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.

Earlier last month some hot air came from Interactive Advertising Bureau CEO Randall Rothenberg, who wants to prevent the Internet advertising economy from becoming “performance based.” This week provided another more disheartening statistic. Helen Leggatt, of BizReport, writes:

With the number of channels a marketer has to manage and monitor increasing, you’d think technology would be employed to make their job easier. Not so. It seems marketers are foregoing analytics to measure their online marketing campaigns…When asked about their use of measurement applications, less than half (47%) of the 1,545 American and British marketing professionals polled by Alterian said they currently use analytics to measure their online campaigns.

Sure, the shear number of those ignoring analytics in today’s marketplace is alarming, but it’s not all that surprising.

At first blush, one could conclude that site owners suffer from either arrogance or ignorance. Marketers either believe they don’t need analytics because they are smart enough to trust their gut (arrogance), or they don’t know what to do with them (ignorance). The Web analytics community has been split on this issue. Eric T. Peterson, Web analytics consultant, argues Web analytics is hard, while Google’s analytics evangelist Avinash Kaushik argues Web analytics isn’t hard. This still doesn’t sufficiently explain why more than 50 percent of marketing professionals fail to integrate analytics into their marketing efforts. (No doubt, getting value out of Web analytics is complex, something I’ll address in a future column.)

Mitch Joel, author of “Six Pixels of Separation,” offers some valuable insight:

It’s hard to measure the success and efficacy of your Digital Marketing initiatives if we’re feeling like our own home base could use a little renovating and extreme makeover. The problem is that many people built their online presence with a one-time budget. While they may have factored in ongoing budget for Web hosting and occasional updates, this strategy has left them paralyzed.

The bigger problem I’ve encountered in company after company is that most have failed to make Web site optimization a part of ongoing business operations. And who can blame them? For many, analytics have failed to live up to the promise that analytics vendors have been selling. Many companies have “been there, done that,” honestly attempting to use analytics to improve and have seen very little result in comparison to their effort.

As I commented on Mitch’s blog:

I blame it on our ADD mentality. Campaigns are exciting and change frequently, providing us with our next, new, shiny object fascination. Most people’s websites are static and lack the ongoing imagination and efforts required to reap the benefits of continuous improvements.Most campaigns would perform better if people only realized how many times a visitor engages with your campaign and then abandons only to search or reach for your “home base” later. This recession will weed out many of those who don’t pay attention to this.

If only they had stuck with their effort to make Web analytics work.

Still, commitment alone could put you on a hamster wheel. How does one know when to stop a particular test, stop improving a particular element, or drop a complete design in favor of something new? You must also commit to learning. Learn about your visitors, why they do what they do, and how you can better give them what they need and want.

The companies that benefit most from analytics have a culture of optimization. Whether it is explicit effort or part of a company’s DNA, each of these has some sort of process or system for analyzing the data, generating recommendations, and most important executing improvements, learning, and starting the process all over again. This improves the ROI (define) of efforts and ends up paying for itself and much, much more.

Optimization using analytics causes an interesting dichotomy. It is a rather simple concept, and there are many valuable and impactful “simple” lessons to be learned. But it is also complex; you can go very deep in analysis. To get the most out of your analytics — or just your optimization efforts — develop a cost-effective, smart system for improving continuously.

Not Using Analytics?

You are running out of excuses. Let’s deal with some of the smaller ones.

• If arrogance is your problem, do nothing. Your competitors will soon overtake you.
• If ignorance is your problem, learn. A good start is to get good at using a free product, eventually you can pay for more.
• If budget is a problem, it doesn’t have to be. You can do all kinds of things for much less money than you would imagine. Some of them are even free.
• If resources are the problem, that’s OK. Just move forward at a slower pace. Optimize what you can as often as you can with the resources you have now. Soon you’ll catch up and surpass the arrogant company mentioned above.

Optimizing the Organization

Want to have a culture with a constant eye toward getting smarter and better? Here are a few things that your organization can do:

• Adopt an attitude that every action measured in analytics has an actual human being behind it. Don’t allow your optimization team or analyst treat your visitors like stats. Try starting by looking at them as personas.
• Don’t get overly addicted to shiny new tools and technologies, or even to marketing platforms. New isn’t always better. Here are a few wise words from the lovable venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki:
  Follow through on an issue until it is done or irrelevant. Many organizations set goals and even measure progress toward them. However, after a short time, some goals are no longer on the radar because people start focusing on the coolest and most interesting stuff. For example, fixing bugs in the current version of a software application is not as interesting as designing a new, breakthrough product — but your current customers think it is. Legend has it that Pat Riley, the coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, measured stats of his players and posted each player’s progress on his locker.
• Commit to a culture of execution. “Execution is not an event — a onetime push toward achieving goals. Rather, it is a way of life,” says Kawasaki.

One of the most important things about improving is making it a way of life, so that it happens over and over.

What’s keeping you from using analytics to optimize your marketing?

Recently, I went to MySpace.com to look up a semi-obscure band.  Why did I go there instead of my usual search engine query?  Because every band is on MySpace.  If you are a band, and live in the Milky Way solar system, you are on MySpace, and everyone knows it.  It’s the kind of reputation you could leverage into ad revenue…you know, relevant banner ads, text ads, promotions, etc.

Midway through my brief listening session, the infamous MySpace music player stopped performing its function and overlayed an ad.  To continue listening, I had to dismiss a very intrusive banner.

I won’t waste anyone’s time with why interrupting my favorite song with a banner ad that has to be actively dismissed is a bad idea.  Instead, let’s follow the experience of that one visitor in a million who wants to stop listening to cool music, go off to another site, and take a completely different action.

So let’s look at the persuasion scenario the advertiser, Dominoes Pizza, has paid to funnel us into.

The Creative: It’s professional-looking, but it could at least try to have something to do with music.  The call to action button doesn’t really stand out or contrast, and it’s asking for a lot (go from listening to music to ordering food online).

The Landing Page: Yikes, that doesn’t look very fun.  Where’s the scent of information for me to follow?  Am I in the right place?  They also get bonus points for giving me a promotional price on 3 medium pizzas instead of sandwiches!

The Rest of the Scenario: I clicked into the scenario a bit deeper out of morbid curiosity.  Once again, nothing makes me more persuaded to order sandwiches online than a big picture of a plain cheese pizza.  The whole experience seems geared towards ordering pizza, which makes sense if I am a direct entry visitor.  Couldn’t they pass a parameter so the page defaults to the Sandwiches tab?

Disruptive advertising is risky. I’ve already started a mental list of brands I now hate because they interrupted my music listening (Blockbuster and Insurance.com joined the list).  So, if you’re going to risk a bad “brand exposure,” and a backlash of negative word of mouth (or worse yet, bloggers ), you’d better have your ducks in a row for those who actually click through into your conversion funnel.

• 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.

1. You use the set it and forget it strategy to PPC. If you setup your PPC campaigns months ago and haven’t adjusted a thing in it, I can practically guarantee you have room to improve it. The seasons change, traffic flow and traffic quality change, even Google’s Quality score changes.

2. You don’t have proper tracking in place. In a recent study of over a 1000 small and midsize businesses it was found that over half failed to properly track conversions. You can’t manage what you can’t measure. Do you have enough insight to what is happening with your PPC ad spend?

3. You have not tested at least 3 variations of your PPC ad. Try testing the following variables in your ad copy: headlines, different offers, variations of your USPs (Unique Selling Propositions) or UCPs (Unique Campaign Propositions, and calls to actions (try, learn, get, save, etc.).

4. You have not tested matching options. If you are not getting enough traffic at your bid prices, test the different matching options. Test between broad, phrase and exact (standard) match to see which brings you the best combination of traffic and converted sales.

5. You have a long list of keywords in your ad groups. The keywords in an ad group should be tightly associated and extremely relevant to each other so you can be sure the ad(s) and landing page are effective for the ad group.

6. You have poor scent from the ad to the landing page. In 2001, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, shared their research with Wired on how humans look for information on the Web;  they use the same food-gathering techniques employed by animals. They follow scent. This is an example of bad scent. Make sure to match your PPC ad text with the message on your landing page.

Click here to view the embedded video.

7. You aren’t testing your landing pages to maximize conversion. With over 1100 variables that impact conversion, if you aren’t testing to see what the best combination to use are, you are leaving money on the table. You should always be testing.

If you would like to learn more about optimizing PPC campaigns don’t miss our upcoming Always Be Testing webinar on November 25th titled Google Quality Score – Exposing the Secret Factor to PPC Success. Sign up now, and even if you can’t watch the live viewing we will notify you as soon as the recorded version is available. Of course, the webinar is free so register today.

Overall, conversion rates are starting to trend downward.

Almost everyone I speak with is looking for areas to cut expenses in and approaching spending from a more frugal mindset. Some are beginning to make drastic cuts, including personnel. While I’m not a financial expert, I can safely predict that this financial mess will likely get worse before it turns around. This isn’t another dot.com bust but a larger crisis that will leave few untouched.

So what does this mean to you, your company, and your conversion rate? Can you come out of the other end of this with little to no damage? Anyone who has been in business through a recession knows it’s absolutely possible to survive and, sometimes, even grow a bit (or a lot as competitors fold under pressure).

They will also tell you that it’s never easy.

For online marketers wishing to thrive, a down economy brings two big-picture lessons. First, now is the not the time to stop being innovative. Second, efficiencies are not an option.

Innovate Your Way Through

In a good economy, the rising tide lifts all boats. In a down economy, you’ll quickly know how good you really are. And let’s face it, we could all get a little better, right?

Conversion optimization basics may no longer be working or working less well. You must innovate your way through.

For example, I was recently asked in an interview about creative use of personas. The interviewer and I were talking about a retailer who was worrying about cutting inventory on hand. I was asked if the retailer could use marketing personas to help people buy more effectively or target more profitable buyers. The answer is absolutely yes.

Creative merchandising, creative buying, creative offers, creative marketing, creative cost-cutting, and creative customer-relationship-building will make a difference between who thrives and who dives.

When I say “create” or “innovate,” I’m not talking about a crazy sock puppet ad or simply redesigning a logo. Instead, I’m talking about offering customers more perceived value at less cost to them and you. I’m talking about finding innovative ways to cut through the clutter of our media-crazy environment and the pain people are feeling from this crisis by increasing message relevance and spending less. True innovation always stretches those limits. And that involves much more than screaming louder, telling a funnier joke, or changing the color of the “buy now” button.

Work harder and more creatively at answering the question: what can we do for our customers today? There are only two things riskier than being innovative: being gimmicky and doing nothing. Neither is acceptable.

Offer your customers something better — or your competitor will.

Bow to the Throne of Efficiencies

The more you master the craft of doing more for less, the more secure you’ll be in the coming months. Don’t try to do three jobs with one person until that person begs for mercy. Instead, make marketing dollars go much, much further. That includes cutting fat from marketing budgets and creating a culture of marketing optimization that leaves no penny unturned. It takes work, but it will bulletproof you internally with the bosses and externally with the customers.

Your customers are already acting more efficiently. You should, too. Recently I noticed a pattern in the top 10 retailers by conversion rate. Last month three big florists made the list, but FTD.com fell off the list. More important, The Children’s Place made the list in September, but not in August during the back-to-school shopping season. That raises the question: is this a sign of early holiday shopping? Could this be a sign that people are looking for a better value by shopping earlier and earlier?

You must start optimizing now.

Need help? Refer to my latest book, “Always Be Testing.” There are reasons why I chose to write a book about Google Website Optimizer, even though there are other, more sophisticated tools. And for many looking for efficiency in marketing, Google Website Optimizer is the right price — free to get started with. This is a first step your company can take to get focused on continuous improvement.

A Few Tips for Rocky Times

Finally, a few tips as we head into the storm:

• People will still buy what the need and want; they’ll just buy slower and more methodically. Expect longer sales and lead-generation cycles. Customers won’t ask you for more value, they’ll just search for it elsewhere.
• Don’t be shocked by changing patterns in your metrics. Your customers may behave differently based on newfound attitudes. Ask why they are doing what they are doing. Use personas to find ways to persuade them and calm their fears. Test to find the answers.
• Don’t cut back on optimization.
• Consider visiting or revisiting price-point- and shipping-cost-related offers. They are at least worth a test or two.
• Stay focused on your customer first, not on the market.
• Even though you can, don’t blame the economy. It likely won’t hear you, and if it does, it won’t do anything about it.
• Don’t think you’re immune. I don’t want to see you in the ash heap.

Is the economy affecting you yet? How? Let me know.

* cross posted from ClickZ

Editors Note: You can also download our white paper titled Grabbing Market Share: Marketing in a Recession.

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.

I was speaking with a client about this very point: What do you do when you reach a plateau in the optimization lifecycle? The problem is, you’ve tested everything that’s there, but what you don’t know is what’s missing.

I was trying to come up with a metaphor as to why Persuasion Architecture™ delivers better results than traditional optimization. So, here’s a perfect metaphor–you’ll have to grab a spoon and go with me on this one…

What happens if, an avid ice cream lover (read: qualified visitor), I walk into your ice cream store (read: website), and you offer me vanilla ice cream. Take it or leave it. I might take it if I like Vanilla. If I don’t, I leave. You notice a lot of people are leaving your store without buying the vanilla ice cream (read: you have a high abandonment rate). You do market research and realize chocolate is a favorite flavor for many people. So, you decide to see which your customers like better; vanilla or chocolate (you A/B test). Turns out, chocolate is more popular (your ‘B’ version of the test resulted in a higher conversion rate). But there are still lots of people who aren’t buying from you. I’m certainly not. I like strawberry.

The problem with many optimization projects is that you’re testing what’s there but you don’t know what’s missing. Many companies are turning to technology to help find the answers, but there’s a limit as to what technology can tell us.

Howard Kaplan wrote a very insightful post about the combination of web analytics and advanced behavioral targeting technology (be sure to read Jim Novo’s comment at the end). Personalization based on past success is certainly promising, but Howard digs deeper with these key questions:

• Does automating “taking action on analytics data” replace planning for success in advance?
• Does Behavioral Targeting atop Analytics provide any real analysis, or generate any true customer insights?
• Is past performance an accurate predictor of success, if the past performance happened by accident?
• If you optimize cowpaths, how do you know how high the ceiling for ROI can go? (How do you know you’re not simply measuring local maximums?)
• What value does targeting bring if you don’t understand the motivations driving the visitor’s search, and the angles of approach they take?
• Who will be taking the time to plan and create intelligently and thoughtfully designed variations.

Testing can help you optimize what is (i.e., taking action on existing analytics data). But how do you take into account what could be (i.e., planning for success in advance)? How do you decide what to test (where do you get your true customer insights)? You’re testing vanilla and chocolate, and you see chocolate performs better. Now you can test pricing, different cones, extra toppings, and other variables that can increase conversion incrementally (i.e., measuring local maximums). But what if a lot of people just want strawberry?

And while we’re at it, why are people who like vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry all forced down the same pathway? Why can’t they each choose the flavor they want and take a different pathway based on that preference (i.e., thoughtfully designed variations)?

This is where Persuasion Architecture™ comes in.

Optimization is based on what is known about your customers. But are there things about your customers/business/competition that you don’t know? Uncovery is all about making more of that information known.

Analytics will tell you what people do, but not why they do it. If you don’t understand the “why,” how do you know what improvements to design and test? Personas give you the customer insight you need to know what to plan and test. They give you insight into your visitors’ motivations and angles of approach. For example, you can test different headlines, but how do you know what verbiage to use in those headlines? Personas will give you that insight.

Planning scenarios allows you to plan for success in advance. You are mapping out the customer experience based on how your customers want to buy. And you are creating different pathways to accommodate different preferences or buying modalities. You’re thus creating intelligent and thoughtfully designed variations.

While most testing optimizes what is, Persuasion Architecture™ takes into account and optimizes what could be by creating hypotheses about who your customers are, what they need, and–ultimately–how you’ll address those needs.

Some customers want to start by picking out their ice cream flavors, some customers want to start with toppings, like asking for a hot fudge sundae first, then picking ice cream flavors. Other customers want soft serve. Some want low-cal options. Is it more work to plan for all these different buying preferences? Sure it is. But if you’ve hit the optimization wall, this is the next logical step if you want to continue to see improvements.

Sure, it’s great that you’ve optimized for chocolate; you may be selling chocolate better than all your competitors. But imagine the results if you planned persuasive scenarios for all the different ways people want to buy their ice cream.

Persuasion Architecture™ is about planning entire experiences, not just testing individual interactions.

What are you testing? Are you measuring the entire customer experience? Or are you just testing individual interactions? How are you deciding what to test? Are you planning what could be? How much more successful could you be if you knew what it is your customers want that they aren’t getting. Are you so busy optimizing the chocolate you haven’t thought about the strawberry? Whatever you do, keep asking bigger questions.

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.

Keyword inflation, low conversion rates sending merchants elsewhere

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — A growing number of online advertisers are bidding a partial goodbye to Google Inc.

Frustrated by the soaring price of Internet-search advertising and diminishing returns from the ads they buy, mid-sized advertisers say they plan to reduce how much business they do with Google this year — in some cases, significantly.

Last year, for example, eBags.com co-founder Peter Cobb spent between $5 million and $8 million to peddle suitcases, handbags and other carrying cases online. Google got 75% of that amount.

But this year it will get “significantly less,” Cobb said. “The Google percentage has got to go down,” he said.

In many cases, the cost of an eBags.com ad placed on either Google’s own Web site or one of its affiliates now equals 45% of the price of the product it promotes. That’s crimping the company’s own profit margins and forcing it to look elsewhere to market its bags.

“We’re testing print ads right now,” said Cobb, whose company will spend up to $8 million on ads in 2007. Read the rest of the article

The article continues…

Keyword search prices on many terms rose between 40% and 60% last year, according to advertisers like Dan Sackrowitz, chief executive of Bare Necessities, which sells lingerie online. He saw his Google ad budget soar 50% last year.

The problem is obvious, traffic costs are puffing up like a marshmallow in a microwave and advertisers are having a hard time finding ways to increase traffic and lower costs. Simply put, Google advertisers are hooked.

Instead of looking for ways to increase return on traffic investment, the average marketer will look for another traffic fix. We’ve said before that the marketing battleground of the future is not traffic acquisition, it will be traffic conversion.

The exceptional marketer is looking for ways to optimize their keyword and landing page conversion rates.

Optimizing landing pages is something we’ve been doing with our clients for quite some time. We are a premier channel partner with Google and their new testing platform Google Website Optimizer beta. If you are interesting in our landing page optimization coaching service, we are going to take on a few testers over the next few weeks to participate in this beta with us. Contact us if you want to know more.

How do you determine its success:? Total subscribers? Number of weekly sign-ups? High open rate? Click-throughs? Comments generated?

All those numbers are important, but often the real value of a good list is the participation it stimulates between the subscriber and your business.

Too many businesses shell out too many dollars and resources to up their number of subscribers or to improve the demographic quality of their e-mail lists, while too few consider the quality of subscriber participation.

Don’t confuse participation with interactive technology. I’m not talking about keeping customers entertained with bells and whistles. Worthwhile interaction truly engages your audience.

So when we decided we wanted to improve participation quality with our company newsletter subscribers, we pulled up our list — and hit “delete.”

We wiped out a list of over 40,000 addresses, built organically and through co-registration. A list we’ve been mailing to since 2000. Before you conclude my book tour drove me mad (and it may as well have), read on.

At the end of the day, we don’t care much about the number of subscribers we have, we care about reader engagement — the quality of the relationship readers have with us. We don’t expect subscribers to read every issue, but if they haven’t read our newsletter once in three months, we assume they’re not interested, or don’t have the time to invest. Making any other assumption risks the quality of our subscriber interaction. The last thing we want is for the newsletter to degrade into a perception of opt-in spam.

Continue reading my column on ClickZ…

"She was a quiet and powerful beast, and she died doing what she loved," states one observer.

"While Web 2.0 technologies and persuasive scenarios were certainly contributing factors, we have determined they were not the cause of death," said a spokesman for the Web page’s care provider. "She was just too irrelevant, and she never quite recovered. She just couldn’t keep pace or serve the needs of today’s marketers any longer."

Read Bryan’s Entire Article over at Clickz.

Radio isn’t radio anymore, it is now ‘terrestrial’ radio and it sharing more of it’s audience (and revenue) with it’s offsping; internet radio, podcasting, and satellite radio. 

Even as the populice is having influence on the radio universe many broadcasting sites remain irrelevant and downright yucky. And of course ‘terrestrial’ radio is struggling to remain viable. The answer to this?

From Audiographics.com

Today, consider a few terms that will help; radio personas, predictive modeling, and persuasion architecture. Combining the three allow stations to build an online presence that delivers better results.

Building a radio persona will let you create predictive marketing that gives clues to how you should build your web site with persuasion architecture. Read the entire article.

Interestingly enough, this conclusion came as a result of Bryan Eisenberg’s 2 part rant over at ClickZ about the state of satellite radio’s online efforts.  Read part one, then part two.

http://clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3623082

Anyone doing PR just may want to take 5 and read the article.

Conversion is no longer the biggest problem facing online marketers; persuasion is. However, a misconception about the nature and value of linear conversion funnels persists. Some say the linear conversion funnel is dead. Others still conceive of their efforts as entirely based on linear conversion funnels.

This misconception about linear processes has been a pet peeve of mine for years. Fortunately, misperception is an opportunity for clarification. So please allow me clarify.

The linear conversion funnel has its place. Though rudimentary and limited, it’s a great blunt-force beginners’ tool for online marketers with few or no metrics in place (and there are far too many of those left). But the linear conversion funnel won’t take sophisticated marketers very much further in their optimization efforts. No conversion funnel will, 2.0 or otherwise.

Instead of considering the conversion funnel by itself, we should think of it as living at the bottom end of the buy/sell process. Let me say again, conversion is no longer the biggest problem facing online marketers; persuasion is.

Without persuasion, there’s no incentive for visitors to walk through your linear sales process. Unlike conversion, persuasion isn’t linear. The conversion funnel is smooth and simple, but the persuasive reservoir that feeds it is as complex and non-funnel-like as your visitors are.

Read the rest of this article.
Read the entire newsletter: Volume 133

• Craig Danuloff from Commerce360, leads an insightful chapter by chapter discussion of the book.
• Mike Grehan recently podcasted his fireside chat with Jeffrey & Bryan, and wrote about it on ClickZ
• The good folks behind 800-CEO-READ offer their thoughts (and free books)
• WonderBranding’s own Michele Miller donating her own charitable dollars to inspire future readers
• Chuck McKay, of Advertising Made Simple, offers the Small Biz take on the value of Cat

There’s been plenty of pub for the release, I gave you five, and in a variety of formats.  I hope there’s something in there for everyone.  Our heartfelt thanks to everyone who’s enjoyed the Waiting for Your Cat to Bark experience, and to those of you who haven’t… what are you waiting for?!

But I’m not going to write about online video today. The real story is much bigger. The real story about the rise of online video isn’t about the fact consumers seem to really like to watch short low-res video clips on their computers. Nope. The real story is that consumers are starting to take control of their media, and they really seem to like it.
Control, not video, will have huge implications for advertisers, publishers, and marketers in the future.

Welcome to the on-demand future. Prepare for major disruptions.

The on-demand future isn’t about just video; it’s about all media.

Click on over to ClickZ, and read the rest of his excellent article. Of course, while you’re there, you may want to stop by here too.

Analysis doesn’t happen in a vacuum. And as we’ve said a thousand times: you can torture the numbers to confess to … uh, we mean, rationalize … just about anything.

Matt Belkin of Omniture blogged recently about the differences between Visits and Unique Visitors as they relate to measuring reach and as they factor into the Conversion Rate formula. Matt argues that Conversions per Visit is more important than Conversions per Unique Visitor. We occasionally see our own clients make this sort of slip-up, so it’s worth examining the merits of the argument.

Read the rest of this article.
Read the entire newsletter: Volume 128

And now for something completely different.

We do a lot of brainstorming … projects, problems, reports, how to communicate a difficult idea. And we’re pretty visual folks around here; we work best when we can “see” how our thoughts relate.

A while back, I wrote an article about the top ten application toolsthat consistently made our day. MindJet’s MindManagerwas (and still is) on the list. It’s the tool that lets us develop our ideas and visually map out plans of action on the spot, then share those creations with others.

Given our happy experience, I’d love to turn you on to mind-mapping. We mentioned the program to our colleague, Fredric Gluck, who was so thrilled, he wrote up this review so I could share his (and our) enthusiasm. Think of this as one of my very few word-of-mouth spots! Read the rest of this article.
Read the entire newsletter: Volume 126

Sometimes you go to a website and you just know the business hasn’t got a clue. They’re doing everything so wrong, you don’t even know where to start. There are also those times you go to a site and think, on first inspection, that things look pretty good.Until you start dealing with the site’s process. In that moment you realize appearances can be deceiving. That’s why, through the use of personas and wireframed scenarios,� we always make sure� our clients are getting their processes squeaky clean first.� It’s basic Horse Before the Cart 101.

Our friend and colleague David Cross was trying to buy a long sleeved t-shirt from a company called C&C California. Here’s what happened.
Read the rest of this article.
Read the entire newsletter: Volume 124

• Interact with personas, their needs, and motivations, and uncover new selling opportunities. Learn how, when, and why they shop and make decisions in your category.
• Walk through all the channels and touch points with the personas to ensure a great, consistent experience.
• Write and speak to personas’ goals and motivations to keep messaging consistent company-wide.

Now, let’s dig deeper for some real-world tactical implementation of persona use. To do that, let’s meet Jill, a persona created for Best Buy:

Continue reading my column at ClickZ…