From the mouths of babes...

Are taglines like:
"Just Do It"

or

"Life Comes at You Fast"

a thing of the past?


So my question is simple- in the new age of marketing (ie: Web 2.0, social media, blogging, Tweeter, Facebook, etc...et al) is there still a place for traditional marketing tactics? Can the right tagline make a difference in branding and having your customers remember you before your competition?

A few days ago my answer would have been yes, there is still a place for traditional marketing in this new age of marketing, but it's place will be different, have a slightly altered role.

Then earlier today my husband was rear-ended, possibly totaling our new (gulp- yes, I am admitting it and putting it out there for all the world to see)...

minivan (god- that was painful).

Anyway, after making sure everyone was ok and figuring out what to do next, we sat around the table with our store bought frozen pizza dinner with the kids. My youngest comments on the nights events with one simple statement:

"Well mom, life sure does come at you fast!"

And I paused, and thought- where have I heard that before? And when I realized it was the tagline for my insurance company, I laughed, turned to my son and asked him, what made you say that? His response? "I dunno, it just popped into my head."

So I wonder, when my insurance company came up with that tagline to resonate with it's potential customers- was a 10 year old part of their target market?

So what do you think- target on or target off?

Oh, and for those of you who are dying to know- yes, we will be getting another minivan.

If content is king, who are its subjects?

I know... it is a phrase that has been beat to death and held up as a banner to internet marketers everywhere. It is the elephant in the room wearing a tu-tu, so I felt I had to address it at least once.

Mark Jackson sums the meaning behind this phrase very well in his Search Engine Watch article last year, but I would like to take it one step further and focus on his first point- engaging your reader.

During a phone call this afternoon when the all-too-famous phrase came up I could not help but add that "Relevant" content is king. When you consider that engaging your reader is probably the single most important thing your content can do for you, relevance is king. And you can only be relevant when you know who you are writing and speaking to.

For example, imagine yourself talking to someone who is between 25-30, lives in New Hampshire, and makes between 30-41k per year about your product or service. You can list all the great features, how it would benefit them, even tell them they can get a discount for ordering today. You would probably be pretty general and tell them everything you can, because you are not sure about what will stick with them. Some companies are so paralyzed by this fact that they can not decide what to put up on their sites, and so they never change their content.

Now imagine that you are talking to your aunt, or co-worker about your product or service. You know something about them, the conversation is geared to their way of thinking and you can address their motivations in relation to your offering. You know what is important to them, and that is what you speak to.

As a youngster I was a Girl Scout, and yes, I sold the cookies. All the Girl Scouts get the same cookies, and they all cost the same price. So one day as I was hitting up my family to buy cookies from me, my aunt responded to me,
"And why should I buy these cookies from you?" I remember being dumbstruck, not because I was surprised she asked the question, that is just how she was, but because I did not know what so special about my cookies from anyone else's. So I went with the one advantage I knew I had with her. "Because I am your niece and you love me." She bought 5 boxes because I knew what would motivate her to buy from me and not the neighbor (that and I knew she could not resist the Sandies).

So how can you get to that level with the visitor on your website? How can you possibly know what will motivate that person to buy from you and not your competitor? How can you anticipate what questions they are asking, and know if you are answering those questions?

This is where personas come in. A persona should be much more than a character that represents the different user types for design. When used as stand-ins for the possible modes of behavior that people will interact with you and your business online you get an idea of what motivates them. When you can understand the different modes of behavior of your customers, you can anticipate their motivations and questions, and ensure that your website content engages them by answering those questions in a way that they prefer.

Will your website help you survive the winter? If you remember the Golden Rule- yes

I hate to say it as much as the next person, but summer is at the exit door and winter is knocking. I hate to think about it even more as fuel bills pile up, and more people are forced to tighten their belts- both in business and their personal lives.

Gather together all the financial experts, business analysts, small and large business owners alike, and their general sentiment is the same- it is going to be a rough economic winter. Most recently, I heard one salesman say today that his CEO is telling his sales team that they are going to have to work for 20% more business just to generate the same amount of revenue as last year. And he is most likely completely correct.

The question then becomes, where will your extra 20% of business come from? Can you afford to spend additional advertising dollars that do not give you the measurable impact you need to generate 20% more sales leads, 20% more requests for information, or 20% more sold online (or in your store)? How will you know that your hard work is giving you the 20% more you will need to be able to survive the winter ahead?

How does the Golden rule help you and your business? As Bryan Eisenberg of Future Now said recently in a webinar focused on conversion optimization, the Golden Rule is simply that the person with the gold, makes the rules. That has never been more true than in this tight economic atmosphere! Your customers are in control, creating a customer focused website will increase your online conversion rates, giving you that extra 20% you need to survive the tough economic times ahead.

The sales funnel and the colander went to market...

"Conversion optimization, what is that and what is the point?" was a question recently posed to me. I love it when people want to get down the the basics and find out not just the what, but the why. A simple question deserves a simple answer. So first, lets answer the what.

All businesses have a sales funnel. A sales funnel is simply a graphical representation of the process of acquiring interest in your product/service and then 'funneling' those interested people into actual customers.


The funnel has steps in it to represent your business selling process. At each step it can be expected that a certain percentage of those who were first interested will drop off. Not everyone is going to be your customer.

What this funnel, and most sales funnels like it, does not show you is why your potential customers are falling out, or jumping out, of the sales process.

Imagine instead the colander, and that is closer to what most sales funnel actually ACT like. Somewhere in this funnel people have dropped off- where and why? The goal of conversion optimization is to identify those places where people are falling out of the funnel (or colander) and not making it to the bottom, the part where they become loyal paying customers. (The part that matters the most to any business of any size.) Knowing where they drop off is half the battle, figuring out why is where you can start plugging up the holes to retain more of your potential customers.Conversion optimization should be able to identify your customer's buying processes and match that to your selling process.

So back to the second part of the question, "Conversion optimization, what is that and what is the point?" The what is turning more interested people into actual customers. The why is just as simple.

You have 2 basic choices to increase your sales; you can either pump more money into acquiring that initial interest and therefore increase your chances of acquiring more customers. In other words, pouring more water into the colander in hopes that more of the water (customers) will end up at the bottom and not spilled out somewhere else.

OR...

plug up the holes in the colander and ensure that you will get more water where you want it. Conservation is becoming more and more popular, and in business it can apply to those sparse marketing dollars turning more people into customers.

What are your customer's key phrases trying to tell you?

Anyone looking to sell their product or service online will find that their research will always start with a key word or key phrase analysis. A good key phrase analysis can tell you not only the key phrases that your potential customers are using to describe your product/service, but also what key phrases your competition and industry are using. Depending on your particular business, a key phrase analysis will also give you niche key phrases, which are those key words that are used by your potential customers that are not highly targeted by the competition.

But can a key phrase analysis do more?

Yes, it can. Here is an example. I recently asked a group of business professionals, some of whom understood the basics of search engine marketing and search engine optimization, to look at the following key phrases, and to tell me what the differences were between them.

-accounting software
-microsoft accounting software
-microsoft dynamics gp
-microsoft dynamics gp for manufacturing

The general response to my question was that some key phrases were more specific than others. Which is true, but what does that mean? Does it mean we should only target the more specific key phrases?

The real difference between these key phrases is intent. How specific these key phrases are gives you some insight into the intent of the searcher and where they are in their buying process.

Are they just browsing to see what their options are to address their need? Do they already know approximately what they want, they are in the market to buy, but have not yet made a final decision? Or do they know exactly what they want and are just trying to decide where to buy it?

If you are ready to jump to the conclusion that if we have an idea of which searchers are in the market now, then lets target just those key phrases, then you would be making a grave mistake. There are a few important things to remember when considering the intent of searchers and potential customers.

1-No one group of customers is more likely to buy from you than another. Many would argue that the person who knows exactly what they want and are in the market now are more likely to buy now. To some extent may be true, but are they more likely to buy from you? These are also the people who may be more likely to be distracted by competing offers. However, the person who is just browsing and seeking to answer questions may become more likely to take action when they find their questions easily answered and are delighted with the experience they had with a company (or a company's website).

2- Not everyone is your customer. As you start looking at how people go about buying your product/service you may discover that your business is not configured to please all of the people all of the time. Knowing who you want to attract as a customer, and who you do not want to attract should be the main focus.

3-Everyone has a different mode of shopping. By ignoring those that are in the mode of 'just browsing' or 'knows approximately' you could be cutting off your pipeline in 3, 6, even 12 months down the road. When in doubt of this rule, see rule #1.

The ideal way to use your key phrase analysis is when it is part of building your customer personas. The new age of marketing (as I like to call it) is going to require marketers to build persuasive systems that account and plan for the different buying modes of potential customers. Personas are customer descriptions that should be used as representatives to the different shopping modes that people use to engage your business. Your personas should answer the 'what if's', 'maybe's', and 'most likely to' questions that you have about your customers.

Are you building without a blueprint?

A house is being built across the street from me, and it does not cease to amaze me how quickly a structure with so many internal systems can be put together. Trees are cut, big heavy (and expensive) equipment wakes you up in the morning, and within a matter of days a structure is there that just simply did not exist before.

Being the social person I am, I walk across the street after my morning coffee and chat with one of the builders. (Ok, I admit, my real motivation was to tell him not to park on my lawn- but I was at least nice about it!)

What does this all have to do with websites or internet marketing? I promise, there is point to my story.

So as I am chatting with Bob the Builder, he relates his frustration to me that the house has so many mistakes and do-overs (wasted resources) because he was never given a blueprint. (!) He is winging it as he goes, and as a result is spending too much time and money on a project that no one will be happy with and who knows if it will sell? His workers are frustrated and confused, and there is nothing he can do. He simply can not understand why anyone who spend this kind of money and not invest a little bit extra to make hire an architect. In his words, "a blueprint is worth 10 times the amount you would pay in what you will save in time and money." I relay my condolences and sympathy to him, but I can not help wondering...

Does this sound like any website (or PPC campaigns, email broadcasts) projects you know of (or are working on)?

Why indeed, would you spend a single dime on a building project that you did not sit down and calculate a plan for? Who clears an entire forest of trees to only put a house 20 feet from the road? Why would you spend 5, 10, or 15 thousand dollars on a website and not plan scenarios on how your customers will want to interact with your website? Why would you not set goals and then measure against those goals to determine your success? If it is worth doing, isn't it worth doing right?

In the rush to get your website renovated, or the campaign launched, are you cutting corners and missing the mark?

In today's competitive landscape and tight budgets, it not only makes sense to have a marketing plan, it is essential to growth (and survival!). More specifically, a marketing plan not only details what your company's goals are, it should take into account what your customer's goals,objectives, and preferences are. After all, if your customers can reach their goals through you, that adds to your bottom line.

It still comes down to those 3 seemingly basic questions:

1-WHO are you trying to persuade?
2-WHAT are you trying to persuade them to do?
3-HOW will they feel confident in taking that action (with you)?

It is, and will always be, all about the customer.

One small step for search engine marketing, one huge step for your customers...

It is always refreshing to know that you are not alone in the world, that there are others like you who think (and act) like you. This was how I felt after returning from NYC to attend Future Now's Persuasive Online Copywriting and Call to Action seminars.

Years ago when I decided to pursue a career in marketing, I was driven by the concept of motivation and persuasion. Why do people do what they do, why is it that given the same circumstances and environment people can have completely different perspectives (tomato- tamato anyone?), why do people make the decisions that they make? Why, why, why, why....

And so I studied marketing plans, demographics, customer segmentation versus mass marketing, and sales processes. I even dabbled in philosophy and psychology and consumer behavior and still the question nagged at me- but why? All of the traditional methods of marketing told me the what or the how, not the why.

And then came search engine marketing- now we are getting somewhere, or so I initially thought. I soon learned that a lot of SEO and SEM experts were merely playing the same numbers game as traditional marketing mediums. Find out what the most searched terms are and use those for the website to get better rankings and more visibility. In other words, lets dump more traffic into a sales funnel that is full of holes. But I was determined, there had to be a better way, I still wanted to know why.

What was the intent of the person who typed in that search term, what questions are they looking to answer, and how can I best answer that for them?

The methodology that I have learned so far from the great people at Future Now answered the why. The why is answered when you consider, plan for, test, optimize, and refine the marketing to align with a person's decision making preferences.

And just how do you do that you ask? Start with these three questions:

1-Who are you trying to persuade?

2-What are you trying to persuade them to do?

3-What does that person need in order to feel comfortable and confident taking that action?

The first two are not new questions to most marketers, the third brings to light the missing link.

Our personality traits shape how we see and interact with the world (and make our decisions). Your customers have a preference for how they interact with you, and it just might not be what you expect. People will easily do what they want to do, the job for marketing should be to figure out what it is that they want, how they want it, and deliver it in a way that is appealing to them.

So the small step for search engine and internet marketing? Empathize with your customers, after all, it is all about them is it not? Don't talk at them, talk with them, in their language, in a way that they are comfortable with. If you have traffic coming to your website, then you have potential customers coming to you with questions. Do you know what questions they are asking? Does your site answer those questions, or frustrate them (and they leave to visit your competition)? All that polished, clever, and pretty copy writing will not mean anything to your customer if it does not answer their questions.

I know what you are thinking- of course I empathize and listen to my customers- but are you really listening? All the focus groups and surveys in the world will not give you your customers natural reaction to your company, product, or service.

But here is the good part, with the internet as a marketing medium, we now have the opportunity to really find out what customers think. Web analytics can tell you how they found you and how they interact with your website. Online forums, blogs, and customer reviews can tell you what they really think. With every click on your website, your customers are telling you what they like, and what they don't. Your customers are in control of the message online, are you listening, or are you making your decision based on actual behavior, or speculations?

So here is the start, the small step marketers need to take to shift the thinking back to the customer. Because it is all about the customer...

Answer that third question, and you have taken that small step.