Archive for February, 2006
Life takes Better Planning
Visa has just dumped their tagline of more than two decades from “It’s everywhere you want to be” to “Life takes Visa”.
As they made the move they unvealed a new mutimedia ad campaign utilizing TV, print, billboards, and of course, online ads.
At the center of the online campaign is a so called ‘viral’ site chock full of over produced video ’snippets’ of life. These video snippets while cute and occasionally entertaining are not the stuff of viral marketing, the reasons why are topic for an entirely different discussion. Needless to say, if they were viral, Visa did a horrific job of planning this viral online campaign, so many aspects of it simply fail.
In my most recent Grokcast, or video critique, I show you where and why their persuasive scenario falls apart.
Watch our Grockcast “Life Takes Better Planning” (Flash Move, 12mg, 13 minute)
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Written by:Persuasion Architects
Conversion Funnel Folly, Part 1
Would you make a radiologist responsible for all of your health care?
Of course not.
Even the world’s finest radiologist, employing x-rays, MRIs, and all sorts of complex technology, can still only spot, and occasionally diagnose, an abnormality. When it comes to treating the total patient, assessing health, or creating a regimen, radiologists are ill-equipped.
This doesn’t diminish radiologists; their role is critical. But that role is only part of the whole picture.
Optimizing an e-business is not unlike treating a patient. Each business is a unique, complex organism with preferences, goals, character, and history. General health can be determined by vital stats, or key performance indicators (KPIs). But businesses also require a more comprehensive data set (some of which Web analytics can provide) that can be analyzed to optimize marketing processes or halt a plummeting KPI.
In business, an incorrect diagnosis, unnoticed abnormality, or improper treatment can literally cost millions. The Web analytics expert, the radiologist of our industry, typically hasn’t the insight or training to carry out this responsibility. This requires doctor types who can pool comprehensive data, analyze it, determine cause, and suggest a holistic strategy for maximum extraction of dollars.
The industry loves Web analytics techies. That’s part of the problem. It loves overly simplistic breakdowns of conversion funnels and formulaic answers. It lusts for a black box.
Continue reading my column at ClickZ…
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
How to write better copy in 60 seconds or less…
Ok, well maybe that’s overstating it. Formal training is definitely a wise idea, but in the downtime between sessions, start by reading better copy on a daily basis. Take this gem, for instance:
Riding the 6 train is a lot like riding the sex train. Bodies press together. People grunt and moan. And no matter where you’re headed, you look forward to getting off.
And then there are the poles. If only hanging upside down by one foot were part of the daily bump and grind.
Guaranteed to make the commute more fun (and by commute we mean nightly romps at home), Sheila Kelley’s legendary striptease and pole dancing workout tones your tummy, bum, arms, and thighs while teaching you how to move sensually. A NYC branch of her famous West Coast studio, The S Factor, opens today.
p>Too intimidating you say? With no mirrors, tunes from the likes of Beck and 50 Cent, and lighting so low you can’t see your own ripples much less your neighbor’s hip rolls, there’s nothing to be afraid of.
Unlike the humpty dance that is the subway.
Where did I find these evocative, impassioned words you ask? From Daily Candy, of course…
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Written by:Howard Kaplan
The Sense of Scent
Establishing and maintaining a scent trail is essential to providing persuasive momentum
Kudos to my heroine and comrade-in-words, Holly Buchanan, who recently presented an electrifying Shop.org teleseminar on persuasive online copywriting. We were reading through the impressive feedback when I came across this: “I would have liked more examples of scent.”Holly and I looked at each other (she still isn’t sure which of my eyes to gaze into), and smiled. What seems so obvious to us obviously isn’t obvious to others.
So I want to be crystal clear about scent, because scent is important. Understanding what it is and how to maintain it is critical to the success of your persuasive mission. Let’s start sniffing.
Read the rest of this article.
Read the entire newsletter: Volume 125
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Written by:The Grok
The Cooperative Marketing Waggle
What the honeybee’s Waggle Dance and word-of-mouth marketing have in common—and how to promote it
When we talk about scent, we’re talking about setting up a trail of relevance. And as we are all (sometimes painfully) aware, businesses aren’t the sole creators of what folks find relevant. In fact, focused on maintaining the rosy frontal view for their products and services, businesses are not always considered the most credible resources for either relevance or truth.
Read the rest of this article.
Read the entire newsletter: Volume 125
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Written by:The Grok
Superbowl Ads throw a Hail Mary…but is there anyone there to catch it? Part 2
ClickZ news reports the following…
Traffic to advertiser sites spiked in the fourth quarter and continued in the hours and days following the game, according to Web services provider Akamai, which hosts more than half of the advertisers’ Web presences. The company registered a peak 782,679 visitors per minute to its client’s sites during the fourth quarter as users added the Web to their personal media mixes.
“There is a convergence between TV and the Web,” Akamai Director of Marketing Kieran Taylor told ClickZ News. “Madison Avenue has been looking for the notion of closed loop marketing. The Web delivers that. In real time, they can gauge the efficiency of an ad based on the visitors to a Web site.” Read the entire article Superbowl Viewers Swarmed to the Web
Closed loop? Effeciency of an ad? What about effeciency to top line sales? What about conversion rate effeciency? What about ROI?
As we pointed out in part one of these posts, some of the Superbowl ads generated traffic, but did they convert visitors into sales, into leads, into future prospects? GoDaddy.com suceeded in getting peoples attention, but clearly dropped the conversion ball.
So we wanted to take a look at a 2006 Superbowl advertiser that actually did a decent job planning the scenario and the scent trails that visitors must follow.
Watch our critique of Blockbuster.com’s Super Bowl campaign (4mb Shockwave Flash movie, 7 minutes)
Note: We want to thank the super folks at TechSmith, especially Betsy Weber and Travis Stoliker for their assistance in using Camtasia to create and post these flash movies. We are all big fans of SnagIt and obviously Camtasia will make any amatuer video presenter look like a pro.
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Written by:Anthony Garcia
Superbowl Ads throw a Hail Mary…but is there anyone there to catch it?
Most ads are a result of marketers giving their best creative effort and throwing them out to an unsuspecting world to see if it sticks. The mother of all advertising Hail Marys is the Super Bowl ad.
Most of this year’s Super Bowl ads were entertaining, funny, and compelling. But did they get the job done? Will they return the advertisers gargantuan investment. Will their websites give us any indication of the campaign (read: not JUST the ad’s) success?
So, today I took some time today to give the official Future Now slant on how well companies are using their Super Bowl ad exposure to convert prospects.
Whether they are planned or not, when a company advertises they create a scenario that potential customers must traverse to reach a conversion. Some persuasive scenarios are planned and help customers convert, others not so much
Our first analysis is of the GoDaddy.com campaign.
Watch the GoDaddy.com analysis (8mb Shockwave Flash video 8:00 minutes. If you’re familiar with multi-channel marketing, please skip to the 2:20 mark)
Note: This is not a streaming video and may take a few moments to download and play in your browser.
Want to know how to do it right? See how Blockbuster.com builds cross-channel momentum in our next post.
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Written by:Anthony Garcia
10 E-Business Proverbs for 2006, Part 2
My last column shared the first 5 of 10 e-business proverbs from Sam Decker, former e-commerce and customer-centricity leader at Dell. Today, the second five.
To achieve e-business results, decide what results you’ll achieve on a daily, weekly, and quarterly basis. Forecast key metrics in your online business: online revenue, margin, visit, conversion, average order value, and so on. Assign ownership to these measurements and report (red, yellow, green) progress against your forecast. Set stretch goals. All will work to achieve a goal, but they must know what it is, how they’re responsible, and where they stand.
Continue reading my column at ClickZ…
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
Science of Stupidities
Bryan Eisenberg just sent me a link to Eric Weaver’s blog Ad-Verse.
I immediately subscribed.
Today’s post, entitled Direct Marketing: A Science of Stupidities stole my little marketing heart. Here is just one tasty morsel.
It’s time to stop talking about relevance and start practicing it.
Time to stop intruding and start attracting. Time to spell out a clear
value proposition. Stop patting yourselves on the back that your
unwanted communication got maybe a 5% clickthrough rate. FIVE PERCENT.
And consider, just for a moment, the 95% that want you to go to hell.Maybe direct marketers don’t get the whole relationship thing because they don’t really know what that word means. Read the whole post.
Warning: if you can’t handle raw, in your face, no holdin’ back truth then please don’t read the above post. It is not for the weak of mind and heart.
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Written by:Persuasion Architects
Didn’t You Say This was on Sale?
Breaking your promises and forcing customers to think like you makes for poor conversion practice
Sometimes you go to a website and you just know the business hasn’t got a clue. They’re doing everything so wrong, you don’t even know where to start. There are also those times you go to a site and think, on first inspection, that things look pretty good.Until you start dealing with the site’s process. In that moment you realize appearances can be deceiving. That’s why, through the use of personas and wireframed scenarios, we always make sure our clients are getting their processes squeaky clean first. It’s basic Horse Before the Cart 101.
Our friend and colleague David Cross was trying to buy a long sleeved t-shirt from a company called C&C California. Here’s what happened.
Read the rest of this article.
Read the entire newsletter: Volume 124
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Written by:The Grok
