Ways to improve the effectiveness of your pay-per-click advertising programs

Alphabet soup is on the menu today, except I’m going to ask you to search among the floating pasta for these letters: S, E, A, O and M. Grab three Ss and three Es while you’re at it. The rest you can eat … and while you are slurping away, I’ll talk about some search engine stuff that is terribly important to how you manage your online marketing efforts.

Eating alongside me…

...continue to read "Teasing Search Engine Advertising from the Soup"

How not to write for your Web site.

We’ve talked often enough about the importance of communicating your value proposition, not only on your home page, but on all your landing pages. You want to give folks an up-front, concise idea why they absolutely need to be doing business with you.

And we’ve talked about the importance of the message being meat, whether you are penning the words to that value proposition or any other piece of copy on your site.

Sometimes it…

...continue to read "Bad Copy: An Example in the Negative"

Can’t really get a grip on what we mean by Persuasion Architecture? Then think of a book.

Recently, my erudite buddy Bryan posted a comment on an e-consultancy forum. His observations included a brief discussion of the value of Persuasion Architecture – which, as you dear readers know, is our synthetic philosophy for creating and managing your online presence. Bryan got a comment from a fellow named Chris, who said,”I can’t help but think of persuasion architecture as one of those…

...continue to read "A Mental Model for Persuasion Architecture"

Toward an understanding of value that will reinforce your persuasive process.

Folks have made a habit of emphasizing the home page of your Web site as the Sacred Portal through which your visitors enter the cyber-structure of your business. As if all other avenues of entry were blocked, and the process could only start at Square One.

Yeah, right. Everyone knows the process can start at any square that is readable by the search engines. And you can directly influence the starting…

...continue to read "The Many Faces of Value"