Boost your Online Ads: Strengthen your value proposition by focusing on your “only factor”

hello everyone and welcome to this marking experiments web clinic we got a lot of great value for you today and speaking of value that's actually the topic we're going to be speaking on how to get the most value out of your advertisements a couple house cleaning things we got to take care of first I want to remind everyone that we're fast approaching the wonderful marketing sure pat summitt 2016 it's going to be held in Fabulous Las Vegas Nevada at the bellagio hotel if you want more information please go to Mecca labs com forward slash Sherpa summit 26 our SUV Sherpa summit 16 to get more information also I want to bring everyone's attention to the fact that you can actually get personalized coaching from Mecca lab scientists if you're interested in this go to Mecca labs com forward slash coaching will get someone to sit down with you and help you talk about your testing strategy how to increase the revenue that your marketing department is generating also how to apply the mech lab scientific methodology to your specific marketing campaigns and needs so now we got that out of the way I just want to remind everyone that we are on Twitter it's going to be Twitter hashtag web clinic so please tweet out anything that I say any questions you have and connect with us on that level you can also interact with us through the actual viewing software here by typing questions that you may or may not have Regina did a great job introducing in my name is Ben Philip I've been working here at mec labs for quite a while have tons of tests you've probably seen me on a couple of these before really excited about being here today also we have kin bowen here he is our senior manager of editorial content he's going to be jumping on a little later to help us with some live optimization and ken is really the driver to get this content to you today so we're really happy to get him on all right we'll jump right in how are we going to optimize ads and get the most value I'd like to start with a simple experiment it's test protocol number 30 41 in the mech labs research library if you want to go on and find it we were approached by a company and they wanted to increase their online advertisement and they specifically for a credit card campaign they had they were really excited about the offer as an exclusive offer to them but they thought they could get a better result than they were in applications so we're trying to increase the applications here that come from a PPC or paid ad we asked a simple research question which online ad will generate the most applications so we came up with a creative we did a a B split test here are the two versions that were put in front of potential customer I want to talk to the audience right now I'm getting some some things no no audio Mike can speak okay you got that fixed Spencer great if you can't hear me please let us know I'm going to keep going though so version a here is is one version B is another one I want to hear from everybody on here which one of these do you think will win version a or version be a a got some a's and b's coming in looks like a pretty mixed bag here be because of the $75 or you're picking up that version B is actually really emphasizing the $75 credit that's good i'm seeing a majority of bees here actually everyone it was a a had a 68% validated lift in applications you see that what can someone tell me what a is focusing on what is the difference the key differentiating factor between a and B here see the apply Now button the button CTA exclusive benefits whoever said that that's great I see a couple people saying exclusivity perfect exclusive benefits is what drove the win here it was a sixty-eight percent increase created quite a bit ROI on these ads for the company and the reason was because we focus on the exclusivity read the headline get the exclusive credit card and support your initiatives choose the rewards that matter most to you versus the $75 statement credit the great thing about preparing a value proposition there in the appropriate way is that you can actually get a bigger gain and keep more revenue because you don't have to incentivize anyone we're not trying to persuade someone to come on and click this button we're providing the value within the thought process that there in that gets them to want to be part of this exclusive offer so the first key principle is if you have an appealing offer and it's not exclusive then the force of that offer has actually been diluted because of all the other competitors and competing options that you've given it it's a two-sided coin though because if you have an offer that's exclusive but it doesn't have any appeal in the marketplace then you've undermined that value again and you haven't attracted the customers that you needed to so it might be sitting there well how do i balance that appeal and that exclusivity how do I get to that sweet one factor that is going to get people to click emetic labs we've worked you know tirelessly over the last couple decades trying to understand this value exchange that we have with our customers on a daily basis and we've boiled it down to a few key principles and we've wrapped up this really nice heuristic so that you can start to weigh and look at your value propositions against each other I'm going to go in here into the the terms a little bit if you have more questions you want me to go deeper let me know the the main VF is the value force that's the perceived value that your offer is giving whoever is reading it the CF is the cost force which is the perceived cost of them taking an action whether that's a button click or reading a headline or even reading the ad there is a cost and the users mind associated with that when you subtract those to your ended with the net force and the higher the net force of your value proposition the more conversions clicks whatever your whatever your goal is for the experiment you are going to get I really want to focus on the value for us here because we break it down a little bit deeper the value for us is based on this appeal and exclusivity the higher the appeal the higher the perceived exclusiveness the higher that value force is and it's great because if you have a higher value for stand you can also have a little bit higher of a cost for us and still get people to move down the line a credit card it has an associated costs with it it's a commitment that you're saying to someone so how you so if you can increase that value through appeal and exclusivity then you can get more people to the phone that's what's happening here we've increased the appeal we've increased the exclusivity to make this an offer that resonates with the users so moving on there it's one thing to know how to quantify these things it's another thing to come up with the actual value propositions that you're going to be using and knowing when you've hit the sweet spot of appeal and exclusivity wait long time ago we all learned about Venn diagrams and Venn diagrams are a great tool coming from a statistics and data science background it's a great tool to help construct form thoughts and actually get to what is really truly important in their mind to the customer and we start by two sides on the left we're going to have appeal so if you're doing this for a new product or an ad or your company even you want to get together you want to brainstorm what is it that is appealing about my offer what is it that the customer wants to see why would they want this and if you can answer that question I want this then you've nailed appeal but we said the value is way more than just appeal it's also exclusivity so we put all the things that make our offer exclusive on the right side of the Venn diagram what is it about this particular product or offer that I can only get from you why should why is it why is this the only place I can get this thing that I already have said I wanted when you marry these two together and you and you look in the middle then you come up with the sweet spot if you will this is where you can generate tons of value propositions and test them because you've answered these two important questions I really want this and I only get it from you that is something that we can all resonate with if you say that to your your clients and you you speak to them in this tone this personal tone telling them these things in the right way I guarantee you're going to get an increase in conversion which you know takes to a whole nother level you start reducing your cost per acquisition you start getting more revenue in everyone's happy so this is the powerful only factor we're going to talk the rest of the day about this only factor we're going to give some more examples first like the audience is there anybody have any questions about this is this making sense to you let me know your feedback here alright Mike's getting it got a couple people good and yes all right so stop me if you don't gonna leave you with the key principle number two we talked about the only factor if you want to increase the conversion then you have to strengthen that value proposition and the place in the way you strengthen that value proposition is by filing the only factor which is where appeal and exclusivity come together to make a very powerful claim and you want people to say I really want this I can only get it from you I'm definitely going to click on this ad or I'm definitely going to move through this web page whatever it may be so look for that only factor within your business and I and I invite you all take your whole team together ask everyone what's appealing and exclusive you know get as many minds on this brainstorming a value proposition as you can within your organization and get to this point because that's where you want to be if you need more help with this we have some great downloadable stuff it's all free obviously as the marketing experiments content this is a value proposition worksheet that you can actually walk through with your employees or by yourself it can help you determine the exclusivity help you determine the appeal help you determine the net force that we were talking about of the total the total net force of the value proposition just go to that URL at the bottom and take that worksheet it's a really great thing I actually use that whenever I'm coming up with a value proposition alright so let's give now we've gone through kind of the this content to let see how much of you guys are actually actually getting it so here's to more ads we have version a support organization with every purchase get the only card that helps support organization based on what we've talked about which of these ads has the only factor that we want bees yes Sharon be be only Kylie very nice yeah be very good Sean all B's you guys are you guys are killing it today great job it is in fact be we tested this one we actually got a seventy-four percent increase in applications when we put in this appeal in exclusivity you can see we had a very high level of confidence and you know it's just another example of how you marry these appeal and exclusivity to get a better value proposition once again I'm going to ask you guys so which of these version air version B I'm going to give you some time to read them I'm not going to emphasize anything's I don't want to give it away through my inflections in my voice so tell me version a or version B take it take a few seconds read those let me know which one of these has the only factor of it peel and exclusivity in the value proposition okay people are a little slower with this one a question see a lot of a's that I got I got a couple bees coming in mores number one quantifying info good job Kylie very good looks like you guys are getting this it is in fact a again version a really had the only factor of the software suite it's the number one it's on demand has over 6,000 worldwide clients these are a lot of appealing and exclusive factors that this software company but in particular had and once they they were started to speak to the customer in a way that the customer thought resonated with their thought process at the time they were able to get this this lift in clicks so here's the final tell protocol you can see a huge relative difference 95% statistically confident all right you guys want to do one more because we're going to anyway strengthen your value proposition so I want to give you a couple examples here of taking what you may or may not already have and how you can increase it into into something better right so the first one not this quest data services it's a customized data center for a medium to large businesses the the way to take a lot of information about quest and and and so we're gonna look at the competitors ad who's doing something a little bit better than quest is the next-gen data center this time we're talking a hundred percent uptime SAS 70 audited Greenfield data center tour online so they brought up a lot of what makes them appealing and what what differentiates themselves from one of their biggest competitors into the ad and really once again put that appeal and exclusivity first into the ad as opposed to just something that's a little more bland a little more generic and sounds like something anybody could do what you want to ask yourself is does my value proposition only talk about my business like if I read the value proposition out loud to somebody would they automatically think of me you can think a lot of big brands that have catchy phrases or something but really what they're doing is putting value and they're associating that with the company and they do it in such a way that we all remember it so if you look at the quest data services add you could take that same ad switch the next-gen data center and really have an ad for next-gen data center it's very generic any data services center could use that wording next-gen did a great job of putting what is exclusive to them and what is appealing about them into the ad I'm sure that other people can say some of these things but I know that next-gen is the only one who can say all of these things in an ad and that's what makes their ad better than the quest once again here's another one this is about online degrees so how would we talk about online degrees what pieces of value are important you think about the audience and what their motivation is and then you can drive home to that with the value proposition so let's look at the first one then not this one earn degree online interested in earning your degree online inquire now about capella so capella did something you know that a lot of people I see doing out in the marketplace now where they're trying to resonate with a customer they're trying to match the motivation they're trying to talk to them and trying to get into that thought process but they're not adding any value to that point in the thought process interested in earning your degree online of course I am I've probably typed in degrees online or online colleges or some other keyword that already answers that question inquire now about capella you haven't separated themselves from anybody else right there not speaking to any one particular customer that could be around any person who does degrees online should use that phrase now accredited online degrees by Franklin edu actually goes in talks to the people and tells them why they should go with them students all ages 18 to 75 so they're including you this is this is you know makes it appealing to everyone I'm not going to be the one young person the one older person in my class I'm going to be amongst a group of peers established in 1902 not many online degree schools have been established in 1902 obviously the internet there's some of the major universities that are offering online programs but bringing that piece in and letting people know that they've been around and you can trust this name isn't a great point last over 11,000 classmates that's another great piece of value proposition you're going to be in a community of learners you're going to be part of something that's been around a long time and something that's generated for you in your audience so Franklin ddu is the way to go adding more appeal adding more specificity I receive me exclusivity into the thing was this a PPC ad sorry I'm just reading through some of the questions here Jessica doing a great job answering them and in thank you for that Jessica anybody else have any questions on this particular or anything we've gone through so far perfect alright so I'm going to throw this back up there I want everyone to see this again because it's really the the key piece of information for this weapon and this is the thing I want you to take away and I want you to take this back to your team and I want you to own this and I want you to go through the Venn diagram i want you to download that worksheet and and teach yourself and give yourself the tools and the powers to do this it's not rocket science it's just one of those things that you don't realize what you're doing until you have the scientific approach this methodology to back you up so find that only factor and drive results in your business alright so if we don't any more questions we're going to move into live optimization if we have time we got some time I've got plenty of time one last time if you've liked what I've said I am one of the coaches we have a lot of other great mech lab scientists here that are more than willing to help we all come from an education we want to see people not only learn but succeed so please take us up on this coaching offer there's no cost to you but there are limited appointments and availabilities so let us know about that remove on a live optimization can come on up hey how's it going I doing all right yeah good thing thank you for having me and providing all this content it seems like everybody's really been resonating with it and enjoying it so awesome guys to yourselves give kidding around with a pause thanks for attending we hear you alright so let me quickly remind the folks as well that we're going to get to a page today we're going to do a quick live optimization of a page and if you guys like what you see next thursday we'll be having a lot of optimization exclusive webinar and our parent company mech labs com so you can use that link right there Mac labs com backslash live opt to find more information and to register for that alright yeah this is really good guys we want to see your pages help us help you by sending us your pages and definitely tune in for the for the mech labs webinar next week ready for some live up yes alright alright then a little bit about this page okay so this is Titan HQ on they do software for web security and email security Salvador was the one who was kind enough to submit this page to us and let's take a quick look at it Brent if you wouldn't mind pulling up the page why is coming up let's congratulate that Brent also is one year anniversary is a company huh so guys brent is one of our key technical people that get these web clinics and webinars to you on a regular basis so he's been around for a year I never thought he'd make it this long but apparently he did but now Brent is great and we couldn't do this without you so thank you brent yeah thank you very much Brent so right away Ben when I'm looking at the page we're looking at the headline so easy your web and email security simplified a safer network is only minutes away if you wouldn't mind scroll up just a little bit Brent the first thing that I notice is the headline yes I'm so easy you know it's it's catchy it's a good headline but it's kind of generic doesn't really tell us much about the actual product so i would suggest salvador maybe something a little bit more value specific to your product perhaps security simplified or simplified security yeah and i would even go a little bit deeper because I imagine everyone who's who's doing this kind of network is talking about security tell me why you have a safer network it's one thing it is appealing and it might be exclusive to be a safer network but when you bring in the specific value points exactly why you're safer then you're really driving home the appeal in exclusivity yes definitely and the next thing I see here Ben is this image again a nice lifestyle based image but it doesn't really to me it doesn't really convey the value of the product either's this you know gentlemen could be looking at anything you know he could be browsing reddit he could be looking at ESPN like I don't see necessarily simple and secure when I see this image what do you think no I completely agree he actually looks a little almost perplexed or like thinking about something I would probably want an image that said you know relief and ease and you know made me I want somebody who looks like they're comfortable and feel safe in this image and Ken let's also ask the audience you know guys what are you seeing right now with these before we scroll down what are you seeing out there with these headlines and images and there's also one major thing that I see on this page as it exists that maybe the audience can pick up is what i'd say probably the number one problem with it we can see on the screen you can see it on the screen ken's number one problem is on the screen let's see if you can find it security made easy it's a good suggestion color very off-putting to my eyes vague and bland difficult to read but whoever said difficult to read page are you talking about the because of the background it's on the size of the words the font copy which what makes it hard for you to read page see some other people you're asking for my email address without telling me anything about your product very good Scott you your and what Scott is highlighting here is that the cost of giving your email is outweighing the value that you've given that yes Scott that's exactly what I had in mind yep to me it feels like they're asking too much too soon yeah you know they're starting immediately with this ask before we even know anything about the software what it does what its real value so right now we've just got some some somewhat vague copy and they're already hitting us for our email and yes and back to pages college she said the typeface is too light I also agree i think that could be adding again to the reduction of value yep if they're not seeing it they're not reading it then they're not getting the value no matter what that stuff for me to rate up here that light text on the the background huh all right all right so you ready to scroll down yeah Brent won't you bring us down a little bit okay so what I see here Ben I like how you know this kind of hits on the exclusivity in the appeal I like how they've called out the number of organizations in the number of countries that are using their soft where and I actually I think this is this is pretty nice here how they go into their three different types of software and they highlight the features of each so I think they're doing a good job here we did what do you think yeah I think that the the value points that they're bringing across right here on this part of the website is great I you know my first suggestion would bring sum this up above the fold if that leap will see it before that ass and I'll we're seeing before the fold is that gentleman looking four plex yeah yeah I agree a couple of things that maybe I it would be worth a test if you're going to test the value proposition here is instead of saying 129 countries say what percentage of countries if it's a good percentage if you're in sixty seventy eighty percent of countries that might be more powerful than just saying the number of countries that you're in products easier than competing solutions you know when you bring up that it's easier point and then you talk about your three but you still haven't told me why it's easier so maybe follow that with a little sub headline or a bulleted copy as to not only that it's easy but as to why but all in all I think that they've done a really good job I really like the credibility indicators to add to that value underneath the first two products there so yeah I know I agree i think this part is better yep needs to be brought up a little bit some of these points and i just anything else you can do to it I still agree with you as well to just instead of like for example spam Titan instead of telling us multiple times within that copy that it's easy you know maybe bring some clarity to what makes it so much easier than your competition ya know it's exactly right ok let's move on down Brett down Brent this quote been I thought this was an interesting quote love the product the price is one of the lowest for small businesses easy to configure and tech support is above average a good strong quote i would suggest maybe even something a little bit stronger for the testimonial you know if i bring home would be minus mm-hmm you know from a test that's above average but that doesn't necessarily mean that i've got the exclusive it II you know and I'm best-in-class yeah no I agree and the way it's kind of they have that value over to the right outside of my iPad honestly I didn't even get over to there before we started talking about it i was reading stuff on the left also the quotes are little awkward audience tell us you see this right now what do you see about this particular thing get you know give this company Titan HQ a little bit of what you think they could do to improve the value the appeal the exclusivity that they're trying to put across here you know once again Wilder while the audience is responding and getting us their thoughts can you know you still have the typeface problem that yep right on greens a little bit hard to do you're telling me about how we help education which seems a little disconnected from the rest of the site of them know you did anything in education yet I guess maybe that's a vertical they're trying to go so if you're trying to relay that you're an industry standard or somebody who has a deep knowledge of your personal industry or something like that then talk specifically about what you've done in those industries can I agree with you to that the value copy could be stronger I would also maybe go with somebody who has a little bit of weight this Kevin carpenter I don't know who that is and that person may or may not yeah maybe he's a super genius so it was easy for him and it's not gonna be easy for me let's see what the audience is saying here a little bit I like some of the focus less on the wii and more on the prospect that's a great point Katie we often as marketers fall into the habit of speaking at our own thoughts our own way of speaking about how we would speak to a co-worker instead of speaking to the prospect I'm sure the people Italian HQ made this page understand themselves why it's easy and they understand what they do for different verticals and industries and and this is probably resonating with them left and right but you got to take yourself out of that and put yourself in the mind of the customer so great point Katie see stuff more so about the language Jim brings up a good point the the customer quote doesn't really tie to the other rest of the page it is kind of sit there on an island and not really driving if you're going to use that customer quote then you want to make it resonate and restate the value on the rest of the page where it's being seen so that's a great point a couple other ones Katie also does not want above average support so we can't we've hit on that above average a few times alright we are running a little bit low on time Brent let's go down one more section and then we will wrap up so here we have our option to start the free trial with that CTA and we've got some stats here let's again ask the audience anything here that you think we could optimize we can improve upon that would be worth testing customizable is misspelled Thank You normal that is very do yeah Kylie good points but they're buried on the page again once again when you have to bring some that value up that's very good to me I would like to see maybe I mean I know August is relatively recent but if there's a way that we could bring in even some more recent stats you know ya what's goin on well when it loaded it actually like it was calculating in real time but then you say August yeah the way the numbers are displayed even for me is a little bit off-putting because you have the billion million below they all look kind of the same the 2.3 billion is way more than the 7.4 million so you know maybe look at at displaying those numbers in a way that is actually you know it's easier to be received by the person reading the numbers more info on what the free trial entails very good point we haven't what we called process level value proposition here what is that free trial going to get me you know where is this button going to take me yeah is it going to is it just like do I get to start right now you need information you need a credit card we build later it's a good point there call to action is weak I could see that too it's a little muted and it's also not really relaying any value definitely not building any urgency start free trial now yeah or you know get safer email now or whatever you're trying to relay there how long is the free trial lasts a lot about the free trial so add some value about the free trial I think as a main point here for the audience kid what else do you have you want to save on this page anything else resonating with you just maybe let's get started with the free trial sounds a little bit you know maybe a little bit too casual a little bit too lacks at a sickle but other than that I think we've hit on it yeah just other than let's move move these valuable information up a little bit higher great well Ken thank you audience thank you so much for being such good receivers of the information I was trying to give you you all seem to pick up on it you gave Titan HQ a lot of great things I love seeing the participation I love seeing you guys get it feel free to use those free resources that we showed you earlier and please once again please wat watch our webinar on next week January 28 to the start at 4pm we're going to be talking about a lot of great things and send your life optimization pages to us no page is too big too small too good too bad ken looks at them all we all look at them and we and we pick so please send those to us so that we can provide the value to you once again thank you for being a part of this and we'll see you next week