Last month, Google turned on Instant Previews for Ads. Now, a little magnifying glass appears next to each search ad, which the user can click on to see a preview of the landing page for the ad. It may not have received much fanfare, but this is a huge change for post-click marketing. Until now, […]
Next month, I’ll be returning to my alma mater, Columbia University, to give a speech to this year’s Phi Beta Kappa inductees. Reflecting on what I ultimately took away from my time at school, I realized that those life lessons underpin my philosophy of marketing today. A brief background: never much into school as a […]
I’ve written before that conversion optimization can learn a lot from content marketing (such as this example). But can conversion optimization also learn something from social media marketing? The answer is yes. In particular, one key lesson: people prefer dealing with other real people. The Social Media Antidote Marketing has gotten a bad rap — […]
In a recent presentation on conversion content marketing, I walked through several excellent examples of “the new microsite.” I thought I’d share one of my favorites with you here. The essence of conversion content marketing, taking lessons from content marketing and applying them in conversion optimization, and vice versa— is that content is king. The […]
Post-click marketing is a big umbrella. There are many concepts under it, intricately interrelated to each other. It can be challenging to picture the entire ecosystem. But let’s give it a try! Here is a proposed “post-click marketing heuristic” that offers a guided tour through the creation and optimization of post-click experiences. (Click the image […]
The Quixotic quest for iconic internet ads is a perennial call-to-arms for advertisers, agencies and entrepreneurs. Surely there must be a way to make online advertising—specifically display advertising—truly impactful. Yet this somewhat misguided mission overlooks the possibilities of entirely new modes of marketing.
We’re incredibly fortunate to play a role in one of the largest transformations of a profession in the history of modern business: the shift from “old marketing” to “new marketing.” We’ve all heard the big themes of this metamorphosis—speed, agility, testing, transparency, measurement, accountability, customer-centricity, micro-targeting—driven by waves of innovation with the web, search, social […]
Is there really a difference between B2B versus any other kind of conversion optimization? To be sure, we all deal with clicks, context and testing. But the environment for B2B marketing often has a different set of dynamics than most consumer-oriented ecommerce: Usually, the goal is to generate leads rather than online transactions. The products […]
The term “microsite” might conjure up images of a web long past, where creative agencies produced high-priced, animated presentations entirely in Flash—the design equivalent of a shock-and-awe strategy for online branding. As visually stunning as some of these works of art were, however, they often had questionable usability, had zero SEO value and were difficult […]
Content marketing, in the words of Chris Brogan, can really “shake the tree.” Thriving at the intersection of SEO and social media, content marketing has become central to digital marketing strategy. Its objective is simple: create genuinely useful or entertaining content for many specific niches of your target audience—not to overtly promote your business, but […]
As marketers, we’re all ultimately in the conversion optimization business. The success of your venture depends on how many people you get to sign-up, register or order. You weigh the value of each conversion against how much it cost you to win it, and that’s the driving engine of ROI for your organization. The higher […]
There’s a wealth of good advice about conversion optimization out there. But when you’re working on a particular landing experience, it can be hard to remember all of the factors in play. Many times, I’ve found myself wanting a quick reference for evaluating a page’s “conversionability.” I was picturing a kind of checklist that was […]
Earlier this month, I presented at the inaugural Conversion Conference organized by landing page expert Tim Ash. Never before have I seen so many conversion optimization thought leaders in one spot: Bryan Eisenberg, Jeffrey Eisenberg, Chris Goward, Lance Loveday, Sandra Niehaus, Jakob Nielsen, Brooks Bell, Jonathan Mendez, Khalid Saleh, Howard Kaplan, Eric Hansen, and many […]
Good design is the unsung hero of conversion optimization. Too often, when the topic of landing page design comes up, it’s dismissed superficially with canned prescriptions. Use an image of a person. Use bullets. Use video. Don’t use video. Put a call-to-action button in the lower right. Use the color green wherever possible. Such fortune […]
Why do some companies thrive at conversion optimization, while others languish? I’d argue that the biggest factor is not technology, testing tactics or creative brilliance. It’s the agility of your marketing team. The more agile you are, the better your conversion optimization will be. So if you really want to boost your online marketing performance—in […]
Conversion optimization is bigger than your web site. From blogs and landing pages, to official outlets on social media sites, marketers now manage a large extended web that thrives beyond the borders of the traditional web site. Great conversion optimization must leverage the dynamics of each layer—and coordinate the interaction between them. The extended web […]
Thomas Edison said that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. As we begin a new decade in search, we face a parallel truism: great search marketing is 1% about getting the click and 99% about what you do next. Starting here in 2010, conversion optimization is the new SEO. To be sure, SEO is […]
Welcome to Search Engine Land’s newest column, Conversion Science. Here we’ll focus on the Three M’s—methods, math and marketing, all beautifully intertwined—for maximizing the quantity and quality of your conversions through search and search-related media. To kick things off though, I’m going to debunk a common misunderstanding about doing things “scientifically” and reveal why marketers […]
Can you apply the spirit of social media to other marketing channels? At this year’s SMX East, after my presentation on Landing Page Usefulness—emphasizing a “usefulness” mission over “usability” tactics—it struck me: great landing pages can bring many of the ideals of social media to paid search marketing campaigns. Here are five principles of social […]
All landing page tests are not created equal. What you test on your pages—and what you learn from those tests—can better inform tactics and strategies throughout your entire marketing program. Here are four kinds of landing page tests that can help you learn about your market. Beware butterflies and magic bullets How much can you […]
Are your landing pages feeling tired? Is your conversion rate stagnant? Not quite sure what to try next? To re-energize your post-click marketing, it can help to step back and evaluate your approach from several different perspectives. Here’s a quick exercise, the Landing Page Wonder Wheel—as in, “I wonder how to improve my landing pages?”—that […]
Over the past year, the term “post-click marketing” has come up more frequently in search marketing discussions, especially in the context of improving conversion rates and overall search ROI. At SMX West earlier this month, Gordon Hotchkiss of Enquiro unequivocally declared that post-click marketing moves the needle for their clients more than any other aspect […]
My earlier article, A Completely Different Kind of Landing Page Optimization, discussed the rationale for delivering segment-specific landing pages to different niche audiences in your search marketing. Instead of having a one-size-fits-all landing page that you try to continually optimize ad nauseum with different variations of content (headline, body copy, image), segment optimization focuses on […]
What exactly is landing page optimization? For most search marketers, optimizing landing pages means A/B testing and multivariate testing (MVT). It means using tools such as Google Website Optimizer to experiment with different arrangements of a page – or different variations in the content of a page – to maximize its conversion rate. We may […]
Quick question: how do you think of your landing pages? (a) As part of your site. (b) As part of your ads. When you reflect on it, the answer probably should be a little of both. For most online marketing campaigns, landing pages are transitional — a bridge from the ad to the site, or […]