The site's not dead...or is it?

Earlier this week I spoke at the eMarketing Association’s eM7 event in Atlanta. The association always does a great job with these bi-annual events and I highly recommend them. Lots of fun, lots of networking, lots of great content.

Over the course of the two-day event I listened in to many of the speakers leading up to my session. It’s hard to be a marketer these days….one speaker after another would contradict the previous speakers on all sorts of topics. I suspect they are all right in their own way—there’s usually more than one way to accomplish any objective and the diverse opinions at the event illustrate that. This can be considered a good thing, it means we have a lot of room to experiment with what works best for our own organization.

My own contradiction came when discussing what role the site plays in landing experiences. An early speaker on day one presented her findings that it’s best to send respondents from online marketing into very focused experiences that don’t distract. The more we put in front of our respondents the more likely it is that we won’t hit the nail on the head and they will land & lead. Shortly after her session, another speaker followed who lambasted all the separate microsites and landing pages that marketers are relying on these days and he argued that online experiences need to be consolidated.

You can probably already guess where I fall in this debate. While I can’t stand bad landing pages, I do feel passionately that the best way to handle respondents from online marketing is by sending them into very focused experiences that are on message, simple and to the point. While it does require a lot of discipline to stay focused,  it’s well worth the results you will achieve.