Landing page optimization, cycle speed, culture of testing

Today on WebmasterRadio.fm, I’ll be joining Tim Ash on his show Landing Page Optimization for an informal chat about landing pages, post-click marketing, and the evolution of marketing culture. We recorded the segment on Friday, so I can give you a sneak preview of what to expect.

You probably already know who Tim is — a popular speaker throughout our industry and author of the book Landing Page Optimization. He’s been one of the most prolific advocates for landing pages and conversion optimization over the years, plus a friendly and funny guy to boot.

Two of the topics that Tim and I focus on are marketing cycle speed and the mandate for a testing culture in marketing.

Cycle speed is how quickly you turn around ideas, from concept to completion. Not too long ago, cycle speed in marketing was measured in weeks — sometimes even months. Now it can be measured in days or hours.

What form does an idea take in today’s marketing world? It can be a social media meme, which are cheap and easy to send out into the world — but over which you have relatively little control.

Or, an idea can take shape as a paid marketing micro-campaign, which can be as simple as a combination of an ad on a search engine keyword and a matching landing page.

While paid micro-campaigns cost a little more than social media distribution (free is free), they’re still relatively inexpensive — and in turn, you gain the advantage of control. You can determine where an ad appears and where respondents are routed when they click. And this enables you to run controlled experiments, such as A/B testing of creative, concepts, and audience messaging with a high degree of measurement accuracy.

These paid micro-campaigns can be as fast as social media marketing.

Increasing your marketing cycle speed then makes test-driven marketing possible. You no longer have to take a big risk on a single idea because you only have time to give it one shot. Instead, every idea can quickly be validated with a small test.

As my marketing professor at MIT said, it’s best for your company (and your career) if you can test the water with your toe before making a running, head-first dive into the deep end.

This discipline of toe-dipping in a systematic way is what marketing teams need to embrace with a culture of testing. It’s immensely liberating, as bolder and more out-of-the-box ideas can be tested with minimal risk — want to try an imaginative new idea? Test it with a small experiment. If it doesn’t pan out, the cost was negligible. If it succeeds, then you can quickly scale it up.

What’s the cycle speed and attitude towards testing at your organization? As I wrote the other week, that’s the big $1,000,000 question for the executive team.

Comments

[Tim Ash]

Hi Scott,

I enjoyed our interview very much. Thank you for your thoughtful comments.

The home-page for my Landing Page Optimization show on WebmasterRadio.fm is

http://www2.webmasterradio.fm/landing-page-optimization/

That is where your readers can find the link to our interview in the future.

Warmest regards,

Tim Ash - CEO, SiteTuners.com

[Bayberry L Shah]

This article is right on the mark. I am able to use Ion Interactive's LiveBall software to increase my client's conversion rates by doing constant testing. With their tool, I can come up with an idea in the morning, build it and launch by the afternoon if needed.

[Gregory Cox]

I ... LOVED ... YOUR ... PODCAST.
Absolutely loved it.

I am going to be writing an article about how I build the culture of testing in my client's world. Setting up the mindset of the culture of testing in my client's business is creating some magical things...

1. I am getting along better with my clients,
2. They're feeding me ideas that I in turn polish to a high lustre,
3. I'm more effective,
4. They are too.
5. They're more excited about their own business in many new ways...

Thank you for some great insight and ideas -

Sincerely, Gregory