(If you are in a rush, here is the registration link – otherwise, read on.)

You probably already know Bryan Eisenberg: he is the co-author of the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, USA Today and New York Times bestselling books “Call to Action”, “Waiting For Your Cat to Bark?” and “Always Be Testing” and has been the keynote speaker for Search Engine Strategies, Shop.org, Direct Marketing Association, MarketingSherpa, E-consultancy, Webcom, SEM Konferansen Norway and the Canadian Marketing Association, among others.

And on April 1st, you don’t have to leave your desk to hear him speak!

In this free webinar sponsored by WiderFunnel, Bryan will guide you through some of the recent changes in the online advertising world and provide you with strategies and proven techniques to maximize your return on investment from your advertising budget based on the latest developments in Internet marketing and advertising.

Are you are currently spending a significant marketing budget on Pay-Per-Click, Pay-Per-Call, and Social Media Advertising?

Then you absolutely owe it to yourself to learn the techniques you need to increase the ROI of these powerful advertising mediums.

Would you like Bryan to answer a specific question?

Easy. Simply post your questions right here on this blog and Bryan will incorporate them in his presentation.

WHEN: Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 2:00 pm EST/ 11 am PST

LENGTH: 50 minutes

COST: Free – But you need to reserve ahead by registering

REGISTRATION LINK here

BONUS! Each webinar attendee will receive an electronic copy of the “Persuasive Online Copywriting” ebook – The actual book on Amazon has sold for over $1000

WIN:
• Attend this webinar and you could be one of 20 attendees qualifying for a FREE custom landing page evaluation!

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?
• Sales, Marketing and eCommerce Leaders and Managers with revenue responsibilities
• Search Engine Marketing practitioners interested in improving the ROI of campaign investments.

Being very clear in understanding the services you will get from a conversion optimization services provider is crucial because, if you don’t have this absolutely clear, you may be in for a nasty surprise in terms of the total cost of engaging with them – and it might be too late to pull out.

So in this blog post I hope to provide you with guidance when considering hiring a Conversion Optimization services provider in terms of what you should be looking for.

Does your company deliver…? Yes or No

There is a fairly long list of tasks and services normally associated with conversion optimization. The list below represents the questions you should ask of the potential conversion optimization services provider (as in, “Does your company deliver…?”)

The conversion optimization services provider you select needs to identify up front what they will deliver vs. what will be expected of you and your team.

There are no wrong answers – but you must remember that, for any of the tasks and services they do not provide, you and your team will be expected to!

For each item where the answer is No, you should budget for additional amounts (and, to be honest, you should also question why they don’t provide these basic requirements to proper and thorough conversion optimization services).

Here is the conversion optimization services checklist:

Planning

• Alignment of your business goal online with experimentation objectives
• Web analytics research to inform the opportunities for optimization
• Competitive review
• The assessment of your technical environment to ensure compatibility with testing technology
• Testing technology recommendations
• Categorization of segments and traffic sources
• Traffic sources & volumes
• Post-conversion sales analysis
• Identification of the specific conversion funnel step objectives
• Identification and prioritization of all your conversion funnel experiment opportunities
• Conversion Optimization strategy (A/B/n, MVT, etc)
• Development of experiment Hypotheses
• Test design

Experiment Execution – for multiple test Variations

• Wireframes
• Layouts
• Graphic design
• Copy and content
• Mockups
• Variable content box placement
• All HTML and images

Technical installation

• Testing tool
• Variable content box code
• Experiment Combinations fully tested before launch

Results Analysis

• Periodic client updates
• Hard coding of winning variation
• Recommendations for future action

In summary, then, it is key to have roles and responsibilities well defined prior to the start of the conversion optimization project.

If you have internal staff not fully utilized and experienced in running online experiments, then the list above does not need to be fully supported by the conversion optimization services provider you select.

However, if time is of the essence and you do not have the internal resources available, you will want the conversion optimization services provider you select to be able to deliver as many of the required services as possible.

(Not coincidentally, we at WiderFunnel deliver all the services listed above because, you see, “we do the work; you get the glory”)

Social media, as we know it today, is only a few years old – at best (Mark Zuckerberg invented Facemash on October 28, 2003; and work on “the Twitter project” started on March 21, 2006).

Yet, remarkably (!), the world today is filled with so-called social media experts (Google search generates 289,000 results for this term) and yet very few (surprise-surprise) are measuring much or developing metrics that support the execution of a social media strategy based on ROI.

So, what is really happening here? How are BtoB and BtoC companies managing their social media strategies? How are they measuring ROI?

Business.com recently published its “2009 Social Media Benchmarking Study” – and we take note because of the depth of their research based on insights into business social media usage provided by nearly 3,000 North American business professionals.

According to them, the two types of firms, BtoB and BtoC, have different social site usage patterns for business purposes – with BtoB firms demonstrating marketing leadership.

Their study found that:

• B2B companies already using social media were much more active in the space than their B2C counterparts, especially when it came to microblogging, participating in discussions on third-party sites, blogging and monitoring company mentions on various social media. Plus, they were managing profiles across more social sites and were significantly more likely to be present on Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.

• B2Cs were ahead in a few areas: social media advertising, user ratings and reviews, and online communities for customers and prospects, and won the day at Facebook and MySpace.

• B2B social media users were more active in measuring most social success metrics as well and more B2Bs were looking at Web traffic, brand awareness, and prospect lead quality and volume.

• Six in 10 B2B respondents used Twitter search to monitor mentions of their company or brand, compared with just 35% of B2Cs. The difference in usage of Google Alerts was slightly smaller, at 59% of B2Bs versus 40% of B2Cs. Consumer-oriented firms were most likely to keep tabs on mentions via Google search, at 61%, just edging out B2B companies, 60% of which googled themselves for this purpose.

How companies are measuring Social Media Success:

The average company in this study used four different success metrics:

1. The amount of web site traffic generated — the most popular way
2. Engagement – with prospects and customers
3. Brand impact – awareness and reputation
4. Leads – both quantity and quality

• Companies measuring leads are more likely to also measure the revenue impact of social media initiatives than companies which don’t focus on leads.

• Also, companies judging the success of their social media initiatives on engagement with prospects and/or customers are more likely to also measure brand impact than they are revenue or leads.

The study also asked respondents to tell how well they can see the impact of company social media initiatives on the success metrics they use today:

• 65% of respondents using web site traffic as a social media success metric report that the data they need is either part of standard reports today or is easily accessed when needed

• At the other end, 14% reporting that they don’t have the data (i.e., either they know they cannot measure the impact of social media initiatives on web site traffic at all or they have no idea whether or not the data is available)

• The brand metrics – awareness and reputation – fall to the bottom of the scale with almost equal percentages of respondents indicating that they can easily see the impact of social media initiatives on these metric or can’t measure the impact at all.

So, it looks like marketers are at least trying to measure social media success – but it isn’t clear this is a cross-industry trend.

“Looking at these results,” writes study author Ben Hanna, Ph.D. VP, Marketing R.H. Donnelley Interactive, “one can’t help but ask the obvious questions – how can a company claim to judge social media on a particular success metric like brand awareness or customer engagement with no ability to actually measure that metric? Do companies think they should measure the impact of social media on brand and engagement metrics but never get around to doing so? Or is this result more a function so many companies with little experience in social media participating in this study and we should expect that the ability to measure brand impact and engagement improves with experience?”

This study should provide you with context to decide how proactive you are in measuring social media success (you can access the complete study here).

The point is, are you in fact measuring social media success? Proactive companies are.

Sales conversions are crucially important to business (you knew that) so what is really interesting to me is that the study revealed once again (we have blogged about it before) the gap between what clients think is important and what agencies think is.

On the client-side, overall site conversion-to-sale was the top metric used by 68% of respondents. Other site metrics clients value include:
• Conversion to response
• Lead conversion rate
• Basket conversion rate

The study also reports that 39% of companies are not satisfied with their conversion rates.

To improve their conversion rates, clients report using A/B testing as the most valuable way to improve conversion, with more than one-half of companies saying it was ‘highly valuable’ and another 42% saying it was ‘quite valuable’.

Other methods valuable for improving conversion rates, according to client s and in descending order, include:
• Customer journey analysis
• MVT
• User testing
• Cart abandonment analysis
• Segmentations
• Event-triggered behavioural email
• Online survey/customer feedback
• Copy optimization
• Pinch point analysis
• Expert usability reviews/consultancy

And here comes the interesting part: agency-side respondents in the report did not always know what their clients thought about the best ways to improve conversions!

When asked ‘what worked’, agency-side responses listed A/B testing farther down the list, plus they overestimated the value of expert usability reviews for their clients.

So when it comes to conversion rate improvements, better to work with experts.

Apparently, there are researchers questioning the value of the click as a metric of success.

comScore and Starcom USA have followed up a July 2007 study conducted with Tacoda that segments Internet users into heavy, moderate and light clickers and found that a decreasing percentage of users are making up an increasing portion of all click-throughs.

Here are the researchers’ findings:

• Heavy clickers only accounted for 4% of all Internet users in March 2009, but they were responsible for more than two-thirds of click-throughs that month.

• Both moderate and light clickers decreased in number and in share of clicks.

• Non-clickers rose as a proportion of all Internet users by 16 percentage points.

As a result, researchers asked themselves, ‘With just 16% of Web users clicking on ads in March, how informative are click-through rates?’

And answer themselves they did: “A click means nothing, earns no revenue and creates no brand equity. Your online advertising has some goal—and it’s certainly not to generate clicks,” said John Lowell, Starcom USA SVP and director, research and analytics, in a statement.

Are these people for real?

These researchers have suggested other metrics, such as the view-through rate, gross ratings points (GRPs) and dwell time as more appropriate gauges of success.

This is certainly not what we are seeing happening today.

Especially in this economic environment, marketers desperate to create demand for their products and services are relying very heavily on click-throughs as well as conversion rate (the “post click experience”) as key metrics.

It seems to me these researchers should have spoken to actual marketers, right down in the trenches, working hard and succeeding under very difficult conditions.

What we are seeing is that now, more than ever, click-through and conversion rate are the key metrics driving decisions around advertising and marketing spend.

While I acknowledge these researchers are talking mostly about advertising metrics and not direct-response metrics, it seems to me irresponsible of eMarketer to decry “More Trouble for the Click-Through” at a time when click-through as a metrics is more important than ever to marketers.

Perhaps the real question these researchers should be asking is, “What is the future of Advertising?”

We received great feedback on the case study – as well as some excellent questions, including:

• The case study is too short. Can you share more insights?

• How do you decide when to do and MVT and when you do an A/B test?

And (my favourite):

• What on earth *is* a multivariate test anyway!?

So we decided to answer these (and many more) questions, as well as provide an in-depth show-and-tell on the case study, during a live webinar and we are grateful that Peter Novotny, W3i’s Marketing Manager, agreed to join us to present.

On Wednesday, September 23, 2009, Peter, together with Chris Goward, WiderFunnel’s CEO, will present a live webinar so you can get an in-depth look at the intricacies of multivariate testing and learn the mechanics of designing and executing an MVT test.

Here are the details:

- Wednesday, September 23, 2009 at 2:00 pm EDT/11 am PST

- Only 100 seats available on first-come, first- served basis

- Length: 50 minutes

- Cost: Free — But reservations required due to limited space

Register here – and learn how a multivariate test gets put together.

Why is Iceland a happy place? According to Eric Weiner, the author of The Geography of Bliss, Icelanders, culture doesn’t stigmatize failure. Icelanders are not afraid to fail — or to be imperfect — and so they are more willing to pursue what they enjoy.

That is one reason Iceland has more artists per capita than any other nation (OK, so here is where Björk comes in). “There’s no one on the island telling them they’re not good enough, so they just go ahead and sing and paint and write,” Weiner writes.

This attitude makes Icelanders more productive. Instead of just sitting around thinking they would like to do something, they just do it. They are not perfectionists who only attempt to do things they know themselves to be good at.

In other words, paradoxically, it seems that perfectionism is a curse if one really and truly wants to do something perfectly.

Peter Bregman, in an HBR blog post, writes: “Perfectionists have a hard time starting things and an even harder time finishing them. At the beginning, it’s they who aren’t ready. At the end, it’s their product that’s not. So either they don’t start the screenplay or it sits in their drawer for ten years because they don’t want to show it to anyone.”

How Marketers aren’t like Icelanders

The way most marketers run their jobs, in my observation, is through “hope-driven leaps of faith” where they plan and execute a campaign and then pray that (a) The campaign works, and (b) Others think the campaign worked (not always the same thing). In all of this, little business value gets measured.

In other words, in this model there is no room to risk failure; no room to try something new and be imperfect — because the outcomes of failure are dismal.

This model makes marketers less productive and reinforces the perfectionist paradox of attempting only to do things they *know* will work. Of course, this approach is frustrating and limits marketers’ creativity to those initiatives they feel are highly likely to succeed — or at least be considered successful.

And here is where Landing Page Optimization comes in to make you happy.

Landing Page Testing for improved conversions is not about perfection. It is about seeing a problem (i.e., low conversion rates) and then trying many, many things out – until the problem is solved.

Yes, sometimes some test variations will fail. That is OK. By testing in a controlled environment, marketers will learn something (i.e., what did not work) and mitigate future risk by eliminating what didn’t work from the toolkit next time.

Having a test variation or two underperform against the Control does not mean failure. It means learning.

Of course, testing will also lead to successes, many successes. This is because at least some of the test variations will actually improve the conversion rate – and will do so measurably. And the measurement aspect will help the marketer shift the discussion away from opinions towards data – and in turn will deliver opportunities for further improvement.

So this is how Landing Page Optimization and testing makes marketers happier people: testing doesn’t stigmatize failure. Marketers become less afraid to fail — or to be imperfect — and so they are more willing to pursue what they enjoy and become more productive (always highly valuable but particularly in this economy).

In essence, the two groups pretty much disagree on everything.

Basically, advertisers and consumers both agree that “amusing ads are effective and scary and guilt-inducing ads are not,” but they don’t see eye-to-eye on the efficacy of other types of advertising appeals.

But that is not all, the two groups also clash when it comes to online ad formats – prompting the report writers to ‘warn’ that the growing trend toward internet advertising in the face of large numbers of frustrated consumers “may eventually cause a backlash.”

Here are a few examples of ad types and their perceived efficacy:

• While more than half of advertisers believe ads that make people stop and think (53%) and ads that give people new information (51%) are very effective, just three in ten consumers (30% and 29% respectively) feel the same.

• 26% of advertisers think ads that are integrated into the feel of the program, that is has the same tone as the program it is based in, are very effective compared with just 7% of consumers.

• When it comes to ads that show before/after, 24% of advertisers say they are very effective while 13% of consumers say they are very effective.

• One in five advertisers (21%) say ads that reinforce a message already known are very effective, compared with only 10% of consumers.

• Consumers and advertisers both like ads that amuse.

• More than one-third (34%) of consumers and 41% of advertisers say entertaining ads are very effective, and one-third of both consumers (33%) and advertisers (32%) say funny ads are very effective.

• However, there is a fine line in amusement as just one in ten consumers (11%) and 14% of advertisers say ads that don’t take themselves seriously are very effective. Almost one in five consumers (18%) say these ads are not at all effective.

• 41% of consumers (41%) 32% of advertisers believe that scary ads are not at all effective.

• 27% of consumers and 18% of advertisers say ads about a serious topic that make people feel guilty are not at all effective.

And what about messaging? Apparently, there is a huge disconnect here too:

• Two in five advertisers (39%) are using empathy approaches, attempting to convey that companies understand what consumers are going through. But only one-quarter of consumers (24%) say empathy works very or somewhat well, and one-third (33%) say it does not work at all.

• One-fourth of advertisers (25%) say they are using cheerleading (”we’ve made it through tough times before, we’ll do it again, and we can help you do it.”) Almost two in five (38%) of consumers, however, say that these types of ads do not work at all.

What do Recession Consumers Like? Value Propositions

The study also examined the perceived effectiveness of ads currently being used to address the economic crisis, and revealed that value proposition strategies and “luxuries for less” approaches resonate most with consumers.

• Three in five advertisers (61%) say they are using a value proposition strategy, promoting sales, coupons and discounts and almost three in five consumers (57%) say that this strategy is working very well or well to help them sell their products or services.

• But less than one in five advertisers (18%) say they are using the “luxuries for less” proposition, while more than one-third of consumers (34%) say these types of ads work very well or well in selling products or services

As if this wasn’t bad enough, there is more.

While compared to last year, advertisers now rely less on print ads and more on Internet and Digital ads – but they are taking ads in the wrong direction.

According to another LinkedIn/Harris Poll, consumers are frustrated with many characteristics of Internet advertising.

So what do consumers dislike? The list is long:

Most hated:
• Pop-ups
• Ads that are “moused over”
• Difficult-to-close ads
• Musical ads

Next come…

• Ads that spread across the page and cover the content beneath them are the most vexing for consumers, with 80% of respondents in the study deeming these types to be very frustrating.

• Ads on which consumers can’t find the skip or close button are a close second, with 79% of respondents similarly annoyed, the survey found.

The study concluded the growing trend toward internet advertising in the face of large numbers of frustrated consumers may eventually cause a backlash and suggests that advertisers who come up with more engaging ways to connect with consumers will ultimately be the most successful.

There is lots of food for thought here for advertisers unleashing agencies to create ads.

Leaving aside the issue of how you as a businessperson define “what works” — especially in the context of branding and not conversions — these finding suggest a tremendous need to corral creativity to deliver on what the consumer will respond to and not to what the creative powers-that-be desire to create.

Consider this:

Being listed in public financial filings means an individual is among the highest compensated executives at the company and sits on the operating board, which is charged with fiduciary and operating responsibility for the company.

As it turns out, 13% to 15% of Fortune 1,000 companies employ some sort of marketing position with a chief or senior-executive-level title (such as chief marketing officer or chief revenue officer), but only 7% of those firms list the head marketer — carrying any title, not just CMO — in financial filings.

(On the other hand, the study also found that in some cases, other chief executives, such as the chief information officer and chief sales officer, were named in public filings while the head marketer was excluded.)

What does this mean to marketers?

The absence of a head marketer in public filings clearly means Marketing has no real say within most top organizations (not to mention that they don’t make the big bucks).

According to Ed See, a consultant in Ernst & Young’s advisory services practice and former president of Marketing Management Analytics:

“It means the CMO is not as involved as they could be. Within a corporation, you are either part of the core decision-making process or you’re submitting your budget to be approved. If you’re not listed as one of the top executives, chances are you’re submitting your budget.”

Why is this the case?

Clearly, financial acumen is becoming a necessity for CMOs seeking influence within organizations: Half of those marketers that are publicly listed as top executives have a background that includes product development, brand management or other operational roles.

Not surprisingly, it looks like the recession is accelerating the shift from “CMOs with agency background and brilliant at outbound messaging” to a new breed of CMOs who know how to cut marketing budgets while minimizing impact on revenues, and know how to monitor every dollar going out the door while demonstrating ROI.

According to Ed See, “the four Ps of marketing are being balanced against the three Ps of finance and operation: payroll, production and profit. After all, the biggest challenge most head marketers face is that they are viewed as an expense.”

It seems to me that the kiss of death is being seen as an expense – especially in this economy.

What can marketers working in corporations do about it?

It’s simple (but not necessarily easy): Marketing needs to aggressively reposition the ‘spending’ as ‘investment.’ Luckily, repositioning is after all something marketers know how to do.

The Marketing budget needs to be communicated across the organization not just an expense but in terms of metrics that everyone can understand. Marketers need to move away from metrics that only marketers understand (or care about).

Can this be done? The good news is that the answer is Yes – and it’s already happening.

The authors of the study liken the evolution of CMOs to that of chief information officers over the last decade.

“In the late 1990s through the early 2000s, most CIOs had little financial or operational expertise. Like CMOs today, they too were making major, multimillion-dollar investments in a variety of projects and promising certain outcomes. When those outcomes didn’t materialize or the projects failed outright, the role began to shift, as companies began to insist that the CIO role be held by someone financially and operationally competent. Today, CIOs, in most cases, are more well-rounded managers and are among their firms’ most highly compensated executives.”

It took CIOs a while to gain corporate credibility. Marketers need to be careful not to be left behind. The good news is that the shift is already happening.

We at WiderFunnel see this shift happening on an almost daily basis.

When we first launched the company two years ago, we would present capabilities to prospective clients and would often sense the boredom in the room when the presentation shifted from Creative to the ROI of Conversion Optimization (for example, by showing the Conversion Rate Optimization ROI Calculators).

Since last Fall, however, prospective clients contacting us have become incresingly focused on their problem: they need to improve their Marketing budget ROI by increasing the percentage of web visitors who transact by taking actions on their web pages. They have the data and we review the model to determine the viability of the strategy. And they need to do it Now.

Inspiring!

Learn more about the services mentioned in this article:

• Website Conversion Optimization Agency
• Landing Page Optimization
• The Kaizen Method
• A/B/n Split Testing
• Multivariate Testing

I have received hundreds upon hundreds of replies (I stopped counting after a while) and have kept this question open to see how long interest in it might last. The vast majority of respondents talked about themselves, their likes and dislikes and their needs. I was struck by their desire to get their story out, to share and be part of something. They (we, because I Tweeter too) want to be heard.

And then, a few days ago, someone posted the following: “For those of you who say you’ve had great results with Twitter – can you please give an idea of what those results have been?”

In the hundreds of replies I got, very few talked about results; about Twitter helping their business goals; about thinking who their target audience was when selecting a topic to Tweet. Very few people, it seemed to me, really talked about Twitter for business even thought there is a clear understanding that Tweeter is meant to work both as a social media tool to stay in touch with family and friends as well as a tool to drive business results.

In those 25 words, this person captured the essence of why I think Twitter could flame out as a business tool.

Simply having a large number of followers is an irrelevant metric (It’s not unlike measuring TV show viewers in a TIVO-world: Yes, the ad was broadcast and millions of people watched the show. But how many did not skip the commercials?)

But I can see some companies really “getting it.”

Here is a great example of how @DellOutlet has gained quite a following (620,000+ followers) and sold a lot of computers: at the end of last year, they surpassed $1 million in revenue, after about a year and a half’s worth of tweeting.

Of course, I can hear it (because my husband pointed it out): Dell’s fiscal 2009 revenue was $61.10 billion and these Tweeter-driven results aren’t even a drop in the bucket for a company that showed zero growth from fiscal year 2008 to 2009 as its sales fell off a cliff in the fourth quarter.

But at least it’s a start in trying to quantify the buzz Twitter has created as a business tool.

So, what is the “secret” to success with Tweeter?

I will finish this post with a quote from a personal email from another LinkedIn respondent – just today:

“I continue to find it exceptionally “funny” how people using Twitter for a few months proclaim themselves as experts — gimme a break! — social media is too young to have any true ‘experts’ — being a great experiment and all… still there are those who will make the claim.”

We shall see.