MarketingSherpa Blog

I’ve been writing about A/B testing for 15 years at Meclabs (MarketingSherpa is part of Meclabs, as is MarketingExperiments). And one of the most common challenges I’ve heard is – ‘what do I test next?’

Because A/B testing isn’t all that hard to get the hang of. And once you catch the bug and see how it can move the needle and help you learn about and better serve customers – marketers and entrepreneurs want to keep testing.

But we’re only human. And eventually the well runs dry. ‘So what the heck should I test next?’

Enter the biggest marketing buzzword of 2024 (and 2023 as well) – artificial intelligence.

But unlike a buzzword that covers up for vaporware, AI is legit when it comes to test ideation. Because unlike me and you, it isn’t human (sorry bots reading this post, you are not part of my target audience).

So AI is a never-ending font of ideas. Are they all amazingly good? No.

But Paul McCartney originally sang “Scrambled Eggs” instead of “Yesterday,” “The Breakfast Club” was going to be called “The Lunch Bunch,” and Jane Austen came up with the title “First Impressions” before she settled on “Pride and Prejudice.”

Brilliance isn’t obvious at first. It takes a lot of ideas to get there.

Which, again, AI has. So the next time you’re struggling with a test idea, give it a shot.

Here’s an example. I’m co-teaching ‘MEC 300: Develop Your Creative’ in the AI Guild. This isn’t just meant to be training; it’s meant to guide you to build your own funnel. So between each class there is a ‘Build Your SuperFunnel’ activity (I didn’t want to call it ‘homework,’ after all, these are all adult professionals).

Read more…

Every Wednesday, we hold a Marketing LiveClass as part of the AI Guild. Everyone is welcome to sign up for a free trial to the AI Guild so they can join and learn from these sessions, as we build marketing funnels with members of the AI Guild.

In the LiveClass, marketers and entrepreneurs can ask questions in the webinar chat. And we answer them right here…

Are we supposed to be framing this like we are talking directly to the customer? Like a headline? Or are we speaking of our customers as a third party?

This question is about how to write a value proposition.

MECLABS defines a value proposition as being the answer to the question, “If I am your ideal customer, why should I buy from you instead of any of your competitors?”

So you are answering a question the customer is asking (in their minds), and the first word in your answer should be “Because…”

You are not speaking about the customer as a third-party. You are speaking directly to the customer.

But the value prop is not a headline. The headline is the articulation of the value proposition. This is directly answering the customer’s question.

To do that, you need to figure out how to increase your customer intimacy and your customer wisdom. If you need to answer the customer’s question, you better understand what the customer wants and what your product delivers. This will help you optimize the communication of the value proposition, or make you realize that you need to create more or different value in the product itself.

To get you thinking for how to find those answers, here’s an example from Radhika Duggal, Chief Marketing Officer, Super…

“We literally stood up for research discipline, doing professional-quality quantitative market research and maybe mediocre-quality qualitative research, in-house producing five to six studies a year simply because we wanted to make sure as we were innovating, we were creating the right products. And we did this with the agreement from the product team that understanding and hearing from our customers really did matter.” (from Consumer Financial Services Marketing: Your customer is your most important stakeholder – podcast episode #39).

Drill down to micro niche?

To have a forceful value prop, the value proposition needs an only factor – a combination of appeal and exclusivity. The less tightly your ideal customer is defined, the harder it is to have that only factor.

For example, a cohort member had an ad and landing page that focused on business consulting. It would be very hard (but not impossible) to have an only factor for such a broad customer set.

However, he conducted competitive research with Bing AI using a methodology taught in the cohort and discovered the lack of high-quality support available to medium-sized businesses in the construction industry.

That is a much more tightly focused ideal customer set (I supposed some people might call it a micro niche), and therefore, it is far easier to identify and communicate an only factor and have a forceful value proposition.

To get more ideas for identifying your ideal customer, you can download 7 Steps to Discovering Your Essential Value Proposition with Simple A/B Tests.

Is it too early to join if you have not determined who your target audience is?

No, it is not too early to join the MECLABS SuperFunnel Research Cohort if you have not identified your target audience. In fact, using the thought tools in the cohort can help you determine your target audience (as discussed in the example above).

Another example is determining if your target audience for a landing page is a prospect or previous customer. This can affect what value proposition you feature on a landing page or in an offer. (Get more ideas on that in Value Sequencing Decider Graphic: What do your customers need to know, and when do they need to know it?)

Container is the quiz?

Your offer will tend to have two parts – the container and the content. For example, I consulted with a brand at IBM to help with their sales enablement early in my career. We brought sales information and case studies to a globally distributed sales team in an email newsletter.

But we realized that this was a highly mobile audience, and they wanted to spend as much time as possible with clients and potential clients. They didn’t want to read an email newsletter.

We changed the format and delivered the content through a podcast. This way, they could listen during their downtime while they were traveling – in the car, an airplane (before there was Wi-Fi on planes, and when laptop use was limited), etc. So it wasn’t taking time away from clients (traveling was downtime anyway). And they had a lot of this travel time to use up since they were highly mobile.

The most appealing container for your ideal customer – like in this question, a quiz – can help pull them into your landing page and your offering.

Of course, the container is just part of it, For more ideas on pulling your ideal customer into your offering, watch Above-the-Fold Energy: How to engage the prospect’s mind with a carefully crafted opening.

Possible to get a link to the 54, uh, things?

To help cohort members come up with ideas for their offer container, in the LiveClass we shared this article – Funnel Strategy: 54 elements to help you guide your buyers’ journey through the marketing funnel.

In the LiveClass chat, a cohort member shared a brilliant way she was using AI to get the most out of the article. I share it here if you would like to use her idea as well. “I copied those 50 and asked ChatGPT for an idea for my audience for each of those … good brainstorming exercise. Even got it to output in a table so it pastes into a spreadsheet …”

How does the shorter landing layout relate to the layout diagram that we were following?

The layout diagram refers to the MECLABS Landing Page Blueprint. The blueprint features eight micro-yeses you should achieve from the customer.

But just because you need to win these eight yeses, does not necessarily mean you need to have a long landing page.

For example, one of the micro-yeses you have to secure is “Yes, I believe.” The amount of information you need to win this micro-yes will vary based on what you are asking them to believe. If you are going to send them a totally free sample that does not require a credit card, it will take less to get them to believe than if you are asking them to sign up for a high-dollar, recurring payment.

Another factor to consider is where they are in the customer journey when they reach your landing page. For this reason, you should also look at those micro-yeses across your entire funnel.

Here is an example from a classic experiment. A migraine treatment center had a lead form on its homepage. The MECLABS team hypothesized that the value exchange was occurring too early in the funnel. The customer had not said yes for all of the micro-yeses at that point.

So they created a treatment that communicated to the three major lead types on the homepage. It provided enough information to get the ideal customers to come to the conclusions “Yes, I will pay attention” and “Yes, I will engage deeper” and then taking customer type to a separate landing page that tied into their individual motivations so the page could answer the rest of their micro-yeses. The experiment produced a 331% increase in lead rate. You can see the experiment in this classic MarketingExperiments web clinic recap – Homepage Optimization Applied: Learn how to replicate a 331% lift on your own site.

If we need a long page for all 8 micro yes, which do we focus on for the short page?

Every landing page, in fact every communication you have, should address all 8 micro-yeses.

And to take it a step further, every landing page should have each of the four levels of value proposition (as discussed in Copywriting and Value Proposition: Unleashing the power of compelling copy).

The magnitude and nature of the decision, along with where they are in their customer journey (which your funnel should be modeled to), will determine how much you need to communicate about those elements to get those micro-yeses. Sometimes it doesn’t take much, and you better serve the customer by getting out of their way (removing friction).

To give an extreme example, let’s look at two purchase decisions and see how this plays out in the real world.

First, consider buying a stick of gum in the checkout line at a grocery store (an impulse buy). This is in a reputable store, and I have heard of the brand before, so I instantly understand and believe. I know I like original more than grape flavor, so the product-level value prop is instantly clear to me.

Now, consider the purchase of an automobile. Do I understand and believe that this car will be the right one for me? Is the company’s primary value prop forceful to me? And even if it is, which product-level value prop (car model from that company) is right for me?

To answer these micro-yeses and find these different levels of value proposition appealing, the customer may go on a long journey. They may read Consumer Reports magazine to understand the reliability and performance of different car companies as well as individual models. They may talk to a friend with an electric car to see if they are ready to make the switch from gas. They may test drive several cars at different dealerships. It will take a ‘long page’ (and funnel) to help them answer the micro-yeses and find the different levels of value prop appealing.

Theoretically, we could have all 8 MY’s (micro-yeses) in a single complex sentence, no?

Great observation. We might even call that an elevator pitch. At which point your goal isn’t to get the final sale (that would take a longer page), but just win the conversion of getting someone to want to learn more.

Hello, great to be here! I’m wondering how one gets access to this workspace?

The workspaces are for members of the MECLABS SuperFunnel Research Cohort. If you stick around after a Marketing LiveClass, we will tell you more about how to join. You can RSVP now for a LiveClass and join us on Wednesdays at 4 pm EDT.

Here is a summary of this week’s MECLABS SuperFunnel Research Cohort LiveClass. It was written with the help of artificial intelligence, part of our exploration into using AI in marketing (scroll down to the Process section if you are curious for how it was written).

On March 1, 2022, MECLABS Institute hosted a LiveClass on “Ad Optimization.” The session was conducted by Flint McGlaughlin, the Founder and Managing Director of MECLABS Institute. The session was insightful and provided valuable insights into the world of advertising optimization. In this blog post, we’ll discuss the key takeaways from the LiveClass transcript.

Importance of value proposition

A value proposition is a statement that communicates why a customer should buy from you instead of your competitors. During the LiveClass, Flint emphasized the importance of a strong value proposition. He explained that a value proposition should not only be clear and concise but also differentiated from your competitors. He also mentioned that a value proposition should answer the following questions:

• What is it?
• Who is it for?
• How is it different or better than the alternatives?

The power of clarity

Clarity is an important aspect of any advertisement. Flint explained that an ad should have a clear and concise headline that immediately communicates the value proposition. He also emphasized the importance of using clear and simple language that is easy to understand. He suggested that you should avoid using technical jargon or industry-specific terms that your target audience may not be familiar with.

The importance of testing

The final takeaway from the LiveClass was the importance of testing. Flint explained that optimization is an ongoing process and that you should always be testing different elements of your ads to see what works best. He suggested using A/B testing to test different variations of your ad and measuring the results. He also emphasized that you should not rely on best practices or assumptions but instead let the data guide your decisions.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the LiveClass on “Ad Optimization” provided valuable insights into the world of advertising optimization. We discussed the importance of a strong value proposition, the power of clarity, and the importance of testing. By implementing these key takeaways, you can optimize your advertisements and improve your conversion rates.

The process for creating this blog post using artificial intelligence

This is another attempt to use artificial intelligence to create second-level content. Not primary content that needs subject matter expertise, but content that has a rich feedstock of information that needs to be repurposed from one format to the other.

In this case, I took a session of the MECLABS SuperFunnel Research Cohort, and created a quick blog post summary. You may try to do something similar by publishing a simple writeup of a webinar, podcast or video.

Should you use an entry-level writer? Or can AI handle this?

I’ll include links to my first two attempts at the bottom of this blog post, and here is a little insight into the third attempt.

This time I tried using the Draft with AI feature in Notion, specifically asking Notion to write a blog post, and then I pasted in a transcript of the LiveClass.

The output was basically a long blog post about me specifically, saying how great I was. This isn’t unique to AI, of course. I’ve had human vendors working for me create press releases and other collateral that made me personally or our brands or events sound just amazing. Everybody wants to please the client, right?

And I’ll be honest, I was tempted to publish that as the blog post and just move on to my next task. It really made me sound pretty darn amazing.

But then I remembered the golden rule of marketing – nobody cares about me. Or our brands.

They care about themselves.

So I tried the same process again. As I’ve mentioned before, using sometimes you can use the same prompt twice and got very different results from artificial intelligence. The blog post was different the second time, but still was all about me. It sounded like a letter of recommendation. I tried a third time. Different again, but about me again. OK, I can’t resist, here is a quick bit of it…

Daniel Burstein: A Leadership Example

Leadership comes in many forms, and Daniel Burstein is an excellent example of how a leader can bring people together to achieve a goal… in this blog post, we will explore three key aspects of Burstein’s leadership style: his ability to create a sense of community, his willingness to help others, and his focus on achieving goals…

I mean, who can argue with that, amiright? In all seriousness, I just couldn’t bring myself to publish a full blog post like that.

So I tried a different approach. As I’ve written about before, even a slightly different approach can bring wildly varied results from AI.

I created a page in Notion with the transcript. (Note: A transcript will probably be so long that you can’t just paste it into a Page, you actually have to import the original text file).

And then I created another Page in Notion and told the AI to write a blog post about… and pasted in the link to the transcript page.

This time it created the full blog post we published above.

I didn’t like the title though, so I went into the OpenAI Playground, and asked it to come up with a title for this post.

And then of course – human oversight, although this only needed some very light editing.

On the upside, Notion helped overcome one of the challenges I was having with ChatGPT – that the transcripts were too long to paste in. And while still pretty basic, this may be the best AI-generated summary blog post yet. Here are the two previous posts, and I’ll let you judge for yourself.

MECLABS SuperFunnel Research Cohort LiveClass: A recap of AI, marketing strategies, and collaborative learning

Lessons Learned from a MECLABS SuperFunnel Research Cohort LiveClass: A marketer’s perspective

March 3rd Update: This blog post was originally called “Gain Valuable Insights into Landing Page Optimization…” until Hellie wrote to me with an excellent point – Wednesday’s LiveClass was actually about ad optimization, not landing page optimization. I question why I didn’t notice this obvious error, which I surely would have from a human writer. I think I was so amazed that the AI had come up with a summary focused on a specific topic, since previous versions were much more generic, like “a marketer’s perspective.” And, in fairness, we did extensively address LPO in many LiveClasses before this.

The irony of course is – I’ve been writing (and thinking) and cautioning so much about the blindspots AI can cause because we are so wowed by the parlor trick that we overlook the obvious. And yes, even being conscious of it, I fell victim to this blindspot myself. Thanks for pointing that out, Hellie!

Here is a summary of the February 22^nd MECLABS SuperFunnel Research Cohort LiveClass, written by artificial intelligence (scroll down to the Process section if you are curious for how it was written).

The MECLABS SuperFunnel Research Cohort recently conducted a LiveClass, which attracted a diverse group of marketers from different backgrounds. The participants shared their experiences, insights, and suggestions on various aspects of digital marketing, from AI to headlines. Here are some of the key takeaways from the LiveClass.

AI as collaborators rather than doppelgangers

One of the participants suggested that AI should be viewed as collaborators rather than doppelgangers. In other words, AI should be used to enhance human life rather than replace it. The participant added that businesses should focus on using AI to augment their existing processes and workflows, rather than trying to replace humans with machines.

Headlines should contain four value words

Another participant noted that headlines should contain four value words. The participant added that these value words should address the customers’ pain points and offer a solution to their problems. Another suggestion was to include the words “you” and “your” in the headlines, which could help to make them more personal and engaging.

Tips and ideas for marketing a new product

During the LiveClass, participants discussed various marketing ideas for a product, including sample stands in local supermarkets, geotargeting filters on ads, and shipping free samples in a time of inflated shipping costs. One participant suggested that the product’s entire step-by-step handmade recipe could be shared as a marketing strategy, emphasizing the ancient human craftsmanship and unending tradition.

Another participant jokingly suggested that the taste profile could be converted to binary so customers could download the taste to their cerebral cortex. Some participants suggested selling the product to restaurants or stores instead of individuals. The participants also discussed the importance of storytelling in marketing and how it can create an emotional connection with customers.

Tips for creating a compelling landing page for a free ebook about logos

One participant submitted a landing page with a free ebook about logos.

The participants discussed the importance of a good logo in building trust with potential customers. They suggested that the design of a page should be more breathtaking if a company wants potential customers to trust them with their logo. Participants recommended showcasing recognizable logos of companies the design team has supported. They also suggested analyzing the company’s own logo to demonstrate their expertise and convey the logic behind the choice of every aspect of the logo.

Participants suggested creating an infographic that dissects the company’s logo to provide a visual representation of their expertise. They also recommended creating a personal value proposition to help businesses develop their brand identity. Overall, participants agreed that a good logo is a crucial element in building trust with potential customers.

Overall, the LiveClass provided marketers and entrepreneurs with various creative marketing strategies to help them promote their products effectively. It was a valuable learning experience for marketers. The participants shared their experiences, insights, and suggestions on various aspects of digital marketing. The key takeaways from the LiveClass highlight the importance of using AI as collaborators, crafting effective headlines, and paying attention to website design.

The process for creating this blog post using artificial intelligence

When I tried this last week, I went into much more detail about the process for using AI, and thoughts for using AI for content creation. You can read that in Lessons Learned from a MECLABS SuperFunnel Research Cohort LiveClass: A marketer’s perspective.

The basic thrust for using AI is – for something simple like summarizing a webinar, is AI good enough? Should you use an entry-level human writer? Or do you need a skilled, experienced human writer with deep subject matter expertise? One of the participants of the LiveClass summed it up well by discussing marginal returns – when it’s not worth trying 50% harder to get a 1.4% improvement.

The goal this time was to use the transcript from the LiveClass as the feedstock for the AI. So first we attempted to use Fathom. But Fathom only works with Zoom Meetings, not Zoom Webinars. So that didn’t work.

Then I tried to use ChatGPT and paste the transcript in. But that didn’t work either. The transcript was over 22,000 words, too long for ChatGPT. ChatGPT recommended about 1,000 words.

So I decided to go back to what I used last week – the chat log. This provides an extra filter, adding the wisdom of the community. Of course, filters have an upside and a downside. The downside being that you’re not learning from the teaching directly.

Even this was too long for ChatGPT, at over 5,000 words. So I had to cut it into thirds.

This brings up another challenge with ChatGPT. Even if you give it the same exact prompt, it will create different outputs each time (there must be some level of randomness programmed into it).

Not ideal for having a blog post with a consistent voice. Although after some tinkering with different prompts, I was able to get something close to uniformity in voice.

The most effective prompt had the least amount of information. “Write a blog post based on a MECLABS SuperFunnel Research Cohort LiveClass. Here is the first third of the chat from the LiveClass.”

This worked better than prompts discussing the target audience or asking for transferable principles or key takeaways. I found ChatGPT used those prompts like an entry-level SEO writer fond of keyword stuffing. It just repeated those words and synonyms of them throughout (trying to please me, I guess?) When I just asked it to write a blog post with less info, it seemed to use natural language processing more to determine what the chat was actually about. There was also more consistency of voice with this approach.

And then, of course, it required human insight and oversight, although I tried to use a very light editor’s touch, since the purpose of these blog posts is not just to give you a summary of the LiveClasses, but also, to further all of our knowledge in using artificial intelligence (paired with human intelligence) in our marketing and content creation.

So this was another step on our journey into the future.

Here is a summary of the February 15^th LiveClass with the MECLABS SuperFunnel Research Cohort. I have the byline, but in truth I didn’t really write this like the articles I normally write. I was just the content generator (or AI writer or automated content writer if you prefer) and used artificial intelligence to create these key takeaways.

At the end of this blog post I share the process I used to create it. This goes along with a key aspect of these cohorts – to experiment with AI tools and see how they can help optimize a marketing funnel.

Hopefully these AI-derived summaries give you an idea or two for improving your own marketing.

Lessons from a Marketing Class: Zoom chat highlights, Part 1

In this marketing class conducted on Zoom, the participants discussed various topics, ranging from ChatGPT’s behavior to the weather in different parts of the world. In addition to marketing-related topics, they discussed the power of community building, and the use of search engines like Bing and Google.

The participants concluded that search engines were increasingly influenced by artificial intelligence, which in turn could be used to further their marketing goals.

One participant noted that “Ads will be much more targeted with this type of information,” suggesting that marketing campaigns are becoming increasingly personalized and data-driven thanks to AI. Another participant shared an infographic of Google Trends showing the popularity of searches related to “Microsoft Bing,” underlining the impact artificial intelligence is already having on the competition between search engines.

The participants discussed the potential implications of artificial intelligence on marketing, noting that AI-driven insights can help brands better understand customer behavior and preferences and create more targeted and effective campaigns.

The participants also discussed the importance of gathering feedback and comments from their audience and then ranking them to determine which ones are most valuable. When asked for feedback on what the cost of the MECLABS SuperFunnel Research Cohort should be, they even joked about splitting a hypothetical $100M equally among themselves.

Overall, the class served as a reminder that marketing is about understanding your audience and building a strong community around your brand. Businesses can create more effective and personalized marketing campaigns by gathering feedback, keeping up with the latest trends, and using tools such as AI.

For example, by using customer feedback to understand their needs and wants, businesses can tailor their marketing campaigns to appeal to their target audience, such as offering discounts or special promotions.

Lessons from a Marketing Class: Zoom chat highlights, Part 2

This is a summary of a MECLABS SuperFunnel Research Cohort LiveClass that was conducted on Zoom. The chat took place at a frantic pace and covered a wide range of topics, which are summarized below:

• BG suggested skipping ChatGPT and heading straight to openai.com.
• DF suggested using Flint’s account.
• The group shared laughter, with JF, TW, and IS using emojis.
• MP noted his preference for OpenAI’s sandbox, despite it not being as conversational in historical referencing.
• BH shared a link to the page [LINK]
• DC made a joke about having tripled his dose of phenobarbital and now being unfazed by K’s page.
• DJ shared his experience of helping a client increase their project rates from $4,000 to $10,973. He credited the increase to helping the client see the value of their work and finding the right clientele. He wondered if the same principles could be applied to the SuperFunnel course and its clients.
• KB expressed her dislike of images with text that are unreadable, noting that they are a bad experience for accessibility and a risk in the USA.
• CG praised B’s work and suggested that the testimonials on his page should include the name of the client’s company.
• DF suggested breaking the instant access form into steps to make it less intimidating.
• HI shared links to three pages: [LINK], [LINK], and [LINK]

The chat was lively and covered a wide range of topics, from humor to serious business advice. It is a testament to the value of the SuperFunnel course that so many people from different backgrounds and locations came together to share their experiences and insights.

This kind of interaction is key to fostering a community of entrepreneurs who are willing to share their experiences with others and help each other succeed. The SuperFunnel course provides a platform for this kind of engagement and encourages its students to build a network of like-minded individuals.

The Process – Can you use artificial intelligence to create written content from your webinars, meetings, classes, etc?

Every content marketer tries to squeeze the most juice from her content, taking information from one medium and bringing it into another. For example, repurposing content from a live event and then sharing videos, transcripts, blog posts, articles, audio podcasts, social media posts, slides, reports, etc., etc.

I like to think of this as secondary content. Primary content is original and requires a subject matter expert of some sorts. But for secondary content, you don’t need a creator with subject matter expertise – just the ability to communicate. I’ve used a more junior writer for this in the past, an intern could do it as well, and we’ve even had this in writer tests before we make a hire.

But to borrow from the GEICO ad, is this so simple even an AI could do it?

Judge for yourself. You can see the AI-written summary blog post above. And you can compare it to previous blog posts I’ve written after LiveClasses of the SuperFunnel Research Cohort – Marketing Funnel Strategy: 3 principles to help you make a high-converting landing page and Lead Generation: Generating business from an ebook, infographic, etc.

I’d like to think mine are better than what the AI wrote, but maybe they’re not? Or how much better do they really need to be? When creating content, I’m often weighted down by the need to deliver enough value to the reader or listener. That is difficult and time consuming. But have I overdone it? And is what the AI created enough?

Of course, the artificial intelligence didn’t create this on its own. It took work from me to engineer. And you may use the same (or different) AI tools to get a better result. AI is still just a tool, and you are the craftsman. A paintbrush, and you are the painter.

So here’s how I wielded the paintbrush in case you would like to do it as well, or let me know a better process.

STEP #1: Determine the source material

I could have used a transcript of the audio from the LiveClass. And I may in the future.

But I decided to use the chat log instead. So the wisdom of the community served as the basis of content before AI was even involved. There is a very active, experienced community on these LiveClasses and they bring up a lot of good and helpful information. If you don’t have an active community in your chat for webinars or other meetings, this may not work as well for you.

STEP #2: Determine the artificial intelligence technology you are going to use

I started with ChatGPT, because, well, the hype is to the moon for it right now.

But I’m a writer at heart, and while ChatGPT can provide good information, I’m not always sure it has the best wording. So, I used Wordtune as well to copy edit and suggest better wording.

Wordtune, with its Spices feature, can also help add content that punches up the copy, and I figure two AI (brains? neural networks?) are better than one.

STEP #3: Craft prompts to get a rough draft

The chat transcript was too long to paste into ChatGPT. And when I asked ChatGPT how long of a discussion I could use, I got the evasive type of answer you would expect from a politician who’s hand was just caught in the cookie jar, not the crisp analytical answer I was expecting of a specific character count.

As an AI language model, I can process queries of various lengths, and there is no hard limit on the length of a query. However, it’s important to keep in mind that longer queries may take longer to process, and may also be more difficult for me to understand and provide a relevant response. So, it’s generally best to keep your queries concise and focused on the information you’re looking for.

When I cut the chat in half, that did the trick. So I did it twice (hence the two parts above). The first prompt I gave was:

Here is the first half of a chat from a marketing class conducted on Zoom. Please write a blog post summarizing this class so other marketers and entrepreneurs can learn from it

I then asked it for a title, and got “Zoom Chat Highlights: Lessons from a Marketing Class.”

After getting that summary, I realized I missed a huge opportunity for specificity (and, frankly, branding) by mentioning the name of the Zoom meeting. So here is the prompt I gave with the second half of the chat transcript:

Here is the second half of a chat from a MECLABS SuperFunnel Research Cohort LiveClass conducted on Zoom. Please write a blog post summarizing this class so other marketers and entrepreneurs can learn from it

I then asked it for a title as well for that version. I ultimately went with this title for this blog post because I liked it better. I passed the title through Wordtune before using it (see next step).

The upside of using artificial intelligence – it provided a different perspective than I would have. For example, the AI discussed some of the humanity of the chat – “the group shared laughter” or “discussed the weather around the world” – while I would have left that out and focused more on helpful information to marketers.

It’s kind of ironic, too, because Flint McGlaughlin and I have discussed at length the importance of making a community about more than just information, and that if we shared video of the LiveClasses we should include some of the camaraderie and fun that has been built up. Even knowing that though, I would have totally missed adding it in.

It’s also interesting that the two parts ChatGPT crafted are so radically different. My prompts were slightly different, as you can see above. And the LiveClass did have two parts – the first half was more informational, and the second half was more interactive as Flint and I provided live conversion optimization suggestions to the community’s landing pages.

But I also question if this is just part of the randomness of AI. If I did this 10 times, would I just get 10 totally different styles. Is this an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters? Is there consistency or just randomness and luck? Something to watch as use of AI progresses.

And really, ChatGPT is called “conversational AI,” but it’s a pretty bad conversation. I give a command and it outputs a response. It would work much better if (like a real human would in a conversation) it asked clarifying questions to hone in on what you really want and how it can help. In this (in fairness, very early) version of conversational AI, too much rests on how well or how clearly you state your prompt, so you need to try multiple prompts and prompt stacking, which lessens the time savings from using AI.

It reminds me of a question I asked Siri recently, “Can you eat the rind of brie cheese?” to which it responded, “I cannot.” When I worded the question better, I discovered the real answer to my question – yes, the rind is edible.

STEP #4: Edit the rough draft

To edit the rough draft, I used Wordtune, an AI writing tool that offers AI-powered writing suggestions.

The tool did some copy editing, although ChatGPT was pretty good there. I’ve heard this function of Wordtune derided because Microsoft Word has similar features. But as I’m sitting here typing, Word is suggesting to me that I change ChatGPT to Catgut…even though Microsoft has invested $1 billion in OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT. So my hope is that Wordtune – an online, AI-driven service – has more updated copy editing than Word.

Wordtune offered rewrite suggestions. ChatGPT often wrote in passive voice, and Wordtune changed it to active voice.

It also offered some good wording suggestions. Although sometimes, in fairness, ChatGPT had a little more personality, which surprised me. For example, when writing about the conversation in part 2, ChatGPT described the chat as having a “frantic” pace while Wordtune suggest “fast-paced.” Fast-paced is more professional and business like, so would probably have been the better word to use. And it was probably a more accurate word. But I enjoyed the humanity (can I say that about AI writing?) of “frantic,” so I kept that in.

The thing I really liked about Wordtune, though, was the Spices feature. It’s meant to “spice up your writing” based on some input you give it. It can explain, add emphasis, give a counterexample, and on and on.

This is where the two AI brains came in. There was ChatGPT’s description, and then Wordtune adding to it. Kind of like sports announcers – play-by-play and color commentary.

Incidentally, since the second half was just a bulleted run down of what individual participants did, it would not have made sense to use the Spices feature in that area.

STEP #5: Fact check and use discretion

My intention was not to put my fingers to keyboard and write anything at all in these summaries. Just orchestrate the two AIs off of each other and choose what worked best.

However, there were a few fact errors. So I manually corrected those. In fairness, any writer who had not attended the LiveClass could have made similar errors if they were not given the video recording and only had the chat log to work with.

I also anonymized the participants’ names (since I didn’t have their permission to use them in this experiment) and the links to their landing pages (since they were all rough drafts that attendees were getting conversion optimization ideas for during the LiveClass).

STEP #6: Determine the byline

As you can see, my byline is on this blog post. I felt comfortable doing that because I transparently told you about the process of using AI. Had I not, and just tried to pass this off as any other blog post I had written, I would not have felt comfortable putting my name on this as the writer.

Content marketing is so effective because it builds trust. So in my opinion, if artificial intelligence creates your content, you should tell your audience.

So was it worth using artificial intelligence to write a blog post? Or should I have just written it myself?

I’m not sure I saved much, if any time, using AI to write the summary in this blog post, and I’m not even counting this lengthy process description I wrote.

First, I’m probably faster than the average writer because of my lengthy experience in this industry. So if you are a slower writer, you might save more time than I did.

Frankly, it took some time playing with the two AI tools and getting it just right.

Of course, this was my first time doing it. If I did this regularly, I would probably get much quicker and more efficient with the process, or even find a better process. And in fairness, I could have used a simpler process, and just taken what ChatGPT gave me directly, not using Wordtune at all.

I also want to point out – artificial intelligence takes some time because it requires human oversight. I worry we can be lulled into a false sense of confidence in what may be an advanced parlor trick. Yes, isn’t it amazing what these machines can do with their intelligence? But I fear they are a bit like Toonces the Driving Cat.

If you’re unfamiliar with the old Saturday Night Live sketch, the people are so impressed the cat is driving them in a car. Isn’t it amazing what the cat can do? Until…

…the cat drives them off a cliff. At which point you get the punch line “Toonces can drive a car, just not very well.”

For marketing leaders, the other question is – would using AI in this situation hurt your ability to grow your team? As I mentioned, this kind of assignment can be great for a junior writer, to build their writing chops and domain acumen in your industry. So will this steal from your bench strength?

No easy answers, at least to me. But when I asked ChatGPT, it had the answer. It told me…

Incorporating AI technology into certain marketing tasks can actually enhance the growth of your team, rather than hurt it. By automating some of the more repetitive and time-consuming tasks, your team can focus on higher-level work that requires a more strategic and creative approach. This means that your team can be more productive, efficient, and effective in their work.

Additionally, AI can serve as a valuable tool for learning and skill-building. For example, an AI-powered writing assistant can provide real-time feedback on grammar, tone, and style, allowing junior writers to learn and improve their writing skills more quickly. This can accelerate their development and help them become more effective writers in a shorter period of time.

Finally, it’s important to note that while AI can automate some tasks, it can never replace the creativity, strategic thinking, and human touch that marketing professionals bring to the table. Therefore, rather than taking away from your bench strength, AI can actually enhance it by freeing up your team’s time and resources to focus on more impactful work.

Related Resources

Sales Funnel and ChatGPT: 6 ways to leverage AI now to develop a powerful value proposition

Artificial Intelligence Case Studies: Two companies that boosted brand awareness with AI and another marketer that used humans instead

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Marketing: What marketers (even those who don’t care about tech) should know about AI and ML

AI Marketing Tools: How marketers are using artificial intelligence to help their campaigns right now

I recently received an email from a MarketingSherpa reader asking how he could point people to the Landing Page Handbook. He ended the email by saying …

“I still think the Landing Page Handbook is the best resource on the topic that has ever been produced.”

— Ken Molay, President, Webinar Success

And the data shows it. The MarketingSherpa Landing Page Handbook is one of the most popular resources we have offered in 20 years of publishing. So we dug into our archives, and are now offering this handbook free to you, the MarketingSherpa reader.

Since it’s publication over a decade ago, the Landing Page Handbook has been a frequently cited resource throughout the years. Some examples:

• Do You Really Need to Incorporate “Landing Pages” Into Your Website? (2018)
• Landing Page Marketing is The Heart Of Lead Generation (2017)
• Email Marketing: Don’t forget your landing page (2016)
• Low Conversion Rate? Here Are 10 Landing Page Tricks (2015)
• Convince & Convert: 5 Essential Elements of a Landing Page Optimization (2014)
• How to Optimize Landing Pages for Conversions (2013)
• Why Landing Pages Are an Indispensable Part of Marketing (2012)

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE LANDING PAGE HANDBOOK

And of course, generated plenty of discussions when its second edition was released in 2007:

• Fix Your Landing Pages
• Landing Page Handbook: How to Raise Conversions by 40%
• Is MarketingSherpa’s New Landing Page Handbook Worth the Price?
• Review: MarketingSherpas’ 2008 Landing Page Handbook

When it was first released, it elicited these testimonials:

“This book is astonishing and you should read it. It’s astonishing because it will tell you very obvious things that you don’t know, didn’t realize and weren’t taking action on. As the person who invented the term Landing Page in 1995 (right after Al Gore invented the internet) I can tell you that we’ve waited a long, long time for this sort of common sense, hands on, verified info. The bad news is that you are now out of excuses.”

— Seth Godin, Author, www.SethGodin.com

 

“I wanted to drop you a note telling you how incredible your Landing Page Handbook is. The handbook is clear about what works and what doesn’t work with loads of data to support its claims. I am in the process of implementing changes and fully expect massive improvements to my metrics. Once again, you have shown why MarketingSherpa is the only source we need to improve our Web presence.”

— Brett Hayes, RentQuick.com

 

“I want to thank you for putting out the landing page handbook. I found that document instrumental in getting one of our clients a 400% lift in conversion response.”

— Elliott Easterling, VP Sales and Marketing, Co-Founder, Red Bricks Media, www.redbricksmedia.com

 

“My honest advice? Buy this report, copy what others have done to increase their landing page conversion rates, and make more money. It’s as simple as that.”

— Nick Usborne, Publisher, www.excessvoice.com

 

“I bought the Landing Page Handbook. I was in two minds about buying it for ages. I am a one-man band so $250 is a lot when your sales are so low. Within the first 50 pages I was 10 for 10 on the common mistakes made on landing pages. I started applying the book’s recommendation to my site. I have gone from +-1 sale a week up to 3 a day and climbing consistently for the past 3 weeks. All the ‘Experts’ told me to up my spend on Adwords to up sales and I did. I now realize I was just wasting my money till I read this book and made the changes. Great book, worth every cent.”

— Peter Mercer, Director, Network & Perimeter Security Services

Read more…

Education is the ability to use other people’s experiences (mistakes) to avoid making your own mistakes.

In that spirit, we prep you for avoiding some serious potholes on your journey while taking on that biggest of digital marketing projects — a website redesign. You can listen to this episode in whichever way is most convenient for you — or click the orange “Subscribe” button to get every episode. And scroll down to read more about website redesigns.

This article was originally published in the MarketingSherpa email newsletter.

More About Episode #5 — Website redesign

“The point is: You get to capitalize on a fellow human being’s misfortune. That’s the basis of real estate.”

The above quote is from “The Money Pit,” the 1986 comedic movie where Tom Hanks and Shelley Long attempt to renovate a recently purchased home to comedic effect. Or tragic effect, depending on your point of view. After all, as Mark Twain said, “Humor is tragedy plus time.”

If you’ve ever been in charge of a web redesign project, you might think that “The Money Pit” was just a prescient allegory for a web redesign project.

After all, your company’s website is its most prime real estate. And if your site is old or large, once you start diving into a redesign project you never know quite what surprises you will unearth.

To help you avoid pitfalls with your own web redesign (both tragic and comic), Austin McCraw and I delved into 10 considerations you should keep in mind for your web redesign projects (while providing a few light house-remodeling tips as well).

We’re giving you this advice from the marketer’s point of view — not the (website or real estate) developers’ point of view. So before you create a web redesign project plan, watch out for these things (time stamps included if you would like to jump around):

Read more…

Marketing has a language all its own. This is our latest in a series of posts aimed at helping new marketers learn that language. What term do you find yourself explaining most often to new hires during onboarding? Let us know.

Most purchases are not an instant decision on the part of the customer. There are several mental steps people must take before making the actual purchase decision.

For a more complex purchase, these steps usually involve learning more about the industry, product and company, until they get to the point of making a purchase. For a simpler purchase, the steps may simply be getting through the product’s purchase path.

And each step on that journey is a decision.

For example, a complex purchase funnel might include steps like this: searching a pain point in a search engine, getting to a content piece on a website, clicking to a landing page for a white paper download, receiving several pieces of email in a lead nurturing campaign, deciding to speak to a sales rep to learn more about the product, going through several stages of a sales process with a sales rep, and then ultimately making a purchase. This may happen over several months.

A simpler purchase might look like this: clicking on a paid search ad, arriving on a landing page, moving to a product page, going to a shopping cart, entering payment info, confirming a purchase. This might happen in a matter of minutes.

Funneling customers to an ultimate conversion objective

A funnel is so named because marketing literature typically depicts this journey in the shape of a funnel.

This is an example of a kitchen funnel.

And this is an example of a marketing funnel.

(from the case study B2B Marketing: Demand generation transformation doubles conversion rate for cyber security provider)

The general idea for the funnel shape is that there are more people at the beginning of the funnel then at the end. For example, more people will visit a landing page from an ad than will purchase your product.

The other idea for the funnel shape is that, much like a funnel channels liquid into a small opening, marketers should channel their potential customers from their first touchpoint to an ultimate conversion.

However, with a physical funnel, liquid naturally flows down into the container pulled by gravity. MECLABS Institute (parent research organization of MarketingSherpa) teaches that this is a flaw in the traditional marketing analogy. Customers don’t simply fall through your funnel naturally pulled by gravity.

Read more…

Marketing has a language all its own. This is our latest in a series of posts aimed at helping new marketers learn that language. What term do you find yourself explaining most often to new hires during onboarding? Let us know.

Simply put, website usability is how easy, clear and intuitive it is for visitors to use your website. This is from the visitor’s perspective, not your company’s perspective.

Of course, website usability isn’t so simple at all. You essentially have to read someone else’s mind, so the expected user experience matches the web experience you design. However, as 18th-century poet Robert Burns wrote, “The best-laid plans of mice and men / Go oft awry.”

As I said, you’re trying to read someone else’s mind (many people, in fact). So the challenges of web usability aren’t necessarily unique to the web. These challenges are the very fundamentals of human behavior and interaction. Here’s a very visual example that UXer Oliver McGough shared on Twitter …

There are many terms related to website usability that you might have heard:

• User experience — how people experience your website. This may be very different than you intended because you may not be able to take an outside perspective of your website and assume visitors will understand something that they don’t, or understand differently, from you (more on this in a bit).
• User experience design (or UX) — the practice of creating websites, computer programs, apps, etc. with the user in mind. UX can also be used as shorthand for website usability. (e.g., “That site has good UX.”)
• User interface (UI) — where man meets machine. For example, an operating system has a graphical user interface. UI continues to evolve and isn’t always visual. Thanks to virtual assistants like Alexa, the human voice now interacts with a UI as well.
• Usability — in general. This is, after all, broader than just websites. Any digital offering has (or lacks) usability, from a website to a computer game. But physical objects have usability considerations as well. For example, OXO is a company that is well known for kitchen utensils and housewares usability. When I first learned about usability, the instructor used a car brake pedal as an example. I had never noticed before, but it is a lot wider than the gas pedal for a reason. If you’re accidentally going to stomp on one of them, it’s better to be the stop than the accelerate!
• User testing — Get your visitors’ opinions about what works well on the site and what doesn’t, what processes and mechanisms are intuitive and which are confusing
• A/B testing — Measuring your visitors’ behavior to see how well they are able to actually use the site, and if the actual user experience matches the intended website design

Read more…

Marketing has a language all its own. This is our latest in a series of posts aimed at helping new marketers learn that language. What term do you find yourself explaining most often to new hires during onboarding? Let us know.

Above the fold refers to the part of an email message or webpage that is visible without scrolling. It refers to a printing term for the top half of a newspaper which is, literally, above the place in the newspaper where it is folded in half.

Unlike a newspaper, however, email and webpage fold locations aren’t predictable. The fold may be affected by the user’s preview pane, monitor size, monitor resolution, device type (i.e., mobile vs. desktop) and any headers placed by email programs such as Gmail or Yahoo!

Material in the above-the-fold area is considered more valuable because the reader sees it first. According to the Wikipedia entry for Above the fold, “Most web design advice available today encourages designers to place important information at the top of the website, but also to prioritize usability and design.”

Read more…