Exploring Marketing Technology

Opinions are all my own

  • Copy remains key to an online ad’s success, but only in service of the promise

    You need only look at the success of sponsored advertising, as found on search engines and elsewhere, to see that copy is key to an ad’s success. After all, these ads are pure text. Not a picture in sight. And by success, I mean the ability of an ad to cause a user to click on the ad to get more information.

    Why is this so? Aren’t we a post-literate society?

    Get There AdI think the answer is trust. No one has the time to click on a link that doesn’t promise something of value. It’s difficult if not impossible to do that with imagery alone, both online and in the real world. Even red octagonal traffic signs, which promise the opportunity of not getting creamed by oncoming traffic, have a big “STOP” message to improve response rates.

    Whether you’re writing a two-line sponsored search listing or a 50-word online display ad, pay attention to every word, and ask yourself if you are promising enough to the reader to generate a click. While you’re at it, here are other tips to keep in mind:

    Include a headline. That is your promise in a nutshell.

    Don’t shy away from longer headlines. They can work as well as shorter ones.

    Dramatize a benefit of your product or service. Don’t just say, “Our GPS cell phone lets you navigate even when you’re not driving.” Say, “Get there on foot or by car.” That’s the benefit of this type of mobility.

    Ask for the click. Don’t expect the reader to know that more information is a click away. Unless it’s clearly a hypertext link, be sure your copy asks for the desired action.

    The ad pictured above is a good example of all of these lessons. You can see it in action on adverlicio.us.

  • Virtual offices need receptionists too

    Reading about the Grand Opening of PA Consulting’s Second Life office reminded me of our own impending move. Our agency has bought a century-old, bricks-and-mortar building, located on Wisconsin Ave. near Lake Michigan. Last Wednesday the team got a tour of the mid-renovation, construction-zone-cum-office-building.

    When I read about the unique challenges of staffing a virtual office with a receptionist, I couldn’t help but think of the very different challenges we’re facing with placing the reception area in a part of the building that is both publicly accessible and able to accommodate the other physical needs of the space. Here’s an excerpt from the news item liked above, describing the unique requirements of putting out your shingle in cyberspace (including a payroll in Linden Dollars, the currency of the virtual world):

    Claus Nehmzow, who leads PA’s Second Life initiative, admitted that he had never met, in real life, the people who designed and built PA’s virtual office. When it was decided to hire a receptionist to greet people at the virtual PA office, interviews were conducted in Second Life. He joked that he was waiting to find out what would happen when the human resources department discovers that he has hired a person without knowing their real name and that the receptionist avatar is being paid in Linden Dollars.

    It’s taken us more than a year to plan our physical move. But somehow I suspect that PA Consulting’s branch office on a virtual patch of land wasn’t much quicker. Probably less dusty, though.

    Related entries:

  • A content explosion is helping to drive mobile media adoption

    Which came first: The mass production of the first home radios or the programming broadcasted to them? The answer is both. Radios spread like a contagion as consumers heard a distant studio’s music, news and laughter coming from their neighbors’ open windows. It seemed to promise something for everyone.

    We’re seeing the same push-pull with mobile media. Take podcasts.

    According to a survey of nearly 3,000 adults, conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, the number of Internet users who are listening to podcasts has nearly doubled in six months. Since the spring of this year, podcast listeners have grown from 7% to 12% (of all adults who use the web).

    To understand this surge in popularity you need to look at two trends. First, the prevelance of portable music players. By some estimates, one out of every four Internet users now owns an iPod or other music player. True, you can own one and never listen to a podcast, just as car ownership in the middle of the last century didn’t mean you automatically went to drive-in movies. But the growth of one fueled growth of the other.

    Then there is the vast depth and breadth of content. The report cites as an example Podcast Alley, a podcast directory. In two years its listings shot up from 1,000 to over 26,000. This content is also easier to access. It also doesn’t hurt that the popular iTunes system has provided even more content on its iPod-friendly download service.

    Are pocket videos the next podcasts?

    It appears that podcasts have hit a critical mass, and are well on their way to becoming mainstream. Will the same two trends — hardware and content — fuel a cell phone video explosion? This week I may have experienced a taste of things to come. First, I was genuinely surprised at what a hit my video-recording cell phone was.

    My mobile device, The V from LG, was small enough to unobtrusively record the fun around the Thanksgiving dinner table (with my family’s consent, of course). Well after dessert was served, we were playing a guessing game called Taboo. The next morning I could show the 15-second segments on my notebook computer. Here’s an example. It was a surprisingly fun way to use this gizmo, and one that enhanced the get-together.

    Not that it’s always Amateur Hour on my phone. There is also a modest selection of professionally-produced streaming video available on it. But the ability to make homegrown videos that can be played and shared with friends will only accelerate adoption of the mobile medium as a whole — especially with today’s news.

    Very soon, V CAST-equipped mobile phones will become a two-way conduit to amateur videos on a massive scale. YouTube made it official today that they will be providing content to Verizon phones. In addition to user-generated content, YouTube offers brief videos that are professionally produced and categorized for easy search and retrieval. These myriad videos, appealing to nearly any taste, are likely to further fan the flames of demand for entertainment that follows you wherever you have a cell phone signal.

    Hey, come here. Take a look at this miraculous, pocket-sized video screen. Let’s watch what happens next.

  • Have some fresh Carnival of Marketing with that turkey sandwich

    It’s a holiday weekend and, not surprisingly, this Carnival of Marketing installment has a little less to chew on. But there’s good stuff nonetheless. It’s been a pleasure hosting it these past two weeks, and I look forward to doing it again. If you can’t get your fill of actionable marketing news and advice from this batch, check out the leftovers — last week’s Carnival!

    I’m starting off with a very personal recommendation, written in the spirit of gratitude that this holiday week engenders.

    I grew up in a small town in the wooded, remote Upper Peninsula of Michigan (the “U.P.”), at a time when we were so cut off from the rest of the state — and the country — that many U.S. maps didn’t bother to include us. We were depicted as part of Canada. As a boy I was a bit of a runt, and not interested in sports or hunting. Instead I gravitated toward books, and they became beloved teachers and companions.

    But the U.P. was a poor part of the country. Books didn’t figure prominently in a typical household. Luckily I could still feed my passion, thanks to my town’s Carnegie Public Library. Astonishingly, Andrew Carnegie’s philanthropy reached deep into the mining and logging outposts of the Northwoods.

    I am convinced that Mr. Carnegie’s library saved my life (if only by keeping me indoors, lest I get the tar beaten out of me). So when I was driving through my hometown on Friday, midway through a nine-hour drive to my Milwaukee home from a family celebration in Lower Michigan, there was only one boyhood landmark I couldn’t drive by without taking pause.

    I pulled the car in front of the building wistfully. Long ago sold to private owners, to God knows what purpose, it has been usurped by a newer library down on Main Street. But this classically designed stone landmark still looks the same, regal and welcoming. Perhaps what’s keeping it looking so good is the psychic force of fond memories, from hopeless dorks like me, now well into middle age.

    Which leads me to my first Carnival entry.

    In her debut to the blog 800-CEO-Read, Rebecca Schlei recommends a business biography of this great man by David Nasaw. You’ll find it in her The Other Side entry:

    [The book] Andrew Carnegie is a cross-genre event, much like the man himself. While Carnegie’s lifelong philanthropy is a major thread in the story, Nasaw also focuses on his early scoot up the corporate ladder and aggressive business practices. An advocate for disarmament, a champion of free and public libraries, a writer and a visionary, Carnegie towers — in spite of his small build — as one of the most fascinating characters in U.S. history.

    Hey! He was even short like me. I like this guy more all the time.

    Is trust scalable through social networking sites? Or is business guru Charles Handy right when he says that trust is too personal to be replicated through bits and bytes? Charles H. Green examines that question, along with presenting some interesting definitions of what trust is as it pertains to sales and marketing, in Charles Handy vs. Web 2.0 posted at Trust Matters.

    You don’t have to be a hardcore sports fan like me [wink] to enjoy End It Like Beckham posted by Starling David Hunter at The Business of America is Business. Major League Soccer (MLS) is changing a rule about who gets to play on a team.

    Nicknamed the Beckham Rule, because it would allow a team to hire such a superstar (without giving away its ability to afford to hire other players to join him on the field), this change is ultimately about getting the sport in front of more fans, and on more television sets. But will it work? Mr. Hunter is skeptical.

    When it comes to feature / benefit selling, which should come first in today’s time-pressed sales environment: the features or the benefits? Jim Logan explores this in The Role of Features and Functionality posted at his company’s blog.

    Using an interesting metaphor, Barry Welford suggests in Walled Gardens – The Walls Keep Tumbling Down that although some companies have adopted the Walled Garden approach to their mobile technologies and services, others are dropping this closed approach when they see the advantages of more open system. It’s posted at StayGoLinks.

    Customer service is more important today than ever. So Juuso Hietalahti poses the question Is Bad Support Better Than No Support at All?, as it relates to the development of interactive games. You’ll find it on his GameProducer.Net.

    Mike Murray presents The Decline of Hardball posted at Episteme: Belief. Knowledge. Wisdom. He’s referring to a book on how women can learn to compete in business using zero-sum tactics. Its revised edition recognizes that the rules of business (and Mike suggests marketing as well) have changed quite a bit since the book first came out.

    Using blogging as an example, he explains, “Rather than learning to play hardball, we all need to spend more time learning to play softball – to build relationships and create connections that allow us to collaborate rather than to compete. The benefits of a relationship-based, collaborative strategy have never been more clear to me as they have been since I have started blogging … I am developing friendships with those out there who, in an age of hardball would have likely been viewed as competition.” It’s a thoughtful piece by an interesting writer.

    Last but not least, Priya Jestin offers up Customer Satisfaction Online: Simple & Tough (as in difficult) posted at CRM Lowdown.

  • Leaping the chasm to a plugged-in construction site

    In the past I’ve had chances to help clients market to the construction trades. These include carpentry, plumbing, masonry and others that send their practitioners home with stiff joints and calloused hands. These occupations account for a surprising amount of spending. So the prospect of segmenting the groups and reaching them online is tantalizing. There’s just one problem. You won’t find them there. Probably not after work, and certainly not while they’re plying their craft. No way.

    I was talking about this with my cousin, who at one time made his living as a high-end carpenter and continues to keep his hand in it. My theory is it’s the user interface keeping these craftspeople off-line, and that made sense to him.

    Computers and network connections have become easier and faster, but when you’re on a construction site trying to decide how to negotiate an oddly angled room, so you can cut and install crown molding, a keyboard and mouse are not among the tools you reach for. Which is a pity. Although there is little content out there now to assist the construction trades, there could be.

    Think of the digital craftspeople. If you develop software, you can find a galaxy of computer expertise online, through user forums and help sites.

    The complexity of building in the real world cries out for similar networked knowledge, but for the most part, all this knowledge remains trapped at individual building sites because it’s not easy to contribute, or access the tips when you need them. The rest can be solved by the need for knowledge-sharing. The real chasm to traverse is the last 10 feet leading to the construction site.

    What sort of tips can be shared? I mentioned earlier the challenge of cutting crown molding that negotiates tough corners. This requires a skill that most carpenters choose not to master. My cousin explained, “Most carpenters know that to make the angled cuts properly, they need a way to calculate the angle perfectly or they need to guess.”

    Most job sites won’t tolerate the waste of guesswork, so the guys who have these angles down cold make a lot of extra money. My cousin is one of those wizards. “I’ve literally earned thousands of dollars more from this one skill,” he said. He learned it online.

    He told me that the absence of online carpentry resources struck him every time he went online, which for him was often (he’s an extraordinary person, in this and many other ways). But he did luck out with this skill. His Net search returned a set of calculations that a professor somewhere made available. The formulas allowed my cousin to do the math on-site with a science calculator. It was that easy to become the crown molding go-to guy.

    That was proof enough to me that valuable knowledge can be shared digitally. But how to cross the chasm? I told my cousin, probably sounding more confident than I should, that it’s the next generations of cell phones.

    I base this on the phenomenon we’re seeing today of large portions of the world that are skipping PCs completely and doing business in fields and other outdoor settings using cell phones. Text messaging to central databases is allowing for the trade of crops and livestock in a virtual auction, all financed with microcredit loans. But this doesn’t eliminate a keyboard. It just shrinks it to the 10 keys of a cell phone. That’s nowhere near an interface a builder can live with on the job.

    Calling For Help

    I’m imagining a time when the next generations of cell phones will allow for voice-to-text conversions, so online forums of knowledge and advice can be accessed remotely. Insights can be traded like wares in a marketplace similar to today’s developing world swap meets. All by talking into a cell phone.

    (The skilled trade that would lead the way in the use of this new user interface would also be the most meticulous. I’m thinking of surgeons. Today surgeons and other physicians are sharing a tremendous amount of data as they consult across geographic and time boundaries. But an interface that allows for accessing this knowledge through speech instead of keystrokes could be a tremendous boon for someone whose hands are otherwise occupied.)

    Advances in a cell phone’s camera and display capabilities would also accelerate this type of mobile consulting. When you’re facing a tough construction problem, often a picture really is worth a thousand words.

    These are all my own speculations, based on watching the technology evolve and the demands of users. I look forward to seeing how things progress, and invite any reader insights on the matter. One thing I know for sure. It will take a some major changes in technology before we see the most unlikely of working stiffs: The plugged-in plumber and the digital drywaller.