So as you may or may not know, there is currently a flash “game” — really, a simulator — to give anyone a taste of what its like to use Adsense on their website to earn some cash.
Personally, I think this is a great tool.
It gives you a real sense of the steps you have to go through to actually implement Adsense in a meaningful fashion, and in doing so, tries to highlight major variables that can determine how successful your Adsense adventures will be.
What the website seems to fall flat is in its own purpose as a marketing strategy. And that purpose seems to be for lead generation.
That is, while its a nice simulator, its real role is to lead the user into a “funnel” for a further educational / marketing program that Joel Comm is selling. For it to be an effective lead generating tool, it should really create a seamless transition from one step to another.
Ian Laurie, over at Conversation Marketing, has mentioned this recently, but basically direct marketing needs to involve a multi-step strategy for most items … and the more expensive, the more odd, the more potential resistance there is to the service or product you’re offer, the more steps you need to have.
Perhaps this is where the Adsense Game’s own popularity is its own “downfall”. While I have no doubt that it is successful in “converting” its players to the next step in the marketing funnel, I wonder how much MORE effective it could be.
The people who are playing the Adsense Game, I *suspect* are people who are unlikely to be hardcore info-marketers who are jonesin’ for the next offering by the next marketing guru.
The vast majority are *probably* people who have somewhere between a passing and moderate interest in Adseense for their blog (if they have a blog at all).
After one or two “days” in the Adsense simulator, a pop up comes up with what looks like a bit of a hardsell, offering that you should “Discover the secrets to Adsense wealth with the web’s most successful e-book”.
Of course, there is a graphic of a book and so on as well.
No matter how successful he is, I wonder how much more effective he’d be in tailoring his offer to a more general, a more casual audience.
Rather than putting the graphic up and coupling it with a pretty salesy bit of copy, would a more transitional piece of copy would work? A simple “Click here for more information on how to improve your Adsense earnings”.
It might be interesting to actually run *those* changes through a simulator (or A vs B testing)!
I think the website illustrates a few important principes in Internet Marketing
- Direct Marketing is a powerful tool when you have a business with products or services to sell: the Adsense Game is part of a larger strategy that is trying to sell a book directly to the consumer. Its pretty damn effective.
- A Multi-Step strategy is important when approaching a new audience or trying to offer something different or expensive: Joel’s not trying to sell it in one go — he could have thrown up a one page sales letter, but its actually more effective to have multiple steps, or “hoops” for visitors to jump through. This way it improves your conversion at each step and ultimately improves your overall conversion from potential custom to actual customer.
- Keeping track of your own metrics, or statistics is absolutely vital when it comes to trying new or different things as it applies to your own marketing strategy: The best thing about internet marketing is that you can make changes to your tactics at a small or no cost. Here’s the critical thing: if you don’t measure what you’re doing there’ll be no way to know if what you’re doing makes any difference!
