If you’re interested in improving your product detail/landing pages and cross-selling, this video (and upcoming Part 2 video) is not to be missed.

I had the chance to ask Mitch a few questions about his new book, Six Pixels of Separation:

With so many Social Media books out there, how is Six Pixels of Separation different than the others?

I’m not sure that Six Pixels of Separation is a “Social Media book.” I think
it explains how some of those channels are very important to business today
and going forward, but I don’t think that’s the crux of Six Pixels of
Separation. Also, a lot of the Social Media books I have read tend to be
written by people giving their perspective of the new online channels either
through the lens of a Marketer, Consultant or Technologist. I wrote this
book as an Entrepreneur for businesspeople. Using real business language and
case stories that really illustrate how business can grow (and yes, that
includes making money). This book is the strategy, tools and tactics my
business partners and I used to grow our business (as Entrepreneurs) from no
employees in 2002 to nearly 85 full-time team members with multiple offices.
Basically, by taking part and engaging in the many online channels, my
company, Twist Image (with me as “the voice”), was able to build this
multi-million dollar business. We continue to grow by still using the same
channels. This book is much more about how to think strategically different
and engage in a much more human way in this new world. It’s also not a book
written by a pundit. It’s written from one businessperson to another. There
is also a lot of influence from the Future Now Inc. people too – especially
the work that both Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg have done. For me, and the
audience of Six Pixels of Separation, having great “scent” for your
marketing and driving to conversation is also a big part of the message in
the book.

If you think the Digital Marketing channels are so powerful and important for business, why not just publish this on your Blog? Why a book?

Yeah, I get that a lot! The reason I wrote a book in the first place – and
did not just tell people to read my Blog – is because when I go out and
speak in public (which I do about 70 events a year), it is amazing to me how
many businesses are simply not engaged online or thinking like the way
people online tend to think. So, I wrote this book using a medium they are
comfortable and used to.

That being said, I am hopeful that you (and anybody else reading this) will
pick it up. I think there is also a ton of value for those who have already
gotten a tipsy on the Kool-Aid. I have been told that there are some
different and unique perspectives even for someone who is highly engaged in
these digital channels. I’m also hopeful that you (and your community) will
see the value in passing a book like this on to clients or peers who keep
asking the questions we get asked on a daily basis.

What are some takeaways people will get from the book? What priorities do they need to focus on for the next quarter?

One of the main takeaways that I hope people get from this book is the
notion of “Digital Darwinism”. Companies quickly jump on to YouTube and post
videos, they add widgets and downloadable applications to their websites,
they start a Facebook Page and then sit around the boardroom slapping each
other on the backs and handing out lollipops for how well they have managed
to “evolve” their digital and online properties from where they were.

The general train of thoughts is that if you add Twitter or a Blog into the
mix you were able to evolve your Digital property by the simple act of
having these new channels as a part of your digital ecosystem.

Digital Darwinism favours the community, not the creator or enabler of the
content.

Digital Darwinism is what your users, community members and readers do with
your content. If you don’t have any of those, you don’t evolve (you become
extinct). If you have readers and users but they’re not active (taking part,
reading, adding their own comments, passing your information around), again,
you become extinct.

Charting a course to evolution is a process (not a campaign).

Can you continue to create content in hopes that people will connect with it
and help you evolve? Of course, but you have to do the heavy lifting at this
point. You have to be the one out there beating the drum and letting people
know that it’s not a self-promotional environment you have created, but
rather one to benefit the community. It’s easy to see why this can be
challenging. In one breath, we want people to connect to our content so they
become loyal customers. In another breath, we have to be sensitive to the
fact that the more self-promotional we are with our material the less likely
it will be that a community spawns and extends our evolution.

For me, the next quarter is about taken a very hard look at your website,
database, micro-sites, search engine marketing campaigns, web analytics and
social media platforms and make some tough decisions: which ones are
working? Which ones are duds? How are you going to open up and let your
community engage and help you “evolve”?

What other books should people be reading now?

I think you mean, besides Six Pixels of Separation? Seriously, I have broken
them down:

..    New business thinking:
o    The Cluetrain Manifesto – The End of Business as Usual, by Rick
Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls and David Weinberger.
o    Here Comes Everybody – The Power of Organizing Without
Organizations, by Clay Shirky
o    Life After the 30-Second Spot – Energize Your Brand With a Bold Mix
of Alternatives to Traditional Advertising, by Joseph Jaffe
o    Made To Stick – Chip and Dan Heath.
o    Purple Cow – Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable, by Seth
Godin
o    Re-Imagine! – Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age, by Tom Peters
o    Trust Agents, by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith.
..    Tactics to get it done:
o    Call To Action, by Bryan Eisenberg and Jeffrey Eisenberg (no, I am
not sucking up!)
o    Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? – Persuading Customers When They
Ignore Marketing by Bryan Eisenberg, Jeffrey Eisenberg, and Lisa T. Davis.
o    Web Analytics – An Hour A Day, by Avinash Kaushik
o    Winning Results With Google AdWords, by Andrew Goodman.

Mitch has been one of my best supporters and he deserves our support as well. If you need more information about the book you can read a synopsis, see some videos and read testimonials from the Twist Image website. Take a couple of moments and order the book. I am sure you will enjoy it.

2. Search drives more sales, but shoppers are thinking longer before buying.

3. Does Google Analytics overstate the value of search? Econsultancy research shows that it might.  Make sure to at least set your cookies for 30 days.

4. our friend, Linda Bustos from the Get Elastic blog asks “Is Free Shipping More Attractive Than A Dollar Discount?”

5. A great example of why Amazon is one of the smartest online retailers. They get Social Media, Too.

6.Catch my interview with my buddy Tim Ash Interview on his Landing Page Optimization show on WebmasterRadio.fm. We discuss Brain types and personas and how they influence landing pages.

2. Dr. Ralph Wilson interviews my good friend Avinash at the eMetrics summit about Useful Key Performance indicators for small business. Ralph also did a few interviews with me. Here is the first one on “The Winning Edge“:

3. Mars Chocolates is being punished for a bad ‘Fling’ – first when people search for the website they end up sending people to a porn site. If that wasn’t bad enough, Marketing to Women guru Michele Miller explains how they missed the mark entirely on this product launch. Make sure to let Michele know what you think of her recently relaunched website Wonder Branding.

4. I am looking forward to presenting at SES Toronto June 8-10th. I’ll also be meeting several OnTarget clients as well as non-clients. Be sure to come say hello to me if you are a GrokDotCom reader and are attending the conference. Ruud Hein from Search Engine People and Sarah Benmaza of NVI interviewed me prior to attending the conference. One of the sessions I’ll be doing is “Tool Time: The Search Marketer’s Free-to-Cheap Goodie Bag.” I’ll be sharing some of my favorite tools from 33 free tools to improve your website and few others not on that list. Do you have any Free-to-cheap tools you use that I should add?

5. Larry Chase who has been publishing his newsletter, Web Digest for Marketers, just slightly longer than Dr. Ralph Wilson’s, Web Marketing Today (I’ve been a faithful subscriber to both of their newsletters for over a decade) interviewed me about the 3 common mistakes in web analytics.

6. My friend Stéphane Hamel shares some web analytics market research and his take on it from his collaboration with Forrester’s John Lovett.

* Photo: Courtesy of Shutterstock Images LLC. Shutterstock and their PR agency Morton PR are doing a wonderful job at pitching bloggers like me to use their images.

I recently had the pleasure to ask Rebecca about her new book, The Truth About Search Search Engine Optimization.

1.  With so many SEO books out there, why is this one different different than all others?

Most of the books dealing with search engine optimization cover the topic from a pretty geeky, practical aspect. They’re written for coders, developers, webmasters and other technical types who are up to their elbows in the plumbing, so to speak, of web sites.  I wrote “The Truth About Search Engine Optimization” for the rest of us right-brained people. We’re marketers, advertisers, bloggers, small business owners, publishers and business people who don’t necessarily build and maintain complex web sites, or write code, or any of that other geeky stuff. What we do want to be able to do is wrap our heads around the ideas and concepts behind SEO — many of which are not technical in the least. If you’re running your own site, this book will help you to understand how to make it more ‘findable’ on the web. If you’re running a marketing program, or have hired an outside agency to manage SEO for your site, the book will help you understand what your role should be in the process, and how to have meaningful conversations with your vendors or SEO staff. In fact, a bunch of my SEO friends have told me they’re buying this book for their clients!

And finally, the book isn’t intended to be a dry, instructional manual, but a pretty good read as well. It won’t hurt a bit to read it — and you may just learn a thing or two! Moreover, it’s not written to be read in a linear fashion. You can dip in and out, and skip around the short, bite-sized chapters to easily get to the bits you want (or need) to read. Someone told me it makes for a great bathroom book.  I’m gonna choose to take that as a compliment!

2.  The majority of books are by SEO practitioners. This one isn’t, so why is it such a critical read?

There are plenty of good SEO books out there by practitioners, but they aren’t necessarily for everyone. First, these can tend toward the technical and tactical, rather than the conceptual. Second, it’s important to bear in mind that a book by a practitioner could very well be by someone with a certain agenda. They’re likely trying to sell you something, right?

As an editor and journalist, it’s part of my DNA to present a broad palette of information on SEO objectively, but with a bent for best practices. And these are gleaned from the dozens and dozens of SEO practitioners I’ve dealt with over the years (and count among my friends) while I was running both the largest marketing, and the largest search, news and information sites on the web. This fairly unique perspective has also put me in unusually close proximity to every development in search, major and minor, of the past 10 years.

On top of that, I am a practitioner of sorts. I run web sites and I certainly do have occasion to practice what I preach. In fact, I’ve been accountable for the findability of some pretty major web sites!

Finally, and as a writer/editor (albeit one with a pretty deep background in marketing), what most attracts me to search is that in the end, it really does all come down to the content, more specifically, to the written word. That’s something I definitely have a pretty darn deep affinity with.

3.  What are some takeaways people will get from the book? What priorities do they need to focus on for the next quarter?

Content, content, and yet again, content. You want to get found? Think like an editor and a publisher. You need a strong content strategy to run and maintain a findable web site. What kind of content can you get onto your site? How often, because the more frequently you update, the more often you’ll be visited by search engine spiders. What kind of editorial calendar can you design to keep content — relevant content — flowing through the pipelines? And I’m not just talking written copy here, though that’s certainly the most important thing. Links are content, too. So are images, videos, audio streams, and auxiliary supplements to your site, such as a social media presence. What’s going to be important in the next quarter is the same thing that’s been important since Creation: In the beginning was the Word!

4.  What other books should they be reading now?

I’m going to go out on a limb here. Yes there are plenty of other good SEO books out there, and I don’t hesitate to recommend them. But this is a conceptual book, so I’m going to recommend conceptual reading. Bone up on reading about digital marketing in general. Understand what you’re doing. In addition to that, immerse yourself in books, articles and ideas about your particular subject matter. That’s where you’re going to get ideas and inspiration for all the content you’re going to have to generate to make your site fresh, updated and findable going forward. Really, SEO is more about strong ideas and communication than about coding and building web sites. Keep those ideas coming and you’ll be on the right track.

I know we are all busy out there, but I can’t think of a reason you wouldn’t benefit from picking up a copy of The Truth About Search Search Engine Marketing.

Don’t miss my interview with David Szetela on PPC Rockstars today. You’ll hear us discuss the top page and ad elements that every PPC advertiser should test.

What do you think – Is Twitter the Next Second Life? http://tinyurl.com/8nof7j. You may also want to read The State Of The Twittersphere? http://tinyurl.com/6upklq. GigaOm claims Followers Aren’t Really Friends on Twitter. This leads to some of the challenge of measuring influence on Twitter. http://snipurl.com/90lob.

If you are looking for more smart people to follow, here are the Twitter IDs for The Top 100 Most Influential Online Marketers http://tinyurl.com/4owzd4. Thanks for voting me #21.

Sex Sells, but a Commitment Can Help.

Multichannel Analytics: Tracking Online Impact Of Offline Campaigns.

Has anyone played with http://www.wordvision.com/. It uses an algorithm to recommend the hot topics and keywords for SEO writers. Thoughts?

40 Inspirational speeches in 2 minutes:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to listen to Bryan Eisenberg chat with Mayer Gniwisch

(To download the interview for use on your ipod, etc., right-click here and “save as”.)

In case you missed it, our first podcast in the series is with Bernardo de Albergaria, VP & GM of eCommerce, Citrix Online and our second podcast was with Avinash Kaushik, Analytics Evangelist for Google. We’ve also recorded two “Always Be Testing” monthly webinars so far, the archived versions are now available.

Have you picked your copy of Always Be Testing? Our publisher says the first printing is already sold out and they are rushing to print a second run.

Landing page optimization and conversion rate improvements are no longer simply buzzwords. The rising cost of driving online traffic means marketers are paying more for less return on their ad dollars. To keep up, online marketers must roll up their sleeves and dive into conversion optimization. Optimizing your landing pages and your website is a proven means of increasing your conversion rates and realizing improved ROI. Google’s Website Optimizer makes it available to anyone who wants to start testing.

1. Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer

The easy-to-understand, in-depth information in Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Web Optimizer, by FutureNow’s Bryan Eisenberg and John Quarto-vonTivadar, will help you understand how to set up website optimization tests and improve your conversion rates. Learn the theory behind the testing, understand Google Web Optimizer click reports, discover the “why” of clicks, and decipher the valuable data.

By the time you finish reading this book, no matter what your skill level, you will have learned how to set up tests and improve crucial page components with the help of real-world case studies and examples.

If you haven’t read the book yet, perhaps you’d enjoy reading a sample chapter (PDF, about 2.5 Mb)

2. FREE *3rd Party* WordPress Plug-in For Google Website Optimizer

Future Now, Inc. worked very closely with blog integration specialists, ContentRobot, to create a WordPress plug-in that integrates Google Website Optimizer into a WordPress blog or blog-powered website. Using the plug-in makes it easy for anyone using WordPress to test headlines, copy or images. To learn more about the plugin, visit the official Website Optimizer Plugin for WordPress page. A direct download is available from ContentRobot and mirrored on GrokDotCom.

3. Getting Started with Multivariate testing?

There are several factors that hold people back before they begin A/B or Multivariate testing. If your organization isn’t testing, hopefully we can help you realize that testing isn’t scary. In fact, what our clients have seen once they do start is that NOT testing is what’s really scary. Read Start Multivariate Testing: 7 Critical Questions.

4. 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.

Click here to view the embedded video.

A good follow up to this is Top 7 Tips for Optimizing Low-Traffic Websites.

FREE Webinars About Google Website Optimizer

5. Landing Page Optimization: Headlines & Calls to Action

In this webinar, Bryan Eisenberg and Tom Leung, Product Manager for Google Website Optimizer, discuss how to improve your headlines and calls to action, including several case studies. They also discuss how to get testing started in your big organization. View the Landing Page Optimization: Headlines & Calls to Action webinar.

6. Landing Page Optimization: Confidence and Trust Building Elements

In this webinar, Bryan Eisenberg explored how a business might focus on testing confidence and trust building elements, a few good industry examples, a few really bad industry examples, and finished by providing valuable insight into structuring your tests. Tom Leung, from Google, then takes over, walking the audience through how easy it can be to setup a test in Google Website Optimizer. He finished with a hands-on demo of creating a test. View the Landing Page Optimization: Confidence and Trust Building Elements webinar.

7. I Know I Should Be Always Be Testing But…

Join Bryan Eisenberg and Elastic Path co-founder Jason Billingsley for this information packed webinar. You can read the recap or view the video.

8. Phone Webinar – Website Optimizer: What Should I Test?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Whether you are an e-commerce retailer or a business-to-business site, we are sure you will learn great tips for how to improve your landing pages through testing.

9. Podcast: Bryan Eisenberg Interviews Avinash Kaushik

As part of the research for our book, Always Be Testing, I had the pleasure to chat with several people about testing and how testing lives in their corporate culture. This one, with Avinash Kaushik, Analytics Evangelist for Google, blogger at Occam’s Razor and author of the incredibly popular Web Analytics an Hour a Day is not to be missed. Take some time to listen to my interview with Avinash.

Click here to listen to Bryan Eisenberg chat with Avinash Kaushik

(To download the interview for use on your ipod, etc., right-click here and “save as”.)

10. Podcast: Bryan Eisenberg Interviews Bernardo de Albergaria

Take some time to listen to my interview with Bernardo de Albergaria, VP & GM of eCommerce, Citirix Online, as we discuss testing and building out a data-driven/testing culture. He is responsible for selling products and the online experience for products like Gotomeeting and GotoMyPC.

Click here to listen to Bryan Eisenberg interview Bernardo de Albergaria

(To download the interview for use on your ipod, etc., right-click here and “save as”.)

11. Podcast of Interview of Tom Leung, Business Product Manager of Google Website Optimizer

On GrokDotCom.com Tom Leung discusses the ins and outs of Google’s latest product to help websites and advertisers.
Part 1

Click here to listen to Part 1 of Tom Leung, Google and Bryan

Part 2

Click here to listen to Part 2 of Tom Leung, Google and Bryan

To download Part 1 of Google Website Optimizer interview the MP3 click here

To download Part 2 of Google Website Optimizer interview the MP3 click here

12. 64 Tips for Getting Started with Google Website Optimizer

Are you looking for some testing ideas? Anthony Garcia, co-author of Which Sells Best? and Contact Me or Submit? provides you with 64 Tips for Getting Started with Google Website Optimizer.

13. Subscribe to the Conversion Rate Marketing Blog – GrokDotCom

GrokDotCom is a marketing blog that is focused on marketing optimization, improving online conversion rates, search engine marketing, web analytics, word of mouth, persuasive website design, and of course landing page optimization. You have many subscription options; you can get the latest content by email (your choice of daily, weekly or monthly) or by RSS. Choose your subscription options…

Some blog posts about A/B & Multivariate testing include:

How to Prioritize Your Optimization

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

Google Website Optimizer: 7 Powerful Tests

Push Your Customers’ Buttons

Hitting the Landing Page Optimization Wall

Does Your Testing Organization Have A Gag Reflex?

Hidden Secrets of the Amazon Shopping Cart

Big Impact, Small Changes on Amazon

Speed! Why Optimization Should Be Sexy

How to Get Buy-in for Conversion Rate Optimization

Why You Can’t Copy From Amazon

14. Subscribe to the Official Google Website Optimizer Blog

The official Google Website Optimizer blog, will keep you up to date product news, and industry insights.

15. Google Website Optimizer website

Website Optimizer, Google’s free website testing and optimization tool, allows you to increase the value of your existing websites and traffic without spending a cent. Using Website Optimizer to test and optimize site content and design, you can quickly and easily increase revenue and ROI whether you’re new to marketing or an expert. Sign up at: Google.com/Websiteoptimizer.

16. What is Continuous Improvement?

Join Dr. Ralph Wilson, Jim Sterne and I, as we explain in this 7 minute video what “continuous incremental improvement” means and how to get started with it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What other resources have you found useful?

My favorite quote comes from his recent mention in the CNNMoney.com article,  where he offers some tips on how to turn your site’s visitors into customers.

“Think of traffic like water pouring into a bucket,” says Bryan Eisenberg, executive vice president of Web marketing firm Future Now in New York City. “No matter how much water there is, it’s not going to stay if the bucket has holes. Pay attention to the balancing act of ranking well in search engines and getting sales out of those who make it there.”

He has been so busy answering questions for others we wanted to make sure he was answering yours. What questions do you have for Bryan? Please comment below or feel free to call us at 877-643-7244.

P.S. The Free Website Reviews – you probably noticed in a couple of those interviews Bryan mentioned a great resource for inexpensive usability tests of your website. Well Darrel and Dave the founders were kind to offer the first 100 GrokDotCom readers who go to http://www.usertesting.com/promo and enter futurenow in the Promo Code box will receive one free usability test (limit 1 per customer).

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)

Click here to view the embedded 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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

Want to learn more about Persuasion Architecture? It’s how our clients get results with personas.

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

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

The best part: I’m pretty sure we can track him down to answer your questions…

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…

This is still a rising medium with a long way to go. An emerging industry with, seemingly, a lot of people who can’t deal very well with change. Just when they’ve set their stall up to sell one thing, the search engines get a little more clever with information retrieval techniques and then their optimization methods become less effective. But because they’ve invested time (and money, probably) into developing a system that seems plausible, they’ll carry on selling it. And if that’s the case, the last thing they want to hear is someone like me saying in public that we’ve moved on a tad since SEO circa 1999.

[...] I write an opinion column at ClickZ. And I feel that I’ve been around long enough in the business to provide fairly well informed comment. I get extremely positive feedback from the audience of online marketers I write for. But sometimes, from the pimply geek squad, if I dare to suggest that SEO as we know it just ain’t cutting it like it used to…Bang! It’s that heretic Grehan again. And out come the cries to have me dragged into Times Square for a public flogging.

There’s a bunch of people out there who come at the industry from more a of a technical/webmaster background and begin to feel a little alienated when industry pundits and observers start talking more about online marketing strategy and less about tags and server issues. You know, I get completely dumbfounded at conferences sometimes when webmasters ask me things like: “Can Google read my CSS?” I’m like, who gives a shit? Shouldn’t you be more concerned about finding ways to get end users to interact with your web pages, rather than losing sleep over whether a bot can read a little bit of your gobbledygook.

Cheers to that, Mike! No wonder they voted you chairman of next year’s Search Engine Strategies in London.

In Part II of Bryan’s interview with Tisch, the two discuss:

• How to deal with difficult customers and turn them around
• How to empower front line workers to delight customers
• Stepping out of his role as CEO to train with other “co-workers” in the field
• The value of embracing diversity
• How the travel pricing engines changed the hotel industry and what what they did to adjust
• What to do when you sell a commodity
• Measuring and making customer experience accountable
• Balancing hard financial metrics and softer experience metrics
• The importance of listening to trends
• What graduates just getting into the workforce should focus on

Click here to listen to Part 2 of Jonathan Tisch and Bryan Eisenberg

To download Part 2 of Jonathan Tisch and Bryan Eisenberg the MP3 click here.

If you want more of Jonathan you can catch him at:
This past Monday:
Experience Manifesto

Customers Rock!

This past Tuesday:
The Engaging Brand . They will be doing both a Q&A and podcast.

Wednesday:
Conversion Rate Marketing Blog – GrokDotCom by Future Now, Inc. Our Podcast.

Vacant Ready:: A hotel industry blog for hotel insiders

Thursday:
Lip-Sticking. They will also be doing a podcast.
Experience the Message

Friday:
Customer Experience Crossroads
Experienceology. They are also doing a podcast.

Sounds like every business you know? Sure it does. And that’s why this book couldn’t have come at a better time.

In Part I of this two-part edition of Grokcast, Bryan Eisenberg explores Tisch’s thoughts on:

• How to break through the clutter to make superb impressions on customers (or in has case, “guests”).
• How the customer experience has/hasn’t changed in recent decades.
• Distinguishing your brand, even in highly competitive markets.
• How to engage employees (he calls them “co-workers”) to rally an organization to the same cause.
• How myriad options have spoiled the customer, and what your business must do to adjust.
• Using customer feedback to improve your business in real time.
• Why transparency is vital in today’s economy.
• How to defuse a negative situation, and turn it around–quickly.
• Why unsavory customer feedback is so viral.
• How to ensure that people have nice things to say about your brand.

Click here to listen to Part 1 of Jonathan Tisch and Bryan Eisenberg

 

 

 

 

 

To download Part 1 of Jonathan Tisch and Bryan Eisenberg the MP3 click here

Bryan Eisenberg: Now that people have a free tool, one of the questions they have is, “What resources will I need to actually implement tests?”

Tom Leung: Let me put it this way: if you have the ability to change an image on a particular page or change a headline, or you have the ability to add our scripts to your page, you can test. However, there are some people who may want extra help and that’s why we work with certifying different partners like [your company] to help provide a consultation on what to test or how to evaluate the results. The tool’s designed for do-it-yourself marketers. But for those who want extra help, that’s available either through our free technical support or more advanced professional services, like our authorized consultants.

BE: One of the questions that keep popping up is if I start tagging the pages and I start making a couple of variations, how long do I have to wait until I get results that are meaningful?

Continue reading my ROI Marketing column at ClickZ…

Read Part 1 of this interview…

or, listen to the interview in-full.

Tom Leung: Let me give you a quick example. Let’s say you had a bicycle Web site, and you sold bicycle accessories online. The way you’d design some of those pages is that, for the most part, you’d work with a Web designer. They come back with a few design mockups, and you kind of point at the one you think would work best. You would base that largely on your gut feel, or opinion. In some cases, whoever is the most senior person in the room will just tell you, “I like that one,” and you go with it. This scenario is wrought with a lot of guessing and opinions. What we’re doing is trying to change that with Google Website Optimizer.

What the tool does is allow you to instrument the page so that you can test a whole variety of ideas. So you aren’t limited to picking just one of a few design mockups. You can literally test hundreds, if not thousands, of versions of a page. When a visitor arrives at your site, we’ll show them a specific version, and it tracks whether or not they convert, whether it’s purchasing a product, or signing up for a newsletter, or whatever you decide is a successful conversion. Then, it will report back to you which combination worked the best. It takes the guesswork out of marketing by letting customers tell you what works best for them by letting them vote with their clicks. You can constantly test new hunches, new ideas, and turn your Web site into a living laboratory. We think that ultimately this is going to make a better Internet overall…

Read more of my column at ClickZ…

Part 1 Of Google Website Optimizer FAQ

• What is the Google Optimizer?
• Is Google analytics required to use Google optimizer?
• Will it work with other analytics software?
• Does A/B or multivariate testing affect your Google search ranking?
• Why is Google offering the optimizer?
• How does Google Optimizer compare to the other testing platforms available now?
• How does Google Optimizer work with sites that are more dynamic in nature?
• Can Google Optimizer be used to test Pay-Per-Click (PPC) or Pay Per Action (PPA) ad copy?

Part 2 Of Google Website Optimizer FAQ

• What other resources do I need to be able to implement tests using Google Optimizer?
• How long do I have to wait to see results testing with Google Optimizer?
• Does hit and run testing work?
• What future features are in the pipeline for Google optimizer?
• How do you see more B2B or lead generation sites using Google Optimizer?
• How would you encourage the average webmaster to get started with Google Optimizer?

Part 1

Click here to listen to Part 1 of Tom Leung, Google and Bryan

Part 2

Click here to listen to Part 2 of Tom Leung, Google and Bryan

To download Part 1 of Google Website Optimizer interview the MP3 click here

To download Part 2 of Google Website Optimizer interview the MP3 click here

Would you like to check out additional Google Website Optimizer resources?