The Smarter Data Manifesto

Video thumbnail for youtube video The Smarter Data Manifesto -

"An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage." - Jack Welch Fifteen years of working with many organizations (it is an impressive list) has taught us most organizations have not yet achieved a point where marketing … [Read more...]

Choose Not to Confuse

the-question-of-life

Every company has to make choices when it comes to how it markets and sells, and, in some cases, who it is and what it sells. In an email exchange, Tom Grimes, the owner of a Culligan dealership in Amarillo, TX and a brilliant friend, shared with me what he's thinking about in terms of business … [Read more...]

Jeff Bezos’ Secret to High Conversion Rates

jeff-bezos

If you do business, online or traditional business, I hope you took the time to read Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos' 2013 shareholder letter. In it he shares this tidbit: "Our heavy investments in Prime, AWS, Kindle, digital media, and customer experience in general strike some as too generous, … [Read more...]

Comparing the Anatomy of B2B Landing Pages

square lp

Last week, my partner and brother, Jeffrey and I were doing an in-house training for a large B2B marketing team. At the end of our training, we had them review a bunch of landing pages across the web to see how they could apply what they learned over the two day training. One source of inspiration … [Read more...]

Facebook Offers Desperation

facebook offers desperation

With news that Facebook gift sales and revenue are off to a rough start, they are starting to show how desperate they are for people to start buying gifts. Have you noticed their latest offer of desperation (Get $3 off your gift of $5 or more): Maybe they didn't think people could see that … [Read more...]

How to Optimize Your Mobile Landing Page for Conversions: Hulu.com Example

Video thumbnail for youtube video How to Optimize Your Mobile Landing Page for Conversions: Hulu.com -

A couple of weeks ago, I asked readers how they would optimize the following Hulu.com mobile landing page that I saw when I searched for Hulu on my iPhone's browser. Obviously, there was an issue with the image loading, but that might not be the only problem on this mobile landing … [Read more...]

When Conversions Come Easily

dropbox old home page

When you consistently deliver a great customer experience, build a great product and develop a brand people trust you don't have to try as hard to convert your visitors. Check out an old version of the DropBox home page: Check out what their home page looks like today: What are your … [Read more...]

The About Us Page in a Social World

Creating a great about us page in a social world

Since my column about the Power of the About Us page (remember 2006 when MySpace was really popular) was written, not a week goes by that I don’t receive a comment about it.  Every website needs an "About Us" page, it’s one of the most important but undervalued elements of a company’s … [Read more...]

It’s Not My Job: Why Marketing is Broken

Bathroom sign

I was in Moscow last week with Jeffrey, waiting in the lobby for a taxi. I passed the time taking screenshots of "promotional" emails and ads with their corresponding landing pages. After clicking through some ads and emails I needed to vent.  I posted the following message on my Facebook … [Read more...]

Companies spend $92 on Driving Traffic Compared to $1 on Customer Experience

by Column Five Media.  What are you doing to optimize that spend ratio in 2013? Are you planning on investing in a/b testing, usability tests, heuristic/expert evaluations, optimization software. customer journey analysis, personas, or marketing optimization training and mentorship? … [Read more...]