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]

“Are you saying that we shouldn’t bother with creating multiple personas with granular details but rather focus on creating only a few (4 if we use the logical-emotional, quick-deliberate quadrant)? But if we add the stages of the buying cycle in there, we could end up with [too many] personas. This is still unclear to us.”

First off, thanks for reiterating these common issues. You probably won’t be surprised to hear us suggest what we’ve said on numerous occasions before: start with what you can handle. If you are unsure of how to proceed, that in itself tells you to shoot for the simpler solution by focusing on the *actual* goal, which is to improve conversion, sell more widgets, get more leads, etc. If you do nothing, you obviously will just continue to have the same results you already have. But if you over-reach for “perfection” to the point at which your eyes glaze over and you become catatonic then you’ll also have the same results you already have. So start small.  A subtle and deep Persona development that doesn’t get implemented correctly is hardly better than using the quadrant approach, and both approaches will definitely work on the important stuff that ought to be improved first.  In fact, if that wasn’t the case, then you’d have to worry, right? Navy blue is still blue, right? An Anjou pear is still a pear, right? And meerkats are still…oops, ditch that last.

And just to let you know: there’s no particular reason that smaller companies should find this harder than larger companies…just the opposite, in fact. We had a recent client, a *huge* technology company, who’s marketing pros convinced themselves they “got personas” and then wondered why their recently-developed PA personas were different than their expectations. So they missed the real point, which is not to reinforce a company’s self-centric approach, but instead to re-think their marketing to be customer-centric. Smaller companies tend to be more likely to implement change, often because fewer sacred cows need be put out to pasture before improvement can begin.

In short, go with the quadrant approach (or even one-dimensional, if need be!) and move on from there. Add in buying cycle, but don’t add a dimension just to keep the count “evened out” — add in distinct differences that result in a required change in persuasion, not a change in demographics. A Spontaneous persona, for example, will often breeze through her Early and Middle stage buying process faster than you can model for, so there’s nothing to be gained by inferring a difference that cannot be measured. Think of buying a candy bar — the buying process is fast for pretty much everyone, except outlier demographic specialties (a diabetic, a seed nuts allergy, a strict bodybuilder, etc). I often refer to this as “the demography seasons the modality.”

Now think of buying a house — surely the Spontaneous is going to go through a completely different process buying a home than buying a candy bar. There will be a Early buying process, and a Middle as well before the house is chosen, inspected the deed is signed and the lawyers paid. The nature of the underlying goal influences how the customer goes about achieving that goal, even when she has a pre-disposition to act in one preferred mode or another. Got it? I like to refer to this as, “The topology mediates the modality.” How much of your content strategy today answers the Methodical’s early stage buying needs?

“We also began questioning the practicality of designing at the page level for all of our personas. Some of us feel that it is possible to use personas for creating a scent trail at the individual page level if personas are very clearly defined but we also believe very large international sites would become extremely cluttered if multiple personas were used in the persuasion architecture of each page. Could you explain your
position on this?”

Another great question, probably because we hear this one a lot as a “freeze” point for larger companies. The answer is almost *never* to be creating multiple page versions, one variation for each persona. That’s not working for personas; that’s working for personalization in an aggregated populance. And if that worked, you’d've seen that emerge a decade ago as a solution that everyone would have jumped on. The reason it doesn’t work is that Persuasion Architecture(TM) Personas aren’t designed to be stereotypes of demographic groups; instead, they are representative models for the buying process and there’s a limited number of ways that the Human Operating System works. Each of us is a little mix of each of the modalities, and even that varies in time, place and context. The Personas are models; the Customers are not. So each of us, as individuals, exhibit varying relative balances of the PA Personas at each step in our own buying process.

So when you design for persuasive scenarios you’re optimizing how the various personas *could* move through the site *persuasively*. Not all possible paths; just those paths along which effective persuasion occurs (that distinction will drive your IT folks crazy. Sorry! ). And to answer the final part of your question, the question of internationalization is a good one, but again is answered by the persuasive process. If someone from Japan buys a camera the same way as someone from Poland, then your issue is one of language. If those processes are culturally different, then the persuasion is different, and has to be analyzed to really lead to optimization (and you’ll have to also determine for yourself, if, say, one quadrant type is different from one culture to another while another quadrant might remain the same), and then you layer the internationalization on top of that.  Usually, though,  when one mode changes due to culture, all modes change and the relative mix of modes changes as a whole.

Again, keep the goal in mind: more conversion, more sales, more leads. You’re looking to optimize your sales system by optimizing all parts of the process. You correctly comment that this can get complex and, in your words, “extremely cluttered”. The “clutter” claim often comes when a company attempts to graft persuasion architecture on top of information architecture — without having understood the persuasion first, an information system was designed and implemented un-prepared to persuade — of *course* it’s going to turn out complex and cluttered. Our experience has been that when you plan the persuasion first, you’ll actually be amazed at how un-cluttered your very talented information architect’s work will be since she’ll be working to a plan for persuasive paths.

I hope that helps! Let us know if you need any further clarification.

This post is intended to respond to the questions we were asked. If you want to know more about personas I’d recommend you read our books or if not download two documents: our Persuasion Architecture (PDF) & Getting Started with Building Persona (PDF) whitepapers.

Here are 5 key, unanswered questions (beyond shipping costs) of the shopping cart:

1. Do you offer alternate forms of payment (aside from credit card)?
2. Are you safe and secure?
3. Why are you asking for this information?
4. Do I have to set up an account to buy?
5. Do I get to review my order before we transact?

I recently bought a Father’s Day present online from a gift retailer, and their overall shopping cart process was “OK.”  I would give it a “B-” grade; it was good enough to get me through the purchase without bailing, but not nearly good enough to earn brand loyalty.  But, they did a good job of clearly answering the 5 Questions, and it was enough to help them “Get The Cash.”

I captured some elements of their billing page so you could see how their design answers the 5 unanswered customer questions.  When you click on the screenshots, can you pick which design element answers which question?

Are you adequately answering the 5 unanswered questions? Whether your confidence level is low, high, or somewhere in between, we know you could run some interesting tests to validate your assumptions about how well you’re doing, and you might increase your funnel conversion rate in the process!  Want help?  Let us know.

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

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

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

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

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

But (most) websites aren’t linear because hyperlinks break linearity (aka subvert hierarchy).

People don’t read (most) Websites one full page at a time in a numbered order; they read/scan/move from one link that interests them to the next link that interests them, often entering or starting on something other than page #1 (what bad web designers notionally understand as the home page).

This means “Long copy” and “short copy” only apply to Websites metaphorically at best, roughly translating to “content rich & substantiated” and “minimalist / pared down,” respectively.

The upside is that hyperlinks make it possible to get the best of both (offline) worlds. Visitors who want more substantiation and richer content can drill down on the links that interest them, and visitors who only want a quick, bottom-line summary and an express path to converting can get that too – all on the same site.

That said, long copy equivalents still tend to out-convert “short copy” alternatives.  Here’s why.

The crucial element: Are you answering their questions & concerns?

Two recent studies, one involving complex B2B sales/Websites and one on e-commerce sites, show that well over 50% of potential leads/customers fail to convert because the Websites studied failed to answer prospects’ questions and provide needed information.

I’ve experienced it myself: if I need to know a wireless card or piece of software will work on my Mac, I’m simply not buying until I get that answered. Similar dynamics exists with concerns rather than absolute requirements, and, yes, this is especially critical for services, complex sales, and lead generation.

Content rich sites typically out-convert minimalist designs because they more completely answer the prospects’ questions.

And as I’ve previously written, question-answering content isn’t just copy. High quality pictures answer questions and concerns. User reviews answer questions and concerns. So do videos, blogs, forums, etc. And, of course, there’s persuasive copy.

Modeling Customer Psychology and Persuasive Online Copywriting

Suppose you’re genuinely interested in buying something, talking to a salesman about it, and in the process of asking how much it costs. How many times can that sales guy dodge or ignore your question before he destroys your trust?

Once? Twice, maybe.

With online copy, visitors ask questions by scanning the page and clicking on links. If your web copy doesn’t facilitate scanning and skimming, and if you don’t provide hyperlinks and content to answer visitors’ questions, your Website will become that used car salesman who won’t give a straight answer to a direct question.

At Future Now, we’re big on Personas simply because we’re big on making sure Websites answer the questions and concerns of their visitors.  We find it essential to model and facilitate the flow of visitor-website sales conversations in order to avoid the “used car salesman” syndrome.

So rather than having any old interaction or conversation with visitors, personas allow one to reverse engineer conversations that lead to conversions. To do this, simply:

• Take a persona’s emotional state, concerns, and informational needs upon entering a Website
• Compare that starting point with what the visitor will have to feel, know, and believe in order to confidently take the action you want them to convert
• And then plan out the conversation your site will need to have with that persona in order to make that persuasive journey from starting point to sale.

Going through this process allows Website designers and copywriters to persona-lize the Website. They can plan messaging and links custom tailored for each buying behavior/motivation.  The visitor can then self-determine just how many rabbit-holes of information/assurance/question-answering she needs to in order to feel comfortable buying, thereby getting the exact “length” of copy that’s right for her.

Fast decision makers and late stage buyers that just need a quick and easy way to buy, get it. And those visitors needing a lot of information, insight, and assurance can get that too.

Think of it as an adult and sales-oriented choose-your-own-adventure novel. Or just think of it as a really sincere sales conversation performed by your best salesman who just happens to be available to talk to (and convert) customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

What more could you ask from either long or short copy?

P.S. For a different (but congruent) take on the advantages of Long Copy (and it’s online equivalents), check out Sonia Simone’s excellent article over at CopyBlogger.

• #1: That video was a waste of time.  They could’ve conveyed the same information in way less time.  My questions aren’t answered.
• #2: That video was awesome!  I feel much more educated about their service now, and it was very professional-looking.

Scary, right?  The video was professionally shot, edited, and produced.  It conveyed good information, but it did so in a style that started to persuade one tester, and didn’t remotely persuade the other tester.

It got me thinking about how important video can be for persuading B2B site visitors, but also about how different types of videos are persuasive to different types of visitors.

I think a lot of sites go out and get themselves a video to stick on the homepage and think that they’re “done,” and that their conversion rate will start doubling every week or so.  But, I propose that one video may not be enough, because you’re trying to persuade people in very different personality profiles.  Further, I think the truly optimized B2B site can benefit from multiple videos, in multiple styles, in multiple sections of the site, from multiple video-production vendors!  I’m sure I’m not making any friends with budget-constrained site owners, but hear me out.

The real budget-waster is investing in one video that tries to be “all things to all people.”  You’ll end up with a disjointed video that’s too long for anyone to tolerate.

Let’s take a minute to review some common types of videos featured on B2B sites:

1. The “Get to know us” Video – these videos are great for showing the people behind the website/business.  Humanistic customers will love them.  Methodicals will probably hate them.  Our friends over at SunPop Studios excel at this kind of video, by the way. Check out some of the samples on his website.
2. The “Make the complicated more simple” Video – these videos help explain complicated concepts in ways that web copy and static visuals can’t do as well.  The Competitive and Spontaneous will appreciate this kind of high-level content.  My favorite creators of these types of videos are the folks over at Common Craft.  (Note: this isn’t just because I share a certain dreary hometown with them)
3. The “Product Demonstration” Video – perhaps the most common video on B2B sites, this one takes visitors through the benefits and features of a digital product using voice overs, animation, and screen recording.  Depending on how detailed they are, these videos might resonate with Spontaneous or Methodical customers.  The number of vendors that do these types of videos is too large to single out a favorite.  In fact, most digital agencies can do high-quality product demo videos these days.  If you’ve got a favorite, drop it in the comments, please.
4. The “Testimonial” Video – these videos add a human touch to the standard, text-based testimonial.  These again will be attractive to Humanistics, but the added layer of “realness” can help move the skeptical Competitive decision-maker.  They can be testimonials about the working with the company, or about a particular service, like our OnTarget video testimonial.

So before you start putting makeup on your CEO and rolling the cameras, I advise that you spend some time thinking about the scenarios your visitors are acting out on your site today, what questions or concerns aren’t being addressed, and if or if not video is the right medium to educate (and begin to persuade) them. You may find that several short, less slick videos that answer your personas’ un-answered questions, placed strategically throughout the site, are more persuasive than that super-slick, Hollywood-style video.  See?  I’m was actually trying to save you money

I call it persona-lization.

Thankfully, today’s technologies have come a long way from those that would recommend “customers who bought my book ‘Call to Action‘ should also buy clean underwear.”

Moving Beyond Demographics

For over a decade, I’ve been railing about demographics’ limited value. Just because your visitors fall into a certain demo doesn’t mean the same things motivate them. Demographics don’t reveal motivation.

Customers have individual needs and different reasons to buy. They’re at different stages of the buying process. Their motivations, largely driven by their unique personalities, are diverse. To maximize ROI (define), a personalization campaign must address and effectively bucket (or segment), then persuade a visitor based on this data as well. This go well beyond demographics.

One place where demographics can be used effectively with personalization technologies: shipping rates. There is an extreme difference in shipping costs for East Coast and West Coast customers; you can make each demographic a different shipping offer.

Hunting the Bargain Hunter

David Brussin, CEO of Monetate.com, describes a campaign involving client ModCloth, an online retailer:

• • 1,590% lift in conversion rate vs. control
  • 2,050% lift in new customer acquisition vs. control
  • 2,314% more revenue vs. control

ModCloth.com’s marketing team came up with the idea of incorporating a game into the sale, by giving customers the opportunity to “win” a discount on their purchase by finding a hidden creative somewhere in the sale catalog. Since this was a holiday promotion, they hit on the idea of using Rudolph as the hidden creative.

The idea was to display a creative on a product page somewhere in the catalog, and once that creative has been seen by a customer affect a discount on their shopping cart at checkout for the rest of that visit.

The results were compelling; customers who searched for Rudolph were committed to the purchase:

This personalization is especially exciting because it effectively targeted and engaged a very distinct persona preference type — the bargain hunter. This campaign went beyond just offering a bargain; it delighted this persona type by actually giving them a virtual hunt. Once this persona type actually hunted for a discount, it was unlikely they were going to abandon it. Many of them completed a transaction and likely told every one of their friends (another common bargain-hunter behavior).

Building a Meaningful Relationship

In these rough economic times, we’re all tempted to bend over backwards for bargain hunters (who isn’t looking for a bargain, right?), but you shouldn’t do it at the expense of the other buyer types.

One is the relational buyer, the relationship-focused decision maker. This persona type wants to build a relationship with those she purchases goods and services from. She wants to know who she’s buying from.

Jim Cain, senior analyst at Sitebrand, which develops personalization software for Web sites, tells the story of how the company reached out to relationship-focused customers:

The Sitebrand team crafted a call to action simply saying “First Time Here? Click here to see our welcome page” and ran it in a banner that would be shown on the first page view of the visit, regardless of landing page.

The welcome page itself, also built and optimized by Sitebrand, allowed their client, the CoffeeForLess.com team, the ability to write the equivalent of an “about us” page with copy designed specifically for this segment. There were no discounts or promotions included in this dialog, only the most relevant information for this unique visitor type and calls to action to help them start their shopping experience.

In the four months this dialog has been live, the impact to conversion has been significant. In the month of January alone, this effort resulted in a 304% segment specific conversion lift, accounting for over 50,000 in incremental sales.

Taking the Offline Online

Let’s face it, a significant portion of our visitors simply don’t like computers or spending time online. These people aren’t luddites; they just live life away from their computers in the offline world. We call these shopping types the spontaneous buyers. This includes buyers with little patience on your site, visitors who won’t spend time searching and looking or who won’t wrestle with complex online tools and builders. So how do you deal with this type of persona? Improve the online experience not with bells and whistles but with actual help purchasing.

Online fragrance commerce site Scentiments was great at personalization offline, but it had to take it up a notch online. From Howard Wyner, CEO of Scentiments.com:

While Scentiments has always emphasized a personalized approach in the stores — it even has an online and phone-based “Fragrance Guru” to answer specific questions from individual shoppers — we had not developed an in-house recommendation capability before then because we did not have the internal staff time or expertise to do so.

Scentiments.com contracted with MyBuys.com to generate personalized product recommendations on its Website and to manage its email list to send personalized email alerts.

We learned quickly to have more fulfillment staff on the job Wednesday afternoons and Thursdays, because the personalized email alerts go out on Wednesday. We always see a spike in sales on those days. The results are outstanding, Scentiments.com’s email open rate was 29%, click-through rate was 7.8%, and conversion rate was 16%. That level of personalization fosters loyalty and boosts sales.

While this isn’t a specific campaign, it is a concerted effort to emulate the offline shopping experience online. Your site should be good at doing what the best of your sales team does offline. After all, the best offline salesperson personalizes their pitch.

Getting Started With Personalization

While the vendors mentioned above are trusted colleagues and friends that I’d recommend, not everyone can afford these types of technologies and solutions. So if you are small or lack budget, or if you want to prove the personalization concept, there are free tools that will help you do just that.

If you want better insight into motivations and your site’s current ability to meet visitor expectations, free survey tool 4Q can give you some preliminary data to start segmenting customers based on behavior. BTBuckets is also a free tool for doing personalization by behavioral segments and targeting. Of course, Google Website Optimizer (GWO) will allow you to test your personalization efforts at no cost, and BTBuckets has even worked on an integration for using GWO.

Before this, however, you might want to create a few personas and create specific campaigns designed to speak to their most base motivations. Then create experiences that will exceed their expectations.

Tell us your personalization stories through the comments section below.

Assuming you’re familiar with the four temperaments, you know that one of the challenges of Persuasion Architecture is to satisfy the needs of the different buying modes on your website.  We generally recommend certain design principles for certain personas, but it’s often challenging to know how to satisfy a temperament if you personally aren’t in that Myers-Briggs profile.

Take me for example.  I’m an INTJ, which puts me in the Competitive profile, and I have Methodical tendencies (especially when shopping for something really expensive online).  I’m often at a loss to come up with ways to speak to Spontaneous and Humanistic profiles.  Maybe you’re in the same boat.

To that end, I found a great design approach for the Humanistic that I’d like to share.  I don’t know if the retailers over at Zappos subscribe to Persuasion Architecture or not, but they’ve implemented a subtle design element that I’d wager is extremely persuasive to Humanistic shoppers.  Notice on screenshot #1 (on the left), above the “search filtering” tool the little bit of copy about “Zappos Core Value #1.”  Intelligently placed near a picture of a person, the understated line of copy simply states that Zappos strives to “Deliver WOW Through Service.”  These core values rotate, so over time you’d be exposed to all 10 Core Values.

I like this approach for two reasons:

1. It doesn’t get in the way of the other 3 Temperaments.  This single line of copy doesn’t shout and doesn’t overpower other important page elements like products and the ability to narrow search results.  It simply sits there, quietly and calmly, waiting for the Humanistic to gravitate towards it.  The picture of a person serves to perhaps act as a ‘tractor beam’ for Humanistics who want to know a bit more about who’s behind the website.  NOTE:  Most Grok readers are well aware of Zappos because they get so much “buzz” about their marketing, their site design, their Twitter presence, etc., but remember that there are people out there who are still first-time visitors to their site.
2. You can drill deeper to learn more. See screenshot #2 (on the left) for what happens when the Humanistic shopper clicks on the “Core Value” design element.  Visitors are taken to the Core Values page, where interested Humanistics can feast on Zappos.com’s forward-thinking values (the ones you could argue have made them a leader in their space).  They even add a testimonial as icing on the Humanistic cake!  They’ve devoted some real estate outside the active window to talk about shipping promotions and direct visitors back into the browsing/buying process. Well played.

Should your copy this approach on your site?  Not really.  But take it as inspiration to start thinking about the things that make your company and your website unique, and about how to present that information to Humanistic visitors without decreasing your persuasive momentum.

And when in doubt, we always recommend you test and optimize to get to the optimum approach for your unique business.

• Dutiful George Washington for Sensing-Judging / Methodicals
• Philosophical Thomas Jefferson for iNtuitive-Thinking / Competitives
• Rambunctious Teddy Roosevelt for Sensing-Perceiving / Spontaneous
• Idealistic Abraham Lincoln for iNtuitive-Feeling / Humanistics

Unfortunately, the cover story (though excellent) treated temperament from a Nine Characteristics perspective rather than a Four Temperaments perspective in a way similar to this Slate article or some recent blog posts regarding presidential personality type.

Yet at least the Time cover/article got me looking for and reading those posts, because the authors guessed slightly different temperaments from each other, and I found the differences illuminating.

But before discussing the blog authors’ picks, my personal predictions were SP/Spontaneous for fiery, action-oriented McCain, NF/Humanistic for idealistic and emotionally intelligent Obama, and NT+Judging/Competitive for sharp-minded and power-hungry Hillary Clinton.

So here’s how the experts typing matched up with mine:

• Everyone agreed that McCain has a spontaneous temperament.
• Emily Yoffe felt that Hillary was an SJ, but it turns out that Hillary has actually taken an MBTI test and has tested as an NTJ, which matched up with most blog post guesses.
• Some experts believe that Obama was an NT, while others felt he was more likely an NF

And here’s what you can take away from the misperceptions and disagreements surrounding presidential candidate typing:

1. Myers-Briggs Preferences (and Temperaments) are just that: preferences.

People are adaptable and can develop or use weaker sides of their personalities – and may even prefer to use them in a given situation.  Introverts, for instance, all have an auxiliary personality that they use for social situations or work.  Johnny Carson was a legendary introvert, but hardly came off as one during The Late Show.

So too could an NT politician learn to speak empathically about deep emotional issues and learn to champion inclusive policies.  Or conversely, NF’s are more than capable of adopting an NT mindset when the need for tough-minded leadership decisions arises.  Hence the NT/NF disagreement over an emotionally savvy, but also emotionally flat “no drama” Obama.

And it’s also why Future Now analyzes buying behavior in terms of “buying modes,” rather than assuming that buying mode will line up with temperament preference.  No one buys accounting software spontaneously, and even the most hard-headed and practical of us have been known to make spontaneous purchases on vacation.

2.  Knowing how temperament preferences overlap – and where they differ – is important

Why would one person see an SJ/Methodical when another sees an NT/Competitive?  Well because both temperaments have a strong preference for logical decision-making.  And an NT with a strong Judging preference, like Hillary’s INTJ personality type, can come off as an organizer – reliable and sufficiently detail-oriented to fool you into thinking they have a methodical temperament*

So what does this mean for your Website/copy?

Rather than pushing copy or messaging styles onto visitors, it’s best to cover all the temperaments persuasive needs according to the “fast up top and slow down bottom” layout method.  That way you can let visitors self-select the copy and links that most appeals to them without worrying about improperly typing them. You can get a sense of how these temperaments interact with a page by reading Howard’s analysis of Jakob Nielson’s eyetracking study.

Conclusion: Put Copy for Fast Decision Makers Up Top and Slow Decision Makers Down Bottom

So the default copy organization for most pages will include copy, links, and calls to action intended for competitive and spontaneous temperaments (your fast decision makers who are less likely to scroll and spend the time to examine the entire page) up top, and copy more suited for methodical and humanistic temperaments (slower decision makers who will examine the entire page) below that.

For instance, if you have an NT/competitive who follows a link intended for Methodicals, the page he lands on will still have some bottom-line or big picture copy at the top of the page and a call to action appropriate for his temperament.  And if that particular competitive keeps reading, well, he may just be in a more Methodical Buying Mode.  No big deal – as long as your pages are set up properly.

And that’s what I took away from the recent spate of articles and blog posts on Temperament and MBTI.

P.S. If this stuff interests you, I highly recommend that you check out this free audio book.

* For the record, what probably should have pushed Yoffe away from typing Hillary as an SJ, is that she is very much an ideologue.  Her political stances were sharply radical when she adopted them and required something of a philosophical bent to arrive at.  She didn’t enter politics by being an outstanding administrator; she entered politics because of a commitment to her political theories and ideas.  Plus, her career as a lawyer indicated an NT preference over SJ.

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.

Remember a few weeks back, when I wrote about the perceived marketing strategy for the Jenny Craig weight loss centers? At the time, I ruminated over the possibility that the marketing and advertising execs at Jenny Craig were either consciously or unconsciously using personas to drive the success of their celebrity spokespeople campaigns. (To read the original post, traverse over here)

I noted the distinct differences between Kirstie Alley (Spontaneous), Valerie Bertinelli (Methodical), and Queen Latifah (Humanistic), and applauded Jenny Craig for being savvy enough to create different marketing “languages” for each celebrity’s ads – language that resonated with the segment of the female market that was targeted. At the time, I wrote:

“It will be interesting to see if the next celebrity spokesperson for Jenny Craig completes the persona cycle by using a Competitive type. Hmmmm. I wonder who it will be. Who would you like to see in the spotlight?”

Guess what? Jenny’s new spokesperson is a Competitive.

It’s also a man.

NBA star Baron Davis of the Los Angeles Clippers is the newest face of Jenny Craig. Talk about competitive – a star athlete who has the drive to win at all costs. The story is that he is trying Jenny Craig as a way to “stay in shape during the off season.” There are no TV ads yet, but check out this copy taken directly from the Jenny Craig website:

“As a powerful professional point guard, Baron Davis never stops improving his game. And as a professional athlete, he knows that a balance of height and weight is crucial to a player’s performance. So when Baron wanted to drop weight in the off season to get into his best game shape, he went one-on-one with Jenny Craig and lost 19 pounds!*

As a busy guy on the go, Baron enjoys the convenience of Jenny Direct®, the at-home program where consultations are done over the phone and food is delivered right to your door!”

This is a Competitive type’s dream copy – talk of improving your game, striving for ultimate performance, and the convenience of the at-home program. It speaks directly to the heart of the potential customer.

Having a man complete the cycle isn’t bad at all; Competitive types in particular are drawn to achievers no matter what the gender. It will definitely bring in more male clients to Jenny, and Competitive women will see that weight loss can mean more than looking good in the mirror. It’s all about performance.

Kudos to Jenny Craig for some of the smartest marketing around – they are quickly becoming my new “poster child” for brilliant marketing to women.

Great video, great message.  Now imagine that the guy in the suit worked for a corporation, and his boss asked him to come up with the words for the beggar’s sign. 
 His sentence would have been made into a paragraph by Corporate, watered down by Legal, and politically corrected by Human Resources.  I’m thinking it would be a completely different message by then. 
 Uh oh, I think my cynicism is showing again. [emphasis mine]

Yup.  Nothing like the mental image of some tone-deaf suits destroying the impact and emotional nuances in one’s copy to spark a good, hearty rant.  I’m right there with you, Susan.  But believe it or not, this is a problem that personas can go a long way toward solving.  Seriously.

You see, absent a well defined and imaginable audience, most people tend to do one of three things:

1. Market to themselves.  We all naturally tend to fall back on what WE like and what WE find motivating.  Great if we’re selling to people just like us; not so great otherwise.
2. Market to Stereotypes.  As in, “hey, let’s target our advertising towards soccer moms!”  People are funny like that: they know when they’re being talked down to.
3. Market on Price. Not that you’ll immediately advertise a sale, but it’s easier to talk about features than real benefits when you’re not clear about the prospect’s emotional itch.  And that’s a game of emphasizing features vs. price.

Most clueless revisions and edits fall into these three categories.  A lawyer might Latinize your copy because it sounds more like the formal language he’s around all day.   He’s making your copy sound like the language he respects and that “speaks” to him.  He’s marketing to himself.

Same thing with executives.  As a group executives naturally skew towards a Competitive temperament.  Plus, Executives with non-competitive temperaments often find themselves operating in that mode due to the professional demands of their jobs.  So they tend to re-write copy to better speak to them:

• Put the bottom-line up front
• Bullet out the important points
• Get rid of the fluffy crap and don’t get dragged down into the weeds
• Etc.

And that’s great for Competitive temperaments, but it can leave everyone else cold.  Unfortunately, Competitives only make up 15% of the population.  So now you’re potentially leaving 75 85% of your audience unconvinced.  Yikes!

Unfortunately, telling a client or boss that they are marketing to themselves never goes well.  Never try this one at home, kids, ‘cause that conversation aint going to stay about the copy.  Same thing with pointing out stereotype-based copy.  There is simply no neutral way to say these things; they’re always interpreted as an accusation.

Fortunately, personas can say things you can’t

Instead of telling the VP of marketing that he’s re-written your copy based solely on what appeals to him, imagine being able to pull out the persona you’ve been tasked to write to and having a discussion about how well the VP’s copy would or would not connect emotionally with that persona.

Now you can put your objections to his edits in terms of what the personas – and therefore the customers – do and do not like, rather than what you or your editors do and don’t like. Telling a VP that his version of the copy fails to address the emotional concerns of Sally is far less threatening and far more persuasive than telling him his edits have sucked the life out of your copy.

And this works for everything:

• for explaining that Sally doesn’t understand the jargon-filled features your editors are trying to cram into the copy
• for arguing the more appropriate connotations of one word over another, for example, “normal” rather than “average”
• for explaining that Johnny really DOES want to know the details and methodology
• etc.

In short, personas give you a vastly more objective basis for discussing the emotional nuances of your copy as well as the tone-deaf edits that might be threatened upon same.  With personas, these conversations DO stay about the copy and they usually do end up going well.

So while I admit that ranting about bad edits can provide a nice break to the day, I’ll also tell you that successfully defending your copy is infinitely more satisfying – and that personas are an excellent tool for achieving that goal.

1. Review Your Lead Generation Forms

Typically lead-gen site forms fail in two major areas:

• Many lead-gen sites simply copy forms from a site they like, giving little thought to the nuances and the difference between their business goals and the site they copied. The result can lead to a slew of unqualified leads, or low conversion to lead.
• Some companies make their complex lead scoring requirements the visitor’s job. We worked with a client with a highly complex lead scoring system that, in turn, created an intimidating lead form with a dozen intrusive questions and several drop downs with more than 20 choices. Only the most determined of leads would actually complete the entire form. The obvious result was an offensively high form abandonment rate.

The obvious advantage to collecting information from potential prospects in a lead form is that it can help a business convert more qualified leads. To solve both of the above problems, there’s one successful approach: use a two-part lead form.

On the first page, ask the minimum amount of questions possible for a visitor to become a lead, where each field is a required field. Ask for the contact information and little else.

On the second page, ask several more optional questions that will help the company better qualify the lead. Above the form, explain that the more information they provide, the better you can prepare for a conversation with them. With this technique, even if little (or no) information is provided on the second page, you at least have contact information that the sales team can follow up on.

2. Develop More Than One Lead Form

Many sites still link to one lead form on the site. Consider placing lead forms in several places on the site. Providing lead forms on each product/service pages and on other key pages allows you to track where the lead form was filled out and provides a helpful nugget of data for the sales team as they contact that lead.

3. Avoid Asking for the Lead Too Early

While recently shopping some demand-gen companies, I did a Google search for Eloqua. The second paid listing for Marketo caught my interest, so I clicked through.

Someone on my staff ended up on a landing a page that successfully enticed them to learn more — specifically this person wanted to see the video demo. Unfortunately, one couldn’t watch the video without filling out the lead form.

Many visitors in this situation aren’t ready to begin the sales process by filling out a lead form with only a promise to watch a demo. My colleague was one of those visitors and bailed. Ironically, another member of my team noticed that the logo on top of the page was a link to the Marketo home page and was able to watch a demo video without filling out a form.

While it may be a “best practice” to limit visitor choices on landing pages, this certainly isn’t a persuasive practice, especially for someone in the early stages of the buying process. My colleague didn’t know what Marketo was, and certainly wasn’t ready to give up personal information at this stage to find out. Marketo is losing conversion opportunities by not providing more actions on this page for visitors who aren’t ready to give out personal info until they know more.

4. How to Do Lead Gen the Right Way

Our partner and marketing to women guru, Michele Miller recently blogged about Jenny Craig’s successful persona-based marketing plan. Whether on purpose or by intuition, Jenny Craig’s celebrity spokeswomen appeal to specific personas and buying types. As we dug further, we were even more impressed. We Googled both Queen Latifah and Valerie Bertinelli and were surprised to find that Jenny Craig had purchased some AdWords ads on those two terms.

Even better, as we clicked through the ads to their landing pages, we noticed that each landing page was crafted and had elements for the persona type that would be attracted to each celebrity.

We extrapolated that Latifah appealed to a more humanistic persona. The page was filled with relational language giving the overall impression to the humanistic persona that becoming a lead for Jenny Craig meant starting a relationship — a key motivator for a humanistic buyer. Take a look at the page and see if you can see the strategy at work.

Bertinelli’s page reflects her methodical style, thereby making it easier for a methodical prospect to get more information. Elements on this page are more information focused and allow for the methodical persona to take action their way. Can you see the difference a persona-based page makes?

5. Aggressively Optimize Your Lead-Gen Process

Many e-commerce sites pour resources and time into improving their checkout process. Lead-gen sites don’t seem to have the same commitment to testing and optimizing their lead generation process. If you’re a lead gen site, your lead-generation process is your checkout process — it’s just as critical to your business as a shopping cart is to an e-commerce site.

What have you done lately to improve your lead-gen efforts? Let me know in the comments below.

*Cross-posted on ClickZ.

Basically, Information Architecture (IA) views websites as libraries in need of the right kind of card catalogue set-up to facilitate information access by visitors.

But most websites aren’t libraries, or merely stores of information. In fact, most commercial websites are more interested in persuading visitors to take certain actions (i.e. converting) than they are in providing access to information.

In this sense, the interactivity enabled by hyperlinks and Websites is more accurately viewed as a digital conversation than a digitized card catalogue. And the goal of the Website’s architect is not to ensure proper categorization of information, but to:

• Anticipate the flow of possible conversations and
• Provide the appropriate hyperlinks to allow visitors to steer the conversation in the direction they want it to go.

So how do you translate, “steering the conversation” into Web architecture? Well, typically, humans steer a conversation by:
Keeping with this analogy to conversations, a website Architect who wanted to design a site for persuasion (rather than “information access”) would be well advised to:

1. Figure out who the website would be conversing with. In other words, figure out who is coming to the site and model them via personas.
2. Map out the conversations while paying particular attention to how different conversational partners would a) self-identify their needs and goals, b) ask questions regarding their concerns, and c) move towards conversion. Allow your personas to walk over the fresh grass, and then study the organic trails they’ve made, rather than forcing all visitors into a grid system of walkways. In other words, create your scenario maps.
3. Create a link-structure and content plan that will allow each visitor to naturally steer the conversation while building up persuasive momentum towards conversion. In other words, convert your non-linear scenario maps into a per-page website blueprint that specifies each page’s messaging and hyperlinks so as to permit visitors to move through the site without requiring them to disengage from the conversation in order to use a navigational bar.

And that, my friends, is the key to creating a website capable of engaging in more intelligent, respectful, and successful sales conversations (i.e. generating higher conversion rates).

So where does that leave traditional Information Architecture?

Well…One still needs a sitemap. You still want those methodical types and returning visitors to be able to skip the conversation and just look up the content they want, which requires you to establish some type of organizational schema and persistent navigation. Traditional IA is great at this because it’s basically digitized library science to begin with.

But never confuse helping users to “find and manage information,” with engaging visitors in meaningful sales conversations. For that you’ll need Persuasion Architecture (PA) –not Information Architecture (IA).

While other companies have featured real-life success stories in their advertising, Jenny Craig has chosen another route: the celebrity spokesperson. While I’m not a big proponent of celebrities as an effective marketing tool, Jenny Craig has applied the use of personas (either consciously or unconsciously) to their campaigns and is experiencing a surge in revenue.

Consider the last three Jenny Craig campaigns, and how they’ve followed the persona business model:

Kirstie Alley: A Spontaneous type if ever there was one. While annoying to some consumers, other Spontaneous types were drawn to her quirky delivery and “it’s so easy to do” mantra about the Jenny Craig program. Throw in her effusive comments about the different kinds of dessert you can have, and you’ve got the Spontaneous dream of what a diet should be.

Valerie Bertinelli: A born Methodical, Valerie’s ads were all about the structure of the program. She cited statistics about obesity and facts about the nutritional value of the Jenny Craig foods. She was straightforward, dependable, and encouraged other Methodicals to apply structure their eating habits. That, combined with regular, specific updates on her progress cause membership to surge amongst Methodicals.

Queen Latifah: This is the woman who’s reaching out to the Humanistics that know they need help but are fearful of specifics and possible failure. The advertising program for Queen Latifah has moved away from previous messaging and started talking about “just feeling better.” She’s telling others that for her, it’s not about numbers on a scale but rather living a healthier, happier life. And, most importantly, she not only talks about how a healthier body feels better, it also means you can do more with your loved ones. That hits the “hot button” for a Humanistic – it’s often not about her, but how she can have a stronger connection with friends and family.

It will be interesting to see if the next celebrity spokesperson for Jenny Craig completes the persona cycle by using a Competitive type. Hmmmm. I wonder who it will be. Who would you like to see in the spotlight?

Review the Jenny Craig campaigns when you can – they are an excellent case study for success using personas, and good examples of how you can apply them to your own marketing and advertising.

Editors note: If you’d like help with your personas and planning campaigns for them please let us know.

While it may not make you popular with cool kids, fancy book reading does have its benefits. So I couldn’t help but laugh when I read about a new study published in the latest issue of New Scientist magazine (subscription required).  It shows that “readers of narrative fiction scored higher on tests of empathy and social acumen than those who read non-fiction texts.”

In other words, reading fiction helps us empathize with others and grok them better. By the way, I just finished Ask the Dust by John Fante…have you read any good fiction lately?

Now let’s head out to the business world – a world dominated by analytics, numbers, feasibility studies, ROI, and other non-fiction information.  All the “non-fiction” stuff is absolutely essential to running a business, especially in a soft economy.  But, when it comes to understanding your customers, and getting them to interact with your business in profitable ways, a little fiction helps.

You can probably guess where I’m heading with this…Wouldn’t it be great if there were fictional representations of your target customers that allowed you deeper empathy and understanding of their behavior online and off? Harry Potter readers would realize Dumbledore and Voldemort wouldn’t be motivated the same way or want the same things and this would influence how you marketed to them.

P.S. Today is Harry Potter’s birthday.

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

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

Framing and Understanding the problem:

The Death of Hype

2008 Year of Transition

Hello and Goodbye from John and Jane Doe

Your Customer and You

Tomorrow Has Come

Pricing Value, and Saleability

The Solution – How To’s

Targeting Through Ad Copy

How to Make Your Ads Sparkle

Ready Angle Frame

Actions Speak Louder Than

Facts vs. Value-based statements

Counter-Branding

The Solution – Advanced Techniques & Examples

The Future of Ad Writing

Revealing the vivid unexpected

Refer to an Unseen Action

The Language of Shadow and Silence

Magic WordsCan You Make It Talk?

Mental Images, Emotions, and Word Associations

The Magnetic Power of the Mental Image

Visual Images vs. Mental Images

Magic Words

Are you Normal?

Peter Pan and Superman

Why We Buy

Persona-based Copy

The New Targeting

Choosing Your Magic Words

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

A recent Advertising Age article, What All That Chatter Is Really Saying, talks about how text analytics can turn customer feedback into more meaningful insight.

Today it is marketers who are increasingly turning to text analytics to mine information from the mountains of customer data they’ve accrued from customer-service surveys, e-mails, online forums, hosted feedback sites and user-generated blogs.

“You can have someone read through 100 comments, and they will likely overstate the importance of some concepts, understate the importance of some concepts and totally miss other things,” said Tom H.C. Anderson, managing partner, Anderson Analytics. “For instance, if one person in 100 mentioned something, it would be missed. But if in 100,000 responses, 1% of people say the same thing, it could be noticed as important, like a new trend that’s developing or something wrong with a product that’s just starting to surface.”

So what are these companies learning? Unilever’s Dove brand is using text analytics to gain insight into who their customers are and what really matters to them.

In recent work for Unilever’s Dove brand and its Pro-Age marketing campaign, Anderson went digging for consumer insight on Dove’s own message boards, coding the text content against 43 different psychological attributes. Anderson found the vast majority of women who posted comments appreciated the realness of using older nude models. But they also discovered other common sentiments. For instance, most women over 50 strongly dislike the concept of “perfection” in beauty images. They also often talked about their mothers, grandmothers and daughters with concern about their portrayal in media. In fact, two in 10 women expressed real anger at how other advertisers portray women.

“Text analytics is a new methodology for us, and we were very pleased with the results and the depth of insight,” said Catherine Cardoso, associate insights manager at Unilever, in a statement. “The results were helpful beyond understanding reactions to our campaign. We also gained an understanding of what motivates people on discussion boards, which issues are most important to women in our target group, and how to create better products and messaging for them.”

Interesting stuff. At FutureNow, an important part of our persona development work is assigning value words to each persona – these are words personas may be typing into search engines, may use to describe their problems or the solution they are seeking, or may be words that appeal to their buying modality.

How do we determine these value words? One of our secrets is mining the text of customer correspondence, blogs, and live chat logs.

What are you doing to use your customers’ words to better understand who they truly are and what they truly want?

Or an outsider to come and open the bottle for you. In fact, their outsider perspective is a huge part of any consultant’s or outside copywriter’s value – so long as they’re willing to call you to the carpet over your unseen assumptions and un-named elephants.

But if you can’t bring in an actual outsider, any attempt you make to understand your reader’s or customer’s perspective will give you an edge over the head-stuck-up-their-own-bottle competition. Now for those painful (but worth it) steps…

1. Change your context

Through repeated association, things that typically go together often become fused in the mind, as if they’re supposed to go together — even if their relationship would strike an outsider as coincidental or weird. Transplanting these relationships from one context to another can allow you to see the strangeness of these connections that familiarity has made invisible to you.

This training video does an admirable job of giving insiders an outsider’s perspective. By directly comparing the medical care of a man and his dog, events and procedures that would seem normal to hospital workers (the video’s target audience) suddenly appear ridiculous because the context for evaluating them has been changed from hospital to vet’s office. The incongruity that a man is receiving worse care than a dog forces viewers to re-evaluate the “supposed to” nature of hospital procedures, as they no longer seem quite so “normal.”

Joel Greenblatt also does a nice job of this in The Little Book That Beats the Market. By moving from the stock market to of the context buying a small business such as an pizza parlor, Greenblatt liberates us from the illusion of “normalcy” that we have about wild swings in share prices. If GE’s share price moves from $25 to $50 and then back down to $25 within the span of 8 months, we think nothing of it. But that’s like saying a pizza parlor could go from being worth $10K to $20K without any major changes in the business. Changing the context allows you to see how weird stock price fluctuations really are.

So use this same technique by pretending you have to explain the Unique Value Proposition of your product or service to your grandmother or a 6th grader. Describe things through metaphor or parable, then pay attention to what doesn’t “map” well from one idea to another – especially things that strike you as odd or comical when placed into this new context. The “that’s funny” moments will become your portal to an outsider’s perspective.

2. Frame ideas like Martin Scorsese

Movie directors frame their shots in order to force viewers to focus on the intended point of action, while live stage theaters literally spotlight performers. They both make it easy for the casual observer to know exactly what to focus on, to know what’s important at that moment.

Experts and insiders benefit from a “big picture” awareness that provides similar focusing cues and mental spotlights. But outsiders, lacking the big picture, tend to see the most prominent, high-contrast stuff. In order to replicate their experience, you’ll need to mentally block your normal area of focus, to turn off your mental spotlight – so you can notice everything else.

Picture yourself as a man from Mars, with no background information whatsoever, who just landed at your website for the first time.

• What’s most visually prominent? What’s high contrast?
• What’s the most kinetic or fast-moving element?
• What parts of the experience would confuse you if you didn’t already know the back story?
• What would seem jumbled or overwhelming?

Describe the scene, website, etc. in the voice of your man from mars – and do this out loud to another person or a voice recorder.

• Where are you led astray?
• What false assumptions do you make?
• Where does confusion or uncertainty cause you to abandon the task at hand or to seek help?

And before you write this post off as hokey, keep in mind that a HUGE portion of FutureNow’s success at improving client’s conversion rates stems from this exact mental exercise (except we do it with personas instead of Martians).

OK, now that you know where the outsider will miss the important stuff and become flummoxed, go back and provide your visitors with a mental spotlight to guide their attention. Be explicit, and purposefully frame your shots – create mental images from a can’t-miss-it perspective. Be sure to tell your readers how to engage their x-ray vision to look past the merely attention grabbing to see what’s really going on.

A great offline example of this is What to Expect When You’re Expecting. The second pregnancy feels so way different because 2nd time moms know what to expect – they’ve got their mental cues in place. The book, What to Expect When You’re Expecting has become a perennial best seller and must-have for first time mothers, precisely because it does such an admirable job of providing that 2nd time experience to first time mothers.

3. Do the “which means ” exercise, then ask “Why?”

Copywriters frequently do the “which means” exercise to draw out the benefits from features and to understand the customer’s real motivations.

This compact car is a hybrid, which means it uses 25% of the gas as your current SUV . . . which means you’ll feel like gas prices are back at $1 per gallon . . . which means you can go back to eating steaks instead of ramen noodles.

What they sometimes fail to do is realize that an outsider might not know WHY a hybrid uses 25% of the gas of an SUV and will therefore ask “Why is that?” at the first “which means” statement.

Copywriters for skin care products make this mistake all the time. For example, I’ve seen plenty of skin product websites which will tell me that increased cellular turnover will lead to younger looking skin (so they’ve done one level of “which means”), but they frequently forget to add copy explaining WHY cellular turnover has this effect, leaving skin care outsiders scratching their heads, unconvinced.

So there you have it, three not-so-easy (but worth it) exercises for gaining an outsider’s perspective. Perhaps you’ll only get one or two insights per exercise, or you might get an avalanche of “a-ha” moments, but the point is that even one or two insights from an outsider’s perspective can dramatically improve the persuasive power of your website.

. .

About the Author: Jeff Sexton is a professional outsider (aka, Persuasion Architect) at FutureNow.

You were on a roll. Just two years ago, You were Time magazine’s person of the year. When Web 2.0 changed everything, You were there. You did it. You turned the Web into the “interactive” medium we always knew it could be.

You changed the rules. You took control.

So what happened? Lately, it seems that marketing and advertising executives are either blind optimists or furrow-browed skeptics about social media marketing. Are we — the marketers, the bloggers, the people who read and post comments on blogs and message boards, the 2.0 digerati — overestimating our audience’s desire to interact?

In a Copyblogger guest post, Hoffman/Lewis advertising CEO Bob Hoffman insists we’re marketing to ourselves. (Et tu, Bob?)

Marketing to “Me”

Bob’s article is a must-read, especially for marketers who are self-proclaimed “Facebook addicts”, “Twitterholics”, or the like, because in it he claims that You, the aforementioned social web-savvy, are the only ones who actually know how — or care — to interact with content online. (He defines interactivity as “the ability to interact with the content of the medium, not just the medium.”) According to Bob, for most people, the internet is a passively interactive experience, like TV but with a mouse for a remote. The net effect is that marketers are living in their own web-savvy bubble and are now guiltier than ever of marketing to themselves.

While I agree with most of Bob’s piece, I wholeheartedly disagree with his conclusion:

Don’t kid yourself. As an online marketer, you are facing the same challenge that every marketer since the beginning of commerce has faced: How do you attract the attention of people who are actively trying to avoid you? The methods currently in our arsenal just aren’t good enough.

It would be lovely if the “social network/conversationalist” crowd were right and interactivity between marketer and marketee would evolve as a caring, loving relationship.

I’m officially skeptical.

Fair enough, but who ever said that social media marketing has to be a forced interaction? The problem isn’t that the methods in our arsenal aren’t good enough, the problem is that “social media marketing” is a misnomer.

Social media marketing should be a largely introverted activity, one where the marketer spend more time listening, researching, and refining their message than they do actually pushing one. It should be about creating environments, and playing in existing ones, where you learn juicy details about what’s actually important to your customer segments. Yet for most, it seems “social media marketing” has come to mean the tactics by which one goes about hunting down customers and annoying them under the guise of “friend”-ship.

Of course push marketing tactics don’t work well on the social web. They never did so well in Web 1.0, either. The problem isn’t social media. The problem is marketers putting tactics before strategy and expecting different results just because the technology and format are new. That’s what’s laughable.

In a recent interview with Josh Bernoff, co-author of the new book Groundswell: Winning In a World Transformed by Social Technologies, we discussed the need to put people before objectives, strategy and technology (just remember the acronym P.O.S.T and you’ve got it). Keep that in mind when considering these other stats about the online population* from the book:

• 25% read blogs, visit social networking sites, and/or read customer reviews
• 20% regularly update/maintain a profile on a social networking site
• 18% contribute to online forums or discussion groups
• 14% comment on someone else’s blog
• 11% post ratings/reviews of products or service, publish, maintain or update a blog, and/or listen to podcasts
• 8% use RSS
• 5% use Twitter

*Figures represent percentage of online U.S. adults participating at least monthly.

Bob is right to a degree. Most people online aren’t involved in social media. But, as Seth Godin points out, the “who” matters more than the “how many,” and if someone is willing to give you free insights about your products, services, or brand, shouldn’t you listen?

A Sea of Irrelevance

Neil Postman, a notoriously cranky (and brilliant) theorist of the mass media era, came to mind after Bob outed himself as being “cranky” and “skeptical” about social media marketing. In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman defers to two other media skeptics, both famously crankier than even Bob Hoffman or Neil himself:

What [George] Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What [Aldous] Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.

Orgy Porgy, Centrifugal Bumblepuppy, Stumbling your Friend Feed, Twittering your Facebook in public. Anyone care to explain the difference? Point is, Orwell’s vision came true in 1933 (16 years before 1984 was published) and Huxley’s vision came true somewhere between 2005 and last Tuesday.

We are living in a sea of irrelevance, but don’t let it bother (former person-of-the-year) You! The constant hissing of digital white noise only makes relevance that much more valuable a commodity. After a day of swimming through mental 2.0 excrement, even a fleeting sip of relevance tastes like champagne.

And that’s our job as marketers; to keep the campaign champagne coming.

Ah, but if only it were that easy. How do you know when to recommend a Sicilian Syrah blend, an earthy Chilean Cabernet, a crisp-and-buttery New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, or maybe a reserve bottle of South African Pinotage? What if an ice-cold Budweiser will do? You’d look pretty stupid offering some fancy-pants varietal to someone who just wants a Bud.

And that’s exactly how social media helps us. It gives us new data to plug into existing methods. But as Postman warns, “there is a limit to the promise of new technology . . . it cannot be a substitute for human values.” Very true, especially considering that I lifted that quote from Wikipedia.

So I wonder, if Neil Postman were an “interactive” marketer, and still alive today, how would he ensure his message was getting to people distracted by the technology that’s come to define them, when it should be the other way around? My guess is that he’d use personas.

But don’t take my word for it. I’m in the Persuasion Architecture business and my target customers are marketers and business owners who read blogs and occasionally comment. Your social media strategy might look very different from mine.

UPDATE: Brian Clark, the editor and founder of Copyblogger, has made a brilliant contribution to this discussion: “The Five Essential Elements of Effective Social Media Marketing“ 

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About the Author: Robert Gorell is the Editor of GrokDotCom. If you enjoyed this post, he invites you to subscribe or, like, totally join FutureNow on Facebook.

Lead generation sites fail to convert for three basic reasons:

1. Visitors don’t understand the value they get in exchange for giving their information.

2. They are informationally challenged and collect too little, too much, or incorrect information.

3. You haven’t established trust and set proper expectations of what to expect when doing business with you.

Obviously, each is interrelated and flow from one to the other. There might be a few more reasons, but for now, these three culprits are enough to start you identifying specific problems on your site and determining action items for optimization.

Keep in mind, more leads may not be what you need. You may need more qualified leads, and a properly planned Web site should help the visitor qualify herself.

We’ve worked with several companies that have seen a decrease in the number of leads, but increased sales and optimized the sales team time and closing ratios because the quality of their leads was improved.

Exchanging Value: My Name for Your Service

Many sites offering “free” whitepapers, case studies, or resources in exchange for some visitor information do a poor job of merchandising their downloads. Your downloads contain valuable information. Treat them as such.

Stop thinking of these downloads as free. You’re asking for something extremely valuable to both you and the visitor, their contact information. To get this valuable information “merchandise” your downloads better. Show the visitor the value of what they’re downloading. So when they fill out the lead form, they feel they’re making a good exchange, valuable information for valuable information.

Include thumbnails of documents.

Let them know what they’ll learn from the download.

Let them know what they can do with the information.

List everything what’s “in it for them” in the download.

Let them know what will happen with their information. Will you be calling them? (More on this, below, under “Establishing Trust and Expectations”.)

If you offer a free trial or demo period, provide clear information about what they are getting. Is it a fully functional trial with a time limit? What happens when the demo runs out? Will you offer them support during the trial? (Sounds like a good way to win over a potential customer doesn’t it?) Disclose system requirements before they begin the sign up process.

Track the number of “bogus” e-mails you get, either bad e-mail addresses or e-mails from Hotmail, Yahoo, or Gmail. If you get too many emails from lucilleball@yahoo.com or elvisp@hotmail, rest assured that visitors don’t see value in the offer and the exchange.

Beware, sometimes these tactics will cause a drop in the number of leads, but rid you of junk leads. You have to determine if this is an acceptable trade off (it almost always is).

Help for the Informationally Challenged

Information, information, information is all around us. Some is useful, sometimes it’s hard to find what’s useful, and some information is just plain not helpful at all.

One approach to determine if you have info problems is to examine time spent on page. Often times I work with sites that have low time spent on main content pages but their FAQ page gets more visitor time. This may indicate that visitors aren’t finding information they need elsewhere. If a visitor relies on your FAQ to get information, it reduces trust. Why aren’t these frequent questions answered frequently (or linked to) on key pages like home and service/product pages?

Often sites put up so much information that visitors cannot find the piece of info they seek. This occasionally indicates an information architecture problem, but more often indicates that the visitors’ needs and motivations aren’t addressed in the content.

Another key issue often neglected is that often the person doing the research on the Web site isn’t the decision maker. She’s trying to gather, sort, and print (you do make it easy to do that, right?) information to give to the person making the decision. Are you making your site easy to understand for this person as well?

There really are no easy solutions to get your information in order. First begin to establish a persuasive framework, building personas then planning each persona’s interaction or persuasion scenarios with your site, and determining what information they need and when and where they need it on the site.

Establishing Trust and Expectations

Visitors must trust you. If they don’t, they don’t become leads or often they become bad leads. Visitors may even fill out a lead form if they mistrust you. Sometimes they are just going through the motion of getting proposals and pricing and are planning on buying from your competitor. You might have the better solution for them but the site or the lead process doesn’t instill enough confidence to take you seriously.

Most visitors who aren’t confident simply won’t contact you. They fear harassment from the sales team. Or sometimes your site is ineffective in communicating the values of the visitor and they bail. Again, this is a tragedy especially when you consider they could be in the market to buy what you sell.

Other times, visitors are in early stages of the buying process and an overly aggressive lead form will cause them to tighten up, assuming you’ll push them somewhere they don’t feel ready to go. Here are some things you can do to help instill trust.

Include information about what it’s like to work with your company. Let them know when you will contact them. Assure them that you will only help them determine their needs and not pressure them.

Ramp up your About Us page.

Ask as few questions as possible in your lead form. Don’t force them to give you all types information or endure a stack of intimidating drop downs.

Include short, friendly lead forms in several places on the site (not just your contact page). This will help you track where they filled out the form and better inform you what they might be interested in.

Tell them exactly what will happen when they send their info, tell them how soon they will be hearing from you. If possible give them a choice of how and when they prefer to be contacted.

Some visitors like to be prepared for the call. Provide a checklist of information they might need to have handy when they speak with you.

Some visitors prefer to call. Provide the phone number near the lead form.

Now go get some leads.

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Originally seen on ClickZ.

Editor’s Note: Want more tips on lead-generation? Join Bryan on June 3rd in Manhattan at the Call to Action seminar.

I had a chance to sit down with Cathy von Birgelen to talk about what’s on the mind of Pennsylvania business owners, and what they want to know about improving their websites and other online marketing efforts. You probably have a lot of the same questions and I think I may have some answers for you.

You can either download the interview (by right-clicking here) or just listen to it streaming below:

Click here for Holly’s interview

Hot Topics

Need to bookmark this for the next time you’ve got a few minutes? No problem. I’ll be going into more detail in the actual presentation, but…

Here’s what’s covered in the interview:

• How to start a meaningful relationship with Customers. (Hint: don’t ask them to marry you on the first date.)

• The four buying modes — Spontaneous, Competitive, Humanistic and Methodical — and how to increase conversion based on understanding what information each type wants and how they want that information presented. (There’s no such thing as an average customer.)

• How to use personas to create persuasive messages that speak to people in their language about what they care about. (Because it can’t always be about you.)

• The real purpose of your homepage and how to reduce those nasty battles over that prime real estate. (I know, I’ve seen the scars and bruises.)

• Common conversion mistakes and how to make simple changes that can have a big impact on your bottom line. (Seriously, you’ll be smacking your head and going, “duh” — here’s how Amazon does it.)

• Content for search engines vs. content for customers (Who said you had to choose?)

• What analytics to focus on that can actually tell you something about your site and where it’s most broken. (Hey, if you want to go ahead and read those 20 page analytics reports,knock yourself out. But if you want to know 5 specific metrics to look at, let’s talk.)

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About the Author: Holly Buchanan is co-author of The Soccer Mom Myth — Today’s Female Consumer: Who She Really Is, Why She Really Buys; and co-instructor of FutureNow’s Persuasive Online Copywriting seminar, June 2nd in Manhattan.

In this interview from London’s recent Search Engine Strategies conference, Bryan sits down with Ralph Wilson — in what appears to be either an airplane hanger, a convention hall, or a school gymnasium — to discuss how planning websites with personas will increase revenue and ROI . . . for a few reasons:

• Personas show copywriters and designers who they’re writing and designing for.
• Personas allow customers to choose their own buying experience.
• Personas prevent customers from being stereotyped.

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

Our presentations went over the high-level basics of creating personas and planning content that speaks directly to your personas. We had a full house for our session and I’ve received lots of insightful questions since from audience members. Overall, the feedback has been extremely positive. But what struck me most was the coming of age of the notion that personas ought to be an integral part of any online marketing plan.

This really excites me, to see people so open to a concept that Future Now has proved effective in almost every interaction. The sheer number of seminars about visitor behavior and the number of times I heard “persona” used in comments and questions suggested a bold new era for interactive marketing.

The rest of the conference was equally thought-provoking. I thought it showed a deeper level of thinking and debate than I’ve witnessed at past industry conferences. (Hats off to Danny Sullivan and the crew at Search Engine Land!)

If you’d like to see my presentation, here it is:

For more in-depth instruction on how to creating personas for your business, read Part 1 and Part 2 of Howard Kaplan’s series on “How to Get Started with Personas.”

If you’d like help planning your online content strategy with personas, contact us.

[Editor's Note: Brian Bond is VP of Marketing and Product at Future Now.]

Occasionally — perhaps more often than we’d like to admit — there’s at least some grain of truth in stereotypes. There are a few attributes that may be accurate about each of the groups others lump us in. So why are they so harmful?

In an article for MSNBC (”Science Gets the Last Laugh on Ethnic Jokes”), Kathleen Wren discusses a recent study showing that real personalities don’t match stereotypes. It seems there’s further proof our prejudices may be misleading…

A possibility is that some very specific components of a stereotype may be accurate — for example, Italians may gesture with their hands a lot — but that they don’t necessarily tell us anything more generally about personality.

Stereotypes keep us from digging deep enough to truly understand people (e.g., your customers). We see one or two traits and assume several others must also be true. Very dangerous.

But here’s the really scary part:

We may be “hard-wired,” to some extent, to maintain inaccurate stereotypes, since we are less likely to notice and remember information that violates our stereotypes.

When analyzing data, surveys, focus groups, and other information we gather about customers, we may be more likely to focus on information that reinforces our stereotypes since, well, it just “feels right.”

Think this can’t happen to you? Think again.

When I create male personas, I check in with the men on our team to make sure they’re accurate. (I’m not trying to brag here, but… ) I’ve been helping clients create customer personas for a long time, and my results confirm that I know what I’m doing. Still, there have been several times where the research information I was getting just sounded dead wrong. I simply could not believe it. But after extensive checking, it appeared it was indeed true.

I’ve done enough research on the difference between men’s buying processes and the ways women buy to know there are indeed some BIG differences. So when I see something that goes against my gut, I don’t just write it off. I investigate and try to keep an open mind. But this is why it’s so dangerous when marketers (even yours truly) claim to know something’s true in their so-called “gut”:

Generally, according to Robins, when we encounter people who contradict prevailing generalizations, we perceive them as unique individuals rather than representatives of their national or cultural groups.

How true. But stereotyping doesn’t end there. When ethnic stereotypes don’t fit, it’s gender stereotypes to the rescue!

I see this all too often: “Oh, the research says this woman is happy with her weight. She even thinks she looks good, even though she’s obviously overweight. That can’t possibly be true. All women want to be skinny.”

Guess what. There are many women whom the beauty industry would consider overweight who are perfectly happy with their bodies and do think they look good. (Look at the success of the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty, or Jenny Craig “plus size” spokeswomen Kirstie Alley, Valerie Bertinelli, and Queen Latifah.)

How can you break through stereotypes and really understand your customers? First, consider that stereotypes are the single biggest reason why so many marketing-to-women efforts fail, then read my post on Copyblogger (”Surprise! Not All Women Think Alike”).

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Shameless Plug: Holly is co-instructor of our Persuasive Online Copywriting seminar on June 2nd in New York City, and co-author of The Soccer Mom Myth — Today’s Female Consumer: Who She Really Is, Why She Really Buys.