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Landing page testing is important in determining your target market demographics and conversion bottlenecks, and has long been a realm for creative changes to text, images, and promotions, but what about video?  Some claim video on landing pages can have a dramatic effect on conversion rate, and it’s never been a better time to test that theory heading into slower months.

In an interesting article named “Wasting your time with Web Analytics“, Manoj Jasra states that many analysts, business owners and marketers waste their time with poorly constructed analytics implementations, marketing campaigns, and meaningless granularity. We must be on the same thought pattern, because I’ve been thinking of writing on this subject for quite some time, except focusing on the goals of web analytics and avoiding the pitfalls - such as overdoing it.

The pay-per-click advertising process all starts with alluring display ad text that includes amongst other things, a display URL representing your brand, site, or store.  With all the different ad text permutations bombarding the search user, case studies have indicated substantial cognitive evaluation of ads prior to the first click.  Getting clicks from search users has never been all that difficult, but pre-qualifying clicks and gaining visitor trust is harder than ever.  One key differentiator between your ad and your competition may be your top-level domain.

A marketers tightest and most valued ally is their sales force.  Without communicating routinely with front-line sales representatives and agents, a marketer will never identify who their true prospect targets are.  Despite what some of us may think, we don’t need to optimize pages for the people that come to a site and convert regardless of content, nor the people that will never convert (ever).  The people we’re trying to ultimately reach are the few that might be interested, because if we can win them, we will be maximizing conversion.

Being in the agency/consultation end of the pay-per-click game for a few years now, I can appreciate how hard it is to manage multiple client accounts through numerous analytics solutions. Client A might use Google Analytics, and Client B might be using Webtrends, whereas Client C might be using both! Managing logins, passwords, unique URLs and varied implementations is the last thing I want to troubleshoot, which is why acquisio SEARCH sparked my interest. Their t-shirt offer sure got my attention, not for the shock value, but because the message resonated.

Being a member of various marketing associations including the Canadian Marketing Association, I see a lot of news about the rules and regulations that are in the works for a National do not call list.  I also get frequent e-mails about how to effectively use telemarketing to drive sales continue to wonder, is it even worth it anymore?  Telemarketing has been around since the introduction of the telephone, and I’m betting Alexander Graham Bell is turning in his grave because of it.

Not long ago I posted a rant on what I thought were major problems with Omniture’s newest releases, SiteCatalyst 14 and SearchCenter 3.  I’ll be honest, it got a lot of attention for my relatively small blog and I thought we were making progress.  It seems a lot of clients are frustrated, and for whatever reason aren’t inclined to make a big switch to other brands like Webtrends.  However, with Yahoo announcing their takeover of IndexTools, an analytics package capable of offering “up 80% of Omniture’s features for FREE”, clients may begin to wonder and possibly wander.

Everyone running online marketing campaigns can tell you that conversion testing is important, especially when fine tuning landing page content. However, there is a far more valuable use to conversion testing: finding out what works relatively better than your stock page content for natural results, and finding those answers quickly using pay-per-click. One hotly debated element of site tuning is actionable page copy and interactivity. Think the text on your buttons, form fields, shopping cart, and post-sales communication.

The only reason I endorsed the Microsoft takeover of Yahoo was because after thinking about the deal from an online advertising perspective, it would setup a nice healthy rivalry between two technology giants.  With recent Hitwise numbers indicating Google dominating over two thirds of the US search share, it is somewhat disheartening that rumors are flying around about Yahoo in testing phases with outsourcing pay-per-click to Google Adwords.  Now, I like Google a lot, but I also like fair competition and I think the markets do too.

It’s amazing what an online behemoth like Google can do in only 6 short months.  After all, it was only 6 months ago that I first reported Content Network placements becoming more and more unstable, a server side switch for Adwords advertisers to turn off parked domain ads, and the mysterious “clicks greater than impressions” reporting.  Google has seriously cleaned up their Content Network act, but history tends to repeat itself.

Is nothing sacred?  As an online marketer, I have little choice to disable spam filtering on my e-mail account, because more often than not, important e-mails that are filtered automatically go unanswered for weeks.  Because of this exposure, I’m extremely aware of the phishing scams that get introduced, and this latest phishing scam made me do a double take.

Oh Google, what will you think of next? “Search Tomorrow’s Web Today”

Google announced early today that they’ve started a joint program with Virgin to colonize Mars.  Virgin, the brainchild of Sir Richard Branson, has in recent years rocketed to the forefront of space travel and exploration - making inner atmosphere space travel a possibility.  Go here for more information on project Virgle.

In my sole post last week, I mentioned how you might get into searchers heads by finding and understanding personas for your ad text, landing pages, and conversion stream.  This week, I’m going to focus on how search marketers can setup matrices to test and fine tune specific aspects of their ad text to maximize clicks to landing pages.  Fine tuning click through rate is probably the easiest thing you can do to help conversion, here’s why…

The concept of using customer personas isn’t new in marketing, but it can be a valuable exercise in finding the right ad text that either compels or pre-qualifies search users to click.  Depending on your advertising goals, you may want to consider several unique personas prior to even committing ad texts to a real time test.