Click here to view the embedded video.

Now I’ll be the first to admit: normally this sort of humor is right up my alley — I’m the one in the FutureNow office who sees “giggle-value” every time a new iPhone flatulence app comes along — but seeing this as an advertisement was funny the first time, and each time I re-watched I became less and less enthusiastic and more and more offended. What’s next? Shall we be subjected to Dunkin’ Donuts Butt Munchkins?

I’m guessing most people would be offended by this ad. But leave personal sense of what qualifies as funny aside for a moment, and consider: At the end of the day, the purpose of the ad is to sell more product. Perhaps in this case one might argue the real focus is on creating product awareness, so that at some point in the future I *might* try the product. Either way, I’m dubious as to whether the ad does anything more than make me aware of Hardee’s new product but lacking the inducement to act.

Did you watch the video? What’s the actual product name? As I wrote this post,  I had viewed the video 8 times, but actually cannot recall the product name since my mind wants to refer to it as “Hardee’s B-holes”. Now there’s an anti-inducer.

What do you think? Offensive, or just puerile humor (not that there’s anything wrong with that, fellow South Park fans!). And what does it say when the more times the audience is exposed to the marketing, the less likely the viewer is to choose the product, or even remember its name?

Recently, I went to MySpace.com to look up a semi-obscure band.  Why did I go there instead of my usual search engine query?  Because every band is on MySpace.  If you are a band, and live in the Milky Way solar system, you are on MySpace, and everyone knows it.  It’s the kind of reputation you could leverage into ad revenue…you know, relevant banner ads, text ads, promotions, etc.

Midway through my brief listening session, the infamous MySpace music player stopped performing its function and overlayed an ad.  To continue listening, I had to dismiss a very intrusive banner.

I won’t waste anyone’s time with why interrupting my favorite song with a banner ad that has to be actively dismissed is a bad idea.  Instead, let’s follow the experience of that one visitor in a million who wants to stop listening to cool music, go off to another site, and take a completely different action.

So let’s look at the persuasion scenario the advertiser, Dominoes Pizza, has paid to funnel us into.

The Creative: It’s professional-looking, but it could at least try to have something to do with music.  The call to action button doesn’t really stand out or contrast, and it’s asking for a lot (go from listening to music to ordering food online).

The Landing Page: Yikes, that doesn’t look very fun.  Where’s the scent of information for me to follow?  Am I in the right place?  They also get bonus points for giving me a promotional price on 3 medium pizzas instead of sandwiches!

The Rest of the Scenario: I clicked into the scenario a bit deeper out of morbid curiosity.  Once again, nothing makes me more persuaded to order sandwiches online than a big picture of a plain cheese pizza.  The whole experience seems geared towards ordering pizza, which makes sense if I am a direct entry visitor.  Couldn’t they pass a parameter so the page defaults to the Sandwiches tab?

Disruptive advertising is risky. I’ve already started a mental list of brands I now hate because they interrupted my music listening (Blockbuster and Insurance.com joined the list).  So, if you’re going to risk a bad “brand exposure,” and a backlash of negative word of mouth (or worse yet, bloggers ), you’d better have your ducks in a row for those who actually click through into your conversion funnel.

• Established his own (very successful) ad agency
• Launched the Dodge and Chrysler brands
• Hired and mentored Leo Burnett, creator of the Marlboro Man, Tony the Tiger, Pillsbury Doughboy, and many other advertising icons that made his clients rich
• Turned positioning into a fine art form half a century before Ries and Trout even coined the term.
• Helped establish Cadillac’s pre-eminence among early automotive marks
• Wrote “The greatest ad of all time,” as voted in 1949 – an ad still listed in the top 50 of Ad Ages Top 100 Advertising Campaigns.

Interesting, but why should you care?  Because MacManus’s – and by extension Burnett’s – approach was the yin to Hopkins’ yang, and because MacManus’s approach still works today.

And what was that approach?

In a word, it was to position the client while dethroning competitors in the minds’ of the audience. He wanted to create, in the mind of the public, a deep-seated prejudice towards his client’s brand.

If, in the words of the legendary Gary Halbert, the biggest key to success is to sell to a starving crowd, then MacManus aimed to persuade the consumer that only his client’s product would fully cure their hunger, and then wait for the more-cheaply-persuaded and much larger mass audience to get hungry as their individual circumstances dictated.  This would be in contrast to targeting only hungry people and then selling to them via direct mail.

And so the two poles of advertising continue on to this day, as is clearly seen in the following comments by an extraordinarily successful brand builder, Chris Maddock.  Chris was responding to my request for his opinion on Google’s recent attempt to track the effect of offline advertising upon online sales/conversions.   Here’s what he had to say:

Jeff,

I think Google’s traditional ad analytics are interesting, sexy, and certainly useful on some level.  But I think the program could also be dangerous, in that it could give some folks faulty impressions of what is actually happening – or what is right – because it assumes advertisers know things they probably don’t.

Let’s say a local hardware store runs some print ads, and compares the online response to another time they’ve run radio ads.  If the print ads were for a short term offer, and the radio ad of a more institutional bent, the print ad could drive more traffic to the website and have the hardware store owner thinking that print’s the ticket.  The reality in such a situation is that the print advertising is impressing and motivating a tiny, albeit palpable, percentage of the market to respond and go the the website, while the time-sensitive nature of the offer makes the advertising all but invisible to the bulk of the market.  On the other hand the radio advertising is likely creating greater long-term top of mind awareness, yet probably not motivating as many to go the website.  Mr. Hardware likely thinks that the radio campaign was less effective, when in fact most category dominant businesses are those that eschew short-term sales, offers, promotions and the advertising tools that make them work, while leaning on intrusive media such as radio and television to push long-term awareness.  Over time, radio could likely drive many more visitors to the website – visitors who will likely buy.

So my worry is admittedly Hamiltonian.  Years of interaction with average business owners and traditional ad people has revealed a startling blindness to things like buying cycles, differences in long and short-term strategy, and proper media selection.

So these new Google analytics are cool.  I just hope the good people using them understand what they’re trying to make happen, and what the numbers returned really mean.

-    Chris

Do you see how Chris picks up the standard of Theodore McManus, Leo Burnett, and Roy Williams?  Although I think it is possible to intelligently and rigorously compare media, I can’t help but agree with Chris’s larger point.  Creating a prejudice in the mind of the customer before they’re hungry is often a more effective strategy than trying to only target hungry customers.*   But it requires a longer time horizon.  So if you are only measuring on the short term, you’ll likely come to the opposite conclusion and then deem your position to be “scientific.”  It’s a perfect example of one of the deadly sins of Web Analytics.

So what’s your time horizon?  And have you implemented a measuring/analytics system that will enable you to measure accordingly?

* To be fair, there are certainly also times when it pays to directly target hungry customers, rather than engage in a lengthier branding campaign.  I’m not necessarily advocating one over the other; I’m arguing that you shouldn’t base your decision on skewed metrics.

Now can anyone tell what the heck the product is? (I happen to know, since I also remember a late night commercial that explains it.)*

Put yourself in the place of the site visitor who is seeing this for the first time. I mean, thanks for the Freebie and all, and congrats that PC Magazine seems to like it … but what is it?

A product? Perhaps magicJack is a flat tire fixer? Is it an apple-flavored  children’s breakfast cereal with a magic toy inside?

From the picture, I might guess maybe it plugs into a phone jack and does…well… something phone-ish?

Or maybe it’s a service by a local magician? The possibilities are endless.

What isn’t endless is a prospective customer’s attention span, even when a Freebie is involved.The best way to sell something is for the customer to have a recognized need for that something. If I don’t know what you’re selling, it’s unlikely I can recognize that need on my part. It strikes me that an awful amount of marketing dollars are being spent to get a prospect to act on the freebie offer for something which remains indistinct.

Here on the Grok we often talk about the three fundamental questions of Persuasion Architecture(R): “who are you talking to?”, “what action do you want them to take?”, and “what do they need to take that action?” Most of the time our posts touch on how easily companies flub #1 or #2. However, this is an example of a company flubbing #3: What I need to know to take action is “what the product is” !

In your own marketing efforts, do you ever forget what it is not to know about your wonderful company and its product or services? Are you forgetting to say the obvious?

===============

* For the curious, I’ll save you a google search and tell you that what MagicJack does is plug into your computer’s USB port, and then you plug your traditional landline phone into MagicJack and make phone calls through the internet. Easy enough to understand once you hear it. Now, look at the ad again and see if it makes more (or less) sense.

Seattle’s Chow Foods runs six restaurants, and recently sent an email blast with an inventive promotion.  The one-day promotion adjusted their menu item pricing based on the close of the DOW and the NASDAQ – the tumultuous DOW set the food menu pricing, and the NASDAQ set the price of house wine, draft beers, and well drinks.

The DOW closed at 8,979, which brought all menu items to a price of $8.79, and the NASDAQ closed at 1,717, which brought drink prices down to $1.71!  I walked by one of their restaurants last night at dinner time, and the line was out the door and down the block.

Here are the lessons I see in their promotion:

1. Be innovative – basing prices on market closes, which have been painful news lately, actually worked to the customer’s benefit.  I had the promotion forwarded to me, so they also came up with something Viral-worthy.
2. Put some skin in the game – the business took some risk here, and customers sensed that and respond favorably.
3. Tap in to something already on customers’ minds – I guess that’s the point of this whole story.
4. Write great copy – their copywriter obviously had some fun with this (samples below).

What other clever ways can you leverage the economy (or the political races) to promote your business or your site?  Need some support as you innovate?

Tasty copy excerpts:

Dow’d but not Out at CHOW on Oct. 16

CHOW Foods is executing a short term Main Street bailout plan far more delicious than the one the goofs in congress passed last week.

The lower the Dow closes on Thursday, the less your entrée costs–no food on the menu will be priced more than the Dow. If it closes at 8300 (gulp!) then you won’t pay any more than $8.30 for any item on our food menus.

If Chowin’ on the DOW isn’t enough to whet your appetite, keep in mind that our house red & white wine, draft beers and well drinks will be priced at the NASDAQ close for the day.  If it dips to 1250, then our depression era pricing on these libations will be just a buck twenty five!

They say it’s better to be born lucky than rich. Guinness stout definitely has the rich part down (pun intended), but it seems they were a bit short on viral marketing luck this St. Patrick’s Day.

Guinness made a valiant attempt to make St. Patty’s a national U.S. holiday with their Petition 3-17 campaign. Their argument: Since there are nine times more Irish-Americans than there are people in all of Ireland, and since people of all ethnicities already miss work on March 17th in celebration of all things Irish, all citizens should be allowed to commemorate the day from the comfort of their favorite watering hole. With “a pint of Guinness stout or two,” of course.

To present it to Congress, Guinness needed 1 million signatures by the 16th. On March 17th, they had about 300,000 — a few parades-worth of revelers off their goal.

No worries. 300k signatures of loyal brand advocates is a huge achievement. And there’s always next year, right?

So, let’s take a look at how Guinness.com was feeding the campaign’s micro-site, Proposition317.com, and see what they might do to convert a million in 2009.

Guinness Means Business!

It’s evident that Guinness means business, as a Proposition 3-17 banner owns the Guinness.com homepage:

The banner is clean, simple, and straight to the point. Unfortunately, this falls slightly flat on this landing page:

Once here, visitors aren’t efficiently persuaded to follow through from the driving point (in this case, the homepage). The homepage was exciting and bold, but it didn’t say much about the campaign, which makes this landing page especially key. Since Guinness’s site exists to support its beloved brand, we can assume that most people who visit the site are already fans of the product.

They just need to keep visitors on track to sign the petition.

Testing is Good for You

If Guinness were a client, here are a few things we’d have them test:

• Tone — Rather than leading off with a “raise your pints!” attitude (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and party pictures, they may have benefited from speaking to personality temperaments other than Spontaneous (i.e., Humanistic, Methodical, and Competitive). Other parts of the site do speak to Humanistic visitors by explaining why it’s important to make St. Patrick’s Day an official holiday, but that sentiment isn’t clear on the landing page. Perhaps they could borrow a line or two from the other pages to make the why-you-should-sign argument stronger. (Is your site speaking to each temperament?)

• Better placement of content — Eyetracking studies also show that staring faces distract visitors. People immediately look to the center, then the flashing signature moves the eye to the right, then down to the quotes and pictures of other supporters. Meanwhile, the “Sign the petition” Call to Action is all the way on the opposite side of the page.

• Make the Call to Action eye-catching — The Call to Action needs to persuade and entice people to sign-up, but theirs is encased in a dark gray button and overpowered by the total signatures. Saying something less generic, like “Make it official,” might yield better results.

• Try counting down instead — This last one’s more of a hunch, so I’m curious to know whether any of you might find it more persuasive to sign the petition if they had it counting down from 1,000,000 (a pretty daunting number) rather than counting up. Example: “Only 650,048 signatures needed to make St. Patrick’s Day official. Don’t just sit there, tell your friends!”

Could Guinness have met their goal? I guess we’ll have to wait until next year to find out, but I’d be interested to hear your thoughts in the meantime.

Proposition 3-17 may have missed the mark, but it wasn’t a failure. Anyone else fancy a pint?

. .

[Editor's Note: Anyone familiar with the so-called "luck of the Irish" knows that success requires hard work and dedication. Such is website optimization. You should test your luck.]

Right there on the lid was this note:

“Profits for the Planet — You can’t have healthy food or healthy people without a healthy planet. That’s why we give 10% of our profits to efforts that help protect and restore the Earth.”

Wow, what great messaging! It was right there, front-and-center on the top of my yogurt. There was no way I could miss it.

But they missed a real opportunity. I’d like to know more about what they’re doing to help protect and restore the planet. Why not have a link to the website? Alas, it was a dead-end message.

How much more powerful might this have been had Stonyfield Farm considered the tops of their yogurt container to be a driving point. What if they included a call to action to visit their website to find out what they’re doing to protect the Earth?

If I weren’t in marketer-Holly mode, I’d have likely never thought to go to Stonyfield Farm’s website, but there’s lots of great stuff there that could engage consumer-Holly.

Are you missing opportunities to drive customers to your website?

[Editor's note: Join "copywriter-Holly" at our Persuasive Online Copywriting seminar on March 28th in San Francisco.]

Landing on the homepage, I was hypnotized by the Flash and interactive design, which must have taken months to program. It showed. (I was on slow connection and had to endure an excruciating load time.) Finally, I was shown one measly, dull-gray shoe. I gave it the benefit of the doubt and clicked on the shoe, expecting to be presented with more colors and styles to choose from. Instead, a new window popped up with no sneaker or link to the online store in sight. They’d sent me to Mongolian Shoe BBQ; a micro-site for a campaign I was unaware of. And although I noticed a trace of copy next to the gray show (after going back to the homepage to figure out what happened), it still felt like the e-tail equivalent of Outer Mongolia.

I started to wonder about Puma’s online business strategy. (Did they even want me to purchase anything? Where the heck are the sneakers or online store? Where am I supposed to go now?) What did they want visitors to get out of their website? As a retail company, the obvious goal of the site would be both branding and e-commerce. In other words, to get visitors excited about their products and brand and, eventually, make a sale. I was ready to purchase, but there were too many usability issues that forced me to browse aimlessly.

A major roadblock for Puma.com com is that it’s top-heavy with (beautiful) design. It’s very image and Flash-oriented and, despite the demand of would-be customers in search of Puma’s sneaker-line, the visitors’ eyes are immediately drawn to the center Flash animation, then to the bottom icons. The small red bag representing the online store is lost amid all the colors and commotion, and the link to the online store in the left navigation is effectively hidden because it’s surrounded by colorful banners. The small, light-gray text — although cool-looking — makes it difficult for visitors to shop.

Current Homepage:

So, what can Puma.com do to be a more effective e-commerce site? They need to provide a clearer driving point (define) to their online store. A simple A/B test on the homepage will have a big impact. How simple? Well, Google makes it free for all and the only thing you’ll lose is time spent learning a valuable advantage over competitors and opportunity cost of course. To be most effective when making changes to a website, proper A/B testing on Google Website Optimizer is recommended.

My Test Page Suggestion:

Which page do you think would convert better?

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads allow you to know the directions visitors are heading, and can help you plan and optimize the experience in order to guide them along their buying process. PPC gives you a great advantage by allowing you to bring the visitor directly the thing they’re looking for, bypassing obstacles that may prevent them from even finding a product directly from your homepage . The more you know about your customers’ needs, the easier it is to fulfill them. Although most e-commerce shops run PPC campaigns to some degree, most get hung up on the search and keyword element of it, and forget that this is really about eliminating steps for the customer. As a result, they end up losing out on a lot of revenue.

Being #1 is not enough…

If you think this isn’t just as much a problem for big-time e-tailers, with huge marketing budgets, think again. The paths that customers follow are called “scent trails,” and precious few online shops seem to know much about them. For instance, check out this search results page for the term “Bestbuy Sony dsc w80″.

Dell has cleverly bought a PPC ad for this term in hopes of intercepting a few sales from the competition. But take a look at where they bring you when you click the link (and, remember, they’re paying for this to be at the top of the page). The product that was searched for is nowhere to be found. They already know exactly which product the visitor is looking for. All they have to do is bring this person to the product page for the item — or at the very least, show the customer that they do in fact have this item by placing it clearly within the active window.

The landing page disconnect…

If you’re paying for PPC ads, you need to get your money’s worth by bringing the visitor as far as you can, given what you already know about their needs. With the right keywords, you already have some information about what they’re looking for; you might as well make it as easy as possible for them.

Hmmm…

TIAA-CREF thinks you will. Their new advertising campaign created by Modernista emphasizes its status as a nonprofit organization. Their new campaign, starting this week, focuses on a new website, PowerOf.org.

According to the New York Times article “A Dot-Org Stresses That It’s No Dot-Com“:

“Think .org-onimically,” the headline of a print ad urges. “How much more objective can you get than .o-r-g?” another ad inquires. A third ad declares that “.org” represents “three of the most trusted letters on the Internet.”

In a television commercial, an announcer declares: “We are a financial services dot-org, not a dot-com. For nearly 90 years, our mission has been to put the heart of a nonprofit to work for those who serve the greater good.

“We do this the dot-org way,” the announcer continues, “with low fees, objective advice and a unique insight into the hearts and minds of those who give us hope for the future.” …

I think the campaign has dialed into some powerful emotions about nonprofits that will resonate with their audience. Unfortunately, they’re using the advertising campaign as the driving point to PowerOf.org, and that afterthought of a website is the weak link.

PowerOf.org is a poorly designed website — actually, it’s a mini-site, and part of TIAA-CREF.org. The scent trails are weak, the navigation is worse, the usability is poor — especially those tiny plus signs for “more-ons” — and the messaging is the usual financial services schpiel with a pixie dust sprinkling of the creative that could have been.

I think TIAA-CREF may be onto something, but I’m not impressed with the execution. Too bad they’ll spend all that money on traffic to a website that won’t deliver the customer experience to match.

What do you think?

Why’s that? At GoDaddy, marketing these days means parties, champagne, t-shirts, and… transparency. And so we say, “you’re welcome.” (I’ll explain later. In the meantime, we should congratulate GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons for getting his metrics straight. The Magic Kingdom awaits your arrival, sir.)

In a guest piece on AdFreak’s Super Bowl blog, Parsons responded to critics of GoDaddy’s not-so-shocking-for-the-00’s ad–replayed no less than three times, mind you–with some equally lukewarm (but sober) revelations:

1. GoDaddy.com makes money by selling URL’s
2. Even if it stinks [and it did], the ad drove over 100% more revenue than last year’s ad
3. This doesn’t add up, since traffic was down 48% compared to last year’s Super Bowl bump
4. But, hey… Money is better than traffic

Now, back to why GoDaddy should thank us. Last February, we blogged about GoDaddy’s failure to create a cross-channel experience that lived up to the hype. “I hope it’s not like last year,” indeed. As you’ll see in our ‘06 video analysis, a simple change to the GoDaddy.com homepage would’ve made all the difference. (Note: for those familiar with multi-channel marketing, you may want to skip to the 2:20 mark.)

Future Now co-founders Bryan & Jeffrey Eisenberg even used GoDaddy’s 2006 Super Bowl fumble as an example of what not to do throughout last year’s Waiting for Your Cat to Bark tour.

So, what gives? Was the GoDaddy “Girl” spying on us between catcalls and brainstorming sessions? If not, then someone else in their marketing department had the good sense to put her on the homepage before popping the sparkling white.

Exhibit D:

Exhibit Double-D:

David Ogilvy needn’t return from the dead to remind us that Monday-morning quarterbacking doesn’t win Super Bowl rings for one’s clients–but who can blame GoDaddy’s ad critics? Hopefully, GoDaddy’s marketing department, and not their agency, really was behind the campaign’s stale creative.

But it worked! Just not for the reasons Parsons outlined for AdFreak:

“At first this anomaly had us scratching our heads. How could sales and new customers be up so drastically, while visitors to the site are down so sharply? Then we figured it out – at least we think we did.

“With the advent of online video, most of those who simply wanted to see our ads went to familiar sites like iFilm.com and break.com. Those with a serious interest in GoDaddy.com came to our Web site. After thinking about it: That’s just fine with us.”

Well, um… not exactly. What happened here–unlike last year–is what often happens when multi-channel planning leads the charge. The end zone is reached when a customer buys a website URL and/or hosting package from GoDaddy; not when fearless bloggers praise the brand for its vision.

Sure, a spike in traffic does wonders for a company’s ego–and is no doubt a relief for its agency–but where’s the beef? The fact is that this year’s GoDaddy ad was so stupid, so utterly cheesy, so dot bomb-era vapid that it was only half as effective as last year’s spot. That’s right, ad-ranters! 48% less traffic means it was 48% less effective! That’s not even a field goal, it’s a punt. And still (STILL!) they managed to double (DOUBLE!) their revenue.

That, sports fans, is a conversion rate touchdown.

How’d they do it? They followed our advice and put the GoDaddy Girl on the homepage, the commercials were easy to find, and they played good defense by buying relevant keywords. (Sorry, Bob. We’d like to think it was the YouTubes and the iFilms that did it, but that stuff was around last year. Speaking of which, you might want to take down those access codes to view the too-hot-for-TV clips. They’re all over the intertron and nobody needs to give you any info to see them. Nor do we need to see your analytics to know it’s hurting conversion. It is.)

Now, the real question is, “How much revenue did GoDaddy leave on the table last year?” It’s a safe bet those figures won’t be available anytime soon but, whatever the number is, it’s staggering (especially since, aside from these few changes, the site looks exactly the same as it did in ‘06). You see, doubling online conversion has an exponential effect on revenue once you double the traffic that feeds it.

And they’ve only tapped half the market!

Ask just about any woman aged 25-50 which Super Bowl moment stuck; Prince’s performance, or the GoDaddy commercial. My initial research suggests both made an impact–the only difference is the look on their faces when you ask. Believe it or not, women everywhere buy domain names and/or “work in marketing.” Amazing, isn’t it?

Now that top executives are warming up to conversion rates and revenue as the true measures of online success, maybe next year’s cross-channel players will stop trying to party like it’s 1999.

A note to Bob Parsons: You’ve got an amazing story. You’re a gentleman, a soldier, and a hero among entrepreneurs (those who don’t know you by now don’t deserve a Wikipedia link). If anyone can handle some tough love, it’s you. So please, Bob, don’t be just a cut above SalesGenie.com. Any Willy Loman-esque geek with 2.6 mil can do that. We know everyone wants to be on your marketing team. It’s just that maybe next year you should outsource. It might not be a bad move.

Oh, and no need to visit FutureNowInc.com to see where to send us a check for finding the key to your mysterious revenue boost. It’s our pleasure.

Let’s pretend for a moment that your analytics reports are lying to you. (It’s nothing personal; they just don’t always see the big picture.)

Now think about a few key questions: Do you know what percentage of online visitors your business converts into offline customers? How many offline sales have you lost from bad online experiences and vice versa? How depressing and/or exciting would it be if you could accurately measure such things? Would you rather have more business or more data?

Okay, don’t answer that last one. Let’s talk about the others.

If there’s any offline component to your business’s online sales process whatsoever-from cold call leads for complex B2B sales to moving consumer goods in brick-and-mortar stores-your website should be anticipating and answering potential questions for potential customers. One thing is certain: your customers/clients/whatevers don’t care which channel they used to find you. In their minds, your brand is some combination of how you’ve treated them and how they’ve perceived your actions. Although brand perceptions tend to ebb and flow over time, an exceptionally good or bad experience-regardless of the medium-can quickly tip the scales.

Read the rest of this article.
Read the entire newsletter: Volume 141

There’s a great chapter in Call to Action about the use of color on your site and Jeffrey and Bryan are always talking about people using the wrong color for the right message. For example, which of the following statements delivers conflicting information because of the color and which delivers confirming information?

This item is in stock and is ready to ship!

This item is in stock and is ready to ship!

What other inconsistent or downright conflicting messages have you found on your own site? Those are the easiest to fix and not fixing them could be costing you a lot of money.

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

We persuade most effectively when we understand the context of where our customers are coming from. Not just from tangible directions like TV ads or banners or emails, but also the intangible directions that depend on the nature of their experience with your product or service or area of specialty. How might they want to use what you sell or do? Are they ready for the whole nine yards, or the best of the best? Or are they dipping their toes?

Want to see what I mean? Let’s start with the premise that you can’t sell me rock climbing gear the way you sell me ski equipment.

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Read the entire newsletter: Volume 137

http://clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3623082

Anyone doing PR just may want to take 5 and read the article.

There’s nothing quite like a verb! Verbs represent action and movement; they are about doing. Even more important, they allow you to see yourself doing.We’ve talked extensively about how you must connect your customers to an emotional reality in which they can see themselves enjoying the benefits of what you have to offer, and in which they can see themselves taking the action you want them to take.

None of us takes action until we can grab on to a mental image of the consequences of taking that action. The fastest verbal way to tap into the emotional, imaginative abilities of our right brains is through verbs. No doubt about it … verbs can be your most powerful persuasive allies.

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Read the entire newsletter: Volume 132

1. For the second consecutive night, on a two separate networks, a tv show I was watching ended with a URL, and some additional, only-available-online, content.  We’re not talking rehashed, repurposed, repeated highlights either- we’re talking genuine, 100%, never-before-seen, FRESH CONTENT… completely free.  You think that traffic source comes any more highly qualified?   

   [Note: Sadly, in both cases the networks utterly failed to follow up the successful driving point (i.e. tv show) with a funnel point that leads the visitor into a scenario where some interaction can take place.  That sound you hear is the cash register signaling yet another squandered opportunity, the likes of which becoming even more critical with continual traffic cost inflation.]

2. FX unleashes a contest which collects CGM.  What type of consumer generated media, you ask?- the type that got Chevy in such hot water a few months back.  This one incentivizes submissions with a $50,000 check.  Oh yeah, and one more thing worth noting, they only accept submissions through myspace! 

   [Note: Sadly, because their site is 100% designed in Flash, linking to it, creating a buzz, and sharing the viral WOM becomes far more difficult than it should be.  Oops.]

3. Our copy of Strategy + Business arrived at the office offering a field guide for the new Marketer (yes, I did wonder if they’d include a reading list, and if Waiting For Your Cat to Bark would top the list.) and a cover story entitled "The Future of Advertising Is Now" (free registration required).  It’s well worth the read, and a harbinger of things to come.  They predict marketing excellence in organizations who:
   • "Shift spending and management attention to
     digital media, and use those media to more effectively influence
     consumer purchase behavior.
   • Develop formats to promote interaction with audiences, especially their most likely consumers.
   • Create new research approaches and metrics that measure outcomes, not inputs.
   • Combine “above-the-line” advertising (TV, radio,
     and print) and “below-the-line” marketing (promotions, sponsorships,
     events, public relations) in new two-way, integrated campaigns.
   • Create their own branded entertainment assets and appeal to customers directly through them."

   [Note: As far as I know, they weren't intentionally referring to the results of planning marketing strategy with Persuasion Architecture, but it sure sounds like they were.]

   Did I mention, it’s only Wednesday? 

Answer: Have fun.

I’ve been watching the new A&E reality show "King of Cars" featuring a loudmouth rapper type car dealer named Chop who runs Towbin Dodge in Las Vegas. 80% of their business is a direct result of a weekly informmercial Chop produces himself. The TV informmercial is one of the single best persuasion scenario driving points I have ever seen, it drives offline traffic like crazy. (Yeah yeah, the website needs work but that’s another post)

Be warned, the infommercial is obnoxious, juvenile, blue, and a general train wreck.  But, it is FUN, magnetic, and hugely successful.

Towbin Dodge is the #1 single point dealership in the nation. 

Instead of trying to market credibility, or change the public’s perception of car salesmen, Chop just decided to make everything fun. To be himself.

Turns out people love him. Turns out people love having fun. Who woulda thunk?

I have to wonder how many companys can benefit from unclenching their rear ends and being a bit real. Or are you gonna make me and the public endure yet another cloned, canned, polished, boring and safe message that no one is gonna believe anyway?

It’s fairly easy to sell online to folks who know exactly what they want. They’re eventually able to find what they’re looking for and seem willing to stumble over a road block or two to complete the deal. Word is these visitors convert well.Trouble is, these folks are only a small part of your audience. Far more of your potential customers are much earlier in their buying decision process. They are at the point where they sort of know what they want or they are still window shopping. Because they haven’t made a purchase decision, they are still gathering information, getting a feel for the lay of the land. Word is these visitors don’t convert well.

Au contraire. You simply have to understand how to help them. And that starts by thinking about the “driving points” you provide for them.

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Let’s say you live in Montreal, and you’re desperate to move up a rung or two on the apartment ladder. You open your search engine and type in some words that reflect what you hope to accomplish. Something like “rent montreal apartment.”That’s just what my friend Melissa Burdon, a Conversion Analyst with Future Now, Inc., did. In under a second, she was staring at over a million results and some pay-per-clicks.

What happened next should give you some serious food for thought when it comes to how you handle the concept of scent in your search engine marketing!

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I’m at home visiting my parents this weekend, and to meet with clients in Boston early next week.  I unpacked my bag and found my jacket to be overwhelmingly wrinkled.  Getting it pressed in time for Monday AM is probably an option… but so is simply buying a new jacket, and that has much greater value to me!  Luckily, there’s a new Jos. A. Bank that opened down the street from my mom.  A few hundred dollars later, I’m checking out and flipping through the catalog while Anthony, the salesman, is packaging up my purchases.  He returns and asks if I’d like to take the catalog with me.  I remark offhand, I’d love to, as I’ll probably make another order online.  To which he replies:

Do NOT do that… They kill you with service fees.  Take my card, if you ever need anything just come back and ask for me and I’ll make sure we take great care of you.

His sales trainer would be quite proud of his attention to service, but that wasn’t what stopped me  in my tracks.  Come back and ask for him?  His store is 500 miles from my living room, which is conveniently where josbank.com is located.  The odds of making a repeat purchase from Anthony are slim, but unfortunately for the retailer, now my odds of making a purchase at josbank.com are probably even slimmer.  People largely will do what they’re incentivized to do.  If I buy online, Anthony loses.  Who else loses here?  The retailer, as well as the customer.  My guess is, this losing scenario is happening at retailers near you.

In scenario parlance, we talk about Driving Points; the point at which the potential customer was driven to engage with company’s communication.  We often cite advertising as examples of driving points- online, a search engine results page (an adword, or organic result), or offline, a magazine placement, tv ad, etc.  Here’s one more for you- completed purchases can be driving points for future purchases. 

Here’s a thought.  What would happen if Anthony handed me a different card from his business card.  This card had a repeat customer code, which tied back to his employee id.  This card allowed me to shop online, and waived the additional service fees.  The retailer tracks which storefronts are providing the most selfless service, those which promote the global organization over their own interests, and rewards them accordinly.

The customer can now shop through whichever channel is most convenient.  The salesman can now earn commissions on all sales in which his fine service played a part in.  The retailer capitalizes on future revenues.  Sounds like a win-win-win situation to me…

Kudos to my heroine and comrade-in-words, Holly Buchanan, who recently presented an electrifying Shop.org teleseminar on persuasive online copywriting. We were reading through the impressive feedback when I came across this: “I would have liked more examples of scent.”Holly and I looked at each other (she still isn’t sure which of my eyes to gaze into), and smiled. What seems so obvious to us obviously isn’t obvious to others.

So I want to be crystal clear about scent, because scent is important. Understanding what it is and how to maintain it is critical to the success of your persuasive mission. Let’s start sniffing.
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When we talk about scent, we’re talking about setting up a trail of relevance. And as we are all (sometimes painfully) aware, businesses aren’t the sole creators of what folks find relevant. In fact, focused on maintaining the rosy frontal view for their products and services, businesses are not always considered the most credible resources for either relevance or truth.

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Sometimes you go to a website and you just know the business hasn’t got a clue. They’re doing everything so wrong, you don’t even know where to start. There are also those times you go to a site and think, on first inspection, that things look pretty good.Until you start dealing with the site’s process. In that moment you realize appearances can be deceiving. That’s why, through the use of personas and wireframed scenarios,� we always make sure� our clients are getting their processes squeaky clean first.� It’s basic Horse Before the Cart 101.

Our friend and colleague David Cross was trying to buy a long sleeved t-shirt from a company called C&C California. Here’s what happened.
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