Playing the market

It has been a crazy busy couple of months in the Warren Huska Associates shop - new partnerships, new clients, and a great dose of challenges.

I had started a blog under separate cover about the glories of Keynote - the relatively new Apple software, now in Version 2, that really takes a run at PowerPoint for the presentation software crown. It does an exceedingly good job at dethroning Microsoft Office for a variety of uses. When you have data, and want to demonstrate insight, nothing helps like good, solid visuals.

Keynote typifies what I like about the Mac platform (I work in both Windows and Mac) - fewer clicks, and features that have you slap your forehead and say, "Well that's just genius - and so obvious a feature to have!"

Twitter has become part of our toolbox - it can and often is a surprise how connected people are on this network. It may not be highly adopted (perhaps 5% of online users), but it certainly comprises an audience of early movers and opinion-shapers.

A not entirely unrelated story about an e-Bay auction: Twitter was one of the channels I used to publicize an auction for an old crew jacket I had in the closet - the 1990's CGI animated series 'ReBoot'. Expecting about $60, I pulled up the finished auction and hit the 'refresh' button on my browser - that couldn't be right - $700 U.S.!

Experiments like these give us a whole new appreciation for - experiments! We've determined the clickthroughs and sources for this 'campaign' and are darned sure to be testing similar tactics for our customers!

Landing pages: people aren't stupid.

I'm reviewing the results from a recent Marketing Experiments on-line 'diagnostic clinic' of some submitted test websites. They talk about a formula that encompasses visitor 'friction', 'anxiety', propositions ... all well and good.

What really stands out is the potential upside of paying attention to where you have people land on your website. And what they see when they arrive - 'Landing pages'

So there's the diligent research into keywords, phrases, categories and segments (right?), then the up-front come-on of the PPC ads, tailored to those categories ..... then .... pphhhht (that's the sound of those deflated expectations).

People aren't stupid. They expect the promise (ad) to deliver - with content that is not only relevant, but engaging to *them*. Not configuring landing pages to dovetail with the finely tuned visitor categories ... well, that's just silly. And wasteful of marketing dollars.

So really, how do you implement a landing page strategy?
What if you are using a CMS? Problem?
Who can best create / publish / test / the pages so they can be weeded out, just like an Adwords ad?

Stay tuned. We have some on-the-ground experience to pass on...

Case Study: Analysis

Use of Analytics to drive conversions

Promotional products company

Conversion is that slippery state where the visitor makes the ‘buy’ or ‘action’ decision – which we were able to progressively refine for a client in a very highly competitive field.

Tuning the filters, campaigns and website itself yielded a continual improvement of results, where to best target their resources, and informed the client further about their most distinct offerings, as seem by the marketplace.

The Drill-Down #3: What? / Why? (Conversions)

3) Conversion Analysis:

That was fun – um, did we make any money?

And this is the big secret. With traffic, with analysis, - it is all assumptions until you can measure against your business goals. Are you getting referrals, leads? Do these convert to sales? Or just increase your costs?
Only then can you work back to determine what sources of traffic are worth paying for: most relevant, most cost-effective, and able to generate continued growth.

Hold your online results to business standards.