Brett McEllhiney
Lonnie Minton
Earl Netwal« Are you making these mistakes? | Home | Niche marketing – Picking up the scraps »
Small changes – big differences
By admin | March 17, 2009
The picture to the left is Gizzard’s back paw spread out fully. Now I have yet to figure out why they love to lay on the dock and stretch out like that but seeing the paw fully spread like that did make me understand something about their swimming.
Quite often you can see one of them paddling like mad and not going very fast at all. They almost look like they are stuck in quicksand.
Then all of a sudden they take off like a shot. After watching for a while it was apparent that little changes in the angle they were paddling and how wide their paw was was spread made the difference.
Same effort but vastly different result.
Your marketing can be like that too. Little things like changing a word in a headline can make the difference between paddling and going no where and taking off like a shot.
That is the reason that you really need to be testing and tracking everything you do. I know it is a royal pain at times but…
It allows you to discover those little changes that make you jump forward. It is important that you track everything through to your ultimate action. For doing that I use Hits Connect. There are lots of other solutions available.
Lots of people just track traffic stats but if you can not track and see which traffic source gets you the result you are trying to achieve you will not be able to find those little changes.
Lets take an example of a result. You set up a squeeze page and send traffic from three sources. Knowing how much traffic is good but what you really need to know is which traffic source delivered the people that went to the verification page, then clicked the link in the verification email. That is your ultimate goal because once they have done that much you have a subscriber you can contact.
That is the ultimate goal to know what works to get people to your final result which in this case is to be fully signed up for your email campaign. It would work the same way for your product if that was your ultimate goal.
So take the time to set up your testing and tracking. You never know what will make a difference. I have had a friend get a 10 fold increase in results from changing the title and graphic of their giveaway on a squeeze page.
The Turtle Dad
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Disclaimer: Some of the links mentioned within this post or posts it may lead to are my affiliate links and in such case I will get compensated for recommending those products. However, I will never recommend something that I don’t personally believe in and I welcome your questions and feedback.
Topics: lessons | 7 Comments »
March 17th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Yes it is very important to test and track everything you do online. Like you mentioned, on a sales page with a big headline, if you changed a word or even just the color of it, it can make a big difference.
But also with content sites, if you use Google Adsense, you can easily change the color of the ads, the placement of them, and a lot more. I’ve often tested this and have seen how much more (or less) those ads made with the changes.
Joel Osborne´s last blog post..Turn PLR Products Into An Instant Cash Flow – IClickPLR
March 17th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
One can never overestimate the value of tracking – not only where your traffic is coming from, but how visitors from each traffic source convert to paying customers. Knowing which sources traffic is coming from is the first half; knowing which source the BUYERS are coming from completes the equation.
Better to have 50 visitors that convert at 12% than 500 visitors that convert at 1% – both for bandwidth usage and for the bottom line.
Doug Champigny´s last blog post..Unique New Multimedia PLR Bundle From Edmund Loh
March 17th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
I am constantly amazed at how you can draw such analogies between turtle raising and marketing Mike, but you do a great job. Some very valid points raised in this post.
Cheers,
March 17th, 2009 at 8:56 pm
It is amazing the results you can get from a little tracking. I do not do near enough and I am glad you bring it up. It seems you can always learn new things the more you track be it headlines, content, colors or whatever.
March 17th, 2009 at 10:35 pm
OK, so I’ll never figure out how you can go from a turtles foot to testing and tracking, but hey, it seems to work for you and you provide great content for us because of it.
So don’t stop.
You make a great point! Without testing and tracking you are just treading water with your website. Find out how to make it better and kick it into high gear!
Thanks for another great resource,
Brett McEllhiney
Brett McEllhiney´s last blog post..Build a Niche Marketing Business – Step 16: Tweak And Test It
March 18th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Okay, this is one of many areas where I know I need to be doing things but don’t. Thanks for continuing to challenge me to be smarter than a turtle.
Earl Netwal´s last blog post..Home Staging: Why Market Maker?
March 18th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Just need a strange brain is all. No one ever said I was sane