I recently talked with Natasha Funk, research director for Terra Networks. She has some interesting demographics to share on the online U.S. Hispanic market. We mostly talked about a content-engagement study Terra conducted with comScore.
You’d think we’d know everything about Baby Boomers by now, right? Wrong.
Here some insights about the demographic you may not know. I came across them while completing a case study about marketing to Baby Boomers. Read more…
Ten years ago this week, innovative marketers tested adding the first call-us buttons to their websites. Results were delightful –- so much so that early testers, including several divisions of IBM, rolled out call-us buttons to more of their Web pages.
Yet, beyond a certain circle of best-practices-type marketing organizations, call-us buttons never really took off the way they should have in the larger world. I’m not sure why –- possibly it’s because the buttons cost next to nothing to implement, don’t use razzle-dazzle technology and aren’t as cool and sexy as videos, search ads or viral campaigns. In the ceaseless marketing march toward Web 2.0 hipness, call-us buttons got left in the dust.
Well, now that we’re in a recession (which we are no matter what the government proclaims), it’s time to add a call-us button to your site improvements agenda. You don’t need razzle-dazzle or the latest great thing. You need what works –- what’s proven to increase responses quickly, cheaply and effectively.
How call-us buttons work:
You add a button (or form) to every page of your site (or to landing pages), which prospective clients might abandon because they have questions they need answered to continue. It works best on considered-purchase page paths –- something expensive or complicated that folks may want to talk to a human being about before making a decision to buy or to add your name to the vendor shortlist for the boss’s consideration.
The button lets people request to be called by an expert service rep who can answer any questions they might have. It’s not a chat box –- some folks don’t like chat at all, and others feel it’s too annoyingly “slow.” It’s also not a sales-rep-will-call offer – nobody wants to be sold. They want to be assisted.
You can set up the button, so that your call center calls immediately (the faster the better, just like chat; no one wants to sit waiting) or at the time each user asks to be called. If you have business clients, be sure to ask for extension. If you can operate only during limited hours, state the hours upfront on the button and include a cross-link to a Web form for questions during off-hours. Make sure someone actually responds to the Web form (a shocking number of companies do not).
Start with a small test that measures what percent of visitors to one page with a highly visible call-us button actually use it. Also, measure what percent of those calls result in a favorable activity (anything from a request for more information to a direct conversion.) And, consider having the reps making the calls ask folks to hang on the line for a brief satisfaction survey at the end (“Was this helpful?” or “Would you be more likely to buy from us as a result of this service?”). This will give you the call volume and results measurements you need to create projections and sell your management team on a rollout.
Last, don’t abuse the phone numbers you receive. Calls should be placed based on prospects’ wishes. If they didn’t ask you to call again, don’t. Otherwise, people will quickly learn to never click on a call-us button again.
Why do people prefer call-us buttons to picking up the phone and reaching out to you? They’re sick and tired of automated phone systems, on-hold wait time and being passed from person to person while trying to find the right expert to answer a question. It’s a pain in the neck to get through to most companies these days. Call-us soothes the pain point.
Every time you overcome a pain point that’s a barrier between you and a prospective customer, your sales rise. The only question is by how much.
Were you one of the Few, the Proud, the call-us-using marketers of the past decade? Please post your comments below. Tell the rest of us how things worked out.
I recently interviewed a B-to-B marketer who had completely revamped her webinar strategy to generate a 400% increase in attendance. One change they made was to eliminate events in July and August, when they’d seen generally low interest from their prospects and customers.
Her theory: People tend to take a vacation in the summer, or else find the nice weather just too enticing to sacrifice an extra hour in front of a computer.
The new iPhone has me thinking about mobile marketing. After stewing over the differences between PC and mobile, a big difference hit me: GPS.
GPS enables sharp geotargeting. You can use IP addresses to target ads to zip codes, but that’s pretty broad. GPS-enabled phones can pinpoint a customer within a matter of feet.
E-catalogs that are navigated with a ‘virtual thumb’ in the turn-the-page sense have been a hot topic among marketers for quite some time. Do they produce sales? Are they worth the effort? What’s the point of an e-catalog when you have ecommerce?
I have searched high and low for a data-based, Sherpa-worthy Case Study on this very subject. The fact is, proving e-catalog activity creates sales with rock-solid data is difficult. Marketers who think they work only want to talk estimates or anecdotally. Read more…
Choosing the right title for white papers and webinars can mean the difference between catching your prospects’ attention and being overlooked in a sea of competing ecommerce content. For some ideas on creating titles that get attention, check out the homepage of the popular social bookmarking site Digg.com.
I’ve worked for brand-driven companies and for A/B test-driven companies. Each was equally snooty and disdainful of the other.
To summarize, brand marketers thought A/B testers were pointy-headed geeks, while A/B testers thought brand marketers were bubble-headed blondes. Luckily, the twain didn’t often meet … until now.
Instead of relying on “fuzzy” data from focus groups, awareness studies and Nielsen ratings, brand marketers now are inundated with detailed numbers from every campaign that touches the Web, email or mobile in some way. Once you have numbers, testing to improve results is the logical next step.
As for A/B testers, the plethora of cheap, do-it-yourself online response vehicles has lowered the barriers to competition. Now anyone can launch a direct response campaign to your marketplace without first investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in printing, postage, fulfillment and media costs. Suddenly, a strong brand is the only safe harbor to launch your merchant ships from.
In practical terms, this means political battles are beginning to rage in marketing departments across America. Whichever side you’re on — brand vs A/B — someone else on your team is evangelizing the other direction as the best way to beat the recession.
Who’s right and who’s wrong? Hate to say it, especially as a chief proponent of measurement in marketing, but brand should always win.
Brand is so critical, in fact, that every company must assign a Chief Brand Evangelist who has *veto power* over any and all proposed A/B test ideas. Test all you want, but never test outside of brand guidelines … unless you are considering changing your entire brand positioning as a result and the CEO has been brought into the picture.
It’s that serious.
You see, I’ve worked for A/B testing companies and brand-driven companies. The brand-driven companies could sell almost anything within their brand far more easily than the testing companies could. The brand’s fans would line up to buy anything that brand had going. You could A/B test your brains out from here to kingdom come, but all those incremental gains year after year would never add up to the sole selling power of a strong brand.
Of course, the gold is having a strong brand with a team that’s able to A/B test, within guidelines, to improve results for it. That’s a company worth investing in.
Online video producer Jim Kukral, of JFK Services, has some interesting thoughts on YouTube and Google Universal Search.
Search competition is not as strong in YouTube as in Google, Jim says. For example, searching “refinance mortgage” in YouTube returns 964 results. Searching in Google returns 11.6 million results. Some other examples:
There’s a lot to be said for marketing to one of our closest neighbors, Canada – especially when their economy (and dollar) is strong, and ours remains weaker.
There is plenty of opportunity for B-to-B marketers targeting Canada. I discovered this opportunity while doing research for a special report on marketing to Canadians.
