Podcast: Website Conversion Rate Optimization

SiteTuners CEO Tim Ash chats with Arnie Kuenn, CEO of Vertical Measures and author of Accelerate! about search, social, and content marketing. Tim and Arnie walk through how social media is not just a marketing channel but also a public relations and customer service tool, and what that means for measuring ROI. The two discuss the virtues of overdelivering on the customer service side, and how even negative situations can turn pissed off customers into company advocates with great service.

They talk about the paradigm shift in customer behavior, from traditional brick-and-mortar store visits to including search in the process 52 to 92 percent of the time before making a pucrhase, and eventually to including even social media into that purchase process. Arnie talks about how only 5% of businesses are responding to social media inquiries, and what that means for businesses. He walks listeners through emerging trends in the space, like the rise of Infusionsoft, Eloqua, and other marketing automation systems that can actively identify hot leads.

Tim and Arnie then go through specific strategies to set the company up as an expert in the industry and steps to ensure ROI can be measured. Arnie tackles how the money is in the lists, and how free guides that require emails work well for the enterprise space. He discusses how Yahoo! answers and answers.com can be good research sites to check for the company’s content strategy.

Arnie also talks about how there is no possible way to prepare yourself for a drive in India.