Interviews
Why You Can’t Copy From Amazon
While I was at Search Engine Strategies San Jose, I caught up with a couple of my favorite bloggers, Jason Billingsley & Linda Bustos from the Get Elastic blog. If you engage in ecommerce then you should subscribe, this links to their rss feed, you can subscribe by email from their website.
The three of us were with another of my other favorite bloggers, Avinash, when Jason suggested to Linda that she should interview us. Avinash went first on how to find a great web analyst and I followed with why you should “always be testing“. The video is embedded below. The key takeaway; testing is the way to answer what will work best for you not just for others.
I’ll also be joining Jason and Linda for an upcoming webinar on September 11th, 12PM EST. The webinar is “I Know I Should Be A/B Testing But...”
It will cover:
• Why you can’t copy from Amazon
Where and how companies should begin testing
• How do you get corporate buy-in for testing
• What exactly you should test
• Secrets to maximize returns on testing investment (tools, people and process)
Related Posts:
Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
Video: How to Do A/B Split-Testing on Lower Traffic Sites
Dr. Ralph Wilson of Web Marketing Today spent a few minutes interviewing FutureNow’s Bryan Eisenberg about testing on sites that have little traffic. You can view the video below. You may also be interested in reading more about the hierarchy of optimization when you are done viewing the video.
Bryan and I have co-authored a new book all about testing and helping you figure out what to test. It’s called Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Webiste Optimizer (published by Sysbex/Wiley) and we’re expecting it out next month; you can pre-order it now on Amazon.
Related Posts:
Written by:John Quarto-vonTivadar
Bryan Eisenberg Interview from Search Engine Watch
Just before his keynote presentation at the Search Engine Strategies conference in Toronto the other week, Search Engine Watch executive editor Kevin Heisler caught up with FutureNow co-founder Bryan Eisenberg to chat about website optimization, split-testing, word-of-mouth marketing, social commerce, personas, and his forthcoming book. With Kevin’s kind permission, we’ve reprinted the interview below. Enjoy!
Kevin Heisler: Tell us about your new book, Always Be Testing.
Bryan Eisenberg: A little over a year ago Google offered everyone a free A/B and multivariate testing tool called Google Website Optimizer. Adoption has been great, but people are still experiencing challenges understanding what to test and how to get an ROI out of testing. Always Be Testing is the answer to that issue. To quote one of the early reviewers, John Jantsch, “I’m a big fan of GO, but this is the first thing I’ve read that really makes it seem practical and simple.” The book is expected to launch at Search Engine Strategies San Jose.
KH: That’s a brilliant title. It’s got that whole “David Mamet-Glengarry Glen Ross-A/B split” thing going for it. Can you do a good Alec Baldwin imitation?
BE: A is for always. B is for be. T is for testing! Who gets the steak knives? Who wants third prize?
KH: So in conversion marketing, who gets the good leads?
BE: The person who best understands the personas of their prospective customers and will spend the time to continuously improve their marketing by refining the alignment between those personas, their campaigns, and their messaging.
KH: Who comes up with your book titles? Waiting For Your Cat to Bark? — that’s genius.
BE: It’s always a team effort. I’m lucky to work with some very creative people.
KH: How many books do you think you sold because people thought they were getting the new Cesar Milan Dog Whisperer book?
BE: I hope not too many. But maybe a handful of people out there who ignore marketing might also ignore book covers.
KH: Did you ever consider any other animals for the title, or was it always a cat?
BE: Both Jeffrey and I are dog owners, but it was Lisa Davis’ cat-like ways that won out.
KH: When’s the sequel, Waiting For Your Dog to Meow, coming out?
BE: Please, one book at a time. This is hard! We’re hoping that this book answers a critical question that people are facing today: how do we get a better return of our search marketing efforts?
KH: Why doesn’t anyone have the nickname “The Word-of-Mouth Marketing Whisperer”? Seems like a natural to me.
BE: I would nominate my friend Andy Sernovitz, but I doubt anyone would feel comfortable calling him a whisperer.
KH: Another one of your bestsellers is Call to Action: Secret Formulas to Improve Online Results. Hundreds of thousands of people have read that book or attended one of your Call to Action seminars. So is it time to change the title? Like, maybe, Call to Action: Famous Formulas to Improve Online Results That Everyone Knows But You?
BE: Thank you for the compliment. Certainly a lot of people have read the books and used it to improve their web marketing. I wish it were more people. I still think that we have a long way to go until these concepts are universally applied.
I think Always Be Testing is going to be helpful in reinforcing those concepts presented in Call to Action and making them even more actionable.
KH: On a serious note, how would you define advanced search marketing? What makes any search engine optimization (SEO) or search engine marketing (SEM) tactic advanced?
BE: I think it is really a question of scale. Good SEO and SEM are about creating ways to grab your potential visitors’ attention, creating content that is relevant to them, and providing a great experience for every keyword campaign and for every step, from the first click to conversion. Truly advanced SEM would have a better balance between driving traffic and converting that traffic.
KH: Your FutureNow blog, GrokDotCom, lists the top 10 retail sites for conversion rates each month. Those numbers aren’t real, are they? Office Depot, for example — 20.9 percent. How’s that possible?
BE: The numbers are measuring real people visiting these sites and completing purchases. They aren’t indicative of the website’s overall conversion rate — just conversions of those on the Nielsen Online panel.
KH: How do you win the paid search game? Is it a zero-sum game?
BE: Just like for every pot there is a lid, for every search term you need an incredibly persuasive and relevant landing page. You can’t afford to be generic. Too many marketers focus on the ad’s click-through rate (CTR). That’s important. However, the marketers focused on conversion rate can always outbid the marketers with lower conversion rates. It’s simple math: the more you convert, the lower your cost.
KH: You also spoke at the Bazaarvoice Social Commerce Summit. How would you define socialommerce?
BE: According to my good friend, Sam Decker, CMO of Bazaarvoice, “Social commerce is a term for the strategy of connecting customers to customers online and leveraging those connections for commercial purpose.” In simplest terms, it’s people sharing with people their commercial experiences without marketers polluting the stream.
KH: What’s the future of search? A point-and-click barcode reader GPS iPhone linked to inventory management systems?
BE: I tend to think the future of search is related to the mobile device, not computers. I can see it working in several ways based on the pieces I see Google working on. First, I can imagine a widget that sits on your mobile phone; when you click, it calls 800-411-Goog. You tell it what you’re looking for, and it provides results (and probably some audio ads). Voice is a much easier interface than typing. You’ll also be able to take a picture of a product barcode or UPC symbol, and it will bring you back results of where you can purchase the item locally or online.
Whatever the future is, it will bring more complexity for the search engines and for the people who want to be found, and it will be seamless and friction free for the end customer.
KH: What’s the future of SEO as a profession?
BE: The search engines are definitely getting better and indexing all kinds of content and technologies. Every day they continue to refine their algorithms so they are less influenced by artificial methods and influenced more by the massive amounts of data they’re collecting.
I’m hoping marketers will get past the old world view that marketing is about driving traffic and begin to understand that today’s marketing is about providing customers, from initial awareness to purchase and hopefully to becoming evangelists. This requires careful planning of the customer journey and experience at a click-by-click level. I don’t see it going there yet, but I’m hopeful more people will read Waiting For Your Cat to Bark?
KH: You guys are kind of like the Weinstein Brothers (Miramax guys) of Internet marketing. So which one are you, Bob or Harvey?
BE: That’s the first time I’ve heard that comparison. Usually it’s the “Car Talk” guys that people compare Jeffrey and me with.
KH: Tell us about your sibling rivalry. Growing up, was it kind of like Cain and Abel?
BE: Growing up and being four and a half years apart meant Jeffrey and I didn’t really have much of a relationship. It was a little over 13 years ago that Jeffrey and I started working together, and we have been business partners and the best of friends since.
KH: What did you want to be when you grew up?
BE: Both Jeffrey and I share one passion: understanding why people do the things they do. It manifested in me becoming a social worker and counselor for years and Jeffrey becoming an investment banker. He figured out how to take that passion and his business skills and turn them into the business known as FutureNow.
KH: You spoke at webcom Montreal 2008 in May in a session entitled, “The Golden Rule of Interactive Marketing.” What would that be? Market unto others as you would have them market unto you?
BE: That’s the way most people would think about it, but that’s the old model of marketing. We explain this concept in detail in Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? The golden rule is a two-parter: He who has the gold rules. And, do unto others as they would have done unto themselves.
KH: The Brits and Europeans were wowed by your panels at SES London. What can Canadians [at SES Toronto] expect to learn from a guy from Brooklyn?
BE: Unfortunately, Brooklyn pizza doesn’t travel well, or I’d share some of that. We did manage to take a few Canadians, including SES Toronto chair Andrew Goodman, on a pizza tour of Brooklyn during SES New York. I promise to share something else that also has a good scent!
For a recap of Bryan’s SES Toronto keynote, follow the scent trail to Bryan’s post on “The Interactive Marketer 2.0“
. .
Editor’s Note: We can’t make the book come out any sooner, but we would like to invite you to join Bryan on Wednesday, July 9th for a free landing page optimization webinar; the first in our “Always Be Testing” webinar series, brought to you by FutureNow and the Google Website Optimizer team. Space is limited, so sign up today!
Related Posts:
Written by:Robert Gorell
Podcast Interview: Forrester’s Josh Bernoff on How to Profit from the Social Media Groundswell
Social technologies have changed much more than our marketing strategies; they’ve changed us.
Social technologies have changed how we gather and share information. They’ve changed who we meet, where we meet, and, sometimes, how we meet. They’ve changed how we buy, what we buy, and where we buy. They’ve changed what, how, and how much we know about the people around us. And while social technologies may not have changed what it essentially means to be human, they’ve certainly amplified, at once, our voices, our influence, and our need to be heard.
Right now, a brand — possibly yours — is experiencing a public relations mini-disaster thanks to a comment left on a message board; a university student is recommending a movie to 372 people at once via Facebook; Barack Obama’s social media-driven campaign is beating the odds (and the Clintons).
Welcome to the groundswell.
Josh Bernoff, Vice President & Principal Analyst at Forrester Research joined us recently to discuss the soon-to-be-bestseller he’s co-authored with Forrester’s Charlene Li, Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies. The book is a brief history of social media — fully seasoned with research and anecdotes from the most notable triumphs and failures of the so-called “Web 2.0″ era — that explains how to thrive now that customers and clients own your brand.
Click here for the Groundswell podcast
Of course you’ll buy the book, but here’s a 15-minute interview you can download (by right-clicking) while you wait for your copy to be delivered.
POST (not haste)
As Josh explains the paradigm of Groundswell thinking, don’t forget POST:
• People - What are your customers ready for? What do they want? What’s motivating them?
• Objectives - What are your goals?
• Strategy - How do you want relationships with your customers to change?
• Technology - Swap “tactics” for “technology” and the same is true. The people, objectives, and strategy must come before your choice of technology/tactics.
Want to find your customers’ social technographics profile?
. .
Read more about the phenomenology of social tech at the Groundswell blog, or any of these other great blogs.
Related Posts:
Written by:Robert Gorell
Interview on Persuasion Architecture, Personas and ROI
In case you weren’t able to join me today at the King Conversion: Websites that Sell conference in Erie, PA — put on by the fabulous folks at eBizITPA — I at least wanted to share a recent interview on personas and persuasive planning.
I had a chance to sit down with Cathy von Birgelen to talk about what’s on the mind of Pennsylvania business owners, and what they want to know about improving their websites and other online marketing efforts. You probably have a lot of the same questions and I think I may have some answers for you.
You can either download the interview (by right-clicking here) or just listen to it streaming below:
Click here for Holly’s interview
Hot Topics
Need to bookmark this for the next time you’ve got a few minutes? No problem. I’ll be going into more detail in the actual presentation, but…
Here’s what’s covered in the interview:
• How to start a meaningful relationship with Customers. (Hint: don’t ask them to marry you on the first date.)
• The four buying modes — Spontaneous, Competitive, Humanistic and Methodical — and how to increase conversion based on understanding what information each type wants and how they want that information presented. (There’s no such thing as an average customer.)
• How to use personas to create persuasive messages that speak to people in their language about what they care about. (Because it can’t always be about you.)
• The real purpose of your homepage and how to reduce those nasty battles over that prime real estate. (I know, I’ve seen the scars and bruises.)
• Common conversion mistakes and how to make simple changes that can have a big impact on your bottom line. (Seriously, you’ll be smacking your head and going, “duh” — here’s how Amazon does it.)
• Content for search engines vs. content for customers (Who said you had to choose?)
• What analytics to focus on that can actually tell you something about your site and where it’s most broken. (Hey, if you want to go ahead and read those 20 page analytics reports,knock yourself out. But if you want to know 5 specific metrics to look at, let’s talk.)
. .
About the Author: Holly Buchanan is co-author of The Soccer Mom Myth — Today’s Female Consumer: Who She Really Is, Why She Really Buys; and co-instructor of FutureNow’s Persuasive Online Copywriting seminar, June 2nd in Manhattan.
Related Posts:
Written by:Holly Buchanan
Bryan Eisenberg on Using Personas to Improve Sales
Got eight and a half minutes to learn about how customer personas boost sales?
In this interview from London’s recent Search Engine Strategies conference, Bryan sits down with Ralph Wilson — in what appears to be either an airplane hanger, a convention hall, or a school gymnasium — to discuss how planning websites with personas will increase revenue and ROI . . . for a few reasons:
- Personas show copywriters and designers who they’re writing and designing for.
- Personas allow customers to choose their own buying experience.
- Personas prevent customers from being stereotyped.
(If video doesn’t load, click here.)
Want to learn more about Persuasion Architecture? It’s how our clients get results with personas.
Related Posts:
Written by:Robert Gorell
(Free Download) Seth Godin & GrokDotCom Sync Into Meatball Sundae
Recently, Seth Godin joined us for an exclusive interview on WebmasterRadio.fm to discuss his latest book, Meatball Sundae.
“What’s a meatball sundae?” Good question. Basically, it’s what happens when everyday products are out of sync with new marketing tactics. For the full story, listen to the podcast (or download it for free!) below. But first, here are a few extra scoops from Seth & Bryan’s interview. Bon appetit!
Bryan Eisenberg: In the introduction, you admit that you’re breaking your own rules about book publishing. First of all, your last book, The Dip, only came out six months ago. Secondly, Meatball Sundae is, what, two or three times the size of The Dip? We see why Meatball Sundae is, well, meatier – but why does it have to come out now, while your last bestseller’s still busy marketing itself?
Seth Godin: The ideas don’t work for me… I work for the ideas. When the book was ready, it had to go out, because the market wanted/needed to hear them. So far, every time I make a silly non-strategic decision that benefits the ideas, it seems to work out okay. So I’ve learned not to get in the way of the ideas.
BE: People are very good at saying “I agree,” and you’re an easy guy to agree with. But what are the really tough questions – outside of the 14 trends you mention in the book – that marketers need to ask themselves so they know whether they’re marketing meatball products with sundae tactics.
SG: I’m not asking for agreement with this book. Not at all. From the title on in, I’m asking for a lot more than agreement. I want action. I want organizations to make fundamental choices and to follow through with them. So, “I agree” will really bum me out.
BE: What are some of the changes organizations will have to make? What are the stumbling blocks, and how will they know if they’re headed in the right direction?
SG: The biggest change is to decide to realign to get the wind at your back. To reorganize and re-strategize to get out of the last industrial revolution and move into the new one. That’s not easy, but you’ll either do it or struggle. Now’s the time, not five years from now.
BE: When you’re talking about the lure of running Super Bowl ads and the like, you say, “The web is astonishingly bad at reaching the unreachable . . . Mass is still seductive, but mass is so expensive that marketers balk at buying it,” and the example you use is that Time magazine is much thinner these days than Gourmet. How do we stop marketers from worrying about driving all this traffic — from reaching out to anyone and everyone — and get them to focus on creating a great experience for the ones who actually want to reach them?
SG: Who is so much more important than how many. And interactivity proves it. You can measure it. You can see what happens, not in months, but in days. Smart marketers are already smelling it, which is one reason they’re running away from magazines so fast.
BE: Trend #2 in Meatball Sundae is “Amplification of the Voice of the Consumer and Independent Authorities.” This made me think of the November 2005 cover of Forbes magazine (“Attack of the Blogs: They destroy brands and wreck lives. Is there any way to fight back?”). Back then, the idea seemed pretty over-the-top. What would you tell marketers today?
SG: Fighting back is such a bad idea. Join is a much better one. Make great stuff, be respectful, tell the truth. Not so hard to describe, pretty hard to do.
BE: How do you know when your organization is ready to serve a sundae? And once you do, how do you match the toppings to suit your customers’ needs? For instance, it seems pretty clear that not every business should be blogging. Is it possible to serve meatballs to some people and sundaes to others, or is it truly either/or?
SG: Oh, I think organizations can do both, just as GE was able to sell blenders and nuclear power plants for a while. The mistake is when one division or one brand tries to do both. When you’ve got need-based, factory-driven commodities colliding with the idea-driven, speed focused web, it’s a big problem.
BE: You talk about the shift from “How many?” to “Who?” (“Just as a store in a busy mall doesn’t have to worry about converting every browser into a customer, high-traffic Web sites and advertisers get sloppy about being efficient.”) As marketing optimization experts, our firm sees this all the time and we still don’t understand why anyone would want tons of traffic with few conversions. But how does a business know when its marketing is inefficient? Are there any telltale signs across industries?
SG: I would never try to tell the guys at Ford about crankshafts. I also won’t tell them about web conversions. They need to learn it, evolve it, test it, measure it. If this is the core of the business of the future (and it is) then a rule of thumb isn’t going to cut it. My point: get in early, spend the money, do the learning.
BE: How do you like your sundaes? (Inquiring minds want to know.)
SG: I’m such a weird eater. It would be Ciao Bella chocolate sorbet, with a teaspoon of Steve Herrell’s hot fudge, a tablespoon of Marshmallow Fluff and a Starbucks Biscotti, chocolate, please. Except that if I was making it, I’d leave off the hot fudge, cause I’m an ascetic.
For the rest of this exclusive interview, click here (or right-click to download).
Click here for Seth Godin and Bryan Eisenberg
Related Posts:
Written by:The Grok
Podcast: Seth Godin on His Latest Book, “Meatball Sundae”
We’re excited to announce that today at 2pm (EST), Seth Godin — author of the most popular marketing blog in the world, Permission Marketing, Purple Cow and many other bestsellers — will join us to discuss his latest book, Meatball Sundae.
What’s a “meatball sundae,” you ask? In addition to something you probably shouldn’t eat, it’s an analogy for what happens when product development, management, strategy and tactics are out of sync with today’s “new marketing” era. But Seth will explain all of that in his own words.
So, be sure to join us today @ 2pm (EST) on WebmasterRadio.fm (home of our daily Blog Buzz podcast) for this rare conversation between two of the most respected minds in modern marketing. It’s 30+ minutes, so grab a cup of coffee, tea, or whatever you think might help you wash down a meatball sundae.
UPDATE: The podcast has been archived and is now available here (right-click to download).
Click here for Seth Godin and Bryan Eisenberg
Related Posts:
Written by:The Grok
Bryan Eisenberg on Why People Buy Online
In a recent interview with e-consultancy’s Richard Maven, Bryan discusses the dos and don’ts of persuading customers to take action online.
The best part: I’m pretty sure we can track him down to answer your questions… 
Related Posts:
Written by:The Grok
Interview With an Eisenberg: Bryan Talks Personas, Persuasion Architecture, and Boosting Conversion Rates
Netconcepts founder Stephen Spencer recently interviewed Bryan about Persuasion Architecture™, our planning methodology that holds marketing accountable by bridging the gap between customer motivations and business goals. It’s about anticipating what people want and optimizing the experience to make it even better.
Yes, marketing can must be accountable. And once it is, smiling faces and money soon follow. As you’ll see from the interview, it all starts with customer personas…
Related Posts:
Written by:The Grok
