by David Kirkpatrick, Reporter

CHALLENGE

WorldAPP is a data collection company with its main platform built on an online survey tool. Its marketing efforts are something of a challenge because the company serves two distinct markets.

Small- to medium-sized companies are offered a relatively simple "one-size-fits-all" product that is easy to deploy, easy to use and is not too expensive. However, large enterprise customers receive a customized survey tool designed and scaled to meet the specific needs of each customer. This product requires a high-touch effort from Sales to understand the needs of the customer, and the product is significantly more expensive than the version offered to SMBs.

WorldAPP realized there was no way to offer pricing on the large enterprise solution since each product is unique to the customer. But providing pricing information on the smaller SMB version left potential enterprise customers feeling WorldAPP did not have an offering that would meet the scaled-up needs of a large company.

Yaroslav Stepanenko, Marketing Manager at WorldAPP, explained, "Every time we disclosed the pricing we just stopped catching the big fish, which is not a company's long-term strategy." He added WorldAPP did not have an issue serving the SMB market with the shorter sales cycle, but landing enterprise customers was a major corporate goal.
Read on to find out about the series of four approaches WorldAPP took to solve this issue, and how the winning result came from a surprising source.

CAMPAIGN

A secondary website with its own domain served as the landing page and drives most of WorldAPP's lead generation, and commands 85 percent of all marketing budgets and efforts. Traffic mostly comes from pay-per-click advertising, and WorldAPP is driving both SMB and large enterprise customers to the same landing page -- the self-contained secondary website.

Stepanenko said the goal for each version of the landing page remained the same -- provide enough motivation to get the prospect to submit a "free trial" form, request more information about WorldAPP's products, and achieve clarity of the value proposition. The key marketing issue was how present the different pricing tiers for SMB and enterprise customers.

The form on each page included six fields:

o First name
o Last name
o Company name
o Title
o Decision timeframe
o Comments and questions box

Now for a closer look at the four landing page treatments WorldAPP used to improve conversion and justify its different pricing for different audiences. WorldAPP did not perform head-to-head A/B split testing on each landing page, but it continued to work at optimizing the page based on results was tracking.

Landing Page #1. Pricing matrix oriented to single user solutions

The first landing page treatment consisted of a pricing matrix with clearly defined dollar values for single-user solutions oriented to the SMB market. Larger enterprise prospects were targeted with a call-to-action to request pricing information. This treatment resulted in three problems:

o The exit rate went up
o The number of leads went down
o The quality of leads also went down

Tracking software also found the page value indicator also went down with the first treatment.

The reduction in lead quality was actually determined by Sales during weekly meetings with Marketing. Discussing lead quality was part of every meeting, and Sales told the marketing team lead quality was going down for prospects filling the form out on this landing page treatment.

Landing Page #2. Matrix with product information, but no pricing information

The second landing page treatment simply compared features of WorldAPP's products targeted to the SMB market and the enterprise market. For example, the single-user product only offers one admin account while a customized enterprise solution offers unlimited admin accounts.

The call-to-action was designed for both SMB and enterprise prospects to raise their hand and ask to be contacted for more information. This was achieved through text at the top of the matrix providing a phone number and email address offering prospect the opportunity to "learn more."

The page also featured clickable buttons to the right of, and below, the matrix offering a number of different options:

o 60-day enterprise evaluation
o Request a quote
o Free trial
o Customer surveys
o Multi-user solution
o Contact us

The second treatment actually performed worse than the first, with Stepanenko stating although this landing page produced some clicks and some form submissions, the landing page version brought in very few leads and "never participated in actual conversion."

He speculated the problem with the second treatment was it did not provide website visitors enough motivation. He compared that to the first treatment where visitors at least had pricing information for the single user product to learn if the product was in their price range.

Landing Page #3. Add video to the landing page

During video recording with the CEO of WorldAPP for internal use to acquaint new employees with the company's vision, Marketing realized a two-minute section of the recording actually provided a great pitch on justifying WorldAPP's pricing model.

Stepanenko described the video, "This is a good engagement thing. This is what can improve the motivation to request more information regarding the pricing, or just to submit at least the free trial form to try the software (the CEO) is talking about."

Other than the new video this landing page treatment was essentially the same as the second treatment. Although the video was popular and was actively viewed, it did not lead to any requests for pricing information.

Landing Page #4. Provide motivation and demonstrate the product

So far WorldAPP tried three landing page treatments, and in Stepanenko's words had no results better than "epic fail."

The idea for the fourth treatment actually came from Sales. The suggestion was to embed a link to WorldAPP's Pricing/Solution Configuration Survey. The popular video was left on the page, but now WorldAPP was learning about its prospects' needs while collecting the form information and it was providing a demonstration of its survey product at the same time.

The survey consisted of 26 questions, but it was dynamic so the number of questions presented to each prospect was determined by each answer. The average number of questions a prospect saw was six.

If the survey determined the prospect was from a SMB, that person was presented with an actual pricing quote.

Enterprise prospects were asked questions to determine the exact type of survey solution they were looking for, and they were informed that a follow-up from Sales was necessary to provide pricing information. A benefit of the survey was for the follow-up call, Sales was armed with more precise information about what that prospect was seeking.

This landing page treatment solved a number of problems faced by previous treatments:

o It provided prospects with motivation to submit the form

o It provided prospects with a clear value proposition

o It differentiated SMB and enterprise prospects "under-the-hood" instead of visible to website visitors.

The form fields were even broken up to reduce anxiety asking for first name, last name and company up front and placing the remaining fields, including email address and telephone number, at the end of the survey.

Stepanenko said even if prospects provided bogus information in the first three form fields, if they actually took the entire survey they were likely to provide a valid email address because they became serious about getting WorldAPP's solution.

The fourth treatment was a winning landing page and produced both views of the CEO video, and more importantly clicks to the survey.

After spending the time to test four different landing page treatments to find a winning page, Stepanenko stated WorldAPP's next marketing test would be on the email copy sent to prospects who complete the survey and provide an email address.


RESULTS

Stepanenko said WorldAPP learned two main things from testing its main lead generation landing page:

- "It's kind of impossible to justify the value proposition on a pricing page for different audiences," he stated. The SMB and enterprise prospects are too different in requirements and expectations, and it's just too difficult to convert both audiences simultaneously. The survey solution that addresses each prospect's needs individually solved this problem

- The second piece of learning was to "listen to those people you work with." In this case, Sales provided the winning solution to a vexing marketing problem

o With the first landing page treatment, the number of Sales-defined "good" leads went down 11 percent as compared to the previous total amount of good leads. The first landing page was a brand new effort in response to a change in WorldAPP's product structure

o The second treatment resulted in another four percent drop in good leads over the first treatment

o Although the third treatment did not improve conversion or lead quality, 57 percent of page visitors watched the video, and 27 percent actually watched the entire video from beginning to end

o The winning fourth treatment resulted in 48 percent of page visitors who click the survey link actually complete the survey and becoming a lead, with lead quality remaining the same or better

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