Most valuable writing lesson ever.

“Nobody wants to read your shit.

Let me repeat that. Nobody–not even your dog or your mother–has the slightest interest in your commercial for Rice Krispies or Delco batteries or Preparation H. Nor does anybody care about your one-act play, your Facebook page or your new sesame chicken joint at Canal and Tchopotoulis.

It isn’t that people are mean or cruel. They’re just busy.

Nobody wants to read your shit.

There’s a phenomenon in advertising called Client’s Disease. Every client is in love with his own product. The mistake he makes is believing that, because he loves it, everyone else will too.

They won’t. The market doesn’t know what you’re selling and doesn’t care. Your potential customers are so busy dealing with the rest of their lives, they haven’t got a spare second to give to your product/work of art/business, no matter how worthy or how much you love it.”

Every online copywriter – no scratch that – every writer, marketer, advertiser, business owner, and entrepreneur should go read this post in its entirety.

This very powerfully states what Future Now has long taught: prospective customers are task oriented – they have lives and they are not on your Website because they are interested in you, or your company, or how you’d like to “position” yourselves within the industry.  Your online visitors have a problem and they are really only interested in whether or not you have a viable solution.

Once you understand that, you can move away from we-we copy in order to focus on providing visitors with:

• Ongoing visual and text assurances that they’ve come to the right place to find their solution – i.e., provide good scent.

• Copy that speaks to them about what matters to them.  Establish empathy with WHY they need your solution.  Figure out what has driven them to need your product or service, and make sure you address those felt emotional needs as well as ALL of their lingering, sales-killing questions and doubts.

• Pathways/links that allow each visitor to choose their own path, to either take the express train to grabbing what they need and converting, or to drill down to richer content on those elements where they need to assure themselves that you are, in fact, selling a real solution to their specific problem.

Nobody wants to read your copy.  But if they’ve voluntarily come to your Website in search of a solution, chances are good they will scan, skim, and yes, even read copy that addresses their task at hand.

The difficult part is often the task of separating out “your sh**” from the copy that’s actually needed to address visitors’ concerns.  Hiring outsiders often helps with this.  Personas are also extraordinarily helpful.  And so are the guidelines outlined in Steven Pressfield’s post – go read them!

And then go kick some online marketing a**

P.S.  If the name Steven Pressfield seems familiar, you may have read his (highly recommended) non-fiction book, The War of Art.  Or possibly his extremely popular historical fiction (also recommended).

[Editors Note:  The author of this article is now blogging at jeffsextonwrites.com]

Sorry about the headline – the 80s flashbacks are getting to me.  Still, I really do “play stupid” as a Website optimizer and online copywriter.  Or at least I play ignorant.

Why?  Because all those terms and concepts you think everyone understands about your business and what you’re selling – well, you’re wrong about them!  Wrong about both the terms themselves and your potential audience.  If you think I’m mistaken, go back and watch the video again.

Or keep reading to see some real website examples. Either way, let me reassure you that way more of your website visitors just fundamentally don’t “get it” than you’d ever suspect.  Either those visitors:

1. have no idea what the industry standard terms you are using mean,
2. don’t really understand the finer distinctions the terms are supposed to represent, or
3. fail to draw the all-important conclusions and emotional implications that you may be basing your persuasive messaging upon.

Any one of those might be enough to kill your chances for a conversion.

And while there are some good reasons to only mention or allude to the “features” in order to hone in on the benefits, there’s also very few excuses* not to provide links, mouse-overs, and early stage content that can guide the perplexed to a better understanding of your industry and your messaging.

How an “idiot” could improve the Black Diamond Home Page

For those of you who haven’t heard of this company before, Black Diamond Equipment makes cutting edge climbing and skiing equipment.  And before we even look at one of their product pages, I suggest you just go to their website and get a feel for how user-friendly (or not) the overall design seems.  Seriously, go there right now.  I’ll wait.

Ok, now ask yourself this:

• Doesn’t it feel as if the company ONLY produces carabiners?  If you didn’t know the company produced headlamps, skis, tents, etc, would you ever think to look for those?
• Did it take you a while to figure out that the pictured carabiners could be clicked on and rotated towards you?  Or was that just intuitively obvious?  What do you think the designers felt about the “obviousness” of this design.
• If you weren’t interested in carabiners and never clicked on the “see all carabiners” link, would you ever have gotten to the pages dealing with other equipment?
• What do you think is keeping them from simply using a persistent top navigation scheme?
• Do you think “playing an idiot” for a day would help these guys out?

Idiot-Proofing Product Pages 101

Now let’s compare a product page on the Black Diamond site with one for the same product taken from backcountry.com.  We’ll start with a product page for a LED headlamp taken from the Black Diamond site:

What the heck is a “TriplePower LED”?

• Is it 3-times more powerful than a 5mm Nichia LED?
• Is it a 3-watt LED?
• Is it an LED with 3 power settings?

By using this terminology, Black Diamond has achieved the worst of both worlds, not only is the description not enough for a non-light geek to really understand, but neither is it technical enough for a light geek to feel confident in what he is buying.

How about underlining these terms and providing a mouse-over that would show comparisons of the LEDS, their real technical specs, and usage shots, so that an average user could get a sense of the light output and a techie could see the real specs?

And what about the “NRG Rechargable battery”?

• Is it a Lithium-Ion battery?
• Is it Metal Hydride?
• How much does it cost?
• Does it improve or hurt the battery life of the light?
• Can I buy the light already bundled with the battery and it’s charger, etc?

Finally, there’s the “single position switch.”  I’m guessing it’s some sort of rubberized button-looking thing and that you just have to keep clicking it to rotate through all 7 of the modes until you get the one you want.  But wouldn’t it be nice to know for sure:

• That a single position switch = clicky switch, like on a Mag-Light
• What exactly those 7 lighting modes are, and why I’d need that many modes
• Where the button is located?

From the pictures it looks like the “single position switch” might be on the bottom of the light, but assuming that’s the case, wouldn’t it be better to link the term “single position switch” to a mousover of that picture along with an explanation of how the switch functions and what the 7 modes are?

As for backcountry.com’s product page for this same headlamp, the page is too long for me to snap an encompasing screenshot and place it here, but I suggest you go to that page and take a look at all of the content rich resources that are provided, including:

• customer photos of the product in-use,
• user reviews, Q&A’s, and
• some actual, non-bullet-pointed, real copy.

But since we’re focusing on the copy, I’ve cut and pasted it below.  Read it and see how many questions this copy answers that Black Diamond’s bullet points leave unclear:

“The Black Diamond Icon Headlamp uses two different types of LED bulbs to give you ultra-bright lighting when you need it and to save battery power when you don’t. The 3-watt center bulb has three settings for light up to 80 meters. Switch to the four SuperBright LED bulbs to get a 200-hour burn time when a lot of light isn’t necessary. This combination of long-distance lighting and long burn time makes the Black Diamond Icon Headlamp a stand-out choice for everything from backpacking to climbing to night skiing. In fact, it impressed Rock and Ice so much that they gave it their Best In Gear Award.

Bottom Line: The Black Diamond Icon Headlamp provides both bright lighting and long-lasting battery life for days on the trail, the rock, and the snow.”

Even if it’s not perfect, that copy is still much clearer, isn’t it?  And understand this: the majority of what isn’t covered in this copy is covered in the user reviews, Q&A’s, etc.  In fact, I’m convinced that the persuasive power of user reviews has as much to do with previous buyers unintentionally answering other customers’ questions within the reviews as it has to do with the increased credibility of user reviews.

Also, understand that this unexplained-term phenomenon isn’t exclusive to technical products, either; it happens in product descriptions for almost everything.  I could have just as easily used tents and asked what the hell a double-wall tent is and why it should matter to me, and so on.

Reverse “The Curse” with Idiot Exercises

While “The Curse of Knowledge” can be hard to overcome, here are a few** sure-fire techniques to get you started on your journey to idiot-optimized copy:

• Do usability testing.  Get someone outside your industry (go ahead and specify minimum industry knowledge in your user request) and watch them move through your site while recording their questions, thoughts, etc.
• Highlight every industry term, phrase, or concept on your site, write them down on a piece of paper, and start interviewing random people on the street about them, just like the guy did in the video.
• Willfully play the part of a 5 year old and ask repeated why questions regarding your industry terms and concepts.  It’s best to team up with a partner/colleague on this one.  Force each other to come up with answers a 10-year old would understand.

After having done any one, or all, of the 3 strategies, go back and re-evaluate your copy.

P.S.  Hat tip to Seth Godin for finding the video and creating a great blog post around it

* Actually, there’s only one excuse: you’re purposely excluding a general audience in order to tightly focus on a hard-core group.  In that case, go ahead amd talk the lingo without apologies, letting anyone and everyone else catch up if they can.  Just realize that you WILL be alienating visitors and potential customers in order to appeal to that smaller, hard-core group.

** Of course, the best sure-fire method of escaping the curse of knowledge is simply to hire an outside copywriter/consultant/optimization specialist

[Editor’s note: the author of this blog is now blogging at jeffsextonwrites.com

Absolutely not, right?  Or at least not yet.

You came to buy a specific book.  You’ve already got a task in mind and browsing random books aint it.  You’ll likely blow past any and all call-outs, recommendations, and other assorted distractions until you’ve found the book you came to buy.

And if Amazon ends up not having the book in stock, you’ll go elsewhere.

But AFTER you’ve found the book you wanted, recommendations are welcomed. At that point you’ll actually pay attention to other books Amazon recommends and bundles with your searched-for book.   You’ll even look at what other Amazon shoppers eventually bought after viewing your friend’s book.

Task Orientation Defines Scent

This Amazon thought experiment exemplifies the task-orientation common to most online visitors.

Visitors arrive at your site with a goal in mind.  They already have a task, and your website either helps them accomplish that task or it gets dumped.  And that goes for every page on your site – either it contains the content the visitor wants, or it provides a link to it, or the visitor leaves.

But what about people just wanting to browse?

This is a question posed to me in a recent comment.  As the commenter put it:

“… when I’m browsing through Amazon – with no other goal than to pass the time – I get converted to buy stuff all the time.

‘People who bought x also bought Y’ And if the book or cd Y is something I’ve been interested in – it triggers a purchase.”

His point was that browsing is a task-less online activity that eliminates the importance of scent.

And it’s an interesting question/thought.  To answer it, I’ll first have to distinguish between early stage shopping and true browsing.

Early Stage Buying vs. True Browsing

In the early stage of the buying process, the visitor is aware of an itch he’d like to scratch, but isn’t quite sure exactly what purchase will best scratch that itch.  Let’s say our shopper is vaguely aware of wanting to get in shape, and is kind of wanting to do Yoga.  But he’s not sure if he wants to do Yoga in a dedicated studio, or take classes in a more general, multi-purpose gym, or just buy some tapes for home workouts.

This Yoga shopper is still task oriented – it’s just that the task is researching rather than buying.  And a home-workout themed website or Yoga Studio website that helped her do the research stands a far better chance of getting her business than a Website exclusively focused on late stage buyers.

This is one reason we highly recommend catering to early stage buyers and developing a content strategy for them.  And for more info on how to do that effectively, check out David Young’s excellent video series: Hunting for Early Bird Persuasion

Browsing is different.  Browsing means the shopper isn’t even clearly aware of a product desire yet. They’re not even focused on research.  If asked, the shopper couldn’t even describe the itch they’re looking to scratch.   And yet, they could buy if presented with the right product.

Browsers are still task-oriented

Despite appearances, browsing isn’t task-free.  Even though a specific object hasn’t (yet) catalyzed their free-floating desire, browsing visitors are still driven by desire.

Browsers are seeking novelty and possibility: the possibility of finding something different and better than they’d have imagined.   Browsers are as goal-oriented as any other shopper – just with different goals.

And as is true with every goal-oriented shopper, any website that fails to deliver on those goals gets dumped.  In fact, most shoppers only browse on sites that have already proved themselves capable of delivering novel products.

People browse Amazon.com not because it presents them with recommendations on the home page, but because Amazon masterfully presents them with interesting possibilities of new books that are similar to and possibly even remarkably better than books we’re already impressed with.  This is why the commenter I quoted from recalled the ‘People who bought x also bought Y’ quote rather than a “view Amazon recommendations” quote.

So how does a site plan to deliver on this search for novelty and cooler-than-expected items?

What it takes to be a browsing-friendly Website

Apart from bargain-priced rotating-inventory sites like bluefly, overstock.com or woot.com, the top three e-tailers most noted for browsing-friendly design are:

• Amazon
• Zappos
• iTunes

Here’s what they have in common:

They sell “impulse-buy-friendly” and “most-people-own-a-bunch” items.  Think about it: books, music, and shoes are all things we buy a lot of AND things we buy on impulse.  So each of these sites have a lot of repeat visits/visitors AND a fair chance at luring visitors into impulse buys.

They make it easy to sample the items in stock. iTunes lets you actually listen to the song.  Amazon lets you read the dust cover, table of contents, and a few passages from the book.  Most reviews also give you a flavor of the book.  Zappos gives you the best product photography to be found and provides expedited shipping both ways, which is a way to eliminate the pain and friction of customers trying on and “sampling” the shoes.

They routinely get new items in stock and make it a point to stock huge inventories. If browsers want novelty, it helps to be able to provide it, both with new stuff and with stuff I’ve never heard of before.  Amazon.com has all sorts of weird titles I’d never find at my local Barnes & Noble or even imagine existed.  Same thing with iTunes and Zappos.  Browsing shoppers know that novelty is only a click away.

They have solid user reviews set-up. Amazon and Zappos make up for limited sampling through user reviews, making it no coincidence that they have the best and most solidly established review communities on the Web. iTunes lags behind the others when it comes to reviews, but makes up for by better sampling, lower average price point, and better than average recommendations.

They make it easy to sort by regular categories AND by loose associations. Amazon let’s me see cool webs of connections between books, and look at user generated lists.  Zappos provides great filtered navigation options, so that I can not only sort by black men’s dress shoes, but also by black cap-toe lace up oxfords that cost between $100 and $150.  And many of the revues compare shoes, even to the point of recommending alternatives.  iTunes allows users to sort music by genre, decade, and browse with the aid of since-you-bought-that-you’ll-like-this recommendations.  For even better filtered, or faceted, sorting, check out this Get Elastic article as well as their thoughts on using user filtering and sorting preferences to personalize visitors shopping experience.

They’ve eliminated or greatly reduced buying friction. I can buy shoes on Zappos and get them next day or by 2nd day for free shipping.  With Amazon prime, I get 1-Click buying, and free 2nd-day shipping.  iTunes allows me to enjoy my music within seconds of buying.  And I know I’ll never have a problem with billing or customer service with these e-tailers.  There’s simply no friction to buying and a good bit of near-instant gratification – important factors for inspiring impulse buys.

Saying content is king is the equivalent of saying money is valuable; it’s true but obvious. Tell that to the even the most mentally challenged Web marketer today, and you’ll likely get a, “Duh, where have you been?” in return.

Nobody needs to be told content is of value. But how valuable is it?

Because there isn’t a $1, $5, or $10 denomination stamped on the front of Web content, it’s often difficult to know exactly how valuable content is to your company. Also, knowing content’s value isn’t the same as knowing how to create it, or even how to use it.

What Is Content?

This is a critical question that often goes underexplored. If you ask most marketers, they’ll answer that it’s the copy on a Web site. While this answer is certainly true, it’s inadequate. Content is more than copy.

We can debate the nuance of the possible answers to this question. But a good starting place is to think of Web content as the public conversation that happens between you and the visitor, whether the conversation is one-way (from you to the visitor), two-way (between the visitor and you), or conversation among visitors.

Content includes but is not limited to:

• The copy on your Web site
• Blogs and reader comments
• Content widgets (check out recently released ContentWidgets.com
• Product/service reviews
• Forums
• Videos, demos, and animations
• Tweets
• Facebook/MySpace fan pages and groups
• E-mail newsletters
• Articles and other intellectual property or knowledge sharing
• Whitepapers, case studies, Webinars

The more this content causes, persuades, or woos visitors to take a profitable action on our behalf, the more valuable it is. If it doesn’t do this, it’s more like bad entertainment.

Content Now Worth More Than Ever

The economic forecast remains rough for at least the near future. It’s easy to make a case for leveraging existing content for all it’s worth. I would also encourage you to determine the costs of content creation strategies (if you have in the past, revisit them now). You’ll likely find that content creation is becoming more affordable. Many of our clients are easily making room in their budgets to try at least a few content-centered marketing tactics.

Using content as a marketing tool is obvious for those with compelling intellectual property, but it isn’t just for those types any more. Almost any company or service can find a content-marketing strategy that will work for it.

An employee of mine has been looking for a home in a new area, and was impressed to find a few Realtors tweeting. He followed them. He was able to meet with one, walk through a property, and find he was from the same area as the real estate agent. Since he didn’t yet have a Realtor, whom do you think he is going to choose?

Getting Started With Content Marketing

• You don’t have to start from scratch. If you have content already, look to your analytics to identify popular content and find other uses for it. Rewrite it, update it, and send it as a newsletter. Even tweet it as an oldie but a goodie. Or have it formatted for mobile browsers.
• Crowdsource. Sometimes your customers will create better content than you can buy from a content creation firm. Why not use specific reviews or forum posts as landing places for campaigns or even as ads?
• Find the passion. Somebody in the company interested or fluent in a particular social media, or has been itching to write a company blog? Now is the time to let him loose. Let his passion be a lighthouse for potential customers. While it may not be polished or on message, it is likely not going to be sterile and flat like most polished, on-message marketing efforts. To get a sense of what this evangelist might do for you, check out my interview with Betsy Weber, chief evangelist of TechSmith:part one and part two.
• Let content come from your company’s strength. We have a client where almost everybody in the company participates in the forum. Every employee is knowledgeable about the service offered, and they all become part of the marketing vehicle, giving tips and comments and escalating customer issues. Not only is it transparent, it’s content marketing at its most organic.
• Content marketing should ultimately be a two-way conversation between you and your customers. While an e-mail newsletter or a static Web page with persuasive copy is technically one-way, it shouldn’t sound like it is. Talk more about them and what they get than talking about yourself. Those who do nothing but talk about themselves just end up “wewe-ing” all over themselves. Try our online calculator that tells businesses how much they talk about themselves in their copy; it is one of our oldest content marketing vehicles and has remained popular for years.
• Don’t be pressured to reinvent the wheel. If you don’t already have one, start a simple e-mail newsletter. Don’t feel forced to pick something new and shiny like Twitter or the latest social media frenzy.
• Content that isn’t relevant to at least one profitable segment of potential customers isn’t content, it’s spam. Spam is boring. Creating relevant content often requires planning.

Final Say

Ultimately, content marketing is about optimizing the dialogue between a company and it customers. The better, more interesting the conversation is, the more attention it attracts and the more your customers are compelled to talk and buy.

How is the conversation going with your customers?

Many sites offering “free” white papers, case studies, or resources in exchange for some visitor information utterly fail to merchandise their downloads. Yet if your website doesn’t treat your white paper as containing valuable information, your visitors won’t either.

The problem starts by thinking of these downloads as free. You’re asking for something extremely valuable to both you and the visitor, their contact information. To get this valuable information, you need to show the visitor the value of what they’re downloading. So when they fill out the lead form, they feel they’re making a good exchange: valuable information for valuable information.

1. Your White Paper Needs an Interesting Title – Would you rather read a white paper title “Mobile Analytics” or “Why 90% of Your Mobile Visitors Aren’t Being Tracked and What Your Can Do About It?” The same technique, that works for selling books, getting people to read blog posts and even to attend webinars can significantly increase your white paper downloads. But don’t go for such an interesting name that no one knows what the paper is about though. For borderline cases, a strong sub-title can bridge between interesting and descriptive.

2. Every Book White paper Needs a Cover – Instead of just giving the white paper a title alone, merchandise it the way you would a book. No plain vanilla covers, make it engaging. Take a look at some samples white paper cover merchandising from other smart marketers.

Keep in mind, many people prefer to download and print white papers before they read them. Which is more likely to catch someone’s attention on a busy, cluttered desk a white paper with no cover or one with an engaging cover design?

3. Make It Easy to Digest – How often have you downloaded a white paper for it only to be pages after pages of block text. No headlines, sub-headlines or bullet points. No graphics, charts or screenshots. People are busy. It is fine to make a long white paper if the topic deserves it, but make it reader-friendly.

4. Tell Them What They Are Going to Get – Write persuasive copy that not only informs people what they’ll learn from the download but also what they can do with the information. Make sure this copy is crisp, simple to read and formatted for online readers. You may want to offer key takeaways, a table of contents, or even an example chart to show them how valuable the paper is going to be.

5. Give Them Download Details – Let them know how many pages it is, how big the file is, what format the paper is in (PDF, DOC), etc.

6. Give Them an Excerpt – Very few people like reading poorly written, monotonous sounding, corporate gobblygook. By providing an excerpt you can help prove how well written, easy to understand and valuable your white paper is.

7. Prove Other People Like It – Like endorsements on a book cover, “credible testimonials” on the download page of your white paper can help sell the value of the content and improve conversion.

8. Don’t Ask For Too Much Information – Make sure your forms are optimized to ask only what you really need. And please don’t ask people to “submit to you.”

9. Let Them Know What Will Happen With Their Personal Information -  Provide them with point of action assurances around their privacy.

10. Make it Easy For People to Share – Give people an easy mechanism for them to share your white paper via social media, email or pass along.  Do it on the offer/landing page as well as on the thank you page. Visitors are most engaged when they are already downloading the white paper, so a suggestion for them to share it often helps.

11. Have a Follow-up Program -Let’s face it, you created your white paper and offered it for download in order to get leads.  That means the white paper has to generate a response or conversation.  Making your white paper interesting, actionable, and readable will help, but you’ll be far more successful getting responses if you initiate the post-download interactions and follow-up conversations through a well-planned lead nurturing campaign.

12. Offer Contact Information – Some persona actually prefer to contact you immediately upon finding the white paper, so make sure your contact information is on the download page. Others prefer to contact you as they are reading the white paper, make sure your contact information is found there as well. Others just feel a sense of confidence knowing you are providing your full contact information and not trying to remain anonymous while asking for their personal information. In simple terms make it easy for them to find your contact information everywhere.

What other techniques have you tried to increase leads from white paper requests?

We have diverse readership, which includes B2B marketers, retailers, publishers, non-profits, Fortune 500 managers, small business owners, lots of consultants and all sorts of surprising people. We love all of your comments, additional advice and dedication you show to the marketing optimization community. We look forward to providing you more great content for the rest of this year and 2009.

January

Marketing Lessons From Apple

Testing Add-to-Cart Buttons: Stuck in the Middle With You

7 Tips for Boosting Web Form Conversions

February

Hidden Secrets of the Amazon Shopping Cart

How to Prioritize Your Optimization

How to Elf Yourself Out of Millions

PayPal Should Go Undercover

March

Top 7 Tips for Optimizing Low-Traffic Websites

Recession-Proof Your Online Marketing

April

3 Reasons Your Visitors Don’t Convert to Leads

How to Increase Shopping Cart Abandonment

10 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Using Flash

May

Tips From a Client Who Doubled His Conversion Rate

How to Get Buy-in for Conversion Rate Optimization

June

Do Women Respond to “Free Shipping” More Than Men?

Firefox 3: How to Convert Seven Million Visitors in a Day

July

What Your Bounce Rate is Trying to Tell You

Tapping the Power of Social Media to Advertise to Women

August

5 Simple Tips for Lead-Generation Sites

Can An Image of a Pretty Woman Boost Conversion?

September

Why Rank #1 in Google

The Difference Between Great and Average Copy

Google Website Optimizer: Free Resources To Jump Start Your Testing

October

14 Tools to Legally Spy On Your Competition

The Ultimate Google Analytics Plugins, Hacks & Tricks Collection

7 Deadly Sins of Web Analytics

November

33 Free Tools to Make Your Website Better

7 Ways to Win Over Reluctant Buyers

Social Media Is NOT Media

Understanding and Aligning the Value of Social Media

Is Free Shipping a Must in this Economy?

December

Increasing “Qualified” Leads From Your Website

No More Consulting Indigestion

Any suggestions on what you would like us to cover in 2009?

There’s an important parallel here with newsletters.  If you’re going to go through the effort of creating a newsletter, you want it to get read.  And there has to be a strategic business purpose for publishing a newsletter.

Here’s a great email case study from Marketing Sherpa.  Drs. Foster and Smith ran an A/B test to see whether a straight product promotion, or education focused with a product promotion would result in more sales.

“The winning design in both tests was information more prominent, offer less prominent. Remember, the informational call to action translated to a 15% increase in sales over the promotional offer.

The all-important landing page used shorter copy with a top image hot-linked to a product page where readers could purchase products relevant to the information. In a sense, readers were being pre-sold on an item with expert advice which further motivated the purchase.

Marketing Sherpa summed up the key takeaway as “Their audience responds better to relevant content than to a heavy-duty sales pitch.”

I think much of this learning applies to newsletters as well.  So, Here are some strategies for writing newsletters that actually get read:

1. If you have a large, more diverse audience, go with the multiple article format (like Grokdotcom).  Readers have the choice to read the whole thing, or cherry-pick the articles of most interest.   With multiple articles, there’s a greater chance a reader will find something of value for their particular situation.
2. If you have a more focused subject of expertise, go with the single article approach.   There’s a greater chance that one article will resonate with your more focused audience.   And short and sweet is a true winning strategy for today’s time-starved reader with an overflowing inbox.   There may be a greater chance they’ll open it up and read it since they know it won’t take much time.
3. Have a voice.    In our Soccer Mom Myth Newsletter, Michele and I are big believers in the use of humor.   Who doesn’t love a good laugh once in a while?   Roy Williams’ extremely popular Monday Morning Memo always has something profound to say and features Roy’s unique way of expressing his ideas.   Here are some tips on how to create a voice for your website or your newsletter.
4. Use a mix of “how to” articles and “wow, that gets me thinking” articles.    We all love articles or blog posts that give us practical tips we can apply right away to our daily work activities.    But also throw in articles that are designed to get people thinking, to help change their perspective or touch on a universal truth.   These types of articles are an incredible way to create an emotional connection with your reader.   It’s a great “how to” logical and “get me thinking” emotional one-two punch.
5. Use personal stories.   Yeah, I know, I’m a humanistic.  I’m a sucker for them.  But these stories help the reader to feel like he or she really knows you.  If you are in the services or consulting business, creating a relationship with your readers is the best way to promote yourself and your services.

What about you?  What techniques do you use to create successful newsletters that people actually read?

Tapping the Power of Social Media to Advertise to Women

3 Things Viral Videos Must Do to Make Money 

Free Whitepaper: “Marketing in a Recession” (Don’t Miss This)

How to Gain and Act on Customer Insights 

How to Prioritize Your Optimization

What Your Bounce Rate is Trying to Tell You

5 Copywriting Keys to Landing Page Credibility 

Optimize Your Copy for Skimming and Scanning 

How to Avoid Marketing to Yourself 

The 7 Deadly Claims (Part 5) — “100% Risk-Free&…

P.S. Always Be Testing – our new book is unleashed and don’t forget to sign up for our Free Webinar: August Session of “Always Be Testing” Webinar Series

Did we miss any of your favorites? Please let us know in the comments below.

Q. Is it correct to use parenthesis to indicate the possibility of a noun as singular or plural? Example: Child(ren).
A. I wouldn’t. It’s not so much an issue of correctness as of ickiness.

I love Jeff Sexton like a brother. But sometimes I feel like a mildly slow, older brother. We have very interesting Skype chats where he uses some awfully big words.  I often find that I’m forced to just play along and occasionally grunt in monosyllabic agreement as he expounds on some exacting detail of this, my only language. Glib, I am. (I actually had to look up the word “glib” when someone in an online forum used it to describe my writing.) In high school, my teacher gave up on ever getting me to successfully conjugate the verb “to be”.

As a zen-like Master of Glib, my natural inclination for drafting this post was to simply write, “Heh, heh. Cool. Check it out.” But, you’d probably think I was trying to Rickroll you.

So, I was thrilled to read some of these priceless questions and answers without actually having to fork over $30 to get access to the real meat and potatoes of the style guide. Behold! You can subscribe to all of the newest questions at the low, low price of FREE!

If you’re not careful, you might learn something that will keep “ickiness” at bay in your writing.

Have a look at the Q & A section. What’s your favorite?

I’ve always advised that you should give your site’s visitors the OPTION to get the information they need from you in the language they prefer. It does not have to immediately be a full-fledged version of your English site, but at least a work in progress (make sure you accentuate this on your site) that shows Hispanic visitors that you consider them an important part of your online customer base.

That said, there are the other 53% of Latinos of which 30% are bilingual and 23% are English Dominant. So roughly 10 million Latinos prefer to speak, read, and write in English; they are not proficient in Spanish. That’s the size of the population of a small country! Now, these folks are culturally Hispanic, but you just won’t be able to reach them with any kind of Spanish communication, they want, need, and prefer to be access their information in English. And all sources confirm that these are the ones more likely to be online right now.

Even bilinguals to a certain extent, might prefer to access online information in English; be it because they’ve been conditioned by the bad Spanish language quality control on certain sites or because they were simply led by any means into the English site, felt comfortable there and did not feel the need to reach out for the information they were looking for in Spanish.

My advice to you is that you should begin to understand Latino culture and subtly begin to weave it into your website’s design and more importantly, content. Please note I am not talking about language here, I am talking about Culture; independently of the language spoken, there are scores of cultural nuances that remain with Latinos.

If you are able to include these seamlessly within your site in such a way that they speak, even whisper, almost on a subconscious level to Hispanics you will be connecting with that other 53% of their population that very likely are visiting your English site. You will be able to notice if you have implemented this successfully by the “ca-chings” of your cash register, since without alienating your general market customers, you will be connecting on a deeper level with English dominant Latinos, who without even knowing what hit them will be more willing to buy from you.

So what are those cultural cues you should be so aware of? That will be the subject of another post.

What: “Always Be Testing” Webinar: Landing Pages: Headlines and Calls to Action

When: Wednesday, August 27, 2008 | 12:00pm EST

Where: Online, register here to receive your invitation

How much: It’s free, but space is limited so sign-up today!

About this session:

Last month kicked off the series with a webinar on testing trust and confidence building elements on landing pages (view archive ). Our August session will continue to explore landing pages focusing on testing calls to action and headlines. register today! Space is limited.

“Always Be Testing” Webinar Series is a monthly webinar that covers specific testing ideas, how to structure tests, and how to use Google Website Optimizer. The best part is that Google has decided to participate in it first-hand, offering the lastest tips and insights straight from Tom Leung, Google’s Business Product Manager.

“Landing Pages: Headlines and Calls to Action Webinar” will be on August 27th, at 12:00pm EST and last 30 minutes.

For more details and to sign-up to attend, visit futurenowinc.com/abtwebinar.htm

We hope you’ll attend and share this with anyone you know who is looking to begin to test their marketing or to increase their testing effectiveness.

About the Series:
Whether your business has just started testing, is planning to test, or has been testing for years identifying the areas and elements that have impact is often challenging. Each month, Bryan Eisenberg starts off by taking attendees on a dive deep on a specific subject area to test in your marketing and give you ideas on variation you could test. Along with these ideas each month Tom Leung will bring you useful insider tips and tricks about using Google Website Optimizer to easily test your marketing campaigns and website. Lastly, the two will team up to answer a popular question spotted on the Google Website Optimizer forums or sent in by our readers and listeners.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Seems I’m not alone. A recent study provides more evidence of the online/offline buying connection.

Media measurement company, Nielsen Online, conducted a survey to examine the relationship between online research and offline purchases. They found that 80% of participants who had recently bought consumer electronics from a brick and mortar store whose site they visited first.

• 53% bought from the site where they spent the most time.
• 58% would choose the internet if they could only use one channel to conduct product research on consumer electronics. Only 25% chose the brick and mortar store.

It’s certainly not breaking news that customers do research online before they buy. But how much that online experience affects offline purchases may have been underestimated.

Are you answering your customers questions?

I was in Petsmart the other day stocking up food and gourmet snacks for my pups. I’ve been considering changing dog food. But was that a decision Petsmart’s brick and mortar store could help me make? Maybe, if there had been a doggie nutrition expert standing in the aisle, or they had a “food tasting” aisle where I could let my picky Boston Terrier sample different foods and choose his favorite. But no such help was provided.

The Neilson Online study found this about pet food purchasers:

Here’s the percentages of pet food survey participants who would use the internet to research each topic.

48% Learn about nutritional specifications

45% Learn about product ingredients

45% Learn about recalls

40% Learn more about safety issues

40% Find sales/promotions

This works both ways. Find better ways to answer your visitors’ questions on your website, but also look at better ways to answer their questions in your brick and mortar store.

Defining & Measuring Success

With the average conversion rate under 3%, it doesn’t mean that 97% of visits fail.  How do you determine if you give your visitors what they want, whether you communicated effectively with them and whether you influenced their thinking and buying behaviors as well as those of their social-media-connected friends.

Defining success or failure, not only through your metrics but also through measuring the perceptions and actions of your visitors is challenging but possible if you understand the value of qualitative metrics and of quantitative metrics using Persuasion Architecture; just ask us how.

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…

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…

That’s a very large price to pay for having everything at our fingertips, all the time, in any format.

Our decision-making processes can’t always keep up with our choices. The same challenge applies to website design and content. The Web is a fantastic place to shop, research, and be entertained, but sometimes when I’m online, I notice physical fatigue when I’m trying to figure out where to go next!

When I’m evaluating a vendor’s Services page, should I:

• Sign up for their newsletter?
• Read about the awards they’ve won?
• Look at a list of clients?
• Read the CEO’s blog?

When I’m shopping for a health supplement, should I:

• Read about related products?
• Read about their latest “green” program?
• View my empty shopping cart?
• Become an affiliate?

Even though we come to a website with the best intentions, we’re by nature drawn to the shiny distractions that marketers and designers put along our path. We go down rabbit holes in websites and sometimes by the time we find our way back to the trail, we’ve lost our momentum . . . or maybe we’ve been interrupted and have to go back to work

So I’m wondering: How much money is lost each year because we overload our potential customers with information on our web pages? How many visitors are driven away by cluttered designs, too many messages, too many offers, and too many choices?

Here’s the problem: Marketers naturally want to use messaging, offers, promotions and more to persuade web visitors. But in their efforts, they often contribute to information overload, which is proven to hamper the decision-making process. Also, companies tend to add more content to their websites over time and rarely retire content that’s outdated or irrelevant.

The solution: Most web pages should have only one primary goal. If there are alternate options, offers, or next steps, that’s fine. But don’t interrupt the task at hand, and don’t overload your visitors with distractions.

The one exception I can think of is the homepage, which should, at a minimum, a) communicate Unique Value Proposition, and b) route visitors.

Should you remove these secondary goals and choices? Maybe, but sometimes making them less prominent is enough to move the needle. It comes down to a business decision whether your “Sizzlin’ Hot Summer Giveaway” promotion is worth distracting a certain percentage of visitors from their primary goal.

What if you don’t know the goal of all of your site’s pages? You could start with rediscovering who your customers really are, or some analysis of your website’s “data dump,” or you could hypothesize and run some tests. Sometimes the purpose of a page is simply to present options. That’s fine, but don’t distract visitors from understanding their options and making a decision.

So let’s get practical here:

• Category page primary goal = route visitors to sub-category or product page
• Product page primary goal = persuade visitors to purchase
• In the News page primary goal = build brand credibility
• Shopping cart page primary goal = get the cash!
• General content page primary goal = build persuasive momentum

Although it seems hard at first, it’s actually pretty easy to find a single, primary goal for most pages on your site. Then you have the harder task of deciding how to do away with unnecessary distractions, get rid of design clutter, and allow visitors freedom without information overload.

Sometimes having a new pair of eyes look at your site can really speed this process up.

If you’re overloading customers with info, you’re not alone. Many world-class, million-dollar sites are guilty of information overload, and even the best online marketers need to work on it constantly.

Best of luck. To avoid information overload, let’s focus on answering the three essential questions of Persuasion Architecture:

• Who are your visitors?
• What action do you want them to take?
• What will persuade them to take that action?

. . .

About the Author: Brendan Regan is a Persuasion Analyst at FutureNow, Inc. This is his first GrokDotCom post. Welcome to the blog, Brendan!

But before we discuss how the iPhone team does it, I’d like to show you a few other examples that illustrate some of the dos and don’ts — mostly “dos” — for using online video as part of your overall Web strategy.

• Ebags.com – Ebags features videos of some of their handbag designers by giving the designers their own category page with which to showcase their own products. Here’s an example from the Antoinette Lee Designs. When you click on the video, you’ll see Antoinette talks about her background and her inspiration — very cool. It’s refreshing to get a sense of who’s designing the handbag. It creates a more personal connection with the designer and her product. Again, a fabulous use of video.

• 4Q – Avinash Kaushik and iPerceptions have teamed up to develop a free online customer survey product called 4Q. The landing page links to this YouTube video where Avinash actually walks you through setting up a 4Q survey on your site. I like this video for a lot of reasons. I like Avinash’s delivery (”You just finished step one. Give yourself a hug!”), and you can actually go through the whole process, screen-by-screen, from the sign-up page through putting the code on your site. So often with software, we see a screen (think sign-up process page) and have no idea what’s coming next. This step-by-step approach helps people mentally go through the process before they even sign up — a brilliant way to remove barriers and inspire confidence in the product.

• Microsoft Dynamics – I know they’re an easy target, but this micro-site for Microsoft Dynamics, a business management software product, has a lot of dos and don’ts in one place. Click on the actors to launch the videos and you’ll see what I mean. While I like the direction Microsoft is going, I think they hurt themselves with the execution. Similar to the 4Q video, Microsoft shows actual screenshots, so you can get a sense of what it would feel like to use their software. But unlike 4Q, they only show the interface briefly, so it’s not as thorough. Microsoft also customized each video to attract different people within a company who might potentially use the software. From the “typical IT Manager,” to the “typical Marketing Manager,” to the “typical Finance Manager,” each video targets specific things that each of these people segments care about.

But Microsoft’s videos aren’t as effective as they could be. They don’t feel authentic. These are obviously actors, using hokey language like, “I’m your typical Sales Manager.” What’s up with that? Because these people feel so plastic, their message doesn’t resonate with me the same way a more authentic delivery would. Which brings me to my final example…

• Apple iPhone 3G – Ah, yes, the iPhone. Leave it to Apple to be ready with a great online experience to explain everything you need to know about the new iPhone on the very day it’s announced. With the next generation iPhone 2.0 operating system, Apple is making a very bold move. They’re positioning the device as the must-have business solution for any type of industry — even the Army! On the iPhone enterprise page, Apple links to a video that proves in no uncertain terms that top companies are relying on the iPhone for their most important work.

• The video features top companies using the iPhone. There is instant credibility. (”If it’s good enough for Disney and The Army, it’s good enough for me.”)
• In the IT industry, the top sources of information are peers and colleagues. Rather than having sales people (or actors) talking about the iPhone’s features, we see actual IT people talking in their language about why they like the iPhone and its specific capabilities.
• The video shows the phone in use, so you can picture yourself connecting through your VPN or using it for other applications. Or just holding it.

What’s your company doing with video to help sell products online? If you’ve found other ways that are new and effective, I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

. .

About the Author: Holly Buchanan is a “typical Persuasion Architect” at FutureNow, Inc. She’s co-author of The Soccer Mom Myth and an expert in planning online persuasion scenarios.

If you look up its definition, copy refers to any “written matter intended to be reproduced in printed form” (e.g., “The text of a news story, advertisement, television commercial, etc., as distinguished from related visual material”). The word was originally used in the context of the printing press, but it essentially means the same thing online.

Since all copy is content, but not all content is copy, some people separate the two. They use “copy” exclusively to mean text that is written to persuade visitors to take action. “Content,” meanwhile, doesn’t imply an intent to persuade. (For example, think of a website that features celebrity news Content, with a page urging visitors, via persuasive Copy, to subscribe.)

So, “web copy” refers to any and all words published on your website. And without it, your site looks something like this.

I don’t know if this is all that helpful for Pearce, but here’s what is important…

Web Copy is different from Offline Copy.

Offline copy (like a billboard) isn’t interactive. Web copy (like what you read on this blog) is. Web copy needs to be formatted in easy-to-read chunks. It’s hard to read a lot of copy online. Break up your copy with headers, subheaders, short paragraphs and bullet points.

Web copy has a powerful advantage over offline copy: Hyperlinks.

Hyperlinks create persuasive momentum. They provide a clear pathway for your visitor to accomplish his or her goals, and your business to accomplish your goals. What actions do you want your visitors to take? Your website should be planned with visitor goals and company goals in mind. Use your web copy to answer your visitors’ questions, address their objections, and provide hyperlinks that move them toward the actions you want them to take.

How do I plan goals for my website?

Pearce’s second question (”"Do you have any ideas on how to come up with goals for college websites?”) helps illustrate where web copy fits into the overall process of planning, building, and optimizing a website.

To find your website’s goals and use copy to support them, ask yourself these three questions:

1. Who is my audience?
2. What actions do I want them to take?
3. What information do they need in order to feel confident taking action?

Pearce should look at all the different types of visitors who might come to a college website (prospective students, current students, faculty, alumni, people in the community), then map out what each of these visitors is trying to accomplish. What questions are they asking? What information are they hoping to find? What information would you most like each of these groups to see?

For Pearce, this involves looking not only at his visitors’ goals, but the goals of the college itself. (Do they have a new program they want to push, a special event, or a special benefit that prospective students would love?) Once he has this information, he can plan pathways and provide information that is relevant for each of these types of visitors.

All pathways should lead toward an action you want your visitors to take. After all, how can you measure success if you haven’t defined what success looks like?

Thanks for the questions, Pearce!

. .

[Editor's Note: Got a question for FutureNow? All you have to do is "Ask the Experts".]

He showed the “Bra Scientist” video clip by Zafu that I blogged about last year.

As the audience was watching the clip, I noticed something interesting: There were certain points when the men were laughing and the women weren’t. And there were other points when the women were guffawing but the men weren’t even smiling.

The guys laughed when the scientist asked the woman in the parking lot if she would talk about her “um, well… you know, uh… breasts.” It’s a funny line, well delivered. (The guys found it funny, anyway.) She responds “Sure” and the scientist is quite pleased the interview can continue. But then she kicks his head off. Literally.

Some of the women looked a little shocked, but for other women, it garnered full-on belly laughs.

Why is this important? Because humor is one of the most pervasive devices advertisers use to try to sell products. Is that humor hitting the mark with target audiences? A recent Advertising Age article claims that “Snide Advertising is Bad for Business and Society” (subscription required but it’s available here).

In the article, Richard Rapaport discusses “the nasty tone that seems to dominate advertising” and “commercials built on sadism, on derision, on one-upsmanship — in a word, ’snide.’” He gives this example:

Another building block of snide advertising is physical aggression. Consider the quite literally shocking ad for Priceline.com in which William Shatner enters the house of a frustrated online vacation shopper and stuns him with a Taser before sitting down at the man’s computer. “Did I zap your daddy?” Shatner coos at the man’s disquieted child. “Yes, I did,” he admits, “but I saved him lots of money.”

I’m not sure what percentage of Priceline’s audience is women, but women book more online travel than men do. I wonder how they feel about that ad.

While I do believe some humor is universal, I think there are certain types of jokes and subject matter that men find funny that women don’t, and vice-versa. Part of what makes something funny is that it rings true to you (”Oh my God, I’ve so been there!”). Different content may speak more to one gender than the other.

Eric Berger at the Sci Guy blog asked if women have a better sense of humor. One comment grabbed my attention. A reader named Scott has this to say:

The women in my office say that the reason they have less expectation of a reward is that most guys tell such bad jokes, and repeat them over and over. Women don’t tend to be entertained by jokes about bodily functions, sexual performance, or many of the other common topics of guy jokes. I’ve never heard a woman tell a Christa Macaullife/Space Shuttle Challenger joke, yet there are guys who still crack up over them. So perhaps women have a more “refined” sense of humor, not necessarily a “better” sense of humor.

Interesting. There’s a fascinating study done by Professor Hugo Carretero Dios at the University of Granada that finds that humor depends on the person. Or, as the press release claims, “Scientific research on sense of humor sheds light on psychological profiles.”

Carretero Dios observed a generational change in the women’s preferences to the different types of humour. “There has been change in women’s values and roles in our society,” says Carretero Dios. “In people over 45-50, we observed that both men and women laughed more at jokes degrading to women than those degrading to men”. At the same time, both men and women showed more rejection to jokes degrading to men.

However, among the participants between 18-25 years old, the trend was different and men and women had different reactions. Men laugh more at jokes degrading to women and reject those degrading to men. By contrast, women laugh more at jokes degrading to men and reject those degrading to women. Indeed, this trend is more pronounced in women.

“Could these findings show a change in educational values or even a new pattern in the roles played by women”

I think the whole subject deserves more analysis, but it underscores the importance of understanding who your audience is and how gender could affect whether that audience thinks your ads are funny.

What ads have you seen recently that you found funny — or unfunny — and why?

. .

About the Author: Holly Buchanan is a Persuasion Architect at FutureNow and co-author of The Soccer Mom Myth — Today’s Female Consumer: Who She Really Is, Why She Really Buys.

Her firm does content development for websites, so she’d never literally been at a loss for words — not online, anyway — until a new client hired her to write some search engine-friendly copy. For the first time, she questioned whether her client’s site actually needed Web copy to do its job. She was stumped.

The client sells new and used industrial drill rigs, augers, hammer grabs, oscillators — stuff they sell at construction equipment auctions (and, no, you can’t find it on eBay). The current website consists of a few image galleries and, thus far, the conventional wisdom has been that all they need to do is show pictures of massive, earth-moving objects, list some basic technical specs, and that’s all their audience needs to know before buying one of these things at a live auction.

A 100-ton drill rig is a 100-ton drill rig is a 100-ton drill rig, right?

Here’s how our anonymous friend described the situation:

According to the [client], there’s not much to say, and the pictures are apparently more important than words in conveying a description of the item. I suggested adding content — a product description — to each picture, so I could get in keywords and so forth, but there’s so little to say about it, and that’s part of [the] problem.

Their visitors are construction companies who already know what kind of equipment they’re looking for. It’s mostly a matter of price competition and whether they want new or used equipment. So descriptions are hardly necessary, especially with the descriptive pictures telling most of the story.

I’ve worked on a ton of web sites and never encountered this before. Any suggestions on what I can do to help them increase page rank?

Let’s start by unpacking some the dangerous assumptions she’s making:

• There’s not much to say
• Pictures are more important than words
• The problem is that “there’s so little to say”
• Their visitors are all from construction companies
• Their visitors already know what kind of equipment they want
• It’s mostly a matter of price competition
• Visitors already know if they’re looking to buy new or used
• It’s unnecessary to describe such products with text
• Pictures can tell most of the story
• Page rank and content are independent variables

Still, the most dangerous assumption she’s made is that the client’s assumptions are true. Yes, they know their business better than she (or any other consultant) possibly could, but that doesn’t mean they know how to market. Whether they can imagine a scenario where someone might need more than just a picture before purchasing 100 tons of construction equipment is irrelevant.

Besides, has a search engine ever bought an oscillator at auction?

Since this was taken on as an SEO gig, not a strategic planning and copywriting project, it’s based on a false premise (”We’ll pay you to help us rank higher, but you shouldn’t have to do much writing to accomplish that”). Until this client understands the value of Web copy — to both humans and search engines — this blog post will likely rank higher for relevant search terms than their website.

Here’s what Seth Godin says about this common SEO myth in his latest book, Meatball Sundae:

My position is that the clients are the problem, not the consultants. That’s because they want shortcuts, not hard work. The best SEO is great content. Don’t do that and you don’t get much.

Do they really believe “there’s not much to say” about a used hydraulic rotary drill rig that (probably) costs hundreds of thousands of dollars? Where has it been? What type of condition is it in? What sorts of jobs is it best suited for? What distinguishes one design or manufacturer from another? Are the needs of a big-budget construction project manager the same as those of an owner-operator of an excavation company? What should I know about each model before I show up to the live auction to bid? If it breaks, do you sell replacement parts? Is everything being sold “as is”? How long have you been in business? Why should I trust your brand?

These are fair questions, and the current site doesn’t answer one of them. There’s not even an ‘About Us’ page.

Of course the client’s customers “already know what kind of equipment they’re looking for.” Those are the only people who would ever be persuaded by a site with no content!

Could you imagine if a real estate website listed houses that were to go up for auction, but showed nothing except for a few pics of the exterior? This is how Christie’s hypes an upcoming auction. Her client should take a look.

Think that’s a stretch, comparing the way 20th century British art is sold to how one should sell drill rigs online? Volvo Construction Equipment begs to differ.

When Volvo hired Future Now, we started with an uncovery session to get to know their business and its key metrics. Then, based on what we learned, we developed personas to match various customer segments. We then performed a scenario analysis of the site to see how it met the expectations of each persona, and to identify fixes that could be made without a redesign. Once they could see how visitors’ needs were unique, they were able to write copy that sold gigantic new and used construction vehicles, machinery and parts.

There’s still work to be done, but with these adjustments, Volvo CE’s lead generation went up 700%. (Here’s the case study from Web Trends, if you’re interested.)

If her client wants rank well and sell more construction equipment, she needs to know more about their business. The client needs to be more forthcoming and she needs to push back for answers. Of course, it would have been better if they’d discussed these things before she took the job, but if both parties continue to look for quick fixes, the site will continue to be “nothing but pictures of drills, augers, and oscillators.”

. .

[Editor's Note: This has been the first post in our new "Ask Future Now" series. If you have questions about interactive marketing optimization, let us know in the comments or contact us directly and we'll start a dialog via email. We'll answer your question in a new post.

Hat tip to Dave Young for reminding us of the Meatball Sundae excerpt.]

But that’s changing — fast.

You’re probably aware that Latinos are the fastest growing minority in the U.S., yet most businesses don’t realize that by 2050, Latinos will be 29% of the entire American population.*

On top of that, their buying power is growing at even a faster pace. This combination of factors has to add up for businesses, especially online merchants.

But in the words of countless political pundits — who, if you turn on your TV right now, are analyzing our voting patterns — “the Hispanic population is not monolithic.” In fact, there are quite a few factors that, combined, illustrate completely different types of people, living different realities, yet all part of the Latino community. (Without getting too deep, these factors include: country of origin; heritage; generation; place of residence; socio-economic status; acculturation; assimilation; and language preference.)

Varias Personas

Consider the differences between these two individuals:

Alejandro Ramirez — 19 years old. Mexican-American. Bilingual (speaks both languages but reads and writes better in English). 2nd generation (born in the US from immigrant parents). Lives in Petaluma, CA, with his parents, who come from lower-middle class families in Torreon, Cuahuila. His family’s annual household income is $80,000. Although he was born and raised in the U.S. and is quite familiar with the cultural landscape, his parents have nurtured a strong love for Mexico and have ensured that he understands his family’s roots.

Fernando Zachniuk — 43 years old. Argentinean. Moved to the U.S. 10 years ago to start a business. He’s bilingual, but more comfortable in Spanish. He rents a condo in Boca Ratón. He comes from an upper-middle class Russian-Jewish family from Buenos Aires. He’s dating a Cuban-American divorcée who has a 10 year old son. Their annual household income is in the low $20o,000’s. He enjoys the amenities and comfort America has to offer, but he will always be an Argentinean at heart.

You wouldn’t market to them the same way, would you?

Exactly.

I could go on, referring to each single difference that defines Hispanic subgroups, but let’s focus on Language preference for the time being.

En Español, Por Favor

Since many Latinos, especially those of us online, are either English-dominant or fully bilingual, it’s easy for a company to say they’re already reaching out to Hispanics. After all, if they’re online and able to read the content, isn’t that enough?

At first glance, that logic makes sense. But the reality is this: Even if the Latino who comes to your website is fully bilingual and looking for exactly what you sell, they may prefer to read about your offering in Spanish.

Example: If I’m reading about marketing, I have no problem — and may even prefer — reading a website’s content in English. But when the same bald guy (me) is suddenly presented with a desire or need for medical or financial investment information, you can bet the farm (la granja) that I would prefer reading it in Spanish!

The situation that bilingual and Spanish-dominant Hispanics encounter in many cases is that there isn’t enough online content that speaks to them. They either can’t find it, or — more often — it’ so bad that they go back to the site’s English version.

It seems most organizations aren’t taking their outreach to Spanish-dominant Latinos seriously. Instead, they choose to feel safe in the knowledge that there is a translation of their site — no matter how awful. Others pay some attention to the fact that a translated version should actually make sense, but such translations are often way too literal and don’t account for cultural nuance.

“Getting all your ducks in row,” a common phrase in America, is used to describe the action of being fully organized prior to starting a new course of action, but there is no literal translation of it that wouldn’t make a Spanish speaker break out in laughter! Same goes for “Barking up the wrong tree,” “Two peas in a pod,” “The whole nine yards,” and so on.

Translate Concepts, Not Sentences

If you’re serious about reaching out to the entire Latino community, your site should be bilingual. And when it comes to bilingual sites, “transcreation” is what separates the men from the boys. (Hey, it’s just a figure of speech!)

To paraphrase Lingo24’s definition, transcreation is a form of translation, closer to copywriting, resulting in a text linguistically and culturally adapted for its intended audience. Transcreated material is supposed to have the same impact on the target audience as the original source text.

Transcreation is like taking the scenic route instead of the direct highway, so it requires a greater investment to fuel it. Still, the rewards for businesses — especially considering what the numbers tell us about current and future supply and demand — are plenty to justify the expense. It will most certainly take more time, money, and effort to end up with a transcreated site, but my advice to anyone marketing in the U.S. is that they shouldn’t risk not having one.

Back to Alejandro and Fernando for a moment, since this could be the crucial element that either converts them into clients or sends them elsewhere looking for what they need.

Let’s assume they visit your site today. How will you speak to them? Will you give them the choice to experience your content in their preferred language? Will the Spanish section of your site be a straightforward translation or a transcreation? If they navigate your site in Spanish, would they actually care if the language were stiff, confusing, or (worse) boring?

I assure you, they will care.

. . . .
* Pew Hispanic Center report on social and demographic trends

[Editor's Note: Each month, Juan Tornoe joins us on GrokDotCom to share his insights on Hispanic marketing trends.]

I laughed when I first heard it, but my friend explained:

At last count, there were some 75 million+ blogs out there, but very few of those blogs have many readers besides the writer, his mom and the family pet; and if it’s a cat, they just casually glance at it. If you care to argue that people use it as a personal journal, I’d suggest they use a more elegant and simpler technology, a moleskine notebook and a pen.

In fact, besides a few really popular blogs, most blogs don’t have enough readers for a pickup game of basketball. Please don’t lecture me about the long tail — I understand niche, even micro-niche. I think as marketers, though, we have bigger issues to overcome if we ever expect to see the acceptance of social media as a viable media channel.

1. Splogs, Scrapers and Money Making Fakers

Way too many of the blogs out there have been created because someone heard the search engines love blogs. And eventually, some low life figured they could get more traffic is grabbing garbage content from others to post and post and post. The frightening part is that Google and Technorati can’t filter out these content thieves and their sites often show up in listings so that in aggregate they deliver traffic. Both blog publishers and readers feel this pain.

Also, according to Google, of the 2 billion or so pages containing the word “blog,” only about 200,000,000 of them don’t contain the word “money” somewhere on the page.

Based on these statistics, close to 90% of the blogs you’ll find on the internet are the products of get rich quick schemes.

2. New Year’s Resolution Makers and Promise Breakers

Do you have your list of things you plan to do in the new year? Ready for a fresh start? Do you plan to lose weight, start exercising, find a better job and quit smoking? Like many people, you might sign up for the gym the first week of January; you’ll feel the burn of that first session you have with the personal trainer. You’ll thrill from buzz and bustle of the crowds. Waiting for your next machine may whisk you back to memories of standing in airport TSA lines during the holiday travel season. You’ll return, but, unfortunately, by March the gym will be so empty that you’ll hear an echo every time you swallow. Sure you’ll keep going, because you’re different.

Blogging, like any of these resolutions takes a real commitment. Out of the 75 million plus blogs started, in April Technorati reported that 15.5 million of them were “active.” What exactly does that mean?

Technorati claims about 1.5 million new posts a day. Take a look at popular blogs like, Boing Boing, Engadget, TechCrunch, Lifehacker, Scoblelizer, Search Engine Watch, and Search Engine Land, and you’ll notice many of these are publishing 5 or more posts a day. Meanwhile others — top marketing blogs like Seth Godin, SEOmoz, Duct Tape Marketing, Search Engine Journal, Marketing Pilgrim and us at GrokDotCom — try to publish a couple of posts a day. To really feel the benefits of blogging, or any of those other resolutions, you have to do it regularly and you have to do it well. How many actual blogs do you think are doing it and not just polluting the interwebs?

3. Link Baiters and Content Masturbators

If you don’t have easy access to Reddit’s leaked algorithm or know the secret formula to be Dugg, let me tell you how most people get to the front page of these sites.

• Create a list. Title it any of the following: The top 10…, a definitive guide…, 101 resources for…
• Pick a hot topic. These include: Apple, Ubuntu, Linux, Wii, Halo, Ron Paul, or choose something trendy from Google.
• Link to a whole bunch of other people’s posts.
• Voila, you have viral post.

Need an example? Just this week I saw a post on analyzing traffic and improving conversions rise through the social media networks. Not to take anything away from the effort made to create the post, but its first link is to a parked GoDaddy domain page with no content. Even still, people saw the list, didn’t read, didn’t click, but just bookmarked it. Is that the promise and purpose of social media?

Bring the Social Back to Social Media in 2008

Promise to create useful, updated, and unique content every day. I toast each and every one of you who make valuable contributions to this blogosphere every day. It’s hard work and I, for one, respect and appreciate it. Will you?

P.S. Happy New Year to you all.

It’s not as simple as some may lead you to believe.

First, there’s the issue of relevance. A blog won’t magically give you a top ranking position on Google, Yahoo! or the like. The content your blog has, the frequency with which such content is being updated, and the amount of relevant incoming links to your site are some of the factors that will make-or-break the effectiveness of your weblog.

Don’t add a blog to your site if you’re not willing to consistently invest time and effort. An outdated blog will reflect the opposite image of whatever it is you want potential customers to know about your company.

Some bloggers are a bit obsessive-compulsive when it comes to “keeping it fresh.” No, you don’t need to add 10+ posts per day; what you need is consistency and relevance. You can update your blog daily, weekly, bi-weekly or even monthly, but you need to do it on a regular basis.

More importantly, write about your product/service/industry from as many angles as you can imagine. Link and opine on news and commentary related to your business. Doing so will benefit your customers as they try to wrap their heads around the issue (or problem) that your organization is able to solve.

If you are selling Piñatas, talk about piñatas; how they originated, the different materials/manufacturing techniques being utilized, market share, growth opportunities, or give examples of when and where it’s appropriate to have one. Show piñatas across the world, client testimonials, the most commonly used characters, licensing issues, what NOT to put inside them, the best sticks used to break them, how to liven any party, how to grab the kid’s attention during a birthday party . . . you get the picture.

Don’t go off on a weird tangent by addressing personal interests (outside of Piñata World) in your company blog. Have the need to do it? Start a personal blog and be as weird, nerdy, cool, public or anonymous as you wish to be. And, when it’s appropriate, link to your company’s blog.

Here’s a personal example of the true power or blogs: “Hi, my name’s Juan, and I’m an obsessive-compulsive blogger.” I have to blog on a daily basis about my passion, the Hispanic Community.

Every single post on my blog has something to do with Latinos; marketing and advertising, culture, religion, language, sports, business, buying power, politics, education, health. Bottom line: If it’s relevant information that will help you acquire a stronger grasp of Hispanics, you will find it on Hispanic Trending.

Through many years of non-stop blogging on the subject, I’ve been blessed to have established good relationships with many interesting people, from all walks of life, with the same interests as me.

One such individual is Dave Schechter, a news editor at CNN. In late September 2007, when interest regarding Hispanic Heritage Month was reaching its zenith, CNN and CNN.com launched a very insightful initiative, both on and off line, under the name, “Uncovering America,” with humongous coverage of everything Latino in a very professional and thorough manner. Early morning on September 28th, I received an email from Dave, requesting that “Uncovering America” be mentioned on Hispanic Trending. He even emphasized that coverage would be on both CNN and CNN.com.

Knowing that the entire coverage would be extremely relevant to the blog’s readers, I complied with my friend’s request and added a simple (and truly short) post that evening, with a link to “Uncovering America’s” landing page on CNN.com. Programming began on September 29th and everything was business as usual at Hispanic Trending. Being addicted beyond hope to my site’s analytics, on October 1st, I noticed abnormally high traffic numbers (trending towards 4 times the “normal” number of visitors for a single day). My analytics showed that the traffic spike was being generated through Google, specifically for the search term: “cnn.com/uncoveringamerica.”

I was fascinated by the phenomenon and kept digging deeper into it. I went to Google Trends (also captivating) and finally grasped the magnitude what was going on. For reasons beyond my control (I’m guessing the mention of the website on CNN’s TV coverage), “CNN.com/UncoveringAmerica” had reached, according to Google Trends, “On Fire” search term status that day; ranked #2, right between “veratril” and “aliens in america.”

Google Trends not only shows the most popular search terms of the day, it provides links to the news articles, blog posts and websites people are visiting after performing that specific search. There were no results under the news articles section, and my guess is that there wasn’t one article from any tracked media outlet that included the specific term being searched.

Under blog posts, I was pleasantly surprised to see my blog ranked number one. Then, looking closer, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The actual CNN.com site had the #2 and #3 positions behind, you guessed it, my blog. People were searching for the term “cnn.com/uncovering america” and clicking on my blog. Once there, they found a prominent and clear link to the information they were looking for and off they went. Since that day, the blog’s readership — although not at the record level it reached — was permanently increased to a new level that otherwise would have taken much longer to achieve.

The power of a relevant and consistently updated blog is not to be taken lightly, nor is it for the faint of heart. Years and years of posting relevant information about the subject made Google consider the blog so relevant that, when this specific term was searched, they listed it “Numero Uno.”

Advertising investment: $0.00

Hispanic Trending didn’t reach this milestone because of a catchy name, a nice design, or by who I know; it was a combination of perseverance and focus over time.

Sure, a blog can do wonders to increase traffic to your site, but do you must consider it a long-term investment.

Has blogging helped your organization? Got any lesser-known examples of how blogging has or hasn’t helped business?

[Editor's Note: This is Juan Tornoe's first guest post for GrokDotCom. He'll be joining us at least once a month to share his insights about blogging and online Hispanic marketing trends.]

While the move is win-win for its creators, Trey Parker & Matt Stone (also the writers), their lawyers, Viacom (MTV’s parent company), the advertisers and the fans, what’s striking, so to say, is that South Park is the only show on MTV’s roster sitting on a contract for a 50/50 digital ad revenue share.

Although it was smart of Viacom to ink an online revenue share with the people behind South Park, it seems odd that such offers aren’t available for writers of The Daily Show or The Colbert Report, both of which are huge ad-money makers and award winners for the company. Here’s what Viacom told The New York Times back in August when South Park’s $75 million deal was penned:

“Doug Herzog, president of MTV Networks Entertainment, acknowledged that the 50-50 digital deal, which was approved by Philippe P. Dauman, Viacom’s chief, would set a precedent. If this is seen as a bold stroke, all the better, because it’s going to take bold thinking to move ahead,” he said. But he said it was justified by the “South Park” team’s stellar track record and by the changing balance of power between the buyers and creators of entertainment.

[...] Adding to the likely interest in the revenue-sharing pact is that digital income is one of the key issues confronting negotiators for the Hollywood studios and the guilds representing writers, directors and actors, who want to ensure they are compensated fairly for their work for the Web, mobile devices and other technologies still in their infancy.

“Talent will look at this and say, ‘Why not us?’ ” said Warren Littlefield, a television producer and former president of NBC Entertainment. “Unfortunately, what you’ll probably find is the response is, ‘We’ll tell you why not you: because you haven’t achieved what they’ve achieved.’ This is based upon a decade of proven success; it’s not a deal that’s made on the come, it’s not a deal made with an established creator who’s about to create something new. It’s 10 years in.”

While it’s nice that Viacom has finally discovered how to leverage “the ROI of free,” many fans — and certainly the writers — have a hard time viewing the media giant’s selective awareness of online marketing as anything but greedy. So, what do writers for The Daily Show, now in its 11th year, really have to say to the execs?

John Oliver: “…all our Daily Show clips were pulled off YouTube by Viacom, who is suing them for a billion dollars. That was not at our instigation – we were happy for people to watch the clips. But instead they wanted to set up a website where they can sell advertising while the clip is buffering, although I thought we were at the point where clips don’t need to buffer anymore. So you have to watch a commercial for thirty seconds or whatever. So they’re clearly making money on that; they’re also clearly making money because they’re suing YouTube for a billion. So that seems quite strange when they’re saying, ‘Well, there’s no money to be made off the internet but we’re suing YouTube for a billion dollars.’ That takes spectacular ba…”

…what I think John’s trying to say is that, well, this YouTube video sums it up.

Even The Daily Show’s friends (colleagues?) in the “real” news media are hearing the echoes from this void. NBC News anchor Brian Williams writes…

Jon Stewart and his colleagues in comedy — along with the writers who support them — serve an invaluable purpose by skewering the pompous and deflating the egos of the high and mighty. They function almost as a separate branch of government. We need them, and we miss them.

But Slate.com’s Dana Stevens said it best:

…The Daily Show is the ultimate Web-ready television show. It’s divisible into discrete chunks (the headlines at the top of the show, followed by reported segments and interviews) that tie in to the political and cultural conversations of the day, and those chunks can easily be collected, shuffled, and exchanged among friends like trading cards.

It’s unfortunate that it’s come to this. In a strike, everyone loses. Had Viacom invested in online channels years ago, they wouldn’t be awkwardly wading through bad word-of-mouth as they sue YouTube and play favorites with their writers.

This is a branding problem, wrapped in a PR problem, spawned by a marketing problem. But the good news for Viacom is that it could all end tomorrow with an online revenue share agreement.

[Picture taken from myyearofnewthings on Flickr. Originally seen at TechCrunch.]

Don’t think copywriters are undervalued? Show me a marketing budget without a serious chunk of cash set aside for Web copy, and I’ll show you a website that doesn’t convert, sell, or even explain why it exists in the first place.

Copyblogger’s Brian Clark, who decided to follow his script-writing dreams until he realized what an awful gig it can be, makes some great points about “What Web Writers Can Learn from the Writers’ Strike.” Lucky for us, 10 years later, Brian’s selling content online — and he decides which of his content is free; a real advantage over Daily Show writers like this guy:

As you can see, one of the more telling points about about the writers’ strike is that these “traditional media” writers really do know how to leverage the Web. They’re even taking a cue from the “Save Jericho” campaign and mailing boxes of pencils to the media moguls.

For most organizations, copywriting is an afterthought. And surely, the web design community would agree. When businesses don’t take copy seriously, they’re the ones who get fired when the site doesn’t do its job. Consider this recent snapshot of a slide at the Future of Web Design conference:

Businesses can optimize their online content all they like, but stale copy leads to poor sales and limp branding. The good news is that if a company’s text doesn’t persuade in the first place, they’ll never know how much business is being left on the table. But the bad news is that if their text didn’t persuade in the first place, they’d never know how much was left on the table. So unless you’ve invented an iPhone that doubles as a teleporter, and you can show all of that with some press clippings and a Flash demo, you’re better off not being cheap with your words.

It may look rough at the moment, but the floodgates have opened, and the real value of online content has become clear. So if you’re writing for television or film, and want to control what your words are worth, now’s a good time to become a persuasive online copywriter.

[Hat tip to Tim Miles for sharing the "Not the Daily Show" clip.]