Ruminations on Marketing

Get Smart With Your Paid Keywords

2009-07-28T15:16:00.000-07:00

Step One: Figure out the keywords that are always in the customer support emails from your competition.
Step Two: Buy those keywords for Gmail.
Step Three: Now you're advertising directly in the Inbox of your competitor's customers every time they are not 100% satisfied with the service they are currently receiving.

I haven't seen anyone doing this nor have I heard of it. If someone is doing this I'd be interested to hear how things are going and what kind of impact it is having.

Changes

2009-04-28T11:20:00.001-07:00

Some random things that have been going through my mind:

It has become increasingly more common that almost everything we do is time stamped now. This blog posting, debit card transactions, phone calls, emails, Facebook wall posts and more and more. This is something that has become more prevalent in our everyday activity thanks to technology.

So this got me thinking about what else has been introduced to our environment that wasn’t there 10 years ago or even 5 years ago. It is these areas, where things are new to our environments, that the next innovations will be born that change our ways of life in a major way. Wireless internet has become so prevalent in the past few years that in any given populated area you’re sure to find several networks. Over ten things are connected to my home wireless network, and we have two laptops and a desktop.

I have yet to see the reason for a land line phone at my house and college students definitely don’t need a land line. I’ve been nearly nomadic, living in over 15 different places over the past seven years. If a land line phone was free I wouldn’t use it. Scratch that, if Comcast paid me to use their phone line I still wouldn’t. Yet Comcast still has TV commercials and campaigns targeting the 18 to 25 crowd and trying to get them to sign up for phone service. There is a new generation of college graduates that won’t by a land line until they are forced to for some external reason, a TV commercial isn't going to help regain market share. This is a huge change in purchasing behavior. Same goes for Newspapers, cable TV and many other unnecessary subscriptions and products that people 18 to 30 are consuming in a different way than their parents.

Things are changing and that’s not new news. I guess if there is a point to this posting it would be - don’t ignore what is changing, the areas of change are frequently the catalyst for new inventions and revolution in the way we do things.

Expectations

2009-02-10T10:53:00.000-08:00

Clearly setting expectations up front and being as transparent as possible is key to a strong relationship with your customers and others interacting with your brand, product or service. Too often companies do not inform enough or communicate through the wrong channel and the user becomes frustrated. There are different ways and times to communicate with your audience and doing this correctly will do wonders for your users’ satisfaction and will keep your customer support team untied from avoidable support cases.

For example, today I was on the phone with my health insurance provider trying to find out when they would respond to an application I sent in over 10 business days earlier. I had been waiting and waiting for a response and it got to the point where I wanted to know if they were ever going to get back to me. After speaking with a customer service agent she informed me that responses typically take 14 business days. Great, now I know. If they had told me when I first submitted my application I wouldn’t have called and I wouldn’t have spent the past week thinking to myself about how unorganized and slow my insurance carrier is. That’s a lot of negativity they could have avoided by just giving me a heads up back in the beginning.

What spurred this post was from hearing about a service at Atlanta’s international airport called Track-a-Line where you can sign up for email alerts about wait times at different security check points around the airport. This is a fantastic example of setting expectations and being upfront about possibly bad news. The psychology of queuing is a fascinating topic and something that almost every company deals with. Do it poorly and your customers will hate you for it.

Email marketing, online ordering & shipping, download times and so many other things online make sure to set your expectations. But be sure to also remember those other areas like, what your return policy is, what features are included in the product or how long it will be until you get a response.

Then there is a balance between what information you push out to your audience and what information you supply upon their request. If I fill out a help request form I want to know right away what the response time is going to be, that’s information you want to be sure and push out to your audience via a confirmation page or email. Technical details that I may or may not need to ever know, that is information you want to provide but doesn’t need to be front-and-center, so create a FAQ area or self-service support section on your website. The examples I just mentioned are obvious and not all that difficult to do properly, I’m sure 99% of companies are doing a good job of this. But it’s the smaller details unique to each company that really make the difference. Figure out what these are and outline how you can make improvements.

And if you’re looking for examples of what the geniuses in queuing psychology are doing visit Disneyland.

Here's a good example.

2009-01-15T14:22:00.000-08:00

Tommy Bahama has a great email sign up page and overall process.
http://www.tommybahama.com/TBG/EmailSignup.jsp

The one thing that I would suggest they improve is that when you click on the privacy policy it opens a new small window in the corner, rather than directing the page away from the form. Other than that, they are a text book case of best practices.

Conversion Rate

2009-01-13T16:42:00.000-08:00

Is it better to look at the conversion rate of a campaign at a micro level or better to look at a macro level and over a longer period of time? Looking at a macro level at individuals is better indicator of lifetime customer value and isn't that what everyone talks about being the most valuable information? So why do managers keep falling into a pattern of looking at conversion rates at a micro level?

I had lunch today with a Managing Director of a nationwide airline, he's on-board with the lifetime idea, adding that looking short-term has been hurting the lifetime customer value of each visitor to their site.

Conversion Marketing and Improving the User's Experience

2009-01-13T16:40:00.000-08:00

A conversion can be defined as almost anything. Most commonly I define a conversion as a sign-up, a sale, a form completed or something similar. In this posting I’m gong to elaborate on the optimization of a sign-up process and the marketing that is involved. This type of work I have termed Conversion Marketing, the science of increasing conversions through optimization.

This is such a broad topic that I could go on and on about it. For now, I have narrowed things down to some areas where a lot of companies could improve on. My December 4th posting has specifics, below are general, bigger-picture improvements.

A very common opportunity for improvement that I see most landing pages or marketing campaigns lacking is that they lead users into dead ends. Confirmation pages and thank you pages should have more links, resources, info, etc… If someone reaches a confirmation page you should have links to other areas of your site. Leading your visitor to a dead end is your own fault and they have a very high likelihood of leaving your site all together, possibly going to a competitor’s site.

Something else that I frequently see is a lack of information about what is going to happen next. Inform your visitor regarding what they should expect after entering their name and information. (i.e. Tell them the frequency the newsletter comes out or tell them that with X amount of time a representative will get in contact with them to address their customer service question.) If the visitor knows what to expect then they are more likely to enjoy their time interacting with you and your brand.

Always have a consistent feel and branding across all of the areas where people are interacting with your site, campaigns and emails. Even the unsubscribe process. People who are unsubscribing are not happy with you and a malfunctioning unsubscribe process or one that is clunky and a poor user interface only digs you into the hole further.

Successful Innovation

2008-12-29T11:58:00.000-08:00

I’m reading Hidden In Plain Sight by Erich Joachimsthaler right now and in the beginning he outlines three things that a company must do to continuously innovate and succeed. The three points he makes are very good and are applicable to the macro and micro level of a company’s strategy.
“First, it must understand the people it is trying to serve as the individuals they are – apart from any connection or interaction with the company.”
“Second, it must know how to go beyond its own perimeters of products, markets, and competencies; let go of and challenge the assumptions, common practices, and golden rules of doing business still held today; and go beyond what it has learned from consumers.”
“Third, it must see itself ‘from the outside in’ and formulate strategies around people’s behaviors, not just seek to satisfy consumer needs and wants or customer requirements. It must execute activation plans that engage consumers and seamlessly fit all kinds of innovations into peoples’ and consumers’ behaviors – or a customer company’s work process – so that the people absorb and assimilate them.”

I feel like SalesForce.com is a good example of doing all of these things. SalesForce is not narrow mindedly looking at them self as just a CRM. They understand their users and have gone to great lengths to create communities and events around their products so that people “absorb and assimilate” with them. I would also say SalesForce is almost infinitely customizable in the way that each customer gets what he or she requires out of the product.

Now go buy the book, it's a good one.

Confirmaton Emails

2008-12-08T21:38:00.000-08:00

Always include more content and information in your confirmation emails. Confirmation emails are always going to have the best open rates because the recipient is expecting the email. So add a coupon or more free content or a white paper. Don’t let these emails with great open rates go to waste. The person just submitted their information on your website so they are obviously interested in whatever your product/service is. So give them what they want, a coupon, an invitation to a webinar or something. This is also could be the first email that the person has received from you, so make your first impression count. A good example of what I’m talking about is after a purchase on iTunes Apple sends you a receipt and in the side column they give artist recommendations you may be interested in based on what you just bought.

The same goes for confirmation pages and thank you pages after someone completes a form or transaction. Don't show them a page that just says "Thanks" and have the rest be blank space. Give them something more to do on your site. Say something like "We have a free webinar coming up soon and would be delighted if you join us." Then have a link to the registration page.

Webinar registration page tips are going to have to wait for another day or this posting will get too long.

Thanks for reading. Tell your friends.

Landing Pages

2008-12-04T18:19:00.001-08:00

Landing pages are everywhere and I would say 90% of them have room for improvement. There are many elements to consider, especially if there is a form on the page. For a lot of business their landing pages and forms are the most popular channel for prospects and customers to reach out and communicate with a company. So shouldn't this mean that companies spend significant time and resources optimizing them? You have 3 - 8 seconds or 15 words to convince people about what you are saying; every element can have a huge impact on your conversion rate.
So what should you consider? What are some of the most common mistakes? Here are some to get things started and maybe I’ll post more later:

Have captions for photos – they are read more often than your body copy.
Add security icons and trust symbols – TRUSTe certified, BBB logos, 100% satisfaction seal, etc… It all add peace of mind and increases conversions.
Drop the extra navigation that the rest of your site probably has – This only adds distractions that visitors may follow rather than what is presented on the landing page.
Add a link to your privacy policy BUT make sure the link opens your privacy policy in a new window that is small and preferably off to the side. Too often a link to the privacy policy redirects the page away from the landing page and now your visitor is off away from what the objective of the landing page is.
Consider saying anything other than ‘submit’ for your button copy. Submit is a very aggressive word; try something lighter like; here we go, start your trial now or join us. But when dealing with an e-commerce transaction, don’t get too cute.
Consider white or blank spaces, they are effective for keeping things clear and concise but sometimes if they are too big people may see them and think they are at the bottom of the page when there is really more below the blank space.
Do not let your copy go beyond aproximately 55 characters across.
Left-align your copy almost always.
Make your hero shot clickable - For some reason people like clicking on large images, have it go somewhere with more info or have it go to the primary call to action.
Have your call to action above the fold and repeated below the fold at the end.

And most important……
TEST EVERYTHING – colors, layout, images, headlines, buttons, more or less fields, everything. Research best practices that are specific to your exact scenario then do some of your own testing and refining.

I have skimmed the surface on this topic, there is a wealth of information and research that has been done in this area. A good place to start looking for more info is MarketingSherpa. I will also post later on some more specifics related to forms and landing pages.

5 Things that I Find Myself Repeating

2008-12-02T15:53:00.000-08:00

In regards to marketing campaigns I find myself repeating these things:
1) Make it targeted
2) Make it relevant
3) Automate
4) Continuously report, analyze and optimize
5) Test

Let the People Choose

2008-12-02T14:31:00.000-08:00

Let your audience choose how and when you communicate with them. The BBC and Google News are great examples of this. Take a look at the screen shot from BBC.com's footer. They let you choose how and when to communicate with you and via the channel you choose (Email, Podcast, RSS, etc...). Ahhh, what freedom.

First Post

2008-12-02T14:15:00.000-08:00

So far so good....