Mitch points out that this restriction isn’t entirely unprecedented. I just hope it doesn’t become a permanent reality.

If I could only travel with 5 books, I’d have to choose…

Secret Formulas of the Wizard of Ads: Turning Paupers into Princes and Lead into Gold by Roy H. Williams

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath

Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini

Why We Buy: The Science Of Shopping by Paco Underhill

I found it difficult choosing just 5. I imagine you will too.

What 5 books would you bring along?

That was the question Bryan & Jeffrey Eisenberg sought to answer in their most recent book, Waiting for Your Cat to Bark: Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing. After hitting the major North American bestseller lists — including The New York Times, USA Today, BusinessWeek, and #1 on The Wall Street Journal and Amazon lists — and even being named by AdvertisingAge as one of the “10 books you should have read” for 2006, there’s a new cause for celebration: Our Turkish friends can now enjoy the book in their native language (a good thing, considering it teaches marketers how to use Persuasion Architecture™ methodology to speak to customers in their own language).

When asked about the significance of this trip and the new translation, Future Now co-founder & CEO, and co-author of Waiting for Your Cat, Jeffrey had this to share:

We’re excited anytime somebody enjoys our book, but when they enjoy it enough to translate it into Turkish, publish it, then pay us to come speak about it in Istanbul, we’re ecstatic. Bryan and I have always wanted to visit Istanbul — our maternal grandparents are from here, so it’s especially meaningful to be in this gorgeous and fascinating place.

While Jeffrey’s had a few days to take in the atmosphere, Bryan just arrived in Istanbul early this morning. The two are looking forward to tomorrow’s speaking engagement, and asked that we thank their hosts at MediaCat Communications Institute for their kind hospitality.

Have you read the book yet? What are you waiting for? Buy the Turkish version from Kapital Market. Bulk order the English-language version from Barnes & Noble, or get it shipped from Amazon (where you can read the reviews instead of taking our word for it).

1.) Build a marketing platform.
2.) Write a book people want to read.
3.) Contact Michael Drew.

We’re often asked how Waiting for Your Cat to Bark hit #1 on the Wall Street Journal list, while reaching bestseller status on the New York Times, USA Today, Amazon, and BusinessWeek lists. (AdvertisingAge even called it one of the “10 books you should have read” for 2006.) How is it, they wonder, that Call to Action became a bestseller, despite being sold exclusively online. Well, we had a secret weapon: A marketer who knows book publishing and promotion better than anyone else in the business, and has the track record to prove it. His name, one more, is Mike Drew — and he’s struck again.

On the American Small Business blog, Michele Miller points out that Drew turned three separate books into bestsellers in just this past weekend alone.

A lot of authors make the mistake of thinking that signing with the right publisher will all but guarantee a book’s success. Think again. Unless you’re uncannily blessed by the word-of-mouth gods, even a well-reviewed book can have a hard time making the bestseller lists. Authors need their books to be properly marketed and promoted. That’s where Michael Drew comes in.

If you or someone you know is an author with bestseller ambitions, take a moment to watch this video or subscribe to Drew’s blog, Beneath the Cover.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot? We’re still not sure if that’s rhetorical. One thing’s certain, though: if 2007 shapes up any better than this year, we’ll be entirely bored with congratulating Lisa T. Davis and Bryan & Jeffrey Eisenberg for their fantastic work.

So, for those who haven’t gotten around to reading the book, what are you waiting for?

Book of Tens 2006

10 books you should have read

18 December 2006 (Volume 77; Number 51)
(c) 2006 Crain Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Rex Briggs and Greg Stuart: “What Sticks: Why Most Advertising Fails and How to Guarantee Yours Succeeds” (Kaplan Business)Uses data from experiments by real marketers to cut through the doomsday hype and cynical opportunism that surround the slow death of conventional advertising.
2. Charles Hughes and William Jeanes: “Branding Iron: Branding Lessons from the Meltdown of the U.S. Auto Industry” (Racom Books)Uses lessons from the car business to hammer away at the importance of creating world-class brands, chastising the industry for going “safe, soft and somnolent.”
3. Chris Anderson: “The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More” (Hyperion)One of the most-discussed concepts and most-used catchphrases of the year, the “long tail” theory has its fair share of lovers and haters.
4. Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton: “Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths and Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management” (Harvard Business School Press)Denounces many modern management practices based on hype and conventional wisdom.
5. Bryan Eisenberg, Jeffrey Eisenberg and Lisa T. Davis “Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing” (Nelson Business) – Breaks down tools such as consumer-generated media and word-of-mouth marketing to help marketers reach today’s aloof, independent customer.
6. Seth Godin: “Small Is the New Big, and 183 Other Riffs, Rants and Remarkable Business Ideas” (Portfolio Hardcover)Tips and ideas culled from Godin’s blog and Fast Company column for everyone from McDonald’s to business schools. The, er, big idea: Act small if you want to be big.
7. Robert Gordman and Armin Brott: “The Must-Have Customer: Seven Steps to Winning the Customer You Haven’t Got” (Truman Talley Books)For companies looking to expand, this book lays out the steps to not just retaining core customers but winning over those who are more elusive.
8. Glenn Reynolds: “An Army of Davids” (Nelson Current)How advances in technology “empower ordinary people to beat big media, big government and other goliaths.” Podcasts and blogs are the least of your worries.
9. Pat Fallon and Fred Senn: “Juicing the Orange” (Harvard Business School Press)Unlike many advertising books, this is smartly written and fun to read. But it must be said that the “aha” moments are evened out by the number of businesses no longer making juice with Fallon.
10. Fred Reichheld: “The Ultimate Question” (Harvard Business School Press)Reduces customer-loyalty quandaries to a breathtakingly simple question: “Would you recommend us to a friend?” Of course, after that, things get more complicated after that.

In our Total Picture Radio interview, Bryan Eisenberg, co-founder of Future Now, explains why most online marketing fails to convert traffic to customers, and how companies can use "Persuasion Architecture" to begin achieving success. We discuss how individuals can best use blogs to build their "personal brand" on the Internet. 

Hear the whole interview from totalpicture.com. 

You’ve seen Cesar Millan, the infamous ‘dog psychology’ dude.  Cesar works miracles with unruly canines in 24 short minutes on the National Geographic Channel show "The Dog Whisperer". 

Now meet Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg, the Cat Whisperers.

The authors of "Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing" have set forth an intriguing set of principles which they call Persuasion Architecture. The formula is not for the faint-hearted — it involves hard work to navigate a complicated matrix of psychological, technical and demographic approaches in order to develop a customer-centric marketing focus. In the process, it requires a business to be willing to relinquish control of information about its product or service; indeed, transparency is key to the entire process. But the authors guarantee results, whether your target clients are individuals or other businesses. Read the entire review over at Wharton School Knowledge @ W.P. Carey.

Have an unruly marketing situation? Will travel.

"Marketers are saying, ‘We must be more innovative — to zig when others zag,’ " says Richard Notarianni, executive creative director of media at ad firm Euro RSCG.

"The industry is desperate to find clever ways to reach people, whether or not it has any legitimate value. … When someone says, ‘Let’s put advertising in bathroom stalls,’ another says ‘That’s great. It’s a captive audience.’ "

More…

No space is too odd. US Airways (LCC) is in talks to sell ads on airsickness bags, spokeswoman Valerie Wunder says. It already makes about $10 million a year from ads on tray tables and napkins, she says.

"The game has become one of finding the next blank space that hasn’t been covered," says Yankelovich’s Smith.

And more…

"I’ve never seen things changing as much as they are now," says Rance Crain, editor-in-chief of trade magazine Advertising Age and a 40-plus-year observer of marketing. "Advertisers will not be satisfied until they put their mark on every blade of grass."

And finally…

The more consumers ignore ads, the more ads marketers spew back at them, says Max Kalehoff of marketing research firm Nielsen BuzzMetrics. "It’s like a drug addiction. Advertisers just keep buying more and more just to try to achieve prior levels of impact. In other words, they’re hooked."

This year, marketers will spend a record $175 billion on ads in major media, such as TV, radio, print, outdoor, movie theaters and the Internet, says ad-buying firm ZenithOptimedia. That’s up 5% over 2005. Add direct mail and other direct-response ads, and the total will hit $269 billion.

Advertisers are becoming that loud mouth annoying guy at the bar who’s flashing his expensive watch, bragging about his job, and buying every prospective girl a drink. Sorry bud, buying even more drinks, or putting your picture up in a lady’s stall isn’t gonna increase your chances, you are probably going home alone…again.

$269 billion can buy you alot of stuff, but it can no longer buy you a desirable magnetic personality that people want to buy.  It won’t buy you a barking cat.  If you think it will, then I have a 41,723 blades of grass in my front lawn that I will be happy to whore out to a desperate advertiser.

Buy one blade get one free, captive audience for canines and occasional jack rabbits, 25% more traffic in growing subdivision, this offer won’t last long, call now.

Bryan Eisenberg will be presenting “Waiting for your Cat to Bark” on Thursday at 3:15. He will also be at the BazaarVoice booth Thursday at 1pm and again 4:15 signing books and kissing babies.

The folks over at BazaarVoice will be guessing conversion rates at their booth, if they can’t guess yours, you get a prize.

Maybe they will get Bryan to get in on the guessing as well. But don’t count on getting a prize if he guesses yours.

For those of you outside of NYC, I guess I lied (sue me you do have to travel far and wide… unless of course we’re coming to a neighborhood nearby.

Our very own warm, fuzzy, and lovable Bryan Eisenberg was recently interviewed on the Twist Image Podcast – Six Pixels of Separation

Mitch Joel interviews Bryan about the book, and Bryan shares some recent insights on current events as well as today’s morphing marketing biosphere. The interview is 35 minutes of savory goodness in MP3 format. Find it here.

I’ve got two goofy cats. One can be lying in totally hedonistic, slumbery bliss. I can walk into the room and get ignored, but the second my other cat walks through, the eyes slide open, the body stiffens slightly and all attention is riveted on the cat in motion. Where’s she going? What’s she up to? Has she found something I need to know about? Maybe I should follow her?

Cats tune-in to cats. They seem to think other cats are their best source of important, relevant information. At least, that’s the way it looks at my house.

And that’s pretty much the way it looks to your customers. To them, other customers these days are their best source of important, relevant information.

How do you deal with this? Well, it’s pretty much a no-brainer situation: you make it easier for your customers to get heard.

Read the rest of this article.
Read the entire newsletter: Volume 138

Bryan, Lisa and I are so grateful to everyone who helped us with this book and to all of you wonderful people who bought and read it. You have read it already, right?

You’ve got online sales. You’ve got offline sales. To complicate matters, neither of these exists in isolation. According to a recent BIGresearch survey, 87% of the customers who research their purchases online actually buy offline!On top of that, websites and flesh-and-blood sales staff must continually field product and service questions from customers who increasingly are as, if not better, informed than they are!

How can you implement strategies to improve your sales efficiency – within and across channels – while at the same time meeting the diverse needs of your customers?

Read the rest of this article.
Read the entire newsletter: Volume 136

“Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?” will be most instructive to the advertising crowd, of course. It’s hard to find a book about marketing that is truly appropriate for anyone but people who practice the stuff. But general readers may find something valuable here too: the latest Madison Avenue methods for getting inside their brains and massaging their decision-making logic. If the Web offers marketers new opportunities, it also allows picky consumers to become — with a feline cleverness and caution — ever more finicky.

Read the entire article (subscription required).

Brian references our book in the context of the ad agency BBDO, a poster child for the Madison Ave. glitz and glamour brand marketing philosphy. On the opposite end of the marketing philosophy spectrum you would find the direct marketing philosophy , as represented by the president of the Direct Marketing Association John A. Greco, who also reviewed our book. Seems that all ends of the marketing spectrum see value in Persuasion Architecture.

Waiting For Your Cat to Bark is now a #1 best seller!

Today we hit #1 on the overall book best seller’s list on Amazon.com

Wow! 

Thanks for the support.  Oh and if you don’t have a copy or three, what’r you waiting for?

  Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? : Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing
" ‘Waiting for Your Cat to Bark’ makes in interesting argument that simply tracking marketing measures to a Web site is not actually effective — it doesn’t take into consideration the reasons driving the behavior of consumers. The book conveys an important message: The consumer is in charge and must be engaged on his/her own terms, and merely measuring Website visits isn’t enough to make an informed decision."

  Call to Action: Secret Formulas to Improve Online Results
"As the Internet changes the way marketers do business, learning how to optimize Web sites in order to motivate consumers to make a purchase is crucial. ‘Call to Action’ explains the steps of successful persuasion and is a must read for any marketer, with practical information on how to convert Website traffic into sales and ultimately, profits."

You can read the other books he recommends at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115211863976798531 .html?mod=googlenews_wsj (registration required – sorry).

The fact that your products or services aren’t suited to shopping carts doesn’t mean the Web shouldn’t be a focus for implementing your business strategies.In an emerging media and experience-based economy, the Web is the glue that binds a business’s multi-channel marketing efforts. Today, the Internet plays a critical role in how customers perceive brand, shape their buying decisions, and evaluate their experiences-even before you’ve ever sold them anything.

Read the rest of this article.
Read the entire newsletter: Volume 135

I had to head to the NBC affiliate at 5:30am to film a segment, head off to the magnificent James J Jill Business library for an excellent event (more on that one shortly – the podcast should be available soon), and then rush back off to the TV station once more. I don’t know why but I figured if this was going to be my first trip to Minneapolis I should go visit the Mall of America. Well my good friend Brian Carroll came by the hotel to pick me up and give me the tour.

One of the first things Brian and I did was head to the Barnes & Noble, his excellent book on B2B lead generation came out the same day as "Waiting for Your Cat To Bark?," and we signed all of our books in the store.

We walked the mall for several hours admiring the architecture and the who’s who of stores when we finally caught up with our mutual friend Dan Janal of PRleads fame for dinner.

I’m looking forward to being home with the family all of next week. I wish everyone a wonderful 4th of July. My next stops are Seattle, Mountain View and back to the east coast and Washington D.C. Hope I run into you soon, don’t forget to bark ?

Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? is now on the New York Times Hardcover Business Best Sellers list.

Bryan, Lisa and I thank all of you for your support.

As marketers in today’s landscape, we must walk a different path. No longer will our product-centered, mass-market habits serve us well. The interconnectedness of emerging media means we must focus on the customer and create persuasive systems that have at their core an understanding of human motivations. Our unfolding experience economy makes this demand on all of us.Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? presents Persuasion Architecture as a set of big principles. Sometimes, the scope can seem daunting … it can feel like sitting in front of a great big feast of roast elephant with your little knife and fork. How, you sensible want to know, do you go about eating an entire elephant?

A perfectly sensible answer? One bite at a time!

Read the rest of this article.
Read the entire newsletter: Volume 134

Today Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? hit # 2 on the Wall Street Journal Business list, but, even more remarkably, three of my author clients had books in the Wall Street Journal’s business lists in the top 4, Succeed on Your Own Terms, by Herb Greenberg and Patrick Sweeney at #1, Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? by the Eisenberg’s at #2 and Secrets of the Millionaire Mind by Harv Eker at #4.

Congratulations Herb, Patrick, and Harv!!!

And of couse kudos to Bryan & Jeffrey

Not too shabby.

Of course selling the book and making all these best sellers lists is exciting, but the really exciting thing for us in the company is to see folks read and use the advice and examples in the book.  We are still hearing great reader success storys from our last best seller Call to Action.

Do you have a copy of the new book yet?  We will be waiting to hear your success story next.

Of course it begins with a succint and positive review of our new book, but the discussion that follows is a fascinating one.

What are your thoughts?