Exploring Marketing Technology

Opinions are all my own

  • “They all laughed when I said I’d use this headline …”

    “– but then it began to work!” For those of you who have made a study of ad writing, you’ll recognize the name John Caples. His work continues to be extensively studied and copied. Not too shabby for someone whose seminal book, Tested Advertising Methods, was written almost 80 years ago!

    Workers or Wackers? CareerBuilder AdHow often is his work mimicked?

    Well, how often have you seen an offer for a guide that offers “12 secrets to X,” or “9 tested ways to Y?” Perhaps a million times?

    Each writer of those headlines was — knowingly or not — following in Caples’ footsteps. I was reminded of how common these offer headlines are, especially online, where free whitepapers abound, when I saw this recent ad for CareerBuilder (the image to the right). Thank you, by the way, to Adverlicio.us for tipping me off on this one. You can see their Flash animated version here.

    And that inspired me to do a Google search for all mentions of the phrase “They all laughed when I.” These happen to be the first five words of Caples’ famous headline for a music correspondence school: “They all laughed when I sat down at the piano — but then I began to play!”

    It’s a killer lead that broke all the school’s sales records, paired as it was with gutsy, testimonial-style direct response copy (example: “Someone asked about the maestro’s execution. Someone else called out ‘I’m all for it.’”).

    So how many online ad writers are using this technique? The Google results suggested as many as 731 matches. Here are the top five, to give you an idea how this technique is being applied:

    • They All Laughed When I Said I Could Turn Their Relationship Around In Just 10 Minute.
    • They All Laughed When I Spoke of Greedy Doctors
    • They all laughed when I said I was going to tell a joke. Well, they’re not laughing now.
    • They All Laughed When I Sat Down at the Computer: And Other True Tales of One Man’s Struggle With Personal Computing.
    • They All Laughed When I Said I Was Going To Become A Millionaire… But Then I Did It In Only 4 Years!

    And then there is this one, which comes the closest to Caples’ original (it even includes quotes, which Caples said was de rigour):

    “They All Laughed When I Told Them I Don’t Spend A Penny To Promote My Website — But When I Showed Them My Web Stats!”

    In what I suspect will come to be known as the Golden Age of Internet Marketing, it’s fun to see just how much hasn’t changed since advertising was in its infancy.

  • Today record labels may find digital rights management less easy to defend

    The adage I heard as a kid was, “Why would anyone buy the cow if they can get the milk for free?” True, these sages of my youth weren’t referring to music downloads and DRM (digital rights management). But record labels with much to lose financially have used this argument to defend their aggressive protection of their artists’ intellectual property. They have to be troubled this week by news of Radiohead’s In Rainbows topping album sales charts — in spite of the band’s offering this CD months ago for download, unprotected and at whatever price a listener would like to pay (including nothing at all).

    Radiohead wasn’t the first to act on the urge to give fans a voice in setting the monetary worth of their music. One of the first artists was Issa, formerly known as Jane Siberry. As I’ve written before, this is an online business model not unlike street corner busking — in a way returning artists to their performing roots. Radiohead is, however, the most prominent group of recording artists to try this model.

    Now, according to a New York Times account released late Wednesday, the band — and their recording label — are reaping an unexpected windfall from this experiment in open source music. Here is an excerpt:

    In a twist for the music industry’s digital revolution, “In Rainbows,” the new Radiohead album that attracted wide attention when it was made available three months ago as a digital download for whatever price fans chose to pay, ranked as the top-selling album in the country this week after the CD version hit record shops and other retailers.

    The album, the first in four years from the closely watched British rock act, sold 122,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

    Part of the reason I find this fascinating is, frankly, personal guilt. This news helps assuage any feelings I might have about copyright violation. Like millions of others, I too occasionally trade digital copies of CDs I like with a friend or two. I tell myself this is ethically acceptable, because it promotes music that my friends might not hear otherwise. In my defense, these friends are hardly a mainstream bunch.

    They listen to long tail music.

    That means chances are slim they would otherwise sample a given artist’s music. What’s more, these folks are the sort to glom onto an artist they like. They may wind up buying all of that artist’s work (yes, I’m thinking of you, Michael!).

    As a business model, I wonder if all long tail artists and labels might benefit from “legal” DRM-free distribution. Perhaps DRM should be removed from any downloadable CD that doesn’t meet a certain sales level. And perhaps the stigma should be removed from ripping and sharing (one-on-one only, not using peer-to-peer online pirating platforms).

    Call it a crazy libertarian streak, but I’m the type to wonder about decriminalizing other activities whose overall harm is in serious dispute. This latest news raises the “dispute level” for me of this common little “crime.” It makes me wonder even more about the real financial harm done when a CD by a relatively obscure artist is shared at no charge.

    What do you think?

  • ProjectStars CEO describes how this new site blends job board with social networking

    I’m returning from a holiday hiatus with recharged batteries and major content changes to Digital Solid. Come back often or subscribe to find exclusive interviews with online news-makers, plus more news and tips you’ve told me you appreciate as marketers in an increasingly technological world.

    Michael Beddows - CEO - ProjectStarsTo kick things off in 2008, I’m thrilled to bring you an interview with Michael Beddows, CEO of the new projectstars b-to-b online social network. This site is part project board, part social network and part blogging cooperative. It’s a novel mix that has already attracted an impressive critical mass of participants.

    Q: projectstars has been around for almost four months. Has the growth you’ve seen in that time surprised you, or was it about what you were expecting?

    MB: Considering that our marketing over the past few months has consisted entirely of word-of-mouth, we’re very pleased with both the quantity and quality of our membership growth. This organic growth has also provided us with some great feedback on how we can refine our equity blogging approach.

    Q: In a blog entry you mention that there are generally three types of online communities, and they mirror the Malcolm Gladwell The Tipping Point connector types. Of the three, projectstars is a “Maven” network, where you’ve written, “Content is king … For those who are knowledgeable, these [Maven] sites are a great place to showcase expertise and get discovered.” Can you name other communities that follow this “maven model,” where members are encouraged to promote themselves and their expertise?

    MB: LinkedIn has an Answers section where members can vie to be nominated as the “Top Expert.” The difference with projectstars is that our members are not restricted to a Q&A format and can participate in more engaging conversations. projectstars is also more amenable to search engine optimization, which means that our member contributions are more discoverable in search engines. It’s one thing to be seen as an expert within the confines of LinkedIn, quite another to be seen as an expert on the Internet at large.

    Q: Your site says that you’re “blurring the line” between job sites and business/social communities. This is extraordinary enough, in that I’ve never seen another site that is certifiably both, as yours is. But what has struck me as more novel is that your business model sounds a lot like a cooperative. A week ago you conducted your first share giveaway, where 100 members with the most earned points receive their shares in the business. This sounds unique for a social network site. Is there any other community that you’ve modeled this against?

    MB: We believe we are the first social network to offer members shares. We think this is the way any online community should operate as it’s the members who make the community. It’s quite possible that someday, many social networks and blog communities will become equity blogs, where members band together to form a cooperative.

    Q: Speaking of blurred lines, I like the Facebook login feature, which allows anyone who is already part of Facebook to register with projectstars from a page within Facebook. I was curious how the tie-in would benefit me, and saw that friends in Facebook who are also on projectstars are immediately identified and added as a projectstars buddy. What a cool way to tie the two communities together. Has this Facebook connection helped spread the word about projectstars?

    MB: With so many sites out there, anything which makes registration easier is good in our books, so the Facebook login helps in that respect. We are also developing a Facebook application so that your projectstars blogs will show up on your profile and others can vote on them – once this is completed we do expect that will help spread the word.

    Q: Are you optimistic about future tie-ins with other social networks through OpenSocial? How is this work progressing?

    MB: We are members of the OpenSocial development lists and are tracking progress closely, however OpenSocial specifications are still in development so we expect it will be later in Q1 2008 before we see anything from projectstars on this front. We are also investigating the possibility of projectstars itself being an OpenSocial container. projectstars members can already set up their own personalized page of projectstars content, RSS feeds, and widgets at my.projectstars.com so this would be an ideal place to host OpenSocial apps.

    Q: Blogging is a great way for domain experts to show off their knowledge. On the other hand, many of these same people already have one or more blogs. Are you looking at ways to port “outside” blog content into your site, or do you simply want to encourage bloggers to move their tent within the walls of projectstars?

    MB: We did investigate linking members blogs to the system, however there were two problems with this. First, the projectstars community structure means that automating where posts appear is not easily possible, and second we realize that although people do have their own blogs, they don’t always blog about one subject, and sometimes blog about personal/life issues. As we want to keep projectstars content focused on the topics provided by the 300 communities, we decided to enable blogging within the system.

    (more…)

  • Survey of marketing tech types finds ROI strongest for search and internal email tactics

    A recent survey has shed light on what one breed of marketing professionals are perceiving as good bets in terms of measurable return on investment (ROI). The tactic leading the pack is email, sent to an internal — or “house” — list. This is hardly surprising, since it is a relatively low-cost way to announce new products and deals to customers and prospects. What is more interested is seeing how both organic search marketing (i.e., search engine optimization) and pay-per-click (PPC) search marketing are viewed by these same executives compared to other tactics. Here is the full run-down:

    Perceived ROI by tactic, from 3,000+ search marketing pros

    Considering the search-centric executives surveyed (these were 3,186 “in-house search marketers or agency executives,” as reported in eMarketer.com‘s ROI for Select Marketing Tactics according to US Search Marketers), it’s not surprising both are regarded highly. Both are deemed as “Good” investments in respect to the return they typically provide by one out of every three respondents, and another third (34% total) considered one of these two tactics “Strongest” in terms of ROI.

    This would be a glowing assessment of search when compared with other tactics, if only PPC weren’t also deemed as “highly variable” by 28% of respondents. Considering how much control one has on the risks and rewards of PPC, this makes me wonder if that measurement isn’t the voice of a minority who either hasn’t conducted a PPC campaign or hasn’t done it properly.

    The booby prize goes to online advertising (“banners, etc.”), deemed “Low Value” by 43% of the group. With opinions of online ads being this negative, is it any wonder ad networks are scrambling to sweeten the kitty with more behaviorally-focused targeting?

    What is your response to these numbers?

  • Google Reader replaces that stack of half-read books

    Thank you, Google. I think. Today for the first time, I clicked a mysterious link in my Google Reader (which reads RSS feeds — click on the “Subscribe”button above if you don’t know what those three letters stand for). The link is labeled “Trends.” Below is what I found when I clicked it.

    My so-called reading habits. Click if you’re the nosey type and want my top-read blogs

    Oh, I see. That’s why I have over 1,000 unread items in my Google Reader.

    So which is worse: Having to look at a stack of half-read books and looming New Yorker and Economist magazines (more on taming them later this week), or visiting Google Reader and being greeted with a chart of my crap reading habits?