Landing Page Optimization and Value Propositions: Back to Marketing 101

Last month, I attempted to better myself by attending the Landing Page Optimization Workshop put on by MarketingSherpa and Marketing Experiments in Santa Monica. While Closed Loop Marketing has extensive experience optimizing search marketing landing pages, I was interested in learning more about the methodology used by Marketing Experiments to improve landing page conversion.

Now I have to admit up front, I am hyper-critical of conferences, workshops, seminars, etc. I seem to require them to be targeted only to me and I have no patience for presentations that are too remedial, advanced, off-topic, sales-oriented, theoretical, etc. In other words, it’s all about me and I rarely walk away completely satisfied.

I’m happy to say that this was one of those rare occasions of satisfaction. This workshop was well designed and well taught (led by Dr. Flint McGlaughlin of MECLABS). It effectively covered a methodology in a tight day and a half while incorporating lots of group discussion and live optimization of landing pages provided by the attendees (some of whom were more gracious than others about the feedback they received).  I (and I believe most attendees) left with a strong enough understanding of the methodology (or conceptual tool) called the Conversion Sequence, to apply it immediately to our own landing pages.

The workshop walked through each of the essential factors that impact conversion, the relationships between these factors and their relative impact on conversion. The factors are:

1.    Motivation of the user
2.    Clarity of the Value Proposition
3.    Friction or resistance to an element of the process
4.    Incentive used to stimulate a desired action
5.    Anxiety about entering information

While each individual factor is important, the one that really stuck in my mind was #2, the Clarity of the Value Proposition.

I know, that’s boring. What about usability and persuasion best practices? What about A/B and multivariate testing? What about advanced segmentation and targeting?

The Value Proposition is Key

According to the Conversion Sequence, Clarity of the Value Proposition is second only to the Motivation of the User in its impact on conversion rate. It’s more important than reducing friction through usability improvements and incentives. It’s more important than reducing user anxiety.

But, everyone has an effective Value Proposition, right? If my experience at the Landing Page Optimization Workshop in any indication, the answer is no.

Very few of the websites we reviewed during the workshop included a Value Proposition at all. And, those websites that did include a Value Proposition, typically did a poor job of clearly expressing it to visitors. In fact, many attendees (and this was a pretty sharp group) couldn’t even communicate to the group what their Value Propositions were. Most of them simply communicated their business models. It seemed as though everyone had leaped forward to advanced targeting and testing techniques and skipped right past the basics.

So what’s going on here?

• Are they so familiar with their Value Proposition that they take it for granted and forget they need to communicate it? Are they so close to it they don’t know how to communicate it?
• Do their organizations have great Value Propositions that are not clearly communicated to marketing?
• Do they think Value Propositions are just fluff?
• Did they never define their Value Proposition? Have things evolved and nobody revisited the Value Proposition?
• Do their organizations have a Value Proposition at all?

Regardless of the reason, I think we all need a quick timeout - take a breather, stop optimizing, stop testing and go back to the first day of Marketing 101.

Two Questions to Ask

Ask yourself two seemingly simple questions:

1. Do you have a clear Value Proposition for both your company and product or service?
2. Are you clearly communicating that Value Proposition on your website?

If the answer is no to either question, then you have some fundamental marketing work to do before you launch into (or back into) a complicated optimization program.

First: identify your unique Value Proposition. What is it about you and your product or service that is of value to the visitor and sets you apart from your competition? You have to clearly address both pieces. First, what is it your visitors truly desire? This is where you can make the business model mistake. Don’t think about what you do. Think about what value you transfer to your customers. Second, ensure you identify what sets you apart from your competition and be sure you identify something that is highly valued by the visitor. Having a slightly lighter product than the competition may be great if you manufacture bicycles, but it’s not likely to have much impact if you manufacture pottery.

Second: encapsulate your Value Proposition in one clear sentence. If you can’t do it in one sentence, keep trying. You are unlikely to get enough time and attention from your visitors to allow for more than one sentence.

Third: test your sentence. Do you “Provide an Integrated, Scalable Enterprise-Class Solution”? That’s probably a fantastic product, but I have no idea what it is. Test it. Run it by your customers. Run it by friends and family. Run it by people in Starbucks. Do they get it? Does it communicate something of value and something unique about your organization? If not…write it again. Once you’ve got your perfect value proposition, ensure it’s reflected throughout all the elements of your landing pages, homepage and the steps of your online process.

That’s it! That’s all there is to it. Easy, right? It’s not, but it’s necessary. So sharpen your dry erase pens and work the whiteboard a bit. It’s time well invested.

Is There an Elephant in Your Room?

However, one last ugly question is hanging out there. What if you can’t come up with a unique value proposition (at least one that is true)? I think one of the reasons that Value Propositions are often weak or simply statements of business models is that many companies aren’t truly providing something valued by their potential customers in a unique or exclusive way. It can be a painful realization and is one reason why so many avoid the discussion.

Are you simply playing the “me too” game? There are only so many hot tub stores a town needs. Has your business model evolved from the original value-based idea due to short-term financial pressures? At the landing page workshop, I saw both. Some of the marketers in the room were clearly looking for the potion that will produce results without requiring an actual product or service that a visitor would find both valuable and unique. They were looking to marketing to fix a fundamental flaw in their business. It’s an unenviable position, and one that requires action more serious and drastic than merely tweaking a landing page.