Join Kate O’Neill, founder and CEO of [meta]marketer, and Josh Oakes, Director of Optimization at [meta]marketer, while they discuss how to resist the urge to pull the plug on your marketing efforts and how to give the medicine a chance to work. Learn how to: • diagnose your marketing troubles • determine the best treatment • feel comfortable about covering the bill • do this all without overreacting As a business decision-maker, you know how difficult it is to asses and diagnose a failing marketing program, much less determine how to treat the condition and accept long-term costs of care. Register today and learn the [meta]marketer approach to marketing optimization and safely move your marketing efforts forward without killing the patient.

1. Don’t Kill the Patient
How Not To Overreact To
Marketing Optimization Numbers
[presented by]
Kate O’Neill, CEO and Founder
and Josh Oakes, Director of Optimization
moderated by Lucas Hendrickson

2. About [meta]marketer
‣ “Marketing optimization agency”
i.e. we’re geeky but we care. :)
‣ We help clients understand their customers based on data
and insights so they can be more effective in marketing to
those customers.
‣ Past clients include Symantec, Ingram Book Publishing,
Opry.com, other e-commerce, B2B, and dozens of other
companies and brands.
‣ We like the color orange. Clearly.

3. Who’s Kate O’Neill?
‣ Past gigs have included Netflix, Toshiba, HCA,
Magazines.com, lots of startups, etc.
‣ Passionate about customer experience and geeky about data.
‣ Just kind of a fun chick, y’know?
Who’s Josh Oakes?
‣ Spearheads our work in conversion optimization: using
data from real world tests to determine what works
and what doesn’t for your customers on your site.
‣ Owns–and can field strip–an original Macintosh.
‣ Office curmudgeon and resident Star Wars nerd.

5. Marketing Optimization
‣ how to diagnose a failing marketing program
‣ how to treat the condition
‣ cover the costs of care

6. Half of your marketing
dollars are wasted.
Do you know which half?

7. DON’T
PANIC!!

8. Don’t Overreact…
‣ To the diagnosis
‣ To the course of treatment
‣ To the bill

9. Don’t Overreact
to the Diagnosis:
Knowledge and Acceptance

10. Symptoms that lead companies to consider
marketing optimization
‣ “Our website sucks!”
‣ “We don’t show up on Google!”
‣ “We don’t know if this is working!”

11. How should you react?
Under react
Do nothing.
Reasonably React
Discrete, strategic tests.
Overreact
Wholesale redesign!

12. [tip]
Use marketing optimization to find
opportunities to improve your
business, and act on them in a
measurable, rational way.

13. Overreact:
Conflating the diagnosis
‣ “Our shopping cart page is too long.
We need to redesign the entire website.”
‣ “Nobody is viewing our product details.
We need to link them from the homepage.”
‣ “We are not showing up on Google.
We need to change our content management system.”

14. [example]
Client with an established website with great
content and an established user base was
performing poorly in organic searches.

15. After incorporating recommendations

16. Under Reacting:
Second Opinions

17. [tip]
Marketing optimization advice
cannot take hold if the people who
need to hear it most...don’t. Who
makes the final decision? Who
signs the check?

18. Don’t Overreact
to the Course
of Treatment:
Processes and Culture

19. Over-Testing
‣ Testing passed statistically significant results
‣ Using A/B Testing when Multivariate is the right tool
‣ Getting stuck on pet projects

20. Under Testing
‣ Ending tests before reaching statistical significance
‣ Ignoring the little things
‣ Letting unchecked bias blind you to results

21. Dealing with Discomfort
‣ The point of getting treatment is
that something has to change
‣ Some things will be non-
negotiable but everything can’t be
‣ Be realistic and remember that
something will have to die

22. Making Lifestyle Changes
‣ It’s “your thing” now
‣ Don’t throw everything out
‣ Take the time to adapt to the
new reality

23. Reasonable Reactions
‣ Things you can start today.
‣ Things you’ll need to see the Doctor
about.

24. Start Today
‣ Talk about what matters to your business and how
to measure it
‣ Take a look and what you can measure now and
evaluate whether the data aligns with what you’re
doing
‣ Try it out!

25. [tip]
There are many low cost tools and
many that offer free trials you can
start using immediately to get a
feel for it.

26. See the Doctor
‣ You don’t know what you
need to (or can) to measure
‣ You don’t have the people
or the resources to do the
work
‣ You can’t ramp up the
knowledge in your
timeframe and you know
you’re going to have to pay
for it

27. Don’t Overreact
to the Bill:
Budgets and Costs

28. ROI isn’t the only Return
‣ You won’t see immediate ROI
‣ It’s an investment in your
people as well as your business
‣ It’s an investment in
sophistication

29. Wins now don’t always pay off now
‣ Long sales cycles make revenue a trailing metric
‣ Small gains compound over time
‣ Small gains can combine for big gains

30. Investment and Outcomes
‣ Attention and investment don’t correlate with lift
‣ Tests with no clear winner tell you what you don’t need to
worry about!
‣ Sometimes big tests get small results and small tests get
big results

31. Don’t Stop Taking the
Medicine!
‣ Don’t stop testing or
redirect your investments
because you’ve identified a
loss area
‣ Don’t stop testing a
particular area just because
you’ve improved it
‣ Don’t stop treating one
condition because another
one is improving faster

32. Conclusions

33. Q&A

34. Got Feedback?

35. Next Webinar
‣ Thursday, December 15th, 12PM CST
“Analytics are People:
Knowing Your Data is Knowing Your Customers”

36. Thank you for your time.
‣ Be sure to join us for our next webinar: ...
‣ For questions and follow-up:
‣ info@metamarketer.com
‣ Twitter: @kateo / @joshtheoak
@metamarketer
‣ LinkedIn: kateoneill / joshuaoakes