Exploring Marketing Technology

Opinions are all my own

  • Putting emotions to work in b-to-b content

    Many talented copy writers hate business-to-business (b-to-b) projects. They give a variety of reasons, but most boil down to a lack of deep emotional connection that they can feel in the writing process. Emotions are the fuel that drives writers. And when selling to businesses instead of consumers, they feel stifled. The emotional air is too thin.

    There are just two emotions that truly persuade a b-to-b audience. They are the desire to earn more money, and the fear of a responsibility going awry, and its consequences.

    That’s it.

    Greed and Fear

    Together, fear and greed don’t seem like much. But just as some of the greatest photographs are made up of shades of black and white, some truly supercharged copy can come from this limited palette.

    Here’s an exercise to show how you can put these emotions to work. Imagine you are writing — or overseeing the writing of — copy for a rooftop heating and cooling system. This system handles entire business campuses, and has a central control called the Ultra Site Minder (this and all names are made up). It also has an improved motion control system for extinguishing lights or lowering thermostats, called the Ultra Sensor, and an Ultra Payback Guarantee.

    The superior features of these products are things like this:

    • An ability to monitor and control from afar
    • Sensors that are guaranteed to gently lower temperatures in the winter, when rooms have been vacated for four hours — and do the same for air conditioning during warmer months
    • These same sensors control lighting, and are less prone to leave customers — or other building occupants — in the dark when they are not moving vigorously
    • An improved way to identify inefficient heating and cooling
    • A guarantee that the system will reduce fuel bills at least to the point of pay for itself within 24 months (at the going rate for fuel)

    Now try writing headlines that turn these features into benefits. The difference between a feature and a benefit is the emotions that the latter carries with it. Here are three headlines for each of the two emotions:

    You’re in control as never before with the Ultra Site Minder

    Placing valued customers in cold, dark rooms is no way to deliver savings. Warm to the Ultra Sensor difference!

    Sleep better at night knowing the Ultra Sensor is working twice as hard

    That was obviously the fear emotion at play — the fear of loss of control, of being cut for not saving enough money, and of missed opportunities. What about greed? That’s a little easier. We all want a raise. And especially in this tight economic climate, it is cutting costs that will demonstrate your value to an employer. At least, that is the case for the person responsible for building operations!

    Ultra Sensor upstream reporting makes you the star with the people who count

    “I’m reducing costs this weekend using Ultra Site Minder in my cell phone”

    “The Ultra Payback Guarantee will pay my salary in Year Three”

    Obviously, headlines can only deliver the hint of a benefit. Subsequent copy would expand upon these kernels of thought.

    Show, Don’t Tell

    One final thought: Writing copy for the web is far more challenging than for print. As recent studies have shown, visitors to sites do more skimming than actual reading. Be succinct, and use the technology to show — instead of tell — wherever possible!

    See the accompanying post, and other thought-provoking posts about business-to-business marketing and branding, at The B2B Debate.

  • Danger: Under Construction placeholders are worse than irrelevant

    Any “Watch This Space” or “Under Construction” placeholders you see on sites mean little to the typical visitor. Their interests coincide less with your corporate interests than you could ever imagine.

    holder_watch-this-space

    Evidence: Bounce rates on sites of 50% or higher are the norm. A typical adult web visitor has little patience for the sort of peekaboo he or she enjoyed as an infant.

    Worse than irrelevant, posting these types of notices for long periods of time place you at risk of being demoted by search engines and disregarded forever by the users would were turned away.

    Take aways: Post these types of notices only as necessary. Should you need to, post them only very briefly. Consider following these “reconstructions” with a strong promotional push, to help woo visitors back to your site and your brand.

  • Using fMRI “heatmaps” to understand online shopping behavior

    Heatmaps to observe eye movements of online shoppers have been around for a while. They’re quite helpful. But in a perfect world marketers would get direct consumer intelligence. They’d see maps of consumers’ “emotional flow,” displayed dynamically as shopping decisions are taking place.

    Brace yourself. We’re getting our wish.

    Armed with fMRI imagery, emotional heatmaps (my term) are being charted and analyzed. They’re yielding fascinating insights into why we choose the purchases we do.

    Take the recent work of William Hedgcock and Akshay R. Rao (in this PDF report). Hedgecock is assistant professor of marketing at the University of Iowa’s College of Business. Rao is director of the Institute for Research in Marketing at the Department of Marketing & Logistics Management at the University of Minnesota. This duo has recently published findings on why some shopping decisions are so difficult to make — and how adding a “decoy” option can get consumers “unstuck” and back in the buying mood.

    Overall, they are using functional magnetic resonance imaging — or fMRI — to “offer an assessment of whether and how neuroscientific techniques might be employed in the study of consumer choice in particular and consumer behavior in general.” Yeah, right. Here’s the English translation …

    Relieving Aristotle’s Anxiety

    This is what they did:

    1. Subjects were hooked up to fMRI machines and presented a choice between two purchases. The choice was so close in desirability a mental stalemate occurred. The consumer chose neither. (As the researchers noted, Aristotle first discussed this tendency toward stalemate by describing a person who was equally thirsty and hungry, and equidistant from food and drink. In this famous thought experiment, Aristotle’s subject remained in place until he dies.)
    2. A third choice — one less desirable than the first two — was presented in the mix. This was their decoy choice.
    3. fMRI readings showed that the mental discomfort generated by the stalemate went away. Once this anxiety level was lowered, a selection between the two “dominant” options usually followed.

    Their conclusion suggested that the addition of an item, simply to hasten a decision, not only makes sense when you tally purchases, but is also validated by watching real-time fMRI heatmaps.

    For e-marketers, a greater takeaway is this: The day is on its way when we can validate our assumptions about major types of “shopping cart conflicts,” and find automated ways to aviod or resolve them.

  • Social networks and fundraising, Part 2

    Below is a story far more personal and close-to-home than Part 1. This story illustrates how some extraordinary people — including co-workers and friends, but also connections I’ve initiated and fostered on Twitter and Facebook — helped improve and brighten the lives of some of Milwaukee’s under-served. The fundraising took place last month, for an event held Thursday, December 18, 2008, in the basement of a church on the corner of Milwaukee’s 54th Street and Capitol Drive.

    The slideshow below shows just some of the smiles that this “picture-perfect” night created:

    By way of background, I’d like to quote an email that I sent as part of my fundraising efforts. It explains our pretty ambitious plans for the Winter Holiday Fest. Here it is:

    Hi —

    To those who already know of this, and have contributed or pledged, THANK YOU!!! This is for everyone else:

    My girlfriend and I have devoted a ton of time, and a lot of our own money, to make a holiday party truly special for 68 under-served preschoolers and their families.

    These 4 and 5-year-old children are mostly of single-parent families, and many — if not most — are struggling for the basics, let alone a head start on their school years. For example, in order to qualify, a family of three must have a pre-tax household annual income of less than $18,000.

    So my girlfriend and I have arrayed a small army of volunteers (8, to be precise!) and on December 18, 2008, we’re going to help these families where it counts. There will be a Winter Holiday Festival for them, and Sherry and I are going to:

    • Serve them a meal, since so many parents will be coming right from work: a hot dog, a bag of chips and a holiday cookie
    • Give them an 8″ x 8″ canvas bag with their name on it, containing crayons, pencils, a coloring book and a book mark
    • Set up a decoration station for them to further decorate this canvas bag
    • Set up a cookie decoration station to decorate the ginger bread man they each get (we baked them last night!)
    • Set up a photo booth. I’ll be taking their photos, and placing them in a thin, foam frame
    • This picture frame is then decorated by the kids at yet another station
    • Yet another booth will make “super balls” — a toy they can customize and bring home with them

    I addition, each child will get a pair of knitted winter gloves and a fleece scarf — also labeled with their names on them, so they don’t get misplaced in the classroom.

    Also, we are raffling off as many $20 baskets as we can afford, filled with flour, pancake mix, syrup, peanut butter, jelly, etc. — you get the idea. These are staples that the parents can use over the holiday and into the new year, along with some treats, such as two mugs with hot cocoa mix.

    The only financial support we’re getting is from donations of people like you. Each $20 donation we receive will purchase one more basket of food, or other necessary supplies for the event.

    Can you please pledge twenty bucks to this worthy cause? (Thanks, Nelie, for your $20 “seed money,” and to everyone else who has donated on this).

    PLEASE HIT REPLY and say yes. Yes, I take checks … and IOUs! 😉

    If you have other holiday charities, or other reason not to give, God bless you. But if you don’t, Sherry and I and the rest of the team will be supplying photos of the many happy memories that you will have helped to create.

    Please say yes. Right now. THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    ~Jeff

    This and other efforts raised an impressive sum (including the money to cover other supplies, the amount came to $628). We were able to raffle off enough holiday baskets to make a lot of parents very happy indeed.

    The Gift Basket Were A Huge Hit

    Speaking of the baskets, I was a little astonished at the response. You would have thought we were giving away new cars!

    Social Networks and Fundraising

    Examples like TweetsGiving have demonstrated the power of social networks to get out the word. By contrast, this story shows more of the power of grassroots fundraising. Physical networks were leaned on heavily — especially my relationship with workmates at ec-connection, Nelson Schmidt and Madison’s Waldbillig & Besteman.

    That said, you might have guessed that I “put the touch” on many of my closest online friends. Our fund raising tally was definitely boosted by my online network, including two of my newest friends. (@annNow and @ChrisQuick, you know who you are!)

    For all of those who contributed, I want to say that I and the other volunteers (Shannon Schlintz, Jaime Schlintz, Paul Thomas, Noel Stollmack, Barb Lloyd, and event mastermind Sherry Richards) could not have done it without you.

    And for those of you who are considering social networks as part of your fundraising efforts, rest assured that this and the case mentioned in Part 1 illustrate how, especially when your network is strong, you can accomplish amazing things!

  • Social networks and fundraising, Part 1

    Shortly before Thanksgiving, a post on Twitter asked me and others on this friend’s network of “tweets” to consider helping in the building of a classroom in an African village. The link that was embedded in the tweet provided the details necessary to authenticate the appeal, and five minutes and one Paypal transaction later, I was back to work.

    I was not alone.

    The graphic below shows the pace of giving for this campaign, which successfully raised more than $10,000.

    tweetsgiving_donations_by_day

    More information on the campaign can be found at the Tweetsgiving web site, and in this post about the project, written as it was underway.

    tweetsgiving_postscript

    The success of this project should not be misinterpreted, however.

    It would be easy to conclude that this illustrates the marketing reach and power of a new medium. Yes, it’s true that this “medium” is powerful. But as others have pointed out, it would be like saying the telephone is a powerful medium, because so much business is transacted over it.

    Instead, we have to look at social networking as a new way of communication. Period.

    And as long as the means of communication is handled well and for a compelling reason, exciting things can be built — a brand, a reputation … and even a classroom inTanzania.