Picture This—An Infographic’s Role in Content Marketing

What are Infographics?

In short, an infographic is any visual representation of information. These large, creative images (see below for an example) can be found in a variety of places around the web, like on blogs, through some social networks like Pinterest, and on bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon. For the purposes of Internet Marketing, an infographic is normally used to present a large amount or complicated data in an appealing and engaging way. And that’s the key to your business getting the most out of this kind of content—engagement with your target audience. The assumption always seems to be that web users are impatient—they won’t bother with a site if it doesn’t load after a few seconds, and they won’t take the time to read every word on a text-rich web page. To market in this environment, where users want information in (faster than) an instant, visual content like infographics just might be a way to slow people down and get your message across effectively.

How can I use Infographics for Marketing?

Just like any other visual-based piece of content, the marketing value of infographics lies in their portability, opportunities for sharing via social networks, and linking back to your business’s web site.

Portability: Once designed and completed, an infographic can be easily uploaded to an aggregator, repurposed in a presentation, highlighted in an email promotion, or discussed in an article, blog post, press release, or social media post.

Sharing: Your business’s online presence, reach, and credibility can all receive a substantial boost when users share your visual content. Because of their relatively small size and wide range of applications, infographics make for an inexpensive chance for your business’s content to “go viral.”

Backlinking: Just because any text content within an infographic can’t be crawled or indexed by a search engine doesn’t mean that these images don’t have distinct SEO advantages. Anyone that shares and/or publishes an infographic somewhere else typically links back to your business’s website; this link bait results in greater traffic and a higher search ranking.

Conclusion

It’s easy to see the benefits that can come not only from infographics, but from the integration of any visual content into your business’s digital marketing plan. The key is that the content has to be well designed. The best images are appealing and easy to understand, as well as informative and engaging. They can show your business’s expertise on a particular subject as well as increase your reach and web traffic. Finally, infographics are easily repurposed, shared by users, and serve as effective link bait for SEO purposes. For a business owner, it seems a picture can be worth much more than a thousand words.

A/B Testing (Split Testing) to Convert More Online Customers

What is A/B testing (split testing)?

A/B testing, or split testing, is a marketing testing method by which one baseline control sample is compared to a variety of single-variable test samples in order to improve response or conversion rates. An example would be to test two different subject lines of an email campaign. A/B testing has been implemented for direct mail and within the interactive space to test tactics such as banner ads, emails, landing pages, or even entire websites to improve performance. You can also extend A/B testing to PPC advertising copy, alternative keywords, or PPC keyword match types.

How can my business or marketing department apply A/B testing?

You should always be testing ways to improve the sales process to reduce your cost per acquisition and to improve your customers’ experiences. I would recommend that you start with the “low hanging fruit” that could have the greatest impact on revenue or the customer experience. For example, an A/B test could be a simple as testing the color of the calls-to-action to improve the click-through-rate.

A/B testing can be applied to marketing tactics to improve sales or lead generation at a lower cost. In general, it’s easier to implement A/B testing with digital advertising because of the ability to make changes quickly and optimize the process. The findings from digital advertising can also be carried over to traditional advertising.

A/B Testing Best Practices

If you’re new to A/B/ split testing, here are a few best practices:

Define your goals. Clearly state what you hope to accomplish.

Determine how you plan to accomplish your goals. Keep it Simple!

What are you testing & why?

What is the variation you are testing (color, position, ad copy, etc.)?

Define the control and your variation for testing.

What are your expected results & reasoning?

Measure & Analyze the results through the sales or conversion process.

How do you apply A/B Testing to Internet Marketing Strategy?

You can leverage A/B testing based on geography, psychographics, customer lifecycles, etc. You want to develop realistic goals based on your target audiences. At first, I would recommend being targeted with your approach and limiting the test to a single market. It’s important to identify the greatest impact on the conversion process or sales process by modifying the internet marketing strategy slightly. Be sure to focus on all the results from the beginning of the process to completion and to communicate the results. Think about the effect the testing will have on saving time, money, and creating efficiencies.

Conclusion

If you haven’t started A/B testing, you’re wasting time, money, and missing opportunities. As marketers, we should always be testing to maximize performance and to reduce costs. Testing goes beyond just a subject line or ad copy. It requires focus, consistency, and planning. In addition, you must think about usability, branding, layouts, the purchase process, etc. There are numerous tools such as Web Optimizer, Visual Website Optimizer, or Test &Target to get started.