Archive for September, 2006
Internet Killed the Radio Star?
Contrary to popular belief radio is not dying. It is, however, changing drastically. What we are witnessing is the medium of ‘audio broadcasting’ being molded and morphed at the hands of a populice in more control of their choices.
Radio isn’t radio anymore, it is now ‘terrestrial’ radio and it sharing more of it’s audience (and revenue) with it’s offsping; internet radio, podcasting, and satellite radio.
Even as the populice is having influence on the radio universe many broadcasting sites remain irrelevant and downright yucky. And of course ‘terrestrial’ radio is struggling to remain viable. The answer to this?
From Audiographics.com
Today, consider a few terms that will help; radio personas, predictive modeling, and persuasion architecture. Combining the three allow stations to build an online presence that delivers better results.
Building a radio persona will let you create predictive marketing that gives clues to how you should build your web site with persuasion architecture. Read the entire article.
Interestingly enough, this conclusion came as a result of Bryan Eisenberg’s 2 part rant over at ClickZ about the state of satellite radio’s online efforts. Read part one, then part two.
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Written by:Anthony Garcia
Barking Cats in Time Square
Thought you had travel far and wide, wait in long lines at Barnes & Noble book signings, or spend 6 figures in consulting fees to have breakfast with the Brothers Eisenberg? Think again… or rather, just pop on over to the Crowne Plaza in Times Square NYC next Thursday @ 7 AM. Bagels are on us (and our good friends at WebSideStory and Responsys too) but seats around the table are limited, so please do register in advance at: http://www.websidestory.com/promotions/eisenberg/register.html
For those of you outside of NYC, I guess I lied (sue me 
you do have to travel far and wide… unless of course we’re coming to a neighborhood nearby.
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Written by:Howard Kaplan
Satellite Radio and Listening to Personas, Part 2
Last time, I shared results of an experiment we ran in the office. I had one of my persuasion architects write up two simple profiles that would be good potential prospects for XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio. Then I had two new, inexperienced support staffers click through the sites emulating these profiles. I shared their XM site experiences last time; this week, their paths on Sirius.
Cindy Arrives on Sirius
Cindy is a competitive, time-starved music aficionado. When she arrives on the Sirius home page, there are no enticing images or elements that provide an impression of the vast music choices she’ll have as a subscriber. The color palette is dark and masculine. The light grey “Music” button is almost invisible; Cindy never sees it. Instead she uses the top navigation and clicks the “What’s On Sirius” button.
On the What’s On Sirius page, Cindy becomes frustrated. She still doesn’t see genre listings in the active window. If she were a more patient persona, she might have noticed the rollover sub navigation near the top of the page, but she’s anything but patient. Underneath the main banner in the active window, she clicks on “Music.”
When she lands on the Music page, Cindy still doesn’t get any satisfaction. This page looks almost identical to the last one. At the fold, she spots the word “Pop” and scrolls, finally seeing a genre list. She clicks on a drop-down and finds an esoteric listing of names, which isn’t helpful. As she scans and scrolls down the entire page, she gets some resolve. Still, she’d like more mentions of specific artists she might hear. This page has no clear subscription call to action. Of course, there’s a free online trial button near the top, Cindy never sees it.
With no clear action to take, Cindy bails.
Continue reading my column at ClickZ…
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
Paid Search Vs. Organic, which converts better?
According to a recent article over at Internet Retailer paid search has a slight advantage. But before you start increasing your paid search budget, our CTO(Chief Thinking Officer) John Quarto-vonTivadar chimes in with his questions about these numbers and their implications…
Imagine that, if you will: given the tremendous amounts of money spent on paid search (huge! And costs are actually going up!), all it manages to do is achieve a Scrooge-ish +9% bump over organic search. On a dollar-for-dollar basis, you may well get a bigger conversion bang for the buck by investing in an organically planned architecture of scent, relevance and persuasion — which is what ends up scoring so well in organic search anyway — than in "buying" traffic for an otherwise cow-pathed site.
Hmmmmmmmmmm, very interesting.
Get into John’s scientific head for yourself and read his entire post.
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Written by:Anthony Garcia
Is Your Service In The Toilet?
Seth Godin took a couple of pictures that tell a bigger story about customer service, customer expectations and customer experience. Read his post and think about how you can improve your customer’s experience.
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Written by:Jeffrey Eisenberg
Satellite Radio and Listening to Personas, Part 1
Would you like to lose $863 million in 365 short days? Too much? How about $667 million? Is that a bit more palatable?
In her article “Satellite radio runs into static,” Sarah McBride of “The Wall Street Journal” writes those numbers represent what satellite radio providers Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio lost respectively in 2005.
It’s proof positive that piles of money don’t buy business or marketing effectiveness.
Are You Sirius?
In his article, “Satellite Radio: Seriously, Folks, Are XM and Sirius Serious?” Denny Hatch of Target Marketing Group lays out more effective direct marketing tactics for these providers. About their Web sites, he writes, “Go to the Sirius or XM Web site, and you’ll find a lot of ‘it’ copy — radios, discounts, accessories, how to order, schedules and personalities, but not one single benefit of subscribing.”
Hatch doesn’t claim to be an expert in online persuasion, but he’s absolutely correct.
Satellite Radio Personas
As an experiment, I had one of my persuasion architects write up two very simple profiles (not quite full personas as neither Sirius nor XM is a client). These entry-level profiles may represent a couple of typical market segments for satellite radio:
Continue reading my column at ClickZ…
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
Have It Your Way
I know you have choices … I’m asking you to make a Grokdotcom choice now.
Nope. I am not referring to a Whopper with cheese, hold the tomato, extra pickles, please. I’m referring to this here newsletter, Grokdotcom.
When we first published, way back in March of 2000, we offered folks three ways they could read these articles. They could access them through the website; they could receive them as HTML emails; they could receive them as plain text emails. We had our bases covered.
But, as readers of our bestselling Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? know, we are extremely sensitive to the fact that emerging media expands everyone’s possibilities and puts the customer in control. Any business that ignores this suffers. Personally, I’m not fond of suffering.
So what does that mean for you and your relationship with Grokdotcom? Read on, McDuff!
Those of you who indulge in the visual interface may have noticed some serious changes to the Future Now, Inc. and Grokdotcom websites. We’ve been busy bees, simplifying our presentation, our look/feel, our usability and enhancing our persuasiveness. And we’ve been adding more ways for you to “read” my magical words.
Read the rest of this article.
Read the entire newsletter: Volume 139
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Written by:The Grok
Can Your Customers Read What You Write?
Readability scales can help you make your persuasive copywriting more accessible to your audience.
You’ve just read my Have It Your Way article, right? According to my Microsoft Word program, that article has a Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level of 7.6 (which means folks half way through the 7thgrade can understand that article). It has a Flesch Reading Ease score of 63.3 percent (which means 63.3 percent of all readers can understand what they’ve read). There are 13.8 words per sentence (those for whom English is a second language shouldn’t have much trouble reading the article). The average word has 4.6 characters (pretty good). And 5 percent of the sentences are written in the passive voice (not bad). According to a different program, my article has a Fog Index of 8.7 (another grade-level reading score).
Is your head hurting yet? Number-talk has that effect on some folks. But these are numbers you’ll want to consider when you evaluate the copy that is going to persuade your customers to take the action you want them to take.
Read the rest of this article.
Read the entire newsletter: Volume 139
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Written by:The Grok
Creating A Customer Experience - The Online Advantage
I just ran across this article at USA Today.
Retailers know how you’ll approach a store, where you’ll hesitate, how to affect your mood, how to pique your desires, how to play to your aspirations. Everything in a store, from lighting to floor color to music to how goods are displayed, is meant in some way to get you to not just shop, but spend.
"It’s like a Broadway musical," says Deborah Mitchell, a marketing expert at the University of Wisconsin. "Nothing was put into that musical that wasn’t thought through. It’s the same in a highly orchestrated retail environment." Read the entire article.
Here is a cold harsh reality: The most beautifully designed website, the most stunning 2D visual product photos or otherwise simply look weak compared to to a well orchestrated onslaught of your 5 senses at a brick and mortar retail outlet. Online your visitors can’t experience depth, texture, lighting, smells, noise ambience, and the list goes on.
Now don’t take this as me telling you not to use images and pretty graphics, I am simply stating that focusing heavily on design may not deliver the conversions you hope for.
JPEGs, GIFs, PNGs, even flash presentations are still only 2d, flat, and when compared with a broadway musical, they are boring.
So why do so many spend so much time debating, and hand wringing about their site’s visuals and graphics? Maybe they haven’t heard.
Your biggest advantage online is your ability to create atom-splitting mental images.
How? With WORDS.
How much time are you spending with design vs. relevant copy?
What mental images are you building about your products/services in the mind of your visitors? Are you using a series of planned mental images to create an online customer experience not bound by a physical reality?
Novelists do it everyday,and the methodology exsists to plan this online.
What are you waiting for?
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Written by:Anthony Garcia
Bryan Eisenberg on the Twist Image Podcast
Our very own warm, fuzzy, and lovable Bryan Eisenberg was recently interviewed on the Twist Image Podcast - Six Pixels of Separation
Mitch Joel interviews Bryan about the book, and Bryan shares some recent insights on current events as well as today’s morphing marketing biosphere. The interview is 35 minutes of savory goodness in MP3 format. Find it here.
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Written by:Anthony Garcia
