Fantastic 5: Online Marketing Reads of the Week

It’s Friday already? Wow, where did this week go? I’ve been reading through some interesting new marketing reports, a few of which I’ve listed below that I think you may like.

Oh, and we recently did a webinar on the Power of Post-Click Marketing. Flip through the slides if you missed the webinar or want a refresher!

Report: Marketing Wisom for 2011 | Marketing Sherpa

MarketingSherpa released their marketing wisdom report which is compiled of tips and lessons from marketers who want to share their successful strategies from last year.

Marketer tools fall short for campaign optimization | BtoB Mag

Forrester recently put out a report showing that marketing decision makers feel that current tools aren’t advanced enough for campaign optimization. What do you think?

How to track content marketing lead conversions | Mongoose Metrics 

Mongoose Metrics offers three ways to convert leads from your content marketing efforts using web analytic and phone tracking data.

The what, why and how on low search volume keywords | PPC Hero

Caleb writes about what you should do when Google brands some of your keyword phrases as low search volume, and suspends you from using them in AdWords.

Report: Bing-Yahoo Missed Opportunity for Marketers | MediaPost

A new Search Market Report shows that paid spend is increasing, and that the Bing-Yahoo integration provides an interesting opportunity for online marketers. The article suggestions developing and testing new ad creative/copy for Bing-Yahoo, and watching their conversion rates carefully.

Hope you all have a great weekend. And don’t forget to tweet me links to your favorite posts @ioninteractive! 

5 stages of your relationship with CRO

There are five general stages every marketer goes through while exploring and developing a relationship with Conversion Rate Optimization or CRO for short:

The flirting stage

A fellow marketer recommends you check out this thing called CRO. You aren’t sure what you’re getting into (sort of like a blind date), but you end up liking what you see, and decide to spend a little more time with CRO. 

You set yourself up with a starter tool and run a few A/B tests. It’s all good and fun until one day that feeling hits you. You know, the OMG-you-are-just-so-wonderful feeling. This usually occurs as you start watching your conversion rate climb.

The dating stage

Watching your conversion rates skyrocket will prompt you to share information about this new relationship with others. You will want to introduce CRO to your friends, family, and especially your boss. It’s getting serious.

At the same time you’ll also get very protective of CRO. You don’t want your competitors checking CRO out.  It’s all yours, and doing wonderful things for you.

This image was created by CRO lover, @gatzseoThe engagement 

As time goes on, everyone in your world gets to know and love CRO too.

In fact, you now have buy-in from all the important people, and are ready to make a long-term commitment.

Along with this commitment comes the realization that you’ve outgrown your current habitat. You will soon be populating the world with lots of tests and need better accommodations.  Your starter tool got you off on the right foot, but it’s time to move on to something bigger.

The wedding 

You happily sign a contract to work with a scalable and flexible tool (like LiveBall).  The return on investment will be beyond worth it.

The happily ever after

Your relationship with CRO continues to grow in the right direction everyday. You launch lots of tests, reap the return on investment, and live happily ever after. 

We’ve even witnessed it going beyond happily ever after to this: 

 

 

If you love CRO as much as Vincent, you may want to check out this informative interview he did with us on how he manages a CRO program at Alter Imaging. 

Which stage of the relationship are you currently in? Leave a comment below and tell us how in love with CRO you are and why!

2010 Search & Social Awards: Vote for Your Favorite Blog (us!)

Voting is now open for Search & Social’s 2010 Blog Awards!

We’re very excited that our own Post-Click Marketing Blog made it’s way to the ballot for “Best CRO/Conversion Blog of 2010”. The ballot includes additional categories such as SEO & PPC, with outstanding blogs like SEOMoz & Search Engine Land on the list.

The winners will be announced at the Search & Social Summit on May 3rd, an awesome event over in Tampa, FL, with speakers like Tony Adam of MySpace & David Szetela of Clix Marketing.

Don’t miss out. Vote for your favorite blogs in Search & Social 2010 Blog Awards now!

21 Conversion Rate Optimization Tips

We gathered some of our Twitter friends and asked them to help us compile a list of 21 conversion rate optimization tips!

This list covers everything from brainstorming a plan to analyzing data. The tips come from copywriters, SEOs, and everyone in between. Here at ion we’re beyond excited to see that conversion rate optimization has infiltrated so many different areas of online marketing.

Long live CRO!

21 Conversion Optimization Tips:

Make the page load fast by removing java, large images, and other unnecessary items. - @KenRobbins

Start the form above the fold so users know there is a form. - @KenRobbins

Answer the three questions your customers are asking: why you, why now, and what’s in it for me? - @robert_brady

Every Web page is a conversation with visitors. Video can visually support how you answer your visitor’s questions. - @Lookadoo

Don’t break the flow of conversation by placing a video right in the middle of your thoughts (copy.) - @Lookadoo

Bounce rates are tricky. If you have unqualified traffic coming to your site, getting them to bounce is a good thing; however, it could also mean your visitors are having a hard time finding what they are looking for based on the page they land on. Be as sure as possible that your visitors are landing in the right places. - @SharonMostyn

Don’t forget to consider offline conversions/sales in your ROI calculation. What may not be converting online may be generating offline conversions via phone, fax or mail. - @SharonMostyn

Write in second person; use “you” and “yours” to keep the focus on the user. - @CopywriterMaven

Write to deliver a clear and persuasive message, not show off how creative you are. - @CopywriterMaven

To increase conversions, try using actionable text. - @Finge

Test different types of images against each other to determine what works best for you. A female vs. a male, a person vs. a product shot and so on. - @Finge

Run tests long enough to reach statistical significance. - @Gatzseo

Remember that just because something is considered a best practice, it doesn’t mean it is the golden goose that once implemented will lay golden eggs all day! - @Gatzseo

Product centric landing pages should not talk about “features” but rather “benefits” to the customer/prospect. - @PriteshPatel9

Be patient with testing - depending on traffic volume, you may need to test for weeks or months before achieving statistical significance. - @PriteshPatel9

Try not to assume anything. It’s okay and normal not to know everything. Ask questions on Twitter, participate in #CROchat, find forums and blogs, and build a community you can learn from. - @LyndiT

Interview the sales and customer service representatives - they are ground level people that  can tell you what customer responses are in terms of objections or assurances.  Use that information to your advantage online. - @LyndiT

Segment your results — averages and totals across the site can hide insights in the data for different channels and user groups. - @sarahd23

Brainstorm your test plan with a multidisciplinary team. The best ideas come from collaboration and allowing the entire team to share in your testing successes. - @sarahd23

Write down the intended purpose of your page or pages. It’s easy to get lost in a sea of tactical possibilities if you don’t keep your eye on the main goal. - @joshsummerhays

Record any assumptions you can think of that you’re making about the target audience prior to designing your landing experience. If you don’t produce the improvements you expected, challenge all of those assumptions through subsequent tests. - @joshsummerhays

These contributors exceeded our expectations with the number of CRO tips submitted, so we’ll be putting together another list sometime soon!

What would you add to the list? We’re always on the look out for great CRO tips! 

#CROchat Community Buzz Weekly Summary

We officially hit one month of #CROchat chatter last week!

Since #CROchat is all about conversion optimization, we’re always looking for suggestions on how to improve it. @InflateMouse suggested we try using a theme each week to help keep the chat on focus. 

Our first theme was last week and we stayed on the hot, steamy romance between CRO and SEO that Scott talked about in his latest YouMoz post. Here are 5 great insights that came out of the chat:

• CRO and SEO balance each other out; not optimizing both will hurt your overall effort
• Search engines index pages updated frequently; therefore testing and optimizing your pages helps your SEO
• Testing and optimizing headlines is important to both CRO and SEO
• CRO is a team effort; collaboration leads to the best results
• Highly effective conversion bait is likely to be much more specific than link bait

You may read the entire April 1st #CROchat transcript here.

You should also check out the post Kate Morris wrote for SEOmoz called CRO and SEO: SEM Civil War.

As usual we have to give a shout out to our top participants: @JanetDMiller @RobCGM @KateMorris @JoshSummerhays @Activelngreds @SandraNiehaus. 

Looking forward to getting everyone together again this Thursday! If you can’t make it (and even if you can), I hope you will be able to join us Friday for our Conversion Coffee Break, a 15 minute webinar all about conversion optimization. This week Anna will focus on using social proof to increase conversions.

PS: Another great Twitter chat to check out is #SEO411 held on Tuesdays at 2pm.