In a world where every Tom, Dick, and Jane on the Internet is a self-proclaimed marketing expert, it’s refreshing to see someone share no-BS marketing insights derived from rigorous testing and research. I’m speaking of Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, one of today’s top marketing minds, whose knowledge is voluminous and whose teachings are a joy to watch.
If you don’t know Flint McGlaughlin, you’re in for a treat. The man reminds me of a superhero scientist—Lex Luthor, maybe, except he’s on our side, fighting to help us win more marketing leads and conversions.
And he’s been at it for a while. In 2000, Flint founded MECLABS, an online laboratory dedicated to studying the psychology of conversion, and MarketingExperiments, a curated library of research and case studies in the field of optimization, A/B testing, and digital messaging.
I learn something new from Flint nearly every time I watch him. Unlike most Internet talking heads who simply repackage the same ideas everyone else is already talking about, Flint digs deep to understand the psychology of the purchase process and explain to us what works and why.
He brings science to the subjective—or what lesser minds believe to be subjective—to find facts and truths that produce markedly better results.
A marketing optimization powerhouse
Flint and his associates offer a ton of live and on-demand video content, including free courses. Some of my favorite videos are his Quick-Win-Clinics—short episodes in which Flint analyzes web pages sent in by marketers and critiques them on the fly.
Here is one that gives me a kick. It’s called “Conversion Rate Optimization: Getting the Right ‘Yes,’” and it clocks in at less than five minutes. (Click the link to open the video in a new tab.)
In this episode, Flint analyzes a page submitted by Zopa Loans. After a short introduction, he puts the page up against his very own patented conversion heuristic developed based on years of testing and research—and it’s clear that the page has problems.
(Click this link to see the Zopa page he’s critiquing.)
What, Flint wonders, is Zopa?
What is happening in the image?
Where is the value proposition in the headline?
Says Flint:
“This is friction already because I am working too hard to make meaning of the page. ‘Get a Zopa loan.’ How would I want to get a loan so fast with knowing so little. ‘Invest with Zopa.’ Even more. Am I ready to make this kind of commitment? No.”
One of my favorite Flint-isms is that the job of marketers is not to optimize a page, but to optimize a thought sequence.
We need to think: What matters most to the prospect at this stage of his or her thought process? Once we think we know the answer, we can begin to organize that information to optimize for conversion.
In the case of Zopa, we don’t yet know the company. We don’t know what they do. We don’t yet trust them enough to want to do business with them. We are certainly not ready to buy.
“Now,” Flint says, “if you have sold me somewhere else before I got here, it makes sense. But if you have people coming here who have not truly gone through the sequence of thought they need to achieve a macro-yes—that is, I want to become your customer, or I want to become a customer of this particular program—then the first thing you’ve done is wasted half of your page asking me to take an action I am not ready for.”
Exactly.
(And did you catch that other little gem he dropped in there? “On the Internet, best practice is just pooled ignorance.” Ha! I love that line.)
As Flint has said many times, the job of the home page is to get the various prospect types on the correct path up the inverted funnel. And this Zopa page fails because it doesn’t do that effectively or with any kind of value proposition.
“Wait,” you may be thinking. “Inverted funnel? Conversion heuristic? Micro-yes? What on Earth are you talking about?”
I’m glad you asked.
Flint explains these ideas and more in the video, “15 years of marketing research in 11 minutes,” below.
Enjoy!
More from MarketingExperiments and MECLABS:
MarketingExperiments Quick-Win Clinics: https://marketingexperiments.com/content/quick-win-clinics
MarketingExperiments research briefs: https://marketingexperiments.com/content/research-briefs
MarketingExperiments research archive (everything they’ve ever published): https://marketingexperiments.com/research-archive
MECLABS recorded events and webinars: https://meclabs.com/events
MECLABS featured research and resources: https://meclabs.com/research#featured-research
Note: Neither Dr. McGlaughlin nor anyone else has compensated me in any way for this blog post. I am writing this for the simple reason that I enjoy Flint’s work and wish to share it with others.
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Flint, I started watching you in 2007 when I entered the official marketing world. You were (and still really are) the ONLY person who puts words into action. Your webinars were always engaging, which was hard way back when! Your science made perfect sense, your ‘user experience’ take on things was not new to me, just affirming–and very unique back in 2007 when marketers thought just ‘pushing this out’ was enough to cause a conversion, lol.
I am one of your biggest fans. Keep at it, and please keep helping people understand what’s at stake when they put something on the web.
I’d like to see more guidance that is not directed to a manufactured product, per se, or a single focus. For many organizations, it’s a multi-faceted proposition (associations, for instance – many audiences, many ‘products’)
So, thank you Flint. You are amazing. I hang on every word you say. And write (love your Marketer as Philosopher book).
🙂
Hi, Ann! It’s so nice to hear from another marketer who has benefited from Flint’s work. His teachings are literally money in the bank to people who put them into practice.
Thanks for reading!
Rob, this is Flint. I am inspired by your kind words. I aspire to be the man you describe. Thank you for your encouragement.
Well, this is an honor! Thank you, Flint—for your comment, and for all of the insights and inspiration you share with the world. I am a better marketer because of you.
Dr. Flint, you truly are an inspiration and a scholar.