by Boris Grinkot, Associate Director of Product Development

Key in-house expertise gaps that challenged LPO in 2010

Q. What were the in-house expertise gaps that challenged LPO in 2010??



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Landing page optimization is a knowledge-intensive marketing function, and expertise gaps are among its top challenges. Traditionally, statistics and scientific methods are not marketers’ areas of expertise. One could even argue that many pick marketing as a collegiate major to avoid all those math and science classes.

Digital marketers that could use design of experiments to power their LPO efforts often come from a more creative background, though not necessarily unaware of the importance of data-driven decision making. As a result of the increased demand for data analysis and design of experiment expertise, specialized educational programs like North Carolina State University’s MS in Data Analysis have become increasingly popular.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is the highly mature field of copywriting. While LPO sets its own standards for developing copy that converts, writers that were effective at traditional direct marketing tend to find themselves just as effective writing for websites. As in direct marketing, optimized website copy is objective-driven, and experienced copywriters have recognized this. Objective-driven copy is certainly not necessarily short copy, and the celebrated "super-long-copy" sell pages have been shown to work exceptionally well for certain product and target market categories.

For additional research data and insights about landing page optimization, download and read the free Executive Summary from MarketingSherpa’s 2011 Landing Page Optimization Benchmark Report.

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