Exploring Marketing Technology

Category: Web Marketing

New ways to create and measure sites so they improve their ability to bring your best customers closer and attact other individuals just like them

  • Video shows the use of buying modes in persuasion architecture

    Personas are used to help in web design — especially in optimizing its content. The goal is to identify important user types and speak to them in their own language. Personas are traditionally archetypes, such as the following (these are summaries of longer personas, pulled from three randomly-selected persona sets):

    • A single, 50-something female executive researching healthcare options for her mother, and intending to share her findings with her siblings
    • A young man who works as a car mechanic, considering buying an engagement ring online and afraid of making a mistake
    • An elected city official responsible for recommending a source for a fleet of utility vehicles, who is unaccustomed to using the internet

    Purchasing styles are implied within those personas, and those varying styles are key to how a site is designed to cultivate interest and close the online sale. It’s knowledge of these varying purchasing styles that helps set the tone and composition of a site — choosing what goes where on a page, and how is it presented.

    This begs the question: Since purchasing styles are so important, why can’t you focus on those alone, and place other aspects of a persona on the back burner? The answer is you can.

    Roy H. Williams, along with The Eisenburg Brothers, tout a four-quadrant system for categorizing a person’s purchasing style. It is as follows:

    1. Fast + Logical = “Competitive”
    2. Fast + Emotional = “Spontaneous”
    3. Slow + Emotional = “Humanistic”
    4. Slow + Logical = “Methodical”

    These Modes of Persuasion Architecture are described at length in Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?: Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing.

    View this video

    Books like this one from The Brothers Eisenberg are all well and good. But they can be fairly lifeless. Then, this morning, I saw their dimensional approach brought to life. It was in a video produced by Patrick Sullivan, Jr., showing the home page of Mint.com, a slick personal finance site. See for yourself how various modes of purchasing are successfully addressed on this excellent site.

  • Two new uses of Twitter — one smart marketing, one pure fun

    After Comcast’s recent embarrassment of a hilarious YouTube video documenting a cable installation worker sleeping on the job, they’ve realized that good social media management equals good reputation management. That’s my take on why they’ve hired a customer service person to monitor Twitter for consumer complaints.

    It almost convinces you that Twitter is more than just a toy.

    Naaaah.

    Check out Twistori, a brilliant Twitter-fueled demonstration of current social zeitgeist. Perhaps this Comcast customer service person should just troll the site’s I Hate feed for mentions of his employer.

  • Why don’t newspapers tout their power to sell across channels?

    One thing that separates humans from other creatures is our ability to use the same tool in different ways. The ultimate example is the computer, which has hundreds of uses. But even a doorstop can make a pretty impressive paperweight when push comes to shove. So why is it so tough to sell a print ad to serve a new strategy? I’m thinking of its use as a cross-channel tactic.

    Is it that the typical ad rep isn’t attuned to this medium’s use? Or is it that the typical ad buyer wouldn’t warm to the new tactic even if it could help turn a mediocre print campaign into something extraordinary? As usual, it appears the marketers on both sides of the desk are clueless, and the consumers are the only ones arriving at the party on time.

    Research done using Google Print Ads activity, and conducted by Clark, Martire & Bartolomeo, found that consumers definitely do not look at newspaper ads in a vacuum. They often use the web to evaluate and purchase. This research focused on a segment of consumer who tends to research products and services seen in newspapers. My guess is this could be a consumer looking for any considered purchase, where the resources risked by a bad decision are significant.

    Not surprisingly, two-thirds use the web in their research. What was noteworthy was that of this group, 70 percent say they went on to make a purchase following the research. Although this is self-reported, it shows the pathway that many multi-channel purchasers take. (Which explains why Kevin Hillstrom is smiling broadly in the picture on his blog!)

    I see three take-aways:

    • Any newspaper advertiser that doesn’t have a strong web presence is wasting money
    • Any web site that isn’t fully optimized for organic search should be considered a defective site, since researchers may not use a URL printed in an ad to do the research
    • Ad reps should be pushing harder on selling the off-line / on-line tactic, whether through unique URLs printed in ads or more innovative tactics (think mobile research), such as ShopText.

    I just came out of a lunch meeting with two ad reps for a national weekly newspaper. No matter which way I probed, it was clear that they weren’t selling — and ad buyers weren’t buying — multi-channel ad strategies.

    Here’s a press release on the study on the Newspaper Association of America web site. Let’s hope the ad sellers — and buyers — read the study and take heed. Consumers are waiting to google the next item they see in print.

  • Real world lessons in social media marketing (SMM)

    There are many conferences in a year I wish I could attend, but few lately seem as valuable as the latest Search Media Expo (SMX). (Don’t you agree, Erin?).

    Then sometimes you get lucky, and stumble across a fellow student’s “really good notes” from the “lecture” you missed. Take for example a post on social media marketing (SMM) by Scott Clark. Here are a few favorites:

    • SMM cannot be sold as a one-off service or “by the campaign.” Too many external variables mean you have to execute many campaigns over time to hedge your bets. To sell as a one-off service is to invite failure and client ill-will.
    • Explaining SMM to clients is going to be very, very difficult. But those who have an inherent curiosity and willingness to participate will earn a strong competitive advantage.
    • To succeed in social network marketing, plugged-in individuals who know the “tribe’s habits” will win. 20-year PR veterans need not apply if they are still in the mindset of the press release or are unwilling to spend time participating before promoting. Plenty of people have got in trouble.
    • There are a lot of really smart people in SMM. Compared to other forms of marketing, the growth and opportunity aligns with trends towards authenticity, word-of-mouth, and making up for short consumer attention spans.
    • SEO/SMM are joined at the hip for many things and a link building effort can stack up dozens if not hundreds of authority links — but direct-click traffic itself, independent of the SEO/link advantages, can be significant.

    For all the reasons above, this one is my favorite. He states that for the most part, “Advertising agencies don’t get it.” Got it.

    Thanks, Scott, for summarizing so well.

  • Can video be the future of “print” journalism, and the salvation of newspapers?

    It’s an interesting thought. As anyone watching the industry knows, Craigslist.org and other web-based classified ad services have eroded the financial underpinnings of the newspaper. Last month Mike Cassidy, in MediaPost (registration required), postulated that a new media phenomenon may actually come to the newspaper’s rescue.

    … Newspapers are in a position to leverage their unique assets and benefit from the video trend. By having journalists and reporters not only file their stories in a video format, but by also providing B-roll or ancillary footage, newspapers can create more and higher-valued ad placements.

    I see a similar opportunity when it comes to video and classifieds — with the real question being, who will leverage it?

    The answer is that several publications are certainly trying. One of the first is IC Places Orlando. Here is an example of how the journalistic infrastructure of the newspaper could be leveraged to provide an ad product that other web properties would have to struggle mightily to match.

    Newspapers have gotten into their current pickle by being too slow to realize how serious a threat the internet is to their business model. They now have to do something — or actually, many things — differently in order to remain socially relevant and financially viable.

    As the 1980’s hit announced, Video killed the radio star. Will it help save the morning paper?