"Imitation is the sincerest form of collective stupidity."—W. Carroll (Bill) Munro, marketing director, PepsiCo

"Don’t give me best practices, they are yesterday’s news. Give me emerging practices, they are tomorrow’s news."— paraphrased from Barry Diller (I believe).

Can anyone help validate who said the second one?

...continue to read "Quotes to Ponder: Best Practices"

I hope by know everyone is aware of the traffic cost inflation problem. Even more so, I hope we are all aware how resistant customers are to advertising.

Even in Search Engine Marketing, we have seen many studies which show that people are less likely to click on an a PPC ad than a organic listing. This also fits in with the fact that people focus in on the active area on the screen and only glance towards the sides. In…

...continue to read "Two Ways to Get People’s Attention"

I really enjoy Seth Godin’s blog so I ordered Small Is the New Big: and 193 Other Riffs, Rants, and Remarkable Business Ideas. Have you ordered it or read it yet?

I just noticed that Amazon reports that people who bought Seth’s book also bought Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?: Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing. Perhaps you have ordered/ read it. Let me know if you enjoyed it.

...continue to read "Picked up a copy"

An open, efficient line of communication is beneficial to customers and the bottom line. Yet judging by many “contact us” pages, you’d never think this is the case. Much like “about us” pages, many “contact us” pages seem like throwaways. They receive little love and even less effort.

This is easily remedied with a little thought and some planning.

Common “Contact Us” Mistakes and Solutions

Problem: Prospects don’t know whom they should contact. Many companies do a great job of listing all the different…

...continue to read "Building More Effective “Contact Us” Pages"

We’ve all been frustrated when trying to contact companies for questions and support. This doesn’t have to be.

Paul English founder of GetHuman.com sent us his thoughts on Bryan’s fresh new ClickZ article Building More Effective “Contact Us” Pages.

Hi Bryan, I enjoyed your column on contact pages. I’m the founder of the www.gethuman.com site, and we will soon be publishing and maintaining info about contact forms and email addresses. In addition to the contact us pages, there is of course…

...continue to read "Building More Effective “Contact Us”Pages"

Understand word of mouth and how your business can benefit from it.

Let’s face it. You may be crooning honest-to-goodness marketing truth sans any shred of hype, but these days that can amount to little more than hollering in a windstorm. What do the plugged-in, tuned-in folks making a buying decision today usually do? More often than not, they consult the opinions of other folks who are much more likely to communicate what really matters to them.

Word of mouth is a…

...continue to read "Opinions R Us (and What You Can Do About It)"

Don’t sell yourself short by misunderstanding your customers’ needs.

Perhaps you’re improving your conversion rate. That’s nice to hear! And perhaps you’re removing some stumbling blocks and giving your customers a little more of what they want when they want. Way to go! But the big question is: are you really digging deep and going beyond your customers’ basic motivations?

We persuade most effectively when we understand the context of where our customers are coming from. Not just from tangible directions like…

...continue to read "How Much of My $1000 Rock Climbing Gear Budget Do You Want?"

Several months ago I decided I was going to fly the new, all business class airline from JFK, MaxJet, to get to London for my buddy, Jim Sterne’s, Emetrics seminar. It was a fabulous experience and I told several people they needed to try it out.

With all the chaos with the airlines this past week, MaxJet’s CEO, Gary R. Rogliano, sent out an email which just about guaranteed my next trip in November will be aboard his caring airline.…

...continue to read "How To Get A Repeat Customer"

Get yourself a YouTube, Digg, Flikr, del.icio.us, furl.net, or __________ (insert your favorite online popularity tool here) account. Get out your handicam, pen, digital camera, blogging software, word processor, or __________ (insert your favorite communication tool here) Find something to say that’s relevant, salient, and transparent to such a mass audience, it overcomes each visitor, infects them (er, eh, like a virus in such a way they can’t quite articulate, at their core they just have to pay it forward.…

...continue to read "3 simple steps to create a viral campaign…"

PRWeb, our partner in applying Persuasion Architecture specifically to the world of Public Relations announced it was acquired yesterday.  We couldn’t be happier for PRWeb founder David McInnis.  Not only is David an incredibly nice guy, he’s one of the smartest guys around, and I’m not just saying that because he’s a partner.  He’s revolutionized the PR game, giving a direct-to-consumer angle that didn’t previously exist, and tying it into search engine optimization better than virtually any SE "expert" in…

...continue to read "Following on the heels of PAPR"