Content distribution channels should live outside of IT

Rob Gardner wrote a great post last week about launching a wide content publishing strategy.  He says, “with the ascension of meaningful social content dissemination across networks… it is now more important than ever for marketers…to strategically refocus their attitudes and philosophies toward content in a big way.”

You can read the great plan of action Rob details out here, so I won’t rehash it in detail. Instead I’d like to add on to it. Rob says,

Plan to develop containers for the asset types that will be promoted (HTML, fees, Web site architecture, etc.). Of course, once the content types are determined, you will need a place to put them. So if you need RSS Feeds, social accounts, video site maps and pages for video display, image galleries, etc. then get with your IT department and start planning for the day that your content is ready to roll out.

When you sit down to determine the content you will create and the containers that will host it, be sure to think in terms of conversion.

Rob hits the nail on the head when he says we MUST determine primary and secondary metrics in the planning process – and these metrics should be bound to our conversion goals. I mean, what’s the point in measuring anything in business if it doesn’t show you how to be more successful? And because data will be reported to you in real time, your containers should live outside of IT control where possible. You’ll be in a better position to increase your conversion rate if you’re able to monitor and make real time changes. 

In fact, empowering yourself to make these immediate changes can be the difference between a ho-hum kind of day and a $45,000 in incremental revenue kind of day, as was the case for American Greetings. 

There is no doubt that having the IT team on your side is important - they can work magic and make dreams come true. However, inundating IT with requests for “small” changes (headline changes, keyword substitution, etc.) will be the last thing on their list to get done. Instead, empower yourself to make these changes with the right tools.

Meaningful social content distribution is huge right now and it will continue to be so. Make sure you don’t eliminate yourself from the game by depending on IT to do everything for you. 

Are you still analyzing old-school metrics?

Conversion optimization appears to be going the way of dentistry. You brush your teeth, and you count your clicks. 

You have 5 or 10 key metrics you track regularly—mostly around how much traffic you are getting and where it is coming from. You know you’re not getting an in-depth analysis, but you feel like you’re at least doing an effective job of keeping tabs. You may not have the shiniest, pearly whites or the highest converting landing pages, but you’re doing fine. Plain ol’ fine.

In a recent report put out by eMarketer, they write, “Despite widespread recognition that the click-through does not measure the full effect of an online ad - even ones placed with direct response objectives - and calls for better branding metrics, many marketers still rely on the easy-to-track click as their top performance metric.”

The data says…

• A March 2010 Chief Marketer survey showed that 60% of US marketers report measuring performance in click-throughs
   
• A February 2010 Collective survey showed that 64% if advertisers measure performance in click-throughs 
   
• A December 2009 Datran Media survey found that 90% of marketers surveyed thought measuring conversions was “very important,” but 72% were still only tracking click-throughs

“Chief Marketer suggested respondents were sticking with ‘old-school metrics,’ while paying lip service to the importance of ROI.” 

Yes, it certainly seems that way. But why?

“Marketer’s familiarity with clicks is only one factor that contributes to its continued usage as the top metric,” says David Hallerman, senior marketer at eMarketer. “Clicks are easy to count, too, and therefore an inexpensive metric to gather,”

Sometimes the easy thing to do, is not the right thing to do. That’s not to say conversion optimization can’t be easy  (we, and our customers, think LiveBall makes conversion optimization easy).

If you’re not yet digging into conversion rate optimization, why not?  If you just jumped in, we’d love to hear what prompted the move. Share with us on Twitter (@ioninteractive) or in the comments.

State of the Landing Page Union

At the beginning of every year the president of the United States broadcasts the current state of the union and where we need to be heading. Yes, I am a little late with my timing, but this same concept is useful for looking back on the landing page best practices of the previous year, and determine how we should be moving forward to further optimize our landing page design.  

Let’s take a look at what worked great last year, and what we need to think about going forward in 2010. From my vantage point, I see these as mandatory if you want to work on increasing your conversions…how do you measure up?

1. Message match - You must match your ad copy to your landing page message. This was important last year, is important this year, and will be important in years to come. 
2. Real time testing - Testing is no longer optional. Real-time, continuous testing should be standard operating procedure.  With real time testing you will be in a better position to maintain or lower your media costs while growing your conversion rate.
3. Marketer-managed pages - now is the time for landing page management to come out of IT and into the hands of marketers. A marketer should be able to go from landing page concept to landing page concept without any hurdles, see real-time results and make adjustments on the fly in order to positively impact the outcome of the campaign. Speed and agility are key here.
4. Real time metrics - there is no reason to not know your conversion rates, lead scores, engagement rates, and so forth. Put your finger on the pulse!

These four are no longer ‘optional’ or ‘nice to have’—they should be Standard Operating Procedure. Once these are in place you can focus on kicking your results up a notch by thinking big for 2010. And now I think 2010 is officially 2 months underway, so if you haven’t already started…what are you waiting for?

The Ultimate User-Centered Experience

There is no web experience more user centered than one that gives them what they ask for.

Landing experiences are unique in web usability in that they are intent-, rather than choice-focused. When user intent is known (or can be known in relatively short order with directed segmentation) the experience can cater to that intent. The way it does that is by limiting distractions with steely focus.

We developed supposedly user-centered enterprise websites for over a decade. Now, after testing and analyzing thousands of landing experiences, I can say that I believe there is nothing “user-centered” about any website. In 2009 the definition of user centered must evolve to consider the absurdities of information and content overload that proliferate even the most well-intentioned website.

There is nothing more important than the first impressions your brand makes in response to explicit user requests. Your PPC, advertising and email-driven clicks are full of intent that must be satisfied by landing experiences that simply give them what they want.

You want to conduct usability testing on your landing experiences? Look no further than engagement, segmentation and conversion percentages. Those are the most valid and credible usability metrics you’ll ever read.

If you’re focused on usability, then you’ve got to be focused on post-click marketing. There’s nothing more user-centered than giving them what they ask for.

3 landing page management metrics

You know the metrics for landing page performance — primarily conversion rate, but also ROI and ROAS. But how do you measure the performance of your organization when it comes to producing landing pages and post-click marketing experiences?

Here are 3 landing page management metrics by which to benchmark your organization:

Landing Pages: Days-to-Launch (LP-DTL). The number of calendar days it takes your organization to launch a new landing page or conversion path, from concept to completion. When the idea to do a specific landing page first arises, that’s when you start the clock; all the design, development, testing, approval, etc. is what happens in the middle; when the page is deployed to start receiving traffic, that’s when you stop the clock. You can average this across certain campaigns and segments or across your organization as a whole.

Landing Pages: Pages-per-Quarter (LP-PPQ). The total number of new landing pages launched in a quarter. This includes both completely new pages, as well as variations to existing pages to incrementally test improvements; if you’re not doing enough innovative or incremental launches, it can help to track each of those categories separately as well.

Landing Pages: Days-Since-Launch (LP-DSL). The number of calendar days since you last launched a landing page, again either completely new or as an iterative test. So if that last landing page you launched was 4 weeks ago, your LP-DSL is ~28.

These first two metrics, LP-DTL and LP-PPQ, can be analyzed over time, quarter by quarter, to see how your company is improving against its own track record. The last metric, LP-DSL, is more of a current dashboard metric, intended to keep people focused on the mission of continuous improvement and renewal of post-click marketing — keep it fresh and relevant to your organization, your advertising, and your overall market.

Improving these metrics — or more accurately, the capabilities in your organization which are measured by these metrics — is one of the best ways for you to systematically improve the performance of individual pages. Conversion rates are a derivative of an organization’s post-click marketing capabilities.