Archive for October, 2005
What Have You Done for Your Customers Lately?
What does your company do after the cash register rings? Do you view a sale as the start of the relationship, or the end? Do you exert as much effort to keep customers as you do to acquire them?
Sometimes, the most effective marketing and selling efforts take place after the first transaction.
The customer you just rang up is a walking, talking ad. If she’s pleased, she can have her family and friends on board and ready to buy from you in minutes. If she’s unhappy, she can spread a seed of discontent just as quickly.
She also holds purse strings and is looking for an excuse to buy from you again. Ignore her at your peril.
You Can Spin, But You Can’t Hide
No matter how hard you try to spin or excuse your product or service mishaps, the interconnected world will stop you in a heartbeat. Tomorrow’s businesses must be transparent. Reality can no longer be altered.
Even a cult brand like Apple isn’t immune to this reality. The iPod nano and the word “scratch” are now synonymous. Check out this thread on a Mac-friendly Web site.
Our senior conversion analyst, Howie Kaplan, shared an online chat he had with HP support:
Continue reading my column at ClickZ…
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
Waste Five Minutes Or 551,000 Years
From AdAge.com "What Blogs Cost American Business" — Blog this: U.S. workers in 2005 will waste the equivalent of 551,000 years reading blogs.
About 35 million workers — one in four people in the labor force –
visit blogs and on average spend 3.5 hours, or 9%, of the work week
engaged with them, according to Advertising Age’s analysis."
Have you checked out our new podcast of GrokDotCom.com; it will only take about five minutes? We are waiting for iTunes to approve the us and it will be available there too. Here’s to more time wasted!
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Written by:Jeffrey Eisenberg
More SPAM please!
I must admit, this SHOCKS me. With all the ongoing commentary regarding the fragmentation of media, and the need to create a whole new experience where the customer’s content is king (or atleast queen), I thought we were all on board for the new paradigm. I thought the shift from push (direct) marketing to pull (visitors as volunteers) was clear as crystal.
Apparently not, because some college kid just raised HALF A MILLION BUCKS in just under two months. Selling what, you ask? Sp*m. You read that right- HALF. A. MILLION. BUCKS. Selling Sp*m.
I give him plenty of credit for ingenuity, and for obviously understanding the Wizard’s first rule. If you’re intrigued by his plan, and have yet to see it in action, surf on over to the Million Dollar Homepage, (and if you’ve ever weeded through your Junk folder, you’re going to recognize quite a few of those logos)
If anyone needs me in the next few minutes, I’ll be signing up for free hosting, while playing Texas Hold’em, and earning a quick graduate degree in the background while I wait for some "free movies" to finish downloading.
Unreal. Honestly, when will we ever learn?
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Written by:Howard Kaplan
No Segment Left Behind
Prioritize your market segments by treating them all equally
It’s a brave new world out there. We’re witnessing the birth of a media-rich environment filled with tons of alternative information resources for customers who are increasingly in control. And these customers are becoming more resistant to marketing’s “push.” Finding customers via targeted mass media vehicles these days isn’t enough. Marketers must be able to leverage all their market segments, maximize ad expenses and message with pin point relevancy.So, how many market segments do you have? How diverse are their needs? Their motivations? Their demographics? How do you market to segments that have interest in your product or service as their only common denominator?
Read the rest of this article.
Read the entire newsletter: Volume 119
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Written by:The Grok
A Persuasive Online Copywriter is Worth More
How to justify the value of those who understand persuasive online copywriting
Last time I examined the qualities we value in a persuasive online copywriter. The way we look at it, copywriting for persuasion is about significantly more than using power words and devising catchy phrases. It’s also a lot more about speaking to your visitors’ buying process than it is pushing your sales process (that piece of the equation may be your raison d’être, but it must remain transparent to your visitors).
So, let’s say there’s this copywriter who understands and is skilled at writing for Persuasion Architecture. A client asks this copywriter to quote a price for a job. The copywriter tells the client $150 per web page. There’s a moment of silence before the client informs the copywriter she has another quote for $70 per web page.
How would the copywriter justify the higher price - and why would the client agree to pay it? Here’s how the copywriter should reply.
Read the rest of this article.
Read the entire newsletter: Volume 119
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Written by:The Grok
Does Your Web Site Stink?
How well does your site preserve the scent trails visitors follow?
Creating and preserving intentional scent trails on your site translates to improved ROI (define) for your paid and organic search terms.
Hot on a Scent
Every scent trail starts with a search.
A prospect types into the search box the search term she believes will give her the desired result. Then, she willfully follows the scent trail of that specific term from the starting point, usually the search results page, seeking a specific answer. She frequently returns to the starting point for orientation. If she doesn’t find the answer after several clicks, she starts a new scent trail. She repeats this process until she finds her answer.
People hunting for online data behave remarkably like animals sniffing out prey. It’s the most effective means of finding a teensy-weensy squirrel in awfully big forest.
Understanding this process allows you to measure and optimize the scent trails people follow, both on your site and in marketing campaigns. Losing the trail is one reason 80 percent of visitors leave a site after three pages.
Most SEM (define) is about getting found. Problem is, most SEM does little more than put signs on every tree that read, “Squirrels in the forest.” Though true, the signs don’t help the hunter a lot in the quest to actually find the squirrels in the forest.
Continue reading my column at ClickZ…
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
What Exactly is a Scenario?
Toward a definition that meets the needs of marketing, analytics and customers
‘Scenario’ is making its way into more and more conversations these days. You’d like to wrap your mind around this concept, ’cause you have the sense it’s the essence of how you construct your online experience (and you’re right!). But depending on who you ask, you get a entirely different answer to the question, “What exactly is an online scenario?”So join me for another installment in my “What Exactly Is” series. Today we come to grips with persuasion scenarios.
Read the rest of this article.
Read the entire newsletter: Volume 118
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Written by:The Grok
Good Copywriters Are …
A baker’s dozen of essential qualities for marketers and copywriters alike
“What makes for good online copywriting?” Both marketers and copywriters have their reasons for asking this question. And we’ve got answers like Carters proverbially had liver pills. You can read them. You can come listen to them. (Answers, that is. Not pills.)
“Can you recommend a good online copywriter?” Ah. Unfortunately we have considerably fewer answers to that one (although we wish we were busting at the seams with them). So one day, I enlisted my colleagues in brainstorming the answer to this related question: “What qualities must a good onlne copywriter possess?”
Read the rest of this article.
Read the entire newsletter: Volume 118
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Written by:The Grok
