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Internet Marketing Optimization From Split Testing, Page Optimization and Monitoring

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Internet Marketing Optimization isn’t a simple process, users can’t simply pick and choose a smart tag line, throw it up on Google Adwords and other publisher platforms and hope for the best, instead it requires split testing of ads, clearly targeted website pages that draw in a users attention and the constant monitoring of old ads and the ads of competitors. If you plan to optimize your internet marketing there are a few simple steps you can take to get you started, where you go from there is solely based on how your site or product performs.

Split Testing Ads

If internet businesses could become successful by throwing up a single ad and immediately reaping the benefits we would all be millionaires, the truth is finding the right ads for your pages and product can be tricky. Users should begin their internet campaigns with the expectation that campaigns may lose money before gaining. Start by creating several ads with different wording, for example you might try “Samsung Nexus S Free With Activation” if you offer cell phones and then try “Free Smartphone From Samsung” or “Free Samsung Android Phone Activations.” During each campaign write down the number of people who visited your site based on the number of impressions you served through your publisher platform, then determine how many people accepted the offer. The first number (site visitors based on page impressions) is your CTR (Click-Through-Rate), while the number of  buyers are your conversion rate (CTR / buyers). After a day of testing during different times figure out which ad works the best. After you choose a winner split test it against yet another ad until you are satisfied that you have the best converting ad for your website. Through split testing you can determine which ads are working during different times and then optimize your ad display times by ad to gain the biggest audience for the lowest future cost.

Here’s a simple chart demonstrating split testing:

Split Testing

Website Page Optimization

You can split test for weeks and still fail at advertising, however you can avoid the risk of failure by optimizing your website’s pages for better conversion. Start your optimization by installing a heat map on your website. A heat map is a piece of software which shows the “hottest” places on your website in terms of visitor click through rates. For example, users may click the top right ad on your page more than anywhere else, by understanding where a users eyes are traveling and their fingers are clicking you can place your best converting pages and products in those section.

Here’s an example of a Google.com heatmap, the red areas are where users tend to click the most:

Google Heat Map

Not only should you understand where users are clicking, you should also optimize your marketing materials for users. Write your pages for people and not for search engines. Engage your readers with exciting information and make sure they understand the importance of your products or information.

Monitoring Results Against Competing Pages

Creating checks and balances for your internet marketing optimization plan is just as important as setting marketing plans into motion. Split testing may provide results in the short term however trends change, users move on and it’s up to you to ensure they return. Once you have optimized your web pages and set your ads to timed intervals it’s important to continually monitor the success of those campaigns. If a certain page or product stops converting you may want to check your pages keywords or exact product names against competitor pages, are they using different keywords? Perhaps they are highlighting parts of the product or story you missed? If you’re using Adwords, Yahoo Ads or other ad platforms you may also want to check if your competitors are using ads that appear more engaging or offer a different angle.

Internet Marketing Optimization is not an exact science, even the best split testers and optimization firms are constantly tweaking their campaigns and testing new marketing practices, however by monitoring your ads and product pages and monitoring your competitors you can determine new and exciting ways to pitch your products to potential customers.

 

How Important Is Brand When Launching A Web App?

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Think Google. Think Twitter. Think Microsoft. Think WordPress. These are either established brands in their respective industries, or hip, new startups that have made the grade. These are already mainstream, with instantly recognizable brands and names. If you’re just starting out with a web app or service of your own, don’t you want to achieve this status someday?

How important is the role that a brand name plays in the success of an online venture?

And if brand is so important, is it also very important to consider the domain name early on in the planning stages? All of the brands I’ve cited above have their own .com names. But what if you have an excellent brand idea, but realize later on that the domain name is no longer available–at least on the popular .com and .net TLDs?

I’m in the process of planning and launching several new online ventures. And among the first considerations I’m working on are the brands and domain names. For this reason, I’ve already purchased several domains that I’ll possibly use. I’m also thinking of using existing domains I own, which I could just turn into a brand, like what I did with WorkSmartr.com, which I turned from a productivity blog into a site for outsourcing online work.

Here are a few things I think are important when choosing a brand.

A name that sticks. As I see it, brand is an essential aspect of business building. People are better able to remember something that they recognize easily. People are more likely to use a product with a cool sounding name. If your brand has made it into pop culture, then even better. See how you can “google” a word or “tweet” an update.

A name that’s descriptive. Another consideration is whether your brand is descriptive. This makes it easier for people to search for you. If you want a blogging platform, maybe the first thing you see on searches is “blogger.” Or how about Twitter Buttons? The domain name is usually one of the things that can help search optimization, so why not get one which already has the keywords you need?

A play on words. Web 2.0-ish names have been popular and everyone had been jumping on the bandwagon. Flickr started it, and a host of others followed (I must admit I do have my own domains that use a similar variation).

A name that’s flexible. Sometimes, getting the exact domain name may not necessarily be an absolute requirement. Think Dropbox. It’s a popular application, but they’ve had to be content with getdropbox.com. How about Backpack, which uses backpackit.com? It’s not the end of the world if you don’t get the domain name you want. For instance, I realize a business called “Racoma” owns the domain racoma.com, which incidentally stands for my surname. So I have had to use racoma.net and racoma.com.ph instead. What’s great is that because I’m more active online, my sites running on the .net and other domain extensions are more searchable than those that don’t belong to me.

Remember that a brand should stick in your target audience’s mind. If it doesn’t, and if your venture doesn’t succeed as planned, then it’s probably time to move on to the next one. I’ve seen it happen before. It’s not so difficult to rebrand, relaunch and redesign in today’s online environment.

No matter what, just make sure your name doesn’t fall under that “stupidly thought of” brand or domain, just like these “unintentionally worst” company URLs. That would be a laugh.

Twitter and the Numbers Game

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TwitterOne of the trending topics on Twitter lately is the #moonfruit hashtag. If you’re aware of Moonfruit, you probably know about their promotion to give away 10 MacBook Pros to random people who mention the hashtag–one each per 24-hour period. So far a lot of people have participated, and the topic has been among the top mentioned. Who wouldn’t want a free MacBook Pro, after all? I, myself, joined in.

But apparently, promotional campaigns like this don’t sit very well with the folks from Twitter, who seem to have taken off the #moonfruit hashtag from the trending topics list, even if it’s still, to this time, a popular mention on Twitter. Hashtags.org says it’s about three times as popular as other trends this week, even surpassing other, probably more relevant, topics like the Iran Election and whatnot.

Twitter and marketing

What does this have to say about marketing on Twitter? Is Twitter’s marketing potential diluted by the fact that the powers-that-be seem to frown upon the idea of the system being gamed? Is Twitter’s marketing potential affected by the negative image put forward by aggressive affiliate marketers (or even spammers)?

I often tell people that I think the best way to market on social media is by really connecting and interacting. In a way, the people behind Moonfruit have connected and engaged their audience, and with valuable incentives to boot. Perhaps the only mistake here was that their popularity took the better of them, and they were viewed as having gamed the system. That is, they have taken advantage of the numbers on a system where numbers play a big part in saying what’s important or not.

Twitocracy?

What’s wrong with this concept of “Twitocracy,” then? Maybe it’s the fact that any numbers system can be gamed. Think of Digg. Think of Google. In the olden days, people used to be able to easily game these two, and other similar services. For instance, Digg is quick to update and refine its algorithm for pushing articles up to front page. But in its early stages, just a hundred or so votes within a given period of time will be enough to frontpage an article. The administrators probably thought marketers would easily take advantage of these to drive traffic to their sites.

Google is another example. While their algorithm for PageRank and search engine results is probably more secret than the formula for Coca Cola, the search engine optimization industry is still thriving. Some Google insiders openly speak against SEO, highly favoring what is thought of as a more natural or organic way of optimizing webpages, which is by creating good content and a good information structure.

Twitter is, undoubtedly, a simpler and more straightforward platform than the two above-mentioned online services. You post “tweets” or updates. You get a network of friends and followers. Popular keywords get trended. But it doesn’t stop there. The wide array of third-party applications and services that build upon Twitter take advantage of the fact that the service is such a rich ocean of data that the possibilities for mining these are practically endless.

And then there’s the issue of things being a numbers game. He who gets the most followers would be considered god-like. The keyword or topic that gets discussed by the biggest number of people deserve a mention in the veritable trending topics list, whether it’s an important world event or simply a trivial word or phrase. Or worse–an explicit or obscene word. And if abused, this could render the entire thing useless, or at the very least less usable.

It’s like saying open comments are good. But when you get deluged by spam, you start moderating.

So does Twitter have marketing potential, even with the problems posed by playing the numbers game? Yes–and as I earlier mentioned, it’s about connecting and engaging your audience. And this is among the things I’ll be discussing on this new weekly Tuesday Tactics column.

image credit: flickr/mfilej

Friday Focus 05/29/09: Huge Type

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Typography on the Web is growing bigger and bigger—literally! That is this week’s theme on Friday Focus.

Designs of the Week

StackOverflow DevDays

I like the boxy look. Particularly, that there are all these boxes of content in strong contrasting colors all on top of each other on a fixed background. Which happens to be a CSS parallax effect, by the way.

For a Beautiful Web

Huge type can be elegant too. It’s interesting how the inner pages of this site are white on dark gray, while the frontpage is brown on light brown (with a bit of maroon in the footer). And CSS text shadows all over!

Ryan Keiser

I love how bright and bold this site is, apart from the type treatments. It’s very much a study in the colors C, M, Y, K. And this designers loves colors so much he’s got a daily color inspiration (including a downloadable color palette file) section as footer. Good idea!

Social Media Weekly

Design – When the Design Doesn’t Match the Messaging

Programming – JavaScript Debugging Techniques in IE 6

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