MarketingSherpa Blog

I’ve come to the conclusion that any serious marketing training course should include sitting around cable TV to watch a few old episodes of Bewitched.

Remember how Darren Stevens would be working away on a great campaign at the ad agency and then a magic spell would mess it all up by turning the client into a chimp or something? That’s exactly what it feels like to be a marketer in the wonderful, ultra-measurable, Internet-age.

Last week an SVP of marketing for a very well known company, who I personally have admired for years, sent me a note turning down my invitation to speak at our upcoming Subscriptions Summit.

He explained, “We recently found there is a glitch in our ecommerce system and thus all marketing tests from the past have to be thrown out and redone. i.e. What we think we learned from tests is all in question because of system failures that lost orders.

Therefore, when I imagine what a group of my marketing peers would ask me on stage, I would feel like a phony trying to answer on this subject.”

When I read that, a big pile of guilt slid off my shoulders. Our marketing tech isn’t perfect either. We never measure everything I think we should – nor do we always have the time to pay attention to the results properly.

But I guess that’s condition normal for marketers these days. Tech SNAFUs are inevitable, and you can’t guilt yourself out for not being perfect all the time. I guess it’s just about doing our best and not letting that magic chimp thing bother us too much.

I’d like your input for some Buyer’s Guides projects we’re working on.

Whether you are a client, a potential client, or a vendor yourself, you can nominate any company you chose to these Guides. Every single nominated vendor will be reviewed for complimentary inclusion — and we try to include as many as possible.

Nominations only take a few seconds, and they are anonymous:

a. Buyer’s Guide to Email Broadcast Services 2nd Edition

Nominate email services that send out bulk (broadcast) messages for clients. Questions? Contact editor Jill Keogh at jillk@marketingsherpa.com:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=59232397756

b. Buyer’s Guide to Web Analytics

Nominate any or all software you would use to analyze your site’s traffic. Questions? Contact editor Terry Lund at terry@terrylund.com:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=84220365265

c. Buyer’s Guide to Selling Content Online

Nominate software/technology services you would need to sell content online, including PDFs, pay-per-view and subscriptions. Questions? Contact editor Andrew Benkard at andrewb@marketingsherpa.com
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=39901365264

Thanks for your support,

Anne

Anne Holland – Publisher
MarketingSherpa

This week the New York Times ran a story that began, “Can small businesses be persuaded to pay for online advertising even if they do not sell their products or services on the Web?”

Well, hair salon owner Jet Rhys, told me the answer is, “Heck yes.”

Jet, a self-described “right-brainer” didn’t want anything to do with online at first. “I do hair. I’ve never even owned a computer.” But, her young staffers kept bugging her to put up a site, so when she discovered a client worked for the Red Door Interactive agency, she decided to try it.

Clients loved the site – especially the form where they could request a phone call to book an appointment. But Jet’s client base didn’t grow much … until her agency began testing local PPC search ads.

They tried using local terms such as “San Diego hair salon” in Overture and Google; and since Google started offering localized ad serving (where your ad only appears for searchers in selected zip codes) they’ve tested broader terms such as “hair cut.”

Results? Jet’s business has boomed, especially for expensive new services such as Japanese thermal straightening and hair extensions that consumers tend to research online. 30% of the Salon’s total appointment requests now come from the site, and roughly 50% of these are first-time customers.

Some ads have done as well as 6.25% CTR; and, Jet’s average click rate is a respectable 1.09%, with 1.5% of clicks converting to filling out the appointment form.

“It’s catapulted me into thinking I can never be without these buys. I’m able to take my blinkers off and see how I can grow in new services,” Jet told me.

If you’d like to check out Jet’s site, here you go:
http://www.jetrhys.com

I get incredibly frustrated when I hear about a new marketing idea, but no one has any real-world results data.

This week I called around to a bunch of marketers who’d added a spokesperson headshot plus an audio clip to their site. “How many visitors click to hear the audio?” I asked. “Does it improve conversion rates?”

Nearly everyone said, “Oh, we’re not measuring it, but we figured it’s really cool so why not stick it up? It probably helps.” Arrgh! Finally I got a tidbit of data (see below for the Case Study.)

John O’Dwyer, who helps out his dad the famed Jack O’Dywer with his publication for the PR community, told me he’d been kicking around the idea of having sponsors add audio clips, of Jack briefly discussing their product, to their site ads.

John said, “It’s not too hard to create one of these things. It’s just Flash with audio popped in. People believe in something more when they hear an authority say it.” Plus, most audio clip tech companies allow your spokesperson literally phone in their message.

Which made me think, what about using audio for celebrity
endorsements online? Click here to listen to what so and so says about …. Could be anyone from a big-name tech analyst to a Hollywood star.

Has anyone tested it? Got data? Lemme know.

Article: Adding Audio to Your Business Web Site
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/sample.cfm?contentID=2595

Tuesday afternoon you should have gotten an email from us with the link to the ‘Marketing Wisdom 2004: 99-Best Real-life Stories & Tips’ Report. (http://wisdom.marketingsherpa.com)

I heartily recommend you take a look now, if you didn’t have a chance earlier, because it’s highly entertaining and definitely inspirational.

In my introduction to the Report, I noted that this year it’s all about ‘in person marketing.’ One reader wrote in to share another example. Turns out a group of college students started an agency called called ‘Headvertise.’ They’ve recruited students at a whole bunch of colleges such as UMASS who agree to have your ad stamped on their foreheads.

Then the students walk around for a few days as living forehead billboards for your brand and URL (if it will fit).

So far 69-Gear.com and Roomates.com have tested it. Mike Peters at Roomates.com says, “5 heads brought in over 10% of the school advertised at.” Eric Gerth at 69-Gear says he got some traffic, and items in shopping carts, but no actual conversions… yet.

Anyway, it’s a fun idea, and yes, the students involved are looking for either outside investors and/or jobs in advertising when they graduate shortly. http://www.headvertise.com

When I was interviewing Forrester Research’s Claire Powell for our new Case Study (link below), she mentioned they have tested a way of coming up with keywords for Google AdWords:

Instead of just putting ads under obvious terms that describe Forrester’s services, Powell’s team is trying newsy phrases – such as bits of quotes and headlines that are top of mind for their prospects.

For example, when the Harvard Business Review published a high-profile story entitled “IT Doesn’t Matter”, Forrester’s team tested paid ads using that exact phrase, as well as its opposite, “IT Does Matter”.

Claire told me, “For these very specific phrases, the impressions we get are extremely low, but the clickthroughs got up to 10-15%.”

Every search expert I know says that often the best keywords are the niche ones. So this is definitely a tip worth testing. Let me know how it goes for you.

http://www.marketingsherpa.com/sample.cfm?contentID=2582

“It was shocking,” Philip Krim, Marketer for The Sleep Better Store told me. “We really, really loved our site redesign. We were impressed with it. I was hoping for an immediate 20-30% sales jump. But, it was flat, if not declining.”

Krim had based his site revamp on what his vastly bigger competitors were doing online. He figured since they had more experience and gargantuan advertising budgets, they must know what they were doing. So he tried to steal smart.

Luckily he watched his Web metrics like crazy. His average sales cycle is 60-90-days, and 80% of site-generated sales come in via the phone. But, within just a few days Krim knew by watching visitor click paths and site abandonment rates that the new design was a failure.

With help from Michael Behrens at WebMetro, Krim whipped up a new site in just two weeks. The funny thing is, he doesn’t like the new site as much at all. It’s far simpler and even less professional-looking. Beautiful images and a heavily detailed navigation bar have been replaced by non-descript text-links.

But potential customers — boomers looking to spend over $2000 on a new bed — love it. Total monthly sales doubled, and search-driven clicks converted 500% better than before.

The moral of the story: don’t assume your competitor’s Web site is better designed than yours, even if it looks prettier. And watch your metrics like a hawk.

By the way, Krim also asked me to tell you he’s discovered for high-price items such as beds, that consumers tend to research heavily online prior to buying, your paid search position doesn’t matter. A #1 position won’t really outpull #3 because folks in research mode often work their way carefully down the results list, clicking on absolutely everything.

Again, it’s your site that counts — it’s all about conversions.

Thanks to your support, as of Jan 1st 2004, our newsletters ceased carrying paid ads from external sponsors.

I’d like to stress that our ad sales guy, Dan Zebroski was doing a great job (in fact he was about to sell out most slots for first quarter.)

The fact is, when I founded MarketingSherpa four years ago, it was from a gut-level need to serve marketers with useful, non-biased information to make their jobs easier. I had just been a marketer in corporate America for 14 years, so I guess I secretly wanted to help out my former self.

While all our sponsors were great folks offering services I felt we could recommend — and none ever pressured us to alter editorial — I felt slightly uncomfortable relying on vendor support to serve you.

Maybe it’s because I’m at heart a marketer instead of a salesperson. Maybe it’s because it’s easier to serve one type of customer really well, instead of two. Maybe it’s because we publish Buyer’s Guides which require no taint of bias.

Plus, if I didn’t have to carry outside ads, then I could slenderize issue layout and design.

So, thanks to your support, we’ve been able to make the changeover. You’ll still get our content free for at least 10 days (from date of original posting on our site.) You just won’t have to look at outside sponsors’ ads anymore.

Instead, the ads will only be for best-of marketing handbooks and resources published by both us and many others which are available at reasonable prices at SherpaStore.com. We’ll also sometimes promote trade shows we think are great in exchange for promotional consideration.

We may not make as much money as we would have otherwise, but this change feels “right” to me. And hey, I’m the Publisher!

Anne

Anne Holland – Publisher
MarketingSherpa

Poor Gord Hotchkiss.

He’s the CEO of an optimization firm called Enquiro. We were
chatting on the phone the other night about 2004’s challenges for
the search optimization (the fact that nobody really understands
Google’s latest “Florida” update yet; Yahoo deciding to bail on
Google and create their own natural listings algorithms that
everyone will have to re-optimize for; and the fact that there
are still bozos giving a bad name to the search field by doing a
cruddy job for clients.)

Then Gord innocently asked, “How do you think the search firm
industry could better market itself?” … and I exploded into this
huge rant.

I had no idea I felt so strongly. But the fact is, the search
industry has an identical marketing weakness to most industries
where there are tons of competitors (software firms, marketing
consultants, etc.): zero obvious differentiation.

Most competitors’ Web sites make same-sounding claims, describe
same-sounding services, and make same-sounding lead generation
offers. (And too often use clip-art.)

Some try to break from the pack by making either of the three big
marketing mistakes:

Mistake 1: Boasting about leadership. “We’re the leader in…”
Even if it’s true, unless you’re a household name it sounds fake,
and no one cares except your CEO. It’s not a key differentiation
point.

Mistake 2: Making up terminology to describe yourself. “We use
the unique A.B.C. process to…” If prospects never heard of it,
they don’t care. They are not here to learn about you – they
just want to know if you can solve their particular problem.

Mistake 3: Broad customer description. “Everyone from the
Fortune 500 to small businesses use our services.” Prospects
don’t think of themselves as generic (even if they are), so they
don’t want to buy generic services (even if it would suit them.)

My advice? Focus your positioning on the customer – not
yourself.

Do you have a group of clients in a particular niche? Then
create marketing campaigns (and a site section) dedicated to how
you serve that niche specifically (yes, even if you also serve
others.) A niche can be:

– the tech platform they use
– the size of their company
– geographic location
– their business model
– their budget
– their job title
– demographics

And, yes if you serve many niches, then create many of these
vertical marketing campaigns starting with the niches that are
currently most profitable for you. Then stick a big honking link
on your home page and your site navigation bar calling out to
each niche by name (the name they themselves use, not something
you made up).

This is *not* rocket science. It’s 101 marketing.

Ok, rant over. Thanks to you and Gord for putting up with it.