Every business owner needs to test advertising messages. If you do not test messages before rolling out your ad campaign you might be doing more harm than good, wasting your advertising budget on an effort that is destined to fail, or will fall short of your expectations or targets.
I have spent a significant part of my advertising life producing radio commercials for small to medium businesses. These are typically the type of companies who do not have the budget for a full service advertising agency, or might have their own in-house marketing department who needed someone to produce their ads. I have also been hired by advertising agencies to produce commercials for their clients. In fact, I still do radio commercials today. I have a simple radio commercial blog where you can find samples of my work… you can find it my just simply searching for radio commercials on Google… it is ranked number 1 for searchers in the Philippines, primarily because my primary client base is in the Philippines. I have also spent some time producing TV ads and local travel shows. This is how it usually works and if you are a business owner, you might know this to be true.
Let’s say you need to advertise a dated promo or a sale, or maybe even an institutional radio commercial for your business. I am sure the first people you get to talk to about this would likely be the radio station where you plan to advertise on, they would likely offer to produce your radio commercial for you free of charge, and include it in the advertising package. This happens when the Account Executive for your account also produces radio ads, if it is a big enough account then he makes a hefty commission from the placement and so would not mind producing the ad himself. He can also opt to pay a colleague a nominal fee to produce the ad. Either way what they usually do is just get information from you, then put together the radio ad copy, get it approved by you, then produce it. After they produce it, they start airing it, and voila.. your radio ad is now on the airwaves.
Ask yourself this question, what basis or data do you have to say that the advertising messages in the radio copy are going to be effective. How do you know that the wording or offer in the ad will cause a listener to take action? You don’t! There is no data, there is no testing.
This is pretty much the same on TV; where SME’s who wish to advertise on TV tap a TV company to give them a proposal for TV advertising spots and maybe a budget for the production of a TV ad. Some companies engage the services of multimedia or video production companies like Eight Thumbs to produce their TV commercial. Again the process works the same as above, production company puts together a concept or story, presents client with concept/budget, client approves, production company gets to work and submits final and approved product to the client.
Again, no testing of messages or offers to see which would be most effective in getting the TV ad viewer to take action.
This is also the same for print and design.
So how do you test your advertising messages? Here is the process I recommend.
Step 1 – Create Your Offer (O)
Write down 1-2 offers or a unique selling proposition that you want to get across to your audience.
You would need 1-2 offers to see which one is the most compelling as far as wording. This pretty much can be the same offer, but only worded differently using power words that catch consumers attention fast.
Step 2 – Create a Call to Action (A)
Identify specific and quantifiable actions that you want your target audience to do. Ask yourself this question, at the end of the advertisement, what is it you want your audience to do? Call a number, send an email, visit a website, visit your store? Write down 1-2 of these.
This way, you are able to identify which action is likely to be the most effective, and then use that action on your ad copy or across the board (radio, tv, print) to ensure that your ad will deliver the highest number of actions from your audience.
Step 3 – Create a Fast Action Bonus or One Time Offer (B)
What added fast action bonus or one time offer can you give them to serve as an incentive to immediately take the action you want them to do? Do you want them to call today and get an added 20% on a purchase? Or if they email you with their contact details they get a free product (tie up partner) with their purchase? Again, write down 1-2 of these.
You want to find out which bonus is most appealing to your audience that serves as the right motivation for them to perform the desired action.
Step 4 – Testing
You would need to combine the elements above, with the ultimate goal of finding out which combination of the three above, delivered the highest number of conversions.
To do that, you would need to put them to the test on the web, since testing on the web is affordable and accountable, and allows you to track behavior of your audience. Behavior in relation to the wording of your online advertisement text you use for the test and behavior in relation to the offer on the page they land on.
Landing Page Creation
So given the 2 variants of each element above, you would have a total of 8 different test messages. You would then need to create 8 different landing pages on your website, each landing page focused on each of those messages.
Let me give you a legend.
O=Offer
A=Action
B=Bonus
So the different versions would yield the following combinations.
Test Message 1
O1=Offer Version 1
A1=Action Version 1
B1=Bonus Version 1
Test Message 2
O2=Offer Version 2
A2=Action Version 2
B2=Bonus Version 2
Test Message 3
O1=Offer Version 1
A1=Action Version 1
B2=Bonus Version 2
Test Message 4
O1=Offer Version 1
A2=Action Version 2
B1=Bonus Version 1
Test Message 5
O2=Offer Version 2
A1=Action Version 1
B1=Bonus Version 1
Test Message 6
O2=Offer Version 2
A2=Action Version 2
B1=Bonus Version 1
Test Message 7
O2=Offer Version 2
A1=Action Version 1
B2=Bonus Version 2
Test Message 8
O1=Offer Version 1
A2=Action Version 2
B2=Bonus Version 2
Send Traffic to Landing Pages
There are man ways to send traffic but I will keep things simple and recommend 2 methods. What is important is, you would need to use Google’s Free Web Optimizer so that you send traffic to one URL, but the web optimizer will rotate all the 8 pages displaying a different page for every new visitor that lands on the URL. Each time a new visitor lands on that URL they see a different page/advertisement, but if they go back to the URL, they will only see the same page that they saw when they first landed so they are not aware that you are testing and rotating different pages with different messages.
Make sure that you have Google Analytics tracking installed on your pages so that you are able to see the behavior of visitors on those pages.
Email. You can simply send out a message via email with a link that you want them to click.
Social Networks. You can post a link on your social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Multiply, Linked In) for people to click.
Step 5 – Evaluating Results
There are generally two things I would look for to establish if a web page and content on a page (your test advertising message) is effective.
First, is engagement. I would check how people that landed on a page behaved. Did they stay long and browse other pages or did they leave in a matter of seconds. Staying long on a site and browsing more pages are signs of good engagement, which means the offer on the landing page (page that they first landed on your site) which you are testing is effective.
Second, is conversions. The Google Optimizer and Google Analytics asks you to create a goal page, this is a page that visitors arrive at only after performing a certain action. Find out which of the 8 different pages you are testing has the highest number of conversions, then you have found your winning advertising message. If however an action you want to measure is a phone call, and are testing two different actions, each action should have its own phone number. So that if people call phone number 1 (associated with A1) more times than they call phone number 2 (associated with A2) you know which offer or bonus is more effective.
An even simpler method of testing is to simply create two different advertising messages, and put them on two different pages. Then send a batch of visitors to one page and another batch of visitors to the other page and track which converts better.
If you do not want conversions as a metrics gauge for your test, you can simply get a poll or survey. Where you send out an email to people asking them to rate which of the two pages had an advertising message they were more likely to take action on.
What is important here is, you have been able to methodically develop data to support your choice of advertising messages that you use on your radio, TV or print ad copy. Advertising messages that are either proven to work or voted by people as messages that would work on them.
Using this strategy will help improve conversions on your advertising efforts, allowing you to maximize on your advertising budget.
If you have questions or comments about Testing Ad Copy, please post them in the comment section below. You can also send me questions through the Contact Form.
Here are 3 Simple Tips to Easily Increase Business through Your Website, and it is not about high tech optimization, complicated programming or advanced SEO or marketing strategies. These tips are very simple, basic tips which I believe to be rudimentary to website usability, and are a must to ensure that you are converting your visitors into leads or even customers.
I always look at websites as marketing tools to achieve very specific and quantifiable goals, and these will certainly increase your figures, if you are not already doing these on your website.
Add Working Business Number on the Website
How many people do you think went through your website and had the urge to immediately get more information by simply picking up the phone and calling you?
Believe it or not, a lot of business websites make the mistake of not putting a working phone number, or do have a number on it but routes to a voice mail box or a facsimile machine. Not a lot of people like to leave voice messages on the first contact, and for those that do, they are no longer hot leads or “hot” about your product when you call them back later. Of course, I do not need to elaborate on how annoying it is to get a fax tone instead of a human voice ready to answer your inquiries.
This just happened very recently to me, I wanted to take the family out to dinner at this restaurant I have been hearing good things about but have never been to. So I searched for their website on Google to find out about reservations; I did find their website and found their number. I called a total of three times and each time, I always got a FAX machine. I gave up and dialed another restaurant and made my reservation. So here is a question; how much business do you think that restaurant is losing from calls from potential customers who get a FAX tone?
Add Simple Contact Form on the Website
Yes contact forms are much better than simply putting your email address on your website in text form. This is because if you put your email address in text format, it is going to get harvested by SPAM bots then you are going to get spammed with all these PPC crap… by PPC I mean porn, pills and casinos.
I notice that a lot of websites have complicated contact forms with too much information to fill in. You want to make things easy for your visitors, so try to keep your contact form to just the name, email address and the inquiry. If you have a product whose audience might be open to providing a phone number, then go for it. The idea is, to make sure your visitors are comfortable about contacting you and that they do so knowing their information is safe. Typically name, email address and inquiry box is sufficient, but what I would suggest is run a test, and do a split test on the contact form, one with and the other without a call back number. That way you are able to see which one is more effective.
It is also important that you reply to them withing a reasonable amount of time. It is ideally best to include a notice near the contact form indicating that, “their personal information is safe with you and that this data will not be sold to other parties or used for other purposes” and “state the amount of time you are likely able to get back to them”. If you say you can get back to them in two business days, strive to get back to them in less and not more.
I do a lot inquiring about products and services online, and let me tell you, a lot of them do not reply on time and by the time they do, I had already contact and given the business to someone else. Again the question is; how much business are the late repliers losing to those who promptly address inquiries?
Prepare a Script and Bonus or One Time Offer
By this I mean, you should have a set of ready made answers to questions you already know you will get asked, whether it is on the phone or through email. Always sound prepared because it makes you sound like you do know what you are talking about, even if you did know what you were talking about but fumble about in your answers, that does not make a good impression.
Always END with a quick action bonus or one time offer, tell them that you happen to have a special promotion on going, then tell them about the offer. If you are selling one specific product or service, then the special offer must be about the service. Otherwise if you carry a variety of products or services, the offer must be specific to the product/service the person is inquiring about. You are going to significantly increase conversions by offering them additional value to a purchase if they act within a specific time. You can also offer them membership to your newsletter if you have one. Newsletters are great ways to not only deliver useful information to your subscribers but is also a way of building on that rapport you have with them and warming them up to your product/service. Marketing is about relationships, and the decision to purchase from someone is in part influenced by the amount of trust a potential buyer has on the seller.
Put these critical elements into your website and into your website marketing mix and you will certainly see an increase in conversions.
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I thought of putting together this brief video and show you how you can use the Google Search Engine effectively. If you spend a lot of time researching online or searching the internet for something you want to learn more about, you probably are familiar with Google and how it can sometimes be frustrating not to be able to find what you are looking for, instead you get overloaded with related or even non related listings, which are probably not exactly what you are looking for.
Google actually has the most advanced system in place that tries to give you a list of websites or web pages that might have what you are looking for, based on the keywords you type in to the engine. A few months ago Google rolled out with a new feature called “Search Options” which helps you find exactly what you might be looking for.
In this brief Google search tutorial video I will give you some tips and tricks on how to do searches and I will also run you through the new Search Options feature.
Here is a quick summary of what you find in the video.
- put keywords that you are using in quotes ” “, that way you get a list of web pages with your searched phrase in their exact order
- use Search Options to specifically find the kind of content you are looking for, whether these are images, videos, news, blogs, updates, books and forums; and even sort them further by freshness
- this tip is not mentioned on the video… if you want to search a specific website for a specific phrase or content you think they might have, type the following site:websitedomain.com “keyword phrase”, for instance on a recipe site like allrecipes.com, if you want to find meatloaf recipes, just go to Google and type site:allrecipes.com “meatloaf recipes” and the resulting page will be a list of pages only from allrecipes.com that have that phrase “meatloaf recipes” in it
Online Brand Management is actually easy to do, much easier to do than traditional brand management. Primarily because monitoring and metrics are so easy to acquire and more accurate in the online marketing space. You can also make faster changes to adjust your campaigns according to data you are able to instantly get.
So what are the 3 ingredients that are going to ensure the success of managing your brand identity over the internet?
Social Media
There are so many blogs, social networks and online forums and communities out there today that people use regularly, and where a lot of consumer often talk about a product, company, a service, a BRAND.
In a recent article on GirlsInTech.net entitled Online Brand Management: How to Respond to Negative Feedback About Your Brand Online, the author mentions that a lot of negative feedback from consumers typically appear on these sites and while it is impossible to control negative commentary, the best thing for product owners to do is be in touch with their market, be ready with a plan or a set of responses to deal with specific issues, and if something catches you off guard that you did not prepare for, respond quickly.
This is usually how online reputation management professionals deal with these situations, but if you want to really build your brand identity online, don’t simply be reactionary but be proactive, adhere to good business practices and make customers happy. Prevention is always better than cure.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
A few weeks ago I wrote a post about brand identity management and how a key element was developing a set of keywords that you may use consistently as part of your offer or positioning in order to successfully associate your brand with those keywords.
SEO knowledge will help ensure that your publicly viewable correspondence or communications about your brand on social sites will get top visibility on search engines to build a healthy search engine reputation. This is brand reputation management specifically targeted at search engines, where keyword searches for your brand coupled with other keyword modifiers yield results that help prospects who are researching your brand, decide on buying you.
Tracking and Documentation Skills
Each online marketing strategy has specific goals and those goals are evaluated based on very specific quantifiable data that you need to acquire, measure, track and use as basis to further tweak whatever you are doing for brand reputation or brand identity management efforts.
If you have questions or comments about Online Branding, please post them in the comment section below. You can also send me questions through the Contact Form.
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New blog post title on WebProNews reads PPC Vs SEO; the new post features a video clip showing an interview with Kristine Churchill of KeyRelevance shot during the recent SES in Chicago.
Some people will say PPC is better because of this and that; the others on the other side of the fence say SEO is better because of so and so. With all that is being said, you now believe that you actually need to pick a side; you feel the urgency to decide whether you are pro PPC and anti SEO or vice versa.
What many people do not realize is that both PPC and SEO, being the traffic generation methods that they both are, are actually equally important for any online marketing strategy since they both achieve specific goals that are unique for each, objectives that the other may fail to accomplish.
You cannot absolutely choose one over the other because doing so would be like deciding what you want to have all day long — daytime or night, which is just not possible. If you are not familiar with the distinct features and difference between SEO and PPC, click this link http://www.magrointernational.com/PayPerClick/SEOvsPPC.aspx
Again I stress, PPC and SEO are both important. PPC delivers quick traffic especially to websites that have just rolled out and without any incoming links or organic rankings. If you were one such website owner, PPC allows you to get stats rolling in that you may examine, evaluate and use as basis for optimizing your content to improve engagement or conversions, and optimizing your traffic generation or online advertising activities that would likely include ranking for search queries organically which are the result of SEO activity.
Here is that interview with Kristine Churchill.
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When the Tiger Woods scandal first broke out with the accident at his home, people were not sure what the story was about because Tiger was not saying anything for several days and as we later find out, it was probably what his team of PR people advised him to do, maybe thinking that the story would blow over and be forgotten.
Unfortunately a lot of evidence had been leaked out to the press which had to do with Tiger Woods cheating on his wife, not only once but several times. It is rather difficult to keep a story under wraps today especially with the internet available to so many, who are also able to use easily use social sites to talk about a story. The story of course went viral, FAST…. with his voice mail recording mixed into an RNB slow jam and made into a video on YouTube, plus transcripts of text messages finding their way to blogs and forums.
Another woman has been linked to Tiger Woods and this one is 48 years old. Or as Tiger refers to her, “my senior tour.” – Conan O’Brien
After all that I have seen and heard I have to say, this is one major PR nightmare that might have been quickly managed had we been in the 80s where today’s world wide web were non existent and social sites used as viral mediums of information were non existent. Every little bit of dirt on the story can be found online… and so we ask, can all that negative publicity online be managed?
Interestingly, someone believes so.
I found this article on Online Reputation Management and how the Tiger Woods story was a great case study for Online Reputation Management. The conclusion to the story is, if you have money you can probably manage it, and Tiger does, so he likely can, in fact from what I have been seeing lately I think they have started to do so.
Incidentally here is a story that will answer your question on what Online Reputation Management is about.
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A new post on Jeremy Schoemaker’s blog www.shoemoney.com reads “SEO vs. Social Media: Which is Better?“.
The post basically tries to determine which traffic generation strategy is better, SEO or Social Media, and in a way concludes that neither is better; SEO is the term that cold unfeeling tech geeks inevitably prefer to use while the more warm and gregarious folks fall under the Social Media.
While I agree to that neither is better than the other, I have different reasons. I believe them to be equally important.
Many people view SEO as a cause, a means to achieve a result… however I have a different perspective on SEO. SEO is actually a result that begets more results.
Let us assume you have an effective website, optimally set up that engages visitors well regardless of traffic source; search engine traffic or referred from social media, and you need to send visitors to that site, what do you do?
You build links! Make sure you observe good link building practices, ensure that your links are found on highly relevant websites or web pages that would ensure high click rates on your links from those pages. Social Media has been an effective way of getting traffic because of the high level of traffic Social Media sites typically have.
Proper link building results in good SEO results (better rankings for relevant keywords), which in turn leads to more traffic. A key part of good SEO is good link building tactics which includes activities on Social Media.
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When Matt Cutts speaks, I listen. Nuff Said. If you want your websites to do better on Google, you have to listen to the head of Google’s anti web spam team. If you want to know how you can get your WordPress blogs to do better on Google, watch this video and listen to Matt reveal a lot of valuable tips.
It is virtually easy to find thousands of posts, articles, blogs, definitions, tips, strategies and what have you about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) … a lot of people talk about SEO and discuss what it is… but in this really brief post, I will tell you six things that SEO is not.
SEO is not a make money online opportunity or a get rich scheme; people have however made some money by using SEO as part of an overall strategy to drive visitors to product/service offers found on their websites.
SEO is not marketing; while there maybe similar principles utilized in the practice of SEO, SEO is not itself marketing but a method of getting your message across to achieve marketing goals, the same way advertising is not marketing.
SEO is not rocket science; it does not take genius to learn it. It does however need you to learn by doing and making mistakes. A lot of important SEO lessons will be found not on books and manuals but will be learned from experience, the information you find on books and manuals easily gets outdated because the rules change often. SEO is about playing the search engines’ game, where a majority of the rules to winning the game are actually kept secret by them. It helps if you are a person who documents what you do, measures results of your actions, creates hypothesis based on known facts and tests these to prove or debunk them.
SEO offers no guarantees; a top keyword ranking might not always increase your traffic significantly, or even if it does, it is not a guarantee that your business or sales will improve or increase. However if you do have the top ranking and are getting the traffic from that keyword, you now just have to tweak and test your site to find a way to improve conversions. SEO sends traffic to a website, and if a website is optimally set-up then the website owner can expect to get a good number of inquiries via email or calls, or even sales (if the website allows transactions). Converting that lead into a customer depends on what the website or business owner does to seal the deal. It works pretty much like a brick and mortar business like a store for example, that sells different kinds of flowers in different types of arrangements; the flower shop advertises on radio, TV or newspapers to get people in the door; SEO is a means to getting people through that virtual door.
However, a good SEO consultant is also likely to be a good online marketer who can advise website owners how to increase their conversions once visitors hit their website. At the end of the day it is not about the amount of traffic, but the amount of conversions from that traffic. And, a good SEO Consultant knows how to do the right keyword and market research to identify the right keywords to rank for so you don’t end up spending all that money to get to number one for a keyword that does not deliver any traffic or delivers non converting traffic.
SEO is not enough; it is not the be all and end all of traffic generation; while it is indeed an effective method of getting visitors to a website, there are countless other ways to generate traffic. The problem with depending too much on rankings on search engines (an SEO result) for your traffic / visitors / customers is, if that ranking disappears for whatever reason, your business also disappears with it.
If you have questions or comments about Search Engine Optimization, please post them in the comment section below. You can also send me questions about Search Engine Optimization through the Contact Form.
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You can republish this article on your own blogs and websites, as long as you retain all the links above.
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In the past I have always used Islands Banca Cruises on my blog posts on SEO, online marketing and linking… what can I say.. apart from believing it to be a good product, I also know some of the people behind it and am good friends with Kitchie too!
In fact Kitchie mentioned to me their idea of putting together a website when I was still based in Cebu, and they did register their domain for their website on April 13, 2008.
So, let us say you were someone who knew what you want to do and where to do it… specifically island hopping in cebu. You got wind of it from either friends, or maybe saw a feature on TV, or a magazine. But, you have no idea who to contact in Cebu for island hopping.
So you would likely ask around, OR go to Google and type keywords related to what you want to do… so you would type in keywords like…
- island hopping in cebu
- island hopping cebu
- cebu island hopping
Guess what, the Islands Banca Cruises website ranks at the top of Google for those searches… studies show that the website at the very top of the search results always gets the most traffic.
So from there, as a potential customer you find their website, browse around their site, check out photos, rates, promos and packages, etc. But you want to be sure you are actually going to get good service, and you may have a few doubts about giving your hard earned money to them… I mean, all the information on their website is supposed to sell their service right? So how do you find out if they are the best island hopping service provider to choose?
You either ask friends if they have heard about Islands Banca Cruises OR, go back to Google and do a search for the brand name, Islands Banca Cruises, or Islands Banca Cruises coupled with other keywords such as reviews, comments, good experience, etc. What you are doing now is actually trying to find a reason for you to justify your purchase decision, you already know what you want to buy but might need convincing… and the results you will find will indeed convince you because…
If you take a look at the results for the phrase, Islands Banca Cruises, you will find that the top 10 results are a mix of other people talking about their overall positive experiences with Islands Banca Cruises on their own blogs, there are also website directories where Islands Banca Cruises has been listed and finally a forum. This is a good mix of sites that contribute to an overall positive Search Engine Reputation that help reinforce a positive product perception among its potential customers.. and it is not because of good SEO, but also good marketing paired with good business practice that leaves customers happy, happy enough to voluntarily talk about the experience. Yes, Web 2.0.. social sites, user generated content sites have definitely changed how we can do marketing online, it made it easier.
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Download my New Twitter Guide"Hello! Nice To Tweet You" is an easy to follow guide to setting up and networking on Twitter, it includes tips and recommended free software to help make the Twittering experience both enjoyable and easy.
To get your copy, all you have to do is ReTweet any of the blog posts you find useful to your Followers on Twitter, simply fill up the form found at the end of a blog post.
