4 kinds of landing page tests: what? why? how? who?

Test, test, test.

In a world full of infinite possibilities, you owe it to yourself — and your organization — to explore, experiment, and push the envelope. One of the big advantages of setting up a landing page management system is that it makes it easy and efficient for you to try new post-click marketing ideas. And new ideas that lead to new experiments, in turn lead to new discoveries: new ways to increase your conversion rate and expand your market.

So testing is good. But what should you test?

Here are 4 kinds of tests: the what, why, how, and who of post-click marketing experiments.

What? The underlying offer
These kind of experiments focus on different underlying offers. A classic example is pricing: try one version emphasizing a 20% discount, another offering a free bonus gift, another extending a money-back guarantee. These are real changes to what is delivered to customers if they convert.

Of course, these kind of differences are usually the most expensive. Many of the ideas for different offers can reduce the economic value for you if respondents convert. That may be worth it if the new offer induces enough additional conversions. But if you don’t have to sweeten the pot to win a customer — and many times you don’t — that would be better.

Note that a big advantage of conducting these types of tests with landing pages is that you can limit the exposure of special offers to a small group of respondents. Tests that don’t work have limited downside. Tests that do work can easily be expanded.

Why? The benefit emphasized
Chances are, the product or service you’re offering has more than one benefit it confers upon customers. A great kind of post-click marketing test is to try emphasizing different benefits, to see which resonates best — at least under certain circumstances. You might be surprised by the winner.

For instance, a home security service might think that its leading benefit is peace of mind. But it may actually be something else — say, reduced insurance rates — that compels more people to convert. You never know until you try.

Many times, the benefit emphasized should be cued from the keyword a respondent searched for, or the particular ad they clicked on. This type of message match synergy is extremely important. So if you’re going to experiment with different benefits, make sure your pre-click and post-click marketing are aligned!

How? The art of presentation
It’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it. Experimenting with alternate ways of presenting the same underlying offer and benefit can reveal tremendous differences in how respondents react to them. At the simplest level, this involves trying different headlines, or trying a photo with a person versus an image of the product.

But the range of options you have for testing different ways of presenting your message goes far beyond headlines and images. You might try a whole new structure: instead of a “classic” landing page, break your presentation into several steps of a conversion path, or make a little microsite focused on the topic. You might try more than one design — the layout and look-and-feel of your pages — which can have a larger effect than you might imagine. You can try embedding video clips or using animated Flash elements or including an interactive widget. The sky’s the limit.

In many ways, these kinds of how you say it tests are the most fertile ground, creatively speaking, since there are essentially unlimited possibilities. Great post-click marketing continually sifts through new batches of these to maintain forward momentum and keep your marketing fresh.

Who? The right message for the right audience
You can have the right offer, emphasizing the right benefit, presented just the right way — but it has to be presented to the right person. One of the most powerful, yet often overlooked, types of landing page tests is to experiment with your messaging across different audiences. This helps you learn what is important to different segments of respondents.

Sometimes, you can segment respondent before they make that first click — by advertising on particular keywords or with particular ad creatives that explicitly appeal to a very specific segment. If someone searches for “small business data backup solutions”, it’s probably safe to consider them in the small business segment.

However, when you can’t determine someone’s segment before the click, it’s easy enough to offer them a one-click choice on your landing page, to route them to the most relevant content. Someone who searched for “data backup solutions” might be either a small or large business, you can’t tell from the keyword. But if you can incentivize them to pick one of those choices on your landing page, you can give them the presentation that is best suited to their needs — and determine their segment for your own testing to boot.

But wait, there’s more…
You may be wondering if there’s a where? or a when? in landing page tests. There are, although they tend to be in a tier below the 4 major dimensions above.

The question where? usually has to do with seeing which landing pages work best when paired with particular ads and the locations where they are placed — in other words, the source of the traffic. The most important aspect of these types of placements are when they impact the who? of different audience segments. But sometimes, even within the same audience, there are unique synergies in continuity from specific traffic sources that are worth testing.

When? can be immensely helpful for seasonal businesses — and some businesses may have seasons that they haven’t even recognized, such as August being a tough month to try to sell enterprise software. Or, if there are particular events in your market (e.g., trade shows, conferences, new releases, tour schedules, etc.), then experimenting with different post-click marketing campaigns in those contexts can also bear fruit.

By now, hopefully your imagination is stirred with the possibilities of what you can explore to optimize your own post-click marketing. The world awaits your experiments. Test, test, test!

Comments

[mlgreen8753]

The great thing about using video clips on your landing page is that you can leverage by submitting the video clip to video advertising networks like Adwido to generate traffic to the same landing page you created the video for in the first place.