Friday, May 13, 2011
Yummy Content Makes My Mouth Water!
This fantastic little video from the editors of Printing Impressions enewsletter is a tremendous testament to genuine educational value that costs very little, uses in-house talent, makes a great point, and knocks the whole thing out in 120-seconds flat. Part of PI’s “Fold of the Week” video series, this one features Chief Folding Fanatic Trish Witkowski demonstrating a beautiful pop-up mailer from Westland Printers in Laurel, MD. Nice job guys!
The WhichTestWon “landing page optimization” webinar series has been outstanding. I got not just one, but two blog posts out of this superb free content from Anne Holland, publisher of WhichTestWon.com and her co-presenters.
Nobody rounds up infographics better than Randy Krum, president of InfoNewt. If you need an illustrative way to say something, take a look at Randy’s blog, Cool Infographics. You’ll still need a graphic designer to execute a good infographic (it’s much harder than it looks), but at least Randy’s blog will give you an idea what a good infographic looks like.
This week, I put up a few web pages using Shareist, a new content aggregation website that lets users “build” web pages based on content the program pulls from around the web. It took me about 20 minutes to build Content Marketing and Content Curation pages that I can refresh whenever I want by selecting “curate.” I stumbled a bit here and there simply because I didn’t follow directions, but was reassured by an email exchange with Shareist founder Scott Jangro, who patiently explained that Shareist actually has a “How to get started” video. Sites like this are the reason that content grows exponentially .. and a fundamental reason that technology is thrilling.
A podcast interview with Bryn Mooth, the immediate ex-editor of How Magazine, shares the angst of a long-time professional who’s “out on her own” for the first time. Mooth talks about her first week as a freelancer after 20 years as a work-for-somebody-else writer/editor. How’d she do it? For starters, she turned her blog into Writes4Food.com. Going forward? Unknown, she says, but I'm betting she won't be sorry.
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Thursday, May 12, 2011
This Spring, Webinars Get the Gold Star for Superior Content Marketing. More, More, Please.
Sure, all these folks are selling products/services, but I couldn’t care less. In the last few weeks, I’ve attended five Webinars, with two more scheduled in May. I even have a “webinar” folder in my email so I can go back to see who, what, where, how. What’s going on here?
For way too long, marketers saw webinars as a way to make money, charging $199, $297, $499 and up. Providers have gotten MUCH smarter. This spring, content marketers are keeping webinars free and short (one hour max). What a gift!
•For my part, I take notes while I’m listening. These turn very quickly into blog posts. Sometimes five minutes after the Webinar is over I’ve blogged and Tweeted. I figure it’s the least I can do for the great information I’m gathering!
I’ve gathered a couple of stories while listening. For one, Guy Kawasaki’s computer decided to do a software update during his Enchanted presentation. Viewers saw the prompt on his computer to "upgrade now." When Kawasaki said “sure, go ahead,” the software download took over. He couldn’t get back online with his slides for seven minutes. Let that be a lesson.
Bryan Yaeger’s phone rang while he was making his Printing Impressions presentation. We heard the ring, but fortunately the phone was not on speaker. Lesson number two.
What features have I most enjoyed in my various webinars?
• I love the button that lets me “download slides now”, since I tend to miss some stuff while furiously typing.
• I find I can monitor email and work while I am listening. Super efficiency.
• Thank you, thank you for post-webinar download options. It’s great archival material that I can refer to in the months ahead.
Advice to webinar Mavens? Please do send me a reminder the day before and TWO on the day of. I do forget what time it is and fail to tune in on time (if at all)
Bottomline: Webinars are a super-duper learning environment. I’m hooked on Webinars!
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Monday, May 9, 2011
Mildred Pierce Pays Tribute to Direct Mail
Tense moments pass before the tables begin filling up. And then the flood of hungry diners almost overtakes Mildred. Where did all these people come from, she asks her friend and business partner, Wally Burgan. “It’s direct mail, baby. It works because you only mail to people you want!”
Wow. That got my attention.
When Mildred’s restaurant opened in the depression era (1932), “direct mail” couldn’t have been a term bandied about by the uninitiated. But the business-savvy Wally definitely knew his marketing. In the “History of Direct Mail,” one expert estimated that, in 1920, 45 percent of total American commerce was done through the mails.
At first glance, Wally's appeared to be an anachronistic reference to direct mail, but Mildred Pierce historians were dead on. And they were prescient, too.
Direct mail worked then and it still works. Now, more than ever, you can mail only to people you want -- which in 2011, are likely the very same people who want you.
Thanks, Wally.
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Friday, May 6, 2011
How Forms and First Impressions Affect Conversion Rates on Your Website
• Ask for information that makes sense. For example, if you ask for a home address when registering for a webinar, people wonder “why?” Zarrella says the reluctance is less about privacy invasion than it is about a fear that sales people will hassle you later. Zarrella looked at conversation rates as related to the number of form fields required. “Yes, there is a very slight decline when the number of fields go up, generally, so I looked at how the number of text fields affected conversion. As the number of text fields goes up, you don’t see significant decline until you reach 15 text fields and up. But when I looked at the number of “select boxes,” as the number of those increased, conversation rate did show a sharp decline.”
Other findings included:
• “When you’re trying to decide about removing form fields, you need to be worried about the more complicated fields.”
• Asking for people’s age is a big no-no.
• When you ask for an address, conversion rate is lower, but ZIP information doesn’t significantly hurt conversion.
• Aversion to giving address, phone, and other information is less about privacy than it is about an aversion to being hassled by random cold calls.
• When you use the word “submit” as a button text, you get a much lower conversion rate than with alternate text choices. “The word ‘submit’ has a negative association for most B2B consumers. When I tested five other kinds of text on buttons instead, the most popular button text choices, in descending order of conversion, were ‘click here,’ ‘go,’ ‘submit,’ ‘download,’ and ‘register.’”
Also of interest were Dan’s general pointers on how visitors tend to evaluate a website.
• Design skill and professionalism are super important to the impression your website leaves with visitors, so give it your best.
• People who are interested in you after a website viewing, will also research you. They won’t just Google you, either. They will search third-party results for complaints or bad comments about you. Research yourself to see what might pop up.
• One of the ways people decide if your website is genuine is by looking for specificity. The more specific you can be about your business, the more people will trust you.
Hats off to Dan Zarrella and HubSpot for its great series of free Webinars.
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Thursday, May 5, 2011
Guy Kawasaki told me how to be enchanting. I don't think I'm fast enough.
Still, Kawasaki is a big deal, being an early Apple and all, so I'll share the following points that came out during the Q&A.
• Stemming from his enchantment advice to "engage quickly, engage many people, and engage them often, Kawasaki says, "Answer your email within 24-48 hours; that separates you from most people."
• Constantly push out links on Twitter. Retweet often and on a range of interesting topics. Facebook is different, he says. The key to Facebook is constantly pushing out pictures.
• How long does it take to enchant someone? “I would say two minutes, or in about that order of magnitude," he says, noting that, like it or not, we have 60 seconds to enchant someone. If we mess up we can enchant them later, but only if we're willing to help them upon request and immediately (why am I smelling leather again?)
• Kawasaki acknowledges that not everyone can be enchanted. "If you are going to be enchanting, you will definitely make some people angry." For example, if someone is transparent, a quality Kawasaki recommends, some people might not like them. Live with it.
• How can we know if we're enchanting someone? "If someone is giving you a smile back, then they are probably enchanted by you. Also, if you ask them to do something, will they do it? If so, they are enchanted." (But how fast will they do it? That seems to be the key; yes, yes, I'm struggling with this. I admit it.).
• Who enchants Guy himself? His Enchantment Hall of Fame includes Andrew Zimmern, Queen Latifah, Istanbul, and the MacIIci. Best book ever? If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland.
• Product development advice? Conduct a pre-mortem exercise wherein you take the collective reason of the group to come up with all the reasons something might fail. You need a formal pre-mortem because an informal invite to “share your opinion” will make people hesitate. And it only works when the boss says, “What are the hypothetical reasons we could fail?” Actually, this sounds fun, although after this exercise, you might have to do quite a few things very quickly to appease the boss.
• In a situation when your boss and client disagree, it's hard, but you're not off the hook. In a situation like this, you have to enchant both of them (Kawasaki never said this would be easy).
Conclusion: a) Please don't do everything I tell you quickly, especially if I've been drinking; b) I had a Mac IIfx and I'm pretty sure that was the best Mac ever; c) You win. I do want to read Ueland's book.
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Thursday, April 28, 2011
More Landing Page Testing Tips from WhichTestWon
Today’s webinar from WhichTestWon, focused listeners again on the testing of landing pages.
Note: With the advent of the ubiquitous QR code, landing pages will certainly take on greater significance than ever, so it pays to get this fundamental part of direct marketing right.
Here are some quick tips from presenters Anne Holland, publisher of WhichTestWon.com, and Anna Talerico, executive vice president of Ion Interactive.
1. Test the big picture stuff -- the landing page experience, the page layout, the offer, and the aesthetics.
2. What to test first -- Headline wording, distraction-removal, images, forms/check-outs, and buttons/response links.
3. Multivariate versus A/B Testing. A/B testing is about testing one element on a page against another element on the page, or one page against another. Multivariate testing is more about testing multiple elements on a single page. Multivariate testing isn’t “fancier,” but it’s more complex, so it does take longer to get significant results.
4. When you’re testing, it takes time to reach desired “confidence levels.” Many marketers want at least a 95% confidence level in order to run the winner forward, so it’s important to wait until the test has had at least two – preferably three -- weeks to run. Things can shift even at the highest level of confidence, so give the test time. No matter how eager you are to talk about the test, hold your results close to the chest until sufficient time has been invested. On the other hand, when there’s a big variance in one test result versus another, it’s okay to consider moving earlier to remove the poor player. Just be careful not to rush it.
5. What four outcomes matter to your CFO? More sales, more qualified leads, lower cost per lead, and higher revenues per cart -- that’s what your test results are working toward. Therefore, be careful about testing for testing’s sake and never lose sight of these four desired outcomes in testing.
6. The “thank you” page where folks land to pick-up their free giveaways should be used to influence what you are testing at the top of the experience. This is your first conversion for that person and should be the start of a great relationship. It's worth time to get your thank-you page right.
Q&A
What if you have to pull the plug on a never-ending test in which results remain unclear? This may be one time you need to use your good marketing intuition to make a choice. Which one of the options do you not want to work with any longer? Pull that one.
How do you test without code or IT help? Marketers have a choice of many testing tools that facilitate self-sufficient operation (Google, for example). WhichTestWon has a 5-minute video that instructs marketers how to get started in testing without IT help.
If I have dynamic pages, how do I test? Usually when you have dynamic/changing content on site, you can still test the shell of the page and the layout of the page.
Do I have to wait 21 days for email testing? No, email is a little different. On the other hand, you want to wait until you have sufficient data (for example, it takes time to measure cart abandonment or reaction to shifting banner ads).
How do I know if my results are statistically significant? This information will be part of the reports you’re getting. If this feature isn’t part of your reporting system, change systems.
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Saturday, April 23, 2011
Is Content Marketing Making Us Dumb?
Wilson, vice president of Jones McClure publishing in Houston, likens much of today’s “content” in the legal field to a golf course, “overrun by trees, grasses, and weeds clumped together in patches.”
Wilson is describing what he perceives as a dearth of those “weighty tomes” that, traditionally, feature a substantial body of analytical material. “Now, thanks to the Internet," he says, "lawyers spend their time writing SEO pieces. Lawyers are no longer scholars organizing and explaining the law, but brand developers and managers.”
I can’t disagree, but I am compelled to point out the competitive jungle out there. What’s an ESQ to do?
Wilson acknowledges that his detractors say lawyers are producing more content than ever. He remains skeptical. “Where is the insight, how far does it extend?” he wonders. “You use terms like content, curation, and real-time as if these are the Three Kings that will lead us to a new era of knowledge and understanding. But I’ve actually tried to understand areas of the law using only the content marketing I could find, and it has failed me up to now. Have you tried to practice law from it?”
I wouldn’t argue with Wilson. Not a bit. In fact, I applaud him. But I do need to underscore that content market is just that: marketing. It's a way for people "in the know" to connect with and influence prospective and current customers.
Let’s say it again. Content marketing is, indeed, “information,” but it need not be “analysis.” It can be statistics and definitions, case studies, and opinion. It can provoke thought and even probe, but its purpose is to offer the reader an overview, a synopsis, a round-up, and a quick look. In short, content marketing is a lot closer to public relations that it is to education. Those of us who do content marketing know that.
To his credit, as Wilson moves through his blog, he acknowledges this point. But he makes another poignant observation that actually scares me. “The end result of the shift from weighty tomes to content marketing is this: the disparity between the haves and the have nots is going to grow. Large law will compensate for the dearth of comprehensive analytical content by creating its own and using it in-house, or selling it to others at a steep cost.”
I fear that as much as Wilson does. Sadly, I think we’re already seeing this trend in areas both inside and outside the law. The deepest research – the most detailed, investigative, and diagnostic – is saved for those who can afford it. For-profit outfits like Gartner, Forrester and even MarketingSherpa (to name only a few), give away information in executive summary or teaser form, but reserve the complete deal for folks who can pay $499 and (way) up. That’s not a criticism at all. It’s the reality of economic survival in a capitalist society.
Besides, hasn’t this always been true? Haven't the best educational resources always been primarily for those who have money – the elite schools, the brainiest professors, the costliest books, the in-depth research, and the pricey trade associations?
We experienced a bright shining moment there for a while, when the middle class was finally gaining access to some of the educational perks traditionally reserved for the rich folks. But the economy has exploded that populist notion. Meanwhile, the volume and speed of information – thrown at everybody, all at once – has nurtured the trend to shallow. Filling in the gap, at least partially, is the Internet, with its free “content.”
The legal field may have some peculiarities, but I think Wilson’s concern about content marketing is a scapegoat for more serious issues – namely, society’s move from a growing to a shrinking middle class, along with a decline in thinking, analysis, and self-examination replaced by the quick fix. That worries me, too.
Nobody so far seems to have a solution for the dumbing down of society, but it’s probably a blessing that content marketers are available to help overwhelmed attorneys – and the rest of us -- stay in the race.
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