The first opportunity to see it is at the Direct Marketing Association’s Flagship Event, DMA08 Conference & exhibition – being held October 11 – 16 at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas.

There is even a $150 discount to pass on to you to use for Conference Only registration and higher level registration packages. (Sorry, but the discount cannot be used for Pre/Post-Conference Only sessions, Exhibit Hall Only or Daily Passes).

To register for the conference, visit www.dma08.org. Please use discount code AN302 so you can get your $150 discount.

The second opportunity to see it in NYC on October 14th at the Search Engine Strategies 2008 Training. Sorry, no coupons at this time, but you can register here.

These are important questions.

Ask a Bigger Question

What makes people buy? When you focus on this question, all the subsequent details fall much more easily into place. This is not a word game; it’s a change in perspective. Without a proper strategy, you can win every battle and still lose the war.

Tactics: The Unspoken Assumptions

Whenever businesses tackle optimization, site design or redesign, they start with a set of assumptions. Very often, these assumptions depend on a granular, detail-oriented view of the problem as the business sees it (from the perspective of the business, not the customer). Very often, the problem is couched in the language of “best practices”, a series of tactics. However, to paraphrase Sun Tzu, tactics applied without strategy are the noise before defeat.

Asking a “bigger question” broadens your view of your situation beyond the details; bigger questions often lead you to reevaluate your strategies, which in turn allows you to devise more effective tactics. The critical answers to these bigger questions—the answers that meet your specific needs—can only from you.

7 Online Marketing Challenges & How to Frame Them as Bigger Questions

Here’s a list of the top seven challenges clients put to us, with their variations. We reframe them through bigger questions to target the deeper issues that influence your marketing effectiveness.

1. “We need to reach more people.”

Sometimes you simply need to reach more people. You need to improve your search engine rankings; you need to add more keywords to your search engine marketing; you need to find new or more places to advertise; you need to grow your list; you need to advertise offline; you need viral marketing; you need to increase the number of links to your site; you need to add or modify an affiliate program, and other variations on this theme.

Bigger questions to explore and ask yourself:

• Are enough of the people coming to our website sufficiently satisfied with what we present that they buy, or does our presentation damage our reputation and create an impediment to buying?
• Are enough of the people who buy from us sufficiently delighted to purchase again, are we wasting resources by driving new traffic?
• Do we provide enough of the right information for people to return even when they are not ready to buy right now?
• Are we focused more on marketing to the search engines or marketing to the people who visit our site?

2. “We need to reach better people.”

Sometimes you simply need to reach better people. You need to target more appropriate publications; you need to select better keywords; you need to source better lists; you need to find more qualified buyers; you need to reach your competitor’s customers; you need to reach people when they are ready to buy; you need the right content to attract search engine traffic, and other variations on this theme.

Bigger questions to explore and ask yourself:

• If we reach those people, do we have relevant content for them when they are in the early, middle and late stages of their buying process?
• Is our offering so narrow that there are too few “better” people?
• Does the buyer only identify the need and buy on a very short time horizon, such that we need to find them before they have the need?
• Is the message we’ve been telling the “wrong” people strong enough for them to reach out and tell the “better” people?

3. “We need more resources.”

Sometimes you simply need more resources. You need more money; your need enough time; you need the right consultant; you need better-skilled people; you need the right talent; you need the right vendor; you need to justify your opportunity costs, and other variations on this theme.

Bigger questions to explore and ask yourself:

• Do our priorities and goals match our resource allocations?
• Do we commit our resources based on predicted rates of return?
• Do we hold people accountable for those returns when allocating new resources?
• If we don’t have the resources or time to do it correctly now, when will we have the resources or time; when, exactly, will we commit to do it?

4. “We need better testing and usability.”

Sometimes you simply need better testing and usability. You need to make it easy to buy from you; you need to make it easy for visitors to find what they are looking for; you need to make it easy to checkout; you need to get feedback from visitors; you need to set up tests and watch how visitors vote with their mice; you need to test to isolate which variables are most important to your visitors; you need to test to see which offers work best, and variations on this theme.

Bigger questions to explore and ask yourself:

• What motivates people to buy even when sites aren’t usability-friendly?
• If usability is the only critical factor, why haven’t conversion rates improved in any meaningful way over the last five years, when attention to usability has increased dramatically?
• What if what we’re testing is only what we can think of, but the problem lies in what we haven’t thought of yet; which variables are truly significant and which are not?
• How do we know that pages further up or down the click-stream don’t affect the test we are conducting on one page?
• Do our scientific tests include an hypothesis of the outcome, a theory for why we expect the outcome and a statistically meaningful sample size so we can validate or refute our hypothesis and learn from the results; can we apply that learning more broadly to other situations?
• Would different click-through paths for different audience segments give us a cumulatively higher conversion than the best average conversion?

5. “We need to redesign.”

Sometimes you simply need to redesign. You need to scrap what isn’t working for you; you need more persuasive copy; you need more persuasive or illustrative images; you need to refresh your company image; you need to update your technology; you’ve added so many pieces to the original design that you need to reconceive it, and variations on this theme.

Bigger questions to explore and ask yourself:

• Do we need a redesign or do we need to make what we have work?
• Why will the redesigned site better serve visitors?
• How, exactly, will the redesigned site better serve visitors?
• Why are the best-converting sites so often boring in their design?
• Will our redesign incorporate a scientific testing methodology that will allow us to optimize click-streams based on a prediction of how different audience segments will engage with the site?

6. “We need better metrics.”

Sometimes you simply need better metrics. You need to measure the impact on conversion of the elements on your website; you need a good web analytics program; you need to turn your data into wisdom so you can act upon it; you need to measure whether your predictions were correct; you need to identify what campaigns, keywords, elements and audience segments give you the best return on your investment, and variations on this theme.

Bigger questions to explore and ask yourself:

• How can we better implement the web analytics program we are currently; do we understand how the data we collect impacts our financial statements?
• Are our metrics based on the way we set up our website to sell or on our visitors’ buying cycles and buying modalities?
• Do our metrics help us refine our website to meet visitor expectations?
• Have we identified and planned an intentional path so that metrics can help us separate the signal from the noise or is our analysis an attempt to divine order from randomness?

7. “We need a better Conversion Rate.”

Sometimes you simply need a better conversion rate. You need a better return on investment on your traffic; you need to remove obstacles to conversion; you need to plug the holes in your leaky bucket; you need to reduce shopping cart abandonment; you need visitors to complete more lead generation forms; you need more business, and variations on this theme.

Bigger questions to explore and ask yourself:

• How does our conversion rate affect our advertising and promotional budget?
• If we could attract a drastically reduced audience that converts better, we’ve increased our conversion rate. Are we prepared to reduce our conversion rate if we can generate more sales at an acceptable return on investment?
• If what we are offering is good, what are all the potential reasons why someone wouldn’t convert today, in 30 days, in 60 days, etc.?
• What is the percentage of visitors we would expect to lose to each of our potential reasons?
• After identifying all the potential reasons why someone wouldn’t convert, if we can’t justify why our conversion rate is less than 20%, why would we set our goals so much lower than that?
• Is it possible that the strategy that helps you increase the average conversion rate isn’t the strategy that would produce the most overall sales or best results?
• Would different click-through paths for different audience segments give us a cumulatively higher conversion than the best average conversion?

Meeting your challenges

Time and again we have learned that the answers to these bigger questions, which depend on a critical appraisal and an intimate knowledge of the business, its marketplace, its audience and its objectives, make the difference when it comes to being successful online.

You can tackle these bigger questions yourself. Objectivity and being able to see outside the box that defines your current situation will best serve the quality of your answers.

What happens if you don’t want to rethink your challenges or to identify more effective marketing solutions? Things stay the same, and you never realize your potential.

What happens if you’re unsure how to, or can’t, rethink your challenges?

Well, that’s why we’re here!

Remember this classic scene from the Odd Couple?

Felix Unger: [to woman on witness stand] Ah … you assumed. My dear, you should never assume. You see, when you assume… [Felix writes the word "assume" on a blackboard] … you make an ass out of u and me.

Want to know what really gets in the way of better conversion rates? All too often it isn’t what you do. It’s what you don’t do! It’s not what you put in to your conversion system; it’s what you leave out of your conversion system.

I’m talking about the unspoken assumptions every business makes when it plans for conversion. Come see what I mean.

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Poor Melissa. A dastardly somebody broke into my dear co-worker’s car and stole her video iPod!! *passes out tissues* This is a woman who lives the fully-integrated iPod life Apple imagines for its customers – podcasts, audiobooks, movies, TV shows, music. She was devastated. And she knew, without question, she had to replace her iPod immediately.

So she started her search for a replacement iPod the way many folks do: online through a search engine. How hard could it be for Apple to answer one important question and help her get back quickly into her pod-groove?

Harder than you might think … because the scenario Melissa stumbled upon was laced with Apple’s unspoken assumptions about what Melissa should need to know.

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This December, I’m featuring my Top Ten Countdown. These are the articles Future Now, Inc.� has published, here and elsewhere,� that have inspired folks to write (in droves), click through, investigate more and take notice. Whether you are revisiting the material or discovering it for the first time, I hope this issue encourages you to jump start your New Year’s resolutions for your business plans, online and off, in 2007.

And however you celebrate your holidays, may your preparations fill you with the inspiration of the season, may your relationships bring you joy, and may you experience it all in wellness and safety.

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How do you recognize these customers? The easiest way to identify them is through the keywords and phrases they use to find you in the search engines. Look for the “long-tail” terms … the under-represented but highly targeted traces of their intentions.

With a little planning on your part, you’ll discover these individuals are often your most pain-free conversions. If you treat them properly, that is!

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Live Chat doesn’t have to be a tack-on concession to customer service. It can be an integral part of your site’s persuasive process. The trick is understanding how to use the technique to advantage and exhaustively planning the Live Chat experience so it fits seamlessly into your bigger picture.

Here are some ideas to get you started.

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I get a number of emails pleading, “Grok, would you lay off the retail examples and help us long-suffering [fill in non-retail type] businesses?” To which I always reply, “Retail is an easy way to demonstrate the principles, but those principles apply across the board.” My correspondents rarely seem convinced.

My buddy Melissa Burdon, a conscientious Canadian, emailed me an interesting banner ad and appended some commentary. “Where’s the persuasion, Grok?” she griped.

It just so happens, no product or service was involved. The conversion goal this time? Sign up to support a humanitarian cause! Email the Prime Minister! End poverty NOW!

Goodie, I thought, an excellent non-retail example for me to dig into!

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So, in the world of online business, what’s a better way to look at The Golden Rule? How about, “Do unto others as they would have done unto themselves.” That’s why we’re so gung ho about personas and their role in helping us develop empathy for our audience.

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It was like Groundhog Day. I had the same conversation over and over and over again. I was at the Shop.org Summit in New York. It was a record breaking crowd, over 2200 attendees. I talked to a whole bunch of those online retailers and everyone was saying basically the same thing …

“I want to know what my customers are doing on my website. I’m finding more and more ways to gather data. I have my SEO firm giving me reports, I have competitive intelligence groups giving me reports, I have my web analytics team giving me reports, I have in house research teams giving me reports. But how do I analyze all that data and turn it into customer insight that is actionable. How can I use all this data to increase my sales?”

There’s more ….

I have more data than I know what to do with, but when we try to do things to increase sales, the first thing we do is go out and get even more data. Is the problem we don’t have enough data or we don’t have the right data?

Everyone in management gets these rich, detailed web analytics reports every week – but what no one is willing to admit is, no one reads them. I mean, what the heck are all those numbers anyway?

These are questions many seasoned online retailers are asking. You may be asking the same questions yourself. What data will give me the best insight into my customers? Which data is most useful? And how can I take that data and turn it into increased sales?

All valid questions, but here’s the problem … while this data tells you what your customers are doing, it doesn’t tell you why they are doing it.

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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.

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It’s about the customer. Nobody out there (I hope) is going to argue that with me. I mean, when you’re taking a break from the daily grind, it isn’t that hard to tell yourself, good will flowing in your veins, “It’s about the customer.”� You probably even believe it.

But it’s easier to say it’s about the customer than actually run your business so it really is about the customer. Sometimes even the most well-intentioned efforts can fall significantly short.

In fact, sometimes those well-intentioned efforts can wind up shooting your business in the foot!

Come listen to my own little personal story, complete with instructional moral.

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“That was really nice of them to give you that $25 dollars for your birthday, wasn’t it?” Mother to son.

“Half way to that new video game. Yessssss!” Son beaming with acquisition glee.

“You did send a thank you note, right? I left one out for you.” Mother with brow raised.

“Um … not yet. How ’bout I just activate my autoresponder … or do a free e-card?” Son grins sheepishly and hopes Mother gets the autoresponder joke.

“Not on your life! Here’s a pen. You know where the stamps are! Just do it.”

It’s not just good manners. It’s not just pro forma. Courtesy counts, whether it’s between relatives, friends, associates, and yes, even businesses and their customers. The little niceties in life, sincerely felt and expressed, can make a world of difference.

See what one of our newest partners has to say on the subject.

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Nope. I am not referring to a Whopper with cheese, hold the tomato, extra pickles, please. I’m referring to this here newsletter, Grokdotcom.

When we first published, way back in March of 2000, we offered folks three ways they could read these articles. They could access them through the website; they could receive them as HTML emails; they could receive them as plain text emails. We had our bases covered.

But, as readers of our bestselling Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? know, we are extremely sensitive to the fact that emerging media expands everyone’s possibilities and puts the customer in control. Any business that ignores this suffers. Personally, I’m not fond of suffering.

So what does that mean for you and your relationship with Grokdotcom? Read on, McDuff!

Those of you who indulge in the visual interface may have noticed some serious changes to the Future Now, Inc. and Grokdotcom websites. We’ve been busy bees, simplifying our presentation, our look/feel, our usability and enhancing our persuasiveness. And we’ve been adding more ways for you to “read” my magical words.

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You’ve just read my Have It Your Way article, right? According to my Microsoft Word program, that article has a Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level of 7.6 (which means folks half way through the 7thgrade can understand that article). It has a Flesch Reading Ease score of 63.3 percent (which means 63.3 percent of all readers can understand what they’ve read). There are 13.8 words per sentence (those for whom English is a second language shouldn’t have much trouble reading the article). The average word has 4.6 characters (pretty good). And 5 percent of the sentences are written in the passive voice (not bad). According to a different program, my article has a Fog Index of 8.7 (another grade-level reading score).

Is your head hurting yet? Number-talk has that effect on some folks. But these are numbers you’ll want to consider when you evaluate the copy that is going to persuade your customers to take the action you want them to take.

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I’ve got two goofy cats. One can be lying in totally hedonistic, slumbery bliss. I can walk into the room and get ignored, but the second my other cat walks through, the eyes slide open, the body stiffens slightly and all attention is riveted on the cat in motion. Where’s she going? What’s she up to? Has she found something I need to know about? Maybe I should follow her?

Cats tune-in to cats. They seem to think other cats are their best source of important, relevant information. At least, that’s the way it looks at my house.

And that’s pretty much the way it looks to your customers. To them, other customers these days are their best source of important, relevant information.

How do you deal with this? Well, it’s pretty much a no-brainer situation: you make it easier for your customers to get heard.

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What’s the best way to deliver a memorable, persuasive message? Tell a story. Don’t believe me? How many copies did Who Moved My Cheese sell? Still remember Aesop’s Fables? Look at the elements of a good story-characters, plot, conflict resolution-and you’ll see many parallels with Persuasion Architecture™.

The essence of Persuasion Architecture™ is a story. It involves building the characters, creating a narrative plot and stating the conflict or tension that requires resolving. Your personas are your characters. Your plot is based on what those characters are trying to accomplish. The conflict and tension that require resolving are your customers’ unanswered questions, their objections and the friction in the buying and selling processes.

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

Word of mouth is a powerful beastie that doesn’t submit to your business concerns. It is a communal watchdog that looks out only for your patrons.

Is that good for them and bad for you? It doesn’t have to be!

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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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Do you ever get annoyed when a business’s online communications are as poor, if not worse, than their offline customer service? One of the most sacred promises of the Internet is that we have the power to chat with total strangers, regardless of how fragmented the information or disproportionately strong the opinion, to piece together the bigger picture about a given experience anytime, anywhere. Access to third-party information is always a good thing for any current or would-be customer; it’s the quickest way of saving ourselves the time, money, and opportunity cost of a bad decision. Besides, most customers take information from peers with a grain of salt. So why should business be afraid of online transparency?

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You’ve got online sales. You’ve got offline sales. To complicate matters, neither of these exists in isolation. According to a recent BIGresearch survey, 87% of the customers who research their purchases online actually buy offline!On top of that, websites and flesh-and-blood sales staff must continually field product and service questions from customers who increasingly are as, if not better, informed than they are!

How can you implement strategies to improve your sales efficiency – within and across channels – while at the same time meeting the diverse needs of your customers?

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Online sales are growing, but the Internet still influences a lot more sales offline than it does online! Think Persuasion Architecture is simply for sweaters and backpacks?Maybe you know WebEx? It’s a great business solution for powering online meetings , web conferencing, teleconferencing , conference calling, and video conferencing services. They don’t do shopping carts. The basic sales goal on the WebEx site is to persuade the customer to contact sales. In short, the WebEx site is a persuasive lead-generation tool.

To demonstrate the power of Persuasion ArchitectureTM, we worked with WebEx to modify an existing scenario for free trials. We identified six personas and created a new free trial persuasion scenario.

We increased lead revenue for that scenario by 7 figures.

You can pick your jaw up off the table now. It’s within your power to do this too!

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The fact that your products or services aren’t suited to shopping carts doesn’t mean the Web shouldn’t be a focus for implementing your business strategies.In an emerging media and experience-based economy, the Web is the glue that binds a business’s multi-channel marketing efforts. Today, the Internet plays a critical role in how customers perceive brand, shape their buying decisions, and evaluate their experiences-even before you’ve ever sold them anything.

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I sing this song a lot: “You sell, I buy, tra la tra la.” But that’s what it all comes down to. Whatever you’re doing, you’d like me to take advantage of it. You’re selling. I’m buying.You’ve got a process in place to manage the transaction from your point of view. Meanwhile, I have my own agenda, and you want to find a way to convince me you deserve line item space on that agenda!

That’s where an understanding of sales topology really pays off!

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As marketers in today’s landscape, we must walk a different path. No longer will our product-centered, mass-market habits serve us well. The interconnectedness of emerging media means we must focus on the customer and create persuasive systems that have at their core an understanding of human motivations. Our unfolding experience economy makes this demand on all of us.Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? presents Persuasion Architecture as a set of big principles. Sometimes, the scope can seem daunting … it can feel like sitting in front of a great big feast of roast elephant with your little knife and fork. How, you sensible want to know, do you go about eating an entire elephant?

A perfectly sensible answer? One bite at a time!

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