Most valuable writing lesson ever.

“Nobody wants to read your shit.

Let me repeat that. Nobody–not even your dog or your mother–has the slightest interest in your commercial for Rice Krispies or Delco batteries or Preparation H. Nor does anybody care about your one-act play, your Facebook page or your new sesame chicken joint at Canal and Tchopotoulis.

It isn’t that people are mean or cruel. They’re just busy.

Nobody wants to read your shit.

There’s a phenomenon in advertising called Client’s Disease. Every client is in love with his own product. The mistake he makes is believing that, because he loves it, everyone else will too.

They won’t. The market doesn’t know what you’re selling and doesn’t care. Your potential customers are so busy dealing with the rest of their lives, they haven’t got a spare second to give to your product/work of art/business, no matter how worthy or how much you love it.”

Every online copywriter – no scratch that – every writer, marketer, advertiser, business owner, and entrepreneur should go read this post in its entirety.

This very powerfully states what Future Now has long taught: prospective customers are task oriented – they have lives and they are not on your Website because they are interested in you, or your company, or how you’d like to “position” yourselves within the industry.  Your online visitors have a problem and they are really only interested in whether or not you have a viable solution.

Once you understand that, you can move away from we-we copy in order to focus on providing visitors with:

• Ongoing visual and text assurances that they’ve come to the right place to find their solution – i.e., provide good scent.

• Copy that speaks to them about what matters to them.  Establish empathy with WHY they need your solution.  Figure out what has driven them to need your product or service, and make sure you address those felt emotional needs as well as ALL of their lingering, sales-killing questions and doubts.

• Pathways/links that allow each visitor to choose their own path, to either take the express train to grabbing what they need and converting, or to drill down to richer content on those elements where they need to assure themselves that you are, in fact, selling a real solution to their specific problem.

Nobody wants to read your copy.  But if they’ve voluntarily come to your Website in search of a solution, chances are good they will scan, skim, and yes, even read copy that addresses their task at hand.

The difficult part is often the task of separating out “your sh**” from the copy that’s actually needed to address visitors’ concerns.  Hiring outsiders often helps with this.  Personas are also extraordinarily helpful.  And so are the guidelines outlined in Steven Pressfield’s post – go read them!

And then go kick some online marketing a**

P.S.  If the name Steven Pressfield seems familiar, you may have read his (highly recommended) non-fiction book, The War of Art.  Or possibly his extremely popular historical fiction (also recommended).

[Editors Note:  The author of this article is now blogging at jeffsextonwrites.com]

“I know you are very busy, but I would like your help. I have read your blog(s) about Unique Value Proposition over and over (and others too).  I am perplexed.  How do you distinguish between a Unique Value Propostion and tag line. For example Fedex, ‘When it absolutely positively has to be there overnight’ – tagline or UVP?
Your site ‘Keep Your Goals On Target: Increase Conversions, Get More Sales, and More Leads’ – is this your UVP? ‘Market Better’ – your tagline?

Could you help?  Maybe a blog on this.

Thanks.  I would really appreciate it.”

So Bryan and I thought we’d share my quick and dirty response to that question:

UVP is just a modification of the term, Unique Selling Proposition (USP), created by Rosser Reeves.  According to his book, Reality in Advertising, the requirements of a USP are:

“Each advertisement must make a proposition to the consumer. Each advertisement must say to the reader: ‘Buy this product, and you will get this specific benefit.’”

The proposition must be one that the competition either cannot, or does not, offer. It must be unique—either a uniqueness of brand or a claim not otherwise made in that particular field.

The proposition must be so strong that it can move the mass millions, i.e., pull over new customers to your product.”

Notice that there’s no requirement for a Unique Value (or Selling) Proposition to be pithy or memorable.  A UVP simply has to speak to the buyer in the language of the buyer about what matters to the buyer – in a way that differentiates your offer from everyone else’s.

But a tagline does have to be short and memorable.  Great taglines should incorporate or touch upon the UVP in the way that “Melts in your mouth, not in your hands” totally encapsulates the UVP of M&Ms.  Yet there are many taglines that don’t.

“We’re #2, we try harder” may be a great tagline, but it’s arguable as to whether or not it’s really (or still) a UVP.  It’s basically an implied claim of better service, and was likely only effective because of the “bold” admission (for it’s day) of an uncomfortable corporate truth.  Or at least that AND a lot of substantiating evidence (everyone remembers the  campaign but few ever mention the reality of improved service which accompanied that campaign).  Once the reality of better service went away, the UVP element of the tagline evaporated.  But the tagline remains.

On the not so great end of the spectrum, you’ve got “Quality is Job 1.”  Or “Fly the friendly skies.”  Or “I’m Lovin’ It”.  Bland corporate taglines that contain nary a hint of UVP.

In short, a reasonably substantiated answer to the question, “why do business with us and not the other guy,” is a  UVP.  A tagline could (and probably should) be a short, catchy summary of the UVP, but there are plenty of taglines that aren’t.

So start your headline optimization process with a close look at scent.  These links will help drive home the point:

Bryan Eisenberg gets interviewed on Scent and Landing Page Stickiness:

Click here to view the embedded video.

How lack of scent feels like “bait and switch” to website visitors

Broken scent between e-mails and landing pages accounts for 35% of failed campaigns

Step 2. Angle of Approach: After you understand what it will take to provide continuity of scent, you’ll need to do the research and idea generation to come up with that compelling hook, or angle of approach that will compel readers to stop and scan the article.

Think of it this way, if scent is about matching information, keywords, and look and feel, angle of approach is about matching your copy to visitors’ emotional drives, motivations, hopes, dreams, fears, etc.  Of course, it’s also about introducing a compellingly interesting thought into the reader’s mind.  For some incredibly helpful tools and techniques on Angles of Approach,take a look at the following blog posts:

How to connect with your prospect’s dominant emotion

How to polarize an audience to speak to the prospects you most want

Roy Williams on Choosing Whom to Lose

Why writing to a specific person (or persona) Overcomes the 200 Headlines Myth

The power of Magic Words – and how to find them

Sean D’Souza on the Power of New & Knew

Sean on how specifics beat generalities when it comes to Angles of Approach

Roy Williams on Framing First Mental Images

Compelling the visitor to keep reading

Why your headline may want to refer to an unseen action

I’d recommend you come up with at least a couple of different approaches and test them.  This might cause you to rewrite your first paragraph or two of body copy for each test variant, but it’s well worth the effort.

Step 3. Wordsmithing: Once you have the angle of approach and the “Scent” requirements, then it’s time for some of the traditional wordsmithing normally associated with writing headlines.  Can you sharpen the point?  Can you increase the curiosity factor?  Should it be a statement or a question?  Can you swap out words to create different emotional associations or connotations?  Can you test fractions vs. percentages?  What kind of presuppositions can you bury in And so on.

Here’s a monster list of links containing some of the best stuff I’ve seen on Headlines:

First, go sign up for Sean’s newsletter and get his free PDF report on Why do most headlines fail.

Second, read through Jay Abraham’s list of 100 Greatest Headlines Ever written

Third, listen to Gary Bencivenga’s explanation of why you should build credibility into your headlines

Now feast on Brian Clark’s brilliant headline articles:

5 Simple Ways to Open Your Post With a Bang

10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work

7 More Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work

Warning: Use These 5 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas at Your Own Risk

How to Get 53% More Readers for Every Blog Post You Write

And for sheer tonnage of listed techniques, it’s hard to resist Chris Bloczynski’s post:

99 Headline Techniques Revealed

Or SEO Blackhat’s 54 Headline Templates That Sell

Of course, it goes without saying that with all these choices, you’ll want to test and optimize, and the Grok’s own post on Top 10 Ideas for Testing Your Headlines is a great place to start, or you can watch the webinar on testing headlines and calls to action:

When I fall off the wagon, every so often, I’ll go ahead and pick a keyphrase and start clicking through PPC ads and their landing pages and take screenshots of the whole entire experience. You can’t imagine how often the experience from keyword to ad to landing page is broken. I want to call them and yell at them to subscribe to OnTarget. I don’t do it. Instead a few weeks or months will pass and the same advertisers drop those ads.  I can just hear their internal discussions as they analyze their metrics and rationally conclude that keyphrase X doesn’t convert for us.

(Maybe we should start the Internet Marketing Darwin Award for PPC ads.)

Keywords Don’t Fail to Convert… we fail to convert visitors for that keyword.

Do you believe the keyphrase you chose is relevant to your business? If it is, then your responsibility is to show every visitor how that keyphrase is relevant to their needs. Every visitor that comes to your site is not completely unique. They have various mostly foreseeable motivations persuading them to buy and various foreseeable objections that would keep them from buying. Ask yourself:

• What is their intent in usingthose keywords?
• What need or desire are they trying to fulfill?
• What is their goal?
• How do we align our goals to meet theirs?

PPC ads are just like tapping someone on the shoulder. PPC ads are only meant to grab attention not convert. If you want to convert your visitor you need to work on the rest of the experience (the conversation) beyond the click.

Do you make any money when a visitor just clicks your ad? No.

So instead of thinking of PPC as pay per click start thinking of it as pay per conversation.

Devote some resources to optimizing your conversations.

How to Get Started Optimizing your Keyword Marketing

1. The first thing you need to do is bucket your keyphrases. Start with the first 100 or so top phrases that drive traffic to your website. For each one of those classify the terms by phase in the buying process. Does the keyphrase apply in the early, middle or late stage of the buying process?

If the term is driving traffic to your site but not really relevant to your business put it in a disqualified bucket for now. For FutureNow one of those terms is “convertion rate.” It may be a harmless typo but time has shown that if they can’t spell conversion they aren’t likely customers.

An example: Someone is planning to buy a new television set. Early in their buying process they might use phrases like LCD tvs, best LCD tv, or LCD tv reviews. As they progress to the middle stage you might see keyphrases like compare Sharp and Sony LCDs, LCD tv 1080 dpi and then move on to specific models in the late stages like Sony KDL-52XBR6.

2. Define and realign your goals with your visitors. Would you expect every person you went out on a date with to marry you at the end of the first date? So why do we expect every keyword to convert visitors to our ultimate goal, the sale or the lead? Our job is to get them there, but based upon their buying preferences, they may not be able to be moved any faster than they are prepared to.

Start planning micro-goals along the way to your macro-goal (sale or lead). Someone earlier in their buying process might not be ready to commit on their first visit. Plan smaller milestones or micro-goals that may lead that person to convert at a later point in their process.

Why don’t many more early or middle stage landing pages have some easy way to capture a visitor’s email address with some kind of offer? 

If your web pages were sales people, how many of them would you fire or at least get trained?

Don’t pay for a keyphrase or a date if your only expectation is a  full commitment at the end.  You need to romance them and show them all your best moves. (Warning – this is conversion advice and it works but I’m no dating expert, just ask my wife.)

Some examples: Maybe you can offer them a buyer’s guide download, a coupon for their first time purchase, an offer to see a webinar about how to choose the product/service they are considering or a price alert notification if this item goes on sale.

Every keyphrase should have a goal that is in alignment with the visitor’s stage in their buying process.

3. Measure your success and build confidence. Respect and support your customer’s journey along their buying process by pulling them along instead of trying to push them to commit too fast. That is the friction that is caused by your sales process colliding with, instead of aligning with, their buying process. This is what creates cognitive dissonance. What you need to build is confidence. Your visitors need confidence that you are there to support their buying process and confidence in your ability to address all their needs and wants in order to convert visitors at all stages.

Start tracking and evaluating your keyphrases and landing pages by how well they support moving visitors through the buying process.  Analyze these micro-goals and continuously optimize the experience to move further and further along so that you keep them on target. Every step closer to the macro-goal is a success, every visit that just bounces is a failure.

Take these 3 steps now and you’ll enjoy a more confident and lucrative 2009.

P.S. This post was inspired by my presentation at Search Engine Strategies in Chicago. Read about it on the AimClearBlog.

I was also lucky enough to get a signed copy of my friend Andrew Goodman’s updated book Winning Results with Google AdWords, Second Edition.The first was was great and I am looking forward to reading this one over the weekend.

Armed with this powerful data, the Comcast Business Services team went ahead and got the ok to produce a 3 page PDF that shows pricing information with a competitive comparision. Now that PDF is the most popular piece of their website.

What will you to this quarter to find out why your customers are at your website and how they perform at accomplishing their task so that you can fix it?

Seattle’s Chow Foods runs six restaurants, and recently sent an email blast with an inventive promotion.  The one-day promotion adjusted their menu item pricing based on the close of the DOW and the NASDAQ – the tumultuous DOW set the food menu pricing, and the NASDAQ set the price of house wine, draft beers, and well drinks.

The DOW closed at 8,979, which brought all menu items to a price of $8.79, and the NASDAQ closed at 1,717, which brought drink prices down to $1.71!  I walked by one of their restaurants last night at dinner time, and the line was out the door and down the block.

Here are the lessons I see in their promotion:

1. Be innovative – basing prices on market closes, which have been painful news lately, actually worked to the customer’s benefit.  I had the promotion forwarded to me, so they also came up with something Viral-worthy.
2. Put some skin in the game – the business took some risk here, and customers sensed that and respond favorably.
3. Tap in to something already on customers’ minds – I guess that’s the point of this whole story.
4. Write great copy – their copywriter obviously had some fun with this (samples below).

What other clever ways can you leverage the economy (or the political races) to promote your business or your site?  Need some support as you innovate?

Tasty copy excerpts:

Dow’d but not Out at CHOW on Oct. 16

CHOW Foods is executing a short term Main Street bailout plan far more delicious than the one the goofs in congress passed last week.

The lower the Dow closes on Thursday, the less your entrée costs–no food on the menu will be priced more than the Dow. If it closes at 8300 (gulp!) then you won’t pay any more than $8.30 for any item on our food menus.

If Chowin’ on the DOW isn’t enough to whet your appetite, keep in mind that our house red & white wine, draft beers and well drinks will be priced at the NASDAQ close for the day.  If it dips to 1250, then our depression era pricing on these libations will be just a buck twenty five!

So as you ramp your sites and marketing up for the Holidays, do you have a few innovations up your sleeve?

Let’s face it. Despite the economic troubles, people are still going to want to give gifts, and find the best gifts they can for their loved ones.  They’re just going to be more cautious and spendthrift.  So empathize with that sentiment as they shop with you.

Encourage them to take their time and find the right deals.  Advise them to buy multiple items to save on their overall shipping spend (Amazon has always ruled this game in my opinion).  Heck, if you’re really bold, cross-sell them with similar items that cost less…it’s sounds crazy, but they might convert instead of abandon.

For a more concrete example, think about gift cards.  A certain percentage of gift shoppers will always end up giving gift cards, and that means a certain percentage of your early-2009 traffic will be gift card redeemers.  The buying path for gift cards is usually OK, but have you optimized it?  Do you plan to test and optimize it in the weeks leading up to the Holidays?

Now think about the card redemption process, which I think has even more room for improvement.  Here’s the experience I’ve always had when redeeming Holiday gift cards online:

1. Receive the card, note how much is on it.
2. Sometime between and 12/26 and 7/4, decide to redeem it (I’m a notoriously bad procrastinator).
3. Look on the back of the card for redemption instructions.
4. Following the instructions, type in the URL and land on the homepage.
5. Now I’m overwhelmed with thousands of products to choose from and no assistance offered.
6. I poke around a bit, maybe try to search by price range, and maybe buy something.

Boring.  Uninspired.  A bit tedious.

Here’s a dream of a better experience:

1. Receive the card, note how much is on it.
2. Sometime between and 12/26 and 1/31, decide to redeem it (Made a New Year’s Resolution about procrastinating less).
3. Look on the back of the card for redemption instructions.
4. Following the instructions, type in the URL and land on a unique landing page or a microsite, 100% dedicated to gift card redemption. No distractions.
5. I can select the value of the gift card and be shown ONLY relevant price range items, or receive a few friendly suggestions of ways to spend the $, or find out how other shoppers have been spending their gift cards.
6. The checkout flow is customized to my unique task of checking out with a gift card.

Those are just a few changes that seem achievable.  Pair those changes with optimization, and you might turn 1-time gift card redeemers into repeat purchasers.
If anyone wants to share their innovative Holiday Season ideas, feel free, but we understand why you wouldn’t necessarily want to give up your competitive advantage .

Can anyone give examples of extraordinary 2007-08 Holiday gift card experiences out there on the Web?

Think of your site’s search box as a last chance to get a visitor to take action on your site.  A majority of visitors will only use internal search as a last resort when they are unable to find what they are looking for through the landing page and its subsequent navigation. If the visitor gets zero results or are still unable to find what she wants in the search results, that result page will be her last stop on the way to your competitor’s site. While internal search is not used by the majority of visitors,  it is necessary to provide a visitor with relevant and useful information when she does search.

Your visitors expectations of your site’s search is that it will perform as well as the search they are used to from their favorite search engine.

There are many ways that search result pages can be optimized to provide visitors with an easy means to find what they are looking for — or at least something that will keep the visitor moving through your site. Here are a few places to start:

Drill down and sorting options -  Long lists of results can be daunting. Give visitors the option to drill down by various criteria. Allow visitors to drill down or to sort by category, price, brand, sale items, availability, best selling. Test which ones have the most impact.

Correct Misspellings - Misspellings are easy mistakes to make. Plan for these mistakes by bringing visitors the right results when they use the wrong spelling. Let the visitor know they have made a mis-spell (”did you mean: dictionary? “) and either provide the results directly on the page or provide link to the properly spelled results. Mine these on a regular basis and they’ll also provide you insights into merchandising opportunities.

Consider Related words - Visitors often use their own words to describe what they want, they may not use the exact words your site (or your industry) uses to describe what they are looking for. Use related words and common synonyms to bring back relevant results.

Listen to visitors -  This is the only place on your website where you can get qualitative visitor information without pestering them or taking them out of the buying process. An early stage visitor who doesn’t have a lot of knowledge on the subject may  search more often (but less efficiently), thereby yielding good insight into what words other early stage visitors think of. Look at what visitors have entered into your search, visitors may not know the exact name of what they are looking for. Mine the analytics data, look through the terms visitors are searching by and use this information to help bring future visitors closer to what they actually want.

Don’t have what they are looking for?- If you don’t have what visitors are looking for then you must present visitors with options to move forward. Give similar or replacement products if you don’t carry the specific product they are looking for, and if all else fails present links to most popular or featured items.

Help your visitors out by optimizing your search results we these tips.  Following these rules you will be able to keep visitors on your site and bring them closer to the finding what they are looking for.

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.

However, my big concern came when I searched for broader terms like “conversion rate,” “web analytics,” “Search Engine Marketing” and then did searches for things like “airlines” and “marketing blogs.”

What was apparent in every one of those searches was that Cuil was using images from another website next to a listing for one of the competitor’s websites. For example, on the “conversion rate” search, the conversion rate squirrel stood next to Widemile. In the “search engine marketing” search, an image for search-optimization.com was next to our friend Gord Hotchkiss Enquiro’s listing.

The only “marketing blog” out there seems to belong to my friend Lee Odden as his Online Marketing blog dominated the results. Lee your blog is good, but there are many others that are also worthy. Finally, searching for “airlines” brought me competitors’ planes next to American and Delta Airlines results.

If Cuil is not going to bring back images that are directly tied to brands in their blended search, I believe they will have negative word of mouth for a while. It also probably won’t help to attract advertisers if that is their intention.

Are you seeing some of the same things happening in your initial searches on Cuil?

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“ 

. .

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.

First, the headline made me consider why I think of myself as Hispanic but never use the term Latino to describe myself. For those of you confused by that, Spanish is my first language. I never learned English until I went to school. My parents immigrated to the US from Argentina in 1962 and my mother’s family — they’re Sephardi Jews — spoke Spanish as their first language, centuries before Columbus bumped into the island of Hispaniola.

Second, image search is revealing. The way people use the terms Hispanic & Latino is often interchangeable. However, it’s obvious that the people using the term have different ideas about what they mean. I simply never thought before about how valuable image search is in understanding the underlying terms. Marketers take note: What an interesting way to determine relevance!

Read the post. It’s short and it might make you think, too.

So, what is the right term; Hispanic or Latino? If there isn’t one right term, how do you choose which one to use?

In the second and final installment of Bryan’s interview with Ralph Wilson — recorded at February’s Search Engine Strategies conference in London — the two shift their focus from personas (as discussed in Part 1) to improving landing page conversion by creating better “scent” for the visitor.

In the video, Bryan talks about a study conducted by usability guru Jared Spool that shows, among other things, that…

• When visitors found the “trigger words” — keywords that either get stuck in their heads, either consciously or subconsciously, often from advertising — on the landing page they’re sent to, they were content with what they found a whopping 72% of the time.
• When these same visitors didn’t see their trigger words on the landing pages they found, their search was only successful 6% of the time.

Despite all the heady research that analyzes how people actually search for — and find — things on the Internet, it’s so obvious that it’s almost funny: We sniff around for relevant info like animals on the hunt. We go where the scent takes us. If we find what we’re looking for, great. Game over. If not, we retreat to home base, regroup and go out on a slightly more refined path until we see it in the corner of our eye. Then we pounce.

. .

Want Bryan’s advice on how to make your website stink (in a good way)? Meet him at FutureNow’s Call to Action seminar on June 3rd in Manhattan.

But with the right process and frame of mind, it is possible to use web analytics to get insight into “why” your traffic isn’t converting — especially if you do pay per click advertising.

Here are some ideas for attracting more targeted traffic in order to get higher conversion rates and a much better return on pay-per-click (PPC) spend.

One

• Look at your top traffic-driving keywords (PPC and organic).

Are they highly relevant to the industry you’re in and the products you sell? Do these keywords clearly indicate that the searcher has a motivation to find your solution to their problem? Some keywords may have double meanings and could suggest that the visitor had a completely different search intent than expected. Someone searching “training videos” might actually be looking for “workout training videos,” “management training videos,” or a variety of other things. If the traffic from these fuzzy keywords is converting poorly, don’t be surprised. Stop buying and doing search engine optimization (SEO) for ambiguous keywords. The ultimate goal should be to figure out which key phrases specifically relate to your industry, product or service, and do some PPC and/or SEO to get listed for more relevant keywords.

Two

• Don’t play the generic keyword game.

It both difficult and expensive to get traffic from the most generic keywords in one’s industry. Such keywords are much more competitive in the search engines. You pay more for text ads and it takes a lot of SEO effort in order to get listed organically for these keywords. A lot of these single-word keywords are really only attracting early-stage visitors who are not necessarily ready to buy, anyway! If I’m searching for “purses,” I probably haven’t yet decided on a brand or a style of purse and it could take me a lot longer to convert. When I search for “white Chanel purse,” though, you can be fairly certain I’m ready to buy. Focusing on phrases that are tailored to your product or service is what people really mean when they talk about “long tail keywords” [define] — and often it’s the difference between having visitors who are ready to learn and ones who are ready to buy.

Three

• Speak the customer’s language, not your own.

Sometimes, marketers get so focused on their own sales process that they convince themselves that would-be customers actually care about the words they use to describe their own products and services. When someone is searching for a solution to their problem, they enter search terms that sometimes don’t match up with what the company thinks people should be searching for.

Are you buying traffic for keywords that mean something to you but mean precious little to your customers? We’ve all done it before. Even brilliant marketers can assume that customers will think and behave as they do. This is what we like to call “Inside-the-Bottle Syndrome.” Although contagious, it is curable, but your web analytics reports alone can’t diagnose you.

Let us know if you’d like to optimize paid search from the customer’s perspective.

It’s not as simple as some may lead you to believe.

First, there’s the issue of relevance. A blog won’t magically give you a top ranking position on Google, Yahoo! or the like. The content your blog has, the frequency with which such content is being updated, and the amount of relevant incoming links to your site are some of the factors that will make-or-break the effectiveness of your weblog.

Don’t add a blog to your site if you’re not willing to consistently invest time and effort. An outdated blog will reflect the opposite image of whatever it is you want potential customers to know about your company.

Some bloggers are a bit obsessive-compulsive when it comes to “keeping it fresh.” No, you don’t need to add 10+ posts per day; what you need is consistency and relevance. You can update your blog daily, weekly, bi-weekly or even monthly, but you need to do it on a regular basis.

More importantly, write about your product/service/industry from as many angles as you can imagine. Link and opine on news and commentary related to your business. Doing so will benefit your customers as they try to wrap their heads around the issue (or problem) that your organization is able to solve.

If you are selling Piñatas, talk about piñatas; how they originated, the different materials/manufacturing techniques being utilized, market share, growth opportunities, or give examples of when and where it’s appropriate to have one. Show piñatas across the world, client testimonials, the most commonly used characters, licensing issues, what NOT to put inside them, the best sticks used to break them, how to liven any party, how to grab the kid’s attention during a birthday party . . . you get the picture.

Don’t go off on a weird tangent by addressing personal interests (outside of Piñata World) in your company blog. Have the need to do it? Start a personal blog and be as weird, nerdy, cool, public or anonymous as you wish to be. And, when it’s appropriate, link to your company’s blog.

Here’s a personal example of the true power or blogs: “Hi, my name’s Juan, and I’m an obsessive-compulsive blogger.” I have to blog on a daily basis about my passion, the Hispanic Community.

Every single post on my blog has something to do with Latinos; marketing and advertising, culture, religion, language, sports, business, buying power, politics, education, health. Bottom line: If it’s relevant information that will help you acquire a stronger grasp of Hispanics, you will find it on Hispanic Trending.

Through many years of non-stop blogging on the subject, I’ve been blessed to have established good relationships with many interesting people, from all walks of life, with the same interests as me.

One such individual is Dave Schechter, a news editor at CNN. In late September 2007, when interest regarding Hispanic Heritage Month was reaching its zenith, CNN and CNN.com launched a very insightful initiative, both on and off line, under the name, “Uncovering America,” with humongous coverage of everything Latino in a very professional and thorough manner. Early morning on September 28th, I received an email from Dave, requesting that “Uncovering America” be mentioned on Hispanic Trending. He even emphasized that coverage would be on both CNN and CNN.com.

Knowing that the entire coverage would be extremely relevant to the blog’s readers, I complied with my friend’s request and added a simple (and truly short) post that evening, with a link to “Uncovering America’s” landing page on CNN.com. Programming began on September 29th and everything was business as usual at Hispanic Trending. Being addicted beyond hope to my site’s analytics, on October 1st, I noticed abnormally high traffic numbers (trending towards 4 times the “normal” number of visitors for a single day). My analytics showed that the traffic spike was being generated through Google, specifically for the search term: “cnn.com/uncoveringamerica.”

I was fascinated by the phenomenon and kept digging deeper into it. I went to Google Trends (also captivating) and finally grasped the magnitude what was going on. For reasons beyond my control (I’m guessing the mention of the website on CNN’s TV coverage), “CNN.com/UncoveringAmerica” had reached, according to Google Trends, “On Fire” search term status that day; ranked #2, right between “veratril” and “aliens in america.”

Google Trends not only shows the most popular search terms of the day, it provides links to the news articles, blog posts and websites people are visiting after performing that specific search. There were no results under the news articles section, and my guess is that there wasn’t one article from any tracked media outlet that included the specific term being searched.

Under blog posts, I was pleasantly surprised to see my blog ranked number one. Then, looking closer, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The actual CNN.com site had the #2 and #3 positions behind, you guessed it, my blog. People were searching for the term “cnn.com/uncovering america” and clicking on my blog. Once there, they found a prominent and clear link to the information they were looking for and off they went. Since that day, the blog’s readership — although not at the record level it reached — was permanently increased to a new level that otherwise would have taken much longer to achieve.

The power of a relevant and consistently updated blog is not to be taken lightly, nor is it for the faint of heart. Years and years of posting relevant information about the subject made Google consider the blog so relevant that, when this specific term was searched, they listed it “Numero Uno.”

Advertising investment: $0.00

Hispanic Trending didn’t reach this milestone because of a catchy name, a nice design, or by who I know; it was a combination of perseverance and focus over time.

Sure, a blog can do wonders to increase traffic to your site, but do you must consider it a long-term investment.

Has blogging helped your organization? Got any lesser-known examples of how blogging has or hasn’t helped business?

[Editor's Note: This is Juan Tornoe's first guest post for GrokDotCom. He'll be joining us at least once a month to share his insights about blogging and online Hispanic marketing trends.]

Isn’t it bad enough that my people can’t even agree on how to spell the holiday?

One might expect Balducci’s, the fine food emporium, to know better. After all, they wrote the we’re-not-taking-sides-but-you-should “holiday” menu(s)*:

Balducci’s has everything you need to create a magnificent holiday meal, no matter which holiday you celebrate. Whether it’s an informal Chanukah get-together, an elegant Christmas feast, or even a glamorous New Year’s Eve fete, with our Holiday Entertaining Menu and Ordering Guides you’ll find all the ingredients for a memorable meal.

Ah, but that just shows how thoughtful they can be online. What about when NancyKay Shapiro goes into one of their stores to shop for the “holidays”? Apparently, the product doesn’t match the persona.

Okay, so it’s not like they were marketing this for Ramadan. And maybe I did have a prosciutto and mozzarella sandwich for lunch, but that thing was good. (Don’t tell my rabbi.) Besides, a stock room clerk — not a marketing manager — probably made this mistake. Still, it’s important for marketers to be careful with those “holiday” promotions.

Happy Chanukah/Hanukah/Hanukkah**!

(*Which, for some reason, you can only download as a PDF. It looks good, but why not host it on the site? That way, customers could have the option to download, print, or email to a friend.)

(**To anyone for whom that’s relevant.***)

(***Now do you see why George Costanza recommended we all just celebrate “Festivus”?)

[Hat tip to the Good Experience blog.]

As we look at how Cabelas.com and BassProShops.com prepare to catch the Early Bird customer, consider the following:

• Relevance — If they’re not ready yet, don’t get carried away. (Is your website proposing marriage on the first date?)
• Screen Space — Early Birds need to know that they’re welcome, right from the homepage. Give them enough space, and combine relevance with scent to lead them in the right direction. (Use the battleship grid to protect the Early Bird from winding up in irrelevant worm holes.)
• Scent Trails — Not even the brightest of basset hounds can help you with this one, but creating the right scent for the customer to follow is key; particularly when they’re early in the buying process, and may not even have the vocabulary to know what they should be asking. If they come in with the wrong questions, and don’t buy, they should at least leave with the right ones. Help them find their way.
• AIDAS — Awareness. Interest. Desire. Action. Satisfaction. If customers aren’t aware of you, there’s no place to move forward. If you haven’t grabbed their interest, forget it. If there’s no emotional desire to lure them in, they won’t bite. If it’s difficult for them to take action, they’ll run away. And if they’re not satisfied, they won’t return.
• Inside-the-Bottle Syndrome (the other “IBS”) — “When you’re inside the bottle, you can’t read the label.” This is the biggest challenge marketers face. They know too much about their own products, too much about their own companies. It’s the “Curse of Knowledge” and you must overcome it to persuade.

Once again, it’s time to go huntin’ for Early Birds…

(If you’re viewing this in an RSS reader, click here for video.)

If you have a moment, share one of your early-stage buying experiences with us in the comments. Which sites have done a particularly good job of persuading you to buy, or turning you off, when you were only pecking around?

Take a look:

(RSS readers click here for video.)

(RSS readers click here for video.)

(RSS readers click here for video.)

A few thoughts:

• The name is, like, totally “1.0″. You’re not eBay. The only companies that should be allowed to be E-anything are ones that can wear it as a badge of honor for surviving the digital gold rush.
• Do I really need “Erin Esurance” to save me from car-destroying, football-playing, thin-ice-skating robots if buying insurance can be done between latte sips? Besides, her real competition consists of talking geckos and metrosexual cavemen.
• Geico.com’s ads are funny because they present insurance as a mundane necessity that shouldn’t get in the way of your life. In fact, they’re just trying to save you time and money — maybe (i.e., “Just 15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance”). Esurance’s Unique Value Proposition seems to be that they’re cute, oh-so-online, eco-friendly — because they somehow save trees/paper — and it’s as easy as “Quote, Buy, Print!” Nonsense. Their quote process is just as cumbersome as anyone else’s in their industry. I counted about 8 steps that I could see without putting in my personal information.
• Erin’s Secret Diary blog is ridiculous. It’s great that they’re involved with environmental issues, but honestly… who can read this crap? “Dr. Botanicus?” Really?
• Sorry, but “Quick, get in the hybrid!” is one too much.

These “dollar words” are truly excellent… at going over your audiences’ heads while keeping them from accomplishing their goals by taking the actions you’ve set out for them. Anyone who’s taken our Persuasive Online Copywriting course would agree; Jakob is singing our tune in his discussion of a usability test he did on the U.S. Census Bureau website:

Beyond banner blindness, the major reason this homepage failed is that it used made-up terms or branded descriptions rather than plain-spoken words. Terms like “Population Clock,” “Population Finder,” and “QuickFacts” are not as descriptive as a simple line of text that says:

Current population of the United States: 302,740,627

Once Jakob goes beyond the heatmap, things really get interesting. He uses gaze plots (click thumbnail for image) to describe 4 main classes of behavior — “search-dominant,” “navigation-dominant,” “tool-dominant,” and “successful” — and gives insightful descriptions for each. If one were so inclined to look at the same observed behavior through the lens of the personality types or the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, they’d see beyond the how people clicked, and into the why they clicked. It’s how they’re wired, naturally, according to their preference, or type.

A: The Competitive type — what Jakob observed as “search-dominant user” in this study; Using the MBTI lens we’d shorten their preference to operating in “NT” (iNtuitive/Thinking) mode- working at a fast pace, with a logical bias. The Competitive quickly scans and skims everything, looking for a clue as to how to solve the puzzle. Neither Active Window [define] content nor navigation seemed to be the path of least resistance. (Notice: Competitive type didn’t even look in the right-hand column; they’ve been trained to ignore it.)

The right and left vertical lines clearly illustrate the Active Window, where a Competitive is most likely to spend time. (The same goes for all types, but the Competitive does this more often.) Once this person struck out with copy in the Active Window, they aimed for navigation and, after quickly striking out there, went to search.

As a footnote, Jakob adds, this “user” (don’t get me started) mentioned the ability to search faster for the answer… at Google.

B: The Methodical type — Jakob’s “navigation-dominant user”; “SJ” (Sensing/Judging) on the MBTI — behaves with a logical bias similar to Competitives, but with a far more deliberate pace. You know the Methodicals in your audience. They’re not easily satiated by the answers you give them. They want more. No detail’s too small. They want it all. The good news from a marketing communications perspective is they’re willing to give you their time — provided you’re willing to give them relevant content.

The Methodical approach was to look everywhere; Active Window, left navigation, right-hand column (where the answer was actually sitting, cloaked in techno-babble and jargon), above the fold, below. You name it, they saw it. They just didn’t find anything that seemed like the answer until, finally, navigation appeared “most promising”.

C: The Spontaneous type — Jakob’s “tool-dominant user”; “SP” (Sensing/Perceiving) on the MBTI; — behaves at a fast pace, with an emotional bias. They’re highly experiential by nature. (Notice how Jakob describes this type as people who “like parts of websites where they can do something”.)

The Spontaneous visitor clicked around briefly, mainly focusing on the interactive features, before most likely leaving in failure. The gaze went everywhere, without focus, until a single feature grabbed their attention — that is, until another rabbit hole appeared (on another website) that was more entertaining.

D: The Humanistic type — Jakob’s “successful user”; “NF” (iNtuitive/Feeling) on the MBTI; — behaves at a slightly less deliberate pace than the Methodical, but with an emotional bias. Testimonials were created for this type. Show them how you’ve treated other people like them, and you’ll gain their confidence.

My assumption that Plot D represents the Humanistic is based on a few observations and is a shining example of the value of optimizing your experience based on a plan, rather than some out-of-the-box analytics package or testing platform. Had we planned this experience using a customer-centric methodology like Persuasion Architecture™ [define], we would have a context in which to view this gaze; to know how far off the execution was from what we’d originally planned. That would give us an actionable approach to making website improvements.

With Plot D, I see someone who’s spent more time than the other visitors — except, of course, for the Methodical — not just scanning and skimming, but actually connecting. I also see someone whose gaze fell oddly on the right-hand column; a behavior we typically see when people are capable of scrolling with their mouse without actually looking at the gutter to find the down arrow. They intuitively know the scroll bar is there.

Each of these experiences could have been planned better to achieve the task at hand, but that’s a post for a different day. For now, simply consider that people are wired to behave according to different preferences, their behavior fueled by their own momentum.

For you to achieve your goals, your audience must first achieve theirs. That means presenting what they want, when and where they want it — even if you have to make a single product page speak to 4 different “types” of people. But that’s the beauty of the medium. Online, it’s far easier to measure and improve your plan dramatically over time.

(Author’s Note: Anyone think my headline would’ve been better if it were “What People Do on Your Site and Why”? Now do you see the power of plain-spoken language?)

[Editor's Note: Here's more on persuasive copywriting by personality type and how to make your site reader-friendly. Enjoy!]

That was Bryan Eisenberg’s morning riddle today. It’s a great question, and one I was sure to answer incorrectly — Bryan isn’t known to ask rhetorical questions without punchlines.

Now, before you read my response, close your eyes for a moment and think of three possible answers.

Seriously, stop cheating and humor me…

Eyes back open? Good. It’s easier to read that way.

I guessed:

1. Shoddy image stabilization — With all the hype over new image-steadying technology, I figured the camera marketers were on to something. Besides, how many commercials of parents taking pictures of kids on tire swings can I handle?
2. Grainy low-light images — This one was a (fine, I’ll say it) shot in the dark, but it’s one of my biggest complaints about non-SLR [define] digital cameras.
3. Poor red eye reduction — The human cornea reflects light differently than other mammals. Lucky us. But why, in 2007, must we endure blinding rapid-flash settings only to look like evil deer in headlights?

Just as I’d suspected, each of my guesses was wrong. It turns out that the biggest complaint among automatic digital camera owners is “shutter delay time” — not “shutter speed,” mind you; rather, the response time between clicking the button and the damn thing actually taking a picture.

Yes! Exactly! That’s my least favorite thing about point-and-shoot digitals, too! So, why didn’t I know that?

Am I backpedaling from my previous answers? Absolutely. Would your customers likely do the same thing? Absolutely. Why isn’t “shutter delay time” addressed by most retailers? Let’s stick with threes:

1. Customers don’t have the vocabulary to describe their needs in the terms of manufacturer’s jargon.
2. Manufacturers don’t want to admit how bad the shutter delay is on their cameras.
3. Retailers aren’t doing their homework on how to help customers buy on their own terms, and in their own language.

After years of hearing “megapixel”-this and “stabilizer”-that, shopping for digital cameras becomes intimidating for people who just want to take good pictures of the people, places and things they love. Some do a good job overall, but miss the big picture when it comes to shutter delay. Others have pretty decent emotional copy, but it ends up sounding generic. And with each boring, overly-technical description, digital camera retailers are flushing money down the drain. Some don’t say anything; they just list technical specs.

Here’s what camera retailers should know if they’re to fix it:

1. Surveys are flawed. Had Bryan explicitly asked if “shutter delay time” were the biggest problem with automatic digital cameras, I’d have said yes. Since I was left to my own, limited vocabulary on the subject, I gave three plausible-yet-unsatisfying answers. Such are surveys. Ask people what they really want and you’ll hear plenty about what they think they really want — which can be horribly misleading, if not altogether useless.
2. Focus on motivations. What questions would your customers ask if they had the vocabulary? What are their underlying needs? How will they be using the camera? To address motivations, learn how to create real customer personas that transcend demographics and stereotypes.
3. Search engines value relevant content. Original, engaging copy is worth whatever you paid for it, and then some. Don’t rely on the manufacturer to sell its products for you. Their perspective is biased, and they don’t know your audience like you do. Grokking customer motivations gives insights into missing persuasion barriers like “shutter delay time”; things the competition isn’t addressing. It’s also how you know you’re buying the right keywords.

For example…

I have no problem geeking out for a week, digging through review sites like CNet until I stumble across a review like this one where, halfway down the page, a graphic (not the video) introduces the concept of shutter delay. But I’m the exception. I’m the gadget-obsessed 18-35 year-old male who knows megapixels alone aren’t the measure of a camera’s worth — and I still guessed wrong about my own biggest concern about digital cameras. So much for demographics!
Meanwhile, other people may not do the research.

What if my step-mom were in the market? She’s owned her current digital camera for three years. It’s in great shape, but she’d buy a new one today if she knew it would take the shot fast enough to capture those rare moments when my 6 year-old nephew looks directly into the lens — that’s what matters to her, not techno-babble like this description of the Canon PowerShot SD800 on Amazon:

[The DIGIC III Image Processor] takes the performance and speed of DIGIC II to even higher levels of processing power including new face detection function, up to 1600 speed ISO, high-ISO noise reduction, lower power consumption, increased speed for SD media cards, and higher resolution image processing for enhanced LCD viewing.

Um… Parle vous Ingles? Any chance she’d know off-hand that ISO refers to light-sensitivity, or that “noise reduction” means it will reduce graininess of poorly lit images, or that “enhanced LCD viewing” means quickly viewing the pictures on the camera’s screen? What was “DIGIC II”? Why would she care?

Luckily for Amazon, customers have always done the selling for them. So, unless you’re Jeff Bezos, it’s good to invest in persuasive copy of your own.

A BUSINESS strategy of The New York Times to get its articles to pop up first in Internet searches is creating a perplexing problem: long-buried information about people that is wrong, outdated or incomplete is getting unwelcome new life.

People are coming forward at the rate of roughly one a day to complain that they are being embarrassed, are worried about losing or not getting jobs, or may be losing customers because of the sudden prominence of old news articles that contain errors or were never followed up.

Archived material is being pushed to the top of the search engine result pages by the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts of the New York Times. That is considered good business, especially for a website that makes money from displaying ads and the reader gets what might be relevant information. However, the practice raises a new crop of questions about journalistic ethics:

• What is their responsibility to archive all of their published works?
• Do they have a responsibility as a news organization to follow up on all published material to verify outcomes and then link it back to the older articles?
• Should they allow people the ability to comment on this dated material?
• Should they allow for the editing of the archives at a later date to change what was originally published as news?
• Should some material just be deleted and forgotten in this digital age?
• Whose responsibility is it to monitor and influence (if possible) what the search engines say about people?

Please let me know what you think about these new ethical challenges for journalists. What are our responsibilities as bloggers? Do the readers even care when things have finally been resolved?

P.S. If you’re in the mood for contemplating ethical challenges, Marshall Sponder raises another large one: What’s an honest SEO person to do when Universal Search clogs up SERPS with results they can’t manipulate?

First, a little background.

In Waiting for Your Cat to Bark, Jeff & Bryan Eisenberg compare traditional, mass media advertising methods (i.e., “push” marketing) to Persuasion Architecture’s use of “pull” marketing. With repetition — and a marginally effective message — ads were once able to create an association in the audience’s minds between…

a) a particular need or want, and;
b) the product’s ability to satisfy that need or want.

They did this using the exact same mechanism Pavlov tapped into when he created an association in the mind of his dogs between the ring of a bell and the serving of food. Done correctly, this type of advertising can reach prospective customers before they’re in the market for your product or service, causing them — once they finally have a need for what you sell — to think of you first and feel good about their decision.

It’s called branding, and it works. But the problems with branding in today’s world are many.

First of all, mass media is an illusion. Thanks to a fragmented media landscape — narrowcasting, long-tails, etc. — most companies don’t have the budget to reach enough people with enough repetition to make branding an efficient option. Secondly, people are using technology to screen out ads that are pushed at them. Because they can, audiences (understandably) don’t wish to be interrupted and now have the means to prevent the interruptions altogether.

Pull marketing, on the other hand, capitalizes on an audience’s existing desire for a product or service and creates a strong enough scent trail (define) to “pull” the customer through her buying process. You don’t have to work to plant an associative memory in the mind of the dog between the scent of raw meat and the satisfaction of his hunger. It’s already there; you just have to make sure the dog can follow the scent all the way to the food.

When buying process is satisfying, it’s often repeated. Repeated satisfaction (not repeated ads) creates brand affinity. This aspect of pull marketing eliminates much of the requirement to repeat an advertising message or to try to “break through the clutter” of ads being pushed at people. You’re going with the flow of a prospects attention and desires rather than trying to commandeer it.

The challenge of pull marketing is to correctly presume, and match, customer intent. What are people really intending to do when they search on this or that term? How do your prospective customers think about and describe their problems? if you misinterpret intent, the rest of your efforts at creating relevant scent trails will be in vain.

Pull marketing won’t reach potential customers before they’re in the market for your what your brand offers. If they’re not aware they need, or will need, what you sell, they won’t search for you — and they’ll be unlikely to pick up on your scent trail. Of course, loads of repeatedly satisfied customers have been known to create word-of-mouth that reaches more people, but the question remains: How do you engage prospects — no, that’s not an oxymoron — in an age when push advertising has become prohibitively expensive?

Let’s get back to the NY Times article and problem with sites like VeryFunnyAds.com:

1) Viewer Intent.

Visitors to these sites come there with the intention of finding entertaining ads. They’re looking for jokes. That’s the itch they’re trying to scratch. They’re clearly not coming there from an interest in the products being advertised. So, pull marketing is out, as is any meaningful attempt at conversion.

But, hey, at least they’re watching the ads, right? You’ve now got their attention and you’re not paying painfully high media rates to get it. How about these platforms as a vehicle for push marketing?

2) Repetition.

First, even before mentioning repetition, let’s talk about relevance. Funny/entertaining ads are only useful when the humor is integral to the brand’s Unique Value Proposition (more on UVP here). If humor is an effective way to convey the brand’s benefits, the viewer remembers the product’s promise. But if the humor strictly gratuitous, or only tangentially relevant, it usually falls flat. And when that happens, listen closely. That’s not the cash register in the background; it’s the sound of crickets and tumbleweed.

How many times will they need to see your ad before they feel the product will satisfy their need? Compare that answer to the amount of times you — or anyone — is likely to watch the same video at VeryFunnyAds.com. Two times? Three?

Does anyone need to tell you that’s not enough? Basically, you’d need an entire campaign of funny ads in order to get enough repetition for this “pull” attempt at branding to work properly. This can be done, but it’s a tall order. For instance, I loved this ad, but it fell flat with different personality types.

Google calls the ads not just “engaging” but “viewer-friendly” — which, in PR-speak, roughly translates to, “Well, they’re not as annoying as they could be.”

Of course, in-video banners aren’t a new concept; VideoEgg has been doing it for awhile now. Yes, this approach is less annoying than “preroll” or “midroll” ads that interrupt the experience — and “postroll” ads are just silly, unless the idea is to push people away from the site altogether. Besides, YouTube had to do something, right? How long could they go before denying affiliates — and themselves — ad revenue beyond traditional banner ads?

But can anything that interrupts a 2-minute video really be considered “viewer-friendly”? Rough Type’s Nick Carr sums it up perfectly:

[...] That’s like saying that being hit on the head once with a hammer is a pleasant experience because it’s not as bad as being hit on the head twice with a hammer.I liked the reaction of the first viewer to leave a comment on the YouTube blog: “yuck.” If you’re going to stick ads on the videos, go ahead and stick ads on the videos. But, please, don’t tell us you’re doing it on our behalf. We’re not idiots.

Over at Publishing 2.0, meanwhile, Scott Karp hammers on the need for relevance with in-video ads.

Not being interruptive is the very LEAST that online advertising needs to do in order to thrive — what it really needs to do is be RELEVANT.

The beauty of search advertising is that the format and the relevancy of the ad are PERFECTLY aligned with that of the “editorial” content, through the miracle of search keywords.

That will surely be the case in some instances of InVideo ads, but in many if not most instances, the ads will have nothing to do with the editorial content — and the relevancy to any individual viewer, unlike keyword targeted search ads, will be hit or miss.

And there’s a BIG problem with low relevancy — advertisers only pay if someone views the ads.

Still, in the Times article, VideoEgg’s chief marketing officer, Troy Young, claims that “Viewers click on them at a rate roughly five times higher than banner ads.”

Then what?

Once again, the conversation about online ad placement centers around a lesser-of-evils argument. That’s no surprise. The old media concept of relevance remains tied to demographics rather than customer motivations; a far better anchor. Create a clickable, holographic video widget that transmits banner ads across continents and click-through rates remain meaningless if the ads inspire fatigue instead of action.

UPDATE: Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire says YouTube overlay ads don’t work.

As AllFacebook.com points out, Vodafone and others could have protected their brands for “a measly $50,000″ by purchasing a targeted news feed promotion.

Do advertisers expect more of Facebook than they do of MySpace, where non-targeted ads reign supreme? Is Facebook a victim of its (perceived) high standards for relevance?

I got this in St. Martin. I looked at it in the store and I loved it. My husband snuck back the next day and bought it as a surprise.

Jack bought this for me when he was in Asia. It’s Burmese jade. It’s a really powerful stone. The ancient Chinese believed it provided protection and could even make you immortal.

This charm is an angel’s wings. My sister gave it to me before she moved to the west coast to let me know she’d always be looking out for me.

My parents got this for me as a graduation gift. I was the first person in my family to graduate from college.

I bought this for myself the day I found out I was cancer-free.

I found this in a tiny little shop in Nantucket and thought it was the most beautiful shade of blue I’d ever seen. Every time I touch it, it reminds me of walking along the shore and staring out into that beautiful sea.

So I wasn’t surprised to read Roy Williams’s Monday Morning Memo reciting the story of a jeweler who gave away 500 free charm bracelets. The people around him said he was crazy, and that he’d lose money on the deal. But this jeweler knew better.

Sure enough, after giving away 500 free charm bracelets, he sold $100,000 in beads and charms. Only 28 people who took a bracelet failed to buy a charm for it.

Jewelry is about relationships; relationships with our spouses, our new loves, our family, our friends, and ourselves. The jewelry we wear speaks volumes about who we are. Women love talking about their jewelry. But I would argue that it’s less about bragging and more about communicating; communicating something about who they are and what’s important to them. Yes, sometimes what they’re communicating is “He spent a lot of money on me,” or “This is one expensive piece,” or “I have fabulous taste.”

But there’s much more to it than that.

So, please, enough with these ads showing fashion models with pouty looks on their faces. Show me some jewelry ads that focus on what the jewelry’s communicating. Close-ups of the piece of jewelry are nice so you can see what the jewelry looks like, but what does it mean to the person wearing it?

Perhaps more jewelery designers should take note of Di Modolo’s success promoting not just their jewelry, but insight into a woman who wears it.