|
SUMMARY: What
value is buried in your marketing department? To
give you ideas to find that value, we bring you examples from the software
industry, a cleaning products company and an answering service. |
April 05,
2021 by Daniel Burstein, Senior
Director, Content & Marketing, MarketingSherpa and MECLABS Institute
This
article was originally published in the MarketingSherpa
email newsletter.
Here is one of my favorite
Calvin & Hobbes cartoons…
Hobbes: Why are you digging
a hole?
Calvin: I’m looking for buried treasure!
Hobbes: What have you found?
Calvin: A few dirty rocks, a weird root, and some disgusting grubs.
Hobbes: On your first try??
Calvin: There’s treasure everywhere!
There’s treasure everywhere
for your marketing organization as well. Hidden opportunities that only reveal
themselves when you roll up your sleeves and do the dirty work of digging far
and wide.
Take the tragedy
surrounding the coronavirus, for example. It’s easy at first glance to only see
the negative. There sure is a whole lot of it.
But as Flint McGlaughlin,
CEO and Managing Director, MECLABS Institute said, “As a global pandemic grips
modern society, most of the conversation has focused around the negative
impacts facing individuals, organizations and society as a whole. Many people
are hurting today. That cannot be understated. However, even COVID-19 has a
silver lining. Deeply painful experiences can also be deeply transformational.”
That quote is from The Hidden Opportunity Within the COVID-19 Crisis: Three
ways to transform your work and your life.
With that thought in mind,
get on your digging gloves and get ready to dive into examples of how your
marketing peers found hidden opportunities from a homepage test, in their
approach to content marketing and SEO, and in their lead attribution.
Quick
Case Study #1: Software industry company gets 60% increase in leads thanks to
focusing more on content promotion than on its creation
A few years ago, Greenice had
set a goal to turn its website into a solid source of leads and sales. To
achieve this, the web development agency chose content marketing paired with
SEO as its main strategy. The team decided to create content in-house and
outsource SEO.
“As the person in charge of
this project, I had an idea that content quality is the key to success. So I’ve
concentrated all our efforts on creating the best content we can and let the
SEO guys do their job,” said Kateryna Reshetilo, Head of Marketing, Greenice.
After a year had passed,
the team had invested a lot of resources but didn’t get anywhere near their
goal.
“It took another year for
me to realize where we went wrong,” Reshetilo said. “We neglected content
promotion (in our case it is mostly link building), doing very little compared
to the competition. We spent too many resources on perfecting our content,
sometimes way more than necessary.”
“So I realized that content
promotion is just as important as content quality, if not more, and you cannot
just outsource it and forget it. I’ve also understood that when resources are
scarce, it is not wise to make every piece of content perfect, sometimes good
enough is enough,” she said.
The team brought SEO
in-house, developed a link-building strategy based on a thorough analysis of
the competition and best practices, invested in link building at least as much
as they do in content creation, and prioritized content based on how much
effort is needed for each post.
At the moment, SEO is the
main way for potential clients to discover their content, so having it in-house
helps to better coordinate content creation and SEO efforts. Also, they found
out that link building is arguably the main growth driver in SEO and they
weren’t doing it right. That’s why they dedicated a lot of time to learn what
competitors were doing and what SEO experts are saying. As a result, they
started developing their own link building strategy to make sure they dedicate
enough resources to it.
After changing their
approach, the team saw a steady growth of traffic and, most importantly, the
number of leads started growing by 15% every month – during the past four
months, the number of leads has grown by 60%.
Quick
Case Study #2: Cleaning products company increases conversion rate 184% with
homepage test
MB Stone
Care dedicated two decades to building a line of cleaning
products specifically for natural stone surfaces like marble and granite. It
was well-known in the professional stone restoration world, but when it came to
the everyday homeowner, the brand was practically unknown.
The cleaning products
supplier worked with Mission Disrupt to
create a website experience tailored to customer needs. The team started by
evaluating the current site. “The first step in doing so was to collect user
data anonymously on their website using Hotjar. Hotjar allowed us to deploy
heat maps, which showed the sections of their website that were clicked on and
scrolled through the most,” said Dean DeCarlo, CEO and Founder, Mission
Disrupt.
After the new website was
launched, the team used paid ads to build upon the site’s organic traffic. “We
knew Google Shopping & Search would be the ideal channel for users to
discover the website,” DeCarlo said. “Google Shopping allowed us to use the
same organic terms that people used to find the brands and then paid for
visibility at a national level.”
“Once we established a
track record on Google we began exploring the world of Facebook and Instagram,”
he said. “We opted to use the instant experience Facebook/Instagram ad format
that allowed for the ad experience to be interactive.” When people clicked on
the ad, they would get an expanded ad experience that showed the
before-and-after results of using the cleaning product.
Aside from paid ads, the
team also leveraged organic social media by working with micro-influencers.
“Affiliate partners produce content on YouTube, Instagram or any other social
media platform, helping to send customers to your website, if they help get you
a sale they get a commission (usually 15%) of the sale,” DeCarlo said.
Now that they had traffic
flowing to the new site, they began A/B testing. “One thing I love about growth
on your own ecommerce site is that you learn more about your customer with
every transaction made. That means a ton of data that can help you build a
better experience. For MB Stone Care, we implemented A/B testing which allowed
us to test new layouts, marketing copy, and even promotions to see how it would
affect our conversion rate. This practice is known as conversion rate
optimization and is a practical way to ensure you’re getting the best results
before increasing ad spend.”
In the original home page,
the team had designed product mockups and a clear call to action to help
customers find the right stone care by using the product finder wizard.
Creative Sample #1:
Original (control) homepage for cleaning supplies company
For the treatment, they
decided to change the layout of the homepage, ensuring top sales products were
front and center on the page while also displaying the top-rated products. They
highlighted three selling points by creating promo grids that had “Free Shipping
Over $75,” “Best Sellers,” and “Guides & How-Tos” – three distinct call to
actions. They chose this approach partly based on website traffic flow data.
Creative Sample #2: New
(treatment) homepage for cleaning supplies company
The new design improved
conversion rate by 184% thanks to a more minimalist design, that featured more
functional call to actions addressing multiple visitor needs.
"Based on the success
of our first A/B test, conversion rate optimization is a regular part of our
marketing plan. As an online retailer it helps us test new innovations,
features and layouts, while understand our customers behavior in a measured
way,” said Denise Daniels, VP of Operations, MB Stone Care.
Quick
Case Study #3: Answering service uses marketing attribution tool to help track
every lead and attribute revenue back to the marketing channels that influenced
it, reduces CPL 11%
Moneypenny is
a communications provider offering solutions like live chat and outsourced
switchboards. They serve hundreds of thousands of clients across the UK and US.
Moneypenny’s marketing team
operates across all digital marketing channels, with multiple campaigns in play
to drive leads into their website. Their leads tend to engage with their sales
team via phone call, live chat or web form and eventually convert offline.
This posed a reporting
issue for Moneypenny. One, how could they track each of their leads no matter
which method they came from? Two, how could they track the full customer
journey to understand the role marketing played in reaching and converting
those leads?
“We were confident we were
missing data on a large number of leads via paid search, particularly for those
leads that came in via phone. While we could cross-reference leads in the CRM
(customer relationship management platform), there was no way to accurately
track leads that came in via a call back to a traffic source,” said Daniel
Marshall, Digital Marketing Manager, Moneypenny.
By implementing marketing
attribution tool Ruler across its website, Moneypenny has
been able to definitively track all visitors to their website and match lead
data back to the original source. This enriched data is then pushed to Google
Analytics and Ads where the team can see leads, opportunities and won clients
attributed back to specific campaigns and keywords, which removed time-consuming
tasks from the team’s to-do list.
And Marshall’s assumptions
on missing data were proven correct.
“We quickly identified we
were losing visibility on around 20% of leads that came in via phone, meaning
our view of overall CPL (cost per lead) was incorrect. We’re now able to
optimize campaigns based on actual won business, as opposed to web
conversions,” he said. “We knew prospects like to interact with us in different
ways, so the ability to see what drives live chat leads has been of huge
benefit too, as we can now identify which keywords work for this specific
audience.”
Now armed with data they
can trust, Moneypenny’s understanding of what drives a high-quality lead has
allowed them to reap the benefits.
“Being able to surface this
data has allowed us to be more intelligent in the way we optimize our paid
search activity. For example, we have been able to reduce our spend on keyword
groups that drive web conversions, but do not result in genuine leads.
Likewise, we have been able to increase spend in the areas that drive good
volumes of leads at good CPLs.”
With significant budget
placed behind PPC (pay-per-click) and Paid Social, Marshall has been able to
use the data to protect his budgets and identify both cost savings and
performance increases.
“Our spend has stayed
consistent year on year, but as we’re now able to optimize based on all leads
rather than web conversions. We’ve seen an eight percent increase in leads and
our cost per lead has reduced by 11%,” Marhsall said. “At first glance, our generic
paid search campaigns appeared more expensive due to the competitive nature of
the keywords. Offline conversion tracking discovered more leads had interacted
with these campaigns, which had a big impact on our CPL and allowed us to be
more focused on our spend.”
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