Marketing and how everything has changed.
Or, has it?
I consider myself lucky in that I got to do something that I really love as my day job for most of my life. I love marketing. As a marketer, one of the key things that get routed to you are campaigns for growth. And that has been the truth of it for as long as I can remember. There have been reams written about marketing that I have consumed hungrily over the years. And I still look and learn.
How I got here
Every few months I set learning goals for myself.
This includes different goals across my interest areas including hobbies and work. And sometimes it is just pure curiosity.
And so, every so often, I revisit learning from others in my field with a view to gaining more from their experiences. (Case studies? Bring it on!)
As Newton said, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulder of giants”.
And so began this saga of learning from the greats.
I love everything about marketing . And I’ve learned a lot from just poring over old advertisements. Hero copy and images. Visual storytelling or long form narratives and storytelling in copy. The use of whitespace.
Here’s an iconic ad by David Ogilvy, one of his most memorable ads, for Rolls Royce. Hero image, attention grabbing headline and well laid out copy.
And here are a few by Bill Bernbach, among my favourites. These ads celebrate the then underdog, the Volkswagen Beetle. The whole series is iconic.
And here is one by Neil French. No attention grabbing visual. No hero. No branding even! And tailormade for the brand this was for — Air Asia.
And now, I’m exploring a completely new set with CXL. Full disclosure here: I’m a certificate junkie. Okay, maybe not so much the certificate — but the learning. Show me an opportunity to learn and I’ll probably try it. And this series of lessons with CXL promised lots of case studies and examples. I was hooked! I diffidently applied for a CXL scholarship and got accepted. And the proverbial “pound of flesh” was a series of blogs chronicling my journey with them. (Something that I kinda enjoy doing, in any case. So- win-win!)
As is my wont, I just could not go through this (as with anything else) in any prescribed order. So... I’ve decided to go wherever my interest takes me. I listened to Joanne Wiebe and Momoko Price on copy, and then Michael Aagard on LPO, and so that’s where I’m going to start this chronicle.
And so here goes.
And everything has changed. Or, has it really?
Hat tip, to Mr. Aagard. He claims that he does what he loves for a living. And he talks about his experiences and failures, about the realities of marketing in the way only a real practitioner can.
If there is just one thing I’ve learned over the many years I’ve spent in marketing (and in looking at whats worked) it is that there is no formula, no cheat sheet that can prepare you for what’s just around that next corner. So, if you’re looking for a career in marketing, roll up those sleeves and get to it. You probably know almost as much as I do. Or wait, maybe you do know more… or maybe you just have to fail a few more times!
The one thing that the digital world provides you with is data on the person who is interacting with your brand. That person is just as complex (if not more so) than in the times of Ogilvy or Bernbach.
So let’s switch back and forth a little to examine what’s really changed over the years as we try to see the world of marketing through the eyes of these two practitioners.
I think it is fair to say that all these people agree on one basic thing. The entire purpose of the work they do is to get you, as the person interacting with the content that they have put out there, to do something specific. Their goal is to “convert” you into a “believer”.
“When I write an advertisement, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it ‘creative’. I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product.” — Ogilvy
They recommend that the marketer starts with a clear goal. And with a specific idea of how they want to get you, the customer, to that goal, as quickly, and with as little friction, as possible.
Back to the future and landing pages, with Mr. Aagard. The goal of a landing page should be the call to action you define on it.
And, lest you forget, the landing page is only a part of the story.
It’s all about the journey, not just the destination
The story is about the user’s journey, including interactions with your brand at different points until something enticed them to click and land here. Through this journey or maybe even as the first interaction with an advertisement or an emailer, you have created some impression in their mind and set certain expectations. And the action that they took there — in reaction to something that you’ve done along the way — motivated the user to click on some link, and it’s brought them to this landing page.
The focus right now should be to address their questions and remove any barriers they may have to finally take that action you want them to. Click on that call to action. Whether it is to buy or to complete some other action that translates into moving them further down that funnel. The aim of that page is a conversion.
Treating a landing page as the end in itself would be ineffective. It has to be seen in the context of the user’s journey.
All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware. — Martin Buber
Let’s go over the characteristics or expectations of an effective landing page (courtesy Mr. Aagard):
- it should shorten the journey from to click to conversion
- it should follow up on the promise that was made (in the ad or emailer or other content) to bring them here
- it should speak to their motivation — answer their questions or clarify what would give them what they seek
- it should address barriers to helping them complete that action of moving further down that funnel
- it should create a clear path to conversion.
A big mistake would be to start right there: on the landing page. Looking at how you can optimize it. This seems logical enough, but keep in mind that it is part of a longer journey. One where at every point of interaction promises have been made, expectations set. All of which need to be met in order to retain your credibility and trigger the “buy” decision.
Every interaction is an opportunity to either create confusion (and lose the customer) or delight them. Your job is to make the journey easy, to not make them pause to think or wonder, to go straight from where they started to the Aha! in as few steps as possible.
So where should you start, you ask?
Research
Advertising professionals who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of army signals. — Ogilvy
Research needs to be both qualitative and qualitative.
Time to dust off those data analytics skills and wrestle out those little nuggets from the data swamp. Quantitative data answers the what and the where questions.
Qualitative research seeks answers to how and why questions. And marketers, now more than ever, need to be aware of the workings of the mind of the customer.
If you are too lazy to do this kind of homework, you may occasionally luck into a successful campaign, but you will run the risk of skidding about on what my brother Francis called the slippery surface of irrelevant brilliance. — Ogilvy
One of the first things here is to look to science — specifically psychology and neuroscience — to understand how people make decisions and why.
Daniel Kahneman’s research findings around intuitive and logical thinking (a wonderful and insightful read is his Thinking, Fast and Slow) provides a foundation for this.
The intuitive brain and the analytical brain, or as he terms them, System One (a machine for jumping to conclusions) or Fast Thinking and System Two (the lazy controller) or Slow Thinking kick in where required. Fast thinking allows for quicker decisions. Slow thinking is more analytical and requires effort. Humans will seek responses from System One for quick decisions and only switch to System Two when the stimulus indicates incoherence or requires analysis.
A demonstration of this is the Stroop Color and Word Test — a neuropsychological test used to assess the ability to inhibit cognitive interference that occurs when the processing of a specific stimulus feature impedes the simultaneous processing of a second stimulus attribute, well-known as the Stroop Effect.
The build-up of cognitive strain is fairly rapid when there is any incongruence in the data presented to the reader. And the more effort that is required, the less likely that the customer will complete the task. We, humans, are hard-wired to avoid pain. Understanding and ensuring we address these cognitive biases is a vital skill for Marketers.
Priming
The basic premise here is that the exposure to one stimulus is linked to the responses to subsequent stimuli. An example of this in the LPO context could be an unexpected step added to the user journey or incongruent touchpoints. So if the expectation setting at earlier stages of the user journey is incongruent with subsequent steps, this can cause friction and drop-offs.
Framing
This refers to how you present a message affecting how it is perceived. Whether you say 75% cost savings or 25% of the cost you are in effect saying exactly the same thing. But which one do you think people will prefer?
WYSIATI
What you see is all there is. If there is anything that is confusing in the content or if there are gaps in the content presented this will cause friction as the mind kicks into the slow thinking mode to process and analyze.
Persuasion, digital journeys, and the brain
You cannot bore people into buying your product. You can only interest them in buying it. — Ogilvy
It is also important that we keep in mind that evolution has hard-wired us as a species to reach for rewards, which triggers the production of dopamine, and to minimize pain/ stress which triggers cortisol production.
While there is a wealth of research done in each of these areas, it is sufficient for us (in the context of LPO) to keep in mind that our customers will respond to our content based on what it triggers in their brains. Also, it is important to remember that what once worked may no longer work, because, dopamine or cortisol production and withdrawal work on a baseline. This baseline is reset with each stimulus and response and we are hard-wired to seek greater rewards over time — the pathways that trigger addiction to drugs work on the same centers in the brain.
We seek out rewards, and when we respond to a stimulus, dopamine is released. We would recognize this as the joy of finding something that meets our needs.
A drop in the level of dopamine, triggered perhaps by NOT finding what we were looking for, or finding something that disappoints us, can trigger the release of cortisol, which signals oncoming pain to the brain. And this is something we are hard-wired to avoid.
Something as simple as a promise that has been made and not followed through in the user journey, or a set of hidden form fields that pop-up at the instant where the user is expecting to access/ get something they were promised, could create a lasting negative impact.
Research insights from Loretta Breuning and Brian Cugelman provide an understanding of the fundamentals that affect user behavior and can help in defining winning Landing Pages and experiences.
Presentation
The next step in the process of optimizing your landing page should be establishing a coherent and effective hierarchy in how your information is presented.
Wireframing is the best way to get your thoughts organized and examine the logic of your user flow. Keep it simple at this stage and use a basic tool — whiteboard, paper, software — to just help organize everything.
Information Hierarchy
the presentation of material on your landing page needs to be prioritized based on relevance and criticality to the user journey. The questions that need to be answered are
- How much content do I need
- What content needs to be on the page
- How should my content be structured to address key questions, motivations, and barriers of potential customers or leads
While it is not uncommon to hear arguments related to the length of the copy, the goal of the page should be aligned to the content and should decide both the length and the format. If I need to communicate a very complex concept, I must be willing to provide them with everything that is required to make the concept easy to understand. Or, if I or expect my customer to make a high-value purchase decision after looking through this content, I need to ensure they have everything they need to make a considered decision. The requirement would be to ensure that the content is coherent, relevant, and logical. Stay as concise as possible while ensuring completeness.
Both too much information and too little information can be counterproductive and increase your bounce rate.
A useful set of questions to answer for each page :
- Who is your target audience?
- What do you want them to do?
- Where are they coming from?
Classifying your audience as Problem aware, Solution aware, Product aware, and Fully aware can help classify the kind of information you want to include on your landing page.
For each level of awareness, you need to prioritize different things to move them further down your funnel.
A good test of how your landing page is functioning is to ask an unschooled audience their understanding of what the page is about after they have seen it for about 5 seconds. This simple test can tell you whether the content is working for the goal you have specified.
Quantitative LPO
When looking at quantitative data, you are mainly looking to answer “what” and “where” questions. And start with your goal. Then drill down using the dimensions to understand what people are doing after visiting your landing page. Where does it take them? You can check if device or browser experiences change the journey to see if things are working fine across all environments.
As with anything to do with analytics, getting straight into your own data helps.
Identifying any outliers and looking over these can help you fix issues affecting the overall performance of the page and can translate to wins in the near term.
Qualitative LPO
This research should look at the “why” question. Look at the performance of your pages to understand dropoffs and address the point of friction. So if your quantitative analysis shows you a drop off at a particular point, understanding and addressing what could be causing the friction — experimenting there could help increase conversions.
The right questions can help uncover any dissonance created by the design or the content, the information hierarchy and its effectiveness, the messaging and whether you are delivering on your promise to your customer.
The answers could point to a hypothesis you could then test out. It also provides a look at the kind of language your audience expects and could help hone your communications. Making this easy
This can also help you understand first hand what is impeding your customer completing the action you expect them to complete on this page.
Tools that help you record sessions of participants interacting with your content and pages can add to the qualitative insights to help address issues.
Landing Page Copy
The objective of your landing page copy is to shorten the journey between click and conversion. The length of the copy should support this objective — provide the information in a clear and concise manner to support your reader in converting — help them complete that action you want them to.
So this is where I started looking at more content from Momoko Price and Joanna Wiebe. (So distracting!) And so, so, so very interesting to see them present the thoughts that have driven my approach to marketing all along.
Tailoring content to the level of awareness of your reader, getting the right CTA for the right audience, ensuring you have the right information hierarchy — all contribute to making this experience useful for/ adding value to your customers.
Structuring the content
On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.— Ogilvy
Ensure that the right messages for your target audience are adequately highlighted. Also provide them with whatever they need to make the decision to click on your CTA. Social proof — whether testimonials or customer and partner logos and a well crafted Q&A that answers some of the key questions. Ideally, this should be based on your research — don’t just take a guess at this. And then, avoid clutter and conflicting messages. Or one wise man once said , “K.I.S.S.: Keep It Simple, Stupid!” The goal is to motivate and persuade the reader to click on your CTA or complete your goal.
Design
The landing page design needs to go hand in hand with the content. Ensure that you have “hero content” that shine on your page. This could include the headline with images and/or video. Establishing credibility with design will require that you ensure the colours and themes are consistent across all interaction points of the user journey. Highlighting the features and benefits and showcasing the right social proof also enhance credibility. And the call-to-action buttons need to stand-out. Any forms need to be self-explanatory — and should be more or less stand-alone. Setting the right expectations around data handling, response times, terms and conditions all go a long way in ensuring credibility.
In conclusion
Effective landing pages are a critical component of the marketer’s strategy. They can generate leads, convert your audience, and improve ROI.
Not very different from these examples from advertising.
Except, perhaps, that the turnaround times, effort and budgets are probably a fraction of what some of these iconic ads would have taken...
So, what else do you think has changed with marketing over the years, apart from the medium?
I’d love to hear from you!
