MarketingSherpa Blog

You’ll get no arguments from me that starting a new blog can be difficult.

There are plenty of great content marketing resources from MarketingSherpa and elsewhere to help you do that.

But, what happens when your company decides to undergo a change in content?

Navigating the waters of a new format on a well-established blog is a different kind of monster than starting from scratch.

Make sure everyone understands the big picture

If you haven’t noticed, there are a lot of new faces on the MarketingSherpa blog.

Also, if you read the blogs of our sister brands MarketingExperiments and B2B Lead Roundtable, you will also find a lot of new contributors there as well.

When I asked Brandon Stamschror, Senior Director of Content Operations, MECLABS, about some of the elements driving the change in content, Brandon explained the new approach was a unique opportunity to return blogging to its roots.

“For us, it felt like it was time for our blogging voice to come full circle,” Brandon explained. “Blogging originated as the ultimate personal journal. It was a platform for practitioners who were passionate about their message being heard, but over time, that approach has evolved into a more sophisticated medium that has as much in common with a trade journal as it does with a personal journal.“

Another reason Brandon mentioned for the change was based on the idea that members of the MECLABS research team have a wide range of insights and practical advice to offer our audience.

“We realized that we are in a place to leverage the strengths of both approaches. Real world practitioner discoveries and observations supported by a consistent editorial standard,” Brandon said.

Instead of letting all of that content simply vanish, the era of the MECLABS practitioner blogger had arrived.

Consequently, this also meant the MECLABS research team would be taking on a new writing initiative, so the first real challenge was one of communication throughout the organization.

So, the first tip here is simple – communicate, communicate and communicate.

Make sure everyone in the organization understands the reasons for change and what their role in those changes will be, as your team can’t help build something they don’t fully understand.

Anticipate problems and start looking for solutions

This is my faith in Murphy’s Law – if anything can go wrong, it will – so the trick is to anticipate problems and find solutions to avoid headaches later.

For instance, while having a sizeable pool of new content creators was a great asset, there was one catch …

Most of our practitioners’ writing skills were based on formal training in academic writing.

Few had prior blogging experience, while only one to my knowledge had any experience in journalism or exposure to the editorial process.

Based on our assessment, here were some of the problems we anticipated:

• Limited blogging experience – How do we help analysts to start writing blog posts?

• Formal training in academic writing – How can the content team help practitioners develop blog writing skills?

• Few have exposure to editorial process – How do we build a new editorial process that allows for more revision and editing time? How can we educate our internal thought leaders on the editorial process?

After a few rounds of discussion, our team decided a blog post template provided a simple solution to solve the problem of helping analysts get started writing blog posts.

The feedback we received from our in-house writers so far is the blog post template has been helpful in providing some rudimentary direction and structure to get started.

In short, the more problems like these that you can anticipate and find solutions for beforehand, the less painful your transition will hopefully be.

  Read more…

“If you don’t eat yer meat, you can’t have any pudding.”

• Pink Floyd, “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)”

The song was an outlet for bassist Roger Waters to express his dislike for the forceful approach to learning that was popular in the British education system during his youth. This serves as a great analogy for why forcing your customers to register for accounts is not always a good idea.

In today’s MarketingSherpa Blog post, I want to demand that you allow your consumers to have their pudding, even if they don’t eat their meat.

But in some cases, I know that “required” just can’t be avoided, so I’ll also share two methods you can try when your company just won’t budge on “leaving the kids alone,” as the song goes.

Make buying easier for users with low motivation

Unless your brand has the near cult-like following of Apple or Coca-Cola, then it’s likely your website will play host to visitors with low motivation.

Now, what will chase away users – and metaphorical British schoolchildren – with low motivation faster than a 12-inch ruler?

Having to submit their information to yet another website!

If a new visitor – most likely an important demographic to your business’ revenue – is forced to commit to an account before they make a purchase on your site, then you could lose this new customer.

Avoid cart abandonment by keeping new users moving through your checkout

Another reason to avoid a required registration is the dreaded cart abandonment.

Combine a visitor with low motivation and subject them to a rather lengthy checkout process, and you are just adding another brick in the wall.

But sometimes, registered accounts simply can’t be avoided for whatever reason …

What do you do then?

Well, it’s all in how you approach a customer with your demands for their data. While I discourage required accounts, consider these two account registration methods from our research that you can test to hopefully increase your sales and minimize cart abandonment:

Method #1. Front-end option

Provide an optional account registration option at the beginning of the checkout process for users with high motivation or brand loyalty.

However, you may need to provide some incentives to convince that user the registration option is in their best interest.

Method #2. Back-end option

Most businesses still need to ask customers to fill out billing and shipping information during the checkout process.

Why not offer customers an opt-in to a registration after their information has been submitted?

This only requires one action from the visitor (a “yes” or “no” answer) and can be placed before or after the completion of the order.

You may also need some additional value copy to convince users that a registration option is in their best interest, but the beauty here is that you’re not making them jump through the same hoop twice.

No matter which option your pick, the goal here is testing your sales funnel to discover the most strategic place for a required account registration if you can’t avoid it.

  Read more…

Originally published on B2B LeadBlog

We all are hearing time spent with mobile devices will surpass time spent with desktops.

Well, it is already happening in the B2C world, according to a recent study from Millennial Media and comScore. It won’t be too long before it starts happening in the B2B world.

According to the MarketingSherpa 2012 Mobile Marketing Benchmark Report (free excerpt at that link), when asked, “Which mobile marketing tactic does your company use?” 64% of B2B companies listed mobile websites as their number one mobile marketing strategy in use.

Moreover, when asked, “How important is mobile to your organizations growth in the next three years?” 52% of marketers considered mobile marketing very important to influence their company growth in the next three years.

Knowing this, I thought it would be interesting to see how some top B2B companies are using mobile sites to influence business.

So, I went to the Fortune 500 list and randomly picked 12 B2B companies I was familiar with (no science behind the selection method) and found only four out of 12 have a mobile site.

To be honest, I was surprised to see so many companies without a mobile site. But at the same time, I felt relieved to see interesting strategies from those that had mobile sites. Now, let’s take a deeper look at the mobile offerings.

Caterpillar: Not a desktop replica

Caterpillar offers a versatile mobile site that allows visitors to not only to check products’ specifications, but also find dealers, rental locations and start the quote process, if they so desire.

The value of Caterpillar’s mobile site is that it’s not a replica of the desktop version. Instead, it is designed to meet “on-the-go” needs.

The categories tab helps users find machinery and tools needed in the field by providing navigation that is simple and direct.

One nice feature here is the “save preferred dealers” option that lets users keep them on hand for quick access.

As one would expect, Caterpillar’s customers or prospects may run into unexpected situations on a field where the only available device is either a cell phone or a tablet. Therefore, a mobile site makes a huge difference and can win someone’s business in the field.

The site has still opportunities to improve since not all of the sections are optimized to the mobile experience. But overall, it offers a great experience and satisfies diverse needs.

Cisco Systems: Customized mobile experience

Cisco’s main website uses responsive design, so it adapts well to different screen sizes, providing a seamless experience among devices.

But, that is not the nicest part of its online presence.

Cisco is putting thought into customizing the mobile experience. The site not only adapts to different screens, but it also prioritizes content to each form factor.

The section “Tomorrow Starts Here” takes first place in the mobile version while it is not even noticeable in the desktop version.

“Tomorrow starts here” reviews trendy topics in different and engaging formats like videos, infographics and articles.

This is a good example of providing content that fits well with on-the-go needs. Plus, through mobile-friendly content, Cisco can accomplish two important things:

• Users spend more time on the site
• Cisco’s brand remains top-of-mind

The only downside I found was the main rotational banner and some site sections redirect visitors to pages not optimized for mobile, which in turn, abruptly disrupts the user experience.

Grainger: Mobile site for prospects, App for customers

Grainger’s mobile store has the standard features one would expect from a B2B e-commerce site.

Users can search products, browse product categories, and make purchases.

The site layout is a simple and clean design that allows users to quickly find what they need. For example, two popular mobile activities like “Finding a Branch” and “Call Us” are just one click away.

Grainger is a good example of why it may be advantageous to have a mobile app in addition to a mobile site.

When you take a closer look at the app, you can hint that the app was mainly designed for existing customers. The elements and user options are more tailored for customers that have purchased from Grainger before or are frequent buyers.

The homepage presents “Products You Might Like” instead of “Browse Products.”

Instead of product categories, the app menu options are: Browse, Find a Branch, Quick Item Entry and Info.

Notice the quick order form option. This option is genius in that it really simplifies purchasers’ lives by letting them place a quick order on-the-go.

Even though apps require additional development and maintenance, they bring two important and unique benefits:

• Push notifications
• Physical presence on a customer’s phone screen

Both are very powerful tools to stay top-of-mind with your customers. But with that said, it is very important for the app to have a unique purpose. If not, there is no reason for someone to download or use it.

Avaya: Thoughtful mobile experience

Avaya offers a very functional and engaging mobile site.

Four aspects stood out for me:

1. Designed with mobile user in mind

The mobile site is another good example of adjusting content to mobile needs.

Although the mobile site has similar categories as the desktop version, the mobile categories are prioritized differently.

For example, “How to buy,” is option two in desktop menu, while it is the last option in the mobile version.

Avaya recognizes visitors are using the mobile platform differently and likely more for research purposes than for actual transactions.

2. Allows continued reading on desktop

Many sections of its main site are not optimized for mobile yet. But instead of letting users either become frustrated by doing a lot of zooming in and out or leaving the site altogether, Avaya uses an interim page to inform visitors the content they are about to see is not on the mobile site, but in the desktop version.

I liked that it gave users the option to continue, go back or “email me a link.” The email a link option allows users to continue reading where they left off once they return to a desktop.

3. Provides a variety of content

Besides its products and solutions, the mobile site brings the “Avaya Magazine” front and center.

The magazine offers users content to find inspiration and information to help them stay on top of technology trends. Topics are presented in a variety of formats including articles, videos and charts.

4. Option to stay connected

Social icons are not in the way of the mobile experience, but are clearly visible in the footer.

This allows users to follow them at any point during their visit. This is important considering recent research reveals 31% of a U.S. smartphone user’s total Web activity is spent engaging in social activity.

Overall, I hope this review provides you with some ideas for your mobile sites. Please feel free to comment or share any other mobile sites you recommend that are great examples of where marketers are getting it right in the mobile space.

Related Resources:

B2B Content Marketing: 5 questions every marketer should ask themselves when using native advertising

B2B Marketing: 3 reasons for adopting video content into your marketing mix

B2B Digital Marketing: How Volvo Construction drove site visits through its email campaigns

At some point in your marketing career, you’ve had a moment of artificial marketing brilliance.

It was a moment where you suspected your customers might respond better to a shorter form or a bigger and more colorful call-to-action button inviting them to a unique experience.

You might have even had the sneaking suspicion that changing some of the value copy on your homepage would boost sales of your product or service because no other competitor can boast figures close to your product’s success rate.

So, you make changes as your gut tells you, “Of course this will work.”

Afterwards, you kick back to watch the ROI roll in.

And then, it happens.

Your brilliant idea bombs in glorious fashion and you’re left scratching your head.

If your marketing is driven by intuition, at some point, you are going to fail and it’s one of the best things that can happen for your customers and your career. Read on to find out why.

Failure starts at relying on your gut

Many marketers use gut instinct in hopes of delivering optimal results, but when they fall short of expected results, those marketers never fully understand why.

But, if we use the hypothetical situation above, some clues emerge that can help us understand what leads to failure.

According to the MarketingSherpa 2012 Marketing Analytics Benchmark Report (free excerpt at that link), when marketers were asked …

Q: Instead of analytics data to make marketing decisions, we rely on the following:

Nearly half (42%) responded with gut instincts, followed by historical spending trends.

So, with almost half of marketers proclaiming instinct and prior spending as their decision engines, let’s fill in the blanks with a few primary sources of inspiration:

• Case studies performed by other companies
• Best practices picked up along the way
• Marketing research

Now, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with these resources because, let’s face it, it’s easier to borrow from a seemingly good idea than it is to create a new one from scratch.

The inherent problem is not where you get an idea. The problem is how you intend to use it.

This is the point at which many marketing campaigns were doomed to underperform because ideas untested are always at the mercy of uncertainty.

Life beyond using your gut

Your gut failed you … now what?

One of the best career moves you can make is to move away from gut instinct marketing and begin using an evidence-based approach that is methodical and systematic. Chances are, you’re going to have some questions after your first radical redesign where shorter landing pages resulted in a 10% decrease in clickthrough.

Did the larger hero image take away from the copy? Was the award for customer satisfaction from 2004 recent enough to provide credibility? What turned the audience away?

You’ll also have questions if your redesign brought you a 5% lift in clickthrough. You might even be pretty content and let things rest, even if you could do better.

Those strokes of “marketing brilliance” are coming from a different source – online testing results that can be used to build a customer knowledge base.

Did your customers like your new vivid red button? Did they respond well to reading you were the only company in your field to offer one-on-one tutorials with an expert?

If you changed the eye-path on the page, could you have achieved a 10% lift? 20%?

The inevitable question – Why?

You must realize that success and failure lead to an inevitable conclusion in marketing – you have to test to truly discover, “Why?”

You can try to isolate the factors that seemingly impacted your audience, or you can test them and measure their performance to know for sure.

Understanding the “why” of customer behavior is really the product of methodical trial and error through testing, discovering and optimizing what you think works …

And then, it’s time for more testing.

Both the small gains and big flops lead you to learning more about your customers, a path riddled with failure, success and discovery, that no gut instinct on the planet can come close to.

Read more…

I’m live blogging at MarketingSherpa Lead Gen Summit 2013 in San Francisco, and attending a brand-side case study with Jacob Baldwin, Search Engine Marketing Manager, One Call Now.

To begin a testing and optimization program, Jacob launched a test on the website with a radical redesign, attempting to improve lead capture. The program was executed sequentially as opposed to A/B split testing.

Jacob said each new homepage version replaced the previous – the marketing team created new treatments and “flipped the switch” to learn how the page would perform.

An important insight from this testing approach  is there isn’t necessarily a need for a complex A/B or multivariate testing program.

The testing program was run on the homepage, and there were several objectives:

• Increase conversion rate
• Increase traffic
• Reduce bounce rate
• Provide niched messaging via enhanced segmentation

Here is the test control and original website:

And, here is the radical redesign treatment:

There were several key differences with the treatment:

• Restructured navigation
• Consolidated calls-to-action (CTAs)
• Single value proposition – no competing headlines on the page
• Trust indicators
• Color palette
• New tag line
• New content

The original homepage, the control in this test, achieved 2.40% lead capture, and the radical redesign treatment pulled in 2.85% lead capture – an 18.75% lift over the control.

Jacob says the radical redesign was based on a revamped segmentation model.

“The new segmentation model drove the basic navigation structure and information architecture of the new homepage,” he explained.

This test with an early “win” was part of an ongoing optimization program. Not every test uncovered a lift, but every test did garner a discovery. The testing protocol involved taking the “winning” treatment and then refining the webpage layout, calls-to-action and length of the sign-up process for lead capture.

Through optimization, the sign-up process was shortened, and free trial sign-ups increased 55.3%, and the overall redesign of the entire website garnered a 89% lift in lead generation.

For the big takeaway, Jacob says, “Never stop improving. Complacency is lead capture optimization’s worst enemy and perfection is impossible. Complacency is conversion rate optimization’s worst enemy.”

  Read more…

Originally published on B2B LeadBlog

I’m at MarketingSherpa Lead Gen Summit 2013 in San Francisco on day one, live blogging the Lead Management Workshop that features a dive into larger topics including lead capture, lead qualification and lead nurture.

Flint McGlaughlin, Managing Director, MECLABS, presented the introduction to the workshop, and I’ve now had the opportunity to speak with Brandon Stamschror, Senior Director of Content Operations, MECLABS, and co-author of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale.

The main principles of the Lead Management Workshop were pulled from that book.

Brandon explains, “We updated the workshop material with a lot of the discoveries we’ve made over the past five or six years. It’s infused with MECLABS customer psychology process, so the workshop is really the best of both worlds – meaty lead generation strategy and tactics coming at it through the customer theory perspective that MECLABS has pioneered.”

Key principles of lead management

At the fundamental level, lead management is guided by four key principles:

1. Leads are people, not targets – Brandon says this goes back to the difference between company logic and customer logic. The focus should be on the customer.

2. People are not falling into the funnel, they are falling out – “It creates an intriguing, and I think important, model about how to rethink the traditional marketing funnel,” Brandon explains. “Everyone thinks with a funnel people are going in and narrowing down and that’s not really the case.” The inverted funnel shows the pipeline is more of a climb, with micro-conversions all throughout the process.

3. We are not optimizing webpages or call scripts, we are optimizing thought sequences – this means getting into the psychology of the customer and understanding those thought sequences to achieve the desired conversion – whether it’s a click, a filled-out form, or even a sale.

4. To optimize thought sequences, we must enter into a conversation and guide it toward a value exchange – Brandon says this means the perceived value of the marketing goal must be greater than the perceived cost. An example would be a Web form. The cost is giving up information, the value is what that person receives in return for providing that information.

The entire process of lead management is based on the concept of the inverted funnel, and the idea that the buyer’s pipeline requires a series of “micro-yes(s)” before getting to that “macro-yes” in the form of the final conversion-to-sale.

“There are all the little micro-yes(s) that you’re having,” Brandon explains. “A marketer may not be able to look at all the micro-yes(s) in their funnel on day one, but as they start to break down each one of those micro-yes(s) and start to look at what the perceived value and perceived cost is at each stage, that marketer is putting themselves in the mindset of the customer over the company.”

The ideal customer profile

In the lead qualification section of the workshop, understanding the ideal customer is a key concept.

Brandon says this is a place where marketers are not focused enough.

“You’re truly defining your ideal customer profile,” he says. “That ideal customer profile should be informed by your data. If you have contacts or companies on your list that don’t meet that ideal customer profile, then they shouldn’t be on your list. Or, you shouldn’t be marketing to them.”

To provide a set of guidelines for database form fields you might find valuable, here are two lists from the workshop.

Data to be collected

Basic:

1. Company Information: Industry type, annual revenue, number of employees, URL, general contact info, etc.
2. Champion Information: Number of contacts, roles and titles, level of authority/influence, contact information, etc.
3. Relationship History: Number of touch points, type of touch points, records of correspondence (what was said), etc.
4. Current Lead Status: Place in the funnel, lead scores, last actions, next steps, etc.

Advanced:

1. Engagement Metrics: Email opens, webpage visits, clickthrough, types of articles downloaded, etc.
2. Business Intelligence: Competitive data, industry trends, organizational changes, press releases, articles, quarterly reports, etc.
3. Life-Cycle KPIs: Average sales cycle, longest/shortest cycle, touch point clusters, lead source and touch point contribution reporting, etc.
4. Trend and ROI Reports: Lead flow, dials to disqualification, dials to leads, email success rates, revenue per customer, lead costs at various funnel stages, etc.
5. All Communication Records: Track, report and archive all email messages, calls and voicemails from contacts that can be associated with accounts or companies.

Keep in mind that these are all guidelines, and your business needs will determine the form fields that are most valuable to your marketing needs, but both the basic and advanced data field lists provide a starting point to begin creating your ideal customer profile.

Related Resources:

Infographic: Customer experience in the digital age

Customer-centric Marketing: Learning from customers helps increase lead quality 130%, Sales-accepted leads 40%

Customer-centric Marketing: 7 triggers to engage customers and build loyalty

Online Marketing: 4 sources of customer insight on your website

At Email Summit, marketers gather from around the world to hear success stories and case studies from fellow marketers and return to the office with fresh, new ideas. At Email Summit 2013, Rachel Hoppe, Marketing Manager, AvidXchange, shared how she did just that and presented the results from her takeaways from Email Summit 2012.

In this excerpt from her full presentation, “Email Measurement: How a former Email Summit attendee achieved a 270% increase in conversion,” Rachel discusses step six out of her seven-step plan for success she developed after she returned from Summit.

In this video, hear how Rachel and the team at AvidXchange performed tests on their websites using insights learned at Summit.

Learn why Rachel and her team choose to optimize content first, and how they continuously run A/B testing on AvidXchange’s websites.

“I would advocate to test everything. Test even the color of the button, or the format. I always tend to lead with content optimization first, making sure that I can get the eye-path down where it needs to be. Once I can get the content optimized, and then I can focus on graphics,” Rachel said.

This is just a brief look into how Rachel applied what she learned at Summit, and saw positive results. View the entire session  to see how her efforts translated to an increase of sales-qualified leads volume by 105%, and 68% of new revenue sourced through Marketing.

Read more…

Recently, I went to visit some friends in Rochester, N.Y.

While waiting for my flight out there, I started browsing Facebook on my phone. After perusing a few status updates and pet pictures, I landed on Ray-Ban’s Facebook page.

Amidst the questions and comments, I saw a really nice pair of Clubmasters I like. While waiting for the return flight, I decided to catch up on some tweets from people I follow.

Coincidentally, one person I follow tweeted about the same Clubmasters sunglasses I was looking at on Facebook a few days earlier and included a link.

So, I clicked on it and was redirected to Ray-Ban’s e-commerce site. I spent a few minutes customizing pairs of Clubmasters to find the perfect combination to suit my tastes. I was tempted to order them, but it was time to start boarding – maybe some other time.

A week later, I noticed a PPC ad in my browser for Ray-Ban. I clicked on the ad, visited its site again, and checked out a video on “Clubmasters Remastered.” I was about to order them for a second time when the phone rang.  A few friends wanted to meet up at the Lemon Bar, a favorite dive for Jacksonville Beach locals.

After a few margaritas, I got a wild hair and decided to finally purchase those Clubmasters. I got home and plopped down in front of my desktop computer, navigated to the e-commerce site I visited earlier, and bought those suckers!

So goes the saga of the multidigital channel user and multidevice user, for that matter. What a mess!

Is accurate attribution even possible?

We have entered an era that presents new challenges for marketers.

How do we accurately attribute credit for conversions with so many possibilities? When it comes to crediting digital channels, a number of attribution models exist that can provide clarity. However, when talking about social media, some models are better at accomplishing this than others.

For example, social media is generally not a last click before a conversion.

Therefore, basing a marketing budget solely upon this method would undervalue the contribution of social media to the conversion process. Google Digital Marketing Evangelist Avinash Kaushik wrote an excellent blog post on attribution modeling, addressing these issues. He opined the Time Decay Attribution Model does a fairly good job above and beyond the last click, and I would agree.

Time decay assigns more credit to media that is closer in time to a conversion, rather than giving full credit to the touch point closest to a conversion as last-click does.

In the Ray-Ban example, instead of Facebook receiving zero credit for my purchase, it would receive at least some credit even though it was my first touch point. This gives a much more realistic picture of how users are engaging versus a last-click model.  Of course, it is the lesser of evils, not immune to biases.

How should you attribute social media ROI?

Now that we have a pretty decent way of attributing credit to digital channels beyond last-click, the next challenge is finding a way to accurately quantify the monetary value of social media.

There are a number of businesses offering solutions on how to determine social media ROI. However, I am not aware of a totally foolproof method. It’s still like the wild west out there and one can become lost.

To provide some direction, I’ve reviewed white papers and other literature floating around in cyberspace, piecing together the most compelling elements into a set of steps to estimate social media ROI that goes a little further than the methods I’ve mentioned.

How does your social media stack up against paid channels? 

The idea of analyzing social media’s value here is by indirectly comparing similar paid channels to social media first. It’s like assessing what the cost of a social media page would be if it were equivalent to a banner ad, for example. We might multiply the number of Facebook page impressions by the typical CPM of our banner ad campaigns to calculate cost.

A white paper I found offers six ways to measure social media and is responsible for that particular example, which I illustrate in Table 1 below.

The article does a great job of laying out this concept for a number of social media platforms. Other sources have expressed similar approaches. I cheekily refer to the whole of them as “vicarious values.” It’s not quite catchy as an acronym, but it encapsulates the main idea well enough.

Step #1. Determine the vicarious value of your social media channels

Table 1. Calculating the vicarious value for Facebook 

It’s likely your business uses multiple social media sites, so you would need to account for the vicarious value of each social media platform to calculate total vicarious value.

For simplicity’s sake, let’s assume our only social media presence is on Facebook.

We can easily calculate social network revenue since Facebook’s vicarious value is the same as total vicarious value in this case.

Step #2. Determine how many time decay conversions are attributed to your social media channels

This is where time decay attribution comes in.

So, for our example, we used data were taken from the Google Analytics Model Comparison Tool found under the conversions navigation menu. Facebook is our only social media platform. We can go ahead and assume Social Network (Table 2, Row 5) means only Facebook.

Table 2. Facebook’s time decay conversions represented as Social Network

Under the Time Decay Conversions column, we see 3,029.57 conversions were attributable to Facebook.

Step #3. Calculate the revenue due to your social media channels

The conversions attributable to Facebook (Social Network) amounts to 2% of the total conversions as illustrated below.

Table 3. Channels as percent of total conversions 

Step #4. Subtract the vicarious value from the revenue attributed to your social network   

From here, you can calculate revenue due to Facebook by applying an average sale price for your goods or services to the number of conversions as seen in the formula provided in Table 4 below.

Now, do you remember that vicarious value we figured out in Step #1?

Here’s where it matters.

Table 4. Calculated estimate of ROI for Facebook 

By subtracting the vicarious value (labeled cost here) from the total revenue due to your social network, the remainder gives you the profit.

From there, we have all of the pieces to estimate the ROI.

Read more…

“We should always strive to better understand our customer, and in particular, to understand the essence of our value proposition,” Austin McCraw, Senior Editorial Analyst, MECLABS, explained at Email Summit 2013.

In this video excerpt, learn how email marketing is one of the most effective ways to quickly test your value proposition with your customers rather than relying on company logic to determine the best way to sell to them. Email marketing, he argued, cultivates testing.

Ease of change

Email marketing is easy to change. Unlike traditional marketing channels, with a couple of clicks, an entire message can be changed. A headline, copy, a postscript, everything in an email is easily adaptable, easily changed, easily tested. If you want to find out what motivates a customer, just see which email they open.

Large sample size

Additionally, email marketing can produce a large sample size if your list is big enough. This allows a marketer to test different value propositions across different segments to see what resonates and what flops. Austin reiterated numerous times, “the goal of a test is not simply to get a lift, but to get a learning,” which indicates some tests will be more successful than others, but it’s all in an effort to put a face on your customers.

Do you stand out in the inbox?

Email also cultivates a highly competitive environment, where every company a customer is subscribed to is also attempting to get the customer to open its email. However, if a typical customer is anything like you or me, getting 20 or more emails a day from different companies, they’re selective about which emails they open, let alone click through. Discovering what value motivates your customer to open the email, or respond to its call-to-action, is a breakthrough.

  Read more…

One of the biggest hurdles you face as marketer lies in the mind of your customers.

What do they think when they read your marketing messages? How does your copy make them feel? What impresses them? Are they sold on what you’re saying? Do they understand what you’re saying? Are you coming on too strong? Are they intrigued? Are they frustrated?

You need to uncover the attitude of your consumers and tweak your marketing efforts to appeal to that way of thinking.

Understanding a customer’s mindset

In the MECLABS Email Messaging Course, Flint McGlaughlin, Managing Director, MECLABS, dissects the attitude of prospective customers towards marketers. Below is a list of the “Prospect’s Protest,” which illustrates the mindset of your customers: what they want from you and, more importantly, what they don’t.

Brace yourself. These may be harsher than you’d expect:

• I am not a target. I am a person. Don’t market to me – communicate with me.
• Don’t wear out my name, and don’t call me “friend” until we know each other.
• When you say “sell,” I hear “hype.” Clarity trumps persuasion. Don’t sell – say.
• I don’t buy from companies, I buy from people. Here’s a clue: I dislike companies for the same reason I dislike people.
• Stop bragging. It’s disgusting.
• Why is your marketing voice different from your real voice? The people I trust don’t patronize me.
• In all cases, where the quality of the information is debatable, I will always resort to the quality of the source. My trust is not for sale. You need to earn it.
• Dazzle me gradually. Tell me what you can’t do, and I might believe you when you tell me what you can do.
• In case you still don’t get it, I don’t trust you. Your copy is arrogant, your motives seem selfish, and your claims sound inflated. If you want to change how I buy, first change how you market.

No sugarcoating there.

“Sorry if this is strong medicine, but you’ve got to understand this is the attitude that you’ve got to overcome with the way you write your copy,” Flint explained.

Adjusting your own marketing attitude

Now that you have a better glimpse into the attitude of your customers, you can adjust your own attitude and approach as a marketer to better suit your consumers and overcome their attitude.

In the course, Flint outlines the “MarketingExperiments Creed,” which is a response to the “Prospect’s Protest.” It’s a way of thinking on the marketer’s side. It’s an attitude syncing to the consumer’s mindset.

Article 1: We believe that people buy from people, people don’t buy from companies, from stores or from websites. People buy from people. Marketing is not about programs. It is about relationships.

Article 2: We believe that brand is just reputation. Marketing is just conversation, and buying is an act of trust. Trust is earned with two elements:

1. Integrity
2. Effectiveness

Both demand that you put the interest of the customer first.

Article 3: We believe that testing trumps speculation and that clarity trumps persuasion. Marketers need to base their decisions on honest data, and customers need to base their decisions on honest claims.

Notice the consistencies between the Prospect’s Protest and the MarketingExperiments Creed. Clarity trumps persuasion. People buy from people. Trust.

“Though you may be a marketer every single day, you’re treated as a consumer, too,” Flint explained. “Because all of us are not just marketers, we’re consumers and we’re tired of it, also.”

As a marketer, you need to empathize with your consumers. After all, you can.

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