Years of Academy Training! (As Spoken by Buzz Lightyear)
I have 6 years experience in Internet Marketing and continually pursue training opportunities conducted by the world’s industry leaders. I’ve attended countless workshops, seminars, conferences, webinars, roundtables, and more.
I routinely read industry blogs and trade journals to keep abreast on cutting edge trends and tactics. My contribution has consistently resulted in bottom-line growth for those involved, year-after-year. So I consider myself an expert in Interactive Marketing strategies.
A Slice of Humble Pie for Lunch
The Xcellimark team holds bi-weekly “Lunch N’ Learn” meetings where we order in and participate in a training session that adds to everyone’s skill set and brings awareness to the value other departments bring to Xcellimark’s overall solutions. I had no idea that during this particular “Lunch N’ Learn,” humble-pie was on the menu.
Xcellimark does a lot of testing on our clients’ landing pages, ensuring that we’re getting optimal results. In this training exercise we were asked to look at 2-3 different landing page options and decide which one we think performed the best and had the best conversion rate. We also had to explain which components within the landing page lead us to our prediction.
Then, we compared our prediction to the actual performance metrics. I was wrong 50% of the time. Even with all of my knowledge of online marketing and best practices, it was almost as if I was guessing and leaving my predictions up to chance.
Test Your Landing Pages for Optimal Campaign Performance
This was an eye-opener. I came to the sobering conclusion that sometimes the “by-the-book” landing page template is not the best landing page due to unique market factors such as industry, user preferences, and competition.
I immediately thought of all the businesses out there that are not testing their landing pages or other online campaign elements. I thought of the businesses that are implementing best practices taught and practiced by industry leaders, but are not carefully monitoring their analytics and continually seeking ways to improve their site or campaigns’ performance.
It is not enough to understand the latest trends or tactics. The truth is, if you are not testing, you are still leaking revenue.
