keywords
Using Customer Review Keywords to Pick Up Women, Men
Have you ever noticed that if you really want good information about a product, you’re much more likely to find that information in a product review than in the product description itself?
Why aren’t product descriptions more helpful?
Here’s one thought: Men and women may care about different things. Product descriptions may not be speaking to both genders’ needs. In product reviews, men talk about what they care about, and women talk about what they care about. This may be one reason why reviews help increase conversion.
Here’s a real life example. I searched for reviews for gas grills. Although the reviewer’s gender isn’t always obvious, I picked two that had a good chance of being either male or female.
First, an excerpt from a gas grill review by “dickiedo” — I’m guessing that’s a man:
Pros: It is sturdy, attractive and cooks good.
Cons: I wish the control knobs were on the front of the grill.I bought this grill at Home Depot in the morning and that afternoon I grilled the best steaks I have ever cooked using the cooking instructions provided by Weber. The next day I grilled some great tasting hamburgers. Before cooking the burgers I heated the grill and easily brushed off the residue from the steaks leaving the cooking surface clean. I really liked cooking on my Weber charcoal grills, but I am now a firm Weber gas grill fan.
Now, an excerpt from a gas grill review by “juliet166″ — I’m guessing that’s a woman:
Pros: weber quality, even cooking, portability, easy cleanup
Cons: 14oz. propane canisters, lack of warming tray, no side traysI became a weber convert several years ago after purchasing a genesis silver c, and experiencing the exceptional cooking found in weber grills. Due to a divorce and move to a small apt without a deck, I was desperate for a grill that I could easily transport outdoors to use, but would not take up a lot of space inside my apt. Because of the dome shaped lid, it easily fits a small roast, or vertical rib stand. Clean up is easy just by letting the grill run a few minutes and then brushing with a wire brush.
I have not had any issues with the automatic ignition. I have been using my grill for 3 months now, and it always starts on the first or second push.
Here’s what’s interesting about these two reviews: They’re an example of the gender preferences Joseph Carrabis of NextStage Evolution talks about on the iMedia Connection blog, where he insists that women purchase strategically while men purchase immediately:
Men make purchasing decisions based strongly on immediate or present needs.
Women want to know that today’s purchase will meet their immediate needs, mid-term and even their needs long-term needs. Long-term and far-term usability can even be a stronger consideration for the female purchasing persona than immediate need
Notice that in Dickiedo’s testimonial, he’s talking about purchasing the grill that morning and grilling that afternoon — great job of speaking to a guy’s immediate and present need.
In Juliet’s review, she’s commenting that even after 3 months, the grill still starts on the first or second push, meeting a longer-term durability need.
Carrabis discusses another gender difference:
Men are willing to make a purchase once it has been demonstrated that someone else was successful with the same purchase; kind of a, “that worked for Joe, so it’ll probably work for me” mentality.
Women posit things differently. It’s good to know if something worked for Sally; it’s better to know what Sally’s motivations were for her purchase. Success in itself isn’t meaningful unless the conditions leading to success are the same. (So much for women not being cut out for the sciences!) This can be thought of as, “it may have worked for Sally, but Sally bought it for reason A and I’m interested in reason B, so the same purchase might not work for me.”
Juliet shares her background motivation for purchasing the grill. She’s recently divorced and moved to a small apartment without a deck. She wanted something she could transport outdoors but wouldn’t take up a lot of room. Now a woman can compare her motivation to Juliet’s to see if it’s a good match for her situation, for her motivation.
How can manufacturers and e-commerce sites use this information to create better product descriptions that sell more products?
- Talk about both immediate and long-term value. “Take it home this afternoon, grill steaks tonight”; “Our grills start at just the touch of a button now, and for months/years to come.”
- Talk about different motivations for buying the product and successful uses of it. “With our even heating system, grillers of all skills can cook the perfect steak every time”; “If you live in an apartment but still want the that backyard grill experience, this is the grill for you. It’s small and portable, but with a domed lid, so it’s big enough to cook family meals like a small roast or vertical rib stand.”
One more hint. While both Dickiedo and Juliet mentioned “easy cleaning”, Juliet got very specific with what that means (”Let the grill run for a few minutes and brush with a wire brush”). This may also tie-in with women’s need for longer-term value. I know a woman who’s sworn off a famous cookware brand because their products are very sensitive and hard to clean. Remember, she’s not just thinking about cooking dinner tonight, she’s picturing how she’ll use the product for months, even years to come. Make sure you’re talking about what it’s like to use and maintain the product in the future as well as the present.
By using keywords that address the underlying motivations of both men and women, your product descriptions are sure to pick them up before the competition.
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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. If you’d like to become a customer pickup artist like Holly, join her on June 2nd for FutureNow’s Persuasive Online Copywriting seminar in Manhattan.
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Written by:Holly Buchanan
Bryan Eisenberg on Websites That Stink (in a Good Way)
Is it really such a bad thing to have a website that stinks?
In the second and final installment of Bryan’s interview with Ralph Wilson — recorded at February’s Search Engine Strategies conference in London — the two shift their focus from personas (as discussed in Part 1) to improving landing page conversion by creating better “scent” for the visitor.
In the video, Bryan talks about a study conducted by usability guru Jared Spool that shows, among other things, that…
- When visitors found the “trigger words” — keywords that either get stuck in their heads, either consciously or subconsciously, often from advertising — on the landing page they’re sent to, they were content with what they found a whopping 72% of the time.
- When these same visitors didn’t see their trigger words on the landing pages they found, their search was only successful 6% of the time.
(If video doesn’t load, click here.)
Despite all the heady research that analyzes how people actually search for — and find — things on the Internet, it’s so obvious that it’s almost funny: We sniff around for relevant info like animals on the hunt. We go where the scent takes us. If we find what we’re looking for, great. Game over. If not, we retreat to home base, regroup and go out on a slightly more refined path until we see it in the corner of our eye. Then we pounce.
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Want Bryan’s advice on how to make your website stink (in a good way)? Meet him at FutureNow’s Call to Action seminar on June 3rd in Manhattan.
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Written by:Robert Gorell
Getting the Most Out of Your Personas
Personas are everywhere these days. They’ve long surpassed the buzzword and fad stage. They’re mainstream.
Marketing firms, usability firms, even companies’ internal marketing teams are crafting personas. Posters of personas are hung proudly in conference rooms. Tacked-up personas dress cubicles from coast to coast.
Sadly, many of these personas are only attracting dust bunnies. They don’t see any recognition past the initial creation.
If you spent any amount of time and resources building personas that represent your customers, it’s reasonable to consider getting more out of them.
Instead of letting your personas drift into a faint memory, here are a few things you can use your personas for.
Tweak Your Personas
A reason some personas get put in drawers is they aren’t as effective as they could have been. Profitable personas are representatives of all buying modes your customers have as they consider you or competitors. The measure for effective personas is that they must evoke empathy in your team and be tied to your business goals.
Go ahead and tweak your personas if need be.
Your Personas and Your Competitors
See exactly how well your competitors are doing with your personas. Take your personas through their site. Be brutally honest.
For each persona, note where your competitors do well and where they fail. In some cases, you’ll find they do better with one or two of your personas. Use this information to shore up your site to provide a superior experience for all your personas. Many times you’ll find new ideas and inspiration for changes in your persuasion scenarios.
Keyword Research
We’ve had many clients who eagerly used personas for everything but researching keywords. We often have to remind them to use their personas for this purpose. Start by brainstorming some of the terms and phrases each persona would use in relationship to your product/service in the early buying stages. Then move on to middle and late stages. By going through this simple exercise, you’ll immediately have a list of potential keywords you may not have otherwise considered.
Be sure not to ignore the low-traffic keywords you dig up. Often times these terms cost much less, reveal true buying intent, and, as a result, convert at astounding rates.
Offline Inspiration
Personas can also be used to inspire and guide your offline marketing efforts. Run all your creative through your personas, and estimate their response. Often you’ll find a particular creative works for some personas and not for others. Instead of ignoring the rest of your personas, adjust the creative to reach them as well or produce additional creative for the other personas. Have you noticed that Geico has very different simultaneous campaigns? The gecko and cavemen campaigns appeal to different customer segments.
Give Personas a Say in Your Marketing Budget
A well-crafted, well-researched persona set represents all your potential customers. But not all personas are equal in their monetary value to the company.
When you’re trying to make tough budget decisions on where and how to market, you can use your personas as a guide. We had a client who had more marketing opportunities than resources and time. Using his personas, we were able to help plan the rollout of an ambitious redesign project by starting with the site elements that appealed to two of his most valuable personas. The redesign’s second phase was to shore up site elements for secondary personas.
You can use this same line of planning to determine how and where to spend marketing dollars, online and off-.
Conclusion
Don’t let your personas get off easy by using them for only one or two projects. Instead, drag them out for everything. Run all your new creative by them, even use them to come up with more effective site optimization ideas. (That’s a column for another time.)
What have your personas done for you lately?
Reprinted from my ClickZ column.
[Image from Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 classic film, Persona.]
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
How to Find Del.icio.us Keywords
Here’s a great “Why didn’t I think of that?” tip from TechSoapbox. Want to find some great keyword fodder for your site, or borrow a bit of mojo from the competition? Search del.icio.us/url to see how people who’ve tagged the sites you’re interested in have phrased their description of the website.
And don’t forget to check out the tag cloud on the top-right [example], which will give you some sense of visitors — at least the ones interested enough to bookmark it — tend to categorize the site.
(Hat tip to BloggingPro for pointing this out!)
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Written by:Robert Gorell
What Keywords Say About Your Visitors
I was reading an article in AdAge about Ian Ayres. He and his publisher were battling over the title of his new book. He wanted to call it The End of Intuition. His publishers wanted to call it Super Crunchers.
[His publishers said] “The End of Intuition” is a terrible name. So boring. But Ian Ayres didn’t believe it. That’s what he wanted to call his new book about how much better it is to test ideas through random trials rather than just trusting some marketing guru or focus group — or intuition. His editor thought he was nuts and insisted that “Super Crunchers” was a much zippier name.
So the two of them decided to do some random testing of his book on random testing. They took out a Google ad and half the time someone was doing a search on “data mining” or “number crunching,” a little ad on the right would appear for a new book called “The End of Intuition.” Half the time the same ad appeared for a new book called “Super Crunchers.”
Based only on this information, which title do you think won? Make your best guess, then keep reading.
To me, it’s pretty darn obvious; “Super Crunchers” had to perform much better if they keywords they targeted were “data mining” and “number crunching.”
Sure enough…
“Super Crunchers” got way more traffic — 63% — and thus became the title of his book.
I was actually a little surprised it wasn’t higher than 63%, but I don’t have access to the actual ad.
There are two types of people in customer research. There are Humanistics, who have a great ability to empathize with other people. They truly want to understand why people behave the way they do, what their deeper motivations are, and how to better relate to people. Then there are Methodicals. They’re superior number crunchers. They like statistics and spreadsheets. They base their decisions on facts (even if they’re merely justifying to themselves a decision that’s already been made based on emotion).
I’d be curious to see this test repeated with different keywords like “customer insight” or “customer research”or “understanding your customers.” These are keywords more likely to be used by Humanistics, who would be more attracted to the title “The End of Insight.”
If the subject matter of the book is truly aimed at more Methodical researchers, “Super Crunchers” is definitely the way to go. I’m not suggesting Ian change the title of the book. But never underestimate the power of words. The keywords you choose will affect your results.
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Written by:Holly Buchanan
