Some of my predictions will be “wishful thinking,” but if I can sway the direction of an entire industry I’d be surprised, honored, and ask for a raise

One of my favorite magazine formats for this sort of thing is the “What’s In and What’s Out” or “What’s Hot and What’s Not” approach, so I’ll hijack it.

In 2010, 5 Predictions for the Optimization Space…

Click to enlarge

Now, let’s step through all five for a bit of explanation and commentary:

Prediction #1: “Scent” optimization is in

Over the past several years, all the buzz has been about “landing page optimization.”  Books have been written, keynote addresses have been given, money has been made, etc.  But, optimizing landing pages ‘in a vacuum’ free of any real-world persuasion context will only get you so far.  So I predict 2010 will give us a shift in focus from only looking at and optimizing a landing page as a stand-alone entity, to optimizing for the scent of information.  People don’t just magically land on landing pages.  They are driven there by marketing efforts that you pay for, and they arrive with intent, questions, objections, fears, motivations, and needs.  Optimizing for scent means understanding the context of online marketing efforts, prospect intent, and how to design conversion experiences (scent trails) that can carry a strong scent of information persuasively from online marketing touchpoint, to landing page, and all the way through to conversion.

Prediction #2: Optimization as a value-add is in

Over the past several years, the Optimization industry has grown rapidly in the form of a “specialty.” Niche Optimization agencies have started to sell their optimization software and consulting services, traditional digital agencies are starting to add groups of resources dedicated to analytics and optimization, and corporations are starting to hire optimization practitioners in to help lead their B2C and B2B online marketing tactics.  That is a natural growth process for a new niche, but it won’t last because there aren’t enough specialists to service all the clients who need optimization.  I predict 2010 will be the year where Optimization becomes a very popular value-add with various vendors of SEO, SEM, analytics, ad platforms, content production, web design, and eCommerce technology. The reasoning is that more and more clients are going to be clamoring for professional Optimization because, ultimately, all ROI on online marketing investments revolves around conversion, and Optimization is clearly the best approach to raising conversion rates and getting better ROI on your marketing spend.  Frankly, all of the above list of investments (traffic generation, content generation, technology) are money-losers if your business isn’t converting enough prospects into customers.  This hopefully will cause the “ecosystem” of Optimizers, SEOers, SEMers, analytics folks, designers, etc. to get together and come up with better ways to service a growing need in a growing industry.

Prediction #3: Marketing system optimization is in

Those who in recent years have moved beyond pure “Landing Page Optimization” have naturally evolved towards optimizing the “conversion funnel,” which could include a landing page, content pages, and multiple steps along a conversion funnel like a shopping cart.  While this has been a positive movement with demonstrable results, it’s time to take the next step in the evolution of Optimization.  I predict 2010 will bring a more holistic approach I’ll call “Marketing System Optimization.” This means that practitioners looking to gain and retain clients will have to help optimize a company’s whole marketing system.  A few things that this could include are: ad spend, keyword recommendations, ad copy, formal testing, messaging, marketing personas, and more.  Optimizers who can succeed at this will have an economy of scale that would make their services very attractive to potential customers.  And ultimately those Optimizers who have the holistic view will be better positioned to find low hanging fruit, prioritize optimization efforts, and add value to a marketer’s overall efforts.

Prediction #4: Social media under intense scrutiny is in

Ok, maybe this one isn’t so much about Optimization, but social media is a popular marketing investment, so it must be a candidate for continuous improvement. While 2009 was the year where every marketer simply had to dive into social media, and every website simply had to have “follow me, friend me, digg me” icons on the homepage, it hasn’t proven to be the cure-all that it’s cracked up to be.  Nothing ever is: Take The Internet, example   A wise man recently said that you can’t fake social media, and he’s right.  So, I predict that 2010 will be the year where social media (as a marketing investment) will undergo intense scrutiny. Some companies will bet more on it, some will throttle back their investments, and some will simply walk away.  But they will all be taking an extremely close look at not only the ROI of their social media investments, but whether social media is even relevant to their prospects, or to their high-level marketing strategies.  The same rule that applies to websites applies to social media:  prospects are always asking What’s In It For Me? before (and while) they engage with you on Twitter or Facebook.

Prediction #5: Email marketing originality & experimentation is in

Last but not least, we saw in the past two years especially that when financial woes put the pinch on online marketers, email marketing has emerged as the “workhorse” channel that can bring in dollars on a reasonable and predictable budget.  It continues to have a decent, steady conversion rate, and is less susceptible to the fluctuating (and often mysteriously increasing) investments needed for Search Engine Marketing and other channels.  That’s OK with me, but the challenge I’ve seen as we’ve gone through a “rough patch” in the online marketing space is that the email workhorse has gotten very repetitive.  I’ve not seen very many original, thoughtful email marketing campaigns that bring value to customers in unique ways.  So, I predict 2010 will be a year in which marketers continue to rely on this channel, but must get more experimental and original in order to stay relevant, compete against social media and mobile, and bring value to prospects. Emails always have been relatively easy to test, track, and optimize, so there’s no reason not to be brainstorming and testing (to small test segments) off-the-wall ideas.  You never know when you’ll strike it rich with some sort of ultra-persuasive, epidemically viral home run!

These five predictions are just one analyst’s hunches, not even sanctioned by FutureNow, so feel free to disagree in a constructive way.  More importantly, to those investing in Optimization, or thinking about investing in Optimization, what do YOU want to see from our industry in 2010?  Let us know!

In this post, I’ll wrap up by covering some of the benefits you can get if you learn to observe and leverage DBL, as well as some of the author’s ideas about the future of sales and marketing as marketers start to adopt the DBL approaches.

Benefits of DBL

If you understand DBL, and can leverage the data points it provides, you’ll be in a much better position to effectively nurture early and middle stage leads.  This is crucial since the majority of leads in your database are probably in these two stages.  We at FutureNow spend lot of time working with clients to optimize their sites for early and middle stage buyers, so this was great to read.  We also encourage B2B marketers to design marketing efforts intended to “graduate” their prospects from one stage of their buying process to the next.

In addition to more effective lead nurturing, DBL allows for much more accurate lead scoring, which is of huge value to an organization.  Most B2B sales and marketing teams seem to only have 2 lead scores: “hot” and “disqualified.”  The lead is either worth calling on the phone, or they’re thrown away.  This obviously can lead to frustration on both sides of the Sales/Marketing fence.  By tracking and monitoring DBL, you have a lot more data to use in scoring leads so Sales knows which ones are “hot,” and which ones simply aren’t ready to buy and can be nurtured.

Woods uses example lead categories of:
1.    Inquiries – usually some contact information captured online
2.    Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) – Marketing has vetted as qualified for Sales
3.    Sales Accepted Leads (SALs) – Sales agrees to follow up with the leads
4.    Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) – Sales agrees the leads are qualified to be sold to
5.    and Deals – closed business

The above categories can set an organization up for a very disciplined, data-driven approach to their prospect pipeline.

DBL is also a tool that helps teams get away from the usually-broken “lead source” model. Woods eloquently argues against the traditional model on page 185:

…the prospective buyer is not suddenly “driven” to make a purchase because of a well-crafted marketing campaign or elegantly worded collateral documents.  Rather, a purchase is the culmination of a well-choreographed series of messaging, campaigns, and collateral that–over time–collectively guide the prospective buyer through education and discovery processes that are driven by their own internal interests and business goals.

Best of all, DBL allows for a new, improved way of measuring marketing performance. We all know that measuring marketing effectiveness at driving revenue (as opposed to just leads) is challenging, even with all the fancy data we have at our fingertips these days.  This, I think, contributes to the fact that CMOs have some of the shortest tenures in all of the corporate world.

DBL can be used to understand, track, and prove “the conversion of prospects from one phase of their buying process to the next.”  If a nurture marketer’s goal is simply to find prospects and convert them over time through a succession of buying stages, it becomes much easier to plan campaigns, segment the data, and make wise marketing investments.

Looking Towards the Future

Given that I’m an analyst, one of my favorite parts of the book was Chapter 10 where the author starts to talk about a new breed of “Analytical Marketer:”

Marketers are beginning to capture, store, and process unprecedented volumes of data and will need people with management capabilities and skills to model, prototype, and design processes.

Woods goes on to argue that organizations must change to meet the demands of DBL: executives must understand why DBL is a worthy investment, skill sets have to evolve or be brought in, data cleansing must be a priority for IT and analysts, and marketing organizations have to become more process-driven instead of relying heavily on “creativity for creativity’s sake.”

In the end, though, the author ties it all back to that core concept of realigning to the buyer’s buying process–using DBL to understand their needs, and providing the marketing that will help them move themselves through the buying stages at their own pace.  And, being there top-of-mind when they decide they’re ready to raise their hands and ask to be sold to.

Finally, those of you in Early Stage who perhaps aren’t persuaded to buy the book could visit the Digital Body Language blog to learn more.  I’m sure Steven would be happy to nurture you for as long as you need

If you’ve ever shared office space with colleagues you really liked and respected, you’ve already twittered.  You’ve already gotten a “feed” of interesting thoughts, updates, recommendations, etc.

Twitter simply allows you to do that with people in other offices/cities/countries.  Think about what you would and wouldn’t share with your office-mate before sending it out on twitter:

• Participating in a group conversation?  Yes, but try to make sure the conversation has value to the rest of the people on your feed and/or make the conversation private.  If I’m your office-mate, I don’t want to listen to your full volume phone conversation with someone else – unless of course the conversation is really that relevant or interesting.

• Occasionally letting people know about cool stuff you’ve created?  Yes, but don’t make it all about you all the time.  No one wants to hear a constant stream of chest thumping at the office.

• Sharing cool websites, blog posts, online articles, etc?  Sure, but don’t flood my twitter feeds with them.  Do the winnowing for me so that I know a link from you will really kick butt.  This doesn’t mean shy away from tweeting offbeat links you think are really cool (let you’re freak flag fly high, baby), just refrain from forwarding on links that you don’t consider must-reads.

• Posting cool or motivating or thought provoking quotes?  Meh.  Every now and then, isn’t too bad, if the quotes are striking, rather than just “inspiring,” but don’t get either too “successories” nor too Despair.com on us.  No one wants to share an office with either a relentlessly upbeat Pollyanna or a “life sucks and then you die” cynic.

• Sharing passing thoughts?  An interesting thought a few times a day is welcomed.  A thought an hour clogs my feed – unless of course your thought has some real substance behind it, which brings me to…

• Sharing insightful comments that (sort of) cohere into a big idea?  Hell, yeah!  If you’re not already following her, Kathy Sierra does this, and it’s her twitters that I look forward to reading most.  Imagine sharing an office with a consistently prescient or incisive thinker who generously shares her perspective.  Who wouldn’t want that?

Of course, when the whole twitter-sphere is your water cooler, you can do more than just impact the conversations that pop up within you “office” – you can seek out people who routinely tweet on the topics that most hold your imagination captive, and, with a bit of tact, introduce yourself and join their twitter conversations.  Here’s one way to do it:

Step 1: Go to a tool like http://search.twitter.com/ and search on frequent topics of conversation for you (or you can use the built in search in an application like TweetDeck)

Step 2: Scroll through the results till you find an insightful comment.  Then check out there twitter page, see if the keyword represents a common topic for them, and introduce yourself and add meaningfully to the thought or conversation.

• While it goes without saying, for clarity’s sake, let me emphasize that you should never, ever promote yourself or your business when doing this.  If you can’t join the conversation for the sake of the conversation and NOT simply as a front for self-promotion, then forget about Twitter altogether.

Step 3: If a good dialogue develops, you can add them to your twitter feed, subscribe to their blog etc.

Step 4: You have now expanded your grapevine network while enjoying interesting and intelligent tweets.  Just like the offline world, great conversations rarely happen by accident – it’s up to you to seek out and surround yourself with intelligent people of shared interests.

“CaptainCowPie: Wow Evernote allows files to be stored and synched across computers and my iPhone. This may replace my Dropbox completely.”

Ouch! Talk about hijacking the conversation. Reminds Brian and me of the classic adword targeting issues. Do you think that tactic helped or hurt their chance at this sale?

Most people failed by mentioning brands that were built well before the 10-year limit.  But one reader suggested Airborne, and I had to agree that it met the criteria, even if it was the exception that proved the rule.

How so?

Well, first off, Airborne basically invented its own product category.  Emergen-C existed before then but wasn’t widely available outside health food stores, and wasn’t fully marketed as a cold or flu-preventative.  And this new product category made substandard product performance extraordinarily hard to detect for the average consumer.  You took Aiborne and still got sick? Well, you probably didn’t have it nearly as bad as you would have if you hadn’t taken it, right? Or you didn’t take it soon enough, and so on.

Second, Airborne owed more of its rapid growth to a fabulously sticky mythology combined with extraordinary PR than to outright advertising.

The myth is that Airborne was the unique discovery and formulation of a 2^nd Grade School Teacher, Victoria Knight-McDowell, and that the demand for the product by friends and local merchants was so great that the product just naturally grew from a home-brewed recipe into a national brand.

If one were to evaluate this story in terms of Chip and Dan Heath’s SUCCESS principles, the story is:

Simple – It’s a classic create-a-better-mousetrap-and-achieve-fame-and-fortune story.

Unexpected – A grade school teacher turned entrepreneurial genius and final vanquisher of the common cold? Check that one off.

Concrete – Lots of great details here, ranging from 2^nd grader’s notoriously snotty noses to the mental image of the teacher-slash-herbalist cooking up a “super weapon” to combat the common cold.

Credibility – It’s practically a self-made Sinatra test: whose immune systems are more challenged than grade school teachers?  If Airborne works for them, it’ll likely work for anyone, right?  Plus, until ABC News blew their cover, Airborne also had that oh-so-conclusive “scientific” test to back them up.

Emotional – A teacher achieving financial wealth and fame through inventive problem solving definitely has emotional appeal. It’s a modern day Horatio Alger story!

Story – Not only is this a story, it’s one of the most powerful kinds of stories: a creation myth.

Is it any wonder that Victoria’s husband, a successful screenwriter, managed to recognize a great story when he saw one and decided to invest heavily in the company and it’s marketing.

Although Airborne did invest in advertising, it owes far more of it’s growth to Oprah and other great PR than to any traditional ad campaign.

The story behind Airborne made the product an easy pitch to media, and the PR lent the product more credibility than straight advertising ever would have, making the tablets an even hotter commodity.

Yes, Airborne built it’s brand success on the back of marketing, in spite of its rather dubious performance. But, it had no real competitors, and the subjective experience it delivered – as a result of its creation myth and fabulous PR – was more than good enough to allow for continued growth.

In short, if the rule is that a product has to be remarkable for marketing efforts to gain traction, then Airborne is a mediocre product that proves the rule, because what was ultimately marketed was not the unremarkable effervescent tablets, but the remarkably sticky creation story behind them.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now, before discussing the ad, please name a brand developed in the last 10 years that was built largely on the strength of its advertising.  Go ahead and think a bit if you have to; I’ll wait.

You might be able to name one, dear reader, but I’m betting you’ll have strained a bit to come up with it, and that you’ll only think of just one (assuming you come up with any).

Now, name 5 brands created in the last 10 years (or that at least come onto the national stage within the last 10 years) and built largely on the basis of great user experience / word of mouth with very little to no traditional advertising.  Here’s my list:

1) Zappos
2) Krispy Kreme
3) StonyField Yogurt
4) Silk (soy milk)
5) Smart Wool

It’s not a definitive list by any means, and I’m sure at least one reader will write me with an example of some kind of ad or PR campaign run by one of those companies, but I trust you get the point: the new Mac commercial isn’t just a satirical poke at Microsoft’s non-response to its problems with Vista; it is indicative of the current marketing climate in general.

Unless you have a message that matters – in other words unless you have a product and customer experience worth talking about – why pay to broadcast it?  A false or inane ad message won’t just be tuned our or ignored: it will actively discredit you in the marketplace and might just prove a handy club for your competitors to beat you with.

Wired’s (and Valleywag) Paul Boutin writes a eulogy for Blogs. Link-bait? Probably, but he certainly raised the ire of several in the online community, myself included. Heck, he even got me to crawl out from the rock I was hiding these past few months and pen a few words of commentary, in defense of blogging (yes, I recognize the irony . I think Mathew Ingram wrote the best counter to Paul’s argument, so I’ll let you hop off and read his discourse before returning to hear a few questions I’m pondering.

Here’s what I found myself wondering after reading Paul’s post:

1. Why does having a number of different authors make the blog any less “blog-like” – i.e. if there are still good blogs out there, albeit less personal and more representative of a group of persons who all share a similar view on a particular topic, why can’t that be considered a blog? Shouldn’t the litmus test be the value of the content they produce, regardless of the person(s) who created the content?
2. Why does the fact that blogging about mainstream topics like presidential candidates makes it difficult to rank highly in google equate to “kill yr blog”? Google is all about relevance, always has been, always (most likely) will be. If the most relevant answer to a searcher’s query could be found on a personal (or professional) blog, it would rank high. For “Barack Obama”, aren’t most searchers looking for that wikipedia page, or the Fox News article (ahem, wouldn’t MSNBC be more likely?!) What about the blogger who writes about a passion topic, something like the greatest college basketball team, and wants to be able to connect with those who share that passion. Is this form of community no longer valid?
3. Why does the “insult commenter” need to ruin the fun for the rest of us? Assigning so much power to those silly flame comments seems to ignore the power the rest of us have to ignore things that don’t add value. It’s like the reviews people post on Amazon, with a absurdly high (or low) score but no substantiation for their claims. People today seem to be far better equipped to deal with hype and BS, and tune out what doesn’t make sense in favor of what does. I strongly disagree that these silly one-off comments really degrade the experience the rest of us enjoy.

His close though seemed to help me understand where he was coming from:

As a writer, though, I’m onto the system’s [Twitter] real appeal: brevity. Bloggers today are expected to write clever, insightful, witty prose to compete with Huffington and The New York Times. Twitter’s character limit puts everyone back on equal footing. It lets amateurs quit agonizing over their writing and cut to the chase.

Ok, so as long as you and I agree not everyone writes about topics covered by the mainstream media on a daily basis, I think Paul will agree with us that the platform still adds value. I’d love to try and have a meaningful and interactive and ongoing marketing optimization discussion, 140 characters at a time.

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments- are you reading more or less blogs today than 4 years ago?

As well what are the topics you enjoy reading about *outside* of the mainstream media (and any blogs you like that cover those topics). For me, scanning my bloglines start page shows:

• Neuroscience – The Frontal Cortex; Cognitive Daily;
• Web Analytics – Marketing Productivity blog;
• Venture Capital – Feld Thoughts; Fred Wilson’s blog;
• Personal Productivity / Simplicity – 43 Folders;

… just to name a few! So if you’re out there blogging, please feel free to ignore the opening advice from Wired, and keep up the fine work- I’m sure your audience appreciates it.

• Customers will look for reasons not to buy.
• Retailers will offer incentives.
• Customers will look for value.
• Retailers will offer promotions.
• Customers will look for more information.
• Retailers will ask their customers to provide content.
• Customers will hold retailers responsible for their entire experience.
• Retailers will continue to work in silos.
• Customers will find new favorite retailers.
• Retailers will look for new traffic.
• Customers will demand more from each visit.
• Retailers will focus more intensely  on the +/- 3% they convert instead of the 97% they don’t.
• Customers have changed.
• Retailers…

Will retailers finally focus on optimizing their customer experience and improving their sales conversion rates? Many, perhaps most, won’t. It’s hard to build a culture of continuous improvement, especially under pressure. Some, a few, will. They will not only survive but they will also improve their market share and profitability.

We do work with a lot of retailers who are already devoted and several who we are helping to adopt a culture of continuous improvement. Still, it’s a relatively small sample size. Am I too pessimistic? Nothing would make me happier than to be wrong.

I welcome your feedback.

9:00 am – 9:20 am

Seth Godin on how to get your ideas to spread:

Click here to view the embedded video.

9:30 am – 10:00 am

Avinash Kaushik on how to create a data driven culture:

Click here to view the embedded video.

10:00 am – 10:10 am

Mike Grehan on the future of Search.

Click here to view the embedded video.

10:11 am – 10:15 am

CommonCraft on social media in plain english.

Click here to view the embedded video.

10:15am – 10:30 am

Please take a 15 minute networking break. Find some great people on twitter or friend some fine people on Facebook. On twitter you can follow me @TheGrok or on FaceBook @Bryan Eisenberg.

10:30 am – 11:10 am

Doug Mack, Carrie Johnson, David Daniels on Web 2.0 and what it means for retail from Shop.org.

Click here to view this presentation.

11:10 am – 12:00pm

Mitch Joel & Carrie Johnson on Social Shopping: How to Learn to Stop Worrying and Love Customer Control

Click here to view this presentation.

12:00pm – 1:00pm

Enjoy your lunch break.

1:00pm – 1:20pm

Ze Frank on …

Click here to view the embedded video.

1:30pm – 1:45pm

Gary Vaynerchuk on building personal brand within the social media landscape

Click here to view the embedded video.

1:45pm – 2:00pm

Rand Fishkin on SEO for branding and blogging for higher rankings.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday-SEO for Branding from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

——————————-

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday-Blogging for Higher Rankings from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

2:00pm – 2:05pm

Chris Anderson on Free! why $0.00 is the future of business.

Click here to view the embedded video.

2:05pm – 2:50pm

Bill Tancer on Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why It Matters.

Click here to view the embedded video.

2:50pm – 3:00pm

Chris Brogan on new media’s necessary evolution for progress. Rated R for language.

Click here to view the embedded video.

3:00pm – 3:30pm
Please take a break and speak to some real people

3:30pm – 3:35pm

Andy Beal on how to monitor your competitors.

Click here to view the embedded video.

3:35pm – 4:30pm

Adaptive Path staff on customer experience and how it integrates with marketing efforts.

Click here to view the embedded video.

4:35pm – 4:45pm

Chip Heath on making ideas stick.

Click here to view the embedded video.

There were several topics we wanted to include but didn’t make it in because either;  there we no presentations of it online, we weren’t thrilled with the content available, or Iweran out of time in trying to keep this virtual conference to one day.

Some of the important topics we wanted to cover:

1. the importance of good copywriting online
2. comparing search, display, ppc, cpm, cpa, etc.
3. creating efficiencies in your marketing
4. marketing in a recession
5. Integrated Brands & Interaction: connecting your online to your offline channel
6. preparing your organization for social media
7. why organization must adopt a continuous improvement process for their marketing efforts

What topics would you like to have seen?

P.S. We made the decision to leave any of our presentations/interviews out of the agenda to eliminate any bias, but if you want to watch some of our presentations, here you go:

1. How to get your organization to start testing

2. How to use personas to increase sales

Click here to view the embedded video.

3. Using Persuasion Architecture to improve your online results

So here you have it, the 7 principles of Gr8t Web 2.0 (read short-form) copy:

1.    Brevity – Twitter = learn to say lots in 140 characters. What must you say in 140 characters?  Can you say it powerfully, as well as quickly?

2.    Acknowledgement – Meaningful acknowledgement is often peer acknowledgement; what point is there to sharing photos on FB or FLICKR except peer acknowledgement?

3.    Participation – For shared platforms, more use = more value.  Always entice people to take the next step, just like facebook gets you to load a photo.

4.    Sharing – Sharing has to start with YOU!  Sharing = participation, acknowledgement, and authenticity.  What real value are you sharing?

5.    Authenticity – Posing kills peer acknowledgment.  Don’t pose for it, show it through transparency.  What can you put on the line to communicate credibility?

6.    Interaction – Can I talk to you, or only just listen?  How long is the lag-time for feedback?  Can I interact with others, or just you / the host?

7.    Speed – Kathy Sierra best explains Web 2.0-style speed.  Participation, sharing and acknowledgment all require speed of interaction & feedback.

This is great practice. As marketers and writers we must learn to say more in fewer words these days. Feel free to take a shot at revising these 7 in the comments below, adding your own, or feel free to tweet them and link back here (http://tinyurl.com/twittercopy).

And please, I beg thee, take your own political goggles off for a few minutes and join me as I take you on a tour of online marketing done well. The fact that we’re talking about a marketing effort headed by a politician running for the highest office is incidental.

Regardless of where you stand politically, even the most jaded pundit admits Sen. Obama’s campaign has built an online apparatus that would make most online businesses execs drool. In both scope and execution, there are few that equal it.

Those of us in the businesses universe can swipe a few lessons by observing the Obama online effort.

Several articles, like this, outline some tactics engaged in by the Obama team. But I want to sort a few of these and show you how they fall into a pattern of a stronger high-level strategy.

Putting People First

It doesn’t take much time on the Barack Obama Web site to realize that it’s focused on building relationships with people. Wording like “Find an Event Near You” reveals a visitor focus. While I was visiting the site, I found several active window Flash banners. One of them highlights the benefits of making a small donation; the other is a simple call to action allowing you to click a button and send a message to Obama’s new vice presidential pick.

Further down the page, Obama reaches out to Hillary Clinton supporters and sends them to a page where they can learn more about Obama in their own context, learn about the issues, and even invite others to the Obama cause. This is great example of a persuasion scenario done well.

The Obama machine understands what motivates people. If you engage the Obama site, you have the sense that you’re joining a team with a cause. You feel like you have a chance to go on the inside and look around, build a few relationships, and be a part of something bigger than you are. This is a powerful human motivation. Maybe that’s why it has motivated millions to donate to his cause.

By contrast, the John McCain Web site has good content and several prominent calls to action but little of it feels tied together to bigger purpose beyond simply helping McCain. There is no sense of WIIFM (define).

Using Engagement as a Success Measure

The team dedicated to maintaining Obama’s YouTube videos has it exactly right. While most social media jockeys are focused on views and traffic, this team is focused on a more profitable metric for the campaign: participation and engagement. In other words, viewers are engaging the campaign and taking action, like signing up to volunteer, joining the conversation, even making a contribution. Kate Albright-Hanna, who runs Obama’s YouTube video team, told the “Washington Post“:

Here, we don’t worry about how many views our videos get. That’s not the priority. One of our goals is to get people talking about what’s going on in their lives and why they’re supporting Barack — and hopefully not only will they watch the videos but also comment on them and forward them to relatives and friends and co-workers.

Possessing a Longer-Term Vision

Last Saturday, the Obama team made a small note in history by officially announcing Obama’s vice presidential pick by text message. Many pundits questioned the move, making the case that the text message platform was too small for such a big announcement. They felt this decision would squander a big opportunity to reach a larger audience. This is beside the point.

The real wisdom of the announcement is that thousands, maybe millions, signed up to be notified by text message.

Now the Obama campaign has a database of mobile numbers it can text in the future and use this communication medium to mobilize people on Election Day, or even before and after. Obama can now speak to a huge, engaged audience wherever they may be, right on their cell phones.

That’s thinking beyond the short term. Score.

Staying Customer Focused on the Micro Level

On the well-executed site, there are sign-up forms for several types of visitor conversions: events, e-mail lists, volunteer lists, and even a my.barackobama.com network that is a MySpace/Facebook type application for Obama supporters to connect.

Each form is presented clearly, is easy to fill out, and are among some of the best forms I’ve seen online. The Obama Web design team has done everything it can to get the site out of the way and let people sign up easily for anything they might be interested in.

Call-to-action buttons on the site are clear, large, easy to see, and generally worded well. You know exactly what you are doing when you click them.

Leveraging Technology, Not Just Using It

The Obama camp clearly understands what people do online. And it seems to be using social media technology well. Obama has a presence on MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and every other relevant 2.0 site.

You simply cannot ignore this presence.

For example, the Flickr account sports a slew of albums updated daily with pics from behind the scenes, all with descriptive captions. Again you get the sense that you can get inside the campaign.

Heck, Sen. Obama has overtaken Kevin Rose on Twitter.

Obama has even launched a site to address all the negative rumors and e-mail messages floating around the Internet about him.

The effectiveness of how the campaign uses the e-mail medium is impressive and probably worth a column all by itself.

Maintaining Consistency

This is easy in concept but hard for a large organization to execute.

Logos, fonts, and color palettes are consistent everywhere you look. Even the podium at the Democratic National Convention sports Obama’s font and colors. The consistent look and feel of the campaign touch points is impressive, and you get the sense that the campaign is a well-oiled machine. What kind of confidence do you believe that instills in visitors and supporters?

Conclusion

If you can ignore the politics and imagine the Obama campaign as a business like any other, you can’t help but admire its execution of a well thought-out plan to reach and engage people in the campaign. Ask yourself: how can you deploy these principles in your online marketing effort to better result? These are the same principle we use when we deploy persuasion architecture in companies.

Whether Obama can translate this into an election win is yet to be seen. The other question that remains: can you take this type of online grass-roots machine into a political office and use it influence change while you are in office? As a marketer, not a political animal, it will be interesting to watch.

And for the record, I am officially endorsing this man for president of the United States.

*Cross-posted on ClickZ.

And that makes sense, right? No matter how tightly integrated your business message is with the premise of the video, prospective customers will probably require more than one exposure to remember that business message right?In fact, there’s even an equation for it:

Retention = Salience * Repetition

Salience can be seen as roughly equivalent to emotional impact – and remember we’re talking about the emotional impact of the message, not the video itself. If the video is really cool AND is tightly connected with the message AND the message is important, salience will be high enough to stick in prospects’ minds with only one or two viewings.

But most viral marketing efforts never achieve that level of salience. Either the video isn’t all that astounding, or the business message is only weakly associated with the videos premise, or the business message itself is irrelevant to most people. In those cases, marketers will need to ensure more repeat viewings than the average prospect is likely to give a single video. You might watch a cool video once, maybe twice, but not much more than that. After all, how many times did you really watch “The Conversation” (excluding showing-it-to-others bystanding).

On the other hand, if a video is part of a series, like the Blendtec videos, you’ll probably watch 5-7 of the videos before tiring of them (assuming a half-way decent starting premise and execution). That’s enough viewings for a weaker business-to-video connection to sink in and be remembered or acted upon.

So I’m happy to say that I can add another viral marketing effort to the Blendtec example, and that this effort is indeed part of a campaign: please welcome the “Penny Pranks” series of videos from Office Max.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now, the premise of the videos (retailers reluctance to accept payment in pennies) is only weakly matched to Office Max, and only then through a special promotional back-to-school campaign. But even still, on your 2nd or 3rd video, the idea that Office Max will let you buy stuff for just a penny has certainly sunk in – especially for parents of school-aged children!

Click here to view the embedded video.

And that’s EVERYTHING when it comes to creating viral videos that will actually accomplish a business task. If Office Max had only done the one video in the restaurant (it’s most watched to date), it would have been a cute one-off that was forgotten and the business connection would have been utterly forgotten by most viewers. But through serialization, the campaign strengthens the business connection in the mind of the viewer.

• On the first video it’s a funny video. Ha Ha.
• On the second video, it’s not just one funny video about the guy paying with pennies, it’s the “Penny Prank” series.
• And by the third or fourth viewing, it has become Office Max’s penny prank series. The idea that Office Max has school supplies for 1 cent per item has finally sunk in.

Better yet, even in terms of just number of impressions, the campaign crushes the highest single video: 448K views for the restaurant video compared to 1.38M for the series. Which would you rather have? And who is to say that, had they gone with a stand alone video, they would have produced their most popular video on the first try?

Click here to view the embedded video.

While there is some controversy whether anyone can actual design a viral video – the viral part is an effect rather than a design feature – it’s a pretty sure bet that a serialized campaign has a much better shot of both achieving it’s business goals AND in going viral.

Yet as I was compiling these links and re-reading the Memos, a central theme seemed to emerged: many of the Roy’s memos dealt with “The Feel of Real” and how to capture that in your copy – what many of us might call Web 2.0-style copy. With this in mind, I began sorting and grouping those Monday Morning Memos to further highlight this theme.

Read through this collection of Memos and you’ll come away with a sounder idea of the voice of “new marketing” than 95% of the folks hyping that term. And if you want the executive summary, just read the first 2 links in each category – and then let yourself get drawn into the other titles as they spark your interest. Either way, enjoy…

Framing and Understanding the problem:

The Death of Hype

2008 Year of Transition

Hello and Goodbye from John and Jane Doe

Your Customer and You

Tomorrow Has Come

Pricing Value, and Saleability

The Solution – How To’s

Targeting Through Ad Copy

How to Make Your Ads Sparkle

Ready Angle Frame

Actions Speak Louder Than

Facts vs. Value-based statements

Counter-Branding

The Solution – Advanced Techniques & Examples

The Future of Ad Writing

Revealing the vivid unexpected

Refer to an Unseen Action

The Language of Shadow and Silence

Magic WordsCan You Make It Talk?

Mental Images, Emotions, and Word Associations

The Magnetic Power of the Mental Image

Visual Images vs. Mental Images

Magic Words

Are you Normal?

Peter Pan and Superman

Why We Buy

Persona-based Copy

The New Targeting

Choosing Your Magic Words

I hope this bit of reading has left you with a strong sense of what authentic, respectful copy sounds and reads like. Better yet, I hope you came away with some great techniques for producing this style of copy. Please feel free to add your own experiences, comments, and links via the comments section.

They’re bringing a balance back to the sometimes-crazy world of SEO enthusiasts.

I’m not an SEO expert, but it’s an interest of mine. I attended with a friend who’s a talented web/software developer, so I enjoyed seeing him “nerd-out” in his element of very, very technical folks.

It was a great set of presentations about AJAX, JavaScript, and making sure the major search engines can easily index your websites. In other words, making all the great technology you worked so hard to build play nice with the major search engine robots.

But it had nothing to do with FutureNow’s mission of helping businesses market better, conversion rate optimization, and Persuasion Architecture…or did it?

I walked away with a few impressions, and hopefully useful insights, about the material that we discussed. By the way, some real heavy-hitters in the SEO world were represented: we had an ex-Googler, Microsoft Live Search, SEOmoz.org, and Amazon.com represented.

First, I was blown away and happy when the Live Search representative, in the midst of everyone talking about JavaScript and sitemap files, reminded the room that the IT changes the developers applied to increase their organic search rankings should be tested to see if they increased conversion. Score one for Microsoft!

Second, it was mentioned that search engine robots don’t like it when you hide your site’s category structure inside a dropdown menu. Picture the dropdowns on many of our sites that are shortcut ways to drill down into site content. They often say things like, “I want to…” and then the menus contain options like, “Get a price quote,” “Talk to a salesperson,” “Read customer stories,” etc. These dropdown options are usually (and should be) redundant ways to navigate without using the site’s top/global navigation or its left or right-hand navigation links. I started thinking about this common web design “convention” and where it came from. It came from some so-called experts and design gurus a few years ago telling us users will only click three times. You need to get them to what they want in three clicks.

Fallacy! It wasn’t ever tested to see its effect on conversion rate! Might work for some, but how many?!? I file this one with the “users won’t scroll below the fold” nonsense.

Us younger web design folks thought to ourselves, “Well, if we have to get visitors to everything they might want in three clicks, the only way to do that is to put a million links on the homepage, or to put them in dropdown menus.” So we ended up doing something that wasn’t that great for visitors, and was never tested or proven to be more persuasive to our customers.

And now, the SEO “revolution” has brought attention back to the fact that search engines rank our sites based on how good of an experience we give visitors. Search engines want to see your site’s information architecture in a readable, no-frills format. Maybe our visitors do, too!

So while I don’t always agree with the amount of frenetic attention site owners give to Search Engine Optimization efforts, it’s nice to see that the SEO game is forcing us to clean up our web pages, clean up our code, and question design decisions that are perhaps past their prime. It even appears to be causing folks to focus on making changes for the sake of conversion, not just for the sake of getting more traffic to our sites.

Today’s interactive marketers face and make these types of decisions several times a day. At a glance, my bud’s decision seems sound. But does it hold up if the company’s goal is to maximize sales, increase conversion, increase return on marketing spend? Or even realize a speedy return on the new Web site’s cost? Probably not.

I’m sure the new site will perform better, but a significant amount of customer insight can be gained in six months, especially when comparing to the control of the old site. Are elements and pages on the site doing what they’re supposed to do? Can changes be made to move the needle even higher? How do they document that design changes were increasing revenue?

How many opportunities to improve business will be missed for six months? How much money will be left in wallets?

This story demonstrates the challenges today’s marketers face. What follows are some tips I shared during my keynote presentation at Search Engine Strategies Toronto.

You can view a sneak preview by watching the video below, and then continue with the post right below it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Traffic and Campaigns are the Means, not the End

For decades, marketing has existed in silo-centric tubes called campaigns. Today’s interactive marketer is managing and creating more campaigns than ever, and has to keep on top of delivery and analytics technologies while juggling third parties and internal staff just to move a campaign out into the real world. Many have become quite good at this, mining for keywords, launching landing pages, and adjusting for SEO (define). The better ones are neck deep in analytics, constantly adjusting, tweaking, and chasing mostly small traffic increases.

But the marketing game isn’t playing nice and refuses to remain static. It’s morphing fast. Campaign costs are rising, and the needles are moving less for even the most effective marketers. Profitable customer behavioral insights are few. And interactive marketers are running out of ideas. So they move on to the next campaign and repeat.

Some marketers’ budgets are being choked. And optimization is the first line item to get slammed up on the butcher block.

To top it off, visitors are expecting more and paying attention less.

Pay Per Conversation, not Pay Per Click.

We recently searched for “pink roses.” The results page looked promising, with several relevant ads above the organic listings, several ads that looked enticing, and several organic links of interest. Sadly, we had to click through three ads and the top organic listing before we landed on a page that included a prominent image of pink roses.

Again, this is the result of the silo mentality. Marketers are experts at directing traffic to the front door, but lack the insight to get visitors to the products and then to the register. This results from failing to plan a persuasive scenario. I’m not saying this is easy with the long tail (define) of terms we’ve become responsible for. This is the minimum required if you expect to convert visitors.

I wonder how many of these marketers would slow down or turn off the traffic on this term and assume that the term “pink rose” doesn’t convert.

They’re thinking about campaigns, not people. And conversion rates remain flatlined. They think of the volume of click and the ad CTR (define), but forget that an ad’s objective is to initiate a conversation with a visitor. That conversation begins on the Web site.

Process, People, then Tools

This is tragic considering how many tracking, implementation, testing, and measuring tools are now available (even for free).

The interactive marketer 2.0 will understand how to optimize and plan for visitor intent, not just traffic. This marketer will spend less and get better conversions. This marketer will know what spikes the needles and how to duplicate it. A few of these marketers already exist.

Amazon is the benchmark example of embracing an optimization culture. They have good people, and testing is ingrained into the organization.

Look at the evolution of its “add to cart” strategy. This evolution reflects better attention to the customer (improved, visible and usable buttons in prominent positions) and reflects a tie-in with Amazon’s overall strategy. Rest assured, there was a cycle of optimization, testing, and customer insight that contributed to each improved element.

click to enlarge

Pay attention to this space on Amazon. Chances are it will get even better. Look at how many times Amazon paid attention to this one area over the course of years, while many companies have never reexamined it. In fact, an Internet Retailer 500 study showed that nearly 76 percent don’t test.

The key is to have a process. One such process, persuasion architecture, is based on asking three questions:

1. Who are we trying to persuade?
2. What action(s) do we want them to take?
3. What action do they want to take (not always identical to No. 2)

Can you see how these questions are answered in Amazon’s strategy?

Interactive Marketing Optimization: Eliminate Risks, Reap Rewards

There’s almost no downside to optimization and testing. It’s easy to make a case for keeping optimization in the budget. Throwing up things to test (a.k.a., the infinite monkey theorem) isn’t effective. You must optimize your conversations.

In conclusion, follow these steps when thinking outside the campaign.

• Get good at free tools, then pay for them. Tools aren’t the indicator of success, but having a process and the people in place to take action are.
• Set up a system for content planning and optimization. If this isn’t a top cultural priority, expect tomorrow’s customer to keep finding ways to ignore you.
• Take more time planning experiences for how people gather information and make decisions. Don’t take your content lightly or your customer will click the back button.
• Take less time idling on execution. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing wrong.
• Invest in continuous optimization. If it isn’t right, you can fix it quickly, easily, and cheaply with tools like Google Website Optimizer.
• Have better conversations, make more sales, leads, subscriptions, etc.

*Cross-posted on ClickZ.

. .

Editor’s Note: If you’re buried in data and looking for a better process to keep your campaigns customer-focused, accountable and metrics-driven, contact us today for a confidential and free consultation.

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

When I first heard of the site, I said it sounded like “the ad industry’s collective Wet 2.0 dream.” The beta seems to reflect that impression, with a heavy dose of racy* and/or funny and/or creative ads, most of which seem more suited to winning awards than selling product. But there are exceptions, and it is nice to see a venue for (at least some of the) commercials that exceed 30 seconds. And since the US lives inside its own media bubble, it’s good to see a new venue for international commercials like this one from the Barcelona City Council:

Sure, they probably weren’t thinking of someone like me when they made the ad, but suffice it to say, there’s now an even slimmer chance you’ll ever find me double-parked in Barcelona.

Then there are funny and memorable ads like this one for Skittles:

There’s also a bit of irony here for brands who’ve tried to push their own ads on specialty micro-sites; brands like Budweiser, which spent G-d-knows-what creating Bud.tv, only to have me see this ad for the first time on Firebrand instead:

If GrokDotCom was the first place you saw this ad, that could mean one of at least two things:

1. Firebrand could be a success as a destination spot for branded content.
2. Bud.tv shouldn’t make people register and log in, and then not allow bloggers to embed the video (something I’m presuming because I refuse to register for the site).

Here’s the Firebrand “Manifesto”:

We love commercials. We submit, with rare exception, that they’re the best stuff on TV. In under a minute you get the best directors, the sickest special effects, the funniest writers—what’s not to love?

We love commercials. 1984. Mean Joe Green. Whasssup? You know you love them, too. So let’s gather ‘round the best of them. Sort them. Judge them. Share them. Love them.

We love commercials. The eye candy. The laugh out louds. The did-you-just-see-thats. The most loved, the most emailed, the ones we still talk about today. Let every day be Super Bowl Monday.

Welcome to Firebrand.com. (The best stuff on TV, online. )

Seems a bit heavy if you don’t consider the ads to be the best thing about TV. But that’s pretty common. The seductions of overstated “About Us” copy when there’s no copy on the homepage (as if to say, “You must know who we are, right?”) are hard for most startups to resist. Since it’s a beta launch, I’ll reserve judgment for now. Still, they might want to run that through the We-We Monitor.

What do you think? Will Firebrand go the way of Bud.tv, or does it help to have all these commercials in one place?

[*The first commercial that was showing when I went to the site this morning was for Naturisme.fr, a French "naturist" site -- and no, I don't mean organic food in the literal sense -- which wasn't exactly work-safe by "violence good, nudity bad" American cultural standards.]

In Roy’s practice, advertising builds brands and drives traffic for his offline clients. Roy cautions his clients not to get ahead of themselves. If all the traffic (read: visitors) he drives get what they expected, then the business grows organically from repeat customers and word-of-mouth. If these visitors don’t get what they want, their lackluster experience will erode the brand. In other words, they would be refilling a leaky bucket with new traffic. Unfortunately, the supply of new traffic is never unlimited.

Jeffrey Eisenberg likes to ask, “Are you paying your marketers to make promises that your business has no intention of keeping?”

On the Web, how much traffic is enough?

If your site has a few thousand visitors a month, what would you do with a few thousand per day? Sadly, with average conversion rates barely hovering in the low single digits for most markets, for most of us, a sudden boost of traffic would do little more than squander our audience. In fact, we’d simply do it faster. When your funnel leaks like a sieve, do you really want to turn on the fire hose? Conventional wisdom on the Internet says ‘yes,’ but I challenge you to ask yourself if that’s wise, or just more convenient.

Bryan touched on this topic yesterday, and Robert Scoble, Dave Winer and the Guardian are debating the concept over at Techmeme. Scoble claims he wants a “smart” audience, not a “big” audience. (Sounds like he’s found conversion.) He can model a smart audience, plan an experience for them, then measure and improve upon that plan. A big audience — just for the sake of winning the Web’s version of “Best Looking” superlative (technically speaking, of course ) — I’d imagine leaves him with the same void some people feel when they grow up, only to realize they’d peaked in high school.

Let’s contrast this with a story I read in yesterday’s Internet Retailer. Our friend Dustin Robertson from Backcountry.com has been experimenting with one of their brands on MySpace. They’ve spent a year, added 3,000 friends, and still can’t find a correlation (forget causality) between MySpace and sales. He acknowledges the experiment costs only a few hundred bucks per month, so their current plan is to keep it going.

Typically, when I hear things like this, Einstein’s definition of insanity comes to mind (or Franklin’s or Twain’s, depending on who you believe originally uttered the quote). In this case, though, it’s more a symptom of the low relative cost of doing business online, and the large numbers the ‘net provides. We’ll happily chase our tails on the logic that we only need a small success to realize the value of a home run.

Funny. Given that thinking, I’m surprised more people don’t take the, “If we build it, they will come” approach to traffic. Of course, that only works if you build what visitors want, and give it to them the way they want it. Do that, and you just may be amazed at how much profit you can squeeze out of the traffic that stops by for a visit.

Our own Holly Buchanan blogged about one company’s viral efforts this week in “Would You Buy a Bra from This Man?” Zafu.com’s campaign started off with a small mailing as part of a test and has started to take off. This ad polarized the audience. Thankfully, Zafu offers a great service that already gets people talking. The video just helped the conversation along.

So how do you make something great?

The Three Word-of-Mouth Triggers:

Recall the last few times you participated in word-of-mouth culture about your experience with a product or service. The product either exceeded your expectations or fell substantially below them. Either way, that word-of-mouth was a result of the product’s performance along with one or a combination of the following triggers:

Architectural: This is a product, package, or store design. When a product or experience is planned or controlled for a specific effect, it’s architectural. Aesthetics and a unique appearance and experience are architectural triggers.

Product examples: iPod, Bose, BMW, “Halo” (video game), RAZR, and Michael Graves’ products

Experience examples: McDonald’s playgrounds, Apple retail stores, Starbucks, and Krispy Kreme stores

Kinetic: This is energy and performance, in the show business sense of the word. Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle, which the well-known book When Fish Fly is based on, is the quintessential example of a kinetic trigger. Hipness, selection, fashion, and outstanding product performance are also kinetic triggers.

Product examples: BlackBerry, Tony Hawk (video game), Red Bull, Starbucks’ products, and Airborne

Experience examples: Any slot machine, Cabela’s stores, HDTV, JibJab’s first presidential video, JetBlue, and iTunes software

Generous: A generous trigger occurs when perceived value substantially exceeds the price of a product or service. Extremely large portions in a restaurant, oversized seats on an airplane, and consistently low prices are all generous triggers.

Product examples: Kia, Vonage, Skype, Hyundai, and McDonald’s Happy Meal toys

Experience examples: Great AYCE buffets, Wal-Mart, Steepandcheap.com, and the first-generation iTunes Music store.

(Note: Roy H. Williams, the “Wizard of Ads,” was the first to identify and label these triggers in his Monday Morning Memo.)

The more remarkable the experience, the stronger the word of mouth. Just barely exceeding expectations isn’t enough. In other words, “Just make great stuff.”

BusinessWeek’s Burt Helm noticed this gem of a Facebook comment:

“do people realize WHY prices are so low at Wal-Mart? cause THEY DO NO PAY LIVING WAGES to employees in America and THEIR CHINESE FACTORIES ARE BASICALLY SLAVERY.

WAL-MART IS HATEFUL AND IS A BLIGHT ON AMERICA.

Facebook should CUT ALL ITS TIES to Wal-Mart. GET WALMART OFF FACEBOOK!”

To which Helm adds:

I actually think it’s a good call on Wal-Mart’s part not to censor the page or take it down. This discussion is inevitable. And looking at the feed of comments now, it has actually spurred a pretty healthy bull session on Wal-Mart’s role in the U.S., with several students coming out in favor of the retailing giant. I think it’s smart PR for Wal-Mart to host this discussion, even it was totally inadvertent.

The retail giant seems happy to stay on the sidelines for now. Jami Arms, a spokesperson from Wal-Mart told Reuters:

“We recognize that we are facilitating a live conversation, and we know that in any conversation, especially one happening online, there will be both supporters and detractors” [...]

Still, PodTech’s Jeremiah Owyang thinks they should be more proactive:

[...] I highly recommend that Wal-Mart consider trying a community strategy using a transparent and authentic blog or video blog series that addresses the very brand issues that they are getting slammed on. I took at look online for a “Walmart blog” and didn’t see any from the company, why is this? It’s going to be very difficult to try a community marketing strategy with eCommerce hooks without first addressing the brand detractors.

Now I’m confused. How exactly could a blog be more transparent than this Frontline documentary on Wal-Mart? Could any company’s self-reflecting stab at “citizen journalism” be more transparent than that of objective, professional journalists?

Linking to our recent discussion on transparency, Copyblogger’s Brian Clark wonders if we really want authenticity in the first place:

[...] Some so-called business blogging experts think “keeping it real” is rule number one, even when it’s completely inappropriate.

The secret to effective marketing is to focus on the needs of others, rather than our own egocentric need to “authentically” express whatever we’re feeling at the moment. We teach that to our children, and yet we’re to believe it doesn’t apply to social media?

Where do we draw the line with transparency and authenticity when what people really want is a story that adds value to their lives? What if no one likes the real you?

It’s a good question. Wal-Mart brings a welcome dose of transparency in terms of product reviews, but the documentary finds their executives coming off as rigid ideologues who readily justify an NSA-style employee spying program, its contribution to America’s vast trade deficit with China, reports of bullying manufacturers, and a creative definition of the phrase “living wage” in terms of the company’s commitment to saving consumers money and increasing “shareholder value”.

Fortunately for Wal-Mart, its loudest critics don’t seem to shop there. It’s a good thing they can take the heat; they’ll need that attitude in order to stay on Facebook.

Has the brand people love to hate finally learned when to stay quiet? What do you think? Should they stay or should they go?

A few of my favorite revelations:

BBC censors excerpt from BBC-commissioned report criticizing the BBC’s tendency to self-censor. There may be some irony here.

Nortel – Accounting scandal, what accounting scandal?? This sweeping rewrite of Nortel’s page removes all mention of the 2000-2004 accounting scandal that resulted in investigations from the RCMP and the Attorney General, the CEO being fired for cause, numerous directors being shown the door, etc.

Ronald McDonald orders deletion of McDonald’s criticisms. They replaced the critical and best-selling book “Fast Food Nation” with the more friendly book “McDonald’s: Behind the Arches”. They also removed a link to anti-McDonald’s site “McSpotlight”.

Don’t be a Web 2.0 lemming!

Sure, Wikipedia is directionally helpful. For instance, I learned that lemmings aren’t suicidal, they’re just stupid. As you may know, the rumors of these rodents jumping off cliffs en masse are overstated. If you’re looking for myth coverage, Wikipedia’s the place to be. Meanwhile, MSN’s Encarta tells us that lemmings “…swim lakes and rivers, cross mountains, and eat all vegetation in their path. Eventually, some reach the sea; attempting to swim it as if it were a river, they are drowned.”

Reminds us of the a few corporations, does it not?

It’s not surprising that governments and corporations are being outed for their Wikipedia spin-jobs; what’s surprising is that it didn’t happen sooner. How is it that Wikipedia couldn’t have done this themselves long ago?

Unfortunately, there’s no Wikipdeia entry for “wikiality,” one of Stephen Colbert’s invented words. Still, this video can illustrate the true PR costs of “wikilobbying”.

LinkedIn is valuable and connects me to many entrepreneurs and potential recruits but, anecdotally, the “senior staff” is hanging out on Facebook and searching for contacts!

Jeffrey and I have been doing some similar experimentation. Jeffrey’s been focused on LinkedIn (here’s his profile) and I’ve been frolicking on Facebook (here’s my profile). GrokDotCom readers should feel free to befriend either one or both of us.

While LinkedIn currently has a greater volume (in numbers) of our “friends,” the velocity of requests on Facebook has been much greater as of late.

Are you on either one?

Many are thinking differenty about Facebook than they do about LinkedIn. Others are concerned with how much time they waste and how to manage it. According to the Telegraph, over 70% of businesses in the U.K. have blocked Facebook from within their company.

What’s your experience with both? Have you used either one successfully in your business? What do you think the future holds for either one?

In just a few years, the company has seen a lot of change in the video market, from Google’s YouTube acquisition to an influx of competition from newer startups. Through it all, the company has stayed true to its vision, letting fans upload videos of refrigerators that can launch a cold beer right into your hand.

What could be better than a beer-launching fridge? Well, unlike YouTube — which has made some gestures to share the wealth — Metacafe pays the folks who submit video as much as thousands of dollars per month.

Bryan & Arik discuss:

• Why the video market is no longer just for skateboarding dogs.
• The rise of Metacafe, and user-generated content in general.
• How to make a living by submitting video to Metacafe.
• Viral marketing, and how to create videos that people want to watch.
• The “micro-boredom” epidemic, and how to fix it.

Click here to listen to Arik Czerniak & Bryan Eisenberg

To download this podcast for your next flight, car ride, or trip to the beach, right-click here

If you have any follow-up questions for Arik, let us know in the comments and we’ll do a follow-up post with his answers!

Surely, channels are where the action is at. However, it’s important to remember they are just that – and they change. Circa 1998, perhaps when many of you were 10, The Globe.com, GeoCities and Tripod were all the rage. They faded from our horizon over time. The same thing will happen to many of today’s hot sites. In fact, I advise marketers not to invest too much time in creating “a Facebook strategy” as much as they don’t have “an NBC strategy” or “a New York Times strategy.” Instead, I encourage them to people watch, learn and then plan based on their audience and the big picture.

The most interesting action is in sociology. In other words, how does technology change our culture and how we interact with media, the web and each other – and to what end? This was a major realization for me a few months back and you have probably noticed it in my writing, which is less channel focused. These days, I am far more interested in what people do with technology rather than on what the latest new “shiny object” is. … [read the post]

By the way, I know where Rubel got that great monkey picture he used for the post.

We spent most of the session on the “Ben & Jerry’s” island. During the session, we were able to fly around, look at a wall of the history of B&J, and chat with other people. Wait, that was one person during the entire 30 minute session. I asked what it cost to create the island and Don nodded when I suggested $50k.

Don also noted that we are only in the first inning of virtual worlds. I agree with his statement. It reminds me a bit of when the Web first started to commercialize. “Who would use the Web to buy insurance” is a statement I heard several times from an executive at an insurance company.

Technovia’s Ian Batteridge has a similar take, writing that:

. . . the approach that most corporates have taken with Second Life has been the same as they took with the early web “We must have a Second Life presence! Build it and people will come!”

But SL isn’t static media, and that, unfortunately, means that the static media approaches you can take with a web page won’t work. SL isn’t a medium which is suitable for researching information unless that information is best communicated via 3D models. A museum might profit from simply building an island and waiting for people to come – a corporate won’t.

On face value, I agree with both Stern and Batteridge. But they raise an interesting point: If those marketing on Second Life are using prehistoric Web tactics — i.e., stuff from the broadcast or “push” marketing playbook, left over from the old media days – why in the proverbial world might they work in a virtual one? This is uncharted territory to be sure, but wouldn’t product placement and viral promotions among Second Life, er, citizens make more sense than paying $50k to setup shop just to say that you’re kinda, almost, virtually there?

Ah-ha… the plot thickens! Over at WebInkNow, David Meerman Scott* tells us of a staffing company that’s paying real money to Second Life temps. Might these virtual folks end up staffing the virtual islands, thus creating a real economy? And does virtual ice cream taste any good? Like “astronaut ice cream” perhaps?

For now, I’m skeptical. But there’s a lesson here for all of us: Before pushing a new online presence, make sure you know what success really means in advance. Otherwise, those virtual islands might leave your company a bit… shipwrecked.

[*For those who missed it, don't forget to check out my recent interview with David Meerman Scott on his fantastic book, The New Rules of Marketing & PR.]