KEY POINTS:
Imagine an isolated island with buried treasure. And the only way to find the treasure is to have a copy of the map.
There's only one problem: you have to have a copy of the map.
And it's this problem that can be turned into
an amazing opportunity.
The opportunity to measure, without a doubt, if your marketing campaign is pure genius or just a dud.
What's an isolated web page?
Imagine a page that search engines can't find. A web page that isn't on any of the links on your website. A web page that can be found only if you send customers directly to it, one that they couldn't get to in any other way.
This is what you'd call an isolated web page.
But, you may ask, what good is an isolated web page?
Let's say you're doing a test. You want to measure your advertising.
How do we drive customers to this isolated web page?
Let's take an example.
Let's say you are indeed flush enough to do some radio and TV advertising.
Well, you could get customers to call a number.
Or you could drive them to an isolated web page.
Just like Al Boenker does with his advertising. On the radio, Al, who runs an insurance broking business, announces a website called insurancecompaniesarestupid.com. But when you go to that web page, you don't see insurancecompaniesarestupid.com.
What you do see is a website that's called thanksal.com.
So what happened to insurancecompaniesarestupid.com?
It's an isolated page. In fact, it's not even a page at all. It's just a redirect. So when you go to that page, you get redirected to another page.
Now, if Al's company is smart (and it most probably is), they'll run that web page URL only on radio and nowhere else. And if they're really smart, they'll see how many people go to that specific web page.
And that's how they'll know that the marketing campaign is a success
They'll specifically be able to see how many people are coming from that ad on the radio (provided they don't run the ad in squillions of places and just on radio).
But is that enough? Shouldn't the customer be buying from that page?
Yes, we do understand that isolated pages are not enough ... I understand, and you understand, that it's not enough to simply drive a customer to a page. It's important for the customer to buy a product or a service.
And while we both agree on the importance of the transaction, we are indeed jumping a step.
The first step is not to find out if you can sell from that isolated page. The first step is for you to measure if your customers are indeed finding that page.
That first step is for you to test the validity of your radio campaign
Or TV campaign.
Or Google Ad campaign.
That isolated page is isolated for a reason. It gives you an understanding beyond any doubt, of whether or not your message is working. That your prospects are indeed responding to your message.
And this understanding is especially critical if your customer is moving from offline media like TV, radio and leaflets to a page online.
Because when the customer does indeed go to that page, it means they've found that isolated island ... and the X mark.
It's time to open that bottle of rum, me hearties. Because you know your campaign is working. Or not.
Sean D'Souza is chief executive of Psychotactics and is an international author and trainer. www.psychotactics.com