in 
landing pages, SEM
landing pages, SEM Wednesday
19Nov
Can your landing pages keep up with your search ads?
The search world moves fast. ;)
Any great search marketer who is focused on maximum ROI continuously monitors the performance of their search ads, and iterates and improves their search campaigns on a weekly (if not daily) basis. New ads, new messages, new strategies, new bids. The swift moving advertising environment can be updated with just the click of a mouse.
But what about landing pages? How can marketers’ landing pages keep up with the hyper-competitive and fast nature of search advertising? For many marketers, this is an impossible feat.
While marketers (and their search agencies) iterate and improve their search ads with a software, their landing pages are another story. If they’re even using landing pages, that is.
Code, development, IT, updates. Unlike search advertising, landing page creation and management is often a costly and time-consuming ordeal, and not a task that non-technical marketers and agency account management can manage on their own. Unfortunately, these technical roadblocks prevent marketers and account teams from being able to update and iterate the message and strategies of their landing pages easily and efficiently. While their ads get updated in real time, their landing pages stay static. And their post-click conversion rate and online marketing ROI suffers. Just because you can get more people to click, doesn’t mean you can get them to convert.
It’s great to be able to update and improve your pre-click marketing on your own, but if you’re not iterating post-click, you’re wasting your time and money. After all, a search ad is 3 lines, but your landing experience is a creative playground. That’s where the real testing and iteration flourishes, and where marketers can reap the maximum ROI.
Lucky for me, I have LiveBall, where I can create, edit, test, and copy landing experiences quickly and easily, without working with our web development team. Currently, our search marketing campaign has 120 ads and 532 message-matched landing pages.
Try doing that ad hoc.
Tuesday
18Nov
LiveBall for Lead Gen
The LiveBall platform is a best-in-class tool for online lead generation. Our B2B clients, both full and self-service, average over a 20% conversion rate. Here are 3 features of LiveBall that will help you improve your online lead generation efforts.
1. Numeric and letter grading
LiveBall’s advanced scoring capabilities can grade your landing page visitors on data like market segments, engagement in a landing experience, and form data. Grading can help sort your desirable prospects from your less desirable, and provide important data to export into your CRM or lead nurturing tool.
2. Instant email notifications
LiveBall’s instant email notifications can notify your sales team when a conversion comes through or when a respondent requests to be contacted. You set the notification parameters. LiveBall delivers the notifications instantly.
3. Post-click segmentation
Conversion paths, which are multi-page landing experiences that segment and qualify your traffic, can seriously and significantly improve your online lead quality and quantity. Paths are easy to create with LiveBall’s advanced master page templates.
Check out our case studies to see how other lead generation marketers, such as Citrix Systems and Bronto Software, have been able to improve their online lead generation quality and quantity with post-click marketing and LiveBall.
Tuesday
18Nov
New Webinar: Rx for Landing Page ROI
Please join us for our brand-new webinar series, “Post-Click Marketing: Rx for Landing Page ROI”. Each webinar will help you identify: 
Join us on Wednesday, November 19th at 1 PM if your business depends on lead generation, or Thursday, November 20th at 1 PM if you depend on e-commerce transactions. We look forward to seeing you at either one (or both if you’re so inclined).
Register for the lead generation webinar.
Register for the transactional webinar.
in landing pages, ROI
landing pages, ROI Tuesday
18Nov
5 Best Practices of Great Post-Click Marketing
As you all know, post-click marketing is about what people experience after we win their click. It may be as simple as a landing page or as complex as a 15 question assessment with scoring.
Whatever the type of landing experience, our end goal is a high conversion rate. We want as many of our clicks as possible to convert into qualified leads, online transactions, new registrations—whatever metric by which we measure real online marketing success.
The higher the conversion rate, the higher the ROl. If we can acquire more conversions from our online marketing spend, we win at two levels: we deliver more net business and we lower our cost-per-acquisition, making the spend more efficient.
1. Message Match
Landing pages, conversion paths and microsites are like your virtual field offices—they speak directly to the people in a specific niche and should be more focused and approachable than home pages and deep links. These independent landing experiences are ideal for campaign-specific marketing, as their messaging can be tightly matched with the different vehicles that generate clicks.
It’s critical that our ads and our landing experiences match—and we’re not necessary talking about imagery and graphics—rather messages and promises. In order to get the user to click, the ad implies a promise. The landing experience needs to immediately, directly and simply pay off that promise. When we do this, we build trust with our respondent and when we build trust, we will automatically build desire.
Key takeaway: Greater relevance + fewer distractions = more conversions
Message match is the easy and quickest way to improve your lead quality and quantity. Just click your ad. Where does it go? Have you fulfilled your promise? Put yourself in the eyes of the respondent.
2. Credible Branding
Brand is many things, but at it’s core it is an emotional connection between a user and a product or service. Good landing pages are crafted and deliberate, sending cues of excellence and trustworthiness, signaling to respondents that value their experience. This is achieved with a blend of good design, good content and zero tolerance for breaks in the experience: bad links, browser incompatibilities, inconsistent brand standards, expired information, sluggish response time. Our conversions need to be branded with credibility and authenticity so that the trust is built and maintained throughout the entire landing experience.
Although can exist at any point in your conversion funnel, the three most important are landing, asking & delivering.
Key takeaway: Take a look at your experience for the “first time.” Ask yourself if your brand maintains its authenticity throughout the experience. Are you building and maintaining at your critical trust moments?
3. Meaningful Segmentation
So, we’ve matched our landing message with the message that got the click and we’ve ensured that our brand is credible and consistent. Now what?
The next best practice to try is pre-conversion segmentation. Why? Two really good reasons. First, to create a better experience for our users. Not all clicks are equal, so we need to find out who they are by offering them a choice, then pay that choice off with copy, calls-to-action and fulfillment that speaks to their needs. Second, to get better insight into who is landing. Along the way segmentation data can help us qualify the online respondent so don’t just get quantity, but quality too.
Conversion paths with meaningful segmentation are friendlier and more conversational than traditional “one size fits all” landing pages. Respondents are gently guided along a short two or three-step path that lets them identify what is most relevant to the them. They become more engaged because each step is a 5-second click, which pays off with more relevant details. The second and third pages finally deliver on that promise, providing a deeper and more targeted offer.
Key takeaway: Consider meaningful segmentation if you have not already. Find out who is clicking by offering them a choice, then pay that choice off with targeted copy, calls-to-action and fulfillment.
4. Strategic Testing
The 4th best practice is strategic testing—rather than testing messaging, calls-to-action and form length—try big picture experiments that can maximize conversion success. At ion, we like to call this “apples to oranges” testing. It starts with a hard look at our post-click marketing objectives and develops into creative and innovative solutions. Looking for some ideas for apples-to-oranges testing? Try…
5. Think “Outside of the website…landing page”
Since your the majority of your web marketing paths are independent of your primary website, it’s safer to try bold, innovative ideas with them. Paths don’t have to match side-by-side or preserve the paradigms of your main website–each one is a clean slate. LiveBall makes it easy to test anything—and it’s easy to swap new tests in and out to continually get new learning and find winners. This creative freedom can be inspiring, revitalizing the energy of your online marketing.
Key takeaway: Put your thinking caps on. Brainstorm ideas for pushing the envelope creatively—or think of ways to leverage LiveBall for all of your marketing channels.
Whatever the type of landing experience, our end goal is a high conversion rate. We want as many of our clicks as possible to convert into qualified leads, online transactions, new registrations—whatever metric by which we measure real online marketing success.
The higher the conversion rate, the higher the ROl. If we can acquire more conversions from our online marketing spend, we win at two levels: we deliver more net business and we lower our cost-per-acquisition, making the spend more efficient.
1. Message Match
Landing pages, conversion paths and microsites are like your virtual field offices—they speak directly to the people in a specific niche and should be more focused and approachable than home pages and deep links. These independent landing experiences are ideal for campaign-specific marketing, as their messaging can be tightly matched with the different vehicles that generate clicks.
It’s critical that our ads and our landing experiences match—and we’re not necessary talking about imagery and graphics—rather messages and promises. In order to get the user to click, the ad implies a promise. The landing experience needs to immediately, directly and simply pay off that promise. When we do this, we build trust with our respondent and when we build trust, we will automatically build desire.
Key takeaway: Greater relevance + fewer distractions = more conversions
Message match is the easy and quickest way to improve your lead quality and quantity. Just click your ad. Where does it go? Have you fulfilled your promise? Put yourself in the eyes of the respondent.
2. Credible Branding
Brand is many things, but at it’s core it is an emotional connection between a user and a product or service. Good landing pages are crafted and deliberate, sending cues of excellence and trustworthiness, signaling to respondents that value their experience. This is achieved with a blend of good design, good content and zero tolerance for breaks in the experience: bad links, browser incompatibilities, inconsistent brand standards, expired information, sluggish response time. Our conversions need to be branded with credibility and authenticity so that the trust is built and maintained throughout the entire landing experience.
Although can exist at any point in your conversion funnel, the three most important are landing, asking & delivering.
Key takeaway: Take a look at your experience for the “first time.” Ask yourself if your brand maintains its authenticity throughout the experience. Are you building and maintaining at your critical trust moments?
3. Meaningful Segmentation
So, we’ve matched our landing message with the message that got the click and we’ve ensured that our brand is credible and consistent. Now what?
The next best practice to try is pre-conversion segmentation. Why? Two really good reasons. First, to create a better experience for our users. Not all clicks are equal, so we need to find out who they are by offering them a choice, then pay that choice off with copy, calls-to-action and fulfillment that speaks to their needs. Second, to get better insight into who is landing. Along the way segmentation data can help us qualify the online respondent so don’t just get quantity, but quality too.
Conversion paths with meaningful segmentation are friendlier and more conversational than traditional “one size fits all” landing pages. Respondents are gently guided along a short two or three-step path that lets them identify what is most relevant to the them. They become more engaged because each step is a 5-second click, which pays off with more relevant details. The second and third pages finally deliver on that promise, providing a deeper and more targeted offer.
Key takeaway: Consider meaningful segmentation if you have not already. Find out who is clicking by offering them a choice, then pay that choice off with targeted copy, calls-to-action and fulfillment.
4. Strategic Testing
The 4th best practice is strategic testing—rather than testing messaging, calls-to-action and form length—try big picture experiments that can maximize conversion success. At ion, we like to call this “apples to oranges” testing. It starts with a hard look at our post-click marketing objectives and develops into creative and innovative solutions. Looking for some ideas for apples-to-oranges testing? Try…
- Testing against your control
- Audience vs Product segmentation
- Flash vs static
- Fulfillment offers
- Conversion type (lead generation, social, etc.)
5. Think “Outside of the website…landing page”
Since your the majority of your web marketing paths are independent of your primary website, it’s safer to try bold, innovative ideas with them. Paths don’t have to match side-by-side or preserve the paradigms of your main website–each one is a clean slate. LiveBall makes it easy to test anything—and it’s easy to swap new tests in and out to continually get new learning and find winners. This creative freedom can be inspiring, revitalizing the energy of your online marketing.
Key takeaway: Put your thinking caps on. Brainstorm ideas for pushing the envelope creatively—or think of ways to leverage LiveBall for all of your marketing channels.
Tuesday
18Nov
Fall New Release Wrap-Up
We’ve had a busy Fall season here at ion interactive. Back in October, we launched a new and improved Support Section. LiveBall Support is now completely searchable and includes LiveBall how-tos, FAQs, our customer blog, a discussion forum and a glossary section. We continually update the Support Section so our clients have a great resource only a click away.
The new support categories are readily available in your LiveBall console, under the Support tab, or from the ion website: http://www.ioninteractive.com/support
Another cool feature we’ve rolled out this Fall is the ability co-brand your LiveBall console. Under the Settings tab, a Configure Site option has been added that enables clients to upload their own logos into the admin interface. There are three images you can upload:
- a custom favicon.ico to appear in the browser address bar
- a custom co-brand logo for the admin login screen (white background)
- a custom co-brand logo for the upper left of the admin console (gray background)
This feature is ideal for agencies who need to maintain brand equity with clients, while they fully integrate LiveBall into their service offerings!
Two gauge enhancements were released this Fall as well. First, we created the Country Summary tool for our clients who target international audiences. This tools provides a more quantitative way of analyzing your international respondent data and is available at the portfolio, campaign, path and traffic source levels.
Sorted alphabetically by country, you can easily view the number of respondents, segmentation and conversion rates, plus the increase or decrease in these stats from a previous time period.
We also released a large gauge that displays a respondent map of Australia and New Zealand for our clients that market to an audience “Down Under”. This tool is available at the portfolio, campaign and traffic source level.
ion interactive announced another, extremely useful LiveBall gauge enhancement. The Specified Date Range option is available on every reporting gauge and every performance level within LiveBall. You’ll now see a swap button next to the ‘time’ label. By clicking this button, you’ll swap the time period drop-down menu out for the new date range enhancement.
After entering a valid date range, simply click the refresh button and your reporting data will reflect the time period specified. If you’d like to switch back to the time period drop-down menu, you can do so by clicking on the swap button.
ion has new releases in the works and definitely appreciates client suggestions. We hope you’ve had the opportunity to utilize the Fall releases and look forward to your feedback.