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Simple and ridiculously effective A/B testing strategies
What is A/B testing?
A/B testing is when you compare two versions of a webpage to see which one performs better so you can increase the amount of conversions and sales on your website. It is also commonly referred to as A/B split testing.
Benefits of A/B testing for building authority
- Use facts and statistics to determine how to improve your website
- Get user feedback instead of just internal or marketing teams opinions
- Can often be much more profitable than just focusing on driving traffic
- Ensure your expert positioning statements are resonating with customers
- More email subscribers, leads and sales means more authority
Effective strategies for A/B testing must eventually incorporate a range of variables and considerations, but don’t have to be as complicated as you might think. Testing tools, methodologies, strategies, and hypothesis all play a part in the best success stories. There is a time and place for certain A/B testing tools, tactics and for testing even simple elements on a page.
Conversion rate optimization case study
In one of our conversion optimization client examples, we needed to increase the amount of conversions for an IT support lead generation campaign. The landing pages we built cost us about $4 per lead using Unbounce, a popular hosted platform for landing page testing.
After A/B testing our landing pages, we noticed a considerable improvement to our conversion rates, simply by making a few changes to our headlines. Simple changes where we were more specific as to what our services would do for the customer, coupled with A/B testing of our paid search ad copy, led to dropping our cost per lead from $4 per lead, to around $2 per lead. This company is now projected to save an upwards of half a million in paid search spend over the next 12 months, and that’s with less than 30 days of experimentation.
Simple headline changes with a value proposition = big wins
The previous headline by their copywriter must have been simply “too cute”, or just not frank enough. So our advice to others would be to stay away from overly cute headlines, technically complex, or otherwise confusing to your website visitors. When they land on your pages, they should not have “to think” AT ALL. They should get what you do, why they should be there, and how you will help them (at least in the case of a service oriented business). On the landing pages, we state very clearly the “Value Proposition” of services offered. We don’t make our visitors search for the key points of what is offered.
A/B testing calls to action on web forms and buttons
Along with testing out our headlines, we also tested various calls to action on web forms. In this case, testing those elements simply affirmed to us that we had the right wording on our web form buttons. So again, the key is in picking the right things to test, and also, making sure you have the basics down.
Back to the basics
A/B testing while missing key elements on your site will only get you so far. Is your contact information easily available? Are testimonials easily found? Does your site load in a reasonable time frame? Is there a phone number and address? You can A/B test headlines and colors until you’re blue in the face, but if you’re missing a key element or consumers feel they cannot trust your company, they will leave.
It doesn’t matter then if your web form button is orange, red, or blue if they don’t even get that far. So before starting your A/B testing, first read up on some of the best practices for optimizing your site. There is tremendous consensus on many key elements that should be in place, and empirical evidence that backs those best practices up. Just keep in mind that only scientific A/B testing will prove if those “best practices” work with your particular audience.
A/B testing pay per click ads
As for our PPC ads, being aggressive in describing the benefits of our services proved to help boost conversions at the top of the funnel. Surprisingly, small changes to the copy in our PPC ads led to substantial improvements in various campaigns as well. Again, we make sure we clearly state the benefits of the service, along with a clear call to action in the PPC copy itself. This is particularly important if you rely heavily on PPC for lead generation.
These two tactics, employed together and implemented within less than 30 days, are projected to save a ton of PPC ad costs and open a tremendous level of cash flow for this company. Months of development and high budget websites were not needed in this case; simply a few small changes to existing pages and PPC copy did the trick.
Challenges and tracking results
The challenges that we’ve faced in the past relate mainly to tracking and bottlenecks. Making sure you have actual backend control of your pages, the buy in from the HIPPO (highest paid person’s opinion), and then are able to get the right analytics in place to track conversion results, can all be common hang ups. When having to “sell” the concept of A/B testing to someone internally or externally, it’s best to have empirical evidence and projections as to the benefits of the optimization process. For example, how will boosting conversions by another 25% potentially impact revenue? If you are a marketing manager trying to “sell” the idea of A/B testing landing pages, you might show the potential improvement in advertising ROI as a result of boosting lead conversion rates by another 40%.
This would be one way of getting the HIPPO’s buy in. As far as analytics, that is more of a technical issue. Certain websites simply have hang-ups that make tracking via certain tools difficult to impossible. This is one example of where your testing tools may need to vary based on the flexibility in tracking and getting the numbers you require to make good A/B testing decisions.
A/B testing tools and software
Finally, conversion optimization tools can be a lot of fun and lead to big wins. The following are some of our favorites:
- Optimizely: For advanced A/B testing
- Unbounce: For quick landing pages that anyone can edit and test
- Clicktale and Crazy Egg: To diagnose conversion “leaks”
- Usertesting.com: Gives you user feedback in the form of fifteen minute video site reviews
- Feedback Army: Quick test reviews of your site issued from 10 or more users
However, the best tool of all is your creativity, teamwork and persistence!
Conclusion
A/B testing and conversion rate optimization is an absolute must for building authority. At the end of the day if you drive a lot of people to your website and they aren’t converting, then you are more like a gerbil on a treadmill than a trusted advisor generating leads.
Do you have any favorite A/B testing tools to add to the list?
How to become a successful blogger by writing your ass off
Let me start by saying I have been really frustrated at times trying to get blogs off the ground. Google Penguin really did a number on one of my blogs and it seem like nothing I could do could lift it out of the doldrums.
So if you are wondering how to become a successful blogger and you are stuck, make sure to check and see if you have been hurt by Google Panda or Penguin algorithm updates. No amount of fresh new content can get you out of purgatory if there is a giant lead weight pulling your ship backwards into the waves.
Assuming you have a site that is not being held back by poor quality back links or duplicate content and it is just not getting the level of traffic you want, one of the ways to jumpstart your activities is to write 30 posts in 30 days. That is how I kicked off one of my blogs called the Legal Marketing Review. It also took off really quickly for some great industry specific keywords because it was a tighter niche than general Internet marketing.
This new blog, while it is just getting off the ground, quickly became top five in Google for our main general keyword Authority Marketing. So if you are in a real funk and you are able to create a new domain name and drill down your niche a little bit more, you just might want to give that a try for some new inspiration.
My 500 Words
After seeing a goinswriter.com post on Deceber 10th, about a challenge called My 500 Words, I was really inspired to do another blogging binge. This time, 31 posts in 31 days.
Here are the rules to become a successful blogger using this challenge:
- Write a 500 word blog post or any type of content per day, for 31 days
- Writing more is okay but you can’t write less than 500 words
- Don’t get hung up on editing and simply write freely
- Pick up where you left off if you miss a day and don’t make up for lost days
- Encourage, don’t criticize (unless explicitly invited to do so)
- Email doesn’t count
- None of this cost anything, other than waking up a little earlier
Becoming a blogger will help you become a better writer
I’ve been blogging for many years but ironically because I wrote a book and was so focused on that for more than three years, my blogging suffered. If I could go back in time, I would blog my book. By writing a table of contents and outlining exactly what you intend to write and then matching keywords to each of the pages or sections, you can then write blog posts that will form an eventual manuscript that is also Google friendly.
Writing a book is a powerful Authority Marketing tactic. One of the best. But I can’t believe how much of a dumbass I was to have rotted away in a cave for years writing my book without using keyword research. For goodness’ sake, I was writing a book about search engine optimization and keyword research and how to get more traffic and yet I overly transfixed on having a printed book. Sure, I went back later and put some keywords into the headings when I turned my book into blog posts but it’s harder to do this in reverse.
Blogging your book should not be a novelty and in fact it should be the only way to write a book in the future. If you’re going to become a successful author, you are going to have to eventually market your book. That means you need a platform and an email list of blog subscribers. Becoming a successful blogger and getting feedback on your work as you go through comments and social shares is one of the best ways to vet your content but also one of the best ways to kill two birds with one stone.
Just make sure that you don’t let anything get in your way. I am just heading off to go snowboarding and I am late to go meet my girlfriend but I had to get this post out. At least while we sit in traffic, I have a sense of completion.
If you are wondering if you really have what it takes to be a writer, then take the My 500 words blog challenge immediately. Are you scared? Inspired? How bad do you want to become a writer and an authority?
3 simple tools to build authority and links
In the online world where Google reigns supreme, there is no way to build authority without backlinks. They are simply the lifeblood of search engine optimization but without great content you won’t get great links. It’s really pretty simple and yet people get very confused about link building and think it’s some kind of weird medieval tactic to be shunned and talked about in the back room.
Link building is good. Really good. Why? Not just because Google’s algorithms – starting back in 1997 before they were even called Google – dictate that they are important but because they show that you are one of the cool kids. One of the important sites. An authority.
This post is inspired by me having just written an email to one of my SEO and authority marketing clients. I meant to send a five-minute email but as I often do, I went and did research to back up why content-based link building is going to be critical in getting him out of his Google Penguin penalty. Below are a few of the tools I used to make my point.
How to build backlinks for SEO and authority
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BuzzSumo
Lately I have been using a tool called BuzzSumo to find content that is heavily shared. Just pop in a keyword that you care about and it will show you top content on the web and how much it has been shared. In the image below I put in the words “link building authority”. Aha, I really like the first result that talks about the power of being an author and having great content for link building. I think I will rewrite that piece with my own perspective later and share my post with the people that shared it.
Here is another example and the one I showed to my client using the keyword mesothelioma.
His website is about asbestos testing and mold testing so we need to find some content that is popular or of great concern to his potential customers and topically related communities.
The piece highlighted above is from the UK but has about 3,500 shares and is worth potentially rewriting as a link bait. I also need to know if it has a lot of links to it, so I move on to the next link building tool: ahrefs.com.
In order to judge how important that page is, you can pop in the exact link – not just the domain name and see how many people are pointing at it.
This particular page has 38 links: (make sure to click the referring domains left navigation item)
After looking at some of the links, I realize that while this is a really good article and it does have quality links to it, it doesn’t have enough to stop me for looking for something better. On to the next tool.
This link building tool lets you see how many people link to the top pages listed in Google and what their domain authority is. Domain authority is essentially how important their website is, largely based on how many people link to them.
I then searched for “black mold health effects” in Google and look at how many people are linking to those pages that rank:
Now you can go back to Ahrefs and look at the quality and types of links that point to each of these pages. You can export the complete list of people linking to the high-ranking pages and email them to see if they would like to link to your newly created version of this type of content.
Looking at competitors links for top content
I should also note that I used Ahrefs to look at the top pages indexed by several of his competitors to see if they had any great content that was heavily linked to. Since they were largely local mold testing sites, what I found was not inspiring at all and also included a lot of old-school black hat links.
Conclusion
It is really important to look at the most authoritative sites ranking in the top search results for things that are interesting about your industry. Link building doesn’t have to be hard if you are creative. In fact, it can be really fun if you are willing to think beyond exactly what you are trying to sell and at what people will find interesting and likely to share.
The more you build high quality content, a blog that is worth visiting based on thought leaders and authors in your company and not just for SEO, the more likely people will want to link to you. The rich get richer and so it is with link building and authority.
In addition, the more links you have, the more easily you will rank for various keywords. The more ranks you have, the more likely you are to get leads.
One of our recent link bait articles called 100 Fun Facts about Lobsters is now the third most visited page on our client’s website. It is also driving many thousands of visitors through an incredible amount of keywords that it is ranking for.
Once your site appears to be a high-quality resource, and is shared frequently, it becomes easier to convince people to link to you. After all, you’re an authority and not just some link building shmuck, trying to beg your way to the top.
How to build your email list using Facebook ads
Platform conference review series: Amy Porterfield’s tips on unpublished page posts.
Amy Porterfield is perhaps the foremost authority on Facebook, so when she says to focus on building your email list and not solely on getting likes, comments, and shares, it comes from a true place of authority.
Like Michael Hyatt, she said, “The entire energy of your business is tied to the size and quality of your email marketing list.” Without it, every day is a struggle, and yet getting your list on track doesn’t have to be that hard. Facebook ads, according to Amy, are one of the best ways to start.
3 steps to building your email list
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Create an irresistible offer
While fans equal community and social proof, the ultimate goal is to turn fans into leads, and prospects into customers. On Facebook, 99% of the time, Amy never sells anything. She leaves the selling to email marketing.
She suggests that whatever your offer is, make sure to align it with what your emails will be about.
Examples of irresistible offers or email sign-up magnets
Simple Green Smoothies 30-day free challenge:
Also check out my recent post with Michael Hyatt’s list of irresistible email offers.
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Create an opt in landing page
Not only do you want to have a nice call to action graphic of what your e-book or offer looks like, but you should have a landing page with more information. Amy likes leadpages.net for creating amazing sales pages. I recently did a webinar from Lead Pages and I can’t wait to try it.
This is what a basic landing page looks like: Guide to Landing Page Copywriting
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Create a Facebook ad
Amy told a nice story about one of her $97 products and how she spent $7,000 on Facebook ads to make $35,605 in return. She recommends spending $10 per day as a test. Even if you just tried for a month, it will be a worthy test. Especially if you have a product to sell.
What type of Facebook ad should you create? Amy doesn’t use sidebar ads much and prefers unpublished page posts. An unpublished Page post will appear in the News Feed but not on your Page. This way you can create and test as many ads as you want, without annoying your main fans.
If you’re wondering how to create an unpublished page post ad, instructions are below:
You can link to your landing page from the ad. It’s a good idea to create powerful text that entices the reader by addressing something that might be a problem for them. You might say something like “Are you struggling with Facebook? Try my webinar.”
Using action words like “click” can be helpful. Interestingly, “learn more” is the least popular button and she finds that words like discover and watch get more attention. It is also important to say who the content is for – e.g. this webinar is for coaches and entrepreneurs. This creates a connection that makes people feel like it is just right for them.
Amy likes PNG images versus JPEG’s and suggest 1200 pixels by 627 pixels. She also likes Canva, which is a fun free tool for creating good-looking images. They even have a 1200 x 627 template.
Interestingly enough, paid clicks actually help your regular organic posts! Your score actually increases via paid.
3 places to potentially put your ad:
- Sidebar
- Desktop news feed
- Mobile news feed going to a mobile lead pages landing page
The mobile news feed often gives the best results. Just make sure your ad looks good on mobile devices.
Selecting targeting for your Facebook ads
Under interests, you can select things such as people who like Amy Porterfield’s page. Targeting other Facebook pages and the people who like them can generate highly targeted customers.
Play around with graph search and targeting.
Don’t underestimate the power of Facebook ads. Using paid ads is a simple way to not only increase activity, but also allow you to generate downloads of your offers and help you build your email list.
Email Marketing Tips and Tricks from Michael Hyatt
Platform conference review series: Email marketing
Michael Hyatt has over 176,000 email addresses that were driven through his blog and by top of the funnel calls to action. So when he gave his talk on email marketing, the audience – despite being surrounded by the glorious Colorado Mountains – was scribbling furiously to fill their notebooks.
Michael’s five tips to improve your email marketing
1. Select a service
The first thing you need to do is select an email service provider that you can rely on. There are a lot of email marketing tools like Constant Contact, Vertical Response, AWeber and many others. Here are two that Michael focused on:
- Mail Chimp
- Free when emailing the first 2000 subscribers on your list
- Over 400 design templates including ones that are mobile friendly
- Simple reports and analytics such as open rate and clicks, etc.
- Infusionsoft (Similar to HubSpot)
- Marketing automation and workflows based on actions
- Includes a shopping cart
- Robust developer network for customization
Set up an email marketing account
After you select a provider you will need to either upload a list or start from scratch and get people to sign up.
One of the big considerations for email marketers is whether or not you will segment your list into different categories. I have seen numerous email marketers do really well by sending emails, for example, about dog food specials, just to dog lovers. and Not sending the same email to your entire list, that would including cat lovers, That is a bit more advanced but that type of setup can be highly effective.
Michael has a main list that goes out to all of his subscribers, to keep it simple for the most part. So that is certainly a place to start.
He recommends at the very least, having the first name of all people that subscribe to your list, that way you can personalize each message. Otherwise the emails look pretty silly when they say “dear, ” and then the sentence starts…
If you try and ask for too many form fields you will likely reduce the amount of people that sign up for your list as well, so unless you are offering something of great value, start by just asking for their first name.
2. Install sign-up forms on your blog
Having an email magnet or irresistible offer such as an e-book, a checklist, or a list of your favorite tools in an organized PDF format is a fantastic way to get people to sign up for your list. If you don’t have a top of the funnel call to action like this yet, get started anyway and ask people to sign up with a basic subscribe form, but while you work on your offer. as soon as possible.
Below are a few places for an email marketing form and offer:
- Top right – in the sidebar – such as on Michaelhyatt.com
- About us page CTA: kriscarr.com
- End of blog post CTA: marieforleo.com
- Pop-up window (Michael recommends Optin Monster and a pop up on exit, not right off the bat. He doubled his conversion rate with this technique and I have done the same for my clients that are willing to experiment with this.)
Services Version goinswriter.com
Ecommerce version: golfsmith.com
- Feature box: diythemes.com
Once you have your sign-up form, it’s time to send out your email newsletter. Here’s how to get started.
Turn your blog posts into an email newsletter
If you are worried about having content for an email newsletter, rest assured that it is perfectly okay to use your blog content for this. There are a few people like Chris Brogan and Jeff Goins that use unique content for their email newsletters. That is certainly an amazing thing to do and gives an even stronger value proposition for your newsletter, but is not realistic for most people, including Michael Hyatt.
Michael then quoted Rev Run by saying: “If you are not consistent you’re nonexistent.”
So be consistent when blogging and sharing your blog content via your email newsletter – at the very least once a month.
3. Opt in magnet
Having an irresistible offer like an e-book, PDF of the tools you use or resources download is essential for building your list. Here’s how to create offers without breaking a sweat.
Mine existing content
Michael says that everything begins on his blog and then he repurposes it into other forms of content, like e-books and podcasts. Hit blog posts become the basis for deeper content. One of his early e-books called “How to create a personal life plan” was just compiled content with a few sentences of transitions in between each post.
In fact, he said that 80% of his book called Platform started as posts. Some short chapters are almost verbatim. The theory is that people will pay for convenience.
A few irresistible email offers that he mentioned were as follows:
- goinswriter.com Blog post series
- michaelhyatt.com Resource list
- themarketingagents.com 10 secrets to better conversions e-book
- chalenejohnson.com 30 day challenge trip sequence
- danpink.com To Sell is Human workbook
- eventualmillionaire.com 3 habits of millionaires
- tonyrobbins.com Audio session
- shetakesontheworld.com Free 14 day course
- amyporterfield.com Four-part video training:
The one above from Amy Porterfield is one of my favorites, possibly because she’s so cute/smart/spunky. Stay tuned for an upcoming platform review series on how Amy Porterfield builds email lists using social media.
Suggested copywriting books – courses
Michael also mentioned a few places to learn more about writing great copy to get more people to sign up for your email list.
- Ray Edwards book: Writing Riches
- David Garfinkel: Advertising headlines that make you rich (One of my favorites)
- Platform University also has a section on writing.
4. Solicit readers’ help
Michael asks people for help weekly on iTunes. You can even write a blog post about your email magnet and ask for feedback. He uses a lot of teasers in his copy without giving everything away that they would get in the download.
An amazing tool that I use for feedback is none other than feedbackarmy.com.
5. Attract more traffic
Michael shares his posts on social media in hopes that people will go back to his blog and subscribe. He also recommends sharing numerous times, especially using something like Twitter, were where people won’t necessarily see it the first time that you share it.
Having keywords in your post will of course make them pop up in Google, but that is not enough. and You need to share with people, and ideally influencers, that can have an impact on your traffic. Check out a tool like BuzzSumo to make this process easier.
Guest blogging at a high quality level was also recommended.
Paid ads can also be a great way to get more traffic. Facebook in particular can provide relatively cheap clicks.
One thing he didn’t mention, but that is absolutely essential, is getting high quality back links to your site. Guest blogging is one way to do that, but only if at a very high quality level because Google is very critical of this tactic. So creating “link bait” or an occasional piece of content that is truly outstanding can make your other content rank better because of the corresponding back links.
All of these tactics will increase unique visitors and therefore subscribers to your list.
The 5 email marketing tips and tricks we discussed were:
- Select an email service provider
- Install sign-up forms on your blog and site
- Create an opt in magnet or irresistible offer
- Solicit readers help
- Attract more traffic
Just remember to consistently create content and to send out your newsletter, or otherwise the likelihood of creating a large following / platform is slim to none. The benefits of having a large email list are just too great to let it slip through your fingers.
Please share your thoughts and additional tactics that I might’ve missed in the comments below.
