Most Popular MarketingExperiments Articles of 2018

Let’s get right into it. Here are your marketing peers’ favorite articles from 2018 …

Heuristic Cheat Sheet: 10 methods for improving your marketing

Marketing — far more so than other business disciplines — seems to be driven by gut. Or the individual star performer.

Marketing embraces a far less methodological approach than say accounting or manufacturing.

In this article, we provide a quick look at heuristics (aka methodology-based thought tools) created by MECLABS Institute (parent research organization of MarketingExperiments) to help marketing teams consistently deliver at a high level.

Convenient and Useful for marketers who know what they’re doing, but aren’t always as thoughtful or thorough as they know they should be when planning and evaluating marketing programs. Cheat and Enjoy! https://t.co/swRmH1gNgn

— Art Reid (@dartreid) March 20, 2018

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In this article, you’ll find heuristics to help you increase conversion, create effective email messaging, launch projects in the most effective order and more.

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Conversion Lifts in 10 Words or Less: Real-world experiments where minor copy changes produced major conversion lifts

Sometimes it can seem like a massive lift to really move the needle. A new technology implementation. Investing in a vast campaign to drive more interest.

But marketing, at its core, is communication. Get that right and you can drive a significant difference in your marketing results.

Flint McGlaughlin says “The ultimate sign of effective communication is conversions.” Do you agree? Here he shows how a few simple changes dramatically affect results. @FlintsNotes #copywriting https://t.co/82goJYCl0U

— Judy Olbrych (@JudyOlbrych) November 20, 2018

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This 13-minute video examines five experiments where small copywriting changes had a large impact

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Mental Cost: Your customers pay more than just money

The monetary price of a product isn’t the only cost for customers. Understanding (and optimizing for) non-monetary costs can lead to significant conversion gains

Is the mental cost you’re charging having a negative impact on your conversion rate? Are there steps, or obstacles that you could remove to improve the user journey to conversion? Via @MktgExperiments https://t.co/8TJZdkzQSe

— ImageX (@imagex_media) April 5, 2018

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What costs are you inadvertently thrusting on your customers? And how can you reduce them?

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Not all of the most impactful articles from 2018 were published this year. Here are some evergreen topics that were especially popular with your peers …

A/B Testing: Example of a good hypothesis

Hypotheses should be an evergreen topic for marketers engaged in A/B testing. If you’re unfamiliar with hypotheses-based testing, this article offers a simple process to start shaping your thinking.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle advises in his blog article 41 Detailed A/B Testing Strategies to Skyrocket Your Testing Skills, “A trick to formulate a good hypothesis is to follow MarketingExperiment’s formula.”

Read this article to learn what a hypothesis is, and a simple method for formulating a good hypothesis.

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(Editor’s Note: Our hypothesis methodology has advanced further since this article was published in 2013. You can find a more advanced explanation of hypothesis methodology in The Hypothesis and the Modern-Day Marketer as well as a discussion of hypothesis-driven testing in action in Don’t Test Marketing Ideas, Test Customer Hypotheses.)

Interpreting Results: Absolute difference versus relative difference

“NASA lost its $125-million Mars Climate Orbiter because spacecraft engineers failed to convert from English to metric measurements when exchanging vital data before the craft was launched,” Robert Lee Holtz reported in the Los Angeles Times.

Numbers are crucial for A/B Testing and CRO as well. So make sure you understand the vital distinction between absolute difference and relative difference. Much like English and metric measurements, they measure the same thing but in a different way.

I have interviewed marketers before who bragged about a 3% conversion increase from a test, and I mentioned that while I was happy for them, it didn’t seem huge. Only then did they explain that their company’s conversion rate had been 2% and they increased it to 5%.

While that’s a 3% actual difference, it’s a 150% relative difference. The relative difference communicates the true impact of the test, and every business leader who learns of it will better understand the impact when the 150% number is used instead of the 3% number.

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6 Good (and 2 Bad) B2B and B2C Value Proposition Examples

What does a good value proposition look like? It’s a question we get asked often, and the article that answers that question was popular among marketers.

Value propositions are hard to write. Here are some good and bad examples from @MECLABS #UVP https://t.co/7kYFLIULNQ

— Charles Warnock (@CharlesWarnock) August 22, 2017

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Check out these B2B and B2C examples. We included some bad examples for balance as well.

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Customer Value: The 4 essential levels of value propositions

Some marketers think that the only value proposition that matters is the overall unique value proposition for the company. This can be disheartening because it is difficult for the average marketer to have a significant impact on that value prop (especially in a very large company).

In this article, we explore different levels of value proposition, including ones that even the more junior marketer impacts on an almost daily basis. At work, and even in life.