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If you are doing any marketing or sales at all, you are in the business of building trust.
But who or what do people trust?
The following data is from Forrester Research based on a survey of online consumers.
Not surprisingly, a friend or acquaintance who has used the product, service or company ranks highest - trusted by 83%.
Reviews in newspapers, magazines or on TV are next, trusted by 75%.
But here's a surprise: The third most trusted source of information is a manufacturer's website, at 69%. Now, perhaps that doesn't translate fully to services sales, but it emphasizes the importance of having INFORMATION, lots of information on your website.
Expert reviews, consumer reviews, blogs and discussion boards all rank lower.
A word to the wise.
To continue yesterday's post, referrals are an extremely valuable source of new business.
First of all, they are nearly free. No expensive advertising. Maybe some staff time, maybe some rewards or commissions for referrals, maybe a sign in the office or a mailing or email blast to your customer base. If you're really ambitious, some kind of forum or user's group. That's about it.
Secondly, someone who comes to you through referral is MUCH more likely to turn into a customer. Why? People trust referrals WAY more than they trust advertising.
In almost every business, actions to encourage referrals have a better ROI (Return on Investment) than advertising. In fact, many businesses survive, even flourish on referrals and word of mouth alone.
Really, the only reason for advertising and promotions is when you can't get enough new business through referrals and word of mouth.
Tomorrow: So what are the statistics on trust? Which do people trust more, information on your website versus expert reviews? Be prepared for some surprises.
Everyone knows that referrals and word of mouth generate the best prospects. Ones where the trust is already well established and the sale is easy.
Given that fact it is amazing how few companies have vigorous programs to increase referrals and generate "buzz" about their company, products or services.
Let's carefully distinguish between these two things. "Referral" is a person telling another person about you and recommending you. I'll talk more about this tomorrow.
"Word of Mouth" is people talking about you. It isn't necessarily person-to-person. It isn't necessarily a recommendation. But it spreads awareness and helps to build a reputation.
People talk about a "buzz", they are referring to just that. There is NOTHING better than a buzz about one's product or service. This is so true that it is almost impossible for an author to get his first best seller any other way. That's why everyone wants their book mentioned by Oprah. Instant buzz, instant bestseller.
Not every business, product or service is amenable to creating a buzz. The fact is, many of them are just too ordinary to generate any excitement.
BUT you'd be surprised. Here's a great example from "Groundswell" an excellent book on the use of Twitter, Facebook, blogs and other "new social technologies".
Blendtec is a company that makes super-robust blenders. They did a series of videos using their blenders to grind up all sorts of things - an iPhone for example.
That spread across the Net like wildfire of course, and gave their sales a huge boost.
Of course, the most basic word of mouth is simply happy customers talking up your products or services. So you'd better make sure your customers ARE happy.
But it's worth sitting down and trying to come up with something, a bright idea and a way to spread it.
Realize it has got to be GOOD or it'll never get noticed. But it can be done. People are doing it every day.
The only cool car Studebaker ever made....
One of the best articles I've seen in a long time.
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These guys spent a year compiling a huge database of information and using it to compare Google's rankings to various factors long known or believed to be used (or not) by Google.
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Today's geography lesson kiddies....
There are always lots of buzz words - and technologies with buzz - around the Internet. And they are constantly changing and new things are coming out.
How is one to keep up? Or even to know what to pay attention to?
Web 2.0 and Social Network Marketing, generally speaking, both refer to highly interactive Internet applications.
Facebook and Twitter are just two of many.
I'm currently reading a book "Groundswell" that gives a great framework for evaluating these technologies so you don't get completely overwhelmed, ignore them all or spend too much time trying to sort it out.
In short, they divide web audiences into a few categories - creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators and "inactives". Then they divide ways a business can operate towards these publics into
1. listening - using interactivity as a research tool.
2. talking - any method such as blogs of getting your message out.
3. energizing - getting your audience to help spread the word.
4. supporting - customer support forums and the like.
5. embracing - visitor participation even in product development.
Determine where your public fits into the behavior categories. Then you need clarity on your company's overall objectives and strategy, to identify what type of ineractive online objectives make sense for you.
Only then can you start to evaluate what of these new technologies to use.
A useful tool for analysis.
People are justifiably nervous when shopping online.
There is no scarcity of criminals and no scarcity of scams out there.
The two huge barriers that have to be overcome by anyone planning on getting rich through an online store:
1. Getting traffic to the site. For a store to succeed - any store, whether online or bricks-and-mortar - you must have a realistic way of generating visitors - a method you can afford and which will pay for itself in return sales. Realize with online stores a much smaller fraction will buy, because it is so easy to shop multiple web stores.
2. Building confidence. It becomes mandatory to do anything and everything you can to reassure the visitor that their credit card information is safe and the goods will be what they expected and wanted.
That can be guarantees, your physical address and photos of your store or warehouse, a contact phone number that is not an 800 number and is located in the U.S., testimonials. Photos of staff. Even the appearance of the site itself, if professional, is reassuring.
Think these things through before you dive into the online store world.
There are several levels of solution for accepting payments online.
The best solution varies depending on budget. Ideally you accept all major credit cards, plus PayPal. Taking major credit cards gives you credibility, makes you look big. Accepting PayPal gives people an easy solution who may not have a credit or debit card, or who feel uncomfortable giving their card information to someone unknown, no matter how good they look.
If you accept only PayPal you look like a small operation and are less trusted to that degree. But in that case you don't need a full blown shopping cart as part of your site, if you are only selling one or a couple different items you can just use PayPal "buy now" buttons - very easy and fast to set up, and with no monthly fees to you.
One of the hazards of the Internet is "phishing."
It is a criminal effort to get you to go to what looks like a legitimate site and input information such as credit cards.
There are several ways to protect yourself:
1. If it looks fishy, it almost certainly is.
2. Look at the link you are supposed to click on. Mouseover to see the actual link. It should match what it claims to be. Look at the domain name. It is only the last part of the domain that counts. "bankofamerica.phishy-site.com" the domain is "phishy-site.com" - NOT "bankofamerica.com".
3. There are now various checking services built into web browsers and security software that will warn you if a site is suspicious or a known attack site. Some of these such as Norton SafeWeb even work in Google search engine results pages.
There are a lot of criminals out there. It isn't hard to avoid getting caught by a scam. Just stay alert.
I'm sometimes asked to survey for pricing.
It is very difficult.
One of the great geniuses of marketing, David Ogilvy, says you cannot survey for a price point. I agree. There ARE two effective things you can do in research to establish pricing:
1. Competitor research. What are competitors charging for similar products, lower end and higher end products?
2. You can TEST pricing. Offer the product at different prices or variations and see how it affects sales. This is particularly easy to do with online stores. You can test different pricing, shipping charges, volume discounts etc. and see if they affect your conversion rate.
Otherwise, forget it. Individuals surveyed as to "how much they would pay for a ___" or "Would you consider this price high, low, or reasonable" have no incentive to tell the truth - and some incentive to lie. Worse, they may try to be honest, but things can be very different when they have to reach for their wallet.
David Ogilvy is one of the marketing gods. Founder of Ogilvy and Mather. Responsible for some of the most famous advertising campaigns in history. Retired to live in a castle in France, probably he's worth $100,000,000.
When David Ogilvy talks, you might want to listen.
A very large portion of his book "Ogilvy on Advertising" is about research, what it is good for, how major marketing companies like Proctor and Gamble use it, notable successes, how to go about research - and railing against the way most marketers neglect research..
Quote: "Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals."
Amen.
It turns out there is at least one profession that is booming in this slow economy:
Panhandling
And note that panhandlers are trading successful actions on-line.
Those were quieter, more peaceful times.
"World Wars", "Weapons of Mass Destruction" and "Home Invasion Robberies" were in the future.
No one had a glimmer of The Internet or TV. No spam or infomercials. Hardly anyone had a telephone - so no telemarketers. Junk mail? I don't think so. Though the mail order catalog had long since been invented (by Benjamin Franklin, no less!)
Were those better times? Actually, I rather fancy being able to go online in my jammies at 3AM and order that 18" long wooden shoehorn I've been coveting....
Which states are most spammed? Ranking is based on the percentage of email sent to those states that's spam.
1. Idaho - 93.8%
2. Kentucky
3. New Jersey
4. Alabama
5. Illinois
6. Indiana
7. Massachusetts
8. Pennsylvania
9. Arizona
10. Maryland - 90.3%.
Over 90%. The global percentage is 86.4%. That means five out of every six emails sent, world-wide, are spam.
Product design - as any marketing - can be timeless art, with a forever appeal.
Google's latest initiative, just launched officially September 23rd, is something anyone with a website needs to pay attention to.
Sidewiki allows anyone with a Google account and a Google toolbar to comment on any web page - and have it be visible to others.
It can also show up in searches.
Multiply the negative potential of Wikipedia by 100x, and you picture the concern.
Of course all may turn out well. But I wouldn't count on it. After all, it enables your competitors to make negative comments anyone can see about you!
It's experimental and I think there's a fair chance it won't pan out because there's no good way to control abuse. The mechanisms which mainly keep Wikipedia from going too far off the rails, won't work with this set up.
Definitely you should be checking regularly to see if anyone is posting entries for your website.
Anyone doing or reviewing designs should be aware of the fact that things aren't necessarily what they seem.
Did you know that the "visual center" of a square is actually slightly above the actual center? If you put a dot in the true center it'll look like it's below center.
This picture is a classic example. I know it is completely unbelievable that "A" and "B" squares are the identical shade. But they are (click on picture to see enlarged).
The moral of the story? Design for how things appear to the eye. There is no absolute reality you are designing for.
I think everyone in the marketing world would like to know the future of the Internet and especially what is the Next Big Thing.
If you were hoping for the answer, sorry to disappoint.
BUT there are some things I can say that are very clear:
1. Change will be incremental. Yes, things change faster on the Internet than any other marketing environment in the history of planet earth.... but they still take time. You'll have time to figure it out.
2. One of the drivers of change will continue to be the move towards faster connections and computers, larger and cheaper storage (the rise of online video being a perfect example of this).
3. The vast majority of things touted as The Next Big Thing, won't be.
4. What works now will continue to work - such as good website design, content, "white hat" site optimization, good click ad campaign management.
5. Some things may decline in importance, but again, it won't be overnight. Banner ad response rates are a mere whisper of what they were some years ago. But the decline has been gradual over that time.
6. Nothing will come along that will turn basic marketing principles on their ear.
7. People will continue to spend lots of marketing money doing dumb things online. Many of these will be Fortune 500 companies.
Well, that won't make headlines in the New York Times tomorrow... but maybe it'll provide a little perspective.
The title is a bit of a gag. This post doesn't have anything to do with pesticides or sustainability. Or the presence of carbon atoms in the molecule (Marketing molecules? Hunh? Look it up) .
What I'm talking about is this: The best marketing is organic to the organization's philosophy and its operations.
In other words, you don't come up with a look, tagline, logo, copy only by reference to survey or what you think is going to appeal to the market. You have to start with who the company is, what they do, how people feel about their products or services, what the owner or founder or management is trying to accomplish, and what is called "company culture."
Yes, as with any art, you have to consider the reality of and what will appeal to the consuming public. Otherwise you die a starving, unknown artist. But all great art comes as much from the heart and soul of the creator as from the world around it.
Marketing that isn't organic to the entire company is always going to be at least a bit phony and impersonal and thereby less effective.
Anyone doing email broadcasting knows to be concerned about spam complaints.
You'd think if someone opted in to the list in the first place you'd be safe. Not. The publisher of a popular weekly email newsletter was moved to make this plea:
To flag e-mails as spam when you have asked to receive them just doesn't make sense and it is a singularly ineffective way to unsubscribe.
Even more uselessly, one person has recently reported as abuse the automated message from the list server asking him to confirm his request to join the list. Another, who has tagged the mailings as spam, similarly tagged the message I sent him to tell him that I'd removed him from the list (I suppose it demonstrates consistency, if nothing else).
Were you wondering if Bing, "The First Ever Decision Engine", would conquer the search world?
Nope.
(Bing's market share declined last month, so did Yahoo, Google rose.)
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When you design a piece, it's always a good idea to step back before you finalize it and see if there is any crucial information missing.
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Just today, I received a mailed postcard, and picked up a flyer at my gym. I'm interested in both of their offerings. Yet the information necessary to act is completely missing in one case, and vital information missing in the other.
What would you do with a postcard mailing for a new sandwich shop that didn't include its address, phone number or website?
Oh yes, and the place is called "Quicky's" thus violating one of the basic rules of naming. It left me thinking "Yes, I like quick service, but what's the name of the place?" I turned the card over twice before I realized that was the name.
If I wasn't interested in the marketing, it would have been in the garbage before then. After carefully studying the card, I found the only way to learn more was by going to the website "superguarantee.com".
I won't even tell you what happened when I TRIED to FIND the place on that website.
Puh-leeze.
The flyer from my gym was barely better than that. It promotes a new add-on service available by web, but while it gives the name of the service (which enabled me to find the website) it didn't give any information on how to sign up and whether it costs anything.
Unbelievable.
I guess that would be okay if it was intended only as a teaser, except the service is promoted as available NOW. Well, guess what, I want it NOW.
Amazing.
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Fonts come in different flavors with different emotional connotations (some different script fonts here).
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One of the worst and most common errors in design is using many and incompatible fonts (type styles).
I think it is just too much of a temptation to designers.
I've seen a small card with 5 different fonts - and that was just on one side!
It's a distraction at best. At worst it prevents the piece from integrating. Viewers will wander off or feel like there's something wrong without, since they aren't typically trained in typography or design, having any idea why it bothers them.
It's so easy to avoid this error:
Resist. Temptation.
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