Conversion Optimization for Deep Impact

By Chris Goward
Co-founder and CEO, Widerfunnel Marketing Optimization

If you’re still just tweaking and tuning your landing pages, you’re missing out on the bigger potential of comprehensive conversion optimization.

Landing Page Optimization (LPO) has had a lot of attention over the past few years, and with good reason. The math is compelling. When you can lift the conversion rate and revenue generated from your landing pages, you can feed those returns back into your marketing activities. Social media, paid search, email marketing, content marketing, inbound marketing; they all start to deliver more revenue when your landing pages work harder.

But Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) can be bigger – much bigger, than just Landing Page Optimization; it can deliver far-reaching insights that for true Marketing Optimization.

Landing page optimization is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg

} Marketing Optimization

For the longest time, the landing page optimization industry has been talking about testing button design, headline color, etc.  Testing and tuning minutia on your landing pages is a starting point of conversion optimization – picking away at the “ice on the top”. Looking deeper, layouts, images, design, copywriting and usability can each make a big difference in conversion rates, but can they deliver even more?

The work we do at WiderFunnel makes use of CRO data to generate marketing insights that impact the entire organization. Our vision for the CRO industry is one where we are truly a marketing optimization industry, leading organizations to dramatic insights through a continuous improvement approach.

In my recent Marketing Optimization Manifesto blog post, I planted a stake in the ground for where I believe this industry is evolving.

Gary Angel stated in the comments to that post, “You can test forever and never find anything interesting. I think the biggest idea here is that the best testing is an exploration of the customer and their drivers of choice.”

I agree. Mediocre testing leads to mediocre results. The ultimate power of conversion optimization lies within the hands of the strategist to develop insightful hypotheses.

Optimization – Not Just For Landing Pages Anymore

WiderFunnel provides a higher-level form of CRO than those that just focus on LPO. Our vision for the CRO industry is one where we are truly a marketing optimization industry, leading organizations in continuous improvement and providing marketing insights that can impact the entire organization.

Join us in adopting this manifesto as your own, and help us lead the industry forward:

Feel free to embed this, using this code:

<textarea style=”width:95%;height:70px;border:1px solid silver;” class=”code”><a href=”http://www.widerfunnel.com/conversion-rate-optimization/the-strategic-marketing-optimization-manifesto”><img src=”http://www.widerfunnel.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/marketing-optimization-manifesto-narrow.png” alt=”Marketing Optimization Manifesto infographic” title=”Marketing Optimization Manifesto” width=”490″ height=”1336″ /></a><br />By <a href=”http://www.widerfunnel.com/”>WiderFunnel Marketing Optimization</a></textarea></p>

Or download the printable pdf version of the marketing optimization manifesto.

About the Author

Chris Goward is a leading expert in Marketing Optimization. His methods have helped clients improve their website lead generation and sales rates by up to 290% for clients such as Ebay, Epson, BabyAge.com, ColonialCandle.com, SAP, Alfresco, Outrigger Hotels, Google and many more. His WiderFunnel LIFT Model is taught at the Unversity of Eastern Michigan Conversion Optimization program.

Chris is Co-Founder and CEO of WiderFunnel Marketing Optimization and is a regular speaker at conferences like PubCon, SMX, and IMC. Chris was the “highest rated speaker” at SMX Search Analytics and IMC workshops. His work has been published in Marketing Sherpa, Search Engine Watch, the Google blog, Search Engine Marketing Journal and DM News.

See Chris Live!

Chris will be sharing more conversion optimization insights at Conversion Conference 2012 on June 25th and 26th in Chicago. Join him in his session on “Fact or Crap: Putting Optimization Best Practices to the Test.” See the full agenda and read more about this session. You can also follow Chris on Twitter for some pre-conference networking.

Save $100 when you register with Chris’ discount code CH12306. Take advantage of regular prices before they go up on June 22 – Register now!