Archive for August, 2005
Could you overcome “new coke”?
Honestly, I doubt it. Let’s face it, Coca-Cola did what most of us could only dream about- unleash a monster NEGATIVE word of mouth campaign, and live to tell about it. Ironically, they even did one better- they profited so much from their failed campaign, the Chicago Tribune actually credited them with planning the entire strategy in advance. Nice try, but even the executives acknowledged their flaws.
So what do we do as marketers today? What do we learn from our past transgressions? Apparently, we’ve learned nothing. We continually hide our customers concerns beneath corporate double-talk and ad-speak in our messaging. We shy away from actually trying to anticipate, and respond to, our customers fears and issues. We sell them features, when what they really want is benefits. We make them false promises, when what they really want is empathy. We build our sales process around our business goals, rather than around the customer’s buying process, and meeting their needs.
These examples are everywhere, and not the least bit challenging to uncover. But here’s a positive example, someone out there doing something notable, from which we can all learn. I’ve been critical of JetBlue in the past, because they still fail miserably at providing intuitive scent trails for us to follow when buying tickets, but today they did something impressive. I was booking my ticket to Shop.org Annual when they popped the following message:
Imagine that? Reminding me I’d be flying on a date that may not make me feel comfortable, and providing an alternate context with which I could choose to think about. Of course, this also comes before I’ve confirmed my payment, so I could easily switch to another date, if I so chose. Might it be an irrational fear for a flier to have? Maybe, maybe not, but that’s not the point. They’ve recognized some fliers may feel this way, and they envisioned the negative onslaught they’d receive if and when they charged $75 change fee for people who just realized the date, and were no longer comfortable flying.
Don’t be afraid of creating fear in the mind of your visitor, be afraid of what happens when you fail to address the fear she’s already experiencing.
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Written by:Howard Kaplan
Pssst…Spread The Word
Don’t miss out on WOMMA’s Word of Mouth vs. Advertising event. To make us look good with our friends; Andy Sernowitz who always takes care of friends and friends of friends; WOMMA arranged for us to offer a $50 discount code , it is: futurenowisawesome
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Written by:Jeffrey Eisenberg
Multichannel Marketing Challenges, Part 1
Recently, I talked with someone I’ll call “Artie.” Artie works for a mass-market retailer, a brand everyone’s familiar with. He told me his company uses two sets of product names and descriptions. Thus, a product in both the on- and offline stores can have two different names.
Need I describe the chaos that erupts when an online visitor comes into the brick-and-mortar store and requests a specific product she saw online?
Another company’s offline sales forces carries so much clout in the organization, it sabotaged aspects of the Web site’s online selling process to funnel more leads to the offline sales team.
How many online sales opportunities has it wasted?
The age of multichannel marketing and sales efforts has created many new opportunities, but it’s also created new problems:<
- Missed sales opportunities
- Inconsistent customer experience across channels
- Consistent irrelevance across channels
Missed Opportunities
Whether a company fears channel cannibalization, struggles with channel integration, or is just asleep at the wheel, results are the same: missed sales.
Read the rest of my column at ClickZ…
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
Flying Blind On The Web?
Will someone help me understand?
Coming from an OFFLINE marketing background this article has got me scratching my skull.
Only one in five respondents indicated they have a complete handle on their conversion, marketing ROI, and revenue metrics. Twenty-three percent reported they don’t currently have any metrics, and 29 percent rely on clickthrough rates alone. Read the entire article at ClickZ Stats.
When I worked in the offline marketing world, every business I consulted was obsessed with marketing effeciency and measuring and optimizing their advertising efforts for ROI.
With web analytics, we now have access to better and more relevant customer data that many offline marketers could only dream of as little as 5 years ago. So why are so many lax, and ill equipped to milk their site metrics for better conversion, ROI, etc…?
Is it ignorance?
Are companies afraid of what they will learn?
If you just don’t know what do with your web analytics, well, that is an easy problem to fix.
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Written by:Persuasion Architects
Words Words Words - Learn Persuasive Online Copywriting
What are you doing right now?
Reading.
What are you reading?
Words
Reading is the primary activity people perform on the web, so why do so many folks spend so much time on design and so little time crafting the words on their site?
In our Persuasive Online Copywriting Seminar you will learn how to maximize results from persuasive copy and how to save your customers time, satisfy their needs and increase their pleasure by writing persuasively and laying out content in a way that works best for the Web.
Our two day workshop, led by Lisa T. Davis (aka The Grok and co-author of Persuasive Online Copywriting) and Holly Buchanan (VP for Client Services), gives you the foundational and advanced concepts you need to get the most out of your copy and offers hands-on experience.
Attendance for both days is US $795.
Plan to join us - the first day or both - in our colorful offices September 15-16, 2005.
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Written by:Persuasion Architects
David Burke Flavor Sprays™
You can get anything online. Against my better judgment I’m going to try this out:
The David Burke Flavor Sprays™ contain zero calories,
zero fat, zero cholesterol,
zero carbohydrates and FDA-approved flavoring.
The website is truly awful but I’ll be proving that a person’s motivations can trump bad conversion practices.
The silly Paypal shopping cart confirmation page told me that I’d get my order in 2-4 weeks (sheesh!); so If you have tried them already; please let me know what you think.
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Written by:Jeffrey Eisenberg
Rethinking Mass Marketing
Mass marketing, a product centric approach, in this increasingly fragmented media market is showing even more evidence of becoming like pushing on a rope.
Here’s what I read in the NY Times (requires registration) this morning:
Any Persuasion Architect could have explained why you always have to sell small. No matter how large your audience you still sell one unit to one person at a time. Mass marketing may have worked only a few years ago; people still bought based on their own motivations but had less choices. People are no longer satisfied with the one-size-fits-all messaging for generic products with a diluted brand promise (more investment in the ads than in delivering the brand experience that creates personal connection) since they have an ever increasing variety of alternatives.
Marketers should all embrace the fragmenatation, the transparency and the increased interactivity because it’s not going away.
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Written by:Jeffrey Eisenberg
Use Personas to Increase Conversion rates
Structuring your site to answer the questions your individual vistors ask dramatically increases your conversion rate
Dan Trump, Felicity Green, Vida Blue and Michael Matters are taking a business trip to Chicago and need to book a room for four nights, from September 25 through 28.
The task each of these four individuals is trying to accomplish is the same. But, hey, these are four individuals! Think they’re going to solve their problem the exact same way? Think they define “comfort” the exact same way or even ask the exact same questions?
Each is about to check out Wyndham’s Web site to see if that hotel is right for them. Let’s take a peek at what happens.
Read the rest of this article.
Read the entire newsletter: Volume 116
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Written by:The Grok
Gap’s WatchMeChange viral campaign - spreading the virus
Seen CPB’s new viral campaign for the Gap yet?
If not, you should definitely pop over their site, and prepare for quite a laugh. The campaign is a spin-off of the popular online retailing "Virtual Me" 3D technology. It’s not exactly well tied to Gap’s inventory or catalog, and actually provides nothing more than a few links to Gap.com, and a few appearances of the Gap logo. Then again, it’s designed to be a viral campaign, not to aid in the selling process.
Here’s the interesting part- you’ll notice word is spreading, but certainly not like it could or should be. Why not? Take a peak at this screenshot- it’s the end of the ad. See anything missing? Like, say, something quite vital to all online word of mouth plays? Yup, for some reason, at the apex in momentum, while you and your co-workers are still belly-aching, there’s no ability to pass your virtual dancer (or even just the url) along to your other friends. Oops.
The crazy thing is, they actually do provide static urls that point to your designed GapGirl or Boy, they simply bungled the execution. Where’s the tipping point in a viral campaign? I doubt it’s before you get to the good parts…
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Written by:Howard Kaplan
Small Business Beware of The Internet
Many small/ local business owners, knowing I’m a marketer who focuses on Internet, have told me that their businesses "don’t sell on the web". As long as they believe that they’ll be right. Nevertheless, their customers are comparing them to Internet competitors, using the web to find them or simply trying to engage with them in a meaningful way online. In those cases a poor website is worse than no website.
The tragedy is not that small business owners are making their own beds to sleep in. The true tragedy is that if and when they do wake up and realize they have a problem they’ll call someone with technical expertise, or their nephew who "knows some html". Those people will have little in the way of marketing expertise and their traditional marketers will know less. I know some of my Wizard of Ads Partners, like Dave Young, are making some headway but they can’t possibly help every small business and our clients tend to be larger. It’s a real shame.
The evidence that this is true has become overwhelming for those that know how to read the handwriting on the wall. These are two more omens I became aware of this week:
- Small-business services provider Interland polled 1,032 leaders of small businesses nationwide for their Interland’s Spring 2005 Business Barometer report (available as a PDF download). Nearly a quarter (24%) said that 26% to 100% of their revenue was attributable to having a website.
- Forbes reports that: "Mobile search is poised to become the next big offshoot of the profitable pool of Internet search. The numbers are there: The U.S. has 180 million cell phone users compared to 125 million PCs." Will local businesses get found, would they know how to make sure that they do, would they know what to display?
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Written by:Jeffrey Eisenberg
