The disturbing thought is that if this style of “starburst” guarantee seal has become so popular that there are free, downloadable icon sets out there, isn’t that beginning to hurt their credibility?  If everyone’s assurances are copycats, can a devastating loss of credibility be far behind? When something becomes a commodity, it loses value.

I don’t fault the designer, who was simply satisfying a perceived demand and trying to promote themselves and make a living.  But, I think we’re hurting ourselves as digital marketers when we settle for the same old generic approach.

When it comes to security, consumers do want to see the same badges across the Net; think Verisign, McAfee, and Digicert.  But, when it comes to business guarantees, I believe seeing the same badges across the Net will hurt credibility over time; it almost has to work that way.

So how do we fix this and make sure consumers find us credible over the long haul?

1. Demand more of your design/er – Let your creative resources be creative.  Ask for custom assurance graphics that reflect your overall site design, brand, and voice.  Better yet, ask them to be creative over and over again, and test your way to the winner.
2. Substantiate the claim – Make whatever visual element you come up with link to more information.  One of our clients has a guarantee linked to a popup window with simple (yet specific) content written in plain language explaining what they guarantee, how to get your money back, and how they are willing to bank on your satisfaction. In other words, put some skin in the game.
3. Avoid the “Set it and forget it” mentality – Last year’s assurances are this year’s BS, and will likely be even less effective next year.  The competitive landscape is always changing, and consumers get savvier and more skeptical every day. Just another reason to Always Be Testing.

Aside from my example, I’ve not seen much creativity in this area of web design.  Does anyone have examples they’d like to share of great, custom guarantee graphics? We promise not to copycat you

As I relate the following three eCommerce mishaps, be thinking about whether you can eradicate all of them from your business by the time the “Holiday Rush” hits. ALL are preventable, if you start today and take one item at a time.

Let’s start at the “precipitating event;” the spark that lit my desire to shop online…

1. An email with a promo code arrived.  w00t!  They paid attention to past purchases, and sent me a great promotion: 10% off a brand I’ve purchased before, and free shipping if the order exceeds a certain amount.

How They’re Losing Sales: Despite not mentioning an expiration date for the promo code, it was expired by the time I reached checkout.  I’m notoriously slow for opening emails from online retailers, but I bet I’m not alone.  Creating a sense of urgency with an expiration date is fine, but remember that shoppers sometimes go weeks without going through their personal email accounts to read your promo codes.

And now it’s Customer Service’s turn…

2. When the promo code came up as expired, I was understandably disappointed.  I’d just spent a fair amount of my weekend building up enough value in my shopping cart to qualify for the free shipping (Yes, I’m cheap.)  My credit card was out of my wallet.  So, I clicked the live chat in the cart to see if they’d extend the promo code, or give me an equivalent one.

How They’re Losing Sales: The live chat agent, while polite and earnest, was not able to do anything to help me (be a cheapskate).  They weren’t empowered by their employer to get creative and save me from abandoning my cart.  They suggested I call the “real” Customer Service during regular M-F business hours.  So my guess is that the live chat is being outsourced, which is fine, but if they aren’t empowered to save sales, they’re probably not giving good ROI.

Now stepping up to the plate, Technology…

3. I came back the next day with the intention of calling the retailer and trying to get them to extend the promo code or give me the equivalent deal.  So, I returned to the site and clicked “My Cart” to review what I’d put in there, and have it on-screen when I called.

How They’re Losing Sales: They didn’t save my cart! So many sites are saving cart items via cookie that I assumed my items would be there the following day or week.  So now I’m definitely not going to re-build my cart AND call them to try and negotiate the promo code.  I’m going to just repress the whole memory…maybe I’ll even forget the retailer’s brand in the process!

These 3 blunders may seem unconnected from a business perspective, but from a buyer perspective, they were all part of a persuasion scenario that broke down and turned a VERY motivated shopper into a lost sale.

I do like the site, and hope they can address these issues and stay in business.  But they and others will have a very painful holiday sales season if they don’t treat the disparate parts as a unified buying experience that must be nearly flawless to be profitable.

According to the nifty pie-chart to the right and the related study, because  print newspapers reach people who are actively looking for, or “checking,” ads, they are still a solid advertising medium.  How these people can conclude one thing from the other is utterly beyond me.

While newspapers may be a medium that still draws people  who are actively searching out ads, that hardly means newspapers are a solid advertising medium for most advertisers.

As Social Media Today rightly points out, the idea of “actively looking” basically implies the following scenario:

“To me it says, ‘I want a new job (or car etc), let’s check the ads.’ And sure, newspapers and online will come first when that’s the motivation.

I would simply add 3 things to that analysis:

1) Newspapers and Yellow Pages are inevitably being displaced by the internet. Local, lower-level job listings may remain a stronghold of local newspapers, but other than that, most prospects feel they’re better off starting with a Google search or a quick check of Craig’s List.

2) You might NOT want to attract the more eager scourers of the local paper.  Especially when advertising a job position.  Seriously, would you rather find an applicant who, while still holding down his present job, thought your position perfectly described his strengths, qualifications, personality, and so on, or would you rather get the guy who’s between jobs, is desperately seeking paid work, and who saw your position in the paper?  Might I suggest that radio, blogging, or social networking sites might be a better option for attracting the first type of applicant over the second?

3) Old school, intrusive media muscle still puts the smack-down on newspapers - especially when the radio or TV campaign is followed up by a strong web presence.   Ad-dollar-for-ad-dollar tests show radio providing a 14:1 increase in driving response over newspapers.

Why Radio + Internet kicks butt for regional and local businesses

If you hear a compelling radio message on something for which you’re not yet in the market, but you continue to hear that same offer/UVP/message from the same brand or company, what do you think will happen when you DO come in the market for that product or service?

Do you think you’ll:

• a) search Google using general category terms?

Or

• b) Type in the offer, campaign name, or brand name from those compelling and memorable radio ads?

I’d guess b, and my experience promoting website via radio strongly suggests the same.  If you do a solid job advertise your offer and your company on radio, you will influence what they search on when they’re finally in the market.

So what happens to your competition when people search on your brand name instead of a category term?

With that scenario, your competitors are pretty much screwed right from the starting block! And that’s a traffic driving system most of us can get behind ; )

P.S.  If you’re interested in learning more about this technique, the great Chris Maddock and I will be teaching Writing for Radio and the Internet in Austin on the 25th and 26th.

In fact, you may not like the product, either, simply because you’re probably not part of their targeted audience.  So make up your mind now to look past that in order to see the marketing decisions behind both the product and the site.

Let’s start by imagining that you’ve just been challenged to enter the fitness category. Not to sell some machine or piece of equipment, but to sell a workout program.  You can pick any angle of approach you want, and let’s assume you have the wherewithal to find the science or content to make the angle of approach you pick the “real deal.”

What angle of approach would you choose?

And for what audience would you tailor your messaging?

Now, let’s walk through the likely thought process behind the mystery website

• As far as dedicated gym rats go, who really makes up the bulk of that audience? Men.  Younger men, in fact.  I’m guessing, but I’d say probably between the ages of 18-35.

• Why do they work out? The same reason why most people work out, if you ignore the rationalized claims and scratch deeper into their real motivations: they want to look good.  And given this age group, that means looking good to women; they want to attract more chicks.

• Now here’s the million dollar question: how may workout programs are brazen enough to say, “This workout is THE workout for attracting women”? Answer: none.  At least none that I’ve ever come across, until – out of professional curiosity alone, mind you – I clicked on a banner ad for The Adonis Effect.

Now, do I actually like the Website?  No.  I think the cartoon character at the beginning is a huge turnoff.  So is forcing visitors to engage with your “Calculate your Adonis Index” tool before letting them past the splash pages and onto the real sales copy.  Nor do I make any claims for the validity of the statements made on this site or by these entrepreneurs.

What I DO like is the incredibly intelligent approach to marketing a workout program. The last workout program to take such a brazen approach was the infamous buns of steal videotape.  You know, the tape that became a cultural icon, that spawned a 22-tape “of steel” series, and that launched Tamilee Web into fitness icon status?

Always make sure your messaging/copy is On Target

While I don’t think The Adonis Effect will become as high-profile as Buns of Steel (and that might well be a Marketing to Women lesson for you right there), I do think it’ll make a killing off its target audience.  And here’s the take-away lesson from that:

Always make sure your messaging/copy is speaking to the real, deeply felt, emotional needs of the prospective customer.  Crummy writing that’s on target will always beat great writing that’s directed at anything other than the heart of the reader. And of course, that goes for websites as well.

You can ding The Adonis Effect for it’s cheesy Website(s) – along with any number of usability and persuasive faux pas – all you want, but the essential message is on target. And I’d be willing to bet money on their success because of that one factor.

Why Persona-based copy matters – and which copywriting legend would (likely) agree

Back when Holly Buchanan and I used to routinely teach Persuasive Online Copywriting, we’d have the class write a short piece of copy based on a standard demographic/target-audience profile, then we’d replace that crappy (but typical) marketing profile with personas and have the students re-write their copy.

Invariably, the second pieces of copy blew away the first – not because we had magically turned the students into better writers, but always because the copy went from stereotypical advertising appeals to emotionally on target copy for intended audience.

And you know who else preached this same “On Target” message?  The late Gary Halbert.  Just watch this video and you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about at around the 1:40 mark:

Click here to view the embedded video.

P.S.  Although a public/open session of Persuasive Online Copywriting hasn’t been held in about a year, you can still get the majority of the lessons from that 1-day course by attending Writing for the Radio and Internet at Wizard Academy.  Chris Maddock and I co-teach that 2-day course, with Chris focusing on improving core writing skills while I teach a specific methodology for creating and linking on target web copy.

[Editor's note: the author of this post is now blogging at jeffsextonwrites.com]

A pitch-man whose fame and success made him the target of more pitches than he ever gave.  Pitches made by desperate inventors looking for him to save them after they’d already mortgaged the house, spent the kids’ college fund, and invested all their life savings trying to bring some gadget to market.  People who showed up saying, “If only you, Billy Mays, would represent me on TV, I know we’d be able to sell my ________”

So what was the one product quality Billy INSISTED on? The one thing a product absolutely had to have if he was going to take on that kind of responsibility?

Demonstrability.

And Billy talks about the importance of demonstrability within the first 23 seconds of this video – the last interview he ever gave.  Watch:

Click here to view the embedded video.

What Billy knew that so many of us forget, is that a conclusion that the audience comes to on their own is a conclusion they’ll believe and act on. No normal advertising claim can achieve that, no matter how much evidence you throw behind it.

SHOW someone an “I can’t freakin’ believe it” demonstration, and they’ll walk away convinced. Try to persuade them with a stack of studies, facts, and figures, and they’ll likely assume you rigged the tests, got your testimonials from all your friends, and “interpreted” the facts with all the abandon of Jim Cramer telling people to hold onto their Bear Stearns stocks 6 days before the bankruptcy filing.

In Web terms, put your Social Security Number on the front page of your website and I’ll be a lot more likely to believe you can also keep me safe from identity theft.  Forgo the demonstration in favor of detailing your 14-step process to keep me safe, and I may not even read it, let alone believe your claim(s).

And, yes, dramatizing the benefit has long been the specialty of the infomercial, whether it was the ginsu knife cutting through the tin can, the sham-wow pulling up spilt coke from a carpet, or, yes, the incredible stain removing feats of oxy-clean.

Click here to view the embedded video.

So the question for you Web copywriters out there is, how can you inject demonstrability into your copy?

And if you can’t fully create demonstrability with copy and static pictures alone, how can you use a little video to bring that info-mercial magic to your sales pages?

And as a warning, this Zappos video is a clear case on how NOT to do it.

Do these guys show the product in action?  No.  Do they show you any parts of the shoe a visitor can’t see from the multiple images Zappos’ site already provides.  No.  So what the hell is the video for again?

How about showing me the guy’s foot in the flip flop, with a close up on the arch support?  How about showing me how flexible (or not) the flip flop is – how much it bends with the foot vs. how hard it slaps up against the heal with each step.  How it fits a narrow/medium/wide foot.  Etc.  Going a few thousand steps further, how about showing me how well the shoe looks after a few months of use?

C’mon, Zappos, why use video if you’re not going to actually SHOW the product in action?  Why use the video if you’re not going to actually help answer more questions than could have been answered with just text and pictures?

Anyway, Billy Mays’s family has my deepest condolences.  And you readers have my sincere wish that you take one of Billy’s last marketing lessons to heart.

While cleaning the last remnants of unsolicited and undesirable e-mail from my inbox a few days ago, I had two interesting thoughts. First, spam can actually be good for something. And second, inspiration does indeed strike in uncanny places.

The thoughts started while deleting spam e-mail number 12,874. It was targeting the otherwise happy man who only needs a little help in the sack, offering him the solution in a little blue pill.

Are there really that many men who need that kind of help? Enough to deserve 90 percent of Internet traffic?

Doesn’t seem like spammers are taking any chances. To help men, spammers will find every single one of those guys. And gosh darn it, they will help them by offering an even lower price on these meds.

Sure, a few guys (maybe even a gal or two) will take them up on the offer. But compared to the number of e-mail messages they send out? What do you think the return might be? One in 100,000? One in a million?

Sounds a little impotent to me. It got me thinking about how impotent all our campaigns can be. Just because we aren’t promoting porn, credit report scores, or ED in e-mail blasts doesn’t mean we aren’t engaging in some of the same obnoxious behavior.

Consider your marketing campaign.

It’s like going into a bar (actually more like thousands of bars) and walking up to each girl sight unseen asking for a kiss until you find one willing to give you one.

Spamming is at an all-time high. While the conversion rate is horrible, spammers must be getting some sort of payoff or they wouldn’t bother. Businesses can’t afford to use these tactics and lose the trust and credibility needed to grow in a transparent market.

Elevate your campaign’s quality by avoiding some of the cheapo, spamalicious tactics spammers engage in. Many spammers focus on the perfect pickup line (e-mail subject line or even the top of the message content) that will get them past the bouncers (spam filters) and in the door.

Pickup lines are tired.

Some of the better marketers are focusing their efforts on the first date (the landing page), but like so many first dates, these marketers are only talking about one person the entire time, and it isn’t their date. These marketers are just “wewe-ing” all over themselves. It’s a bit of turn off.

Next, still not willing to take the blame for being bad conversationalists, these chumps resort to trying different designs, colors, and hero images. But the only thing that changes is the outfit; inside it’s still the same selfish page, with copy that drones on and on about the company, never stopping once to ask or acknowledge the visitor’s needs. These marketers feel justified because every once in awhile some bored date will give in and pull out a wallet. But there’s no love, no spark. Just another night in shopping purgatory.

Some marketers are so impotent that they think some pill, like a new technology, a new measuring tool, or a new campaign idea, will get the ladies to fall in love.

Sad.

It’s much easier to get a lady’s phone number than to win her heart. But what companies are actually aiming for their customers’ hearts? How many are only aiming for the phone number — or worse? How many think it is intelligent business to build a company on one-night stands? Check out how many of the top converting retail Web sites have a strong focus at bringing back customers.

Making customers love you is hard work. You can’t fake it or manufacture it. You have to charm your customer, surprise her by giving more than she expected. Listen more than the other guys (your competitors). Make your conversations about her, not you. Before you know it, you’ll have a lot more visitors genuinely interested in your company. You won’t feel the need to get sleazy for your marketing to actually work.

Have you been guilty of spamming your way into bad relationships? Or have you found a nice formula for customer love?

Never?

You mean no one has ever blocked the exit and said something like, “Hey, I saw you put that bottle of wine in your cart, why didn’t you buy it?”

It sounds funny until you realize that most online remarketing services offer to do exactly that to your website visitors.  They’ll pester them with e-mails, pop-ups, and phone calls should they have the bad fortune of visiting your site, adding something to your shopping cart, and then not buying it.

Why would otherwise sane e-tailers revert to such uncivil, gorilla-like tactics?  Really bad assumptions about both human nature and the nature of online shopping.  They simply haven’t compared what they’re doing to that kind of offline analogy.  So here are the bad assumptions, along with a few suggestions on how to correct them and what to do instead:

Assumption #1: Everyone is a late stage buyer

Related assumptions: Everyone who puts something in your shopping cart has a full-blown intent to purchase that item, and it was just chance or a shopping cart flaw that caused them to “abandon” your cart.  Cart abandonment is caused within the cart itself.

Corrections:

• Lots of people research and comparison-shop before they buy.
• Adding an item to cart is often a means of comparison shopping
• Adding an item to cart is often the only way to get important information for making the buying decision – stuff like shipping costs, whether express delivery is available, gift options etc.
• Most lost sales are caused by a lack of information and persuasion on the product page and the rest of the website – not by the cart itself.

Assumption #2: Long-term effects will parallel short-term gain

Related assumptions: sales that you recover from abusive or annoying tactics are easily tied to increased revenue and therefore are more important than the much-harder-to-measure ill will and annoyance created by those same techniques.  That the successes are as cumulative as the ill will generated.

Corrections:

• “He who would run his business with visible figures alone will soon have neither business nor visible figures to work with.”  -    W. Edwards Deming
• Don’t mistake a lack of hate e-mail or complaints as a lack of passionate response.  Or at the least, find out a way to measure the offense or annoyance you’re causing amongst the visitors who you don’t convert through your remarketing efforts.    If more people are converted than are pissed off, and the converted become repeat buyers, then keep doing what you’re doing.  But have the discipline to find out for sure.
• Pissed off people are a lot more likely to share their experiences than a visitor converted through remarketing tactics.  And even the converted visitor will be less likely to do ANY further early stage shopping from you now that they know what to expect from putting an item in your cart or visiting your checkout page.
• Ask any remarketing service what the longer-term trends for their customers have been.  If they can’t tell you overall impact on their clients conversion rates for periods of at least 1-2 years, you should be very, very suspicious.

Assumption #3:  It never hurts to ask.

Related assumptions: that the mere form of a question /offer renders it impossible to offend visitors’ sensibilities or violate their sense of privacy and online safety.

Corrections:

• Read this Seth Godin post
• Imagine that you had only started to fill out a check-out form, had not ever hit any kind of “submit” or “enter” button before closing out, but now have that website e-mailing and calling you because they pulled the info off of their server in real-time, as you typed it into the form.  How do you feel about that?  Think this thing doesn’t happen?  It does.
• A website forces you to create an account in order to checkout.  You create one.  Then you see that they gouge their customers on shipping charges.  You close out of the process and now you’re receiving spam from that company/website.  Are you EVER likely to do business with them in this or any other lifetime?

So are all automated responses and attempts to “save the sale” a bad idea?

Absolutely not.  Just let your offline sense of what’s appropriate guide you in your applications of this online technology. Pushy sales clerks can kill brick and mortar sales just as easily as over-aggressive re-marketing techniques for the simple reason that human nature doesn’t change just because a person goes online.  In fact, I frequently recommend Why We Buy to Web optimization specialists and online copywriters for exactly this reason.

So to use that offline analogy, let’s say you are looking at a more expensive bottle of wine and that the store owner sees you put it back on the shelf to grab a few other cheaper bottles.

Would it be ok for the clerk to approach you, mention that the bottle you were looking at is one of the best buys he has in the store, guarantee you’ll love it, and offer to give you a discount to get you to try a bottle?   Or for him to show you similar bottles closer to your price range?

As long as the clerk was respectful and took “no” for an answer, there’s no problem with that at all, right?  So how could you do it online?

• You could show special offers on previously-deleted-from-the-cart merchandise during the checkout process
• You could have a button on your product page that says “alert me to any specials or discounts on this product,” and then follow-up with a special e-mail offer AFTER the visitor has given you permission to contact them.
• For completed sales – and completed sales ONLY! – you could send a follow-up e-mail with special deals on previously-deleted-from-the-cart merchandise
• And a few other techniques that I’m sure you’ll come up with yourself if you spend some time thinking about it.  I don’t want to give away all my secrets without exacting any mental work from my readers

All of these things work just as well online as their offline counterparts, which is far more than can be said for most “gorilla” (re)marketing tactics.

P.S.  Before going through all this trouble to remarket, why not make sure you’ve fully optimized your checkout process to begin with?  Bryan Eisenberg’s initial and follow-up blog posts on this are a great place to start.

• The rating system is too clunky. Most people get stuck between 3 and 4, usually with 4 sounding too good and 3 too wishy-washy, meaning that the results are often more indicative of a temporary mood than an honest difference.

• Written answers are almost always more informative than raw numbers and everyone knows it, but they’re rarely asked for.  The words people chose, the way they phrase things, what they actually comment on, what details are mentioned, all add up to a much richer insight into the psychology behind the responses.  They provide context.  But Likert scales are rarely asked in conjunction with written responses and the overwhelming preference is for Likert scales over full responses.

• Numbers are preferred over written answers because they’re easy – and easily averaged.  The reason organizations like Likert surveys is that the results are easily totaled and averaged.  You can express the results with mathematical certainty.  That’s harder to do with written responses.  So most organizations somehow decide that it’s better to be precisely wrong than approximately right.

• The mind provides misleading answers to questions of the heart. Ever noticed how most respectable psychological research “tricks” the participants.  Participants are always told the experimenter is studying or looking for one thing, when it’s really something entirely different.  This indirection is considered necessary so that the participants self-conscious desires and biases don’t taint the results.  Likert-scaled surveys almost never use this technique.  Instead they ask direct questions about participants feelings, actions, and future actions.  And as Coke’s misstep with New Coke proves, the results of these surveys simply can’t be trusted.

• No one bothers to write questions (and answers) in a psychologically astute manner. It usually helps to write questions and the attendant answers so that an honest response will not seem self-incriminating to the participant.  Ask a mom if she feeds her kids a lot of fast food, and you’ll probably get a false answer.  What kind of mom would answer yes?  Ask her if she frequently finds herself strapped for time and looking for food preparation and mealtime shortcuts and then follow that up with a question about the mom’s most used go-to solutions to food prep shortcuts, and you’ll get an entirely different outlook.*  Yet almost no one takes the time to do this with Likert-scaled surveys.  And so they get bullshit answers.  Go figure.

• The results are almost always abused.  Surveys are as easily used to bolster a prejudice or further an agenda as they are to actually shed light on a subject.  Of course, any study can fall prey to this manipulation – if you torture the data long enough, you can get it to confess to anything – but the doubly abstracted nature of Likert survey results are far more easily abused than a compilation of written survey answers.  Want an example of this and most of the previous concerns?

Check out this little work of horror from Marketing Sherpa.  Let’s start with their interpretation of the survey and work backwards from there.  So here’s what they think their survey indicated:

“Two-thirds of marketers who work for organizations that have not used any form of social media marketing or PR consider themselves “very knowledgeable” or “somewhat knowledgeable” about this emerging strategy.  Their overconfidence in unproven ability can doom social media initiatives to failure.”

And what do they base this interpretation on?  A worse-than-normal Likert-scaled survey with only 4 badly worded answers.  Marketing Sherpa didn’t provide the exact question in the post, but it was centered on the respondents’ knowledge of social media marketing for organizations.  At any rate, here are the possible answers:

1. Not knowledgeable at all
2. Not very knowledgeable
3. Somewhat knowledgeable
4. Very knowledgeable

So think about it: you’re a marketer, maybe even specializing in interactive/internet marketing.  You’ve played around enough with social media to be comfortable with its dynamics and to know that most so-called social media experts aren’t, mostly because it’s an emerging field and few can claim legitimately successful social media marketing campaigns for non-entertainment or cutting-edge/sexy companies.  Then again, you know you’re no expert either.  So what do you select?

Not surprisingly 58% of the respondents selected “Somewhat knowledgeable.”  The survey basically forces you into that response unless you want to admit that you’re all but clueless about a rather important and emerging element of online marketing.  Even still, 28% of participants selected “Not very knowledgeable.” My guess is that if Marketing Sherpa had worded the choices more intelligently, avoiding the perception of self-incriminating answers, they would have had even more people falling between “not knowledgeable at all” and “somewhat knowledgeable.”

At any rate, the numbers show that 86% of respondents basically indicated that they are not totally clueless, but they aint all that, either.  Not exactly shocking answers given the question and possible answers.  And yet, this is the basis for Marketing Sherpa’s conclusion that the respondents were dangerously “overconfident.”  Give me a freakin’ break!

The real lessons of this?

Stay away from Likert-scales.  And especially avoid them when you’re trying to gauge people’s perceptions, feelings, ambivalencies, etc.  Do the real intellectual work of crafting intelligent and nuanced essay questions.  Invite open ended responses.  Comb through the answers with eye towards being approximately right rather than precisely wrong.

* Special thanks to the talented Holly Buchanon for sharing the McDonald’s survey example with me.

If you enjoyed this post please consider Tweeting it please.

So it’s only fair to ask: can you get sophisticated and wary audiences to buy pseudo-snake oil simply by switching from extolling the virtues of a single miracle product to praising the miraculous combination of two semi-wondrous products?  As in this teeth whitening example:

Well, yes, actually.  The tactic works because having to use two products is a type of downside.

By implying that the promised miracles are too big for just one product and that you’ll need to combine a couple of wonder-products to get the results, the copywriter is tacitly admitting a downside to the strategy: you’ll have to buy two products instead of just one.  And admitting the downside boosts credibility.

Moreover, the “housewife just like you who stumbled into a miracle cure of the decade” bit (the part that’s “enhanced” by the false home town claim) comes off as a lot more credible because more people can see themselves discovering a combination of existing products than discovery a single miracle cure.

But, wait: I can get you a trial sample of both for free!

Ah the copy writer givest a downside, and then the she taketh it away – almost.  If I can get both products for free, it’s not much of a downside that I need to combine the two of them, is it.  Plus, I can see if the combination really works before having to buy.

And then the auto-renewal on your credit card snags ya.

P.S. As a follow up to the Jenny Perfect Skin article, Grok reader Steve Chase snagged this screen shot from Calcutta and it seems that Jenny has a twin sister living there!  And she ALSO figured out this amazing skin combo.  Incredible, huh?

In January, I was sitting with Jack Love publisher of Internet Retailer as he was being interviewed on WebMasterRadio. Jack told my friend Jim Hedger that it didn’t take much to look good over the last 6 or 7 years in the ecommerce space while industry growth was 25% or greater year after year. A rising tide lifted all boats. Most people could just be on auto-pilot and their business would grow.

Times have changed.

We are no longer experiencing that explosive growth, and in these turbulent times I still see many people hoping to pilot their business using auto-pilot. I have bad news for those people. If you want to avoid a crash and burn over the next few years you are going to have to roll up your sleeves, maintain control, and maneuver yourself to safety.

This week at the “New Rules for Engagement” breakfast Forrester analyst Patti Freeman Evans played the following humorous video (just wait till the commercial ends) from the Daily Show with John Stewart for the 50+ retailers in the room:

In every bit of humor there is underlying some truth. I am seeing so many businesses relying on “Emergency Christmas”, offering huge sales (20+% off) week after week. You probably can see many of those same offers in your inbox. This show of panic to move merchandise is not the way to a safe landing.

I urge you not to stay the course, the times for easy money are over. Sully could have crashed in the middle of NYC, but he stayed calm with effort, some close calls and real precision he could succeed. So can you.

]]> http://www.grokdotcom.com/2009/03/05/sully-sullenbergs-secret-to-online-success/feed/ 4 http://www.grokdotcom.com/2009/01/22/when-the-little-things-matter-most/ http://www.grokdotcom.com/2009/01/22/when-the-little-things-matter-most/#comments Thu, 22 Jan 2009 14:35:54 +0000 Howard Kaplan http://www.grokdotcom.com/?p=2731

Transparency.
Speed.
“We” are smarter than “Me”.
Interconnectivity.

These are just a few of the staples of the digital world in which we now live, and each present opportunities for success, or potholes that must be navigated around as business owners & brands interact with their audience, prospects and customers.

Consider three brand interactions I…

Transparency.
Speed.
“We” are smarter than “Me”.
Interconnectivity.

These are just a few of the staples of the digital world in which we now live, and each present opportunities for success, or potholes that must be navigated around as business owners & brands interact with their audience, prospects and customers.

Consider three brand interactions I had yesterday, and observe the different ways I shared my experience with others (prior to this very public broadcast of all three!)

The good, the bad and the ugly

As some of you may know, I’ve recently decided to take the plunge, and make an honest woman of the one whose been by my side this past decade and a half (note to female readers: yes, I’m aware, I took a VERY long time getting around to the question, and yes I’m VERY lucky she said yes!)  We’re having a destination wedding so we wanted to make sure we gave our guests as much planning time as possible, seeing as we’re the kind of friends who inconvenience you and make you come away on vacation with us   That meant getting the save the dates out uber-early (check) and then even getting the invitations out sooner than expected as well.  The invitation buying process wasn’t exactly what I’d call easy, and online was ZERO help.

[An aside, if you're in that business, an area the web *should* dominate is in the education process of nurturing first time B&G's from early through late in the buying process.  What types of things do they need to know, what does all the vernacular mean?  It seems the main value proposition most sites pitch is a cost savings, which while it's nice, seeing as every other wedding vendor adds the "most important day of your life" tax, is only part of the equation and a useless one if you can't figure out how to get the invitations you actually want!]

I digress.  We ended up ordering from William Arthur, via Papyrus.  Elka, our absolutely fantastic “coach” through the process at Papyrus told us not to worry when the first proof came back, and wasn’t exactly as we had planned.  We were reluctant to order a second proof, for fear of delaying the eventual shipment, but she recommended we did, just to make sure they’re exactly as we wanted.  The second proof came back perfect, and off to the printer they went.  Here’s where the two brands each went above and beyond, and provided a delightful experience worth writing about (seeing as we live in a pay-it-forward world):

1. Elka called us to let us know she rushed the delivery, so we wouldn’t be delayed from our original planned mailing date.  Within a few days of her phone call, we received our order, much ahead of schedule.
2. William Arthur, on the top of the box had included an envelope “to the bride & groom”.  When we opened it we found they had included 10 extra copies of everything we ordered.  There was a note that read, “While printing your order, we noticed a few extras came off the line, so we hope you enjoy them with our compliments”.  Whether they intentionally produce a few extras, or this really is the case, who knows, who cares.  The end result is, they know we have far greater use for the “extras” than the trash can does and even keeps the groom from having to open every box of inserts to see what the finished product looks like (and getting them all dirty!)

I wonder, how many soon to be brides has Kelly now recommended Papyrus to?

Contrast that with the last remaining newspaper I’ll ever subscribe to in print form, the WSJ.  For the past few months I experimented with reading the Journal online only, like I do every other newspaper I still read (a dwindling number these days, sadly).  Ultimately I noted, I read more of the paper when I had it in print form than I did online only- I had a deeper engagement with it. Then in the mail (interesting to me that it wasn’t an email) I received a “professionals discount” with a very good rate for home delivery, and I decided it was time to resubscribe to print.

The subscription process was smooth & easy, not unexpected although many other sites (and far too many newspaper sites) fail here, and I was emailed a confirmation upon completion.  Imagine if you bought from Amazon, and your confirmation arrived, noting what books you had bought, how much you paid, what CC you used, etc… everything but the shipping/arrival date.  It would never happen, right?  Well, it happens every day with the WSJ!  Great to know my subscription was confirmed, but would you believe I had to write back, not once, but twice before giving up and assuming I’d simply have to wait and see if the subscription ever actually started!  Fail.

Ironically enough, missing subscriptions must happen with some frequency, as evidenced by the fact that yesterday (a few days AFTER I started receiving delivery) I got an email telling me I should have started receiving the paper already.

Where does this actually hurt?  Well, seeing as the newspaper business seems to be fighting the banking industry for the title “most likely to be OOB” these days, you’d think they want new subscribers?  I had the option to pass along my discount to other colleagues I thought would enjoy it.

I wonder, why haven’t I passed it along to anyone yet?

Then there’s the really ugly… and since I made a new years resolution to be more positive, and less snarky (it’s a two year old resolution!) I’ll change the name to protect the guilty!  Our CTO and resident coffee roaster John (unlike me, who is our resident lives-at-starbucks-far-too-much-guy) was scouring the ‘net looking for a new source of beans.  He knows we’ve talked to a few of the leading players in this space of late, and wanted to see what was out there.  After a little hunting, he found just product he was looking for at, er, um, Bob’s House of Beans   We thought it was a little odd the logo didn’t resolve properly, but chalked it up to Firefox/Mac issues, and kept plugging along.  Added beans to cart, check.  Entered credit card info, check.  Make purchase, fail.  Try as we might, the shopping cart and backend merchant account just wouldn’t connect, and after five minutes of reloading, we abandoned.  We tried once more later in the day (I assure you, purely as an experiment) and still couldn’t order.  If you’re an online retailer, no matter how large or small, you simply have to be able to calculate the cost of downtime, and require some proactive monitoring to alert you while the problem is ongoing.  In this case, the problem could have been on the bank side (I suspect not) but it’s really irellevant- the retailer lost the sale.

This is conversion 101, and yet, these are the mistakes which are still out there on the web.  If your site has some of these basic challenges, don’t get caught up in judgment (or let anyone else make you feel bad, myself included), it is what it is.  What’s important is taking the steps to correct, early & often. Get yourself on a program, and commit to continually improving your customer experience.  It’s the only way to grow in this day, age and economy!

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• Established his own (very successful) ad agency
• Launched the Dodge and Chrysler brands
• Hired and mentored Leo Burnett, creator of the Marlboro Man, Tony the Tiger, Pillsbury Doughboy, and many other advertising icons that made his clients rich
• Turned positioning into a fine art form half a century before Ries and Trout even coined the term.
• Helped establish Cadillac’s pre-eminence among early automotive marks
• Wrote “The greatest ad of all time,” as voted in 1949 – an ad still listed in the top 50 of Ad Ages Top 100 Advertising Campaigns.

Interesting, but why should you care?  Because MacManus’s – and by extension Burnett’s – approach was the yin to Hopkins’ yang, and because MacManus’s approach still works today.

And what was that approach?

In a word, it was to position the client while dethroning competitors in the minds’ of the audience. He wanted to create, in the mind of the public, a deep-seated prejudice towards his client’s brand.

If, in the words of the legendary Gary Halbert, the biggest key to success is to sell to a starving crowd, then MacManus aimed to persuade the consumer that only his client’s product would fully cure their hunger, and then wait for the more-cheaply-persuaded and much larger mass audience to get hungry as their individual circumstances dictated.  This would be in contrast to targeting only hungry people and then selling to them via direct mail.

And so the two poles of advertising continue on to this day, as is clearly seen in the following comments by an extraordinarily successful brand builder, Chris Maddock.  Chris was responding to my request for his opinion on Google’s recent attempt to track the effect of offline advertising upon online sales/conversions.   Here’s what he had to say:

Jeff,

I think Google’s traditional ad analytics are interesting, sexy, and certainly useful on some level.  But I think the program could also be dangerous, in that it could give some folks faulty impressions of what is actually happening – or what is right – because it assumes advertisers know things they probably don’t.

Let’s say a local hardware store runs some print ads, and compares the online response to another time they’ve run radio ads.  If the print ads were for a short term offer, and the radio ad of a more institutional bent, the print ad could drive more traffic to the website and have the hardware store owner thinking that print’s the ticket.  The reality in such a situation is that the print advertising is impressing and motivating a tiny, albeit palpable, percentage of the market to respond and go the the website, while the time-sensitive nature of the offer makes the advertising all but invisible to the bulk of the market.  On the other hand the radio advertising is likely creating greater long-term top of mind awareness, yet probably not motivating as many to go the website.  Mr. Hardware likely thinks that the radio campaign was less effective, when in fact most category dominant businesses are those that eschew short-term sales, offers, promotions and the advertising tools that make them work, while leaning on intrusive media such as radio and television to push long-term awareness.  Over time, radio could likely drive many more visitors to the website – visitors who will likely buy.

So my worry is admittedly Hamiltonian.  Years of interaction with average business owners and traditional ad people has revealed a startling blindness to things like buying cycles, differences in long and short-term strategy, and proper media selection.

So these new Google analytics are cool.  I just hope the good people using them understand what they’re trying to make happen, and what the numbers returned really mean.

-    Chris

Do you see how Chris picks up the standard of Theodore McManus, Leo Burnett, and Roy Williams?  Although I think it is possible to intelligently and rigorously compare media, I can’t help but agree with Chris’s larger point.  Creating a prejudice in the mind of the customer before they’re hungry is often a more effective strategy than trying to only target hungry customers.*   But it requires a longer time horizon.  So if you are only measuring on the short term, you’ll likely come to the opposite conclusion and then deem your position to be “scientific.”  It’s a perfect example of one of the deadly sins of Web Analytics.

So what’s your time horizon?  And have you implemented a measuring/analytics system that will enable you to measure accordingly?

* To be fair, there are certainly also times when it pays to directly target hungry customers, rather than engage in a lengthier branding campaign.  I’m not necessarily advocating one over the other; I’m arguing that you shouldn’t base your decision on skewed metrics.

Now can anyone tell what the heck the product is? (I happen to know, since I also remember a late night commercial that explains it.)*

Put yourself in the place of the site visitor who is seeing this for the first time. I mean, thanks for the Freebie and all, and congrats that PC Magazine seems to like it … but what is it?

A product? Perhaps magicJack is a flat tire fixer? Is it an apple-flavored  children’s breakfast cereal with a magic toy inside?

From the picture, I might guess maybe it plugs into a phone jack and does…well… something phone-ish?

Or maybe it’s a service by a local magician? The possibilities are endless.

What isn’t endless is a prospective customer’s attention span, even when a Freebie is involved.The best way to sell something is for the customer to have a recognized need for that something. If I don’t know what you’re selling, it’s unlikely I can recognize that need on my part. It strikes me that an awful amount of marketing dollars are being spent to get a prospect to act on the freebie offer for something which remains indistinct.

Here on the Grok we often talk about the three fundamental questions of Persuasion Architecture(R): “who are you talking to?”, “what action do you want them to take?”, and “what do they need to take that action?” Most of the time our posts touch on how easily companies flub #1 or #2. However, this is an example of a company flubbing #3: What I need to know to take action is “what the product is” !

In your own marketing efforts, do you ever forget what it is not to know about your wonderful company and its product or services? Are you forgetting to say the obvious?

===============

* For the curious, I’ll save you a google search and tell you that what MagicJack does is plug into your computer’s USB port, and then you plug your traditional landline phone into MagicJack and make phone calls through the internet. Easy enough to understand once you hear it. Now, look at the ad again and see if it makes more (or less) sense.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here’s the question: what do you want to bet that Apple has been just waiting – even itching – for Microsoft to release that kind of response to their “I’m a Mac” campaign?

Why do I ask that?  Because I’d bet anything that Mac’s marketing was smart enough to engage in what Mike Smock has termed The Three Move Set.  You see, when you try to take market share from a competitor, it’s usually a fair bet that they’ll react with some kind of countermeasure.  And that means smart marketers think at least far enough in advance to consider their response to the competition’s countermeasures.  Ideally, one wants to make sure this response is decisive, or at least hurts the competition as much as the initial challenge.  Here’s how Mike breaks it down:

Move 1: Challenger attacks Leader

Move 2: Leader reacts to Challenger.

Move 3: Challenger reacts to Leader.

And here’s how to view the current Mac/PC ad campaigns in light of that:

• Move 1: Mac challenges PC by personifying Macs as hip, cool, and reliably workable and PCs as nerdy, problematic (especially with the release of Vista), and behind the curve in user experience.

• Move 2: Microsoft responds by creating an ad that actively evokes Apple’s framing of the issue and that essentially says, hey, PCs are cool, too.

• Move 3: Mac slams Microsoft for covering up real problems with Vista by creating fancy advertising campaigns.

Do you see?  Most strategists could have – and should have – seen this one coming.  Apple goads you into advertising to respond to their ads and then they slam you for being more concerned with creating ad campaigns than fixing your software, as in the case with the ad I posted yesterday or Apple’s PC Bake Sale ad:

Click here to view the embedded video.

So what should have (or could have) Microsoft done?

Well, leaving aside the obvious bit about getting Vista right before releasing it to the public, they probably should have:

1. Responded to Mac in a matter of weeks, or at least months, rather than years.  This one is sort of a no-brainer.
2. Come up with a response that re-framed the issue rather than responding to Mac’s frame.  Saying, “I’m not a dweeb” is a bit like saying “I’m not a crook” – it just forces people to think of you within the frame of dweeb/not dweeb (or Crook/Not Crook).  This is actually a well known phenomenon that is actively used by modern politicians.  Just as asking people not to think of white bears is actually counterproductive, so too is Microsoft’s denial of Mac’s characterization of PCs.
3. Possibly take a page out of Trout and Ries’ playbook and attack the weakness inherent in Mac’s strength.  In this case, it’s Apple’s closed system and (lower but still there) price premium.  William Thomas alluded to the limitations of a closed system in a comment to my previous post when he compared Linux to catching and gutting your own fish and Apple to ordering fish at the restaurant.  And I’m guessing here, but it’s also what Microsoft might be getting at with the “Life without walls” slogan.  Of course, Microsoft will have to be as creative and sharp witted in pressing this point as Mac has been with their campaigns, and, well, their ad above hardly qualifies.  The slogan is nothing but an afterthought.

So what do you think Microsoft should do?

Heidi runs 3iying, a marketing company that specializes in reaching girls age 15-25. I met with Heidi in her NYC offices last summer to talk about an exciting new idea she was working on. When Heidi speaks with agencies and companies targeting this group, she tells them about the less than stellar job current advertisers are doing trying to speak to girls. The problem is, these companies and agencies haven’t believed her.

So Heidi took it straight to the girls themselves.

“Flip It” is a series of videos where girls talk about ads and why, specifically, the ads are not relevant to them. It started with some girls around the office, but as word spread, Heidi had girls lining up out the door. A handful of examples has taken off into 400 videos and counting.

When I first heard the idea, I wondered, Will this really work? Will people listen to girls complaining about ads? Then I saw the videos, and I was blown away. (For the record, it’s very hard to impress me.) These girls are articulate, thoughtful, and the insight was flat out amazing.

So, how do girls age 15-25 really feel about ads that are targeting them? Taking my cue from Heidi, I’ll let them speak for themselves.

(RSS readers, click here for video #1)

(RSS readers, click here for video #2)

(RSS readers, click here for video #3)

Heidi and her team are not out to condemn advertising. They’re out to make it better.

3iying is not in the business of flipping. We are an all-girl strategic and creative think tank that helps mass-scale brands become more relevant to girls. 3iying offers our contribution to ending this gap. We cannot do it alone. The new millennium girls reflect a consumer shift that will lead generations to come. Their mindset cannot be ignored if we wish to keep our client’s brands alive and powerful and stop wasting their money.

Heidi Dangelmeir is my hero. The whole reason why I’m in the business of marketing to women is to create better marketing for them. Girls, like women of all ages, are bombarded by ads and images, day in and day out. At best, they’re annoying. At worst, they’re actively offensive. Keep in mind, these are ads targeted at this group. Marketers are spending millions of dollars to create ads that turn off perspective customers. Instead of connecting with customers, they’re proving just how disconnected from consumers they really are.

Heidi has found a brilliant way to give voice to how girls and women really feel. Are you listening?

Find out a few other reasons why 3iying is succeeding in understanding and communicating with 15-25 year-old girls.

Anyway, human nature being what it is, I perked right up; everyone likes to gawk at a car wreck.

I don’t want to say much specifically until you’ve had a chance to watch this yourself — am I’m helping to make it viral? — but give a look-see and let me know your reaction.

Don’t read any further until you watch this video:

OK, now you’ve seen it. This brought up a few points for me:

First, it felt a little longer than expected, didn’t you think? I figured once I saw the ad for the Quattro — a name I’m fond of for obvious reasons — we were near the end. But no, it continues for some time past that. And the ending gave me a bit of a surprise, as I had only a hint of a feeling we were dealing with a game.

Second, even at the end when the game nature became clear, I kept thinking Shick Quattro was probably just a commercial sponsor.

Third, I actually went through the bother of going to the main site for this beast, ffk-wilkinson.com. Other than commenting on how extraordinarily painful it was to wait for this site to load — close to 2 minutes on a broadband connection!? — it turns out the razor itself is one of the characters in the game. So, Quattro isn’t just a commercial sponsor of a game; it seems Shick actually produced the game as theater for showing off its product. Well, that “shortened my leash” on how much I’ll allow this game to shave minutes off my valuable free time.

Finally, let me defend my geek: The clip was entertaining. But if marketing were entertainment, every day would be the Super Bowl.

The funny thing is, although I’m curious to see the game in play, I’m not terribly excited about the prospects of playing it.

What about you? Are you interested in this product, or were you simply entertained by the video clip? Do you have a passion to fight for kisses?

That is why you look to the blogosphere and the collection of publications that publish advice from “experts”.

Like you, I keep current with a lot of what industry experts have to say. Some of it’s excellent, some is good, some of it’s neutral, but a dangerous yet substantial portion of it is toxic. I sometimes point to the excellent. I sometimes prod the good with a question or comment. I largely ignore the neutral or harmless even though it provides a source of endless chuckles for my team. However, my tongue is bloody and scarred from repeated biting in an effort to refrain from attacking the toxic misinformation being published.

STOP! Don’t drink that! The Kool-Aid is poisoned!

I can’t say that, can I? You might think I was mean-spirited, unprofessional, spiteful or disrespectful of someone’s opinion.

So, why do people drink the Kool-Aid? If you say anything with enough conviction, someone will believe you. If you put a thought in writing, on a blog, your credibility increases. If you sprinkle in a collection of conventional wisdom, paraphrased concepts and some pseudoscience, the cocktail is ready. Bottoms up!

I haven’t linked to any such toxic advice, even though I read two blog posts and an article this morning that I know will send some people off on expensive wild goose chases.

I hate being called an expert. I’d rather the results speak for themselves. I’d also rather have the right questions than the right answers in a truly accountable marketing system.

I’ve been involved in cleaning up experts’ messes for almost a decade. If you’re a client, you know I wouldn’t hesitate to tell you the truth.

Dear reader, how can I tell you the truth? Perhaps it’s impossible, but I’d like to know if there is some way I could save you the pain.

It’s not this bad, is it?

(Video may not be work-safe… If you work in an ad agency.)

Among electronics retailers, Best Buy (BBY) is one of the top brands because of its reputation for service, and they’re often able to command a premium because of it.

I’ve written previously of their customer-centricity efforts and use of personas to improve the Best Buy experience. How’s that working out for them? Here’s a quick story…

My mother wanted to upgrade her bedroom TV. Mom’s a widow now, and she knew with our crazy schedules, it might be hard count on my brother Jeffrey and me to help with the installation of the new 40″ LCD television she was buying. She was excited and couldn’t wait to get her new TV, so the plan was to pay someone to do it all for her — rather than waiting for her sons to come through.

On Sunday, Jeffrey came over and helped her take down the old TV from the shelf on the wall; she was told the installers couldn’t do it. I’d found a great deal on a new Logitech Harmony remote on Amazon (AMZN) and she ordered it right away. She was going to upgrade her cable box to HD-DVR. She was all ready for the delivery of her order on Monday, and for the installers on Tuesday, but that’s when the fun and excitement ended.

This is the email she was about to send to customer service before sharing it with me last night:

I was at the Best Buy (BBY) store on Bay Parkway (Brooklyn) and a nice young man helped me decide on the 40 inch LCD TV I wanted. We went for a Samsung that was on special that week. I could not buy it at that moment because the salesman told me that I have to have the old television removed before the new one was delivered and I had to go home and find out how I could do it. He gave me the model number, the price, the amount it was going to cost me to have it installed on my wall, the price of the wall mount in the back of his card and he told me the offer would probably last one more week.

I was not able to go back to the store so I decided that I would place the order with Best Buy online. I wanted to make sure that when they installed the TV I had all the correct wires, plugs, etc. that I could possibly need to have a successful event. I then called the number on the website so I could set up the installation and finalize the purchase.

I spoke to Joyce. She was very pleasant and she told me that the installation I needed was going to be $150.00 and not the $400.00 – $100.00 discount = $300.00 that Aram, the salesman, quoted me. She told me that the one she recommended was the one I needed. I asked if there was anything else I needed so everything went smoothly and she said that if I needed any wires the Magnolia (the ones who do the installations for Best Buy) people would have it in their truck. She also told me to get the free home theater that went with the television set I choose and I went for it. So my order was complete with a TV, a wall bracket, a home theater and an installation package. I was all set.

I received the delivery on Monday and the guy asked me where the television was going to be installed and I told him it was going to be in my upstairs bedroom. He left it in the downstairs living room. He even called someone and I had to verify to the lady that he did leave it in the living room. Why did he even ask? I asked him if the installer would bring it upstairs and he said that they would and that they would also bring the wall bracket and the home theater as they did not have it in their delivery truck. He did not give me any shipping confirmation papers and then left.

The first thing I was told when they installation guy came in was, “Sorry, I cannot and would not bring anything upstairs.” For 2 days I didn’t have a TV in my bedroom, I was ready to cry because he told me he couldn’t do it then and he was telling me I would need to reschedule. I was not informed that the piece to be installed had to be in the same room where the installation was. The delivery guy had to know about this, why did he leave the TV downstairs in another room? Aren’t they all part of the same company? I just wanted a hassle free experience.

The installer then when outside and came back and said that OK, he would bring the TV upstairs and he proceeded to set it up on top of the dresser. I told him that I purchased a wall bracket. He made me read the description of what he was sent and I had already paid for and nothing about setting up the TV on the wall. Why would I order a wall bracket and installation together if I wasn’t going to have it installed on the wall? If I needed to buy something else should I not have been offered it. Then I started to feel the extortion pressure. He told me if I didn’t pay $250.00 plus tax additional to hang the TV and set up the home theater I couldn’t get it the way I expected.

I felt like I had no choice now. He would not start doing any work unless I gave him the check, so I did. “Could this have been because I was a women alone in the house?” I wondered. I did not get the $100.00 discount and it ended up costing me $400 for the installation. I did buy everything together. Why would I buy it if not to have it set up properly as well?

In fact, they were supposed to setup any components I had as well. Well, they didn’t have the wires in their truck to install my DVD player. They told me if someone else hooked it up and not them that it would “null and void” the guarantee of their installation. I had to run to the local Radio Shack and pick up the wires for them. Only after I told him that he promised that if I had the wires before 4pm and I called him he would come back later and install it but only until 5pm today. I called and he did in fact return to install the DVD.

I reviewed the contract and it says, “Ensure that all wires and cables are neatly dressed using wire ties.” They left the wires hanging loosely and the wires in the back all bunched up. They considered the home theater installed because the wires were connected, to the TV and the speakers were attached to the back of the main unit. They left the Home theater on top of my dresser without unwinding the wires, the speakers sitting around it. Would you consider that an “expert” home theater installation? It seemed they could not wait to get out even without “providing instruction to familiarize the customer with the basic use of their system.”

This has been a nightmare for me.

I’ll have to waste even more time, on top of the money, getting it installed properly and fighting with customer service. Best Buy has become the “Worst Buy” for me.

The money being spent for the proper installation was not the issue. A salesperson’s job is to help the person buy what they want. My mom is a very detailed oriented person. I’m sure she explained exactly what she was looking for to both Aram and Joyce, the Best Buy salespeople, and even still the whole experience left her with a bad a taste in her mouth.

How will Best Buy, recently ranked #1 in customer experience online, measure the success or failure of this type of experience? Should they keep relying on these panel surveys or look elsewhere? In this case, the online store — together with the Best Buy’s brand reputation and some assistance from a call center — converted the visit to a purchase. But where should the online experience end?

Best Buy has had numerous issues as of late. Just this past week, they fired a Geek Squad crew for ripping pictures (including porn) from their customers’ computers. Are these the things Best Buy counts as part of its “customer-centricity” strategy and great experience?

Seems like the strategy and tactics are way off.

UPDATE: Here’s the customer service response email. I’m not sure what’s worse; the experience, or the customer disservice email:

Esther,

I am Paul with Best Buy Customer Care.

I apologize for any inconvenience you have experienced related to your
TV purchase.

Best Buy strives to make each experience you have with us positive and
as fun as possible, and we are disappointed if we don’t live up to that
expectation. Best Buy relies on feedback, both positive and negative,
to help us find areas for improvement.

Please do not hesitate to contact usfor any questions or concerns. We
look forward to your next visit to one of our stores or to
www.BestBuy.com.

Thank you,
Paul

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.

If the subject interests you, then also check out SaveNetRadio.org

Recently, the WSJ (subscriber link) served up the ultimate in passive, poor me, whining. When Matt Cutts is getting quoted in the Journal, isn’t it possible we’ve gone just a bit too far? I mean, seriously, it’s a wonder the world managed to have a single entrepreneurial success story before Google debuted on the scene.

Even if traffic to Topix, which gets about 10 million visitors a month, dropped just 10%, that would essentially be a 10% loss in ad revenue, Mr. Skrenta says. “Because of this little mechanical issue, it could be a catastrophe for us,” he says.

I can’t even talk about the entire article without my blood pressure boiling over, but it reminded me of days long past at Georgia Tech. (And for the record, no, I’m not a GOOG shareholder, but I do preach accountability for a living. It strikes me as pretty convenient that website owners who have trouble monetizing that which Google gladly hand-delivers them would prefer to cry in their milk and bite the hand that feeds them rather than simply say ‘thank you’ for the free traffic and focus on building stronger business models that aren’t so dependent on un-game-able technology.)

Back to Georgia Tech. Atlanta was gearing up for the Olympic games, which were still a few years away. Major construction projects were underway all over campus, blocking access to certain roads for months, sometimes years. My house was just off one of these blocked roadways–the route known as the place to park while heading to hoops games at the Coliseum.

Being the enterprising young engineers we were, it didn’t take us long to smell opportunity. We gave birth to an impromptu parking lot … in our driveway! Through one full hoops season, revenue was good (we spent our profits on “books”). But eventually, even the slowest of construction projects wrapped up, and the need for our overflow parking lot evaporated. Being the more logical, left-brained types we were, we moved on to other new and equally “innovative” ways to make extra cash.

I wonder now why didn’t we just sit around and campaign the campus newspaper to write about the loss of our little cash cow? Why didn’t we call the university president and demand he reinstate the construction? Why didn’t we create an industry designed to divert cars from the streets drivers preferred to travel and send them along the streets that led past our front door?

If all the money spent “optimizing” search engine traffic is any indication, we should be sitting next to Mark Cuban at an owners meeting.

How effective will the candidates be at using the the web and all it’s mojo? techPresident is a blog set up to do just that, check out this post about how the current candidates are utilizing (or not) Google Pay Per Click (PPC).

It’s time all candidates recognize the power of search to drive highly-targeted traffic to their fledgling websites. Get cracking, everyone! We’re watching.

We’ll be watching as well, and I am sure we can find a few great lessons to share with you about online persuasion.

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

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I purchased my round trip ticket for a Continental business flight online. I even got a confirmation email the day before departure that let me check in right online. That was wonderful! With my confirmation print-out, I managed to forego the large lineup at the airport. I thought I was off to a great start.

But then the brown stuff hit the fan! What was supposed to be a 1 hour and 35 minute flight from NYC to Ottawa, turned into 12 hours of too much coffee, a couple of beers and an unhappy customer! My tally of blacklisted airlines just grows longer.

Any more, online conversion rarely happens in a vacuum. And that precious loyalty you want to build is going out with this week’s garbage if you overlook the fact that what happens offline influences whether customers ever return to do business with you again online. Some of what happens offline – like your customer service – is in your control. Botch that, and you set in motion an out-of-your-control avalanche of word-of-mouth that requires serious attention on your part.

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