Using Testing & Analytics to Increase Lead Growth

Using Testing & Analytics to Increase Lead Growth

By Trevor Jones

Introduction

• About Me– Director of Marketing and Product

Development for GWI– Telecom marketer since 1997– USM Grad (Business) – Gorham resident, born in Bangor,

(BHS Class of ‘89)– Passions: technology, social

media, music, outdoors – @trevorjones71– linkedIn.com/in/trevordjones– Blog at: blog.gwi.net,

onemanmarketing.wordpress.com, maineoutdoorliving.blogspot.com

• About GWI– Maine based since 1994,

based in Biddeford– Internet access, phone

service, cloud computing for home and business

– Serving 60 communities statewide

– www.gwi.net– @gwimaine– Linkedin.com– http://youtube.com/gwimaine – http://facebook.com/GWIInc

Agenda

• The role and importance of goals• The website funnel• Stimulating traffic by optimizing for our

audience - How analytics can help• Increasing click through on offers by testing

calls-to-action• Increasing conversion by testing landing pages

Analytics are useless until you have a goal that defines success.

S.M.A.R.T. Goals

Your goals should be:• Specific• Measurable• Achievable• Relevant• Time-Bounded

Example

Generate 260 leads before the end of 2014.

The Website Funnel

• Increase traffic• Increase click-

through rates• Increase

conversion rates• Increase closing

ratio

To increase sales we can:

USING ANALYTICS TO OPTIMIZE FOR YOUR AUDIENCE

Traffic Generating Tactics are Changing

• Could be a whole presentation– SEO– PPC– Display advertising– Social media marketing– Offline methods

• The Future: Optimize for your audience, not search engines.– If you write good content your audience is looking for using the

language they use, keywords will take care of themselves– Social proof – Likes, shares, recommendations and reviews. “Likes

are the new links”– Content relevance and quality – Bounce rates, site usability,

conversion rates

How Analytics Can Help Optimize for Your Audience

• How’s your bounce rate?• What devices and browsers are in use?• What is the age, gender and location of your audience?• Who’s linking and sharing? Is it an appropriate

audience?– Social media referrals– Inbound links

• What content?– Blog articles getting the most views/shares– Product pages getting the most views/shares

What Analytics Tell You About Social Sharing

Who’s Sharing?

My Social Sharing Takeaways

My Takeaways:• Photos are very important –

spend more time on them• Pinterest is a good place to

promote my blog• Dutch oven recipes and how-

to articles about novelty cooking techniques are my best content– Most traffic, lowest

bounce rate• A large percentage of my

audience are not Boy Scout leaders, but Girl Scout leaders

Other Evidence of Your Best Stuff

• Look for similar results in other areas.– Acquisition>Keywords– Behavior>Site

Content>All Pages

High views +lots of sharing + low bounce rate = your best content

TESTING CALLS TO ACTION GET CUSTOMERS TO ENGAGE WITH OFFERS

Anatomy of a Call to Action

• Start with an offer - something free that you give away in exchange for engagement

• Design a “Call To Action” (CTA) that invites the customer to the offer page– Clickable button, banner or text

link

• Place adjacent to relevant content– Try multiple placements

• Get a high volume of views– Place on multiple pages– Above-the-fold placement is best

Increasing CTA Click-Through with A-B Tests

• Create a second variation of the CTA – Different text/headlines– Different designs (aesthetically

pleasing isn’t always effective)– Different offers

• Test 2 variations of the CTA in an A-B offer test

• Tools for button optimization– Paid tools: HubSpot– Free Tool: Google Analytics

Content Experiments– Free Tool: Button optimizer from

http://SiteApps.com

Testing Two Button Styles GWI’s Home Page

Original Test CTA

Process for Testing CTA’swith Google Analytics

• Define goal pages– The target page our CTA links to or the page after it– Map out conversion path

• Take baseline measurements– Conversion rates

• Create a Content Experiment– (We’ll go over that for landing pages.)

• Monitor the results of your Content Experiment• Be patient!

– Considerable traffic is needed for a meaningful result– Be prepared for some experiments to yield no difference!

• Conduct another experiment using the winner of the first as the new control

Monitoring Test Results with Content Experiments

USING ANALYTICS TO INCREASE CONVERSION

What is a Landing Page?

• Designed to obtain customer contact information

• Always contains a form• Usually short content

designed to encourage conversions– Explain offer - persuasive– Longer sometimes works – test

it!

• Minimal other navigation/links– Earns them the nickname

“squeeze page” or “jail page.”

Increasing Conversion: Setting Up Analytics

• Define goal pages– Usually the “thank you” page after form submission– Map out conversion path

• Baseline measurements– Conversion rate– Abandoned funnels

• Create a Content Experiment• Monitor the results of your Content Experiment• Be patient!

– Considerable traffic is needed for a meaningful result– Be prepared for some experiments to yield no difference!

• Conduct another experiment using the winner of the first as the new control• Tools to test landing pages:

– Hub Spot: A-B testing– Google Analytics Content Experiments: Multivariate Testing

A Recent Test of GWI’s Residential High Speed Internet Page

Existing PageTest Variation

Test: Simplified Conversion Path

Setting Up Content Experiments: Step 1

Setting up Content Experiments: Step 2

1. Give your experiment a name2. Identify the goal set you would

like to test3. Specify how much of your traffic

should be included in the test.a. Larger percentages result in

quicker results, but may put conversions at risk

4. Specify the minimum test duration and level of confidence needed for the test.

a. Default is two weeks and 95%

Setting Up Content Experiments: Step 3

1. Name the current page2. Add the url of the test

pagea. Google analytics tracking

code must be on this page

3. Give the test page a name4. You can add as many

variations as you likea. More variations will

increase the time required to complete the test

Setting Up Content Experiments: Step 3

1. Add the Google Analytics Content Experiment code to your original page a. Options to do this

yourself or send to your administrator

2. Make sure both pages are live on the web with analytics code installed

Setting Up Content Experiments: Test & Launch

1. Google automatically checks to see if the code has been added correctly – fix any errors and re-test.

2. You can add notes at the bottom to explain what you are testing.

3. Click start experiment to begin testing.

Monitoring Content Experiments

• You can periodically check to see how your experiment is going.

• You can pause or change your experiment at any time.

• Note at bottom tells you the experiment is still running.

Takeaways

• Our Result: – Overall conversions are up 64% in November– Traffic has been flat, so this is really the result of testing

new CTA’s and conversion paths.• Getting this result on your site– Create offers– Create and test calls to action– Create and test landing pages

THANK YOU! ANY QUESTIONS?