Author Archive
Bryan Eisenberg Interview from Search Engine Watch
Just before his keynote presentation at the Search Engine Strategies conference in Toronto the other week, Search Engine Watch executive editor Kevin Heisler caught up with FutureNow co-founder Bryan Eisenberg to chat about website optimization, split-testing, word-of-mouth marketing, social commerce, personas, and his forthcoming book. With Kevin’s kind permission, we’ve reprinted the interview below. Enjoy!
Kevin Heisler: Tell us about your new book, Always Be Testing.
Bryan Eisenberg: A little over a year ago Google offered everyone a free A/B and multivariate testing tool called Google Website Optimizer. Adoption has been great, but people are still experiencing challenges understanding what to test and how to get an ROI out of testing. Always Be Testing is the answer to that issue. To quote one of the early reviewers, John Jantsch, “I’m a big fan of GO, but this is the first thing I’ve read that really makes it seem practical and simple.” The book is expected to launch at Search Engine Strategies San Jose.
KH: That’s a brilliant title. It’s got that whole “David Mamet-Glengarry Glen Ross-A/B split” thing going for it. Can you do a good Alec Baldwin imitation?
BE: A is for always. B is for be. T is for testing! Who gets the steak knives? Who wants third prize?
KH: So in conversion marketing, who gets the good leads?
BE: The person who best understands the personas of their prospective customers and will spend the time to continuously improve their marketing by refining the alignment between those personas, their campaigns, and their messaging.
KH: Who comes up with your book titles? Waiting For Your Cat to Bark? — that’s genius.
BE: It’s always a team effort. I’m lucky to work with some very creative people.
KH: How many books do you think you sold because people thought they were getting the new Cesar Milan Dog Whisperer book?
BE: I hope not too many. But maybe a handful of people out there who ignore marketing might also ignore book covers.
KH: Did you ever consider any other animals for the title, or was it always a cat?
BE: Both Jeffrey and I are dog owners, but it was Lisa Davis’ cat-like ways that won out.
KH: When’s the sequel, Waiting For Your Dog to Meow, coming out?
BE: Please, one book at a time. This is hard! We’re hoping that this book answers a critical question that people are facing today: how do we get a better return of our search marketing efforts?
KH: Why doesn’t anyone have the nickname “The Word-of-Mouth Marketing Whisperer”? Seems like a natural to me.
BE: I would nominate my friend Andy Sernovitz, but I doubt anyone would feel comfortable calling him a whisperer.
KH: Another one of your bestsellers is Call to Action: Secret Formulas to Improve Online Results. Hundreds of thousands of people have read that book or attended one of your Call to Action seminars. So is it time to change the title? Like, maybe, Call to Action: Famous Formulas to Improve Online Results That Everyone Knows But You?
BE: Thank you for the compliment. Certainly a lot of people have read the books and used it to improve their web marketing. I wish it were more people. I still think that we have a long way to go until these concepts are universally applied.
I think Always Be Testing is going to be helpful in reinforcing those concepts presented in Call to Action and making them even more actionable.
KH: On a serious note, how would you define advanced search marketing? What makes any search engine optimization (SEO) or search engine marketing (SEM) tactic advanced?
BE: I think it is really a question of scale. Good SEO and SEM are about creating ways to grab your potential visitors’ attention, creating content that is relevant to them, and providing a great experience for every keyword campaign and for every step, from the first click to conversion. Truly advanced SEM would have a better balance between driving traffic and converting that traffic.
KH: Your FutureNow blog, GrokDotCom, lists the top 10 retail sites for conversion rates each month. Those numbers aren’t real, are they? Office Depot, for example — 20.9 percent. How’s that possible?
BE: The numbers are measuring real people visiting these sites and completing purchases. They aren’t indicative of the website’s overall conversion rate — just conversions of those on the Nielsen Online panel.
KH: How do you win the paid search game? Is it a zero-sum game?
BE: Just like for every pot there is a lid, for every search term you need an incredibly persuasive and relevant landing page. You can’t afford to be generic. Too many marketers focus on the ad’s click-through rate (CTR). That’s important. However, the marketers focused on conversion rate can always outbid the marketers with lower conversion rates. It’s simple math: the more you convert, the lower your cost.
KH: You also spoke at the Bazaarvoice Social Commerce Summit. How would you define socialommerce?
BE: According to my good friend, Sam Decker, CMO of Bazaarvoice, “Social commerce is a term for the strategy of connecting customers to customers online and leveraging those connections for commercial purpose.” In simplest terms, it’s people sharing with people their commercial experiences without marketers polluting the stream.
KH: What’s the future of search? A point-and-click barcode reader GPS iPhone linked to inventory management systems?
BE: I tend to think the future of search is related to the mobile device, not computers. I can see it working in several ways based on the pieces I see Google working on. First, I can imagine a widget that sits on your mobile phone; when you click, it calls 800-411-Goog. You tell it what you’re looking for, and it provides results (and probably some audio ads). Voice is a much easier interface than typing. You’ll also be able to take a picture of a product barcode or UPC symbol, and it will bring you back results of where you can purchase the item locally or online.
Whatever the future is, it will bring more complexity for the search engines and for the people who want to be found, and it will be seamless and friction free for the end customer.
KH: What’s the future of SEO as a profession?
BE: The search engines are definitely getting better and indexing all kinds of content and technologies. Every day they continue to refine their algorithms so they are less influenced by artificial methods and influenced more by the massive amounts of data they’re collecting.
I’m hoping marketers will get past the old world view that marketing is about driving traffic and begin to understand that today’s marketing is about providing customers, from initial awareness to purchase and hopefully to becoming evangelists. This requires careful planning of the customer journey and experience at a click-by-click level. I don’t see it going there yet, but I’m hopeful more people will read Waiting For Your Cat to Bark?
KH: You guys are kind of like the Weinstein Brothers (Miramax guys) of Internet marketing. So which one are you, Bob or Harvey?
BE: That’s the first time I’ve heard that comparison. Usually it’s the “Car Talk” guys that people compare Jeffrey and me with.
KH: Tell us about your sibling rivalry. Growing up, was it kind of like Cain and Abel?
BE: Growing up and being four and a half years apart meant Jeffrey and I didn’t really have much of a relationship. It was a little over 13 years ago that Jeffrey and I started working together, and we have been business partners and the best of friends since.
KH: What did you want to be when you grew up?
BE: Both Jeffrey and I share one passion: understanding why people do the things they do. It manifested in me becoming a social worker and counselor for years and Jeffrey becoming an investment banker. He figured out how to take that passion and his business skills and turn them into the business known as FutureNow.
KH: You spoke at webcom Montreal 2008 in May in a session entitled, “The Golden Rule of Interactive Marketing.” What would that be? Market unto others as you would have them market unto you?
BE: That’s the way most people would think about it, but that’s the old model of marketing. We explain this concept in detail in Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? The golden rule is a two-parter: He who has the gold rules. And, do unto others as they would have done unto themselves.
KH: The Brits and Europeans were wowed by your panels at SES London. What can Canadians [at SES Toronto] expect to learn from a guy from Brooklyn?
BE: Unfortunately, Brooklyn pizza doesn’t travel well, or I’d share some of that. We did manage to take a few Canadians, including SES Toronto chair Andrew Goodman, on a pizza tour of Brooklyn during SES New York. I promise to share something else that also has a good scent!
For a recap of Bryan’s SES Toronto keynote, follow the scent trail to Bryan’s post on “The Interactive Marketer 2.0“
. .
Editor’s Note: We can’t make the book come out any sooner, but we would like to invite you to join Bryan on Wednesday, July 9th for a free landing page optimization webinar; the first in our “Always Be Testing” webinar series, brought to you by FutureNow and the Google Website Optimizer team. Space is limited, so sign up today!
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Written by:Robert Gorell
9 Ecommerce Innovations Worth Testing On Your Own Site
Ever wonder how often other people return an item you want to buy online?
Honestly, it never occurred to me before, but now that I’ve seen Shoeline.com’s Return-O-Meter™, I wish other online retailers would borrow the idea (especially since I’ve learned it’s actually lowered returns and raised Shoeline’s conversion rate).
If you own or are in charge of a marketing budget for an e-commerce shop, you should take a close look at the latest webinar from the good people at Elastic Path Software.
In “9 Ecommerce Innovations: What’s Now & What’s Next,” Elastic Path co-founder Jason Billingsley showcases the latest e-tail trends in these hot categories:
- Video
- Customer Service
- Real World Guided Selling
- Multi-store Retail
- Navigation
- Merchandising
- Social Shopping
- Loyalty
(If you need to bookmark the webinar for now, check out Linda’s recap at Get Elastic.)
OK. Now that you’re about to have a bunch of new ideas for cool features to add to your site, let’s not get carried away just yet. What works for Amazon, NetShops, Shoeline, Zappos, Martin + Osa, Borders.com, Endless.com, American Eagle, Shopatron.com, Backcountry.com, Knicker Picker, Vitamin Global, WineLibrary.com, and Shoeline . . . [deep breath] . . . may not work for you — which is exactly why strategy must come before tactics. Always.
How will you know if these innovations will add value to your visitors’ online shopping experience? Well, if the change you want isn’t too expensive to implement — and if it’s not overly disruptive to your current business model — try it out by running a split test.*
. .
*Split testing is the only way to know whether your site’s new features are A) worth keeping, or B) setting off the Return-O-Meter™. Don’t know where to begin? Join us on Wednesday, July 9th for the first installment of “Always Be Testing,” our free monthly webinar series, co produced by FutureNow and the Google Website Optimizer team.
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Written by:Robert Gorell
Boost Conversions With Better Product Page Images
One of the most effective — and overlooked — ways to differentiate yourself from the competition and improve conversion is to optimize the images on your website.
Granted, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but online, your customers don’t quite have the luxury of taste, touch, or smell. So one thing we can learn from ProFlowers.com’s impressive conversion rate last month is that images matter. A lot.
But what works for one website may not work for yours. Oftentimes, the product (or service) itself dictates which strategy is most effective. For instance, if you’re selling jackets, you may want to give visitors multiple views and zoom features.
It all depends on what you’re selling and how much the customer needs to see in order to feel confident to buy.
At last month’s eMetrics Summit in San Francisco, Bryan had a chance to sit down with WilsonWeb.com’s Ralph Wilson to discuss the importance of product images and how they affect conversion. Here’s the video…
As Bryan mentions in the video, even a better looking pear can boost conversion 147%. But the power of images isn’t limited to e-commerce. When images on a B2B site don’t focus the visitor’s attention on the goal at hand, even a pretty face can push visitors away.
That’s why A/B split-testing is essential; it’s how you know the images are making a difference.
For more ideas on how you can test your way to a better conversion rate, we cordially invite you to join us on Wednesday, July 9th for our free “Always Be Testing” webinar, co-hosted by FutureNow and Google Website Optimizer.
. .
Editor’s Note: Don’t keep this all to yourself. Help spread the word on Facebook…
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Written by:Robert Gorell
Firefox 3: How to Convert Seven Million Visitors in a Day
Oh, to have such problems…
If you’re hoping to download Firefox 3, it looks like it’s now safe to do so. But for nearly two hours yesterday, when the latest version of the popular Web browser first launched, so many people rushed the Firefox landing page that Mozilla’s servers crashed from the volume.
A round of applause for the marketing team at Mozilla. The pent up demand for their product combined with a brilliant “Firefox 3 Download Day” campaign to produce a perfect storm of online marketing genius. As of 7am PDT today, over seven million people have downloaded Firefox 3. They even made it into the Guinness Book of World Records for the most software downloads in a day. As CNet reports, “The download rate, which peaked at 14,000 per minute Tuesday, was about 6,600 per minute Wednesday morning.”
Mozilla’s secret: An effective landing page and a commitment to website optimization testing.
Follow the Call to Action
In February of last year, we explained how Call to Action buttons make a difference on each of the landing pages for the major web browsers (including Firefox 2). Back then, FutureNow Conversion Analyst Joshua Hay noticed that…
“The non-standard shape stands out from the background of the page and has been given a persuasive color that draws the eyes to it [and] reinforces their brand. Within the Call to Action, Firefox lists the benefit and tells the visitor exactly what he is getting. Directly below the Call to Action, Firefox provides links that answer visitors’ questions if they aren’t quite ready to take action…”
Clearly, the download button for Firefox 2 was effective. It had been downloaded hundreds of millions of times; an impressive feat for software that, as Seth points out, “…wasn’t the default when you first turned on your computer.”
But Mozilla didn’t stop there. With version 3, they kept the same basic design, but they changed a few subtleties with the design, to bring us this:
Now is when I imagine some of you rolling your eyes, thinking, “How can something so make a difference? They barely changed it!” Believe me, I understand your doubt, but making small improvements is why Amazon has one of the best conversion rates online.
Do you see everything Mozilla changed? I count five “small” tweaks that helped them convert seven million and counting. (I’ll explain why it worked to the first person who can correctly list all three five changes in the comments.)
Maybe your landing pages aren’t giving away free software. Maybe you don’t need to break world records to meet your goals. Maybe you don’t expect to go from zero to 5% market share in 24 hours. But don’t think it’s impossible to, say, double your landing page conversion rate.
It’s possible.
. .
Want to test your way to a better conversion rate? Do it strategically. FutureNow can help.
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Written by:Robert Gorell
Bryan Eisenberg to Deliver Top Secret SES Toronto Keynote
Since we all know a pretty face can push visitors away, I trust I still have your attention. 
FutureNow is pleased to announce that our co-founder and Chief Persuasion Officer, Bryan Eisenberg, will deliver a keynote address at the Search Engine Strategies conference in Toronto at precisely 0-900 hours (that’s 9am) on Wednesday, June 18, 2008. That much is certain.
What we can’t share at this time — because, frankly, he won’t tell us — is what it is Bryan will discuss. It’s “something big,” he insists. It’s “something the online marketing industry needs to wake up to.”
Me - “Something from [your forthcoming book] Always Be Testing?”
Bryan - “Nope. It’s top secret. Sorry, Robert.”
After two and a half years of working with him, I’ve seen Bryan pull this “top secret” routine a couple of times, and it’s always because something big’s brewing underneath that spiky hair and knowing smirk of his. Unfortunately, I won’t be making it to Toronto for Search Engine Strategies, but I think I speak for all of us when I say that we expect a full report from Bryan and anyone else who plans on attending.
. .
For all declassified info on this event, please visit the SES Toronto website for details.
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Written by:Robert Gorell
“Green Marketing”? Save Some for the Fishes…
Here’s a great opportunity: The oceans are dying.
Seriously, the oceans are in horrible shape, and it’s your fault. You did it, Supply, Demand, Pollution and Overfishing. And if we don’t take ownership now, our brands, our children, and our collective appetite for seafood may never forgive us.
I’m not trying to bum you out, but the next time you feel the need to impress clients or co-workers with your sushi-ordering skills, you should at least know whether you’re eating sustainable fish. (Either way, you’ll have to kiss your Chilean Sea Bass goodbye.)
Perhaps you’re wondering, “What’s all this hippy, save-the-Earth stuff got to do with online and multi-channel marketing optimization?” Great question, and I’m glad you asked.
By now, you’re familiar with the environmental catch-all term “green marketing,” but what you may not realize is that “blue marketing” is a relatively untapped way to differentiate your brand while raising awareness for an urgent problem that affects everyone. Besides, it’s not easy being green, because, when everyone’s doing something “green,” it loses meaning fast. (Seth Godin has a great post on the coming backlash over green marketing.)
A quick anecdote to make my point: The other week, I saw two containers of soy milk — original flavor, same brand, same size — sitting next to each other in the fridge at my corner store. One of the containers had a green cap, the other didn’t. I picked up the container with the “green caps for green energy” promotion, turned it around, and saw that they were promising to donate 30 kilowatts of “green power” (solar power?) if I entered the number from under the cap into the database on their website. Pretty smart, right? Well, yeah, but when the first words I read are, “Can one little green cap change the world? Just maybe.” I have my doubts. Even if their campaign is a great idea, it’s lost amid the over-branding of “green.”
It’s sad, but as much as we care about the planet, Broca is tuning out.
Making Waves
World Ocean Day happened on June 8 and, if you’re like me, you didn’t think to commemorate it. Still, I have been paying attention. Did you know that if we don’t curb overfishing, pollution and global warming trends, there will be no more (edible) fish in the sea by 2048?
It’s true. Here’s how I found out:
(If video doesn’t load, click here.)
The URL at the end caught my attention, so I went to Oceana.org/matingseason.
Oceana is the world’s leading ocean conservation group, and their website is full of blue ideas. You can become a WaveMaker, tell your grocer to buy sustainable fish, find out why you should say no to shark fin soup, and you can even download a pocket seafood guide so you always know if you’re ordering something sustainable and low-mercury.
Not concerned with saving the fish? How about saving the humans? As the climate of the ocean changes, so goes the rest of the world. Anyone who’s lived through the East Coast heat wave these past several days will find it easy to believe that 11 of the warmest years on record have happened in the past 13 years and ocean temperatures are rising.
How to Avoid Drift Net Marketing Tactics
Whether your eco-friendly marketing initiatives are focused on land or sea, here are a few ways to build trust, encourage word of mouth, and keep it financially sustainable (read: the other “green”):
1.) Be specific — What’s the exact dollar amount you’re trying to raise? What’s the exact percentage you’re donating, and to whom? Why are you donating to that cause and that specific non-profit?
2.) Campaigns are best — It’s so much easier to track and manage special promotions at the campaign level than it is to track it across the entire organization. By focusing on campaigns, you can see very closely how and why your customers and clients are responding to your environmental marketing efforts at each touch point across channels.
3.) Don’t guilt trip — Nothing is a bigger turn-off. People donate because they want to, not because you’ve nagged them to. Be careful not to come off as holier-than-thou about whatever cause you’re promoting. (I was at an event to raise money for drinking water in sub-Saharan Africa the other night, and the CEO of the company that was hosting the event was yelling into the microphone, acting as though attendees — who’d already donated $100 just to be there — were being cheap if they didn’t raise their hands to sponsor a $5,000 well, and literally shushing the crowd like they were in a grade school library. Whatever the online equivalent of that is, don’t do it.)
If Sharks Were Marketers…
Ideally, giving to a great cause should be the icing on the cake that encourages fence-sitters to convert to happy customers. Whatever you do, don’t go the drift net route and merely advertise your brand’s inner green- or blue-ness as though it’s self-evident. Each year, tens of millions of sharks are killed by drift nets while marketers like us roam free.
Hmm… If sharks had better marketing support, maybe we wouldn’t have an irrational fear of them.
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Written by:Robert Gorell
What You Never Noticed About Google’s Homepage
We all take the Google homepage for granted.
It’s so remarkably simple that (unless you’re, say, a blogger for a website optimization firm) it’s unremarkable; just a text box, two call to action buttons, and a few links that most humans don’t even look at, let alone use. That’s all.
But why? Why is it that the Google homepage has barely changed in the past decade? Are they obsessed with minimalism, or is there more to the story?
From its humble origins as a research project by a couple of Stanford graduate students, Sergei Brin and Larry Page always knew that testing matters. They realized that it’s not just important to build a good online experience, but that they would need to know why it worked in order to make it better.
Take a look at Google’s 1998 homepage and see if you can guess its most innovative feature:
Got your answer? Feeling lucky (hint: that’s not it)? Great. Now hold that thought.
Speaking at the Google I/O conference last week, Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google, explained how the company developed a culture of testing, insisting that, “On the Web in general, [creating sites] is much more a design than an art. You can find small differences and mathematically learn which is right.”
The CNet article (also linked to above) details some of Google’s many innovations from their years of A/B split testing. Their results illustrate one of our mantras here at FutureNow: “Believe what they do, not what they say they will do.” For instance, users claimed they wanted to see more search results per page, but testing proved otherwise. You can read the article for details on that one, but I digress. The homepage example remains the most telling. Here’s how Mayer tells it:
[Our beta testers] would sit in front of the Google screen for 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 45 seconds, a minute…Google was perplexed.
So Mayer would eventually intervene and ask what was holding up the searchers. “I’m waiting for the rest of it,” they’d say. Clearly they expected more of the flashy ads and busy text of other search pages of the 1990s.
“The very first home page was that misunderstood. People didn’t resonate with it,” Mayer said. One woman even thought the Web site was a fake construction that was part of a psychology experiment. As a result, the company put a copyright notice at the bottom of the page. “It’s not there for legal reasons,” Mayer said. “It’s there as punctuation. That’s it. (It tells the searcher) ‘Nothing else is coming; please start searching now.’”
So here it is, the big innovation they came up with back in 1998:
Amazing. Just showing a copyright assurance is what gives us the confidence to proceed.
Mayer said a lot of insightful things in her presentation, but this quote struck me:
“The urgent can drown out the important.”
So true. With website optimization, what seems to be of urgent and of vital importance from your company’s perspective may not at all be what’s urgent and vital to your visitors. In fact, your visitors may not even know what they’d fix about your website if they could.
Who among us would have told Google back in 1998 that they should try putting a copyright symbol on the homepage? [*Hears crickets chirping in background.*] Exactly. And that’s why developing hypotheses and testing from the visitor’s perspective is a must.
. .
Editor’s Note: FutureNow is an “authorized consultant” for Google Website Optimizer. (We’re writing the book on it.) To learn about which of our optimization services will best help you boost conversion rates and other key performance metrics, please contact us for a free consultation.
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Written by:Robert Gorell
It Takes More Than Words to Out-Karaoke Microsoft
Not long ago, Microsoft showed just how bad a corporate motivational video can be with an utterly painful Bruce Springsteen adaptation that proved a fitting soundtrack the equally lackluster Vista operating system. (So much for the “Start Me Up” days of the Windows ‘95 release.)
As a former music journalist and current karaoke champion [in my own mind], I know a bad remix when I hear one. That’s why I’m particularly impressed with this outlandishly cheesy/brilliant rework of Extreme’s soft “rock” hair ballad chart-topper from 1991, “More Than Words” — one of the most yack-inducing songs known to man — used by our pals at Bazaarvoice to kick off last week’s Social Media Summit in Austin, TX. Watch this video and see how a few men in wigs can pick an even worse song and still do a better job of inspiring brand affinity and laughter than Mr. Softy himself:
Lyrics:
Sayin’ you should buy this, are not the words they will believe from you
It’s just they have YouTube, and every search brings up blog entries too
How easy it could be to find out how they feel
More than words is all you had to use to make it real
Then you wouldn’t have to cry over costs per click
‘Cause you’re Google’s top guy
What you do with Ratings and Reviews?
More than words to keep it real
Let them say just how they feel
What would you say
If they took those words away
Then they wouldn’t buy things new
Without reading a review…
Now your market wants to
Talk for you and help others understand
All that you have to do is open up and just reach out your brand
Then you’ll see word of mouth for you and me to read
More than words is all you ever needed to make more sales
Then you could easily say “Mr. Bossman, it’s time I get a raise”
How sweet it’d be
A freed marketing annuity
More than words to show they feel
That they like a brand that’s real
Why would you pay
For research to guess and play
More than words to show what’s true
Then hear your market say “I love you”
. .
Hat tip to Linda for transcribing these righteously dorky lyrics.
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Written by:Robert Gorell
How to Avoid Marketing to Yourself
What ever happened to “You”?
You were on a roll. Just two years ago, You were Time magazine’s person of the year. When Web 2.0 changed everything, You were there. You did it. You turned the Web into the “interactive” medium we always knew it could be.
You changed the rules. You took control.
So what happened? Lately, it seems that marketing and advertising executives are either blind optimists or furrow-browed skeptics about social media marketing. Are we — the marketers, the bloggers, the people who read and post comments on blogs and message boards, the 2.0 digerati — overestimating our audience’s desire to interact?
In a Copyblogger guest post, Hoffman/Lewis advertising CEO Bob Hoffman insists we’re marketing to ourselves. (Et tu, Bob?)
Marketing to “Me”
Bob’s article is a must-read, especially for marketers who are self-proclaimed “Facebook addicts”, “Twitterholics”, or the like, because in it he claims that You, the aforementioned social web-savvy, are the only ones who actually know how — or care — to interact with content online. (He defines interactivity as “the ability to interact with the content of the medium, not just the medium.”) According to Bob, for most people, the internet is a passively interactive experience, like TV but with a mouse for a remote. The net effect is that marketers are living in their own web-savvy bubble and are now guiltier than ever of marketing to themselves.
While I agree with most of Bob’s piece, I wholeheartedly disagree with his conclusion:
Don’t kid yourself. As an online marketer, you are facing the same challenge that every marketer since the beginning of commerce has faced: How do you attract the attention of people who are actively trying to avoid you? The methods currently in our arsenal just aren’t good enough.
It would be lovely if the “social network/conversationalist” crowd were right and interactivity between marketer and marketee would evolve as a caring, loving relationship.
I’m officially skeptical.
Fair enough, but who ever said that social media marketing has to be a forced interaction? The problem isn’t that the methods in our arsenal aren’t good enough, the problem is that “social media marketing” is a misnomer.
Social media marketing should be a largely introverted activity, one where the marketer spend more time listening, researching, and refining their message than they do actually pushing one. It should be about creating environments, and playing in existing ones, where you learn juicy details about what’s actually important to your customer segments. Yet for most, it seems “social media marketing” has come to mean the tactics by which one goes about hunting down customers and annoying them under the guise of “friend”-ship.
Of course push marketing tactics don’t work well on the social web. They never did so well in Web 1.0, either. The problem isn’t social media. The problem is marketers putting tactics before strategy and expecting different results just because the technology and format are new. That’s what’s laughable.
In a recent interview with Josh Bernoff, co-author of the new book Groundswell: Winning In a World Transformed by Social Technologies, we discussed the need to put people before objectives, strategy and technology (just remember the acronym P.O.S.T and you’ve got it). Keep that in mind when considering these other stats about the online population* from the book:
- 25% read blogs, visit social networking sites, and/or read customer reviews
- 20% regularly update/maintain a profile on a social networking site
- 18% contribute to online forums or discussion groups
- 14% comment on someone else’s blog
- 11% post ratings/reviews of products or service, publish, maintain or update a blog, and/or listen to podcasts
- 8% use RSS
- 5% use Twitter
*Figures represent percentage of online U.S. adults participating at least monthly.
Bob is right to a degree. Most people online aren’t involved in social media. But, as Seth Godin points out, the “who” matters more than the “how many,” and if someone is willing to give you free insights about your products, services, or brand, shouldn’t you listen?
A Sea of Irrelevance
Neil Postman, a notoriously cranky (and brilliant) theorist of the mass media era, came to mind after Bob outed himself as being “cranky” and “skeptical” about social media marketing. In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman defers to two other media skeptics, both famously crankier than even Bob Hoffman or Neil himself:
What [George] Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What [Aldous] Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.
Orgy Porgy, Centrifugal Bumblepuppy, Stumbling your Friend Feed, Twittering your Facebook in public. Anyone care to explain the difference? Point is, Orwell’s vision came true in 1933 (16 years before 1984 was published) and Huxley’s vision came true somewhere between 2005 and last Tuesday.
We are living in a sea of irrelevance, but don’t let it bother (former person-of-the-year) You! The constant hissing of digital white noise only makes relevance that much more valuable a commodity. After a day of swimming through mental 2.0 excrement, even a fleeting sip of relevance tastes like champagne.
And that’s our job as marketers; to keep the campaign champagne coming.
Ah, but if only it were that easy. How do you know when to recommend a Sicilian Syrah blend, an earthy Chilean Cabernet, a crisp-and-buttery New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, or maybe a reserve bottle of South African Pinotage? What if an ice-cold Budweiser will do? You’d look pretty stupid offering some fancy-pants varietal to someone who just wants a Bud.
And that’s exactly how social media helps us. It gives us new data to plug into existing methods. But as Postman warns, “there is a limit to the promise of new technology . . . it cannot be a substitute for human values.” Very true, especially considering that I lifted that quote from Wikipedia.
So I wonder, if Neil Postman were an “interactive” marketer, and still alive today, how would he ensure his message was getting to people distracted by the technology that’s come to define them, when it should be the other way around? My guess is that he’d use personas.
But don’t take my word for it. I’m in the Persuasion Architecture business and my target customers are marketers and business owners who read blogs and occasionally comment. Your social media strategy might look very different from mine.
UPDATE: Brian Clark, the editor and founder of Copyblogger, has made a brilliant contribution to this discussion: “The Five Essential Elements of Effective Social Media Marketing“
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About the Author: Robert Gorell is the Editor of GrokDotCom. If you enjoyed this post, he invites you to subscribe or, like, totally join FutureNow on Facebook.
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Written by:Robert Gorell
How to Cure “Death by PowerPoint”
The other day, Seth Godin wrote about the new standard for meetings and conferences. He’s absolutely right. Asking people to travel to see a presentation can be dangerous, and the last thing anyone wants to overhear is, “I flew all the way out here for this?”
With those words echoing in our heads, Bryan and I were chatting about this brilliant tutorial post by Garr Reynolds on his Presentation Zen blog, where he shares a presentation for Dr. John Medina’s new book, Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home and School.
You can see the presentation here or view it full screen at SlideShare:
I can’t wait to read Dr. Medina’s book, but flipping through Garr’s presentation again got me thinking about Seth’s post, where he insists that conference organizers owe their audiences “surprise, juxtaposition, drama, engagement, souvenirs and just possibly, excitement.” We couldn’t agree more.
But wait… what about our upcoming NYC seminars, just two weeks from now? Are we really promising “surprise, juxtaposition, drama, engagement, souvenirs and just possibly, excitement”? Well, yeah, I guess we are. That’s something to take seriously.
While I can’t promise you that Bryan’s slides are all as pretty to look at as Garr’s, I can promise that our event attendees won’t be keel over from “death by PowerPoint”. That’s the good thing about seminars like these; they’re face-to-face and interactive, and everyone gets to walk away having learned something instantly relevant to their own online strategy. And they get to ask questions. Lots of questions. Besides, how could you be bored in New York when you get to make fun of both of our losing baseball teams choose from 6 gazillion menu items at our 14,000+ restaurants?
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Written by:Robert Gorell
