In this quick (but deep) video, Flint McGlaughlin, CEO and Managing Director, MECLABS Institute briefly discusses the four elements of marketing before providing insights about how you can make your means of communication with potential customers – in this case, a web page or email – better communicate your offer and therefore achieve a higher conversion rate (MECLABS is the parent organization of MarketingExperiments).
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Transcript
Flint McGlaughlin: Marketer, which of these three pages will produce the highest conversion rate? Think about them carefully, the difference is reasonably obvious, can you spot it?
If you notice that there is a difference in the number of calls to action and thus the flow of the page, then you are correct. But which version? Which approach will get the most clicks? Think, look, and try to understand what is happening in the mind of the prospective customer. They’re encountering a message. It is a stream and it is flowing to them. There are only four parts to marketing:
- The sender
- The receiver
- The message
- The means.
This page is the means. It is a signal set designed to create an illusion in the mind. It is zeros and ones, pixels being turned off and on. And as you think about it, and as you think about the flow it becomes clear which version has the highest potential to get an interaction. The type of interaction the marketer is seeking.
Indeed, you might be surprised to discover that the elegant simplicity of version C outperformed versions A and B dramatically. It even received more clicks. And this despite the fact that the other versions had more places to click. What’s happening here? What’s going on in the mind?
People don’t buy from web pages, people buy from people. A web page is personified. When you interact with a page like this you are being invited into a conversation. If the conversation is clear, and the message is credible and simple, it is much easier to understand. If it cannot be understood, then it cannot be believed. So, it’s important that we achieve clarity, and then we achieve credibility, and in that order.
A message that cannot be understood cannot be believed, and a message that is understood but not believed is of little value to the marketer. I invite you to think about this simple illustration, this simple case study, as you think about the design of your next web page. Or about your next email. In every case we achieve the most by guiding the conversation through a series of micro yeses in a linear fashion that matches the sequence of thought.