“Our job is to help you do your job better.” That’s how I sign every MarketingExperiments Journal email, and it’s a mission all of us at MarketingExperiments take very seriously.
One of the main ways we help marketers is through the production of MarketingExperiments Web clinics – free, hour-long webinars where we share our research discoveries, analyze what they mean, share actionable advice for using these discoveries in your day-to-day job, and often provide live optimization advice for submissions from our audience of their marketing material.
These Web clinics are crucial to our educational and enablement activities, so I want to take today’s blog post to introduce Web clinics to those new to the MarketingExperiments community while addressing some key comments that may be helpful to long-time audience members as well.
I’ll get to those comments in a minute, but first a look at the replay of our latest Web clinic…
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While the Web clinic replays are valuable (you can find more replays in our Research Directory), please note that they don’t fully replicate the experience of attending a live Web clinic – which is usually a lively session with much interaction and two way-conversation.
I could rattle on about our clinics, but clearly I have a vested interest in them…my opinion might be a bit skewed. So let’s take a look at some comments from the 917 marketers that attended our last Web clinic (with some annotations from yours truly to shed some light here and there)…
“I really enjoyed the fast pace and real-life examples.”
– Erica Waitman, Director Business Development at ARG Inc.
“Lots of immediately useful information”
– Liz Bredeson, Consumer Marketing Director at Meredith Corporation
“I like the directness. They don’t waste time with marketing rhetoric or pull any punches. They just get right into the content, tell you what’s wrong or could be improved, and then give you actual ideas and solutions on how to do it.”
– Bob Curtis, owner at SoHo Business Services
“The Web clinics are straight to the point.”
– Veaney McIrvin, owner of Storefront Creations, LLC
“I always enjoy the webinars given by the MarketingExperiments team. I especially like it when the Doctor (Dr. Flint) is in the Web page operating room. If you have experienced a live page review, you must be pretty bold or want help. Flint is not PC when it comes to telling it like it is. On reflection, I would rather have total honesty and improved conversions than hurt feelings. If you want to strive to be the best, let the best critique your work or you will never get there. I have been sliced and diced by the best, it made me better! Great stuff Flint and team as always. I particularly liked the bluntness.”
– John Wolfe, COO at IntelaSystems Inc.
“This is the second MarketingExperiments clinic I’ve attended, and the only thing I wish is that they were a bit longer, so more user-submitted sites could be reviewed.”
– Melody Foster, Marketing Director at Zephyr Real Estate
Special thanks to Erica, Liz, Bob, Veaney, John, and Melody for allowing us to publish their comments as a sampling of all the great feedback we get. Keep it coming. It gets us fired up to help you more.
To Melody’s point, while Web clinics are currently 60 minutes long, we also optimize audience-submitted sites that we didn’t have a chance to get to on the Web clinic right here on the blog. Here are a few recent examples:
Web Page Optimization: Consider this post the help desk for free trial landing pages
Landing Page Optimization: Regions Bank opts for the information underload strategy
Web Page Optimization: In search of a value proposition as fast and reliable as Verizon FiOS
“When you send out the email blasts about these webinars, you always say to submit our website for possible review during the seminar. But then I see that during the seminar you are reviewing sites from Wall St Journal and Microsoft. Why are you giving them free advice? They have teams of people that do this full-time. Help out the smaller company who can’t afford full-time employees dedicated to optimization. If you’re going to spend your time reviewing Microsoft’s site, why ask us for our URL?”
– Brian Bischof of Crystal Reports Online Training
In our most recent Web clinic, Flint McGlaughlin, the Director of MECLABS Group, Research Manager Adam Lapp, and Research Analyst Nathan Thompson did conduct live optimization on Microsoft Azure Platform and WSJ Wine from The Wall Street Journal pages.
But they also conducted live optimization on pages from Pure Pearls, Newave Energy, and Positive Parenting Solutions.
To give you a little behind-the-scenes look, we have a wide range of marketers who attend these events – some are sole proprietors, some are at agencies, and some work in the corporate marketing departments of the biggest global brands. Our desire is to serve all of these elements of our audience.
So while I empathize with Brian (I’ve been there myself…lacking the resources of the major enterprises), to truly live up to our mission – “our job is to help you do your job better” – we have to serve the enterprise audience as well. Besides, I’ve worked with those Fortune 500 companies before, and, trust me, big-time budgets don’t paper over every challenge they face. Everyone could use a little help from time to time. (Us, too. Have blog optimization ideas? I’d love to hear them.)
“We are developing a new website and really need some feedback. What can I do?”
– Gina Dement, PR/Marketing at Five-County Mental Health Authority
The MarketingExperiments Optimize Group on LinkedIn has 3,092 of your peers that have (or are facing) the same challenges that you face and can provide feedback for all of your marketing initiatives. Many have even achieved certification in landing page optimization, email marketing, and/or online testing from MarketingExperiments training.
“Amy and I are very aware that our site needs work. That’s why I submitted it when I signed up. We were thrilled you guys selected it for use in your webinar and more thrilled to get the free feedback. Unfortunately, I had a meeting and could not participate. Amy took as many notes as possible but you guys go so fast. Can I get a link to the recording?”
– Dave McCready, Owner at Positive Parenting Solutions
Web clinic replays are published eight days after the live Web clinic. To ensure you get a link to the recording, you can activate your free subscription and be notified when the replay is available.
“I would love to examine a partnership with Ecopaper.com. We would benefit greatly from your wisdom and it would be great for you since the tree-free paper market is brand new.”
– Aaron Schiff, COO at Ecopaper Inc
We received 365 landing pages for live optimization during the Web clinic, and while we try to offer free optimization advice on Web clinics (and right here on the blog) for as many pages as possible, we simply can’t get to every page.
If you need marketing help and haven’t been selected for live optimization, you may want to consider exploring a paid Research Partnership with MarketingExperiments.
Related Resources
Homepage Optimization: How using the homepage as a channel led to a 59% increase in conversion (with live optimization examples) – the invitation to our next free Web clinic
Optimizing Landing Pages: The four key tactics that drove a 189% lift – replay of our most recent Web clinic
MarketingExperiments Research Directory – you can find replays of all of our Web clinics here