MarketingSherpa Blog

A new ScanAlert research report, revealed exclusively to MarketingSherpa for publication this morning, shows that consumers now delay on average 34 hours and 19 minutes from the time they first click to an ecommerce site and when they finally buy something there.

So, any marketer who measures conversions solely by click-to-immediate-sale is blind to the vast majority of his or her success.

But, the bigger news broken in this report is stunning trend data. You see, back in 2005 when the study was conducted for the first time, consumers took an average of 19 hours to covert. Over the past two years, that delay time has risen by 80%. So, more consumer comfort in shopping online equals *longer* conversion cycles. That’s something I don’t think any of us ever predicted would happen.

The problem seems to be that consumers are comparison shopping more, rather than buying at the first place they click to. However, as studies for the past seven years have concurred, price is rarely the biggest deciding factor. Instead items such as shipping speed, guarantees, on-site merchandising, merchant name-brand and, of course, site trustworthiness, all play a role.

Tomorrow, you’ll be able to get the full report on this data from the folks at ScanAlert, who offer the HackerSafe service to ecommerce sites. It’s worth a read. In the meantime, thanks to ScanAlert’s Director of Marketing Communications Nigel Ravenhill, who slipped me a copy early, I’ve had time to consider its practical implications.

My top four tests you should consider in trying to win the delayed conversion wars are:

#1. Add “About Us” blurbs to every conceivable entry point

Nearly every site page you have now is a landing page for a click (especially if you have fabulous SEO.) However, by bypassing your homepage, consumers also bypass much of your warm-fuzzy content about who you are as a brand.

Merchant brand matters. Have you tried adding an “about us” blurb sidebar or extra copy block to all landing pages? Does the content in it emphasize why people should buy from you rather than someone else offering the exact same item? Do those reasons go beyond price alone? (I sure hope so.)

This is a good place to pop in all that feel-secure info, including various icons of trustworthiness and “as seen in” fame. It’s also a great place to put any evidence of tangible offline existence, such as a photo of your flagship store or a real-life customer service person waiting to answer questions.

#2. Grab emails early on — before the shopping cart

This is especially important if you don’t have a truly famous household brand name. Don’t rely on consumers’ memory alone to get them to return to your site — and, for gosh sakes, don’t pay for another click for the same exact person.

Instead, consider testing a DHTML overlay offering an email opt-in offer (perhaps a % off coupon for first purchase to be sent via email) triggered to appear when first-time visitors add something to their carts, or when they spend more than three minutes examining a particular item.

If you wait to ask for email permission until the actual checkout, then you’ll miss the opportunity to promote to fleeing shoppers.

#3. Content: give more product info than the competition does

If you rely on data feeds from manufacturers alone, chances are you don’t have enough content on product pages to convert those “in consideration” shoppers. This type of thoughtful shopper is the perfect person to become engrossed in:

o Long copy — as in more than 150 words, better yet, more than 400 words
o Tech specs, product details and trivia of all kinds
o Shipping data and in-stock data
o Reviews — customers, “experts” and press
o Comparison charts with similar products

#4. Exclusive here-only bonuses

If you sell something that’s truly indistinguishable from items available elsewhere, consider creating a line of “extras” to offer as free gift with purchase for your top-sellers.

Often, that extra can be nothing more than a PDF eBook on something related to the topic. (Top 100 Tips to Get the Most from Your Digital Camera; 5 Mistakes to Avoid When Buying Gifts for Men; Easy Recipes; 25 Best Web Sites for New Parents; User Handbook for … etc.)

Depending on your product, the eBook doesn’t need to be more than five pages long, as long as it has some entertainment or practical value.

Or you can toss in any extra your fulfillment department will let you come up with that extends your brand without raising shipping costs too much. This could range from an extra single long-stemmed rose to a bag of scented confetti or silly imprinted balloons.

My personal favorite? ArchieMcPhee.com will ship your order to you for free along with your NEW CAR when you order $1 million worth of items from their catalog or site.

Have you tested anything to improve those pesky delayed conversions? Let us know in the comments below … and someday a Sherpa researcher may be calling you up!

Useful links related to this article

ScanAlert’s home page, where, no doubt, a hotlink to the PDF of this study will appear on Tuesday, July 10:
http://www.scanalert.com

My past blog on — rather shocking — data CareerBuilder’s marketers discovered when they tracked delayed conversions:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.html?ident=29684

Past Sherpa Case Study on a personable ‘about us’ page:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=28532
(Note: Members only)

If your brand offers only one product or service, deciding what to promote in your paid search ads is easy.

But, what do you do if, like Microsoft, your brand has a bunch of line extensions or, like Amazon, your site is a land of 100,000 SKUs. How should you handle PPC ads for your company or brand name as a whole?

Here are the four main options I see being used by big brands on search engines these days:

#1. Official Corporate Offer Copy

Let Corporate Communications hold a meeting with the branding agency, Investor Relations and maybe the CEO to figure it out. Your PPC ad for your brand name is considered on par with logo and tagline decisions.

Example: Honda
The Official Honda Site
www.honda.com
See new Honda pictures & specs. Get a Free Dealer Quote today.

#2. Promo du Jour

Let the product marketers teams duke it out among themselves. Whoever has the biggest promo or launch gets to own that real estate for the week or day. House email list blasts and homepage real estate are probably decided at the same scheduling meeting.

Example search: Microsoft (as seen on Google)
Microsoft Updates
www.Microsoft.com
Detect & Remove Malicious Software. Free Removal Tool from Microsoft.

#3. Let Affiliates Eat Crumbs

You own the top organic result, so why bother paying for traffic? Let the affiliates mop up any crumbs left on the table.

Example: Keds
Best of Keds Shoes
Piperlime loves Keds Shoes!
Free shipping and returns.
www.piperlime.com

#4. No Ads Allowed

After, no doubt, negotiations with Google and other search engines, you suppress all potential ads against your brand name. Nothing appears except organic listings, and you’ve made darn sure the top organic listing has a brand statement about your company as a whole that you can be proud of.

Example: Nestle (no ppc ad, just SEO)
Nestlé is the largest food and beverage company in the world. We aim to become the world’s leading Nutrition, Health and Wellness company and we are …

So which option is the best? You’ll have to run tests (including brand awareness) and tweak numbers (including traffic stats and affiliate data) to decide. My main point is that this is something worthy of consideration and investment.

The top ad (or lack thereof) that runs across your brand name is increasingly as critical for your brand’s health as traditional media is. If you spend ages in committee meetings about logos, TV spots, spokespeople, PR, etc., then your brand’s search presence should be examined in those meetings, too.

The Internet is no longer a branding afterthought.

Useful link related to this blog:

MarketingSherpa’s search marketing topic microsite:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/search-marketing-category.html

MarketingSherpa reader Raquel Hirsch of Hirsch Strategies Inc. in Vancouver just wrote in response to my blog last week about MySpace and Facebook replacing email for Gen Y:

“I have two daughters, both away at University. For the last few years (one is on her second degree), whenever I *absolutely* had to get them to get back to me on something, I would text message them (as an “over 40,” it motivated me to learn how to do it :>).

However, as you point out, since both have been home for the last few weeks I’ve noticed they are constantly not only checking their Facebook account, but updating their profiles and messaging (so, being a persistent mum, I got an account … now I just have to get them to agree to link up with me … but that’s a different story).

BUT, and it’s a huge but, my youngest commented to me this weekend that there is starting to be too much spam on Facebook and that she is starting to delete messages without reading.”

The first thing I did when I received this note from Raquel was to call across the office to our college intern, “Hey, do you ever get spam in your Facebook account?”

Why, yes, she answered. In fact, she got her first Facebook spam just last Wednesday.

The spam message came from a friend. “Well, he’s not a real friend, he’s a Facebook friend,” she explained. The difference? Through various Web 2.0-style connections, this young man joined a Facebook group that our intern was a member of. And now he’s starting to post what she considers spam — in this case a promotional message for White Stripes.

She doesn’t think it’s the band’s fault, or the marketing team behind the band. She just blames the young man. There’s little anger, just bland resignation.

Will she stop joining Facebook groups now that members sometimes post spam? “Oh, no. Of course, I’ll continue to join groups. You get these invitations all the time, and it’s rude not to say yes. If I don’t like something I can just delete it.”

And that’s the crux of the matter.

Best practices in email permission (I’m almost tempted to say “good old-fashioned email permission”) dictate that you only send messages to consumers who have eagerly raised their hands by proactively giving you their email addresses and perhaps checking a special box.

However, now Gen Y increasingly uses their Facebook or MySpace accounts as their primary online personal messaging accounts, leaving traditional email, together with traditional permission, behind in the dust.

What’s Facebook permission? Well, it’s a lot like classic email discussion groups, where once you join a group you’ll get all the messages sent within that group. If you’re not interested, you have to leave the group.

However, the difference now is, it’s often personal. Your groups may have been started or initiated by a personal friend or a friend of a friend. And this person, or someone they know, might be personally offended if you decline an invitation to join a group … or if you leave a group.

So, as our intern explained, when she gets an invite to join another Facebook group — which occurs about every week or so — she politely clicks on the “join” button.

Generally, she’s not joining because she wants to give “permission” to receive messages about something she’s fairly interested in. She’s joining because she doesn’t want to decline someone and, what the heck, some of the messages might be interesting.

So, on the one hand, she’s more personally connected to this group than to many email lists she might also be on. On the other hand, she may be far less interested in the group’s messages than she is in email she signed up for. The permission wasn’t given for the sake of the content, it was for the sake of the connection.

I can’t predict how this whole thing will play out, but I can tell you that there’s a whole new ballgame in permission. And spam, in any media whatsoever — even hip hot 2.0 — will be ignored by its recipients.

Related links:

Last week’s blog on Gen Y and email:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=30010

Raquel Hirsch’s company site:
http://www.hirschstrategies.com

Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/

My 23-year-old stepson is driving me crazy. He’s a lovely young man, wonderful in every possible way except for one. He never-ever checks his email.

Why would I care? Well, sometimes I send him things to print out for his father, who doesn’t even have an email account, let alone a computer. Then, when I get home at night and say, “Did you print out that thing for your dad?” he says, “Huh?”

Then he reminds me, “Anne, you know I never check email.”

Why would a young man, who is so much a part of the Internet generation that he does university homework at night “with” his friends via live webcam, never check his email account?

Apparently, email is old fashioned. Email is used only by ancient people over 40. Turns out being a card-carrying member of Generation X can only get you so far in understanding the Internet these days. Generation Y has new rules.

So, what has replaced email? For kids, apparently it’s still text messaging … but by “kids” I mean true children. For anyone over a certain age of consent, texting is apparently no longer cool unless you’re stuck somewhere unbearably boring (such as a nine-hour car ride to Yosemite with your family) and there’s nothing else to do.

Instead, according to my college-age kids at least, for Generation Y, communication is all about MySpace and Facebook. So, instead of saying, “Email me” a Gen Y might say, “MySpace me.” And, in fact, that’s just what my son does. MySpace is now a verb for him and his peers, replacing “email” and/or “text message.”

Alternatively, if you yourself are a college student in the US and you meet another student you’d like to get to know, you no longer ask for his or her phone number. “What’s your Facebook?” you ask instead.

What does this mean for marketing? Well, it may betray an entire generation’s lessening of broadcast-to-one email messaging availability. In a world where there are zillions more ways to reach people than ever before, the generation just now entering adulthood is retreating behind newly built walls.

So, don’t phone them, don’t email them, don’t text message them. Instead, look them up via search and post a personal note on their blog or MySpace account. Maybe they’ll consider getting back to you if it’s good enough.

I’ve always wondered why so many B-to-B homepages feature photos of beautiful young professional females. I mean, why should Web sites for companies selling proxy servers, enterprise software, electronic components and the like use stock footage of pretty women on their homepages?

Back when I graduated from college, one of my very first jobs was as an assistant in the circulation department for The Oil Daily. Sometimes I’d hear whoops of laughter from the art department down the hall when a new space ad came in. We called it the Sex Sells Syndrome. The advertiser figured their new pipeline or oil platform equipment wasn’t exciting enough to catch attention by itself, so they’d stick a naked babe on it.

It was the art department’s job to clean up the ads, carefully drawing bikinis onto models before the issue went to press.

In one of my next jobs, I was in the aerospace publishing industry, marketing for Jane’s. They didn’t have a problem with the advertisers — thankfully no one I heard about thought to stick a naked babe on a missile. But I did run into the whole booth-babe world.

There, I would be at the big trade show standing proudly in my serious-young-executive Ann Taylor suit at the Jane’s booth, ready to meet customers. But it was a bit difficult to sustain conversations because of the babes in the next booth over in their white leather-with-zippers-all-over micro-miniskirts.

In fact, many attendees figured that because I was a young woman who dressed professionally, I must, ipso facto, be military and not corporate. “Air Force?” they would inquire looking at my navy suit.

But, that was nearly 20 years ago …

B-to-B marketing has grown up and far beyond those old Sex Sells days, right? Well, almost. My rough guesstimate is that perhaps 30% of B-to-B Web sites for sales-driven organizations often feature a woman’s photo on their homepage. Generally, the young woman has absolutely nothing to do with the company because the picture was purchased from a stock footage company.

So, I guess this proves the B-to-B marketers of the world still think a pretty girl can help to sell a melody. But, can she? Does it work?

Striking data from MarketingSherpa’s new B-to-B Web site Homepage Study suggests it does to some extent. (See below for info hotlink.) In every single instance when a female face was above the fold on a homepage, both the male and female executives in our lab spent time looking at her. Men’s faces didn’t get nearly the same level of attention.

Unfortunately, lots of other elements didn’t get as much attention either. In some cases, a female face got more eye-time than promotional offers, sales copy and company news on the same page.

In other words, yes, businesspeople, male and female, alike will absolutely look at a beautiful woman. But, that look could be distracting eyes from the copy and hotlinks more important to your business. So, you’re getting attention in the wrong place.

One B-to-B marketer actually tested the “does sex sell?” concept for a lead generation campaign MarketingSherpa gave an award to last year (see link below.) Results: a cheerful male model got 53% more responses than a beautiful female model.

The marketer wasn’t sure why the male model worked better for a campaign to 40-something business executives. But, now that I’ve reviewed our B-to-B Homepage study, I’m inclined to believe the male model worked better because he was ignored. His smiling face didn’t distract email recipients from reading and responding to the offer at hand.

Does this mean you should eliminate all women’s photos from your Web pages? No, of course not. However, you might:

o Post critical must-read in positions most likely to be read near a women’s face (generally underneath as a caption and/or in the direction her eyes are looking) to take advantage of the extra attention she generates.

o Consider using a “real” woman, such as an executive working at your firm or one of your happy customers, rather than stock footage, in order to promote your organization instead of a stranger.

Useful links related to this blog

Info on MarketingSherpa’s new research study into B-to-B homepages:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.html?ident=29999

ProspectZone B-to-B Email Test – Does Sex Sell?
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/emaw2006/35.html

Got feedback – have you tested “sex sells” for B-to-B marketing recently? Post a comment below.

This morning MarketingSherpa research partner KnowledgeStorm sent out a press release revealing the data you see in the headline above.

At first glance, it’s an obvious truth. Let’s face it, when a site asks for your phone number, it’s akin to saying “Sales Rep Will Call.” Many folks figure they would rather not be pestered by a sales rep so they lie about their phone number.

MarketingSherpa has additional data, on both the B-to-B and consumer marketing side, that if your online registration form asks for a phone number, the presence of that question alone can — and usually will — reduce response rates.

So, when you ask for a phone number people will either abandon your page or flat out lie.

What’s a marketer to do? Your lead qualification team needs a phone number to follow-up. If you don’t follow-up, you may lose a sale, or waste a lead.

Plus, other new MarketingSherpa data just released last week (link below) indicates at most only 11-17% of business prospects are actively annoyed by the phone call when they get it. In fact, 53-45% of the executives admit a cold call they received made a positive difference in their new vendor or technology selection decisions. The cold call helped the vendor leapfrog onto the consideration shortlist.

My advice?

#1. Do you have to get the number from the prospect directly?

If your marketing database is remotely up to snuff, chances are you have a phone number — at least a main number — on file for that organization already. Even if you market to fairly small organizations, these days in B-to-B you’re marketing to a committee. So, several members may have already given you that data via other media (such as trade show contacts.)

You can also buy and append main company phone numbers for your database fairly easily, without breaking any privacy regs. Or you can use look-up services such as JigSaw.com to append manually.

#2. Can you get the number further down the pipeline?

If you get an email opt-in or a webinar RSVP, you have a chance to get a phone number later. Do you need the phone number right now … or do you need it when the prospect is a bit further along in the sales cycle? For example:

– Could you ask for the phone number on the sign-in form for a webinar rather than on a webinar invite form?

– How about asking for phone number as one of the questions – preferably the last – for a survey or giveaway to your email file?

#3. Pre-fill a phone number and get it corrected by the prospect

One nearly guaranteed way to raise response rates to a B-to-B offer is to pre-fill a registration form so prospects don’t have to type in their contact information. It’s already there for them. All they have to do is eyeball it for possible corrections, answer a further question or two, and then click submit.

This requires more work up front from your team, but personalized URLs and pre-filled landing pages have come a long way in the last few years. And, your content offer conversion rates could go from an average of under 10% to over 40%. That’s a big enough difference to be worth testing marketing tech investment.

If you have a generic phone number on file, put that in and see if the prospect fixes it. Or, ask for their extension as your extra question.

#4. Consider not *requiring* a phone number on forms

I’ve seen Case Study evidence that when a marketer asked for a phone number but didn’t make it a required field, he ended up with both better phone numbers and more responses as a result.

Prospects may see the non-required field as a sign of respect. You as marketer respect their privacy. If they don’t want to get a call, you won’t call. You won’t force the issue. That respect can engender respect in return.

#5. Budget extra for phone number research

Lastly, use this data to get your database budget increased. The fact is, humans are humans, so they’re going to lie about their phone numbers. Your job as a marketer is to gather the information for the CRM system or sales database that your team will need to follow-up properly.

Consider making “getting the correct phone number” a separate line item from “getting registered leads” in your budget. After all, even if you don’t budget that way, your prospects are responding that way.

Here are two hotlinks related to this blog:

The Executive Summary of MarketingSherpa’s new Business Technology Marketing Benchmark Guide which contains a chart showing response results for cold call telemarketing:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/exs/BusTech07Excerpt.pdf
(Open access)

The formal press release about the findings with our research partner KnowledgeStorm
http://www.prweb.com//releases/2007/6/prweb532433.htm

If you work for a trademarked brand name, do me a favor and go to YouTube right now and type in your brand name in the search box there. Does anything come up? Is it authorized?

This April first, Randy Cassingham publisher of the hugely popular “weird news” site and ezine ThisIsTrue.com, decided to post his first video on YouTube. However, to his shock and dismay, he couldn’t.

At least not under his trademarked brand name.

Turns out the preceding August, a total stranger had registered the YouTube username YouTube.com/ThisIsTrue. Randy wasn’t sure if the stranger was an avid fan or a pushy squatter, especially because the stranger never posted any videos under that name. However, Randy did know owning his trademarked name on YouTube would be important for his business. So, he immediately contacted YouTube asking for his trademark to be reassigned to himself as rightful owner.

His request went up the official pipeline, bounced around a bit in the corporate bowels of YouTube/Google, and finally late last week Randy got the official judgment back from his YouTube contact.

In short, the answer was “no.”

Here’s an excerpt of the legalese Randy received via email from YouTube:

“It is our position that in general use of a string of characters or group of words in a username that happens to be used as a trademark in some market by another party is not infringement. In almost all cases the use is not a commercial use in the meaning of trademark law, and does not cause confusion. Further, to the extent that most trademark claimants have not used their marks in a market or for services overlapping YouTube, the YouTube user has priority regarding that name within our market.

In cases of dispute, as we are not in a position to adjudicate the appropriateness of a user’s name selection, we do not disable accounts in response to such allegations. We recommend instead that people pursue any claims they may have directly with the user in question.”

I’m no lawyer, but to me this sounds a lot like the arguments Google has used regarding trademark use in AdWords and AdSense advertising, among other things. And frankly, from their perspective this makes a lot of sense.

It probably would be awfully tough to police trademarks in user names; let alone to decide who has the right to use a trademark in which circumstance. Trademark law is knotty stuff.
This morning Randy is contacting his law firm to have them send a cease and desist letter directly to the user who’s using his trademarked name. Hopefully that’s all it will take, but they’ll stand ready with tougher measures if need be. Protecting your intellectual property online is a serious, never ending business.

When Randy contacted me last Friday to tell me about this whole mess, my first action was to ask if I could tell his story to you as a precautionary tale. He graciously agreed.

My second action was to dash off a memo to Sherpa’s Web department, asking them to make sure all our brand names and trademarks are registered *by us* on YouTube immediately. We may or may not ever post videos to YouTube, but we certainly don’t want someone else taking that option away from us for the MarketingSherpa name.

You might also want to contact your own Web and legal departments right away. Consider taking protective measures for your brand names.

In the meantime, you can watch Randy’s first video ThisIsTrue edition on YouTube at

It’s a beautiful example of how to transition your text-content into video format. Including, of course, a prominent copyright right at the start. BTW: Randy’s main URL is http://www.thisistrue.com.

Back in 2001, when “multichannel marketing” became a buzzword, most marketers’ initial reactions were, “I’ll put the exact same content offline and on.”

However, offline quickly had less content. For example, an ecommerce site with 50,000 SKUs won’t put everything in their print catalog or brick-and-mortar stores. Or a technology firm with vastly detailed specs and user community Q&A features might not reprint everything in a binder.

So, the Web ended up being the center of marketing materials for many marketers. Printed materials became a spin-off. You’d take a slice of the mother ship website and print it up for real-world meetings and mailings.

Which, in turn, at least in my life, is leading to a lot of customer disgust.

That’s right — disgust.

Three times in the past week, I’ve heard different people around me exclaim with pure annoyance at printed materials they received in the mail from a site they had visited. “There’s nothing new here. It’s the same stuff that I saw on the site!” my stepdaughter scoffed as she tossed aside a glossy tourism brochure from a city in California.

“Well, this is disappointing. I was hoping for more details than they had on the site. I want to search for information online and read details in print,” said my father about a brochure for a consumer electronics device he was considering purchasing.

“Where’s the beef? This is fluff,” said my next-door neighbor holding up a sunroom contractor’s booklet that she had requested online.

So, I’m wondering if we all need to re-examine our notions of what content belongs online and what is more suited for print materials. You don’t want consumers to get all excited by your site and then fall flat on follow-through.

Print materials used to be the first outreach step for many companies. You would do a mailer to raise interest. Nowadays, especially with the new US postage hike, print is sometimes too expensive for pure prospecting.

The Web has become more of a prospecting tool, and print is what you send to those candidates who have leapt through the first qualification hoop. If you view your print campaigns that way, what does it mean to the type of voice and materials included?

Example: If you’re sending a print catalog to online requestors, how fat should that catalog be?

My favorite example of a company that handles the new online-vs-offline content mix really well is from this year’s MarketingSherpa Email Awards. What’s cool is that it’s a campaign from a traditional offline company called Basement Systems.

They used to send prospects nothing more than a big fat package in the mail. Now they have transitioned to use the Web for what works best on the Web — especially demonstration videos — and to use postal mail for what works best in print — in this case, a book about basements.

In fact, I think a printed book plus Web content may well be the killer combo of the 21st century. Anyway, here’s the link to their awards entry if you hadn’t seen it already:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/emaw2007/26.html

Has your organization tested any interesting takes on Web-plus-print campaigns? Let me know, and maybe we’ll write about you. Just post a comment below and we’ll be in touch.

Thanks.

It was so funny — there we were last week at our Selling Subscriptions Summit in New York talking about “Web 2.0,” the new Internet where visitors create and organize content as much as professional publishers do.

We had Case Studies on how to market subscriptions via blogs, etc.

But what struck me, and some of our Summit attendees as well, was the fact that this was an “old-style” Summit. Speakers spoke and attendees listened.

OK, we tried to make it 2.0ish and interactive. Speakers and topics were nominated by our readers beforehand, so the programming was, in effect, done by the attendees themselves. And there was Q&A after every speech. Plus, we built in lots of networking — breakfasts, lunches and a cocktail party.

But it wasn’t enough to serve folks’ true needs. One attendee came up to me in the hallway to voice her frustration. “I came to the Summit to get a specific question answered, and with 220 attendees and speakers I know someone here can help me. But I don’t know who specifically to ask or how to meet that one perfect person.”

Her idea, why not add a session where we opened the floor up to questions from the audience … and then asked the audience themselves to answer them?

I thought it was a brilliant idea, so I ran backstage to coordinate with Summit staff. That night while attendees enjoyed themselves at the cocktail party, Sherpa staffers revised the next day’s agenda to fit another session into the schedule. Then they printed up a new agenda and slipped it onto every attendee’s seat for the morning.

At 4:15 p.m., I stepped on stage to lead this new session. I was a bit nervous, and, I think, so was the audience. “OK, who has a burning question they came to this Summit to get answered?” I asked. For what seemed like an eon, everyone just sat there silently, waiting for someone, anyone, to be the first to volunteer.

Then, thank heavens, a brave soul raised his hand, and we were off!

At first, it was a little weird to moderate. I’m perhaps a bit too used to being the expert on the stage answering questions myself. So, it felt strange to get a question and, instead of answering it myself, to call out, “Who in the audience would like to answer this?”

The answers were *amazing*. Our Summit attendees were definitely as expert as anyone on stage had been (which makes sense, because it’s a peer-driven event).

I noticed several times that the person asking a question and the person who volunteered to answer it were sitting very close to each other in the audience. In one instance, they were sitting beside each other! It looked a bit odd to see them speaking into microphones so the whole room could hear as they talked face to face.

To my mind, this was the most wonderful aspect of the whole 2.0-type session. Here were people who had been sitting next to each other for two days of Case Studies and networking, who until that minute hadn’t guessed they could solve each other’s biggest questions.

In the future, we’ll definitely add this type of 2.0 session to all MarketingSherpa Summits. If your organization runs events, such as user conferences, networking gatherings or trade shows, I strongly suggest you test a similar idea.

In the meantime, if you’d like to learn what sorts of questions came up at our 2.0 session and how they were answered, a transcript of our entire Selling Online Subscriptions Summit is available here:
http://www.sherpastore.com/selling-subscriptions

I’m in New York City today to give a speech about Web 2.0 at Sherpa’s annual Selling Online Subscriptions Summit. (See below for link to transcripts & slides.) So, as you can imagine Web 2.0 has been weighing on my mind a lot.

12% of Web traffic now supposedly goes to so-called Web 2.0 sites, such as MySpace, and Flickr, not to mention 17 million blogs. I guess you could say Web 2.0 is the reality TV of the Internet.

Which, of course, makes it enormously appealing to would-be advertisers. Or so platform owners such as Google hope. In fact, a Google exec proclaimed last month that “tens of billions in offline ad dollars” were going to shunt over to the Web as soon as YouTube made ads within videos easy for media buyers.

At last, an Internet format that old-school Madison Avenue TV commercial types can embrace.

But will it work? The funny thing is, for the past 10 years selling ads on user-generated content (UCG) was really tough. Before Tim O’Reilly came up with the snappy Web 2.0 nomenclature, online bulletin boards, discussion groups, personal profile databases, personal Web page networks and, yes, millions of blogs all existed. But they didn’t get much press, and it was nearly impossible to sell ads on them.

OK, part of the difference now is more video. But, that said, video has been available as an online ad format (AKA rich media) for ages.

The other part of the difference is pure, unadulterated hype. When New York agency types heard that the founder of Wikipedia was going to be in town this week for a breakfast, the deluge of registrations was so vast that event organizers had to switch locations twice.

Web 2.0 is cool, cool, cool, and everyone wants to tell their clients they are doing something in it.

But, ‘Where’s the data?’ you ask. Well, luckily, BlueLithium Labs came out with a new study last week with some well-researched and useful data. I’m including a hotlink to that study below. Three highlights:

o Ads on non-2.0 sites (classic editorial content sites) convert 31% better than ads run against user-generated content.
o Ads on top-brand non-2.0 sites (defined as comScore’s top 250) convert 175% better than user-generated content sites.
o However, 2.0 media is so *cheap* (as of now anyway) that it’s still worth testing. The minute the price goes up, buyer beware.

This is actually no big shock (except perhaps to Madison Avenue.) Human beings are all about *THEMSELVES*. Web 2.0 is incredibly appealing content because it’s all about you. Ads are generally not all about you. They are about the advertiser.

Super-targeted niche ads — especially those served by contextual systems such as the ones ITtoolbox recommends in their white paper (see link below) — can work really well in this case.

But if you’re a Madison Avenue media buyer, you are not remotely
interested in super-niche media buys. Even if the 2.0 media is cheaper per thousand, the admin, tracking, and creative costs of running dozens or hundreds of niche ads will far outweigh the savings.

In other words, if you are tasked with reaching 10 million consumers by Wednesday, which will you do — run 1,000 different super-niche campaigns or run 10 general ads on broad-reach media?

Which is why you can be sure we’ll be seeing lots of less-then-targeted TV ads on YouTube someday soon. And when the ads invariably don’t pull as many clicks as expected, Madison Avenue will shake their heads and say, “I told you the Internet wasn’t as good as it seemed.”

OK, call me cynical. Here are the links to that data for you:

BlueLithium’s new white paper on UCG advertising data:
http://www.bluelithium.com/press/bl_labs_user_generated_content.pdf
(Open access)

ITtoolbox thinkpiece on B-to-B UCG advertising:
http://www.ittoolbox.com/advertising/whitepaperdirectory.asp
(Registration required)

MarketingSherpa’s Viral Hall of Fame 2007 – many entries used Web
2.0 promotional methods:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=29947
(Open access)

Transcript & Powerpoints from Sherpa’s Selling Online Subscriptions
Summit 2007 (including my Web 2.0 speech):
http://www.sherpastore.com/selling-subscriptions.html