MarketingSherpa Blog

Lots of B2B marketers use free white paper offers to gather leads. I suspect 50% (or more) of the battle in trying to get folks to download your white paper, especially if you’re not such a famous brand that people will read anything by you, is the exact wording of the white paper’s title.

I just saw a great white paper offer at kenexa.com’s home page. The title was enticing enough that it made me want to read the paper even though I’d never heard of Kenexa before and I’m overwhelmed with too much reading. It was “Real-World e-Recruiting: Lessons Learned from the Fortune 500.”

Now I’m wondering — does anyone ever test white paper title names? I hear a lot about testing the marketing campaigns to get the word out … and have heard about testing in-house white papers vs. paying a brand name analyst to write one for you … but not about testing the wording of the title itself. If you have, let me know at AHolland@MarketingSherpa.com.

I defy you to purchase a pair of women’s corduroys at Gap.com. Every fall I trot down, without fail, to the Gap brick and mortar store in Pentagon City Mall in the DC area to get a new pair of cords. This year I was thinking deep rich brown wide wales…yummy. But then this evening I stopped myself. Why not order online? Why not literally save hours? How fun is that?

I went to Gap.com and was vastly disappointed. The site has no search function and navigation is pretty non-intuitive so it’s hard to find stuff. They also offered no women’s (or mens) wide wale cords whatsoever online although it’s unbelievable that they don’t have said cords in the stores. In fact, Gap.com seemed to be more of a branding-focused brochureware site with some ecommerce tacked on than a true online play.

So I checked out all the other stores I would normally go to in the “real” world. And ended up buying at least one item from each of the following – Target.com, OldNavy.com, EddieBauer.com. JJill.com and LandsEnd.com.

None were perfect shopping. My biggest grudge was that the check out process in each was very different, so I felt like I had to learn something new each time. I’ll bet over time check out online will begin to look and feel much more alike — just like real world check out. Which will be a boon to shoppers everywhere.

But, whining aside, I ended up buying an entirely new (badly needed) winter work-from-home wardrobe in under 4 hours. Something that would be completely impossible in real life. In future blogs I’ll let you know if any of these onnline stores do anything really smart (or stupid) with email follow-ups, etc.

Today I heard from three different agency execs in three different parts of the country that business is really starting to pick up! Each told me they were being called on to do new client pitches from interested companies that want to launch interactive campaigns this year. Each also said their current clients have been tossing them surprise rush campaigns — as in “We decided to launch a campain today – how fast can you get it online?” Media buyers are starting to work longer hours again. While 3 people do not a guaranteed nation-wide uptick make… it still made me very happy to hear it.

Fun! Loretta Weiss-Morris of QuickTrainingTips.com, writes, “I was just reading your complaint about awful PR blather and wanted to let you know about two sites which might tickle you to look at:

Perhaps one of the most brilliant pieces of marketing I’ve ever seen!”

Definitely links for marketers seeking a good laugh to check out. Plus, don’tcha just love Loretta’s own domain name? Easy to spell, plus you know exactly what you’ll get when you go there, and why you should bother to in the first place. Score!

I’ve written about this before — how to do a name transition. Obviously nobody at GoTo (as of today Overture) read it. Three key things:

1. Don’t change everything at once. Your colors are part of your brand. I’ll bet lots of people visiting GoTo today are startled when a blue/black site pops up. I’ll bet many of them think, “Oh I’m at the wrong site, must have made a typo” and start typing “GoTo” into their address bar before the site finishes loading.

I used to be the marketer for a famous $800 per year newsletter for Satellite Industry execs. They all read it. They all loved it. But they didn’t call it by its name (which was Satellite News) — they called it “The blue one” because it was printed on blue paper. When our telemarketers called up to sell these guys renewals or editors called to get quotes, they’d say, “I’m calling from Satellite News.” People would say, ‘Which one is that?” Then our telemarketers or reporters would say, “The blue one.” “Oh yes, that one!”

2. Create one (if not a series) of transitional logos. These logos should include BOTH company names. So when people glance at the logo, it’s really obvious who you used to be, and who you are now. This process in the print world when we changed publication names went on for about six months and used at least 3 logos. The first one was OLD NAME becomming new name. The second was NEW NAME formerly old name. The third was NEW NAME.

3. Include your old name in your advertising. Overture just launched a giant marketing campaign – including banners, newsletter ads and direct mail across multiple lists and media. Very few (if any) of the campaigns even mention the old name. So all campaigns appear to be from a new company you never heard of. Which means response rates will almost certainly be lower than if they’d mentioned – we used to be that company you already knew and trusted!

Mark Jarvis, the Chief Marketing Officer for Oracle, who we did a fun
Case Study on this Summer (the one where he admitted, “our marketing used to suck”) is publishing a book on marketing. His first chapter is free to read here. My favorite bit is where he rips into marketers who let their MBAs go to their heads. You see, like Mark, I don’t have any formal marketing education at all … and back when I used to be a professional marketer (as opposed to just writing about it) my campaigns would regularly beat competitor’s sales. Competitors with big fancy MBAs. Made me believe that marketing savvy is part of the human genome, not something you can really learn in school. You’re just born with it, and then you learn how to refine it in the real-life school of test campaign results. (Ok here’s where everybody emails in to disagree.)

Amazon’s started a new friend-get-a-friend online marketing campaign called “Share the Love” (ok only a West Coast marketer would come up with a name like that.) Anyway, it’s kind of clever so you might want to test something like it at your own site.

After Amazon.com buyers purchase something, instead of getting the regular Confirmation Page, they now get a page that asks them to enter the email addresses of their friends, who will be sent a 10% discount on the products the original buyers just purchased. So if you bought the new VHS of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s third season, you can send all your pals a 10% coupon to buy the same thing.

I don’t like some things about this — it might feel spammy to the recipient depending on how the discount email is worded and who it’s sent from (the merchant or the customer). BUT, it’s the kernal of a good idea. One I’ve seen before, but always worth repeating. i.e. using your confirmation (aka thank you page) to urge your visitors to take another action. Send a coupon to a friend, sign up for other newsletters, purchase related products, read white papers …. the list is endless.

Quote from tonight’s issue of SitePoint Tribune: “Too many designers think of their Website as a fine piece of literature, which is carefully read and studied. In fact, a Website is more like a billboard, while you’re driving past it at 80km/hr. People glance at each new page, they scan some text, and they click the first link that’s ‘close enough’ to what they are looking for.”

Ok how true is that? Very in my experience. I think almost all of us have obsessed over the details of our home page design so much that we’ve lost sight of the view of the ‘hit and run’ viewer. Navigation bars need to be so blindingly obvious (no cute section names please) that everyone can ‘get’ them in a split second.

Input on McAfee from Sherpa reader George Junginger, “From a marketing communications standpoint the site is poor. No one can tell what they are buying, how it works, what they’ve installed. And then if you update your files, you just get a message that you are being updated, but nothing else ever happens.

I think they had a reasonably nice product and a great idea. Then they started throwing all kinds of add ons to the product without seeing if they would work. Problem with McAfee? Too much group think and they cannot see the product from the eyes of their users.”

Lots of Reader feedback in my in-box today — great! (Love getting notes and ideas from you guys.)

Allen Freeman of Cleveland Creative writes, “Can you show me where on the linked page mentioned above that a person signs up for the daily SherpaBlog? I found two boxes for the weekly version, but nothing on the daily. I spent 3-4 minutes looking. (P.S. — since you guys critique other sites, why doesn’t this link take me to a distraction-free signup page exclusively?)”

That’s because we only offer the emailed version weekly right now as I learn more about editorial flow, etc. Didn’t want to overpromise and send you a bad blog just because I had to send “something” every day. Your site critiques are very welcome — especially since we’re in the midst of a giant site and blog redesign right now. More news later.

Troy White at the American Management Association writes, “I’ve also had folks pitch me on handling our email messaging. ‘Send me info’, I’ll say. Which they do… from a hotmail account!!!! Huh? Whassup w/ that? Gee, XYZ Company says they can handle all AMA’s email messaging, but they can’t set Mr. Sales Rep up w/ a company email address?”

Jim Nugent (who didn’t say where he works) says,“Value Click annoying? Gets worse after the opening page? Come on Anne. The site loads fast, the exciting yet simple graphics grab one’s attention and one can get to essential information in just two clicks with no waiting. Can’t say that about most pages I’ve seen. Take another look. In my view, this site exhibits the qualities you so often laud: fast loading, eye catching opening page, easy navigation.”

Todd Kellner of List-Universe writes, “You are SO right! I was on Value Click’s site earlier today and it sucks.”