As you can see from the below chart prepared by MarketingSherpa sharing email content via social networks really does have benefits. In a recent survey to a sample of 1400, 80% agreed there were two clear reasons to encourage email subscribers to share your email content.

The clear winners for sharing emails through social networks were

1)  extending the reach of the email content

and

2) increasing your brand reputation and awareness.

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We have heard so many times that small changes can have a big impact on your bottom line. Well this is also the case with A/B Tests, because you can test different scenarios online and see which tests perform better.

A/B Testing Explained

A/B Testing involves testing two scenarios against each other in it’s most simplest form. In more advanced forms you could use multi-variate testing for more than two tests. So lets provide some examples to understand the power of A/B testing.

Some examples of where you may want to try out A/B testing is in your email, on your website and landing pages.

a) Email A/B testing could involve sending two emails with two different subject lines to half of your newsletter list. Just to see which subject lines performs better and generates more opens and clicks.

b) Website A/B testing could involve displaying one offer on your home page to some of your visitors and another offer to other visitors. Put another way, half of your visitors would see either offer 1 or offer 2.

The key takeaway from A/B Test Splits is making sure you maintain a controlled test to ensure what you are testing is really the two variables. Testing on different days of the week, or different times of the day can have an impact on your end results. And it may have nothing to do with the variables you are testing in the A/B test. Otherwise you could misread the test results and come to the wrong conclusions since the test was changed because of other factors.

What do you try and test?

You really need to decide what you want to test and try to keep it simple at first. Creating two offers or two emails can seem like doing more work at first. But if you don’t test you may not know what you are missing out on. Which could include higher clicks, more orders,  be more work upfront but can also have a big impact even for small changes.

What colors you choose and where you put your call to action buttons makes a difference in getting noticed.

For ideas on where you might get the best improvements look at what others are doing.

Online Resource for learning about A/B results – ABTests.com

ABTests.com is a great place to learn and share what A/B testing has done for others.  ABTests is providing an online directory highlighting success stories using A/B Testing.
A recent such case study highlights a Driving School that was able to achieve a 15% improvement on their home page.

To perform the home page testing they used Google’s Web Optimizer which is a free tool that you can use on your own website.

Big Takeaway

Increasing the visual weight of the primary call-to-action improved conversion.

Read the details

More Resources:

A/B Testing – Wikipedia

ABCs of A/B Testing from Google

Photo Credit: mil8 on Flickr

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Re-branding your company or launching a new product can sometimes be detrimental to a company, if chosen incorrectly.  It may cause a negative outlook on the new product or company name. Before making this big step, you may want to consider browsing for brand ideas on BrandBucket.com

As you probably know finding a premium short domain name is hard to do. Mostly because a lot of domain names have already been registered. So what BrandBucket is trying to do is create a directory of brands that are available to use which also include the necessary domain name. And they have also added eye-catching  logos beside each brand to help you visualize what your new brand might look like.

You could pay a lot for a professional branding company to suggest suitable new company or product names. Service fees typically range from $10,000-50,000 and above for help in re-branding your business.  So considering the value of what BrandBucket is providing it is certainly a viable alternative. Using BrandBucket, the pricing starts out at $495 and goes up from there.  With an easy to search directory, choosing a new brand is quick and efficient. You can search by price range, or by category such as a 4-letter brand or for a category like sports.

Also available are helpful tools to both find a logo designer, and how to measure the value of your new domain name/brand. Check out their tools page for helpful domain evaluators. Keep in mind that a brand should be both short and memorable, as well as easy to spell if you want to be found online.

If you look in their directory of more than 500 brand and domain names, you can also contact them for help with your branding project. Something as important as your company name deserves seeking help and feedback to make sure you arrive at the best choice in the end. You may want to contact BrandBucket directly for your next branding project.

Examples:

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• Brand Recognition and do you have any?

All of your marketing efforts may be wasted if the call to action is not obvious. On your website, and landing pages call to action buttons are key to your marketing success.

1. Choose your words with care

We are talking about action buttons. So you should use verbs to indicate buttons are actions to take. Examples include “Download”, “Order Now”,”Buy Now”,etc.

What is your user trying to do? If you are used to hearing your customers say “give me a quote”, your call to action would be? “Request Quote”, for that type of request. Using this type of thought pattern will help you to create effective call to action buttons. Use the same words your customers use, and not industry terms or wording that is overkill. Simple is better.

2. Emphasis (color, size and positioning)

Make sure you emphasize the action items. What is it that you want your customer do on your website or order page. It goes without saying but don’t make me think about what I need to do. You want your action buttons to be big, and use high contrast to stand out. Some readers just scan pages and you want them to zero in on the call to action.

All three points should really be separate topics.

a) Which colors you use will have a dramatic effect even if the wording and positioning are the same. Some people have emotional responses to color like red or black. And color can help cut through the clutter.

b) Size will help to stand out too. If you create a large button it will be easy to see. Even if you are not reading the visual queues, and written instructions on the page.

c) Positioning the action button on the bottom left can help. Remember people read from left to right. Of course if you want you can also move the button to the right of the marketing text and keep it surrounded by a white background.

3) Too many Action Buttons

If you have one or two action buttons that is plenty. Keep your landing page simple with as few distractions as possible. You may have noticed when clicking on a search engine ad that you are directed to a landing page and not a company’s website. This is because in order to make sure you get the desired action you need to focus on leading the reader to the next step.

Real Examples:

PBWorks.com

Things

For more information on Landing Page marketing we have an earlier post titled:

Effective Web Persuasion for Landing Page Conversion

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How do you know if you have Brand Recognition?

Do you customers talk about your product or company name without being asked? If so you have brand recognition. It is really about sticking out in your buyers mind. Such as when you think of what car you are going to buy. Which vehicles stand out, or which ones are you drawn to first.

Ideally you are trying to achieve brand loyalty but you can actually have positive or negative brand recognition. And it can change over time. So if your business does something for the community you will be shown in a positive way. However if attract some press attention due to poor customer service or refund policy that earlier positivity toward your brand can fade.

How to focus on your branding

Branding starts from thinking of your brand experience and how you want people to feel about your company and offering. You also want some name recognition whether that be in your local community or online. So in order to focus on your brand remember to keep thinking of how you might be evaluated by your peers, customers, prospects, etc. If your next best customer walked into your store today would you treat them any differently. You probably couldn’t have predicted that person would later become your best customer when you first met them. Branding is developed over time to associate a premium product or service with your company name. Branding is also not something you can fake. If you are making claims about using the freshest ingredients and you are not, your customers will know.

The Levels of Brand Recognition

1. Brand Rejection
   - is when you have a negative reaction to your brand. Your brand is recognized but in a negative way. And consumers will avoid your brand.
2. Brand non-recognition
   - is when your brand is too new or has yet to be established (known for something)
3. Brand Recognition
   - is when your brand is recognized. You are likely on the right track at this point. When making purchases consumers go with what they know, trust and prefer over a new brand they have never heard about before.
4. Brand Preference
   - is when your brand connects with your buyer. And when given a choice they will prefer to stick with your brand/company/product.
5. Brand Loyalty
   - is when there is a strong connection with your buyer. To the point where a few sour experiences will not make them jump ship and go with your competitors product. At this level your buyer feels comfortable and they are getting something of value that can not be easily replaced.

So after reading through this, do you have any Brand Recognition? Now you know which level you are at with your business.

Photo courtesy of: http://www.flickr.com/photos/everydaylifemodern

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HubSpot just released a new study confirming that if Small Businesses have their own blog. Then their marketing efforts achieve better results.

We have often discussed the benefits of online blogging to keep fresh content on your website and an engaged customer base. And this most recent study confirms yet again how important blogging can be to your bottom line.

Key findings of the study concluded the average company that blogs has:

• 55% more website visitors
• 97% more inbound links (links to your website)
• 434% more indexed pages (Indexed pages appear in search engines)

Read the full study results

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Using coupons can be very effective in a down economy. Remember an earlier post titled,  Coupons can be used to accelerate sales in down economy and in fact it is one of our most popular posts too.

But how often have you printed a bunch of coupons for your promotion and been left with extras when the promotion was about to start? Or worse when the promotion has ended?
Did you print too many? More likely you did not have a way to distribute the coupons for maximum effectiveness.

In today’s post I wanted to describe a few ideas around how to get your coupons to go viral.

• Display coupon offers in other Locations
  If you have multiple locations is the promotion you are running going to be for all stores, or only specific stores on certain days.
• Talk to local merchants on your street or block about promoting you
  Another way to get word of mouth marketing is to distribute coupons to other vendors. This week I was buying take out Chinese food at our local restaurant, and while I was waiting I noticed a coupon sitting on the counter for free bowling. The coupon was certainly inviting since I was just waiting around for the food order to be ready. And two I had not hear of the new bowling location in my area.
• Re-purpose the same offer on your website, or in your email newsletter
  Get the word out online or by email, with a forward to a friend option could help. Make it easy to forward the email version of the coupon to others, meaning that you may not want to personalize each coupon code for instance.
• Twitter or Facebook
  A lot of companies are encouraging sign ups by promoting incentives. For example, this offer is only available to our fans or followers.
  
• Encourage sharing to get the word out
  Bring a friend with you when you redeem this coupon and you eat free. That type of thing. Or require a certain level of participants such as a group or 3 or more.
• When giving out the coupons give out several to the same people
  Having extra coupons people will try to share the discount or offer with their friends. On several occasions this has happened to me while waiting in line and the person in front of me used up the maximum coupons they could. And gave the extras to the guy standing behind him.
• Send an SMS to mobile phones of your customers
  Perhaps this strategy is newer and not everyone is trying it yet. But hey there is opportunity there then right.

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Many businesses have started creating their own Facebook Fan pages to communicate with their customers and fans. However not everyone knows that you can also use your Fan page to collect valuable email addresses to contact your fans directly in their inbox. Adding a newsletter sign up form to your Facebook fan page only takes a few minutes but can be very effective in growing your email list.

If you are looking for more information on why your business needs a Facebook Page you can read our earlier post: Do you need a Facebook Fan Page for your business?

What you will need:

1) Facebook Fan Page
2) Email sign up form (Many online email marketing tools offer a built-in tool to create an HTML sign up form for your website)

How to add a Newsletter Signup form to your Facebook fan page

Step 1: Login to Facebook and go to your Fan Page
Step 2: Click on the “Ads and Pages” link in the footer toolbar of your Fan page
Step 3: Click on the “Pages” link, and then on “View Page”

Step 4: Add the “Static FBML” application to your page by click on the “Application” icon in the footer toolbar.
Then select “Browse More Applications”

Step 5: Search for “Static FBML“, and click on the icon for the application.
Looks like this:

Step 6: Click on the “Add to my Page”

Step 6: Configure your newly added application, by clicking on “Edit Page” on the left menu.

Step 7: Put your mouse cursor over the blue pencil icon, and click on “edit” under the Admin Options.

Step 8: Paste the HTML code for your sign up form. This was the second item from our what you will need checklist above.
On the Edit FBML screen paste your sign up for source code and then click “Save Changes“.

Step 9: Your Facebook Fan page should not contain a new Newsletter tab which when clicked will display your email sign up form.
If you do not see the Newsletter Signup form option click on the ‘+’ sign to see more tabs. Your page probably looks something like this:

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The best way to to sell is to create demand. Creating scarcity helps your business to create just such a demand. What we are talking about is creating a demand for a product or service, with familiar examples such as a sales promotion that says “sorry, no rain checks”. If the offer is big enough you can also generate some buzz and good public relations exposure. Which will lead to even more word of mouth marketing.

Typical Examples:

Why does this technique Work?

By creating a short or limited supply you are forcing consumers to make a decision. If they wait they will lose out it is as simple as that.
Think about this for a moment, what would you do? If you received a flyer in the mail about an invitation only event, or an offer that was only available to the first 30 shoppers. Would you be the first person in line to take advantage of that offer?

Recent Example

Probably the most recognizable example is the Apple iPhone. There was a huge demand for people wanting to buy them, but until a year after it’s launch the iPhone was not available in countries outside of the United States. Further you had to sign a contract with AT&T to activate one because of an exclusive contract. Then when the next generation was released only certain quantities were sent out to specific Apple stores. Again because of limited quantities they sold out in the first few hours of availability. And of course there were lines of people waiting to be first to buy them.

Share your Stories

What has worked in your business? Please leave a comment sharing your story.

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Ok, the first time I heard about the Google Wonder Wheel, my initial reaction was the “Wonder what?”. But then I had one of those “Aha!” moments and realized how powerful it could be to use for brainstorming.  I will walk you through how to use the Google wonder wheel. So lets start with an example close to home, I recently needed ideas for what to add to this blog that were relevant to our readers. So my first step was to log in to our web analytics system and find out what keywords our visitors were using to find our website content.

The keyword phrase that stuck out the most was “i need help marketing” which is perfect for our website content because our web address (domain name) is NeedHelpMarketing.com. So naturally it is a perfect keyword phrase to focus on, but the real question I wanted to find out is what you, our readers, want help marketing about. Please do leave comments for marketing questions and future topic ideas.

• First Step: Go to Google and enter your search phrase

• Second Step: Click the “Show Options” option on the top left side of the results

• Third Step: Next click on the “Wonder Wheel” option on the left hand column

You should now see the search results represented in a diagram similar to this:

Google Wonder Wheel Example

In looking at the above example you can see more refined and more specific topics centered around our initial search phrase “i need help marketing” and by clicking any of these links you can see further results and drill into these topics for more information.

Key topics for future topics should concentrate on:

• Internet Marketing Help
• SEO Marketing
• Affiliate Marketing
• Marketing Graphic Design
• Marketing Help Coaches

Google Wonder Wheel – Related Topic Results

By taking this a step further and clicking on one of the results you can see more specific related topics of interest (shown above). The power of the wonder wheel is that it is such a natural way to brainstorm and very much mimics using pen and paper or a white board. Think about when you are brainstorming in a team and are making groups of ideas and drawing lines linking similar topics. In a very visual fashion Google is helping you to brainstorm using their vast knowledge of years of analyzing what people search for and how topics are connected together. From a brainstorming and market research perspective that knowledge is priceless.

Very specific related topics and ideas for future website content:

• Marketing with Postcards
• Marketing with Meaning
• Marketing with Color
• Marketing with Facebook
• Marketing with Twitter
• Marketing with Care
• Marketing with Flair

For another technique that is just as powerful take a look at Idea Generation using Word Clouds

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