors should fill out the form, as well as what they should expect afterwards.

If they’ve already done any insurance shopping, visitors can conclude a quote will not result from the displayed form fields. So, you need to mitigate the anxiety potential customers will feel at handing over personal information with not much hope of getting what they want.

Again, clarity will win. Explain exactly what benefits they’ll gain from filling out your form. Will they receive a free report? A personalized email newsletter? A sales pitch? Plus, make sure visitors know how they will be receiving those benefits. A subsequent webpage? An email? A phone call?

Step #5: Cement expectations with the landing page’s call-to-action

The call-to-action under your form is the last place you can set your customers’ expectations before they submit their information. Like Step #1, you want to make sure value is implied in your call-to-action copy.

Call-to-action copy for forms like “Submit,” “Click Here” and “Register” don’t imply any value. All the customer knows is their form will go to some unknown place and some unknown thing will happen at some unknown time. Basically, the customer is left not knowing a whole lot with CTAs like that.

Here are some examples of how to infuse value into common, generic CTAs:

Get Free Access instead of Register

Get Your Free Consultation instead of Submit

Request More Information instead of Click Here

With value in your CTA, the focus is no longer on the act of clicking the button, but on the value or benefit they will receive from clicking the button.

But remember, you want to accurately set the expectation. In the case of the example, the form’s CTA should have said, “Request My Quote,” as I wasn’t actually getting the quote by clicking the button.

Step #6: Meet expectations

The last step is pretty simple: Meet the expectations that you have already set. Failing to meet expectations can confuse customers or even anger them, leaving such a bad taste in their mouth they don’t bother to open your email or return your voicemail.

However, if you followed steps #1 through #5, then this step should be a breeze. That’s the beauty of beginning with a certain objective in mind: You paved yourself an easy path to follow.

Let’s look one last time at our insurance company example. If they had used this thank-you page as a starting point, then the other steps – the homepage CTA, the landing page headline, the copy and the form CTA – should have all accurately set expectations that would have been met on this page. From this page, I have a much clearer expectation of what is to come. However, it’s come much too late in the process. Many potential customers may have never clicked that “Get My Quote” button because of the inconsistency and misleading elements they had already encountered.

Related Resources:

Lead Gen Summit 2013 in San Francisco – Call for speakers

Form Field Optimization: 3 optimization opportunities from a real-world form field page

Lead Gen Form Optimization: Why a lower conversion rate can be a good thing

Lead Generation Test: How adding urgency increased conversion rate by 6%

Optimization and testing is all about learning. What really works? What really doesn’t (even though we thought it would when we set up the test)? And, most importantly, how do you learn these lessons in a reliable, repeatable way?

Every year at Optimization Summit, we conduct a live test. We receive your input before and during Summit, release the hounds/treatments into the world and in an extremely short amount of time (before Summit ends), use the live test as a teaching lesson to help marketers better understand optimization and testing.

At Optimization Summit 2011, we (somewhat inadvertently) taught the audience about the importance of test design and validity using the live test.

At Optimization Summit 2012, the live test was a great example of using hypotheses when designing tests to make sure you learn from your testing.

This year, Spencer Whiting, Senior Manager, Research and Strategy, MECLABS, has been tapped to lead the live test at Optimization Summit 2013 in Boston. And, as we tend to do with the live test, Spencer wants to involve you in this fun experiment.

Generous guy that he is, Spencer will even give a MECLABS Landing Page Optimization Online Course to the person who leaves the best test idea for the control pages (you can see them below) in the comments section of this blog post by Monday, May 13, 2013 at 8:30 a.m. EDT.

Here’s some info about the test …

The goal is to have marketers to provide information about themselves on a form to receive a free copy of a 30-Minute Marketer about email subject lines.

We partnered with Dun & Bradstreet on this live test, and traffic will be driven to this landing page from the MarketingSherpa and MarketingExperiments email lists, along with Dun & Bradstreet’s email list. There will likely be free and paid social media promotion, along with a possible social media contest.

There is a two-step conversion process.

Step #1 (Click to enlarge)

Step #2 (Click to enlarge)

Leave your test ideas in the comments section of this blog post. Spencer will choose the best comment (at his sole discretion, his decision is final) and give that person a copy of the online, on-demand MECLABS Landing Page Optimization Online Course, in the new HD video format.

Also, if you’ll be at Optimization Summit 2013 in Boston and would like to learn how you can apply lessons from this live test to your own testing efforts, be sure to attend the roundtable Spencer is moderating on this subject.

***Update***

Spencer has picked a winner! Here’s what he said …

 The 2 I think are best are (8) Nate Nordstrom #1 and then (1) Clayton for #2. They have good evaluation and specific test recommendations.

We have a consensus:

Nathan Nordstrom has won.

1. Specific recommendations for the right column to add value or credibility.
2. One-step process.
3. Gave us specific headline recommendation.
4. We will have 2 logos on the page due to the nature of the offer, but makes a good recommendation.
5. Spoke of continuity throughout the funnel. Didn’t make any specific recommendation, but a good recommendation once the ad/email copy is known.

Clayton would be my runner up.  However, Nathan was the only optimizer who identified going to a one-step process. In my mind, this will be the greatest opportunity for this offer.

Congratulations, Nathan. Enjoy your MECLABS Landing Page Optimization on-demand course.

Related Resources:

MarketingSherpa and MarketingExperiments Optimization Summit 2013, May 20-23, Boston

What to Test: 4 sample landing page treatments from Optimization Summit 2012

You Decide: Which lead generation landing page will perform best?

Landing Page Optimization: 4 test ideas for a free-trial, lead gen form page

Landing Page Contest: So you think you have a good lead gen page?

Live Experiment (Part 1): How many marketers does it take to optimize a webpage?

Live Experiment (Part 2): Real testing is messy

How long should this blog post be?

What about your landing page? Or email?

Content length discussions are as old as human communication itself. When Ug (the first critic) said to Zog about his cave paintings, “You had me at ‘Zog kill bison.’ All the rest was unnecessary commentary. I lost interest.”

On Wednesday’s free MarketingExperiments Web clinic – “Long Copy vs. Short Copy: How discovering the optimal length of a webpage produced a 220% increase in conversion” – Flint McGlaughlin, Managing Director, MECLABS, will share our discoveries about copy length.

But first, we asked the MarektingExperiments community for their opinions on copy length. Here’s the long (and short) of it …

No such thing as too long or too short

There is no such thing as too long or too short when it comes to copy. It’s like a long ball or a short ball in football. If it’s effective, then that is the one to use. The right one.

The key to any copy is the headline, followed by the first paragraph and so on until the P.S., putting in sub-headings for the browsers and enough detail to emotionally engage the reader.

The same is true of video. When the quality of the writing is good, it creates emotional engagement with some logical elements which people use to rationalize their emotional buying decision. No one complains their favorite book was too long to read … or their favorite film was too long to watch. That’s because they are emotionally engaging.

So, the answer to the question is …

“Copy should be long enough to emotionally engage the prospect and give them enough rational reasons to back their emotional decision to purchase.”

If it’s good enough copy, (the message) going to the right person, (the market) in the right format, (the media), then you are onto a winner.

When you can’t deliver enough quality copy in the media you are using, e.g. radio ad, or press ad, then you write a call-to-action advert which gets people to request the detailed copy or go somewhere they can get hold of it.

- Boyd Butler, Consultant

What is your customer’s goal? How do they find your content?

I’ll take a counter point to Boyd.

First thing, not all content will work in all situations, regardless of your copy. You have to look at how the consumer will be engaging with the content, and how they come across it. If you break down content into two buckets, people engage with content to do the following:

1. Research a purchase
2. Professional development (Entertainment is a veil we use to make this more palatable)

Inside of both of these, you can then further break it down to [the question]: how do they find the content? This factor determines the odds of your content getting engaged with.

People find content two ways:

1. They search for it
2. It is sent to them

For example, if someone is researching a purchase, they are more likely to like a longer form of content. Why? Because they are seeking out information to make an informed decision. This means they are doing a search, and asking to engage with content.

Most of us also require a form to be filled out to access the content. This means there is a negotiation going on with the consumer as well. We are asking them to give up something in exchange for the content. So, there has to be [significant] value on the content for them to give up their email address.

In these situations, a longer, or full, document performs better. At first glance, a larger document appears to have more value than a short document, hence is a better deal for the person. So, they are more likely to engage with it in that situation.

Compare this to content sent via email. The consumer is not in research mode (unless your email is on a drip campaign following up researching activity), and they are in work mode. This means professional development content is more likely to get engaged with.

We are disrupting their day. So, they do not have the time to read a long form piece of content. They need to engage with the content in a short time period. They have to stop their task at hand to read your content. In this scenario, short form content works better.

I suggest the rule of five in these cases. Make sure your content can be digested in under five minutes, and that is clear to the consumer. If you do this, you are increasing your odds of engagement when disrupting their day.

You need to look at when and where your content is going to be engaged with, to make sure you are creating the best content, giving you the best odds of engagement. You also need to combine this with your goals. The goal of content should never be to make someone sales ready. It should be to move them to the next stage in their lifecycle. I have never read a piece of content and said, “OK, I’ll buy it.” Especially not in the B2B world where there is a large amount of research.

The stats back up these claims with the following data:

Stat #1: The more expensive your product, the more research someone must do.

Stat #2: People break research up into stages, and usually perform two to three different batches of research before they reach out to set up demos.

Stat #3: People prefer their content to be under five pages, in general.

This research will be made public in my report published by Pardot coming up in the next month. You can also see me present on this data at the B2B Inspiration Tour.

- Mathew Sweezey, Manager of Marketing Research and Education, Pardot

Focus on customer personas

I think it all depends on how you know your customer persona. For example, if you market to women/housewives/24-32/living in Texas, I think long copy of human talk (the one that you have while you are with you friends) will be perfect – especially if you include a chance to add comments (with a plugin like Disqus).

On the other hand, if you market to professional males/19-33/living in New York, then you need a catchy headline with a short copy.

- Ahmed Seddiq, Senior Operation Officer, Corporate Visa Services, Dnata, The Emirates Group

Related Resources:

Long Copy vs. Short Copy: How discovering the optimal length of a webpage produced a 220% increase in conversion – Wednesday, May 8, 2013, 4:00 – 4:35 p.m. EDT

Long Copy vs. Short Copy: How our micro-testing increased conversion rate by more than 100%

Content Marketing: Focus on value, not length

Copywriting: Long copy vs. short copy matrix

It’s no surprise folks everywhere like choices.

From the car you drive to the shoes you wear, paper or plastic, and the classic … would you like fries with that?

Choices are good, and having lots of them is even better.

So, it would make sense giving customers as many options as possible would be a sound principle of Web usability – or is it? Watch the below video for a MarketingExperiments discovery about presenting options to your visitors.

As Flint McGlaughlin, Managing Director, MECLABS, said, “People don’t need many options. They need the right options.”

You can watch the full free Web clinic – “The Usability Myth: 4 surprising discoveries we learned after testing the most common usability principles” – to see Flint reveal three other surprising findings from our optimization testing and experimentation.

Our goal is to show marketers key principles to use as a framework to aid usability and optimization efforts.

Related Resources:     

Web Usability: Long landing page nets 220% more leads than above the fold call-to-action

Email Optimization: A single word change results in a 90% lift in sign-ups

5 Common Call-to-action Errors